Book Review: Maharanas – A Thousand Year War for Dharma

Kumar Gauraw

Maharanas of Mewar and their thousand-year defense of Hindu society have been kept hidden from the people of Bharat. Average Indians can hardly think of just three names, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Guru Gobind Singh, and Maharana Pratap when we think of resistance to Islamic invasions in India. But all these three people happened to be around the 16-17 Century.

History tells us that the first Islamic attack on Indian soil was led by Mohammad Bin Qasim in 712 AD, who killed King Dahir Sen of Sindh and was soon humiliated and chased away by Bappa Rawal in the 8th century.

However, Indian history books have been wiped clean of the names of King Dahir Sen or Bappa Rawal or any of the Maharanas of Mewar, or any brave Kings who relentlessly fought Islamic invaders to keep them at bay for over 800 years and protected the Hindu motherland from those barbarians.

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The post-colonial political powers in India have been in bed with the Leftist- Jihadi cabal who did not wish the people of Bharat to know the truth of the true heroes, the true sons of the soil.  They carefully conspired to hide the true history and wrote lies to portray the indigenous Hindu society as a meek and weak society who were always defeated and ruled by superior and more powerful outside forces.

At a time when the Hindu psyche has been consistently polluted with lies about Mughal Sultanate straight through the school system for over 75 years since independence in 1947, Dr. Omendra Ratnu’s ‘Maharanas – A Thousand Year War for Dharma’ is a much-needed anti-virus to protect the Hindu minds from the virus of apathy towards Bharat’s glorious past that fuels the disease of fake secularism and ‘Gandhiwad’ that has plagued the Hindu minds!
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Updated On June 6, 2022 In Book Reviews, History & Culture , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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The Kashmir Files-The Movie, History and the Genocides of Kashmiri Hindus

Kumar Gauraw

I cleared my schedule yesterday (March 13, 2022) and got my two tickets to watch the afternoon show of Vivek Agnihotri’s ‘The Kashmir Files’, which has created waves worldwide. The movie deserves a second look and therefore, I am planning to take kids to this movie again, this week

All I can say about The Kashmir Files itself is that this movie is extremely intense, overwhelming, and shows the naked truth of the seventh genocide of the Kashmiri Hindus committed by the Islamic Terrorists that started in January 1990. The Kashmir Files captures the lived memory of Kashmiri Hindus, rips off band-aids that were administered by the establishment to keep it all silent. The movie captures the pain that we swept under the carpet to get on with life, a pain the world at large anyway had turned a blind eye to. The movie captures a lived trauma that not anyone dared to even speak much of.
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Three decades have already passed since that horrific ‘exodus’ of more than 500,000 Kashmiri Pandits and their lived history already branded a myth, Hindu propaganda. The 2% minority of the valley, the Kashmiri Pandits had been branded an oppressive majority by the mainstream media, and their murderers wined and dined with PMs and Lutyens elite. Even the eminent Lordships of the Indian Supreme Court snubbed refused to listen to their tragedy asking the oppressed to forget it and move on to uphold secular chatter of the country. The naked truth of Kashmir, the horrors of Islamic terrorism was almost buried successfully by secular India…until the movie, The Kashmir Files was released! That changes things for India and for the rest of the world.
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Updated On March 15, 2022 In History & Culture, Miscellaneous , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Book Review-Savarkar (Part 2): A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966 by Vikram Sampath

Kumar Gauraw

Decades after his death, the mere mention of the name Vinayak Damodar Savarkar riles people up even today. From being an optimistic advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity in his famous book, “The Indian War of Independence 1857”, what transformed him into a proponent of ‘Hindutva’? Why was Savarkar a severe critic of Gandhi and the Congress? What happened after Gandhi’s assassination?

Veer-Savarkar's Biography part-2-Review-collage

These are the questions that the readers of Vikram Sampath’s first book about Savarkar have. The answer to all those questions and many more historical facts are documented in the second and concluding volume of this two-part biography of Veer Savarkar. Having read the first volume, the expectations were high, and Vikram Sampath did not disappoint. This book is even more detailed, so engaging that I read the entire volume in just three days! I couldn’t put the book down!

Before we get going with my insights from this book, if you haven’t seen my review of the first book in this series, you can click here to read it:

BOOK REVIEW-SAVARKAR: ECHOES FROM A FORGOTTEN PAST BY VIKRAM SAMPATH

As I had shared in my last post, these books by Vikram Sampath are my first introduction to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, having read nothing about him in textbooks. Therefore, everything I shared is what I discovered about his life reading through the book. I was eager to get my hands on this second volume because I wanted to know what happened after Savarkar was transported from Andaman to Ratnagiri jail around 1924.

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Updated On February 27, 2022 In Book Reviews, History & Culture , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Book Review-Savarkar: Echoes From a Forgotten Past by Vikram Sampath

Kumar Gauraw

The name Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (aka Veer Savarkar) doesn’t mean much in the minds of Indian people these days, other than a notion that there is some controversy around this name that politicians stoke around the election period.

The author of the biography of V.D. Savarkar named Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past, Vikram Sampath says in the prologue itself, the name of Savarkar or any details about him is conspicuously absent from all our history textbooks across India. After reading this book, one thing is obvious to the reader, as the author also confirms, the post-colonial political powers in India did not wish the young people of the country to know anything about Savarkar and his legacy. And they succeeded so far!

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Picture: Book Cover(left) and the author, Vikram Sampath(right)

The left-liberal cabal of historians and media who seem to have infiltrated all influential institutions with the help of political powers has ensured that one can hardly get anything positive about Veer Savarkar if he tries to search even his name on the internet. Amidst all the propaganda, Vikram Sampath brings a very comprehensive and rare biography of Savarkar that carries details of his fascinating life story, description of the tumultuous times of our history, and presents us with a comprehensive account of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s eventful journey through this book.

Being an avid reader, I have read many great biographies and autobiographies. But this is by far the only biography I couldn’t rest until finished once I got started. Going through Savarkar’s life from just an ordinary little boy to becoming a multi-talented young man, to becoming a threatening figure for the almighty British Empire who needed to get rid of him anyhow, to his deportation from England to India to be sentenced to a 50-year jail term on fabricated charges, to his transfer to Cellular Jail at Port Blair and his suffering there is a heart-wrenching reading experience that gives a feeling of nothing less than a thriller!

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Updated On February 27, 2022 In Book Reviews, History & Culture , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Samrat Yudhishthir – Study of Mahabharat’s Glorious Emperor

Kumar Gauraw

Although Mahabharat has been analyzed and commented on by numerous scholars from around the world, most people from Bharat (India) would think of the TV serial Mahabharat by B.R. Chopda brought Mahabharat to the masses.

Most people’s knowledge of Mahabharat is limited by what was shown in that TV serial. However, for a curious mind, that should be the starting point to the exploration of such an epic from the ancient and glorious history of Bharat. Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, the repository of knowledge that was bestowed upon Arjun for all of us is just a part of the set of events captured within the timeline of Mahabharat.

Yudhishthir-Krishna-Discussion-Mahabharat

When we think about Mahabharat, people think of the battle of Kurukshetra and the set of events that lead to that battle. But Mahabharat is so much more than that. The best way to know Mahabharat is to read it and learn about the glorious history of Bharat captured in it.

To keep this post focused about Samrat Yudhishthir, I want to mention that the impression I got (and many people will agree with me) about Yudhishthir Maharaj after watching B.R. Chopda’s Mahabharat or reading about stories/commentaries by scholars was not very positive of even impressive. The impression we get is that though he always tried to follow Dharma and never lied, he was a weak/soft person whose only strength was that he had brothers like Arjun and Bheem who were mighty warriors.
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Updated On February 20, 2022 In Analysis & Research, History & Culture , , , , , , , ,
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Book Review – One Arrow, One Kill: Jai Shri Ram

Kumar Gauraw

If you don’t know anything about Shri Ram and the Ramayana written by Maharshi Valmiki, then this is just the book for you. And if you don’t know anything about Shri Ram and Ramayana, this is a great starting point for you as well. In either case, a great book to increase your knowledge. One-Arrow-One-Kill-Jai-Shri-Ram-Book-Cover Growing up, I didn’t have much exposure to the Vedic concepts of India, there was never any formal education system that teaches the glorious history of Indian civilization. Therefore every historical aspect of Ramayana and Mahabharat was pretty much absent from my life as it is absent today from the lives of most people

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Updated On February 17, 2022 In Book Reviews, History & Culture , , , , , , , , ,
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