When the pandemic started the world projected India as the next 'global hotspot'.

The journey from being projected as the global hotspot in July to becoming the global supplier of Covid vaccines was not easy.
Apart from condescending global media, many Indian media houses fueled panic, predicting millions of sever infections.
Epidemiology 'experts' projected millions of dead senior citizens, based on a flawed mathematical model.
The attempts to instill confidence and a sense of security in the people were mocked by fellow Indians.
An extremely difficult task of a hard lockdown was taken. A nation of 1.3 billion agreed to stay home, following one appeal from the government.
The rich countries witenessed riots in protest of lockdown. People thete faught eachother for toilet paper.
Meanwhile India offered free ration to its poor. We did not witness a single Corona related violent episode, anywhere.
Then the collective efforts of India & Indians did something amazing. They flattened the curve during the peak festive season.
Then came the vaccine approvals. The world was watching the global pharmacy with great expectations.
Yet there were people who were not ready to accept the obvious. They went around peddling uninformed opinions.
But the real world knew better. They queued up for vaccines from India and vaccine developed in India.
India has gifted 5.6 million doses of vaccines to different countries. It also sent 10 million commercial doses. The motto of the vaccine supply was सर्वे संतु निरामयाः, may all be free from disease.
The vaccination drive at home proved the nay sayers wrong, yet again. Decades of experience in universal vaccination was leveraged to vaccinate millions of frontline workers in a short span of time.
Meanwhile rich countries who routinely pontificate India, indulged in what they know best, hoarding. The same countries let millions die in the HIV pandemic in Africa & are shamelessly indulging in it again.
But Covid is not over yet. Don't let your guard down. Practice hand hygiene and always wear a mask.

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More from @IndicHistory

30 Dec 20
The Indo-Greeks were on decline & the grounds were fertile for yet another invasion of #India. This time it was the Yuezhi tribe of Gansu from #China. They established the #KushanEmpire.

This #thread is about Kushans & how they became Indianised, unlike later Islam!c invaders.
The Kushans started to establish themselves as a major power around 30 CE with Kujula Kadphises forming a confederacy of various tribes from China.

They adopted Greek as their court language, which was soon replaced by Bactrian, the popular local language.
They also adopted #Buddhism & #Hinduism as their religion. They issued coins with Hindu Gods like Shiva with a trishul & Buddha in Abhaya mudra.

This was unlike the later Islam!c invasions where the invaders would try to obliterate local languages and religions.
Read 9 tweets
22 Dec 20
Turmeric, banana, sesame oil & the story of ancient culinary export.

Archeologists have found evidence of Indian spices & fruits in dental remains from ~1700 BCE in Israel, reinstating the belief that the ancient trade routes from India catered to far off places in the West.
Turmeric, used as a spice, medicine & a dye, was probably highly prized in the ancient world for it to be traded across sea & land to the Levant & Egypt. Sesame oil, one of the earliest known seed oils, was a staple in ancient Levant & was exported in large quantities from India.
The domesticated variants of banana from India were also exported & is believed to have arrived in Africa from India.

Read more on the ancient trade routes from India to the rest of the world in my book, Essays on Indic History. Now available on Amazon: tinyurl.com/y5romtne
Read 5 tweets
17 Dec 20
Inside the @nytimes article on India's 'Virus Trains' by @gettleman, @suhasiniraj, @sameeryasir & @Karan_Singhs

They collected reams of data & wrote a story entirely on one district out of 718 districts in the country, & lied about the data. Let's look what they say
The New York Times story starts off with typical disdain, pity & condescension that privileged white people show towards people of colour. The slum dog flavour has to be sprinkled for the local consumption (i.e. in US). A sense of pity has to be evoked.
The fact that India has reported second highest number of cases comes as a surprise to @nytimes reporters. What else would one expect from the second most populous country in the world. The most populous country & source of Chinese Virus stopped reporting cases.
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16 Dec 20
The story of liberation of #Bangladesh starts in the year 1946 with the Muslim League (ML) winning an overwhelming majority in the then province of Bengal of Colonial India.

Of the 250 seats in the province, the ML won 113 seats in the legislative assembly.

#VijayDiwas
The overwhelming victory of the ML was a vote for a separate Pakistan based on religious majority. Within a year India was divided on religious lines into the States of India and Pakistan.

Muslim majority areas of Bengal became East Pakistan.
Though united by religion, East & West Pakistan were divided by language & Culture. The dominance of West Pakistan in military & bureaucracy meant the East Pakistanis were always treated as second class citizens. Despite being larger in numbers.
Read 11 tweets

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