Churned 3000+ pages spanning dozens of primary and secondary sources to complete my book ‘वास्को दा गामा – ईसाई और मसाले की खोज में’ (Vasco Da Gama – In search of Christian and Spices). Book is in Hindi (English version is wip) and the print version is expected in early 2022.
When I started in September 2020, I was completely clueless about where to begin and where to end 🙂 Fixing the scope is always difficult unless planned carefully. I had a vague list of tags which I wanted to use as anchor points and weave a story around with the aim to decolonise the mind of the students.
Not trained in language and neither in writing, I really had a tough time framing the sentences and stitching the topics. Hope my running Hindi doesn’t appear entirely cheap to the readers. Another tough thing was to filter out Urdu based Hindi words like shayad, kaafi, etc and replace them with Hindi (Sanskrit based) words.
Purpose to write this book
A deliberate effort is been made to keep the confidence of generations of Indians low by repeated teaching of false history. India’s education (Macaulay’s) doesn’t matter which board, pass a self-guilt to the students day in and out and trap their minds in the inferiority complex of being from a subjugated land and a country of coast-huggers.
I remember as a student and rather till late I had the assumption that the fanatic Vasco Da Gama and babbler Christopher Columbus were some sorts of Indiana Jones who would set on their ship alone and sail to explore hidden treasures. I believed that their only and true purpose was to find gold and become rich personally.
Little did I knew that reading their sources would wash away their colour of masquerades and reveal the sinister conspiracies and deep geopolitics.
It is still surprising that no school or college material shares the fact that Vasco Da Gama didn’t know to cross over the Arabian sea and he requested an Indian pilot from the king of Malindi (in modern Kenya) for help.
Before he sailed out, the king of Portugal sent 2 spies on a secret mission to India via land to gather intellect, maps and other information. So this was not an isolated mission rather a planned national effort.
Also on the most famed voyage, Da Gama sailed not more than 13% on the uncharted route, rest of the route was already mapped in the last 60 years, leaving aside the most difficult phase where the actual crossing of sea was required and it was sailed under the command of an Indian pilot from Gujarat.
Moreover, I personally see hiding the fact that Vasco Da Gama was a religious zealot who burned 400 pilgrims alive on the ship on his personal commands apart from several other murder and tortures, as a sort of planned agenda probably to improve his character.
I hope this book does justice to the readers by sharing truthful events along with technical facts around navigation.
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