“The book is special, and an important contribution as Kanchan Banerjee brings a fresh and lively perspective to this era.   He relates the comprehensive and detailed story, going back to pre-Islamic Arabia’s history, attacks from Huns and numerous other invasions, and the Islamic rule, followed by the British occupation, up to present-day India. He paints a realistic picture of plunders, massacres, and the destruction of temples, educational institutions, and industries. Banerjee’s focus, however, is not on history per se, but the impact of the major actors and events that shaped this history, as he concludes that the Islamic rule, the colonial subjugation, missionaries’ misguided zeal, and Marxists’ slant on India’s past accomplishments, have sought to destroy the Indian civilization.”

“It is a bold attempt to offer interesting ideas on various themes that have shaped the evolution of human society over the millennium.  Kanchan Banerjee being a “non-historian,” has done an admirable job in offering a scholarly survey of various landmarks in history that have deeply impacted-mainly harmed Bharat / India. ..There is much to commend the author in his maiden venture.”

“I am sure anyone fired with the thirst to know India’s evolution over the centuries in comparison to the evolution of other cultures and its great contribution no less than its sufferings under foreign domination will find this book a great asset, and so would those patriotic Indians who wish to see India emerging as a Vishwaguru and a Superpower in the future.”

Review of The Crash of a Civilization by Kanchan Banerjee

The history of India has yet to beunderstoodfrom an Indian/Bharatiya perspective, apart from the outside views of India commonly available in academia and the media today. Though several important efforts have been attempted in this direction, they have been largely ignored in textbooks. Even today 75 years after India’s independence in 1947, the dominanthistorical views of Indiahave not fundamentally changed since the colonial era and do not portray a respectful view of the country or its culture.

Some scholars deny that there ever was any real country that we could call India, or any unique Indian civilization apart from the diverse and transient cultures and kingdoms of a region they prefer to call South Asia, whose identity is nebulous and whose historical depiction as India is forgotten.

Efforts by pro-India scholars to challenge these colonially related views and their new leftist formulations are quickly dismissed asbiased accounts of Indian or Hindu nationalism that lack any academic or intellectual credibility.

Yet the fact isclear that the current western view of India’s history still reflects colonial, missionary and Marxists prejudices. It is part of an attempt to control India at intellectual and cultural levels that is a product of the very type of prejudices that these scholars are criticizing in others.

An academic apartheid has been created where Indians are not provided any significant place in discussions about the history of India unless they are Marxists. No positive Indian voice is allowed, and certainly no Hindu voice is considered worthy to listen to, though Hindus represent the majority of Indians.

The history of India from the most ancient Vedic times through the modern era remains under the shadow of questionable interpretations that do not aim to present the history of the country so much as to discredit its great civilization. The main reason for this bias, which is seldom questioned, is that such presentations are based upon a different and perhaps hostile cultural view than India’s dharmic civilization, which remains the only major ancient civilization to have survived to the present day. Such scholars do not study India with a receptive mind or as students of its great culture. They try to reduce it according to their ownunquestioned perspectives and judgements that are postulated as self-evident truths beyond scrutiny, which no pro-India voice has the right to question.

This is happening though today India as a nation is developing a powerful presence on the world stage, and immigrants from India form affluent and well-educated minorities in many countries including the United States and Great Britain. This truncated view of the history of India now has to face a resurgent India in a global context, which exposes its limited perspective. The New India demands a reexamination of its history in light of its cultural achievements, civilizational status and their new developments for the future.

Kanchan Banerjee and the Book

In this context of how India has been denigrated and the New India that is rising to challenge it, I am most happy to note the new book “The Crash of a Civilization” by Kanchan Banerjee, a prominent Indian and Hindu author and teacher who resides in the United States. His bookis a vast and profound study of the cultural, political and intellectual influences involved in the history of India, exposing the assault on a great civilization and how it has endured through all the difficulties involved.

Banerjee has taken on directly and unapologetically the entrenched historical and cultural prejudices against India,exposing their misinterpretations and biases and revealing the suppressed truth about India’s history that we must face today not only to understand the history of India but that of the entire world.

Since the end of the colonial era, the history of many traditional and native cultures throughout the world has been rewritten and prejudices against them exposed and corrected. This includes Native Americans, Africans, Polynesians, and many groups in Asia, as well as older European pagan cultures and those of the Middle East. Yet the same type of prejudices against India continueunchanged and unquestioned. This is perhaps because India has preserved its older civilization and is rising again as an alternative view of humanity that reflects a different vision that other groups may fear.

Kanchan Banerjee has taken on the most difficult and controversial issues in his monumental historical analysis of India, including exposing the atrocities perpetrated under Islamic rule and under British rule, which occurred along with efforts to convert India, or divide and rule India according to their own political, economic and religious vested interests.

Banerjee’s views are well-documented, logical, insightful and engaging. They are not the product of mere emotion or outrage but reflect a clear and broad analysis of the issues and ideas involved, their origin, development and consequences. He raises fundamental questions about the nature of religion and politics relative not only to India but to the world as a whole, and how these have impacted India over the centuries up to the present day, often in a negative way.

Most interesting for the reader, Banerjee makes the history of India come alive and become relevant to us in our current era of world crisis, with its dramatic and often tragic stories that need to be heard and learned from about the preservation of a great civilization.

He challenges the efforts to whitewash the genocide, destruction and distortions that have occurred, many of which have been encased and highlighted as truth in textbook and media accounts of India. Reading about these will not be a comfortable experience and can expose some of the cruelest events in human history. Yet this is necessary to create the catharsis that can change how we view India, history and even ourselves.

Banerjee’s examination of the Islamic attacks on India, particularlyfrom the Turks, is well researched and portrayed in terms of its actions and motivations. Their efforts not only to conquer over and rule India, but to undermine, subvert and remove its ancient civilization are made clear, including their destruction of numerous temples, schools and universities. In this he includes the Mughals, who were far frombeing as liberal as historians like to portray them, a few exceptions notwithstanding. He brings to light and give credence to the ongoing Hindu resistance to such outside rule that never accepted these groups as representing India as a whole and tried to preserve India’s ancient civilization in spite of their dominance. This history of Hindu resistance must also be recognized and honored for its persistence and bravery.

He documents thislong Islamic encounter from the eighth century to modern times, including the creation of Pakistan and the Marxist-Islamist alliance, often with Nehruvian support, that cast its shadow over India’s Independence Movement and brought about the partition of the country. This led eventually to the genocide of the Bangladesh War in 1971 that the world seems to have already forgotten though it killed millions, of which most were Hindus. Pakistan had the support of the United States under Nixon in this war, yet no one was ever prosecuted for the genocide involved.

Banerjee’s exposure of the role of Marxists and Communists in India up to JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) is extremely important. India’s Marxists along with their international leftist connections have been the main intellectual group perpetuating these old denigrations of India, largely through distortions about the role of caste, woman, regional differences and social iniquities, ignoring the fact that the same culture and rituals pervades India today from Tamil Nadu and Kerala to the Himalayas. India’s Marxist academia and related media have often been the source of the anti-India and anti-Hindu stories that appear in the western press, planted for their propaganda value.

He goes into great detail relative to British rule and India’s Independence Movement and the efforts of the British to cripple a free India. The British colonial genocides in India must be told, which shatter the myth of the benefits of British rule in India.

His book extends to current events in India today in which these cultural and political distortions are being questioned and slowly removed by the vision of a New India in harmony with its ancient Dharmic traditions.

Will this book provoke criticism? This is possible given the entrenched vested interests against India, but its scholarship cannot be easily dismissed and is detailed and well documented. We encourage all those to read it who wish to be better intellectually prepared to handle the issues and debates involved.

The Way Forward

I have known Kanchan Banerjee over the past thirty years and have witnessed his dedication to revealing the truth of India and its great civilization. He has worked in many fields of education, Yoga, Ayurveda and Hindu Dharma, gaining a deep experience and much practical knowledge as well.

One must admire the determined labor that he has dedicated to this difficult historical task. He approach is clear, concise, fearless and uncompromising. He raises important questions that can no longer be ignored. He provides the information and motivation for a new historical vision that reveals the truth of what has occurred in India and the corrections needed for the history to be valid.

For those who have already studied India’s history and perhaps believe in the prevalent negative and condescending views about India, they may be offended by this book, but will have to take notice, as it represents a powerful new stream of scholarship that will no longer bow down to anti-India prejudices.

For those who have already accepted the need for such a new approach to the history of India, Banerjee has provided it with great clarity, detail, depth and precision, which can serve as an excellent model to follow and a foundation on which to build much new research and different topics of examination.

The book fills an important gap in historical studies and opens a new vision. We can no longer reduce India to western cultural, political or religious views and their different view of life. A new, dynamic, creative and confident India is arising on the world stage, with a growing stature in terms of diplomacy and economics, as well as culture and science.

Indic knowledge systems of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh and related traditions of Yoga, Vedanta, Ayurveda, Sanskrit, science and mathematics are gaining recognition worldwide. This view of Indic teachings at the cutting edge of cosmology, medicine and spirituality also clearly shows the hollowness and shallowness of most of these old historical views about India as backward, ignorant and superstitious.

Banerjee provides the historical view that explains both why Indic civilization has been denigrated historically and why it is rising again today at the forefront of a new global spiritual civilization with a cosmic vision. As such, his book is a call to action to remove this distortion and prevent such distortions from arising again.

Let us not forget that the great sages of the Upanishads long before the time of Buddha stated that Everything is Brahman, the Self is Brahman, and there is only One Self in all beings. The cosmic and universal view of India’s dharmic traditions and the great culture they havecreated will continue to bring light to the world today as in ancient time if we allow it to speak to us.

David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri), author and teacher of Yoga, Vedanta, and Ayurveda, recipient of Padma Bhushan Award (2015) from the govt. of India.

This book deals with history but Kanchan was not trying to write a history book.
It is more of an unapologetic expression of the Hindu experience of history.
Some “scholars” will no doubt disagree with his views but Kanchan seeks no endorsement,
he just wants to assert that a Hindu worldview is just as valid as any other.”

In this context of how India has been denigrated and the New India that is rising to challenge it,
I am most happy to note the new book “The Crash of a Civilization” by Kanchan Banerjee,
a prominent Indian and Hindu author and teacher who resides in the United States.
His book is a vast and profound study of the cultural,
political and intellectual influences involved in the history of India,
exposing the assault on a great civilization and how it has endured through all the difficulties involved.