Episode 1
The scene opens with a panoramic visual of India and its colourful landscape. Occasionally,as Nehru reached a gathering , a great roar of welcome would greet him-‘Bharat Mata-Ki Jai’! He would ask the crowd unexpectedly what they meant by that cry, who was this ‘Bharat Mata’, whose victory they wanted?
Episode 2
When Nehru stood on a mound on a Mohenjo Daro in the Indus valley and all around him lay the house and streets of the ancient city that existed over 5000 years ago, he had the astonishing though, that any culture or civilization that has a recorded history
Episode 3
The rise of the Aryans, with their river-bound agricultural community, took place perhaps 1000 years after the Indus valley period. Could the Indus valley civilization disappear altogether? More likely, thought Nehru, it was a synthesis and fusion between the new Aryans and Dravidians who were probably the representatives of the Indus valley.
Episode 4
The advent of the Aryans in India raised new problems, racial and political. The conquered race, the Dravidians, had a long background of civilization behind them, but Nehru has little doubt that the Aryans considered themselves vastly superior and a wide gulf separated the two races.
Episode 5
When the fiery Pandavani performer Teejan Bai from chattisgarh, holding aloft an Ektara and alternating verse with prose describes the dialogue between the Pandava King Pandu and Queen Kunti, she is receating familiar episodes from the Mahabharata. Indeed the Ramayana and Mahabharta were the oldest names faliliar to Nehru from his earliet childhood.
Episode 6
An enchating Kathakali dance unfolds stylistically Bhima’s drinking blood from the killed Dusshasana’s entrails and tying Draupadi’s hair. As the Pandava Kaurava battle revealed battle revealed, the post-Vedic fights were not over animals, but over land-holdings.
Episode 7
O hunter- don’t dare brake the love-chain, by killing mail-dove immersed with its consort in the conjugal bliss, proclaims the meditating saga Valmiki, outraged by the sudden forest- carnage and is amazed at his own utterance, for, he has just composed the word’s first time of verse! Nehru consider the Ramayana, its written by Valmiki, as a unique epic poem and loved by the people.
Episode 8
While the Ramkatha singers are all praise for Rama’s many battles with the Rakshasas (demons), the vignette in lathakali dance show the fierce fights between Man and Demon, with defeat writ large for the latter. Ravana now enters the scene, suave and dignified as would befit one whose father was from the higher class and who had received initiation into advanced scholarship.
Episode 9
There is a widespread aerial view of ancient India. Nehru observes that in all probability, this India was a collection of small agriculturally based states. There were many tribal republics, some of which covered large areas. There were also petty kingdoms and even city-states with powerful guilds of merchants.
Episode 10
Nehru finds in India tostreams of thoughts and action: the acceptance of life and the abstention from it developing side by side with the emphasis on the one or the other varing in different perioud.
Episode 11
After the gradual spread of Buddhism in India, Nehru notes that there were process to bring about racial fusion and amalgamation of the petty states and republics to build up a united, centralized state into a powerful and highly developed empire.
Episode 12
The scene now opens with special entente with virochak, son of the deceased king Poras. For jointly rooling the kingdom with Chandragupta on an equally shared bases. This is agreed and chanakyas plans a pincer movement’s of troops with an element of surprise into Patallali putra.
Episode 13
The scene opens in Ashoka’s many-pillared hall in his place at Pataliputra (dug up in Nehru’s time in an incredible state of preservation). Ashoka, grandson of Chandragupta succeeded to the great Magadha Empire around 273 BC.
Episode 14
Ashoka is now the Emperor and is relaxing with a vina recital in court. There is an interruption by the Buddhist emissaries from Ujjain on a tiding of gratitude for the nearly-completed monastery. The fun-loving youngest prince Tissa is disrectful to the visitors and makes matters worse by joucularly climbing on the imperial throne.
Episode 15
Nehru noted that in South India, for more than 1000 years after the Maurya Empire had shrunk and finally ceased to be, great states flourished. Unlike the virtually land-locked North India, Southern India was especially noted for its trade by sea.
Episode 16
Having left their old home at Puhar, kovalan and Kannagi undertake a new voyage of life to Madurai with the pair of gold anklets of Kannagi as their only asset. The road is long and arduous, the wayside perils are many, and kannagi is not too fit.
Episode 17
The seasons and their changing landscapes are always celebrated in out busts of songs redolent in joy. Thus in spring the wide valleys, flower-bedecked mountains, the boating lakes and the romping deer are paid an ode to, in spring’s own raga Vasanta.
Episode 18
Nehru cited traditions that Kalidasa lived during the reign of the Chandragupta ll Vikramaditya of the Gupta dynasty. Vikramaditya came rested on the literary and cultural brilliance of his court where he collected some of the most famous writers, artist and musicians, the ‘nine gems’ of the imperial court.
Episode 19
Nehru cities the French critic Sylvan levy in The Indian theatre : Theatre is an excellent expression of civilization even in its infancy. With its translation and interpretation of real life it can be confined to a single striking form free from insignificant accessories and generalization with symbols.
Episode 20
Nehru notes from the fourth century onwards the Guptas ruled for about 150 years over a powerful and prosperous state in the north. For almost another 150 years their successor continued but the empire shrank and became smaller and smaller.
Episode 21
The celebrated statue of Nataraja (dancing shiva) is panned lovingly: his feet, arms, benign face and the evil figure firmly under his foot. Nehru gives the significance of the cosmic dance in Epstein’s words: Shiva dances creating the world and destroying it,
Episode 22
Nehru observes that in south India, after the lapse of 1000 years after the Mauryan empire collapsed, there were great states like the Chalukya Empire in the west followed by the Rashtrakutas. Further south were the Pallavas who were mainly responsible for the colonizing expeditions from India in the eastern seas.
Episode 23
In order to employ the best architect the royal messenger reaches a remote village where the designated architect is preoccupied with a village temple. He is almost forced to abandon his project and come to the Chola king along with his sculptor assistant.
Episode 24
Nehru records that while Harsha’s death in 648 AD ended his powerful reign, lslam was taking shape in Arabic. Its revered prophet Mohammad, who had vitalized his people with faith and enthusiasm, died in 632 AD.Soon after, Arabs carried the banner of lslam right across the Iran and central Asia in the east by the 8th century, but their conquests in 712 AD did not go beyond Sind in India.
Episode 25
We eavesdrop into the bedchamber of Prithviraj and his lovelybride having an idyllic union, with Samjukta serenading her lover. But the bliss is short-lived, as there are rumblings of war needing him to march out,but without any support from other kings due to his illicit affairs.
Episode 26
Nehru notes that the Rajput forces of Chittor became weakened in the early 14th century as a result of Afghan plundering and dominance.The legend of the Afghan Sultan’s lust for the charming queen Padmavati of Chittor was a typical instance of morbid feudalism in operation, as recorded in Malik Mohammed Jyasi’s ‘Padmavat’.
Episode 27
Nehru refers to the effect of the Turk-Afghan conquest as two fold. On the one hand , those who remained in the Afghan –occupied territory became more rigid and exclusive retiring in to their shells and trying to protect themselves from foreign influences.
Episode 28
Nehru records how, late in the 14th century. Timur Lang the Turk, swooped down from the north and smashed up the Delhi Sultanate. After this terrible affliction, North India remained weak and divided into small potentates. But south India was comparatively well off with Vijaynagar as the largest and most powerful of the southern kingdoms.
Episode 29
Nehru recounts that while India had widespread monarchy, the hold of its power different from that of European feudalism where the king had the authority over all persons and things within his domain. In a herarchy of authority, both the land and people belong to the feudal lord.
Episode 30
As Nehru notes, in the sunset years of the Hindu kingdom of Vijaynagar, it faced the Bahmani kingdom in the other great state of Gulbarga. The latter is now sit into five states: Bijapur, Golconda, Bidar, Berar and Ahmednagar. There are ample incidents for the involvement of the sultanates in the Vijaynagar succession and vice versa. To enhance his chances, Rama Raya seeks the aid of Bijapur.
Episode 31
As Nehru observes, while Vijaynagar was flourishing in the south and the petty sultanates reigned in Delhi in the 14th and 15th centuries , there were individual strongholds of Orissa, Bengal and Awadh in the east, and Gujrat, Malwa and Rajasthan in the west
Episode 32
As Nehru noted, Babur died within four years of his coming to India and much of his time was spent in fighting and laying out a splendid capital in Agra. Hanking for Central Asia, Humanyun lost the whole empire in India. Humayun encountered Sher Shah Suri, a well-prepared Afghan contender for sovereignty and, in the ensuing tussle in 1540 near Kunauj, he barely escaped with his life, but the Mughaltroops were decimated. Humayun became a fugitive.
Episode 33
Nehru mentioned that Babur is an attractive person, bold and adventurous, fond of art and literature. Akbare, his grandson, is even more adventurous and had greater qualities, daring and reckless, an able general, and yet gentle and compassionate, an idealist and a dreamer, but also a man of action and a leader of men who roused passionate loyalty in his followers.
Episode 34
Nehru notes that in Jehangir and Shah Jahan’s time, the ‘Grand Moghuls’ were so well established that it attracted trade and commerce from far and wide-Iran Iraq, Egypt and other outlying countries. Meanwhile, the Europeans also came to the western coast.
Episode 35
Nehru remarked that Akbar’s empire spread far in north and South and his grand rule continued to evoke admiration all over Asia and Europe.The scene opens in 1656 with prince Aurangzeb, as shah Jahan’s governor in Mughal Deccan, driving a hard bargain with Golconda’s queen. He demands a hefty indemnity, against acceptance of Mughal over-lordship by Golconda, which had put up a hard-fought resistance and colluded with Bijapur earlier .
Episode 36
The denouement leads inexorably to Aurangzeb imprisoning his father and not sparing any of the brother. After Murad joins action with Aurangzeb both move north together to fight Shah Jahan’s army with a strong artillery-detachment and ample cash enrichment from Bijapur and Golconda indemnities.
Episode 37
Nehru notes that during the declining years of the Mughal Empire ;there was a ferment of revivalist sentiments; which was a mixture of religion and nationalism at all in its present sense.
Episode 38
Nehru noted that Shivaji, having openly raised the standard of revolt, sacked the city of Surat, sparing the English and their factory, and anforced the Chowth (one-fourth) tax payment, as he did in other distant parts of the Mughal dominions in western India.
Episode 39
nehru observed that the hundred years that followed the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 saw a complicated and many-sided struggle for mastery over India. The Mughal Empire rapidly fell to pieces and their Subehdors (viceroys) and Mansabdars (governor) began to function as semi-independent rulers.
Episode 40
There is an opening panaroma of several impressions painting showing, as Nehru observes, the 1st to 4th Mysore Wars towards the closing years of the 18th century fought by Haider Ali and Tipu sultan. They were formidable adversaries, who inflicted severe defeat on the British and came near to breaking the power of the British and came near to breaking the power of the East India Company.
Episode 41
Nehru observes that as the British become dominat in India as the formost global power they represented a new historic force that ushered in many changes inducted from the West. Bengal witnessed and experienced these agrarian, technical, educational and intellectual change long before any other region of India, as it had a clear 50 years of British rule before it spread over wider areas.
Episode 42
Nehru notes that, after nearly 100 years of British rule, the Bengal peasantry was devastated by famine and crushed by new economic burdens
Episode 43
Nehru opines that the 1857 Revolt that completed 100 years of British presence in India since Plassey, was essentially a feudal rising, though undoubtedly there wrre nationalistic elements in it.
Episode 44
Nehru observes that when the English first occupied India, there was a sufficiently developed base of industry and the chief business of the East India Company was to carry Indian manufactured goods like textiles and spices to Europe.
Episode 45
Nehru opines that caste, which was meant to develop individuality and freedom had become a monstrous degradation, the opposite of what it was meant to be.
Episode 46
Nehru notes that after the 1857 Mutiny, the British government deliberately repressed the Indian Muslims to a greater extent than they did the Hindus
Episode 47
Nehru records that the real impact of the West came to Bengal in the 19th century through technological changes and their dynamic consequences.
Episode 48
Nehru opines that early stage of the political movement where dominated by the ideological urges of upper middle classes. With the coming-of – age of the National congress founded in 1885
Episode 49
Nehru notes that when World War 1 started politics in India was at a low ebb. This was chiefly because of the split in the Congress between two sections, the radicals and the moderates, and also because of wartime restrictions and regulations.
Episode 50
Nehru notes that against the all-pervading fear amongst Indian people of the British Raj, Gandhi’s quiet and determined voice was raised, ‘Be not afraid’.
Episode 51
Nehru notes that during the post-mutiny period, all the leading man among Indian Muslim, including Sir Syed Ahmad Khan were products of the old traditional education although some of them were influenced by new ideas.
Episode 52
The scene opens with Nehru being taken to the Ahmadnagar Fort jail. The time is September 1939 and World War ll is about to begin. The Congress has laid down dual policy in regard to the War.
Episode 53
Nehru commented that science may be on the verge of discovering vital mysteries. Ignoring the ‘way’ of philosophy, science would go on asking ‘how’ giving greater content and , meaning to life.
