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An interview with Bhagwan Gidwani of 'Tipu Sultan', the TV serial,
fame, and now the author of 'The Return of Aryans'.
Montreal based 72-year-old NRI author Bhagwan Gidwani could easily pass
off as an energetic 62 on Bombay's stressed out streets. Sustained by the
comforts of a retired senior bureaucrat's pension in the cool Canadian
air, the man thrives on controversy, and has found that it pays. That certainly
was the case with his historical novel on Tipu Sultan which inspired Sanjay
Khan's mega serial The Sword of Tipu Sultan. It managed to antagonize both
Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists - the former because it portrayed Tipu
as exceptionally tolerant towards his Hindu subjects, the latter because
he was not sufficiently orthodox.
His latest offering, The Return of the Aryans, is another historical
novel which hit the stands recently and has already been widely noticed,
especially by TV producers including the Hindujas, for conversion into
another TV serial. It contends that the Aryans did not come down to civilise
ancient India from northern Asia and Europe as is widely believed by historians
and archaeologists, but rather that they went out from Sind on the banks
of the Indus river and civilized the rest of the world.
Meanwhile Gidwani claims that this huge 944-page blockbuster is his
magnum opus - a book he has been working on for the last 18 years.
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