I heard an anecdote about how Buddhism died off in India until the British rediscovered it, I thought "no, that can't be right", so I asked the AI.>Yes, the British played a significant, though controversial, role in "rediscovering" and restoring Buddhist heritage in India, but it's more accurate to say they brought attention to the forgotten aspects of Buddhism through archaeological efforts and textual discoveries. While it's debated whether this was a deliberate campaign to belittle India's past or a genuine effort to preserve history, British scholars and officials like Sir Alexander Cunningham and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) were instrumental in unearthing, documenting, and restoring Buddhist sites and texts that had fallen into neglect and disrepair. This brought a once-forgotten Buddhist past back to the notice of both Indians and the wider world>Some historians argue that the British aimed to use the discovery of a Buddhist past to put their intellectual rivals, such as Hindu intellectuals, on the defensive and to assert their own intellectual superiority. Others emphasize the role of British scholars' genuine interest in Indian history and their efforts to preserve cultural heritage, which benefited India and the world. Do some home histories really believe British historians went through all that effort to just belittle the Indians? If they wanted to do that, they'd just make a two second jeet shitpost like the rest of us.
Why are you asking us? You could just ask the AI which historians, when it's almost certainly going to be Indian nationalists and revisionists.
>>18004007>pic BWC fiend.
