Blockchain a New technology to revive the old past.

Some Background for the Idea

Since 2014 the biggest buzz word in India has been history for people on both sides of the political aisle. There has been a larger consensuses among the historians that there are vast parts of our history which are not out in the public domain. Also India as a country is the union of the 28 states. The Sanatan as a Dharma and India as a geography itself has at least a 4500 yrs of literary existence and about 8000yrs as a civilisation. Also Sanatan as a dharmic structure is way different from the Abrahamic architecture with decentralised structure vis-à-vis top down and one book structure respectively. In India every sect has its own history and there by its own cultural nuances and its variety. India has 33 sects of gods alone in the sanatan pantheon and each has its own unique importance and its own significance and its different traditions and ritual patterns and upasanapadhatti. Also in India there were different dynasties in it’s long history from Puru or the Bharata dynasty to the now “infamous’ Nehru Gandhi’s. Indian is the only country to boast of giving the world 4 different paths of worship in the larger umbrella of the Sanatana. It has never tried to suppress the one for the other. It also has seen its glory days from the Maurya, Chola and Maratha period and also pillage loot and genocide in the British and the Mughal rule. As K M Munshi had famously said that “Indian story is not that of defeat but its remarkable resistance and rise in spite of it”.There were many kingdoms and practices that are part only of the regional folk traditions, which have a national impact but are not at all known to the Indian audience. Also I have heard Amish Tripathi a well know mythology ‘fiction writer’ say that we have the largest archives of the un decoded, un translated scriptures in the world. We have so many regional languages, these languages have their own story to tell. The major difference in the Indian understating  and essence of the historical perspective is also the way of telling it in the form of poetry verse as in the Mahabharata and Ramayana which have always been called (Itihasa) in our traditions. Vedas also have been said to be practiced for ages in the oral form before which they appeared in the written form. India alone hosts five to six different language families different from languages which are a plenty.

All this short summary does is it leads to one sure conclusion that whether you believe our history is wrongly presented in the public discourse or not there is no denying the fact that there is a humongous amounts of documents which are not yet in the public domain. What we know cannot even be said as the tip of the iceberg. Also the decentralised structure of the Sanatanand the fact that we have preserved all our differences makes it an enormous task and a challenge for historian and a near impossible one at that for any central body to bring all this work together under one umbrella. But if you see the earlier vedic lineage of documents they have a remarkable structure in them from Vedas to Upanishads to puranas to Ithihasa, all documents have a sense of where they come from and yet add to the regional flavour and maintain diversity. The art surely lost us from the medieval times. So the task of stitching it all together is surely not an easy one at that. Plus the loss of grip on the regional languages and the command on them and the language of the most ancient texts Sanskrit and Tamil makes the matter more difficult. There are histories waiting to be told from each home the histories of courage, sacrifice, hardship, victory defeat, glory and sorry and Dharma.  So what exactly is the solution to this revival and what exactly is the role of tech and block chain in all this??

Blockchain Technology in short

Blockchain is the new buzz word in the tech circle. The success of Bitcoins has put the tech on the global platforms. People around the globe are looking forward to alter the business models based on the block chain. Some say it has the potential to change the world as social media did in the past decade. So what exactly is this block chain architecture? Block Chain is a decentralised architecture. The tech allows digital information to be distributed, but not copied. That means each individual piece of data can only have one owner.The information is constantly reconciled into the database, which is stored in multiple locations and updated instantly. That means the records are public and verifiable. Since there’s no central location, it is harder to hack since the info exists simultaneously in millions of places.

Is there a similarity in Block chain and the Sanatan structure of India?

The similarities in the basic structure of the Sanatana Indian roots and blockchain are great. Both have open and decentralised architectures. Both are in a sense bottom up and not top down. The decentralised structure gives a huge scope for it to act as the driver for the local source acting as the story teller as on the ground rather than some perceived ‘realities’ from the top not rooted on the local thought. Also once the information is out it is in the public domain and hence it is verifiable and falsifiable making it truly robust and minimizes distortions. Blockchain builts on the information it already has thus keeps on expanding its scope much like the age old Sanatan has.

So how to merge the two. How to make the ancient embrace the new?

Santan Indian history and storytelling IMO was waiting for a platform like the blockchain which is compatible to its basic structure. The 8000 year old history is impossible to be controlled or organised from the top by some babu or organisation in Delhi however strongly s/he is rooted in the philosophy and thought of this land. The answer has to come from the different communities writing and displaying their stories and retelling their past in their own style language and narrative abilities. All they require is platform which can compile and expand the various data and  stories and give it a truly globalform at the same time keeping it decentralised yet rooted so that to preserve the flavor and the essence of the thought.

Step to begin the exercise.

Get a basic block chain architecture up and running to have the archives and history data uploaded in whichever language and form available (primary source).  Once we have the primary source then people can chose to add their commentaries and there secondary material on the same thus creating an unending chain of the events. The source and the upload and the control of data as the blockchain mandates is truly decentralised so there is no gov. or any group that can control or filter on what data is put out on the platform. Once put out the data is in the public domain and hence verifiable and falsifiable thus over a period of time the data can be truly harnessed and its scope expanded, thread and continuity can be achieved from the days of the Indus-Saraswati-ganges civilisation to the Bharat varsh in its modern form which truly represents the Indian story in its entirety and with all its diversity.

Also people can use it to put out their local traditions and festivals and rituals and its various forms so as to create an manual and guiding principle which then away from the native land can still act as a fall back source literature to continue the tradition of their ancestors from wherever they go on to reside and be a global citizens preserving their Indic identity. The tech is out there and waiting for us to leverage on it and stop the outrage.