History was an endlessly boring subject in school. We crammed sacksful of dates that related to distant events, none of which made any sense. Textbooks listed – never discussed – causes of these allegedly momentous events. They enumerated attributes of various civilisations, empires, and dynasties, not unlike properties of elements in Mendeleev’s periodic table - only more lifelessly. We were to consign these to memory and pour them out in examinations. History was a matter of dates, names of rulers and their kingdoms; not a narrative or an endeavour to understand past. History and story come from the same Greek word historia , meaning enquiry, i.e., knowledge acquired by investigation. Many languages, like French and Italian, have the same word for both story and history. I am not suggesting that story, as is used in common parlance, is indistinguishable from history. I only stress that story had been missing from the history I read in school. This left the subject as dry as dust.

There was never such a threat to the integrity of our nation as now. Desh-drohis are planning rebellion in every street, every mohalla of the country. Urban centres are teeming with Naxalites , who are busy in upending the social-democratic structure of our society. State enemies have gang ed up and want to blow the country in tukade-tukade . India-bashers and Indian-haters, stooges of western ideology, the highbrow crowd of Lutyens’s Delhi and Khan Market , preach their seditious ideas with impunity. Harward trained pseudo-intellectuals spread calumnies about the hardworking , desh- sewaks . Descendants of nomadic invaders, a barbaric race, foreign to our culture, want to disrupt the harmony that characterises our diverse nation. Bob Dylan sang about the ‘times they are a-changin ` ’. And these times that ‘are a-changin ` ’ demand new interpretations of old concepts. Definition of patriotism has thus been revised. To sincerely work at your job all your life, to pay your tax