This book is a blend of history and fiction for a readable personified presentation of the Hindu mindset which appeared in the later half of the nineteenth century, after the demise of the Mughal Empire and the end of the Muslim rule in India. It is a saga in a racy narrative of the life and time of a man who was extraordinarily intelligent, an intrepid fighter for his convictions, a master strategist and a fearless nationalist personifying the Hindu psyche of the post-Mughal renaissance period seeking inspiration from Chanakya’s Takshashila.

3. THE ROAD
TO
TAKSHASHILA
***
By B R Jaitely

4. © B. R. Jaitely. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written
permission of the author.
First edition published by:
Mohanji Productions and Publications
2014

5. Dedicated to my father
whose pioneering research into the history and
secrets of Takshashila enabled me to write the book
he wanted me to write.
Also, to my wife who in spite of her indifferent
health let me carry out his wishes.

7. PREFACE
***
S
ituated in the Himalayan foothills 15 miles north-east of our ancestral
town, the Takshashila ruins have been evoking for archaeologists ever
since the dawn of the modern era as much curiosity as zest to delve deep
into them and uncover the secrets of India’s hoary past lying buried there.
May be, the legends about the great ancient university presided
over by Chanakya during its most glorious period about 2500 years
ago, cast a mystic spell on the listeners, my ancestors believed they did
have séances with the sages of Takshashila to know what they thought
about the present day India and its predominant populations, the Hindus.
My father witnessed these metaphysical visitations, or believed he did
and valued what the message from the grand seat of the Vedic learning
said though being an educated person he felt inclined to dismiss them as
hallucinations. But he could not and on the contrary, cherished them to
later pass them on to me for weaving into a biographical book on him.
Apart from excerpts from the occultic period of his life, he left for me
vast accounts of his adventurous career preceding the road to Takshashila.
The two intermix to present a holistic panorama of his life and have
not been ‘yoked together by violence’ as Dr Samuel Johnson would say but
occupy their slots when they reach them.
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8. Literally brought up under the shadow of Takshashila, my father
did have the awareness of what the Capital of the Hindu Empire ruled
by King Ambhi signified: the prowess of the Vedic India which was,
in the course of time, taken to its zenith by Chandra Gupta Maurya
under guidance of Chanakya. This awareness was an integral part of
his convictions made explicit by him as a student of the Prince of Wales
College at Jammu and during the subsequent period as an employee of
His Majesty’s Government, a Hindu missionary and a freedom fighter.
The book might have remained a jumble of disarrayed material
had I not visited Takshashila for a face-to-face and received a stern
reminder of the words to my father that I would work on it to
complete it.
I got on the sidelines of the Islamabad SAARC summit
I covered as a journalist in January 2004 the opportunity for a direct
acquaintance with the ‘first laboratory of nationalism’, where Chanakya
experimented with his concept ‘knowledge with power’ and raised
an army of Takshashila monks to ensure unity of Bharat Varsha.
Earlier, wandering through the excellently maintained Takshashila
museum, I felt to have been transported to the Vedic era to witness its
grandeur. And that night I dreamt a séance with the sages of Takshashila
or, so I felt the next morning. Yet, the message I received from them
was clear: ‘you have seen our karmabhoomi and felt its ambiance
and must fulfil words to your father’. I am thankful to the curator
of the museum who let me go about and see the ancient exhibits.
My gratitude to wife Ada who played the home maker long after
the Partition, helping me go through and sort out the jumbled heaps
of record maintained by my father in English and Urdu. Her decision
about the sequence of narration was always correct. My thanks
are also due to my children who allowed their mother to help me.
I trust the intelligence of the readers which will make them appreciate
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9. the odyssey of the protagonist from the pragmatic to occultic and then
to the pragmatic again when he finds the resolution of his conflicts
and accepts the turns of India’s destiny from ages bygone but not
without the expectation that the nation would one day find its saviour.
He wanted his life to be read and appreciated. And I owed him a
debt he left for me, that is, the accounts of his life to be decoded and
made readable. I hope the book pays back the debt. To me, fiction
is the ideal form of facts which the book is laced with at places.
B.R. Jaitely, Chandigarh
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11. INTRODUCTION
***
T
his book is a blend of history and fiction for a readable personified
presentation of the Hindu mindset which appeared in the later
half of the nineteenth century, after the demise of the Mughal
Empire and the end of the Muslim rule in India. The native psyche was
thrilled at the assumption that what emerged after the 1857 unrest,
popularly known as the first War of Independence was a Hindu India,
which would see the rise of a nationalist society to fight and overcome
the British rulers who had replaced the Muslim dictatorship. The Hindus
who had been in a state of self-oblivion because of prolonged spell of
foreign rule were suddenly reawakened by the clarion call of religious
and cultural path breakers like Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Swami Ram
Krishna Parmhansa and Swami Vivekananda, besides a number of social
reformers ushering in a neo-Vedic era. They raised the curiosity of the
educated Hindus in the ancient scriptures notably the Vedas, Upnishadas,
epics Ramayana and the Mahabharata, particularly the divine message of
the Gita and encouraged the study of Sanskrit, recreating interest in Hindu
rituals and festivals. A galaxy of religious, literary, social and political
personalities carried forward this assumption of a Hindu India, converting
it into conviction and initiating the Hindu renaissance towards the end
of the century. The incipient renaissance consolidated considerably in
the first quarter of the twentieth century with the rise of the educated
Hindu middle class, replacing the well-to-do erstwhile feudal sections and
producing thinkers, men of letters, entrepreneurs and professionals to
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1

12. provide leadership to the community. Its enlightened youth preferred to
become teachers, medical practitioners and lawyers instead of religious
clerics, shop keepers, artisans, menials in government offices or odd-jobmen. Those belonging to the upper strata of the feudal gentry, who could
afford higher education, were being attracted towards the civil services
offered by the British government. The protagonist belongs to this gentry
that was beinggradually eclipsed by the nouveau riches patronized by the
English at a time when the status quo was yielding to a social ferment
causing epochal changes in the Indian society, particularly amongst the
Hindus.
Coming of a family which had profited from the feudal privileges,
including, jagirs (fiefs) conferred for martial services to the ruler of the
day besides administrative-cum-judicial posts, he grows up under the
influence of his reformist father’s dislike for indigenous nobility he called,
‘a school of sycophants’. His elder brother, a senior administrative-cumjudicial officer trusted by his White superiors as an ‘important limb of
the British government in India’ gets him admitted to the Prince of Wales
College, an exclusive educational institution of the British Empire in India,
Located at Jammu, the college was founded for feudal scions and wards
of other pedigreed opulent sections close to the rulers to anglicize them in
accordance with Lord Macaulay’s plan to create ‘sahibs out of the brown
skin natives’. He soon discovers that the British authorities expect from the
Indian students complete loyalty bordering on servility, which he abhors
but cannot resist openly. A talented alumnus who is spared the entrance
test compulsory for natives because of merit reflected in his school leaving
certificate, he is not ignorantly orthodox despite being a staunch Brahmin.
He has achieved proficiency in the King’s English, reads literature and
has developed aesthetic taste to enjoy beauty, human or ideological. He
attracts attention of a Catholic missionary assigned to the College to draw
the Hindu youth to Christianity. But in this case, the priest fails in spite
of the spell of his charming sister, also a missionary, who falls for him
instead of winning him over to her faith. The priest occasionally engages
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him in lengthy discussions to analyze his Hindu character and finds him
2

13. obsessed with the past glory of his religion, culture and civilization-to
revive which is his overriding passion and for which he will make any
sacrifice. Instead of trying to weaken his resolve, the priest, an Oxford
educated Doctor of Divinity, sharpens it and tells him ‘instead of drawing
you to the Christianity, I want to embrace Hinduism myself ’.
And then an incident takes place, which brings to the fore the
nationalist credentials of the Hindu youth, for a career that will serve the
British Empire more than his being a Christian. He is engaged in a running
feud with a group of Muslim students belonging to rich land lord families
who, jealous of his brilliant academic record for which he is honoured
by the College, don’t miss any opportunity when they can humiliate him
with aspersions on his religious zeal describing him a ‘ponga Pandit (a
worthless Brahmin). He hits back saying ‘the only merit you possess is
being ‘angrezon ke ghulam’ (slave of the Englishmen)’. The remark is
played up by his rivals as highly derogatory of Englishmen and the Principal
holds him guilty of blasphemy against the British Crown. The youth
refuses to apologize and the Principal decides to rusticate him for gross
misdemeanor. The intervention of his elder brother, however allows him
to leave the College without any adverse remark in his character certificate.
All this while, the priest continues to engage him in yet another
discussion, emphasizing that the Hindus suffered because of strategic
blunders, one of which was to ignore genuine friends by submitting to an
oversized ego. They had the best of everything, rich philosophical treatises,
unmatched cultural heritage and a civilization representing an ideal living.
Yet they had to face the worst of ignominies including, a thousand-year
slavery under the Muslim rulers. Unaware that the College incident and
his traits of a staunch Hindu in thought and practice of the neo-Vedic era
were being analyzed and interpreted differently at another level, he is
astonished that the priest did not attach any significance to the Principal’s
charge against him and gets him from the library some books on history
and general knowledge to read and assess the Hindu destiny over the ages.
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He also does not know that the die is being cast for a future, he could not
3

14. have even imagined. In a well-thought, well-planned and well-executed
strategy, involving a top British General and political wing of the Empire,
he is convinced that the benign British rule is better than the Muslim
dictatorship and is morphed through a circuitous route into a combatant
officer of the Royal Indian Army to fight and defeat rebel tribal Pashtoon
elements from the no-mans-land between Afghanistan and British India,
threatening the North West Frontier Province and the adjoining upper
reaches of Jammu and Kashmir.
Led by a British General, his handlers are so impressed by his
conviction-based devotion to the duty imposed on him and the successes he
achieves that they allow him every comfort in a very difficult, dangerous,
and tension bound life on the battle front including permission for a live-in
relationship at ae non-family station with a childhood girl friend he could
not marry because of a parental mandate. The General who has a complete
dossier on him tries and succeeds to a great extent in conditioning his mind
with his own politico-martial theories and becomes his friend, philosopher
and guide. The General supports the unorthodox manner in which the
Hindu youth morphed ferocious soldier pursues each mission, and assigns
to him an assignment only ‘in consultation’ with the Army Commander.
However, the General realizes soon enough that though he succeedss in
the mission, he has overdone his duty and exceeded the brief to wreak
vengeance on the fanatic Muslims inhabiting the tribal belt. He perceives
them as descendants of the Islamic invaders who had plundered India for
aver a thousand years instead of just repulsing a serious threat to the British
Empire’s ustable western frontiers. Though promoted, he is transferred to
a less problematic area; he considers a punishment post and feels betrayed
soon entering a zone of disenchantments and uncertainties. His despair is
accentuated when he finds that the medical tests of his girl friend show,
she is barren. At his new post, he has enough time to read newspapers and
indoctrinating material sent by the General, besides analyzing the army
commander’s brainstorming theories. Here he develops political insights,
which enable him to understand that the British rule has similarities with
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the perceived Muslim dictatorship. His depression mounts and becomes
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15. overwhelming at the Jalianwala Bagh massacre which optimizes his
disillusionment with his British employers.He resigns from His Majesty’s
Service to quietly disappear. His five-year incognito odyssey of selfdiscovery brings him face-to-face with the reality of inherent and imposed
deficiencies of the Hindu society, instances of which he comes across at
Benaras (Varanasi). He returns home, a chastened, enlightened and mature
man and turns away from romantic companions, his childhood friend and
the priest’s sister, who provided him ‘only aesthetic satisfaction’ in a period
of tension and depression, to marry a girl he finds to be his alter ego,
instead of a ‘passion pill’ and embarks upon a course which passes through
mysteries of Takshashila, political upheavals, the Partition holocaust and
ends in the denouement to conflicts in his life.
Takshashila (Taxala) exerts its mystic influence on him through séances
and dream sequences. He is advised by repeated metaphysical séances with
the Takshashila sages to follow Chanakya, the master strategist, exponent
of statecraft and promoter of ‘kutniti’ (winner’s diplomacy), to avoid yet
another holocaust waiting to happen to the Hindus. He tries but fails
because of lack of following and collateral support. However, he delves
deep into history and comes up his own interpretation and accounts based
on research supported by indigenous sources not undertaken by text book
writers. By then a settled man with no economic problems, he prepares a
blueprint for reconstruction and reawakening of the Hindus in the hostile
frontier belt he resides in. Fatehjang, his ancestral place, is at a distance of
just 15 miles (about 25 KMs) from Takshashila. He carries forth research
initiated by his father into the past of his small rural habitation and finds
it to have been an extension of the Takshashila University. After a dream
séance with five ‘rishis’ of Takshashila summoning him, he visits the ruins
of the ancient Capital city of a Hindu Empire, and is commanded by them
to follow Chanakya for a better destiny. He makes the Takshashila monks
the mascot of his mission revival which he has to abandon because of
strong opposition by the dominant Muslim community reflected in the
administration’s hostile attitude and lack of support among the Hindus.
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He diverts his energy to prepare the Hindus, physically and mentally, to
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16. counter threats of conversion in a hostile demographic environment. He
sets up a youth wing to act as the vanguard and ensure universal education
for the community particularly women and registers a great success.
Tension generated by fanatic section of the Muslim League which
demanded Pakistan and the riots on the eve of and after the Partition
overtake his efforts and he has to suspend the mission hoping to revive
it when the situation normalizes. It never does and deteriorates to reach
the inevitable conclusion, the Partition and the resultant bloodshed,
demolishing his fantastic vision of a glorious future. He reaches India
broken yet optimistic, expecting the situation to normalize one day for
him to revive contact with like-minded people he left behind in Pakistan
for the ‘repair and reconstruction of body and mind of India’ damaged
by the holocaust. For the revival of his mission, he also enlists support
of the two women who once adored him and are now spinsters past the
age of 50, settled in Calcutta. His childhood friend teaches English in an
eminent women’s college and the other is a senior functionary with an
international charitable organization. Both had been in touch with him
until a little before he was engulfed in anarchy and had to migrate to India..
He assumes that they would read his interview to an English news agency
about his adventurous journey from Pakistan to India full of exploits and
hopes they will locate him as some others had done. When this does not
happen, he telephonically contacts his childhood friend and is shocked
when instead of welcoming him she taunts him for his nondescript Hindu
mission describing it as a series of weird fantasies and wasteful exercises.
‘Don’t you realize that had you not resigned from the Royal Indian Army,
you would, because of your rapport with English employers, have achieved
the rank of a General and escaped the holocaust you were so much afraid
of. Now do something meaningful to support a large family. Just to inform
you, we have decided to terminate our spinsterhood and respond to offers
of companionship’. Separated from old colleagues and associates, he had
been adumbrating a new world in India. The two girls had walked into
his life at a time when he was struggling for a foothold and walked away
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after he got it. Bewildered and befuddled, he tries to reorient to reality. ‘I
6

17. am wrong. Yes, they have walked in again not to support me but for the
final drop-scene’. He goes to bed at night with a sick mind to find the
Takshashila sages appearing in his dream for the last time. They tell him
why the mission dear to him has failed in spite of his great experiment with
the Hindu renaissance and reconstruction and show him the way to the
denouement from a life jinxed with conflicts.
The book tries to pinpoint causes of the events in the most formative
first half of the twentieth century. They reflect actual happenings and first
hand experience of those who survived the humongous destruction of
human life during the century next to the two world wars. Past history and
contemporary developments have been interwoven and filtered through
the protagonist’s mind to present a holistic view. The book’s language in
King’s English and the diction corresponds to the usage of the period. The
protagonist’s career is biographical, except parts where fiction has been
used to present facts in an ideal form or what should they have been instead
of what they actually were. Important names and situations are factual but
with imaginative embellishments to present history in an attractive format
without destroying the basics. It is a saga in a racy narrative of the life and
time of a man who was extraordinarily intelligent, an intrepid fighter for
his convictions, a master strategist and a fearless nationalist personifying
the Hindu psyche of the post-Mughal renaissance period.
READERSHIP
The book is fashioned to attract universal readership but will have
special appeal for sections wanting to know the incidents hitherto
unpublished which immediately preceded and succeeded the partition
holocaust. They are contemporary to the existing three generations
of Punjabis spread all over India and abroad. As the milieu of the book
contains pre-partition areas of Punjab, it is likely to command extensive
readership in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asian region.
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