LONDON: An article in the April edition of The Economist was captioned: Rewriting Indian history. There was also a subtitle, saying Narendra Modi is retrofitting his country’s past to control its future.
Since then, there have been articles in the Guardian and even the BBC. They report as if there is an orchestrated and centralised attempt to rewrite history to supposedly gain an electoral advantage.
Is this propaganda or reality? A group of Indian diaspora living in the United Kingdom decided to dive deeper into the subject.
Raj Bhatt, of Elara Capital, sponsored an event on July 20 in London wherein Shazia Ilmi, national spokesperson of the BJP, was invited to present counterpoint to the allegations made by the western media.
Shazia gave a powerful redressal to the allegations, specifically focusing on the article from the Guardian. Manish Tiwari moderated the event and Lord Rami Ranger gave concluding remarks. In an interactive Q&A session, the audience got a chance to ask questions, even challenge some of the issues raised by Shazia.
Raj Bhatt said the motivation for this event came from the fact that there are gaps in the history of India for reasons that are obvious. There are many historical facts that are coming to light now, as they were either unknown, or considered uninteresting by the historians.
As the country is gaining confidence and progressing with social and economic growth, new facts are discovered and brought to the public attention, he said.
Bhatt’s Elara Capital is involved in philanthropic activities, both in the UK and in India, particularly in the states of UP and Uttarakhand. It also organises social and cultural events on a regular basis.
