Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Printable Version

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Printable Version

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Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Amber G. - 03-17-2006

<!--emo& Big Grin

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /> <!--emo& Big Grin

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /> Looks like we have to start a fanclub for irffan!
As for Witzel's whining in his list .. one can not even make it up if one tries.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-18-2006

http://www.capeem.org/capeem1_files/page0003.htm

QUOTECAPEEM FIGHTS DISCRIMINATION AGAINST HINDU CHILDREN WITH A LAWSUIT

Los Angeles, March 14, 2006

California Parents for the Equalization of Educational Materials (CAPEEM) has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of California against the California State Board of Education and the California Department of Education. The complaint is about Hindus and children's civil rights, derogatory portrayal of Hinduism & Ancient Indian Civilization and violation of Federal and State laws and statutes, as well as the California Department of Education (CDE)Â and State Board of Education (SBE) guidelines.

The complaint was filed with the Federal Court on Tuesday, March 14th, 2006.

The civil rights of Hindu schoolchildren are violated by advancing an inaccurate and derogatory picture of Hinduism in sixth grade school textbooks.Â Â California Department of Education and State Board of Education meetings on the matter failed to address Hindu concerns. Hindus are being discriminated.

Various Hindu groups and parents participated in this process since the Sixth grade History-Social Sciences textbooks came up for adoption last year. After being let down by the CDE and SBE, the parents decided to move the court and restore civil rights and forbid discriminatory practice against Hindus. Most importantly, the school children are the ones who will be suffering damage due to derogatory presentation in the textbook. Many students, from past and present, have spoken to CDE and SBE about their experience in the classroom and that what is taught in the school has nothing to do with what they know and practice at home.

Venkat Balasubramani filed the complaint on CAPEEMâs behalf. Balasubramani is an attorney who has worked in the past with public interest groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on civil rights matters.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-18-2006

http://www.sulekha.com/news/newsitem.aspx?cid=446870

QUOTE HINDU AMERICAN FOUNDATION SUES CALIFORNIA STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION
DATE: March 16, 2006

Sacramento, California: The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) filed suit against the California State Board of Education (SBE) in California Superior Court in Sacramento today. After months of repeated correspondence with the SBE and California Department of Education (CDE), HAF filed suit as the foundation contends that a fair and open process was not followed in adopting textbooks that introduce Hinduism to sixth grade students. HAF sued the SBE for failure to perform those duties required by the California Education Code and the Standards of Evaluation of Instructional Materials with respect to Social Content.

"Today Hindu Americans have taken a stand against not only the illegal machinations of the SBE and unfair treatment Hindus received during the textbook adoption process, but also the inaccurate and unequal portrayal of their religious tradition in school textbooks," said Nikhil Joshi, Esq., member of the HAF Board of Directors. "This is about treating Hindus in America and their religion with the same level of sensitivity and balance afforded to other religious traditions and their practitioners," continued Joshi.

The HAF complaint alleges that the SBE violated the law when it approved textbooks for sixth grade history-social science that tend to demean, stereotype, and reflect adversely upon Hindus; that portray Hinduism as undesirable; that hold Hindu beliefs and practices up to ridicule or as inferior; that inaccurately describe and characterize Hinduism; and discourage belief in that religious tradition. HAF identified five areas where the foundation holds that the staff recommended edits were not only inadequate, but also inconsistent.

HAF asks in the lawsuit that 1) the description of the role and status of women in Hinduism be neutral and consistent with the treatment accorded this issue in the context of other religions; 2) the description of the caste system and the social practice of "untouchability" be historically accurate and consistent with descriptions of social inequities in other societies that are falsely perpetrated by some in the name of religion; 3) description of Hindu theology and its understanding of divinity be consistent with the understanding of practicing Hindus; 4) Hinduism not be unfavourably compared with other religions or made to appear as a more regressive or archaic belief system; and 5) the text present the Aryan Invasion or Aryan Migration Theory as one possibility, along with the prevailing view among Hindus that Hinduism is indigenous to India.

On December 2, 2005, SBE's Curriculum Commission initially approved several Hindu edits that addressed these issues. The SBE decided to ignore the Curriculum Commission only in regards to the edits suggested by Hindu groups. HAF further argues that the SBE violated the California Open Meeting Act among other procedural violations when it made numerous private determinations that effectively subverted the public process. The Bagley- Keene Open Meeting Act requires that certain state agency meetings be conducted openly so that the public may remain informed.

HAF is seeking a temporary restraining order to halt the publishing of the textbooks until the issue of whether the textbooks meet the state standards have been resolved by a court of law.

"Weâre dealing with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars here," stated Suhag Shukla, Esq. HAF Legal Counsel. "We need to ensure that the suggested edits by the Hindu American community are given due consideration and that ultimately the text is fair and accurate before it goes to the print."

An emergency hearing for injunctive relief will be scheduled within the next week. A copy of the complaint and exhibits are available on www.hinduamericanfoundation.org

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-18-2006

QUOTEFor Immediate Release

Los Angeles, March 17, 2006.

PRESS RELEASE: CAPEEM FIGHTS DISCRIMINATION AGAINST HINDU CHILDREN
WITH A LAWSUIT

California Parents for the Equalization of Educational Materials
(CAPEEM) has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in the
Eastern District of California against the California State Board of
Education and the California Department of Education.

The complaint was filed with the Federal Court on Tuesday, March
14th, 2006.

The essence of the Complaint is that the California State Board of
Education (SBE) and California Department of Education (CDE)
violated the civil rights of Hindu schoolchildren by advancing an inaccurate and
derogatory picture of Hinduism in sixth grade school textbooks.Â
California State Board meetings on the matter failed to give an adequate voice
to Hindu concerns.Â There has been a violation of Federal and State
laws and statutes, as well as CDE and SBE guidelines.

Various Hindu groups and parents participated in this process since
the Sixth grade History-Social Sciences textbooks came up for adoption
last year. After being let down by the CDE and SBE, the parents decided
to go to court and restore their children's civil rights.Â Many
students, both past and present, have spoken to CDE and SBE about their
experience in the classroom and that the Hinduism that is taught in the school
has nothing to do with what they know and practice at home.

Venkat Balasubramani filed the complaint on CAPEEM's behalf.
Balasubramani is an attorney who has worked in the past with public
interest groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), on
civil rights matters.

For further information please contact Murali Menon at:
e-mail address:Â media@capeem.org
Phone: (310) 804-5126
Web Site: www.capeem.org

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - acharya - 03-18-2006

They Cannot Decide On History
ROMILA THAPAR and MICHAEL WITZEL

Timesofindia.com

The California State Board of Education (CSBE) is currently discussing a very controversial issue. The CSBE has to ask the community for suggestions in regard to the updating of school textbooks.

Ominously unscientific, religious-based materials thus received may now be presented as historical facts. Remarkably, in this case, the religious fundamentalists are not Christian but Hindu.

Initially, the goals of these pressure groups seem benign and even righteous. They aim to rectify culturally biased and insensitive depictions of India and Hinduism and they would like Hinduism to be treated with the same respect as Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

They indeed managed to obtain a few thousand signatures from the 1.6 million South Asians at Hindu temples across the United States.

However, the other agendas being pushed are oddly fami-liar: The first Indian civilisation is 1,900 million years old, the Ramayana and Mahabharata are historical texts to be understood literally, and ancient Hindu scriptures contain precise calculations of the speed of light and exact distances between planets in the solar system.

Further, the American Hindutva lobby is very closely allied to its parent, the RSS, but disguises its divisive political agenda in the language of inclusion, while in India it is predicated on the subjugation of minorities and pluralism in society.

Modest political victories in the US translate into donations and huge political capital at home. California has a large Indian American population and one of the largest school systems in the country.

Changes made there have immediate repercussions for school systems across the whole country. When the California textbooks came up for review, a former (largely unknown) California professor of history and Hindutva sympathiser was approached by a Hindutva foundation and later was appointed to an expert advisory panel serving the CSBE.

He did not disclose his previous Hindutva relationships. One of the Hindutva lobby groups was founded by the American branch of the RSS and the other is owned by a sub-sectarian Hindu temple group out of Austin (Texas) also tied to the American RSS group.

Neither of these facts was disclosed to the CSBE either. When word leaked out to the wider academic community last November, our American academic colleagues, many of whom are Indian American, and those in India, strongly objected to historical inaccuracies championed by the Hindutva lobby.

Not only were many of the suggested revisions factually incorrect but they also explain away those aspects of traditional Indian society that are now a matter of critical concern to Indians in India.

The textbook revisions whitewash the plight of women and the so-called lower castes. Women's history was reduced to "different" rights while the caste system was simply a division of labour.

Approximately 150 South Asian specialists from leading US universities sent a letter to the CSBE, which paused to reconsider their course of action.

Last month they asked one of us (Michael Witzel) to debate the issue with their in-house Hindutva leaning expert, Shiva Bajpai.

The historical inaccuracies were debunked in face-to-face debate but the CSBE put off a final decision to early March â after still another public debate on February 27.

Our letter and actions have provoked a furious but predictable response. Contradictory slurs such as "Nazi", "Hitler", "Racist", "Marxist", "Communist", "Hindu hater", "Race Traitor", "Missionary" and "Creationist" have been directed at us and we had to contact law enforcement agencies.

When the political nature of their campaign was revealed, the American Hindutva lobbyists hurriedly removed information about their links to the RSS from their websites.

The lobbyists will undoubtedly persist even if they are stopped in California. In order to counteract this threat, an international council of scholars, called The Academic Indology Advisory Council now offers its expertise to school boards and publishers.

Hindu nationalists have a legitimate right to pursue their political agenda in India. Hindu Americans have a legitimate right to a fair and culturally sensitive representation in public school curricula.

However, no one has a right to distort the truth and push their own political agendas at the expense of schoolchildren.

For the Hindutva lobby to successfully introduce academically irresponsible, false material into textbooks would be a dishonour to the rich cultural and religious heritage it claims to cherish.

Once we accept one religious group's agenda and beliefs to be taught in public schools, it opens the doors for every other group to do the same thing.

As educators, we should stick to teaching the facts, and allow the teaching of religion to be handled by the real experts: Parents, pastors and priests.

Thapar is professor emerita of JNU. Witzel is professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-18-2006

Saudi hires Harvard to bash Israel

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html London Review of BooksVol. 28 No. 6 dated 23 March 2006

An unedited version of this article is available at http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpap...f/rwp/RWP06-011 , or at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=891198.The Israel Lobby John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-19-2006

QUOTEhttp://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/arti...ofessorial.html

Petty Professorial Politicking in The Indo-Aryan Controversy -Dr. Koenraad Elst

A note on a Harvard professorâs assiduous misrepresentation of my position in the Aryan invasion debate

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-19-2006

APH Alert! IER Scholars Missing in California <!--emo& Big Grin

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-21-2006

Horseplay at Harward
By Vasant Sharma
Publication: The Organiser
Date: April 1, 2001
http://www.hvk.org/

Most readers may be aware that the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) and its Siamese twin the Aryan Migration Theory (AMT) have been deep-sixed for good. Yet many academics in the West continue to recycle material from hundred-year-old books under the exalted title of "Western Indological Researches". Witzel of Harward University is the chief purveyor of old rubbish. Despite his prestigious university position he is a marginal figure quoted only for his blunders in Sanskrit grammar. His retractions forced by peer criticism of his own translations highlight his deficiencies in Sanskrit. He writes about the Vedic civilization without studying the primary sources. His training is in the speculative science known as comparative linguistics. Readers are referred to a recent article "Horseplay in Harappa" he wrote and which was published in the Indian magazine Frontline (September 30-October 13, 2000, available online in the magazine section at samachar.com). German by birth, among Western Indologists he is one of the most fanatical propagandists of AIT. The bigger, the more preposterous the lie, the more it will be believed. The proof of this successful propaganda technique is the AIT itself which had a run of more than a hundred years until its relatively recent demise. With AIT and AMT gone, the reports are that he now has the answer to how the Vedic civilization developed through a new research tool called "sophisticated acculturation models". Do not be taken in by the high-sounding description. This jumbled, hodgepodge acculturation "research" has one aim: to obscure the truth. It is just more of the same, another attempt to mislead and deceive. Like the AIT and AMT, this specious simulation too has nothing to do with the Vedic civilization, its creators, the origins of Sanskrit or anything else connected with ancient India.

Witzel's collaborator on the Frontline article is one Steve Farmer. He is a computer programmer who lives in California. At various times he has claimed to be a Sinologist, a comparative historian, a geneticist, a historian of science and just in time for the Frontline article it seems that he became an Indologist after only two months. While Witzel keeps struggling with Sanskrit, Farmer has no such language problem. For not only does he not know Sanskrit, he does not know any other Indian language either.

Parpola is another contributor to Frontline. He has earned some renown for two volumes he co-edited with Jagat Joshi and Sayid Shah known as the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions. Often simply called the Corpus, this world-class photographic collection is highly prized and considered an indispensable reference resource by scholars in the field. But in the difficult and the hard world of scholarship meant only for the very best, Parpola measures not at all. In his Frontline article he comes across like a dim bulb with a broken filament unable to emit any light popping off irrationally extreme speculations as scholarship. This is how he and others in the AIT brigade write: personal attacks after personal attacks; speculations piled upon speculations; not a single new insight; not one new discovery; not one illuminating interpretation. Complete disdain for independent scholars and writers outside the establishment who are in fact doing all the trailblazing work in the field.

In thirty years of "research" on the Indus script and several volumes, he has not read a single seal correctly. Parpola's only contribution to scholarship is his claim that "min" means both "fish" and "star" in Tamil and therefore the fish sign is used also as the star. The truth is that "minaâ means fish in Sanskrit also and his argument works for Sanskrit as well - making his claim a total failure.

The oxygen, the lifeblood and the whole sustenance of AIT has been the false claim that horses were unknown in India until they were brought in by invading light-skinned Aryan nomads from somewhere in Central Asia their exact location known only to these peddlers of AIT. It is also fraudulently claimed that they spoke some early from of Sanskrit in which they later composed the Rigveda.

In the Ashvamedha or The Great Horse Sacrifice, the Rig describes the Indian horse with 34 ribs or 17 pairs. Here is a verse from the Rig: "The axe cuts through the thirty-four ribs of the thoroughbred who is the mount and the companion of the gods." Of these thirty-four, one is offered to the sun, one to the moon, five to the planets and twenty-seven are dedicated to the constellations. The Central Asian breed by comparison has thirty-six or eighteen pairs of ribs. The Vedic horse is thus the native Indian horse. It did not come in with fictitious nomads from Central Asia as invasionist scholars have been telling the world for more than a hundred years. This fact alone should prompt many establishment Western professors in the field to consider retraining for jobs in other occupations like horse training or horse breeding. Their Indology careers are over. In fact, Western Indology is itself on its death bed.

Immediately below is a search for an answer. It is an attempt to explain the near-absence of horse seals and the relative paucity of images of the horse on other artefacts discovered so far at Vedic sites. Because of the prominence of the horse in the Rigveda, it is reasonable to say that many people had expected to see more horse seals and artefacts than have been found so far. At the same time, it is affirmed and reaffirmed here that both horse remains and horse artefacts have been found at Vedic archaeological sites. Maybe not quite as many as some would have liked.

Finding more horse seals and horse artefacts is not a central issue any longer. But it is interesting to explore the question why excavations have not turned up more of them so far. To sum up: we have found them, but why have we not found a lot more of them?

The horse figures very prominently in the Rigveda in a number of different roles: domesticated animal, war-horse, racing thoroughbred, mythic mount and companion of the gods, and most important to our discussion the sacrificial stallion. Also, the Sanskrit word for the horse, ashva has other abstract meanings such as power, energy, heat or vitality depending on the context. Many Western Sanskrit scholars have tended to translate ashva to mean the domesticated animal every time in every context without a knowledge of its many contextual meanings. These translations have often provoked laughter.

The horse sacrifice is a solemn, funereal event conducted with the utmost gravity. Interestingly, the horse is not thought to have died at all during the sacrifice. The Rigveda says: "You are not harmed, you do not really die through this. You will be on a pleasant journey to the abode of the gods." The departed earthly horse becomes a celestial equine with extraordinary powers to protect and to shower material blessings upon the worshippers.

The people probably felt that these hallowed horses of heaven, formerly their earthly companions, were more close, more personal, more generous in their blessings and more protective than the other great gods of heaven whom they found too remote and impersonal. The divine horses occupied the same place as personal gods. The people seemed to be more comfortable with the idea of a personal divine guardian than a distant god of theology. They also believed that their earthly existence and well-being were closely bound and subject to the powers of these consecrated creatures now residing in heaven. In this aspect, the horse indeed enjoyed a supremely exalted status in the lives of the Vedic people.

This might have led to a ban on the use of horse images on seals and other everyday objects by religious officials to preserve its lofty and noble status as the consecrated sacrificial victim and now their divine protector. Images on everyday objects would have been demeaning if not sacrilegious. Or the people may have recognized this on their own and may have chosen not to use horse images- a voluntary, self-imposed ban. No ban can be expected to be total and complete in a civilization covering more than 300,000 square miles. This may explain why seals or other objects bearing horse images have been scarce at Vedic archaeological sites. Like all bans, official or voluntary, this one too may have broken down over time. So more seals or other items with horse images may still be found but perhaps not in great numbers.

Readers may find it interesting to know that Buddha gave specific instructions to his disciples that after his death his physical likeness should not be represented in any visual art form and he should be represented in art as the Bodhi tree, the Tree of Wisdom, under which he had attained Enlightenment. For more than three hundred years the Buddhists respected the Master's wishes. During the time of Ashoka, a typical representation of Buddha was the Bodhi tree recalling his Enlightenment at Bodh-Gaya. There was not a single image of his anywhere. Images of Buddha began to appear after his teachings and philosophy spread beyond India and began to take hold in other countries. The images we see today are intensely contrary to his stated wishes and everything he taught and did.

With respect to the Vedic horse, its near-absence on seals and the relative scarcity of other horse artefacts raise the suspicion that there might have been some kind of taboo or prohibition in effect against using horse images. The ban was probably prompted by its status as a consecrated sacrificial victim and angelic, divine guardian and to prevent profanation of this status.

Mythological works describe demons and evil characters as having red hair or gold-yellow eyes but the Indian traditions uniformly describe Rama and Krishna as pleasingly dark in color. The most dominant rishis of the Rigveda - the Angiras - are described as dark or coal-black and a prominent figure in the Rigveda is described as brown. These authentic descriptions in the ancient texts are completely harmonius with a tropical and sub-tropical India which receives large amounts of ultraviolet A and B radiations from the sun. This was also a pristine India several thousand years before the invasions and attacks upon its land by the Greeks, the Turks, the Persians and an assortment of Europeans like the pork-chu-geese, the French fries and the English muffins.

Invasions and occupations have had very little impact on the physical characteristics of the people except in border states like Punjab and Kashmir and provinces in the north-west now in Pakistan. Nationwide, less than one in two hundred perhaps shows any foreign traces and almost all such people are from the border regions or people who have settled in other parts of the country from those areas. Most relevant to the topic under discussion is that occupations by foreign armies took place some two thousand years or more following the Vedic age in its original purity.

A bronze sculpture dating back to the Vedic age has been identified as depicting the famous Vedic rishi Vashishtha. Exactly matching its description in the Vedas, the sculpture displays a unique hairstyle oiled and coiled in a tuft to the right (In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, pp. 70-71). The finely chiseled nose, the large, black and piercing eyes and other features on the face make the sculpture look like a quintessential Indian priest.

Another Vedic-age figurine depicts a svelte and beautiful woman who is clearly black. The graceful nude model may have been the prototype of the Devadasis or Temple Virgins of later India. A torso is all that has survived from Vedic times of a splendidly crafted sculpture of a male in the nude. An interesting fact about these artefacts is that not only the celebration of sex as exemplified in Vatsyayanaâs Kama Sutra but also the celebration of the artistic beauty of the human form has its origins in ancient India. Despite its current problems, an India of the future, modem and prosperous, must reconnect itself with the Vedic love and passion for life and establish a pervasive physical culture throughout the subcontinent.

Now we have not only a proven description of Vedic horse anatomy but also descriptions of the most powerful rishis of the Rigveda including a bronze sculpture of one of them. This along with a crushing mass of other evidence forcibly confirms the purely indigenous lineage of our great rishis.

One old game Western Indologists still play is proposing an "original homeland" outside India for everything Indian. The current favourite seems to be the steppes of southern Russia. Another is Central Asia. Of these, one is grasslands and other a patch of earth inhabited by people who never created anything. According to Western fantasies, perhaps pharmaceutically induced, nomadic barbarians popped out of these places and went on to write something as grand and vast as the Vedas in a language of their own in which they were illiterate. Let us review some facts. The four Vedas are in poetic form. They are a work of high literary sophistication using as many as 15 distinct metres. They consist of 20,358 verses. They are far more extensive than the much later literary works like Homer's epics or the Bible. They are a work of literary art created by master wordsmiths. The entire body of literature that may have been produced in the last 6,000 years in the Russian grasslands and in Central Asia would be trivial and puny compared to the timeless majesty of the Vedas.

A fictitious invasion by illiterate nomads is hardly the kind of event that will lead to the development of the world's greatest civilization and its greatest body of literature. The simple fact is that to set up a culture or transplant a civilization elsewhere you have to proceed from an already advanced one. Even so, you need brilliant people to do it, not illiterate nomads. And you need ongoing communication links with and prolonged support from your original homeland including a steady flow of people from all walks of life - from the home country to the new land over many generations. As the world's great civilizations go, the Russian Steppes and Central Asia are little more than compost heaps. They have no relevance in any discussion about the Vedic civilization or the origin of Sanskrit.

The reports are that the quest for the "original homeland of the Indo-European speakers" continues unabated. Supposedly, at present, "excellent cases" are being made by "scholars" for some new place to be anointed as the original homeland. It seems that this is about the only thing going on now. If you get the drift, Western Indology is already a dead discipline.

The other game is âreconstructing" a fiction called "the proto languageâ. It goes something like this: Sanskrit, Greek and Latin have strikingly close affinities. Therefore they must have all come from an older "proto languageâ from a conveniently "assumed" place like Central Asia which is the cradle of all civilization. The proto-Sanskrit speaking Aryans came out of there. Their charging war horses came out of there. Last but not least fantasizing, yam-spinning Western Indologists also came out of there. If you said, hey, wait a minute. None of this makes any sense. Sanskrit is not an Indo-European language. It is Indian. Nothing Indo-European about it. All its antecedents are in India. The many Prakrits, the numerous dialects, the works. It is very old. Probably as old as the air we breathe. Greek and Latin are far too junior to it. Now that would turn everything upside down and force a complete rewriting of ancient history and potentially bring down Western civilization along with Christ and his kingdom to boot. As long as the place of origin is not India, their mission is accomplished which is to deny India's great antiquity, to deny the primacy of Sanskrit and India's supremacy as the greatest civilizing force in the world through the millennia. The pathology underlying this compulsion to falsify history is sustained by a toxic mixture of race, politics and missionizing Christianity the last more harmful than all the world's industrial pollutants.

Making no assumptions, relying on no speculations and introducing no extraneous material from other sources, Shrikant Talageri has thoroughly studied and analyzed the extensive ancient sources of India such as the Vedas, the Puranas and other historical literature to give us an accurate picture of our ancient history. Western Indology, a sick-house built on lies, fraud and speculations and sustained by money and Missionary propaganda simply does not have the background, the skills, the honesty and the integrity necessary to undertake an exhaustive study of the primary sources.

Thanks to Talageri's work, the distribution of various groups of people during the pre-Vedic and Vedic periods looks as shown in the box. The readers are reminded that this is an India of some six or seven thousand years ago. The population if extrapolated backwards would be only a small fraction of what it is today. Some estimates put Indiaâs population in minus 4000 (early Rigvedic period) at one million and in minus 2000 (late Vedic or Harappan) at five million. Therefore, the information may not quite correspond to the distribution of various groups across the country as we know it today. Also the information presented in the box is only what is clearly stated and described in the ancient documents.

It is the Purus who created the Vedic civilization in Punjab. They are the movers and shakers, the kings, the priests, the poets: the power and the brains, the heart and the soul. It is they who wrote the Vedas. It is they who coined the word Arya.

There were no nomads in Vedic India from Central Asia or the Russian Steppes or any other blinking place. Let it be said here and now: The Vedic horse is our own. The Sanskrit language is our own. Our rishis are our own - born and bred right here in this Sacred Land of the Aryas.

Compare all this with the malevolent and thoroughly bogus "light-skinned nomadic Aryans" from Central Asia - read "white niggers" or "wiggers" - trumpeted by Western Indologists for more than a century as the real poets of the Rigveda.

In the face of megatons of mounting evidence from multiple disciplines Witzel, Parpola and others like them are beginning to look more and more like a retarded bunch. They have been left behind by new discoveries and have reduced themselves to a nuisance and a sideshow. Their whole discipline created by Christian missionaries and colonial agents has collapsed. They should make a graceful exit and leave the field.

The truth will out sooner or later. This is a natural law. Scholarship must be responsible, objective and reflect the latest discoveries that many have dedicated their whole lives to make. Establishment Western Indology, however, still lives in the nineteenth century ignoring all new evidence and continues to keep its sinking ship of AIT afloat, but the water is rushing in from everywhere taking it down and all aboard with it.

Copyright Â© 2001 - All Rights Reserved.
http://atributetohinduism.com/articles_ary...n_theory/32.htm

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-21-2006

Will someone please educate this ignorant TOI reporter to stop writing nonsense. I am not sure, how I can write to the reporter directly.

I am not surprised to see that TOI still publishes utter garbage!

http://www.samachar.com/showurl.htm?rurl=h...va~lessons'

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-21-2006

The Tissue of India(TOI) article is written by a rice Christian.
Check it out. Indian Christians are a fifth column created
during the colonial era to serve colonial interests. They
receive funds from abroad and continue to work for foreign
churches, foreign detractors and adversaries.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Amber G. - 03-21-2006

QUOTE(Mudy @ Mar 19 2006, 10:47 AM)APH Alert! IER Scholars Missing in California Â Â <!--emo& Big Grin

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />

I am not sure where to locate rest of 1/4, I think inÂ <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Flush.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='Flush.gif' />
[right][snapback]48743[/snapback][/right]

Hey! did you see this Item?
There are two soulmates n'est pa?

Also: This too!

(BTW Steve Farmer wants everyone to see these pictures.... He is posting them <!--emo& Big Grin

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /> in IER.)
(Added later: Sorry if this was already posted in IRFFAN blog or here... )

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Amber G. - 03-21-2006

Without comments: Here is the story befhing those pictures ...
QUOTE[reposted, as the links did not work. They did for me... Must be the
'foreign hand'Â at work]
-----

Just when we thought we could return from the Californian mess to
serious workÂ ... here comes Dr. Rajaram again -- just in time for the
weekend!

Rajaram revealed yesterday in a letter to Harvard (see his letter at
the end of this post) more secrets about me. Rajaram has already
informed the world to their shock and dismay that I am not only German
but Polish -- and a Nazi and Communist and Creationist as well. He has
also written of my failed career (holding an endowed Chair at Harvard
to him is a sign of failure) and let it be known that my opposition to
the Hindutvavadins was part of a plan for me to get hired by the
California State Board of Education. One of his most hard hitting
recent accusations is that I teach Sanskrit in the Harvard Summer
School "to Japanese students sent by [my] wife."

After Steve and I demolished Rajaram's absurd "decipherment" of the
Indus sign system and unveiled his bogus Harappan horse seal back in
2000Â (see "Horseplay in Harappa" at:
<http://www.flonnet.com/fl1720/fl172000.htm>
<http://www.safarmer.com/frontline/> ),Â Rajaram began a long and
increasingly ridiculous campaign to get revenge. (Steve and I get
spammed by him regularly.)

Rajaram's promised second volume of complete Indus "translations" of
course never appeared, and Rajaram's usefulness as a Hindutva
propagandist long ago sunk: he was the Kalyanaraman of his day, but he
has been so discredited that (unlike Kalyanaraman and Frawley) Rajaram
was not even added to the HEF'S Board of Advisors.

Rajaram's newest, in his note to Harvard yesterday, is to claim that I
have set up an academic consulting business in order to gather
anti-Hindu funding from Pakistan. His supposed evidence: the fact that
a Pakistani newspaper (Dawn) reprinted my announcement on the Web of
the outcome of the vote of the California State Board of Education on
March 8.

Now that Rajaram brings it up, I better admit it. Below is a picture of
me shaking hands with General Musharraf of Pakistan in the Presidential
Palace. We had just agreed to continue our campaign to India by
demanding historical accuracy in California history textbooks.

<http://www.safarmer.com/witzel.musharraf.jpg>

I also have to admit that my connections with the General go back to
his Agra trip a few years back. At the time, the General and I posed in
front of the Taj -- not even bothering to hide in one of those secret
unopened sections of this Tejomahalaya.

Here's that evidence, using the same types of techniques you need to
get an "Indus horse seal" out of a broken unicorn seal:

<http://www.safarmer.com/witzel.musharraf.taj.jpg>

Anyway, what is wrong with seeking gainful employment, advising the
State of California and teaching Japanese students Sanskrit, in the two
months of the year that we are notÂ employed by the university? Too bad
for the Hindus that the Sangh (RSS, VHS, BJP, etc.) has failed in the
past to make me a lucrative offer: Hindutva financiers like A. Chowgule
could have easily dropped a check in the mail!

If they only had asked me, I could have found them all those Sanskrit
passages that prove their vision ofÂ hoary Ram Raj in the Vedas... Rama
'pleasant, black'Â and Krishna 'black' are mentioned several times!

Below is Rajaram's letter, just as he sent it to Harvard. By the way, I
did not form IPAC, which is made up exclusively of Indian Americans and
certainly is not a "consulting firm."

Have a nice weekend, MW

---

And here is Rajaram writing to our Provost at Harvard (if Dr. Hyman is
struck by laughing cramps on Monday you know why):

Forwarded message from "N.S. Rajaram" <nsrajaram@...>
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2006 08:59:29 +0530
From: "N.S. Rajaram" <nsrajaram@...>
Reply-To: "N.S. Rajaram" <nsrajaram@...>
Subject: Does Academic freedom include suppressing facts?
To: Steven Hyman <Steve_Hyman@...>

March 18, 2006

Mr. Steven Hyman, Provost
Harvard University

Dear Mr. Hyman:

I am writing this in connection with an article in the Pakistani
newspaper DAWN by Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit at
Harvard, advertising his supposed triumph over the Hindus (Hindus) in
California schools. (See attachment.)

Leaving aside the fact that it is tasteless, but protected by academic
freedom, and the fact that it might involve him and the California
Scholl Board in a protracted legal battles, I am struck by the fact
that Witzel advertises himself as Professor of South Asian Studies, and
not Professor of Sanskrit.

The reason for suppressing this fact is not hard to seek. His
advertising his position as Sanskrit Professor might turn off potential
Pakistani sponsors in his efforts to sell himself as an anti-Hindu
lobbyist.

I use the word "advertise" because Witzel has formed a consulting group
that calls itselfÂ The Academic Indology Advisory Council, and IAPC
(Indian American Public Education Council), with the dedicated website
http://www.indiantruth.org/, offering its services to potential
customers.

Naturally, it would be bad policy to advertise himself to potential
Pakistani customers as Sanskrit Professor.

It is not my place to decide whether the Wales Professor Michael Witzel
is guilty of conflict of interest in simultaneously posing as an
independent expert on Hinduism to California school authorities, while
suppressing the relevant facts in selling his services to potential
customers in Pakistan. That is something for the California courts to
decide, where there are several lawsuits pending.

All this proves, if any further proof was needed, that Michael Witzel
is less a scholar than a political lobbyist, and now a budding
entrepreneur looking for customers for his anti-Hindu lobbying skills.

Sincerely, N.S. Rajaram

----- End forwarded message -----

________________________________________________________
If you give me six lines written by the hand
of the most honest of men, I will find something
in them which will hang him.

(Qu'on me donne six lignes Ã©crites de la main
du plus honnÃªte homme, j'y trouverai de quoi
le faire pendre.)
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Cardinal Richelieu, Minister of Louis XIII
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â (Quoted: January 1641, inÂ "Mirame")
------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------
Michael Witzel
Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University
1 Bow Street , 3rd floor, Cambridge MA 02138
1-617-495 3295Â Â Â Â Â Â Fax: 496 8571
direct line:Â Â Â Â 496 2990
<http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm>
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/>
< http://users.primushost.com/~india/ejvs/>

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Amber G. - 03-22-2006

QUOTE(Amber G. @ Feb 26 2006, 05:18 AM)SummersÂ is still the president, and will remain the president for some time (end of June) ;Â and even later, he willÂ keep his post as aÂ full (tenured) professor in Harvard.Â Most likelyÂ Â they do not have to change anything ...
[right][snapback]47302[/snapback][/right]

FYI according to news item:Harvard Pesident Summers in IndiaQUOTESoon, Harvard to have India as a subject
Kounteya Sinha
[ Wednesday, March 22, 2006 01:25:22 am TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: Americaâs oldest institution of higher learning, Harvard University, will soon have India as a subject.
And teachers will include visiting faculty members like Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, Gardiner professor of history at
Harvard Sugata Bose and Harvard Business School professor Tarun Khanna.
In an exclusive interview to TOI , Harvard University's outgoing president, Lawrence Summers, said: "Like people study
political science, culture, public health, economics, law and medicine, students in Harvard will now study India as a
subject."
"We are working hard towards building a programme especially on India, the subcontinent and South Asia studies. We
want to strengthen and increase our knowledge the country, which is fast becoming a super-power."
Summers is a renowned economist who was the treasury secretary under Bill Clinton.
In Delhi after having travelled to Rajasthan and Agra, Summers â who will deliver the Golden Jubilee celebration lecture
of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences on Wednesday â said he would discuss with his peers on his return to US
about Indiaâs tremendous emergence as an economic power.
Summers will also seek ways to deepen the connection between Harvard and Indian universities. Summers received his
bachelorâs degree in economics at MIT in 1975 and PhD at Harvard in 1982.
He was appointed president of the university in 2001, making him only the second MIT teacher to become Harvard
president.
But it was his candour and brute honesty that some say cost him the job.
His January 14 address that supposedly suggested that women have less aptitude than men in science and maths
received a lot of flak leading to a vote of no-confidence against him by the faculty of arts and sciences, Harvardâs largest
division.
Following this, Summers resigned from his chair.
He will remain president till June 30 following which he will serve as a professor in Harvard. Derek Bok, the universityâs
president from 1971 to 1991, will serve as interim president.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - acharya - 03-22-2006

<img src='http://www.safarmer.com/witzel.musharraf.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Amber G. - 03-22-2006

Acharya: Yeah Witzelji (or farmer) is trying his photoshopping skills (I too posted the photos above) .. yes they have maturity of and IQ level of a 5 year rotten artichoke .. but still can't understand why they are showing these photos proudly to IER guys... <!--emo& Confused

tupid--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/pakee.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='pakee.gif' />

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Guest - 03-22-2006

Amber G.
Unemployed and bored, I believe so.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - agnivayu - 03-22-2006

From the way Witzel looks, I would say he has definetely been inhaling lot's of mimamsa philosophy in Nepal.

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Amber G. - 03-22-2006

Latest:<img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5355/2022/1600/-1.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

Of course from one and only <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/b_woot.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='b_woot.gif' /> Irffan <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/b_woot.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='b_woot.gif' />

Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron - Amber G. - 03-22-2006

QUOTE(Mudy @ Mar 22 2006, 10:43 AM)Amber G.
Unemployed and bored, I believe so.
[right][snapback]48883[/snapback][/right]

You, as always, could be right: but there is something about " fury like a scholar scorned' too ... anyway he does complain (See my post a few posts above) ... No I am not making this up .. these are the scholar's exact quotes!
QUOTEToo bad for the Hindus that the Sangh (RSS, VHS, BJP, etc.) has failed in the
past to make me a lucrative offer: Hindutva financiers like A. Chowgule
could have easily dropped a check in the mail!