Foreward

There are very few places on earth that are as young as the Indo-Gangetic Plain, particularly of its comparable size. The home of a huge population, that area is estimated to have become mature enough to be fit for human habitation at around 7000 years BP. A huge basin area had turned into flat land by the interactions of the natural forces. The rapid transition of the geography of that region had a huge impact on the life of the people who had been present in the surrounding places of that basin since long before that basin got matured. A new way of life was evolved around that geography. That way of life, known as the Hindu religion, in turn, affected the history of that region.

 

Introduction

Whenever the word Hindu comes up for discussion, at the very outset, it is announced that that word has its origin in the word Sindhu, the Sanskrit term for the river Indus. That statement has been taken for granted as an axiom and repeated by all concerned. It is not seen in the public domain that anybody has ever contested that explanation. The current explanation has been accepted ex silentio. Arguments may be put forward to expose many logical loopholes in the present explanation. This book tries to highlight the logical inconsistencies of the present explanation and at the same time tries to provide a more consistent alternative explanation of the origin of the word Hindu that has a traceable root at the core values of that way of life.

Chapter 1 - Connotation of the term Hindu

Present available connotation of the term Hindu

 

The explanation that the word Hindu was originally derived from the corrupted pronunciation of the word Sindhu has been assumed by all and sundry as a maxim.

 

It is said that the people residing on the eastern side of the river Sindhu was named as Hindu as some people of very high significance, resident of the western side of Sindhu, developed problem in pronouncing a letter as represented by the English letter ‘S’.

 

That was the time when the British tried to find out the bond, which was responsible for keeping the largest section of the inhabitants of the land, south of the Himalayas linked together in a sense of commonness.

 

The then ruling British in India initiated the exercise of analysing the total scenario at hand of that land from the managerial perspective during the second half of the nineteenth century.

 

The necessity of that search originated from the efforts of drawing a planning process by the British. To run an organised structure, planning is necessary. That is more pertinent in the case of directing the human society. It is said that even the Rig Veda (oldest of the four Vedas and one of the oldest scripts of the world) contained the ideas of census in some form or the other.

 

The process of planning is all about creating a bridge between ‘where we are’ and ‘where we want to be.’ For a political entity, the census is the way to find out ‘where we are.’

 

Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, informs through the website titled censusindia.gov.in that on a pan-India basis, the British originally started the exercise of census around the year 1865. That process ended in the year 1872. Before that effort was undertaken, many regional level enumerations of ‘where we are’ got started as early as the third decade of the nineteenth century. However, the first countrywide census, in the true sense, took place in the year 1881.

 

It has been pointed out by many that during that process of the census the British found it extremely difficult to determine who was a Hindu. Accounts are available that show that, originally, during the process of that census, a Hindu was found through the method of exclusion and not by the application of any definition. To find a Hindu, many parameters were set which needed to be negated. That was a scientific approach but impractical in implementation. Later, it was left to the citizens to declare their religion by self-proclamation. 

 

When a search started, the word Hindu could not be found in any of the original, old, traditional literature, which were available in that land. Nevertheless, many references were found to the word Hindu in other forms; the most prominent of those forms were the two, Indika and Hindusthan. The earliest written account about India is available (the original one is lost) from the writings of Herodotus and Megasthenes. Megasthenes wrote his book titled Indika around 2300 years BP (Before Present). It is said that around 2000 years BP the suffix of ‘Stan’ was added to the original word Hind.

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_India]

 

Citing page 3 of Arvind Sharma’s book ‘On Hindu, Hindustan, Hinduism and Hindutva’ published in 2002, Wikipedia writes that the use of the whole term Hindustan is believed to be first used in a written account during the 13th century, i.e. 800 years BP. Even a small area around present-day Lahore was named as Hindustan in 11th Century i.e, 1000 years BP.

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_India]  

Chapter 2 - Hindu Kush

Hindu Kush

 

 

A search on the website https://www.etymonline.com for the word Hindu, introduces one to ‘Hindu Kush’ in the description of the word Hindu. Though the origin is not known, it is generally believed that the name ‘Hindu Kush’ first appeared in the written history around 700 years BP and it is told that the name meant ‘Hindu Killer’. The naming of a vast mountain range could not be done by the whim of anyone, and even if it were done, that would have never been accepted by all the others involved and interested. Even Mount Everest has local name and that local name is still in use widely. ‘Hindu Kush’ mountain range was surrounded by many proud, devastating conquerors on the north and on the west. They would have gone to great lengths to erase any trace of the word Hindu from ‘Hindu Kush,’ had they had the capacity to do so. It is also said that the people on the west of ‘Hindu Kush’ had discovered that many Hindu labourers were killed on the passes of that mountain range, and thus the name ‘Hindu Kush’ appeared (Ibn Battuta, Morocco, North Africa), where the word ‘Kush’ meant a killer.

 

Probably, while forwarding that explanation, the propagator forgot that nature does not discriminate between the non-labourer and the labourer, particularly at the harshest of the terrains. Labourers generally remain in a more advantageous position physically than the non-labourers in tolerating the adverse physical conditions presented by Nature. The national Public Radio website informs that in more than a hundred-year's history of climbing the Mount Everest, it has been recorded that out of the total deaths in those expeditions, one-third of the cases were involving the Sherpas (the helpers and guides in the expeditions) while two-third of the deaths were involving the non-Sherpas.

 

A caravan, through the mountain passes of the ‘Hindu Kush’ range, millennia back, certainly was not comprised of a single traveller who was assisted by numerous Hindu labourers. Were

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: Dibyendu Chakraborty
Bildmaterialien: Dibyendu Chakraborty
Cover: Dibyendu Chakraborty
Lektorat: Dibyendu Chakraborty
Korrektorat: Dibyendu Chakraborty
Satz: Dibyendu Chakraborty
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 08.07.2020
ISBN: 978-3-7487-4905-9

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ॐ श्री विष्णवे नम: (OM SHRI VISHNAVE NAMAH) In memory of Late Madhab Chandra Chakraborty My great-grandfather, who spread education in Village Roail, P.O. Kaloha, Tangail, India (present-day Bangladesh) in the late 19th and early 20th century.