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Uprooting the Beautiful Tree: Dharampal’s Rediscovery of India’s Indigenous Education System
In the landscape of Indian historiography, few interventions have been as intellectually disruptive as Dharampal’s The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century. First published in 1983, this landmark volume mounts a compelling challenge to entrenched colonial narratives that portrayed precolonial India as a civilizational void, bereft of formal education and awaiting the salvific arrival of British modernity. Drawing on archival records and administrative surveys commissioned by the British East India Company, Dharampal meticulously reconstructs an educational ecosystem that was at once decentralized, inclusive, and pedagogically rich. The source materials for Dharampal’s research include extensive data from early nineteenth-century surveys conducted in the Madras, Bombay, and Bengal Presidencies.…
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The Manipur Conundrum: Truth Behind the Violence | Authors Speak Out | Itihasdhir
Step into an unflinching conversation on Itihasdhir with the authors of The Manipur Conundrum: History. Exodus. Conversion. Manoshi Sinha, Dr. Ankita Dutta, and Vladimir Adityanath, as they unpack the layered realities behind the conflict in Manipur. From pre‑Mahabharata origins to the recent surge of violence, the authors dissect how demographic shifts, indigenous exoduses, religious conversions, narcotics trafficking, and colonial-era policies have shaped the crisis. Combining rigorous research with regional insights, they offer a narrative grounded in facts, historical precedent, and cultural heritage. Buy the Book: https://www.amazon.in/Manipur-Conundrum-History-Exodus-Conversion/dp/B0F5BGYPBX 📚 About Us: Itihasdhir is a podcast book review channel dedicated to diving deep into the world of literature. We explore a diverse range of…
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Justice or Farce? Analyzing When Anita Gets Bail by Arun Shourie
In a nation where justice is supposed to be blind but often appears blindfolded by incompetence, corruption, and callous indifference, Arun Shourie’s Anita Gets Bail emerges not as another academic treatise on judicial reform, but as a raw, deeply personal account of what happens when ordinary citizens collide with India’s labyrinthine legal system. This is judicial critique at its most human—written not from the ivory towers of legal scholarship, but from the waiting rooms of district courts where hope withers and dignity dies a slow death. The Personal Becomes Political: A Love Letter to Resilience What makes Shourie’s twenty-seventh book extraordinary is its foundation in lived experience. The narrative begins with a…
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Crash of a Civilization: How India Was Broken from Within | Kanchan Banerjee | Itihasdhir
Buy The Book: https://www.amazon.in/Crash-Civilization-Kanchan-Banerjee/dp/9355212402 In this eye-opening conversation, Itihasdhir sits down with Kanchan Banerjee, author of the explosive book Crash of a Civilization, to explore how India’s ancient civilization was systematically dismantled—politically, spiritually, and culturally. Was Bharat’s fall accidental, or was it engineered from within? From colonial sabotage and religious conversions to the erasure of indigenous knowledge systems and historical distortions, this interview uncovers the uncomfortable truths behind India’s civilizational crash and what it will take for a true Indic renaissance. 📚 About Us: Itihasdhir is a podcast book review channel dedicated to diving deep into the world of literature. We explore a diverse range of books, from historical masterpieces and…
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Whose History Is She Really Telling? A Critical Look at Romila Thapar’s Marxist Lens
Romila Thapar, long revered within elite academic circles and international liberal platforms as the authoritative voice on Indian historiography, positions her work, Our History, Their History, Whose History?, as an ostensibly impartial inquiry into the political utilization of historical narratives. However, when viewed critically through an Indic right-wing lens, Thapar’s slim but ideologically dense volume emerges less as detached scholarship and more as a carefully orchestrated defense of a Nehruvian-Marxist historiographical paradigm that continues to dominate Indian academia decades after its ideological apex. Central to Thapar’s narrative is the contention that nationalism inherently distorts historical interpretation. Ironically, this critique fails to confront her own implicit nationalist biases favoring the Nehruvian…
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Where Temples Speak and Histories Whisper: A Journey with Deepa Mandlik
India’s temples have always been more than stone or ritual—they are vessels of heritage, culture, and unbroken faith. Deepa Mandlik’s Dynasties of Devotion is not just a book; it’s a journey that invites the reader to linger in the shadows of spires, decipher legends in sculpture, and experience the essence of Indian history through seven extraordinary temples stretching from Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu to the Khmer heartland of Cambodia. To a reader like me, who loves to travel and explore temples, with the recent example of the 8 Aṣtavināyaka Temples in Maharashtra, this book was like a pilgrimage in itself. The Book’s Spirit: Weaving Story With Stone Unlike most academic treatises, Mrs.…
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Goddess Ila: The Forgotten Matriarch of Vedic India
When we begin to trace the origins of Indian civilization, we often encounter a familiar starting point: Manu Vaivasvata, the archetypal progenitor of humankind in the Indic tradition. While he is most famously associated with the Manu Smriti, a text that was redacted and formalized many centuries later during the post-Vedic period, his legacy predates that code by millennia. Manu Vaivasvata is invoked over twenty times across the Vedic corpus, not merely as a mythical patriarch, but as a moral and legal anchor: the first law-giver, the inaugurator of human society (manushya samaj), and a link between the divine and the earthly order. His role is comparable in scope, though…
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Swami Vigyananand’s “The Hindu Manifesto” Offers a Civilizational Roadmap
There are books that inform, repositories of facts, footnotes, and frameworks.There are books that inspire, kindling within the reader a momentary flame of idealism, a fleeting vision of something greater.And then, there exist those rare and potent texts that do more than inform or inspire, they awaken.They rouse the soul from its civilizational slumber.They summon the dormant spirit of a people long chained by forgetfulness, distortion, and disinheritance. Swami Vigyananand’s The Hindu Manifesto is one such text. It is not merely a political treatise, nor just a spiritual commentary.It is a clarion call sounded across the corridors of time, a conch blown at the cusp of epochs, awakening the memory…
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The South Indian Story: Beyond Fables | Nitin Kushalappa on South Indian Stories | Itihasdhir
Buy The Book: https://www.amazon.in/Dakshin-South-Indian-Myths-Fables/dp/0143454994?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=A15DBATYR506U3&gPromoCode=BankPromoPD25_All What truly shaped the lands of Dakshin? On this episode of Itihasdhir, we’re honored to host acclaimed author Nitin Kushalappa MP for a profound discussion on South Indian stories. Nitin takes us on a journey beyond the familiar fables and widely propagated myths, uncovering the lesser-known, yet incredibly significant, narratives that form the bedrock of South Indian civilization. From ancient kingdoms to cultural evolutions, get ready to see the South like never before. 📚 About Us: Itihasdhir is a podcast book review channel dedicated to diving deep into the world of literature. We explore a diverse range of books, from historical masterpieces and contemporary bestsellers to…
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The Ajanta Caves: A Multidisciplinary Examination of Indic Civilizational Expression
The Ajanta Caves transcend their conventional categorization as archaeological sites, emerging instead as monumental testaments to the Indic civilizational ethos—where Dharma, aesthetic sophistication, and metaphysical inquiry coalesce into an enduring legacy of visual and architectural brilliance. This essay undertakes a multidisciplinary analysis of Ajanta, exploring its geographic anchoring, historical development, artistic modalities, and broader civilizational significance. I. Geographic and Chronological Contextualization Nestled within the Sahyadri ranges of Maharashtra, the Ajanta Cave complex comprises 30 intricately carved rock-cut monuments arranged in a crescent formation along the Waghora River. The geographical seclusion of these caves contributed to their obscurity for centuries, until their rediscovery in 1819 by a British colonial officer—a moment…
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Goddess Ila: The Forgotten Matriarch of Vedic India
𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐜 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐘𝐨𝐮 📚
