I say, drop the past. Drop it whether it is your nation's history, or your ancestral 'greatness'. Talking about your greatness only belittles the other man, whoever he is, to whichever race or community or religion he belongs. Similarly drop your bitter, sorrowful or unfortunate past, because this can only generate ill feeling, and hatred in you against the perpetrator, and a sense of guilt in the one who might have committed aggression against your forefathers. Drop all this and you are free of an enormous burden called history as it is presently taught. Let the young be taught instead, the history of mankind and its struggles through the ages -how from the pastoral it moved towards the agricultural and then later towards the industrial and scientific civilization and how it is now caught up in the environmental problems and arms race and what needs to be done to solve the present crisis. Let the young be taught how freedom is circumscribed and suppressed under different societies, under various economic and political systems, how man who is supposed to be born free, is found in fetters under every system.
So, the proper study of man is man himself, and this is done not by studying archaeology, or the history of peoples of the world etc., but going into one self deeply. One has to study oneself, and not go about researching other people's lives.
One has to see how one reacts to every situation mechanically, to every relationship
with accumulated prejudice. One should actually see that one is thoroughly conditioned
by the past and that one's thinking is based only on one's memory. Consider
how a slave of all this past conditioning can ever act freely, justly, and compassionately.
So the first requisite is to be free of our past, to lay the proper foundation
for right action. Digging up the past and excavating the earth may give you
an idea of all the civilization gone by. However, not all the knowledge that
is gathered is going to produce a compassionate human being, though such knowledge
may have its place in our life. If our aim is to produce a deeply compassionate
human being, then digging into oneself is certainly more important than digging
up the earth.