INFOPORTAL

Episode 2: The Beginnings With Harish Patel, Pallavi Joshi, Lalit Tiwari, Adil Rana, Pankaj Berry, Murari, Mahendra Raghuvanshi, Siraj Ahmad Khan When Nehru stood on a mound of Mohenjo Daro in the Indus Valley and all around him lay the houses and streets of the ancient city that existed over 5000 years ago, he had the astonishing thought, that any culture or civilisation that has a recorded history dating back to the Paleolithic and Neolithic rock-arts should have a millennium-old continuity, while changing and progressing all the time. India was coming into close contact with the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Arabs, the Central Asians, and even the people of the Mediterranean. Spread as far apart as Kathiawar in the west and Ambala district of the Punjab, people of the Indus cities had many contacts with the Sumerian civilisation of that period. Indian manufacturers reached even the markets on the Tigris and Euphrates in ancient Mesopotamia. Our story unfolds lively transactions in commerce and art, exchange of silver- based currency, temple rituals and processions carrying living goddesses on sequined shoulder- thrones with scrumptious cross-country love affairs on the side. There is an overall stamp of sophistication in the decorated earthenware, the engravings on the seals, the humped bulls and the exquisitely supple-bodied dancing-female statuettes. There is a surprising wealth of ornaments of gold, silver, precious stones and vessels of beaten copper. Who were these Indus people with their unsurpassed glyptic arts? Where did they come from and how did they connect to their sister civilisations of Persia, Mesopotamia and Egypt? It was an urban civilisation where the merchants were wealthy and streets lined with small shops, giving the impression of an Indian bazaar today. How did it decline and yield to the hordes of horse-riding invaders looking aggressively for farming space and abundant animal-wealth? We see the enactment of an epic story, the mysterious figure of Gilgamesh, the superhuman warrior in a fearsome mask, being placated for mercy, when equestrian marauders suddenly overrun the venue of the drama. Between the Indus Valley civilisation and the present in India, there are many gaps about which we know little, felt Nehru. But there is always an underlying sense of continuity, of an unbroken link, which joins modern India to the far distant period of over half a millennium, when the Indus Valley civilisation probably began. Producer Doordarshan Language Hindi

Bharat Ek Khoj—The Discovery of India A Production of Doordarshan, the Government of India’s Public Service Broadcaster Episode 1: Bharat Mata Ki Jai With Ravi Jhankal, Vijay Kashyap, Ram Moorti The scene opens with a panoramic visual of India and its colourful landscape. Occasionally, as Nehru reached a gathering, a great roar of welcome would greet him-‘Bharat Mata—ki Jai’! He would ask the crowd unexpectedly what they meant by that cry, I who was this ‘Bharat Mata’, whose victory they wanted? His question would surprise them, and then, not knowing what to answer, they would look at each other. He persisted in his questioning. At last a vigorous jat, wedded to the soil from immemorial generations, said that it was the Dharti (the good earth) of India that they meant. What earth was it? Their particular village patch, or all the patches in the district or province, or in the whole of India? Nehru would then endeavour to explain that India was all that they had thought, and much more. The mountains, the rivers, the forests, and the broad fields which gave them food, but what counted ultimately was the people like them who were spread out all over this vast land. Bharat Mata was essentially these millions of people, and victory to her meant victory to these people! Travelling by train, the landscape and the landmarks flash past his eyes. He wanders over to the Himalayas and sees the mighty rivers - the remote Brahmaputra, the Yamuna, and the Ganga - that flow from this great mountain barrier into the plains of India, from their source to the sea. India unfolds with its waterfalls, rivulets and seas, with her richness of life and its renunciation, of growth and decay, of birth and death. He visits old monuments Ajanta, Ellora and the Elephanta Caves. He sees the lovely buildings in Agra and Delhi where every stone tells its story of India’s past. At Saranath, near Banaras, he could almost hear the Buddha’s first sermon. The inscriptions on the Ashoka Pillars of stone make their inscriptions speak to him. At Fatehpur—Sikri, he almost hears Akbar converse with the learned of all faiths. Slowly, the long panorama of India’s history unfolds itself before him with its ups and downs, its triumphs and tragedies. To him, there is something unique about the continuity of a cultural tradition through 5000 years of an unbroken history.

This video describes the functioning of magnetic cores within electrical circuits. Since it is published by the United States Government it is released into the Public Domain under a Creative Commons CCO License.

This is an Air Force Training Film from 1968. Troubleshooting Electrical circuits. Released into the Public Domain under a Creative Commons CCO License.

This is a video recording of a broken septic line. The camera traveled over 90 feet into the line. The line has a dip that freezes, blocking the line, and must be replaced. It is created by Gerard Arthus and released into the Public Domain under a Creative Commons CCO License.