The story of forgetting history due to the loss of geography also occurs in the change of names, a point we had briefly seen in a previous part of this series. This name change falls in the realm of not only places but tribes, people, flora, fauna, etc. In the case of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and large parts of the original Bharatavarsha that has survived, this cruel and tragic theme is even more glaring. And galling. Even the most fleeting glimpses of the protracted history of Bharatavarsha shows this fact: one of the immediate things that occur after a Muslim invasion is how the event purposefully and permanently erases all traces of a Hindu past in the immediate physical geography.

Neither is this fact limited only to an unprovoked invasion but even in wars of conquest. The terminal Battle of Talikota, one of the most disconsolate melancholies in world history reveals this barbaric facet. It was the climax of at least two centuries of hostilities between the grand Vijayanagara Empire and the ragtag crew known as the Bahamani kingdom. Yet, when Hampi fell at last to the cruel sword of a determined coalition united by nothing but Islamic fanaticism, what was the need to so thoroughly pulverise every symbol, monument, temple, tradition, and ways of life rooted in and inspired by Sanatana Dharma? It could have been a military victory, a theme so familiar in Hindu political and military history. The opponent could have made the Hindu king submit to and acknowledge the supremacy of the victor while allowing him and his citizens to retain their culture. When we visit Hampi even today, we can barely form, let alone fathom, a mental image of the geographical swathe it encompassed.

This is the true meaning of lost geographies and forgotten Hindu history.