What Was ‘War of 20 Kings’ Mentioned in Vedas | GD Bakshi Takes Us Back To Ancient History

Major General GD Bakshi, a retired Indian Army officer, recently launched his book, "Indian Strategic Culture." During the launch event, he spoke about the war of 20 kings mentioned in the Vedas and how colonial thinking and historiography have distorted India's past.

According to Bakshi, Western scholars like George Tanham and Stephen Peter Rosen have argued that India lacks a strategic culture and tradition of focused strategic military thought and analysis. They blamed Hindu and Buddhist history for this lack of strategic culture. However, Bakshi disagrees and says that this results from colonial thinking and historiography, which has severely distorted India's past.

“Two decades ago, a series of Western scholars, including George Tanham and Stephen Peter Rosen, came to India to study its strategic culture. After extensive research, they sadly concluded that India lacks a strategic culture and a tradition of focused military thought and analysis. They particularly attributed this deficiency to the Hindu and Buddhist aspects of Indian history,” said GD Bakshi. 

Major General Bakshi, who is also a defence expert, talked about how the Vedas mention war and major wars, such as Ramayana, the invasion of Sri Lanka by the kingdoms of the north, and the Mahabharata, which is about a major ground battle that ends an age and commences a new one. He emphasized that India has a rich history of strategic thinking and military culture, which has been overlooked by Western scholars.

“In his well-known book Societies and Military Power: India and Its Armies, Stephen Peter Rosen stated that there is no primordial strategic military culture in India. He argued that the large armies mentioned in the Mahabharata and referenced by Greek ambassador Megasthenes were unrealistic and merely fictional,” Bakshi said. 

GD Bakshi further stated that, “Major epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata are centered on warfare. The Ramayana depicts the invasion of Sri Lanka, while the Mahabharata describes a cataclysmic conflict that marks the end of an era.”

“Even in the Vedas, colonial historiography has perpetuated a fiction, suggesting that the Aryans were invaders from Central Asia and that Hinduism is a foreign implant in India. This narrative claims that Aryans pushed Dravidians, depicted as dark-skinned, further south. Such interpretations have oversimplified a rich and complex history, distorting the understanding of India's past,” he added.