Unmasking AIT

[acharya]

A new foundation for history



The idea of the Aryan invasion, related to such concepts as the ‘Aryan race’ and the ‘Aryan nation’, has more to do with Europe than India. Like the German Nationalist Movement that gave rise to it, the ‘Aryan race’ concept should be seen as part of European history.



It became part of Indian historiography only because it could be used to impose a Eurocentric version of Indian history to go with European colonialism. Its creators and beneficiaries were mainly colonial scholars and Christian missionaries. They made no secret of their intentions.



Lord Elphinstone, Governor of Bombay, once said: "Divide and rule was Roman policy and it should also be ours." This was put into practice in the form of the invading fair-skinned Aryans colonizing the dark-skinned Dravidians— little more than a copy of European colonization of Asia and Africa.

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And W.W. Hunter, a leading Indologist of the nineteenth century wrote: "Scholarship is warmed with the holy flame of Christian zeal." It was such scholars who created the version of history that went into textbooks in colonial India.[/size]



This is understandable from the colonial point of view, but why are they still taught in Indian schools and colleges fifty years after independence, especially when they are entirely without a scientific foundation or even rudimentary evidence? To understand this, it helps to recognize that British education left behind an elite that was cut off from Indian tradition but uncritically accepted anything coming from the West as valid.

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This elite soon gained monopoly of the Indian intellectual and educational establishment. This allowed a ‘colonial hangover’ to continue, with the same version of history becoming the version favored by the Indian ‘establishment’. This was supplemented by another Eurocentric ideology called Marxism, which became the official position of the Indian establishment.[/size]



This had been anticipated by Sri Aurobindo long ago when he wrote: "That Indian scholars have not been able to form themselves into a great and independent school of learning is due to two causes: the miserable scantiness of the mastery in Sanskrit provided by our universities, crippling to all but born scholars, and our lack of sturdy independence which makes us over-ready to defer to European [and Western] authority."



This colonial-Marxist elite dominated the history establishment, leading to stifling of debate and rejection of alternative viewpoints. In the circumstances, it is no accident that the most significant advances in Indian history — from the discovery of the Vedic Sarasvati River to the decipherment of the Harappan script — should have come from the work of non-establishment scholars.



As for as the Harappan civilization is concerned— we now have conclusive evidence to show that it was Vedic. What is presented in the present article is a small part of the new picture. The deciphered readings make it even more conclusive. (For details see The Deciphered Indus Script by N. Jha and N.S. Rajaram, Aditya Prakashan, Delhi.)



The two great weaknesses of the Indian history establishment — apart from their lack of independence — are ignorance of the scientific method and ignorance of the primary languages. [size="6"]These weaknesses have led its members to apply modern trappings like Christian prejudices and Marxism to people and cultures that lived thousands of years ago. [/size]



This suggests that a new school of scholarship needs to be built that combines traditional learning like Vedic scholarship and the modern scientific method. They provide a firm foundation for ancient Indian history by linking archaeology to ancient literature, beginning with the Rigveda. Such an approach has already yielded dividends in solving the demanding problem of deciphering the Indus script.



The present article provides other examples of such a mix. The study of ancient Indian can now begin in real earnest, based on science and the primary sources rather than on the whims and fancies of colonial and missionary interests. This has been long overdue.

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