"The dew disappears as the sun rises"- the falsehood catered to us as history will vanish as soon as the reality of our past gets acknowledged. "India" has been described as land of wisdom by Hensang. Al-Baruni recounted India as 'land of knowledge and prosperity'. India's great knowledge centres like Nalanda, Takshashila, Vikramshila, Vallabhi, Vidisha, Kashi and Vatapitrained the scholars round the globe in different disciplines such as Yoga, Ayurveda, mathematics, economy, agriculture, politics astrophysics, surgery, military, music dance, art and literature. The magnanimous scholars like Adi-Shankaracharya, Aryabhata, Abhinavgupta, Apala, Bhaskaracharya, Brahmagupta, Chanakya, Charak, Gargi, Kanad, Kalidas, Lilawati, Lopamudra, Maitreyi, Madalsa, Patanjali, Panini, Sushruta, Sankardev, Thiruvalluvar, Ubhaybharti, Varahmihir and Yagyavalk were the leading figures of this great intellectual legacy. The ideas and practices sprawling from Indian culture and philosophy had defining influence on the world that is why India was the one and only "Viswa Guru" to ever exist.
India's freedom from British rule is a hard-earned liberation from the clutches of a highly exploitative and barbaric alien rule. The 'official' historiography of India's freedom movement is vast and yet insufficient in bringing out the true facts about all the actors and activities that contributed to the eventual ending of the British rule. Similarly, the history of medieval age and ancient time has also been subjected to ideological violence resulting in gross distortions and self-denigration. Apart from this, there is a popular consensus among the scholars that the post-Independence history writing has not been accommodative of all the dimensions of our history, therefore, it is convincingly believed that certain motivated acts of omission and commission have taken place in the process of history writing. Many contributions remain unacknowledged. Among those who got acknowledged, some deserving contributors were reduced to insignificant mentions and, erringly, some of them became the centrepiece of the discourse. The missing balanced sense of proportion is also a highly unlikely feature of our post-Independence historiography.
As we are entering into the celebrations of the 75th year of our independence, it is very vital to find the historiography into a more informed and accommodative shape. The historians under the colonial patronage were loyal to the interest of their masters. Post-Independence, the history writing further degenerated into the abyss of imperialist ideologies and the historians took upon themselves the mission of justifying and validating their patronage givers in the erstwhile ruling dispensation. As an implication, the facts got replaced by propaganda, the hard evidence got ignored and even destroyed. Today what we have in the name of history is at best, the literature of fiction. History has to be rewritten. The true attempt to do fair history writing is long overdue. It is an onus on the shoulders of the present generation of historians to tell our nation its true History.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to look back into our past health practices and learn from them in order to adapt to our modern lifestyle challenges. In fact, the world overlooked Indian knowledge of antiquity as a source of ideas for maintenance of health equilibrium for the individuals as well as society at large. This is the high time when researchers in India should look into their own native resources to extract new age principles of health management and medical treatment.
This seminar is aimed at achieving a reinvigoration of novel research fields in academics. The restirred research and development activities are the only pathway to reach to the goals of aspirational youth of India. The seminar targets the bridging of ancient knowledge with futuristic ideas. The contribution of young Intellectuals, ensured by this seminarwill be one of the foundation stones of "Vishva Guru Bharat".