Book
Review
Sanghi, Ashwin. (2012). The Krishna Key. Westland. Chennai.
Pages: 475. Price: Rs: 250/-
Indians
do not have a sense of history. The ancient rishis
did not leave a record of their scientific experiments and achievements. For
them science was a philosophical pursuit, an eternal quest for truth and
unravelling the mysteries of the universe, and aimed at improving the lot of
mankind. (See SCIENCE INANCIENT INDIA).
If
the youth of today does not have an understanding of the achievements of their
ancestors, there are several reasons for this. One is that the nation was
subjugated and ruled by aliens for nearly a thousand years. If the theme of
the alien rule during the first six hundred and fifty years was inflicting
physical cruelties, the British who ruled next for about three hundred years used
a different tactic. Their objective was to keep the Indians physically and psychologically
oppressed. By the time the British left in 1947, large numbers of Indians were oblivious
of their ancient glory. They were convinced that they were always a backward
civilization and that they were civilized
by their alien rulers!
The
history of India had been often a ‘made
to order’ product commissioned to sub-serve the interests of those who did
so. History was written to suit the religious and political interests of the
rulers. The religious objective was to lower the self-esteem of the people and
show India’s indigenous religion as a backward cult. The political objective was to cleave the society vertically
and horizontally. It is as a part of this game plan that the ‘Aryan – Dravidian’ bogey and ‘Sanskrit is a dead language’ myth were
created. (See Should WeRe-write Indian History?)
Any
residual knowledge or achievements that survive were sought to be explained
away as relevant only to the upper strata of the society. The caste system that
plagues the nation today was in fact congealed into place during the two phases
of alien rule mentioned earlier. Originally, it was merely a division of labour
and social mobility permitted both upward and downward movement of people. The castes were no more different than the
Anglo Saxon surnames like ‘Barber’ or
‘Carpenter’, which only connote the
trades the ancestors of these people might have adopted in the past. Any hope
that history written during the colonial rule would be corrected and rewritten in
the post independence period to project the glories of the ancient civilization
was shot down because of the political imperatives of the new rulers
and their fellow travellers in the academia. Both the rulers and their fellow travellers,
the ‘rootless intellectuals’ (to use Ernest Bevin’s phrase) who occupied the
higher echelons of the academia failed to see the role of history as a unifying
force and nation building. As a result, we are today not one nation but a loose
conglomeration of states held together ironically, by a civilization which the
rulers and the academia wish to airbrush. If the ‘official’ academia is
unwilling to correct wrong history how do we educate posterity about the
grandeur of their ancestry?
It
is against this backdrop that ‘The Krishna
Key’ assumes significance. The book discusses in great detail the history
of the extinct Saraswati River and
the civilization that shadowed its growth and decline. Thanks to all the
scientific evidence that has come to light in recent decades, the politically
motivated ‘Aryan - Dravidian’ theory
can at last be laid to rest. (RIP Aryan
Invasion / Aryan Migration Theory!) The evidence includes not only new
archaeological evidence but dating historical events based on the planetary
configurations described in our epics. It
would be ridiculous to argue that the writers of the Ithihasas not only
exhibited extraordinary skill in creating everlasting stories but went to the
extent of calculating planetary configurations that predated them by thousands
of years simply to include them in their works. It was not beyond the power of the rishis who created the epics to
do so, but it would only be natural for them to describe the planetary
positions as they were seen in their time. It is in this context, after
demolishing the impugned ‘Aryan -
Dravidian’ theory, the book pointed out the possibility of an ancient
civilization spreading from east to west instead of west to east as always
presumed. Ironically it bases its argument on the same philological logic on
which the protagonists of ‘Aryan -
Dravidian’ theory based theirs. If ‘Dalton’s
atomic theory’ could be rescinded within forty years of its proposition,
why should we also not discard the ‘Aryan
- Dravidian’ theory in view of mounting evidence to the contrary? There is
a lot of discussion in the book about the cryptic
symbolism of numbers and various other practices of Hinduism which were originally initiated by the rishis in their scientific wisdom. It is for this
wealth of detail that the book should be read by everyone interested ancient
Hindu civilisations.
The
novel is about the quest of a group of four scholars (a historian, an
archaeologist, a marine archaeologist and a geneticist) to unlock the secrets
of Krishna’s ancient kingdom of Dwaraka. The storyline is a broth of
mythology, history, archaeology and theology cunningly intermingled with the
current narrative that makes for compelling reading. The story of Krishna and Mahabharata is used as a backdrop for a story of murder and
mystery. The cast of characters includes an intelligent, middle-aged, widower professor
and a dutiful (and middle-aged), widowed woman police officer to pair him.
There is a beautiful, clever, not so honest (again middle aged) spinster, research
scholar and her unquestioning, criminal acolyte. There is a sharp, ruthless
criminal lawyer who made his pot of gold representing the criminal underworld
(imagine someone like ‘Raj Malhotra’
in the Govinda starrer, ‘Kyonki main jhut nahi bolta ’) and a
gangland boss with a hoary ancestry dating all the way back to Sri Krishna. As the narrative picks up
speed (it does so right in the beginning) the characters run about from Jaipur
to Pune to Delhi to Jodhpur to Dwaraka to Chandigarh via Manasa Sarovar and finally to the Taj Mahal in Agra, the crooked on a murder spree and the righteous
in pursuit. As in all virtuous stories, in this novel too good triumphs over
evil and the culprits were captured. Giving away more details of the story
would be spoiling the thrill of reading it. One can’t help recall Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code after reading all those twists
and turns, allusions to mythological events and cryptic puzzles.
Though
there are only a few errors in the book, some of them are significant and
cannot be ignored. See these examples: There is a story behind Bhima’s slaying of Jarasandha. It was not about Sri Krishna's desire to strengthen his Yadava kingdom by eliminating a potential enemy, as mentioned. (p. 187) According to the Mahabharata, five mahabalas
(immensely strong warriors) were born at the same time under a single
birth star. They were Bhima, Bakasura, Duryodhana, Keechaka and Jarasandha. According to a divine ordinance, the first to slay any
one of the others would also slay the remaining three. Therefore for Bhima to slay Duryodhana at the end of the war according to his vow, it was necessary for him to slay any one of the others first. Yudhisthira’s first Rajasuya
Yaga was to make the kings of all
those kingdoms through which the horse roamed accept his suzerainty; not as an
equal. (p. 187). The raison d’ etre for
performing a Rajasuya Yaga was
correctly described when Yudhisthira
performed it a second time after the war. In line 14, p. 189, it should be Sastra chikitsa or tantra (meaning surgery) and not Sastra karma. In the sentence ‘Some
coincided, others differed’ (line 7, p 272), shouldn’t it be ‘concurred’? The Rig Vedic hymn (line 6, p. 293) should read as ‘ekam sat; viprah bahudha vadanti’ (not vidhaante). Isn’t it ‘Rahika and Saini’ and not ‘Priya and
Saini’ in p. 301? Prithviraj Chouhan
the last Hindu king was killed in 1192 AD
and not BCE (p. 328). In line 9 page
330 the sentence should read as ‘… Indian blacksmiths had succeeded’, not ‘succeeding’.
Is it necessary to repeat the story of ‘Syamantaka
mani’ once told by Sri Krishna and a second time by Sir Khan? The event of Gandhari bestowing Duryodhana with vajra sareera
with her fondling touch had occurred in his childhood, not before the war. Sri Krishna prevented Duryodhana’s whole body being bestowed
with a vajra sareera by jeering at
him for walking naked (p. 372). Sri Krishna thus ensured the upper part of his thighs remained
vulnerable, to enable Bhima to hit
there and so fulfil his vow which he made when Draupadi was insulted. It should be Saini and Radhika who put their hands up and not Priya and Saini (line 16-17 p. 389). The sastra
that dictates temple architecture is the Aagama
Sastra and not the Vaastu Sastra.
(p. 402). A nerve does not supply blood. It should be a blood vessel (line 13, p.
406). Avoiding these errors would have improved an otherwise excellently
researched well-written novel.
