Unmasking AIT

dhu · (This post was last modified: 01-29-2008, 09:54 AM by dhu.)

QUOTEThe Caste System and Aryan Invasion Theory

MarianneÂ Keppens

Abstract

The controversy about the Aryan Invasion Theory has occupied scholars from several domains over the last few decades. The advocates of this theory claim that a Sanskrit-speaking Aryan people invaded or entered India around 1500 BC and brought along a language, religion and social structure, which they imposed on the indigenous population. The opponents claim that the Aryan people, their language and religion have always been present in India and hence that an invasion could never have happened. When we analyze the arguments from both sides, these sustain only one general conclusion: India has a long history of co-existence and cross-fertilization of different groups of people, cultural traditions, languages, etc. Given the trivial nature of this conclusion, the question becomes: why have so many scholars debated the Aryan Invasion Theory with such passion? To answer this question, my paper looks at how the Aryan Invasion Theory was developed in the nineteenth century. I argue that the theory itself did not emerge from empirical evidence or scientific theorizing about the Indian languages, archaeology or history. Instead this theory developed as an explanation of two entities central to the European experience of India: the caste system and Hinduism as a degeneration of Vedic religion. The Aryan Invasion Theory not only explained how the caste system came into being, it also accounted for the degeneration of the religion of the Vedas and allowed for the classification of its evolution into three main phases: Vedism, Brahmanism and Hinduism. The contemporary debate shows that it remains impossible to defend the occurrence of an Aryan invasion on the basis of the available linguistic, archaeological and other evidence. However, the significance of the Aryan invasion controversy becomes intelligible when one realizes that this theory did not emerge as a description of real historical events. Rather, it is a theory that explained entities which exist only in the European experience of India. As such, if we desire to understand how the âAryan invasion' as well as the âcaste system', âBrahmanism' and other related concepts came into being, we need to study the development of Western culture.

dhu · 02-01-2008, 10:24 AM

recovered from google cache:

QUOTE<div class='quotemain'>This truly a must read book. Here is a review and excerpts from the book

This book forms a good source of reference material for the assertions we have been making in the South Asia File,. Prof Prodosh Aich of Oldenberg university has demolished the notion that many of the people who studied India over the centuries have any pretensions to scholarship or knowledge about India. It is clear that neither Max Muller nor Sir William Jones would have passed their PhD qualifying exams had they proposed their hypothesis about the history of india based on such flimsy and shoddy work. But such is the reality of the age we live in that an occidental heritage is the major qualification for international acceptance of one's work. it is this heritage and not the content of the scholarship that determines whether one gets published in the journals of the west. Clearly the dream of Martin Luther King has a long way to go before it becomes reality.

In a sequel to the South Asia File we will document the works of Indologists through the millennia and show that beginning with the Jesuits in 1540 CE there was a concerted effort to purloin the intellectual property of the Indic civilization while at the same time denigrate it as being of little value.

The work of Prodosh Aich is of great value in exposing the fact that the Emperor has no clothes (see Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales), and that the entire history of India is based on the work of people with meager scholarship in the traditions of the Indic civilization. I trust this book will be read by every Indian who can afford to buy the book or borrow it from a library

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/2005091.../book1.htm

Macaulays, Muellers exposed
Satish Misra

Lies with Long Legs
by Prodosh Aich. Samskriti. Pages 404. Rs 650.

Lies with Long LegsIN his painstakingly long academic journey through mountains of source material available in Europe, Prof Prodosh Aich establishes that the entire understanding of India developed by self-claimed scholars from West is erroneous, since the initial attempt to comprehend ancient India through the Vedas was itself faulty.

He questions the validity of the works of the famous western scholars who translated the Vedic literature from Sanskrit into Italian, English and German. A vast majority of them did not even set foot on the Indian soil and those who came here did not learn the ancient language in an organised manner, even though translation needs an equal command of both languages. Since Sanskrit was not a spoken language, it was all the more difficult for them to develop language skills required for translation.

Colonialist Imperial England had prepared a concerted design to establish the superiority of white, blue eyed, blond, Christian culture over other cultures that they opted to define as "primitive", particularly in case of India.

Prof Aich uses juxtaposition to drive home a point and leaves judgement to readers. He frames a question and then answers it by using the primary source material. The book is bound to trigger an academic debate in the West also and would go a long way to establish once for all that the much-trumpeted and self-championed discipline of Indology in the West has in fact been based on falsehood.

It must have been a design that none of the scholars so far bothered to use the existing material, so abundantly available, which could have helped to unravel the truth about the colonial powers and imperial administration and bureaucracy. Scholars after scholars, even after the end of colonial empire, have continued to overlook the material that would have removed the well-laid myths about Indian society, polity and culture.

It would raise questions on popularly accepted theories on India, such as did the Aryans come to this part of the world from the north or they emigrated and then pushed back the original inhabitants to south. The book also puts a serious question mark on the anthropological understanding of the ancient Indian society as sought to be explained on the basis of the colour of the skin.

Prof Aich has dissects the methods adopted by famous Indologists for collecting material for their renowned works and made rightful inquires into their sources. A Jesuit father, Roberto de Nobili, in his missionary zeal, went to the extent of claiming that he had been able to find the lost Yajur Veda, which in fact was a copy that he had written to establish that there was indeed a relationship between Christianity and ancient Indian practices preserved and followed by Brahmins. In order to win the confidence of the local Brahmin community, he even called himself a Brahmin from Rome.

The author has put every Indologist under the microscope and exposed the majority. Comparing their descriptions with the writings of Megasthenes and others, the author shows how the 18 and 19th century Indologists did irreparable damage to the people of India.

Sir William Jones, celebrated as the Father of Indology in the UK, befooled not only his superiors but also the entire academic community by claiming that he knew 32 languages, including Sanskrit. He came to India as one of the Judges and went on to set up the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which closed its doors to the Asians, on January 15, 1784. He disseminated so much false information about India that an entirely wrong image of this ancient society was painted in the popular mind. German Indologist, Friedrich Maximilian Mueller, known here as Max Mueller, despite never visiting India, came to be known as the most authoritative Sanskrit expert.

Itâs now beyond doubt that it was an English conspiracy hatched by none other than Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, who wanted to control Indian minds by ensuring that they should know, comprehend and understand India through books written in English. Mueller became an instrument in Macaulayâs plan to convince the majority of the local population that the English alien rule was better for them.

Macaulay had written in 1835 in absolutely clear terms: "We are not content to leave the natives to the influence of their own heredity prejudices..."

Till the l6th century, social studies, including historical studies, did not use racial terminology.

It was used later, by the British, to create a conscious divide between the ruled and the ruling classes, by bringing in words like "us" and "them" alien and local, Aryans and non-Aryans, Indo-European or Indo-German, so much so that a new discipline, "ethnography" came to be established at the European academic institutions.

Even physical descriptions like skin colour and types of lips, etc. were consciously used to drive a wedge between people. Stories of conquests were designed as the "historical justification" for looting, building strongholds, colonising foreign lands with the purpose of sustained exploitation and presented as an inherent law of evolution. The conquerors, the deliberate killers, the occupants, the exploiters were hailed for having brought culture and "civilization" into the "colonies". They were just following the pattern of the nomads on grazing grounds who came in some "pre-historic" period and brought "civilization" into India. "What could be wrong with that?

The book has exposed the western scholars who are never tired of claiming their objectivity and impartiality.

LIES WITH LONG LEGS

Discoveries, Scholars, Science, Enlightenment
Documentary Narrative by Prodosh Aich

To this book

Our daily life is organised by "Information". World wide. A continuously increasing flow of "Information" leading to more and more consolidated social and political order. "Information" is brought to us not only through the so-called print and electronic media, but also by our environment, by the family, by educational institutions, etc. extensively. But, where does "Information" come from, where is it produced, who puts it into circulation, what are the channels, how fast does it reach us from its source? Can we really find out? Is it important to know all the facts?

These are the reasons, these are the backgrounds that made our search for answers to our rather harmless questions so difficult, so complicated: who the "Aryans" are, the "Indogermans" and the "Indoeuropeans"? Who they are, since when has their existence been known, how has it become known that they existed, who discovered them, and how, why and for what purpose? But we have made progress in our search. With the help of our unusual questions. And as it seems, we have banged on Pandora s box and it is open now.

CONTENTS, Prolouge: WE ARE, WHAT WE KNOW, THE IMPETUS, Epilogue: AN ERA OF BRAINWASHING and THE BACK OF THE COVER.

CONTENTS

The impetus 7

Prologue: We are, what we know 9

What is happening to us? 28

Who paved the way
for the epochal discoverer William Jones? 52

Who is this William Jones? 119

Calcutta - Sir William s Eldorado 155

All trails lead to Calcutta 227

Treading in Sir William s steps 282

Epilogue: An era of brainwashing 383

PROLOGUE: WE ARE, WHAT WE KNOW

And we know what knowledgeable people tell us. We readily accept a story if it is consistent, if it does not create a feeling of unease and if it doesn't contradict our experience and our knowledge stored so far. We save it as an addition, and we increase our knowledge a little. We are inclined to accept stories from far away fields innocently, otherwise an inner assessment is due; assuming that our memories function well, we won't have time to sublime contradictions. We are accustomed to this process. Mostly we don't care about who the narrator is, how he got the story, how he earns his living, who is harmed by the story, who gains and so forth.

We wanted to know about "Aryans", "Indogermans" and "Indoeuropeans". And we found many stories. Who doesn't know them? Most learned people know these stories found in "references" in "standard books of history" and in more detail in specialised books: The "Aryans", the grazing nomads, were, in pre-historic age, residents in the Steppes between the Caspian Sea and China's western boundary. How does one define "pre-historic"? Well!

Those grazing nomads had domesticated horses and cows for the time in history around 6000 years ago. They discovered copper, iron and other precious metals. They invented bronze and steel. They prospered. Their population increased. They expanded their "Lebensraum". Whose living space did they invade? We won't know. Who is to tell us? Is it important to know? Did they perhaps occupy "Lebensraum" of animals only? An earlier age of "discoveries" eventually? Nothing is known yet. If our type of questions was important, we would have found answers in the end. Are we perhaps on a wrong track?

Some of these grazing nomadic people with cows, horses, copper, iron, bronze and steel emigrated. So it is told. To the west and to the south. The circumstances of this expansion of "Lebensraum" are either veiled in "early or pre-history" or even buried. We can imagine why they didn't go into the inhospitable northern regions, into the cold, if some of these grazing nomads did really emigrate. But why did they not expand their "Lebensraum" eastwards too? No one tells us. No one has, for that matter, as yet asked.

But there seems to be no doubt about "expansion" of "Lebensraum" of these people. Naturally, as "cultured" people they had a common language. So the language wandered with them too. Some of these "Aryan wanderers" reached Northwest India. The Hindukush was the only pass through the Himalayan massif. How could these nomads from the Turkmenian steppe find this single pass? Wandering from an area thousands of kilometres away? Should we be detained by such "useless" questions? Isn't it solely important that they did find the pass? Otherwise they would not have arrived in India. Did they really arrive? Anyway. They were tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed, and obviously "dynamic" as well. Otherwise they could not have made this long journey.

They settled down in Northwest India. They brought their language with them. Quite logically. This was Sanskrit. But without scripts. They invented the device of writing in India only. Had they had brought also a script with them, we would have found it in their initially native area. However, the Sanskrit script was found nowhere. Therefore it is deduced that the need to store their knowledge for future generations in writing was first felt in Northwest India. And they accomplished the job nicely. How long does it usually take for a cultural community to devise a script? "Philologists" or "Comparative Linguists" do not tell us anything about that. We must be content with the fact that "Aryans" from central Asia moving around discovered the Hindukush pass, drove out the inhabitants from this hospitable Northwest India to the South, settled down, acquired new knowledge, invented a script for writing and produced a huge amount of highly sophisticated literature. We naturally won't know where the initial inhabitants of the North forced the inhabitants of the South to go after they had been forced out from the North. Is it important to know that? So far, so good. In the oldest parts of this literature these "New Indians" called themselves "Aryans"; so we are told. We shall yet have to identify the "historian" who told us these stories for the first time. No one can tell us, however, why only those grazing Nomads in India should call themselves "Aryans" but not their brothers, sisters and cousins elsewhere in western Europe and/or the ones who remained at home. Why not? Shouldn't we know it?

Let us take it as a fact for the time being. We are assured that the "New Indians" called themselves "Aryans" and the language they brought with them was "Sanskrit". Up to now Sanskrit is universally regarded as the best arranged language. As Sanskrit has been found nowhere else, it is logically assumed that the nomadic "Aryans" in central Asia must have spoken a simpler version of Sanskrit. So we are told. This simple form, the early Sanskrit, Sanskrit in its childhood so to say, is called "Protosanskrit". Well and good. Those "Aryans" wandering towards the West also had to take along the same "Protosanskrit" Isn't it absolutely logical? Well, it didn't keep its initial form. The language and culture of the "Aryans" did change with time and through encounters with other languages and cultures in different continents. But the "kinship" naturally remained in regard to language and otherwise. So we are told. A convincing story.

It is supposed to be sufficiently established that there is a close kinship between Sanskrit, the language of the Northwest-Indian "Aryans" on the one hand and Greek, Latin, Germanic and Celtic languages on the other hand. The family of the "Indoeuropeans". So to speak. And who has discovered and established this kinship? Not those "Aryans" who passed through the Hindukush and created the world-wide known literature like Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Sutras, and so forth and allegedly called themselves "Aryans" in their literature. No! None of them, not in any of their writings, not even once has it been indicated that at some period in central Asia their "Lebensraum" became so congested that a lot of their brothers, sisters, cousins set out on a search for new space to live and emigrated in the end. No! The "Sanskrit-Aryans" did not remember anything else, so it is told, than that they were "Aryans". An absolute "black out" otherwise. The kinship was claimed rather late by the remote cousins and relatives belonging to the "Abendland" (occident); only while they were engaged in robbing and killing in the "Morgenland" (orient). They were robbing India indiscriminately, carrying away whatever was not riveted and nailed, occupying the country for enduring exploitation. But they blessed also their remote cousins and relatives first with "language kinship" and then the "Linguistics". This branch of "science" has also invented the term "language family", but only in the 19th century AD, to be more exact, between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 20th century.

Terms like "family" and "kinship" however, even when they are designed in the context of languages, develop their intrinsic dynamics. The "occidental" inventiveness was at that period quite effective. The distant cousins from the "occident" deduced consequently that if their languages were from a common origin, then they belonged also to the same family, then there was a "blood relationship" as well; even if this had remained in oblivion for centuries. This was how the "Aryan race" was added to the "Aryan language" hardly fifty years later. And we have also been blessed with further branches of "science": Ethnology, anthropology, psychology, psychoanalysis, and so forth.

In the 1995 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica we can read about these inventions: "During the 19th century there arose a notion - propagated most assiduously by the Comte de Gobineau and later by his disciple Houston Stewart Chamberlain - of an 'Aryan race', those who spoke Indo-European languages, who were considered to be responsible for all the progress that mankind had made and who were also morally superior to 'Semites', 'yellows' and 'blacks'. The Nordic, or Germanic, peoples came to be regarded as the purest 'Aryans'. This notion, which had been repudiated by anthropologists by the second quarter of the 20th century, was seized upon by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and made the basis of the German government policy of exterminating Jews, Gypsies, and other 'non-Aryans'." The second half of the 20th century has proved, however, that this rejection of the "Aryan theory" by anthropologists didn't have any effect. Shouldn't the anthropologists, historians, indologists, political scientists and social scientists of this culture have known from their own professional experience that a bare rejection rather confirms? As "makers" of a "media society" they should know that "denials" rather amplify the refuted statement? What has been undertaken by the anthropologists or representatives of other new disciplines after it was established that the rejection of the theory about the alleged superiority of the Aryan race had had no effect whatsoever?

In 1990 the second revised edition of the biography of German indologists was handed over from the "Max Mueller Bhawan (House)" in New Delhi. The German Institute for Culture in foreign countries is called "Goethe Institute". But in India quite interestingly it is called "Max Mueller House", named after Friedrich Maximilian Mueller. We shall deal with him in detail later. An impressive number of 130 German indologists have been referred to who are known through their publications on the "early history" of India. The youngest one in this "gallery of ancestral portraits" was born in 1931. There are younger indologists, of course, and a lot of young persons are engaged in "research" on this topic in Germany and elsewhere. Many books have been printed; the "Aryan race" lives on and is still going strong.

Helmuth von Glasenapp (1891-1963) wrote a lot in large editions about religion and philosophy. Here we quote from his book, first published in 1963, from "an unabridged paperback edition", printed in 1997 as a 6th edition: The five world religions. (He did not include Judaism!) Under the heading "The historical development" we read on page 29: "The old city PrayÃ¡ga (i. e. sacrificial site), which the Muhammadans renamed AllÃ¢hÃ¢bÃ¢d (Allah's residence) and as such familiar to us, happens to be the holiest place of India because both the holy rivers Ganges and YamunÃ¡ join here. That is symbolic for Hinduism: as it is according to its essential spirit also a merger point of two big evolutional streams, though emerging from different origins, merging to a new unit: one of these streams is Aryanism that penetrated from the north four millenniums ago to India and reshaped it to a large extent in linguistic and cultural respect, the other stream is represented by the indigenous element already before the Aryan immigration and has been maintaining its characteristic until today. The origin of Indian culture goes back to the creative synthesis of these two components; through them the Indian religion received its distinct mark, unique in the world."

Is it not pretty, light, and smooth convincing and saleable in style? Under the heading "The pre-Aryan period" we read on page 31: "The oldest history of India is to us still today a book with seven seals. Ethnographers accept that the oldest inhabitants of the Indian continent, which then did not have its contemporary appearance, were Negroid, standing to their tribal comrades in Africa and Melanesia in spatial and genetic connection. These are supposed to have been forced away by Europides coming from the north to the south and into remote fields and to have been absorbed by degrees so that they are not to be found today anymore in a pure state. Under the Europides, who, moving in several waves, took their residence in the wide country, ancestors of the delicate brown peoples which, with its inherent variety of aspects, had its seat in India talking in Dravidian languages in the south represented the most developed type. ... Fifty years ago (that is around 1913) the prevailing view was still that it were the Aryans who brought a higher culture and religion to India and that the pre Aryan inhabitants of the continent of Ganges, however, had been primitives lacking in culture. This view changed entirely through the great archaeological discoveries made since the years 1921/1922 in the Indus area. In Mohenjo Daro (in the region of Sindh) and in Harappa (in Punjab) the ruins of large cities were then laid open. The spacious buildings, artistic tools and form-beautiful sculptures found there betray a state of culture that was highly superior to that of the Aryans living only in villages that had no developed technique and art yet. This so-called Indus culture shows a striking similarity with the simultaneously existing Near East culture, on the other hand it bears again so individual traits, however, that it can not be considered as a simple subsidiary of the latter and is therefore to be taken as an independent link of the international world culture of the 3rd millennium. ... While some researchers are holding the Induspeople for Indogermans that belonged not to the Aryan branch, but to an older group of this language-family, most accept that they were ancestors of Dravidians and as such to be rather related to the Sumerians and pre-indogerman Mediterranean peoples."

Isn't it delightfully narrated? Why didn't Helmuth von Glasenapp come to the obvious conclusion that the results of excavation led to a thorough collapse of existing theories in "history"? Unfortunately we can not ask him anymore. But we can continue our reading in "The vedic period" on page 32: "Those Aryans who immigrated through the mountain route of the Northwest into the watershed of Indus and subjugated in continuous fight the prior residents of the north-west corner of India in the 2nd millennium BC, were warriors of a youthful group of herdsmen, who did already some farming, but knew nothing of town planning and of fine artistic work."

Our apologies for the long quotation. As mentioned, we are quoting from a large paperback edition. It has a pretentious appendix: It has a pretentious appendix: "Comparative survey over teachings and customs of the Five Religions", "Comparative chronological table", "Regarding the pronunciation of words in Asiatic languages", "List of the abbreviations", "Section-wise Literature and Index of names". A pure "scientific" book at its best. We refrain here from a subject-wise criticism. We ask simply: what were the sources of Helmuth von Glasenapp's stories, which he tells us in this apparently pretentious book?

So we looked at the bibliography. The first chapter "History of Religion, General Theology" has three sections. The oldest mentioned source for "Overall views" goes back to 1920, for "References" to 1956 and for "Sources" to 1908. The next chapter: "Brahmanism and Hinduism" has two sections only for reasons we don't know: "References" and "Overall views" are put together. The oldest source referred to here is from 1891 and in "Sources" from 1912. A critical review of sources doesn't occur. Was every printed word holy for Helmuth von Glasenapp? What would be the benefit of a critical review of sources? Isn't it rather depressing to note what is being sold as science? How does it look like in other "scientific" books? We have not yet been able to identify a different "science-culture". Therefore, before we go into stories, we have decided to put a few simple questions: who is the narrator, how does he earn his living, who supports his story-telling, who is benefited by his stories and what were his sources. The result of this practice is even more depressing. But first things first. We haven't been able to detect a single primary source in Helmuth von Glasenapp's book. But he knew all about human races and their ranking. Tellingly, during the "TausendjÃ¤hriges Reich" under Hitler he certainly did not suffer any setback to his career.

Knowing the modern-science-culture as manifested in the book by Helmuth von Glasenapp we are not amazed to note that sources have been referred to in the latest edition of the book, which were first published after 1963, that is after his death. Of course not real sources, but new printed products. In "notes" we are informed that "a number of other publications, mainly of recent dates, that could be suitable for further studies of the five great religions have been made available." We would have liked to know, which "spirit" has selected 'a number of other publications' and whether this "spirit" has also fumbled in the text. To make the book more sellable, of course!

In one of the "standard history books" in Germany, History of India: from Indus Culture to Today by Hermann Kulke and Dietmer Rothermund, 2nd expanded and revised edition, Beck, Munich 1998, first edition 1982, the same story reads on pages 44-45 as follows: "The second millennium BC witnessed, after the fall of Indus Culture, another important event of the early history of India, when groups of central Asiatic nomads migrated through the Hindukush pass to Northwest India, who called themselves 'Arya' in their writings. In 1786 William Jones, the founder of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, discovered close linguistic affinity between Sanskrit, the language of Aryas, and Greek, Latin, and the Germanic and Celtic languages. This epochal finding laid the foundation stone for exploration of the Indo-European family of languages, to which according to our contemporary knowledge more languages belong to than Jones had assumed in the beginning. Since the late 19th century more and more researchers came to the conviction, that the origin of this Indo-European family of languages was to be searched for in the spread of the East European and central Asiatic steppe (We include William Jones in our list for later scrutiny).

The important findings of the early Linguists about the close linguistic affinity within the Indo-European family of languages were however overshadowed increasingly by racial-nationalistic ideologies, in which the origin of one's own nation was postulated in a mystic-Aryan race. This applies particularly to German nationalistic historians since the 19th century and recently also to nationalistic historians of India. This development led to devastating results in Europe and also resulted recently in India to vehement quarrels between historians and to heavy communal riots. It appears therefore to be appropriate in the context of the early Indian history, to speak of 'Aryas' in the German language, to distinguish the mythical primary race of Indo-Europeans of Northwest India more clearly from the ideological construct 'Arier' of recent times."

This quotation is even more cynical than the one circulated in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, isn't it? Are these "historians" not clandestinely trying to escape the moral responsibility for their so-called scientific doings? Even today they talk about 'the Indo-European family of languages', but do not tell us which languages are not to be assigned to this family. They act as if all those problems created during the "TausendjÃ¤hriges Reich" had been over for them since long. But do they really believe that it will work if they just spell the term "Aryans" differently? Should it now concern the Indian historians only? Can one be more hypocritical?

So, the immigrating "Aryans" bring the "Aryan" language "Protosanskrit" along with them to Northwest India. Then they refine their language to Sanskrit, devise the Sanskrit script and produce and deliver an abundance of great literature to the world. The "modern historians" specialised on this period and on this area are busy with their dating of events. What else could be more important than to determine precise dates when each and every writing was first published and to dispute on such issues "scientifically" with colleagues in the same field?

Since the emergence of Jainism and Buddhism about 2600 years ago the history of India is well documented. During that period Sanskrit was no longer spoken. The literature on metaphysics, on science, on history, the books (Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Sutras) and the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata were, however, already known in the 7th century BC. So the "modern scientists" concluded precisely that this abundance of Sanskrit literature emerged before the 7th century BC only. So far, so good. The conquest and/or immigration is, however, dated around the 15th century BC. How was this dating determined? We add this question to our list of notes to be dealt with later. The ancient Sanskrit literature could accordingly by no means be older than the invasion and/or immigration of the "Aryans", with Sanskrit as their language.

Rigveda is established as the oldest of the four Vedas because it does not mention in the other three Vedas. It is also supposed to be the oldest of all Sanskrit scripts composed around 1200 BC. We cannot see how a "scientific" fixing of the dates of these books could particularly enlighten us. We won't pass judgement on that. We only wonder why we are so totally unable to comprehend the stories told by the "modern historians" and indologists about the origin of Sanskrit literature. It would be unfair not to mention here that there is dissent about the dating acrobatics among these "scientists" as well as among different "scientific" disciplines.

It is agreed by all "modern scientists" that something like an "Aryan invasion" or an "Aryan immigration" must have taken place in India. How else would Sanskrit have found its way to India? Brilliant, wouldn't you agree? Where else would Sanskrit have come from? Do we find Sanskrit elsewhere? We do not know. No one can tell us. But one fact is striking indeed: the inventors of the theory of the "Aryan invasion" and/or of the "Aryan immigration" resemble the "Aryans" in their physiognomy. Is it just coincidence? We won't know. The diligent diggers, the archaeologists have yet to find evidence of an "Aryan conquest", however. On the contrary. Their finding shocked the "Aryan-looking-scientists" for a while but could not shatter the whole theory. Because the archaeologists are unable to disprove the immigration of a language. Immigration of a language does not leave behind archaeological evidence. No one can deny the presence of Sanskrit in India. Does it not brilliantly prove that the "Aryans" did at least immigrate into India?

And as already mentioned, the "Aryans" were tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed. So they would have been absolutely able to conquer Northwest India if their immigration had faced resistance. There was no doubt about the presence of the "Aryans" in India. Every simpleton who visits India can obviously see the "Nordic race" in Northwest India. In the south on the other hand the people are of short stature, dark-skinned and dark-eyed. "Scientists" imaging the "Aryans" are obsessed in describing this physical appearance They were, as said, tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed. People with these features are of course superior to others. Does the scientists' obsession not actually indicate an urgent desire to identify themselves with these "Aryans"? Is this desire rather an indication of "Ich-StÃ¤rke" (ego-strength) or of "Ich-SchwÃ¤che" (ego-weakness)?

Naturally the "race", allegedly inferior to the "Aryans", had also a name. They were "Dravidians". Unfortunately we have not come across such an exceptional "scholar" having the "qualities" of a Friedrich Maximilian Mueller, who could have told us whether they also did call themselves "Dravidians" in their early literature. Did the "Dravidians" have "early writings"? Did they have literature at all? We do not know. We do however wonder how the dynamic, self-conscious and clever "Aryans" obviously never compared themselves with the "Dravidians" in order to develop their own "we-consciousness". There is no reference whatsoever to "Dravidians", to "two races" or to "race" in any ancient Sanskrit script.

Shouldn't this lacuna have been noticed by the "modern scientists" and been reflected upon? Anyway. We are not yet through with the stories we are told. The "Aryans", having either invaded India or immigrated into India, displaced the "Dravidians" to the South, settled down, developed their "Protosanskrit" almost to perfection, devised a script, produced literature of high cultural value, brought this culture to the pushed out "Dravidians" and spread the "Aryan" culture over entire India. Helmuth von Glasenapp gave clear indication that the "Dravidians" too are not indigenous people (Ureinwohner) of India. They immigrated in the "earliest early period" from 'Africa and Melanesia' to India. We won't comment on this. We just take a note of this version of the earliest history of India. But we have many questions. It needs not be specially mentioned that we don't find answers to our questions in the "modern-scientific-literature". It is even worse. Most of these questions have not even been raised yet.

What was the numerical ratio, for example, when the "Aryans" sent the "Dravidians" scuttling South? Is it in the realm of imagination of these scientists that the more unfavourable the ratio of the conquerors or of the immigrants to the inhabitants was, the more difficult and more improbable it would have been to drive them out? The "Aryans" could not have passed the Hindukush in masses. Which routes could they have taken from the steppe to the south? How were the conditions of the routes? Did they encounter human beings on their way? Which ones? How much did they roam around until they discovered the only pass, the Hindukush?

What logistics? What were the prerequisites for logistic considerations for these grazing nomads in the central-Asiatic steppe? Were there any? Did these "historians" ever study a map of this area? Even if we accepted the story of "population explosion" leading to immigration, how could they have found and kept direction in a vast, unknown, incalculable terrain thousands of miles from their steppes? Besides, if, against all odds, the nomads did find direction, we should find these central Asiatics all over the place not just India. And to add to it, the nomads were no star gazers. Their eyes were on the ground or ahead of them. How did they suddenly learn astronomy?

And what has been told by Helmuth von Glasenapp? Under the heading "The vedic period" on page 32? " Those Aryans who immigrated through the mountain route of the Northwest into the watershed of Indus and subjugated in continuous fight the prior residents of the north-west corner of India in the 2nd millennium BC, were warriors of a youthful group of herdsmen, who did already some farming, but knew nothing of town planning and of fine artistic work.

Instead of asking at least a few of the many obvious questions, the "Glasenapps" describe how different the physical characteristics of those the two races, "Aryans" and "Dravidians", were. As already said, the "Aryans" were tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed and the "Dravidians" were of short stature, dark-skinned and dark-eyed. Would it actually have been possible that the "Dravidians" were inferior to the "Aryans" due to the differences of their physical features and were therefore conquered? In spite of a vast majority of "Dravidian" people? Which question is more relevant, the numerical ratios or physical features? And how could those "modern scientists" determine the appearance of people of those "two races" who lived 3500 years ago? Is there any comprehensible method for that? Can there be a method to that purpose?

Obviously the designers of the "theory of two races" and their descendants do not only sympathise with but admire them and identify themselves with "Aryans" and their assumed physical attributes. It goes without saying that the physical aspects dominate their subjective evaluation. These designers projected their own physical appearance to the assumed superior "Aryans" and developed with it a common "we-consciousness" vis-a-vis the "others", whoever these others might have been. There are just the "others". And the "others" were by no means tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed. What is not wished cannot be.

After the creation of the "we-feeling" the individual features develop independently. We don't have to remember the impressive meeting of Hitler and Mussolini in the movie "The Great Dictator" by Charles Chaplin, to understand the powerful motivation behind the internalised values, the all too prevalent misconception that "big" is "great". In the Chaplin film, the two dictators are sitting on a swivel chairs and, throughout their conversation, each is trying to sit appear higher than the other this hilarious scene brings amply to light that inferiority complex a sense of security is the root motivator of all dictators.

We leave it at that, emphasising the fact that every "we-feeling" presupposes actual or pretended positive qualities which "the others", of course, don't possess. It is irrelevant who linguists, historians or indologists when they pen such imaginary theories in the guise of "scientific" history, a classic example being the following: 'in the context of the early Indian history it appears to be appropriate, to speak of "Aryans" in the German language, to distinguish the mythical primary race of Indo-Europeans of Northwest India more clearly from the ideological construct "Arier" of recent times. In their purely subjective desire to hold on to the "racial superiority" theory whether it be the beauty or the virtues of the Aryans the author has thrown to the winds one of the key elements in research ethics: Objectivity.

The impilcite massage is that In fact, the "short-statured" persons are not just "not tall", they are also "incalculable and mischievous"; dark-skinned people are in fact "shady customers", not frank and open like fair skinned people. And if they have dark eyes in addition, who would like to meet them? Be they citizens or not, who would seriously think about integrating them into the "we-group"? A culture which has generated the superiority consciousness of the "blond-blue-eyed-white" people for centuries must also be named accordingly. We should no longer allow "experts on culture" to confuse us by inventing new labels for this culture. The "Aryans" could not have been Christians. Christianity emerged later. But who are the "Indo-Europeans"? Are they only the Christian descendants of the "Aryans" or also products of the blond-blue-eyed-white-Christian culture? Are they not more civilised than the "Indo-Aryans"? And a little superior too?

And superiority is not superiority if it is not constantly scrutinised and being evidenced. This can be observed when physical violence is used against those fellow-habitants in Europe, in "America", in "Australia", in "New Zealand", who obviously do not belong to the "blond-blue-eyed-white-Christian" culture. And in Germany, of course. Why do we have the public appeals of the celebrities against the infringements? Is it more than just "celebrating"? It should be added that all pioneers of this culture have not necessarily to be "blond-blue eyed-white-Christian". Not all pioneers/leaders of this culture need to be blond-blue-eyed-white-Christian. Take Hitler and Gobbles. There should not be any misunderstanding. We, the authors, also belong to this culture. We lack the essential features but cannot root out the internalised "values" either.

But let's get back to the original "Aryans" who are supposed to have started the whole affair. They were basically simple people, who 'were warriors of a youthful group of herdsmen, who did already some farming, but knew nothing of town planning and of fine artistic work', but nonetheless 'immigrated through the mountain route of the Northwest into the watershed of Indus and subjugated in continuous fight the prior residents of the north-west corner of India in the 2nd millennium BC'. They just 'were warriors of a youthful group of herdsmen. That was it. We wanted to know in which period all these things happened. But there is no concrete evidence. And what about the spread of this culture up to the southern tip of India? When did it happen? From the time of Vardhamana, the first Mahavira of the Jains and Gautama Buddha, the history of India is well documented. There is no evidence of any "Aryan" invasion, occupation and spreading of the culture into the diminished "land of the Dravidians" in the south of India. Apparently this must then have occurred in the period between the 15th and 7th century BC. Why was it not even mentioned in the extensive literature of the "Sanskrit-Aryans"?

Even if we bought the theory of "population explosion" among the grazing nomads, we would need to try to find out what section of population would be ready for a collective emigration: The "well established" ones or the "inferior" ones? Which of these two would foster the common language better: the established ones or the inferior ones? Who is inclined to emigrate? If the "Aryans" brought "Protosanskrit" to India, must we not assume that those remaining at home spoke the same language? If the "Aryans" abroad produced an abundance of Sanskrit literature, shouldn't the same "breed" have produced literature at home? May be not in abundance and in good quality, but some literature anyhow? Where is the literature of the "Aryans" at home? Where is their history? And why didn't the other "Aryan" emigrants, the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans and the Celts, produce literature similar to "Sanskrit literature"?

Then we would like to know how modern historians were able to acquire their knowledge. What were the sources of all these theories which are being served even today? In that exemplary German "standard history book" of 1998 we get a hint about the quality of their sources on page 49: "The dating of the texts and the cultures that produced them was vigorously disputed for quite a long time also among western Indologists. Based on astronomical information the famous Indian freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak has published in his book 'The Arctic Home in the Vedas' at the beginning of this century his belief that the origin of the Vedas was to be backdated to the 5th and 6th millennium BC. The German Indologist H. Jacobi came independently to similar conclusions and dated the beginning of the vedic period in the middle of the 5th millennium. Mostly one followed, however, the dating set by the famous German Indologist Max Mueller who taught in Cambridge in the late 19th century. Setting out from the lifetime of the Buddha around 500 BC he dated the origin of the Upanishads in the centuries from 800 to 600 BC as the philosophy in them had originated before Buddha's deeds. These were preceded by the Brahmana- and Mantra texts in the centuries from 1000 to 800 respectively from 1200 to 1000 BC. Today one dates the oldest vedic text, that of Rigveda, into the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. Since the Vedas soon after this genesis as a divine manifestation were not allowed to be changed anymore and handed down to our contemporary time by priest families verbally in an unbelievably precise manner, they can now be considered, after their dating can be regarded as being fixed at least in specific centuries, as historical sources of first rank for the history of the vedic society in northern India."

Impressive style, indeed. In fact the whole book is in the same impressive style, made more so by its "scientific" character. Each sentence, each paragraph is convincingly presented. The book, from the first to the last word, is a demonstration of the scientific character of the "Humanities". Who can still have doubts about its contents? The most important aim is to convince readers - no, not exactly. It is to make believe. The weak points, wherever possible, camouflaged in insignificant portions. And the debatable points which might lead to criticism are just touched upon, signalling that these issues have been recognised, but could not be dealt with in detail due to the lack of space. Right?

At the beginning of the "modern humanities", we suppose, it was more difficult "to make others believe". But today the means of manipulation are almost perfect. It is not that the scientists of our time have become cleverer and packed their messages more impressively. No that is not the danger. What is happening is we are increasingly losing our ability to recognise manipulations. It begins with the family, continues at school, on the job, in the subcultures and finally takes control of the entire culture. The mass media always play a major role. Nothing depends on the actual truth. Whatever is sold becomes truth. The logic is primitive but effective. The people wouldn't buy it if it was not true, would they? Have we already forgotten the media report on the "Gulf war", "Kosovo-air strokes" and "Afghanistan-crusade"? And the bombshells enriched with uranium?

We have to apologise because of these provocative sentences. We are particularly angry because we have long been victims of this manipulation. It will not make much sense if we describe our way to emancipation in all details. There is no point here in going into all the details. Rather, what is needed is to read again the following "exemplary" paragraph carefully. "The dating of the texts and the cultures that produced them was vigorously disputed for quite a long time also among western Indologists (What could be the purpose of 'for quite long time also among western Indologists' in this connection? Is it important to know? Is it not more important to know why it 'was vigorously disputed ... also among western Indologists'? Why? And what is the meaning of 'also among western Indologists' in particular? And all these controversial items in one sentence? Why aren't we informed in a simple way that: for a long time the dating was controversial among Indologists? And thereafter the issues of controversies? Was all this done just by mistake?).

"Based on astronomical information (Is the information correct or wrong?) the famous Indian freedom fighter ('famous Indian freedom fighter'? What are we to be conditioned for now?) Bal Gangadhar Tilak has published in his book 'The Arctic Home in the Vedas' at the beginning of this century his belief ('belief'?) that the origin of the Vedas was to be backdated to the 5th and 6th millennium BC (Did Bal Gangadhar Tilak give some reasons also?). The German Indologist H. Jacobi came independently to similar conclusions and dated the beginning of the vedic period in the middle of the 5th millennium."

The 'famous Indian freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak' is not easily available to us. However, 'the German Indologist H. Jacobi' is. Hermann Jacobi (1850-1937) was a mathematician. He got his doctorate in 1872 on: De astrologiae Indicae "Hora" appellatae originibus. In translation it is: About the origins of the term "Hora" in the Indian astrology. He worked with Jainic texts dealing with mathematical and calculational background. He was proficient in Prakrit and in Pali, both spoken versions of Sanskrit 2600 years ago in the eastern area in India, in the contemporary Union state of Bihar. Up to his middle age he remained a mathematician and natural scientist. He also wrote a Prakrit-grammar. He contributed an article on the age of Vedas on the basis of astronomical calculations on the occasion of a commemorative volume for the indologist Rudolf von Roth, which then was published in 1908 also in the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society". In his published biography we can not find any indications about his knowledge in Sanskrit. Having gained this background knowledge the next three sentences in our exemplary paragraph cast a different light.

"Mostly one followed, however, (why so?) the dating set by the famous German Indologist Max Mueller who taught in Cambridge in the late 19th century (Was he famous because he taught as a German in Cambridge, or did he teach in Cambridge because he was famous before? Did he become "the leader of the (indologist)pack") because he was famous, or did he become famous because he had ascended to "the leader of the pack"? We would prefer to know instead how this indologist established the dating of the Vedas. Absolutely no indication. And what is more, there had never been 'a German Indologist in Cambridge' called Max Mueller. We continue in that paragraph.). Setting out from the lifetime of the Buddha around 500 BC he dated the origin of the Upanishads in the centuries from 800 to 600 BC as the philosophy in them had originated before Buddha s deeds. These were preceded by the Brahmana and Mantra texts in the centuries from 1000 to 800 respectively from 1200 to 1000 BC ."(Are these methodological indications or arguments? Instead they foist upon us that the famous German indologist Max Mueller could read these texts brilliantly, judge them and consequently deduce when these texts were written. Nothing like that in fact. We shall deal with Friedrich Maximilian Mueller, that is his full name, in detail giving special attention to his knowledge of Sanskrit in particular and to the knowledge of Sanskrit of the indologists in general. Now we can continue our reading.).

Today one dates (just like that?) the oldest Vedic text, that of Rigveda, into the middle of the 2nd millennium of BC. Since the Vedas soon after this genesis (had there been anything before that?) as a divine manifestation (A divine manifestation is always related to a person. To whom was the Rigveda divinely manifested and by which God?) were not allowed to be changed anymore (how could it be ascertained?) and handed down to our contemporary time by priest families (priest families?) verbally in an unbelievably precise manner, they can now be considered, after their dating can be regarded as being fixed at least in specific centuries, as historical sources of first rank for in northern India (Is this sensible reasoning?)."

How does 'the history of the vedic society' emerge? We also fail to comprehend the meaning and purpose of: 'a divine manifestation', 'historical sources of first rank' and 'the history of the vedic society'. Another aspect is striking in this exemplary paragraph. It applies adjectives and adverbs, positively and negatively loaded, as an instrument of manipulation, like: vigorously disputed', 'for quite a long time', 'western Indologists', 'famous Indian freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak', 'the German Indologist', 'mostly one followed', 'the famous German Indologist Max Mueller'. We were not led astray by this trick. We have frequently endured such fruitless disputes staged in order to scuttle essential discussions. Just to give an example, we all remember the quarrels about "tapped-records" being "illegally" published in many "democratic" countries. Mostly the public disputes were focused on the legitimacy of the publication. The essential question remained in the dark: What in fact did honourable democratic political personalities tell their political friends, opponents and leading administrators? Why should it be kept away from the democratic public? A diversion of focus as a technique of manipulation.

Again we must apologise because of a small naughtiness of ours. In the beginning we talked about "Aryan conquerors". Later we introduced "Aryan conquerors and/or immigrants" just like that. It was only done to get the reader tuned to understand the way we become victims of a common method of manipulation by the "historians". The 2nd section of that standard history book, The history of India: from Indus culture to today by Hermann Kulke and Dietmer Rothermund, 2nd expanded and revised edition, Beck, Munich 1998, first edition 1982, is titled: "Immigration and Settlement of Aryas". Now, "immigration of Aryas" is an event which was called "Conquest by the Aryans" till the first quarter of the 20th century. Due to absolutely unavoidable interdisciplinary rivalries among "modern scientists", the "historians" and indologists got involved into more than a dating conflict with the archaeologists. The archaeological finds refute the conquest theory insofar, as the so called war trophies as a proof of the defeat of "Dravidians" were unfortunately already there much earlier, before the "Aryans" were supposed to have had their "population explosion" in the central-Asiatic steppe and gone on their march to a new "Lebensraum".

In fact, this should have not only led to the collapse of the theory of the Aryan conquest, but also of the theory which claims that India is a country of two or three races. But 'mostly one followed' the flexibility of the "historians" and indologists: If there was no conquest, then there must nevertheless have been an immigration! By this twist the theory of the "superior Aryan race" was rescued. These "Indo-Europeans", no, these "Aryan-Europeans" were and are emotionally convinced of their own superiority. What would happen to them if the theory collapses? Perish the thought!

These manipulators of opinions know very well how deeply the racial consciousness is rooted in this "blond-blue-eyed-white-Christian" culture, which is still on the search for an innocent name. They are confident that even if they have to use the term "immigration" it will nonetheless automatically be converted in the mind of the members of this culture into "conquest". And their smug confidence has no limits. They do not even feel that while writing a little more attention has to be paid to keep their innermost conviction about the superiority of the "Aryan-Europeans" under restrain lest it be exposed. Thus we can already read on page 50 of the 2nd section: "The victory of the Indo-Aryas over the indigenous population seems to have been as in the case of other conquering nations in the Near Orient, based considerably on their sophisticated two wheeled horse chariots (ratha). The spokes of their wheels were so valuable and sensitive that the chariots were carried occasionally on ox carts in order to spare them until the beginning of the battle. The land-taking of the Aryas seems nevertheless to have been carried out only in a step by step manner and slowly. The reason for that might have lain indeed also in the width of the country and in the great number of hardly passable rivers.

The resistance of the indigenous population seems however to have carried more weight. As dark-skinned Dasa or Dasyu they are named in the texts again and again as the real adversaries of the conquerors. They defended themselves in fortified places (pura, later = city) that were mainly surrounded by several palisade rings or ramparts, or they moved back onto the mountains into their retreat-castles. Numerous hymns celebrate the God Indra as the Â«castle breakerÂ» (purandara) and King of Gods of the Aryas who stormed the castles and killed the Dasyu intoxicated from the Soma drink."

Apart from the fact that these "historians" and indologists, who, in spite of the archaeological discoveries, let themselves be led by the "race superiority of the Aryans", our attention is attracted by two other facts that are not less fatal. By insertions of simple Sanskrit words these "scientists" create the impression that they are proficient in Sanskrit. Whether this is true, remains to be examined thoroughly. We will systematically track down, how Sanskrit and "Vedic Sanskrit" or the one that is just being called Sanskrit came to Europe.

The second aspect is still more pathetic. We recall the part of the quotation: 'The resistance of the indigenous population seems however to have carried more weight. As dark-skinned Dasa or Dasyu they are named in the texts again and again as the real adversaries of the conquerors.' As already mentioned, in their tales these "historians" and indologists describe the Aryans" as tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed. As these physical characteristics are still positively evaluated and are in flesh and blood those of the members of this culture, we will also trace the time when these physical characteristics were applied to distinguish the quality of human beings and where this theory originated.

A very last remark on "modern humanities" to reveal their treacherous arts. Since the third quarter of the last century archaeologists in India are laying open entire cities concealed under the earth for millenniums. These cities were planned with coherent settlements, straight roads, play grounds with stadium, efficient water management, public baths, drainage, artificial irrigation plants, channel systems, dry docks and so forth on banks of mighty rivers later dried up by drought. These cities didn't have palaces and temples. An intensive discussion at least on one issue should have started. Is it conceivable that such a civilisation could exist without a language, without writing, without literature, without science, without philosophy? The answer is obvious. It is not conceivable. Where are those cultural achievements?

And what would happen if we had reasonable doubts about Sanskrit being the language of the 'Aryans who immigrated through the mountain route of the Northwest into the watershed of Indus and subjugated in continuous fight the prior residents of the north-west corner of India in the 2nd millennium BC, were warriors of a youthful group of herdsmen, who did already some farming, but knew nothing of town planning and of fine artistic work.' What are we supposed to do then? What would have to be done?

The impetus

The Faculty of Social Sciences of the Oldenburg University announced a seminar on "Might, Media and Manipulation: The invention of 'Indogermans', 'Indoeuropeans', 'Aryans' as an exemplary case-study" for the winter term of 1996/1997. It was a project of "learning by doing it". It was research at its purest seeking answers to open questions free of any prefixed projects and unprejudiced by preconceived or prefabricated theories.

No one could have anticipated that the seminar would last for four long years, to the beginning of the winter term 2000-2001. And, the extensions were always on students' demand, though with changing participants. Some students were dropping out and new students were constrained for time. They had to go through the work already done the collected material, protocol of the sessions, and their evaluation and then develop new areas for further research.

When more than 35 students wish to participate in the seminar it is time for rethinking. A seminar of "learning by doing research" needs a manageable size of between 5 to 15 participants. So in the first session of the term a detailed report was presented on what had already been done and what the open questions were. Thereafter, only five participants were left. They decided to evaluate the results achieved so far and to prepare an interim report before proceeding to further research work. After the evaluation, only two participants remained at work. And these were not to undergo any more university-examinations.

They added new materials to fill up the gaps so as to get a comprehensive view of what

**acharya** · (This post was last modified: 02-01-2008, 10:29 AM by acharya.)

July 03, 2005

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.p...&pid=85&page=16

Debate
Aryans: A people or an obsession?

The Aryan problem is a modern European creation that has no relevance to ancient India. The invasion is the tail wagging the Aryan dog, writes N.S. Rajaram

Who were the Aryans?

No single aspect of ancient Indian history and historiography has so dominated discourse as the so-called âAryan problemâ. There is the Aryan invasion (or migration), which is supposed to have brought in the Vedic civilisation and the âAryanâ language (Sanskrit), the Aryan race and even an Aryan nation thousands of years later, of all places, in Germany! Even archaeology has not escaped the Aryan assault with scholars claiming that the Harappan civilisation was non-Aryan, destroyed by the invading Aryans, who, of all things, are supposed to have introduced the horse into India. Never mind the fact that horse fossils in India are over a million years old, but what is the reality?

In the whole of the Rigveda, consisting of ten books with more than 1,000 hymns, the word Arya appears fewer than 40 times. It may occur as many times in a single page of a modern European work, like for example, in Hitlerâs Mein Kampf. As a result, any modern book or even a discussion on the âAryan problemâ is likely to be a commentary on the voluminous 19th and 20th century European literature on the Aryans having little or no relevance to ancient India. This is simply a matter of the sources: not only the Rigveda, but also the whole body of ancient literature that followed it have precious little to say about Aryans and Aryanism. It was simply an honorific, which the ancient Sanskrit lexicon Amarakosha identifies as one of the synonyms for honorable or decent conduct. There is no reference to any âAryanâ type.

A remarkable aspect of this vast âAryanologyâ is that after two hundred years and at least as many books on the subject, scholars are still not clear about the Aryan identity. At first they were supposed to be a race distinguished by some physical traits, but ancient texts know nothing of it. Scientists too have no use for the âAryan race.â As far back as 1939, Julian Huxley, one of the great biologists of the 20th century, dismissed it as part of âpolitical and propagandistâ literature. Recently, there have been attempts to revive racial arguments in the name of genome research, but eminent geneticists like L. Cavalli-Sforza and Stephen Oppenheimer have rejected it. The M17 genetic marker, which is supposed to distinguish the âCaucasianâ type (politically correct for Aryan), occurs with the highest frequency and diversity in India, showing that among its carriers, the Indian population is the oldest.

This article is based on the latest findings in history and natural history. It is part of a pathbreaking effort to place ancient history on a scientific foundation. (Source: Out of Eden by Stephen Oppenheimer (2003), Wiedenfield and Nicholson: London.)

Natural history of modern humans

There have been some strange claims in the name of genome research, going so far as to claim that they support the Aryan invasion. But here is what world leading geneticists like L. Cavalli-Sforza and S. Oppenheimer have to say: Our ancestors used to live in Africa 150,000 years ago. A small group of homo sapiens left Africa some 80,000 years ago and settled along the South Asian coast from where they spread out to colonise different parts of the world. All non-Africans in the world today are descendants of a small group of South Asians living south of a line from Yemen to the Himalayas, especially along the Indian coast. This âfounder group,â from which all non-Africans are descended, barely survived the fallout from a volcanic eruption in Sumatra known as the âToba Explosionâ 74,000 years ago.

This is roughly the story of our past growing out of more than fifty years of intensive mapping of human genes and climate changes by different scientists. By relating these movements to ecological upheavals, what we obtain is the genetic history of modern humans correlated with the natural history of our planet. Climate changes have been the drivers of both evolution and migration, and hence the growth and decline of civilisations.

Equally interesting is the message of the M17 genetic marker, which some have sought to identify with the âAryanâ gene. It appears in India, Iran, Eurasia and Europe, but exhibits the greatest frequency and diversity in India showing that among its carriers, the Indian population is the oldest. This means that proponents of the Aryan invasion (or migration) have got both the origin and the direction of movement wrong. (See migration map. Source: Out of Eden by Stephen Oppenheimer.)

It is important to interpret this properly. It does not mean that there were no non-African humans before the Toba Explosion, but only that no descendants of those earlier populations have survived outside Africa. A group out of Africa 120,000 years ago made its way to Egypt but disappeared 90,000 years ago without a genetic trace. All Europeans living today are descended from South Asians, possibly as recently as 40,000 years ago. South Asia, India in particular, was the jumping off point for the colonisation East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and ultimately the Americas.

This raises some questions for theories about Indian history and anthropology created during the colonial era. Leaving aside pseudo-scientific theories about race and language, which have been discredited by science but continue in various guises in some academic circles, it shows that both the so-called adivasis (tribals or aborginals) and the caste Hindus share a common African origin. The same is true of Dravidians and Dalits.

A remarkable aspect of this vast âAryanologyâ is that after two hundred years and at least as many books on the subject, scholars are still not clear about the Aryan identity. At first they were supposed to be a race distinguished by some physical traits, but ancient texts know nothing of it. Scientists too have no use for the âAryan race.âQUOTE

NOTES:
He misses the point. It creates an intellectual class in India for over 100 years which will follow the European/British version of their History and this class will be used to rule India by secrecy. It creates a political divide and secularizes the history of India away from the Vedic History and this will be used for conversion of large population of Indians. This Aryanology is a political tool of the Christian Vatican/Protestant Church to be used for manipulating the Indian colonized intellectual mind.

Tail wagging the dog

It is a similar situation with the Aryans as a linguistic group, which is what some scholars, sensitive to the disrepute that race theories have fallen into are proposing. But the vast body of Indian literature on linguistics, the richest in the world going back at least to Yaska and Panini, knows nothing of any Aryan language. The German-born Friedrich Max MÃ¼ller made his celebrated switch from Aryan race to Aryan language only to save his career in England following German unification, when the British began to see Germany as a major threat. The âAryan nationâ was the battle cry of German nationalists. It was German nationalists, not ancient Indians who were obsessed with their Aryan ancestry.

All this means that the âAryan problemâ is a non-problem- little more than an aberration of historiography. It has been kept alive by a school of historians with careers and reputations at stake. According to its advocates, the Vedic language and literature are of non-Indian origin. In the words of Romila Thapar, a prominent advocate of the non-indigenous origin theory: âThe evidence for the importation of the earliest form of the language [Vedic] can hardly be denied.â (Foreword to Aryans and British India by Thomas Trautmann (1997), Vistaar Publications: New Delhi, page xiv.)

In other words, Aryans are needed because without them there can be no Aryan invasion (or migration). The invasion is the tail that wags the Aryan dog.

In the face of this overwhelming evidence, it is best ignore labels and stereotypes like âAryanâ and âDravidianâ and look simply at the record of the people who lived in India and created her unique civilisations. This is the spirit in which my colleagues and I study history- as a combination of natural history and the human record.

(The author has written several books on ancient history including Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilisation with David Frawley and The Deciphered Indus Script with Natwar Jha.)

dhu · (This post was last modified: 02-03-2008, 12:10 PM by dhu.)

QUOTEPART â II

Anti-Mahavamsa movement in Sri Lanka

The humiliation of native Sinhala-Buddhist culture began after1505, until a resistance movement slowly emerged by way of revival of Buddhism in the 1840s-1880s of which the Great Panadura Debate in 1873 was a climax event. An anthropology guru of HLS, Gananath Obeysekara, called this âProtestant Buddhism.â The behavior of Christian colonial masters and their local supporters, the Christian-born/converted local elites, adversely affected the Sinhala-Buddhist heritage in the island, but one cannot say there was an organized anti-Mahavamsa movement in Ceylon at that time. White rulers and white archeologists did not have any reason to distort islandâs history. But with the introduction of universal franchise and the territorial representation to the State Council in 1931, replacing communal representation which began in 1832, the majority Sinhala-Buddhists gained voting strength after 450 years of discrimination and oppression.

When the Legislative Council debated the motion presented by a Hindu Tamil (P. Ramanathan) to make Vesak a public holiday in the colonial Ceylon (1885), with the backing of an American Olcott, the Sinhala representative A. L. de Alwis, a Christian, opposed it. The Governor Gordon who was for the motion said he was embarrassed by de Alwisâ behavior. Colombo ruling families opposed the grant universal franchise, free education, labour rights and other welfare measures, but 1931 was the end of 100 years of communal governance. Those who held power under colonial patronage began to orient and emerge themselves as an anti-Mahavamsa movement in the soon-to-be-freed colony. The constitutional coup of the English-educated locals and the governor Manning in 1923-24 and the Christian GG Ponnambalamâs demands were the early tips of this iceberg. A long-awaited reaction to this arose in the 1960s as Buddhist National Force (BJB) spearheaded by the late L. H. Metthananda who focused on an official church document titled âCatholic Action.â By the early 1970s traces of a theory of Sinhala Buddhist Chauvinism began to appear, first in the writings of Mrs. Vishaakaa Kumaari Jayawardhana (daughter of an English mother). It spread like wild fire all over the world after the government blunder in1983 when the president of the country told the people to defend themselves. Thus, Prabakaran and his web sites could talk about the Mahavamsa mentality.

Eelam politics and Boston-area professors

As a follower of HLSâ political anthropology works in print, I am not surprised by his new theory. HLS, his principal guru S. J. Tambiah, the late political science professor A. J. Wilson, history professors C. R. de Silva and Michael Roberts (Australia), (K. Indrapaala is a recent addition), could be grouped as a network of Boston area professors who âsuppressedâ historical facts in their professorial public writings. For example, SJT in his Buddhism betrayed book mentioned in detail the1967 Dodampe mudalali coup and 1968 Colvin-Leslie Kollupitiya march against the Tamil Language Reasonable Use Regulations, but ignored completely the real coup by the Chritian-Tamil police and navy officers in 1962 and the infamous Imbulgoda march by JRJ in 1958 against the Reasonable Use of Tamil Language Bill. To give another example, in his book âthe work of kingsâ (which he dedicated to his guru SJT) HLS alleged that the mess of ethnic clash in Sri Lanka was due to the actions of two solitary monks, Vens. Yakkaduwe Pragnaraama, and Walpola Raahula. HLS thanked WR for help given in writing his book, but did not give WR an opportunity to respond to his âresearchâ opinions. The Boston group was influential enough to convince the Massachusetts Legislature to pass a resolution against the government of Sri Lanka for allegedly oppressing the Tamils (Massachusetts House Journal for 1979, page 977 reads: â¦ âResolution memorializing the President and the Congress to protest and utilize the powers of their offices to rectify the gross injustices which have been inhumanely inflicted on the Tamils of Sri Lankaâ).

Colombo black-whites (coconuts- white inside, brown outside)

The most culpable conduct of these professors and their Colombo contacts was their hiding of the fact that the problem in Sri Lanka was a problem of mismanagement by the Colombo ruling families, who created and later benefited from a clash between Tamil and Sinhala languages. If in India, Gandhi was for a unifying language despite Hindi was spoken by 30-40% of the people, making Sinhala the unifying language could not be a disaster for Tamil-speaking people in the island. By 1948 there were two countries in Ceylonâthe English-speaking Colombo country and the Sinhala-Tamil-speaking village country. The ruling elites and their officer agents made sure the continued existence of this division by converting English versus Swabhasa clash into a Sinhala-Tamil conflict. Ironically, Col. Karuna finally exposed this game by a simple demandâGive us what Colombo gets. He did not ask for a homeland. The late Kumar Ponnambalam, a Christian, on the other hand felt that Tamils have âaspirations.â The destruction of Sri Lanka since 1948 could be explained not by a Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism paradigm but by a Colombo black-white paradigm. Because the professors, officers, peace mudalalis, UN agency officers, foreign ambassadors in Colombo and the human rights INGOs are predominantly, if not 100%, Christians they failed to understand that a Sinhala Buddhist cannot be a violator of human rights. Unlike faith-based Christian and Islam where human life is uni-directional (linear) in Buddhism life is cyclical and everything is impermanent (sabbe sankaara aniccaa). This was the basis for a harmony of different faiths at the Buddhist village level. This was why 50% of the Tamil population in Sri Lanka lives among Buddhists.

With the church organization run like a corporate business, and the last Popeâs desire to âconvert Asia into Christianity in the 21st century,â I am pointing out the behavior of Christian politicians, the powerful and the Colombo ruling families. I am not blaming in this essay the average Sinhala or Tamil Catholic or Christians who have suffered along with the Sinhala Buddhists in the Non-Colombo country of the island. For example, the Marxists brains at least from 1935 to 1964 were active in anti-Mahavamsa affairs irrespective of their ethnicity. A section of the JVP is still struggling to overcome its anti-Mahavamsa mind set.

dhu · (This post was last modified: 02-12-2008, 12:43 PM by dhu.)

German Orientalism and the Decline of the West

SUZANNE MARCHAND

ramana · 02-12-2008, 11:17 PM

Dhu, Viren and Acharya,

Please look up
"Theologians under Hitler" Robert Ericksen

The premise of the book is that all of the Church was involved in the anti-Semitism and not just H's personal point of view. To date only the Catholics were named due to Pope Pius's silence on Nazi activities. This book and the documentary point to the Protestants also and their acquiesense

**acharya** · (This post was last modified: 02-13-2008, 12:20 AM by acharya.)

QUOTE(ramana @ Feb 12 2008, 05:47 AM)Dhu, Viren and Acharya,

Please look up
"Theologians under Hitler" Robert Ericksen

The premise of the book is that all of the Church was involved in the anti-Semitism and not just H's personal point of view. To date only the Catholics were named due to Pope Pius's silence on Nazi activities. This book and the documentary point to the Protestants also and their acquiesense
[right][snapback]78418[/snapback][/right]


It is clear that WWII was a religious war and the ultimate aim was to destroy the jews with the tacit understanding between all the christian denominations in Europe.

MOVIE REVIEW
âTheologians Under Hitlerâ

Cliff Vaughn
05-31-05

The relationship between religion and politics continues to draw the publicâs attention. The public might be well served to revisit that relationshipâs historyâspecifically the chapter involving the Third Reich.

A new documentary, âTheologians Under Hitler,â examines how three prominent men of faith came to ally themselves with the Nazi party during the 1930s and 1940s. Producer-director Steven D. Martin spends 64 minutes dissecting how respected German theologians of the day embraced Adolf Hitlerâs ideology and spun it for the German people.

âDuring the darkest days of the 20th century, three of the churchâs greatest teachersâPaul Althaus, Gerhard Kittel and Emanuel Hirschâgave their full support and allegiance to Adolf Hitler,â says the narrator at the beginning. âThis program will examine their stories in an attempt to discover what went wrong.â

Martin blends a voice-over narration and classical score to supplement historical photos, film footage and, notably, extensive interviews with American and German scholars. Occasionally the documentary relies too much on generic visuals like clouds, gardens and church steeples, but some of the important ideas discussed here are simply difficult to illustrate.

The documentary uses the work of Robert Ericksen, history professor at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash. Ericksenâs 1985 book, Theologians Under Hitler, was a pioneering work on the German churchâs involvement with Hitlerâs programs.


âIf you looked around the university community, you almost could not find real resistance to the Nazi state,â says Ericksen in the documentary. âIf you looked in the church, you didnât find much resistance.â

The documentary progresses in three sections. In âAct 1: The Crisis,â Martin sets up how the Enlightenment affected Christendom, with the churchâs efforts to make Christianity more palatable to a reason-saturated culture.

âNineteenth-century liberal Protestant theologians, in an attempt to address the concerns raised by the Enlightenment in Europe, created a portrait of Jesus as the ultimate moral guide and teacher,â says the narrator. âHis example of humility and service was lifted out of the specifics of his Jewish milieu.â


Thus, belief in Jesus was tantamount to belief in the potential of humanity. From there, one could make the leap to Hitlerâs Aryan ideal. Martin effectively conveys this kind of information, drawing on other experts like Dartmouth Universityâs Susannah Heschel, who talks about how the German people, after World War I, identified with Christ and awaited their own resurrection.

From there, Martin moves into a profile of Emanuel Hirsch, dean of theology at Goettingen University when Hitler rose to power in 1933. Hirsch argued that the volk should be the basis of German society. The concept of volk not only established a mystical and emotional bond among the German people, but it complemented the church and provided a sort of lens for its work in the world, said Hirsch.

Like Hirsch, Paul Althaus was born in 1888. Althaus became interested in Lutheran involvement in politics, the documentary says, and by the 1930s, Althaus found himself in the Nazi camp, believing that Hitler was a conduit for Godâs plan.

âAct II: The Rebirth of Germanyâ continues the examination of Althaus, whose 1933 pamphlet âThe German Hour of the Churchesâ essentially advocated the combination of church and state. Althaus called 1933 âthe year of grace of Godâs handâ when Hitler emerged supreme. He equated faith in God with faith in Hitler.

âFaith and folk were one,â says the narrator.

One of the documentaryâs strengths is its presentation of the Deutsche Christenâor âGerman Christianââmovement that came to prominence in the 1920s. It championed a radical, nationalist agenda that merged church and stateâto the point of draping a swastika on the church altar.

At this point, Martin brings in Doris Bergen of Notre Dame University, who points out how the Deutsche Christen movement thought the church had become too feminized and sought to portray the institution as young and virile.

The documentary also touches on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Barmen Declaration and the Confessing Church, a decision that perhaps inadvertently points out how this documentary would make an excellent companion piece for a Bonhoeffer study.

The third and final act takes viewers further into the abyss of church-state collusion with âThe Case of Gerhard Kittel.â Simply put, Kittel was broadly admired in the 1920s as a pious manâand then he appears to have sided with evil.

Kittel was founding editor of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, still a seminal work in the field. He had Jewish friends and evidenced Jewish sympathy, but then something changed.

In 1933 Kittel gave a lecture called Die JudenfrageâThe Jewish Questionâthat was later published. The ideas he espoused led to his inclusion as a Nazi researcher on Jewry.

âHe became one of the most viciously anti-Semitic leaders in the Christian church in support of the Nazi ideology,â says Ericksen in the documentary.

Martin even includes a letter from one of Kittelâs colleagues at Cambridge University. When Kittelâs new ideas became public, the colleague wrote:

âNo one in England, Jew or Christian, troubles about the views of Nazi professors who have given themselves to Hitler and sinned against the light. It is just not worthwhile. â¦ But about you we are troubled and grieved because we reckoned you to be on the side of the angels.â

The documentary concludes by telling how Hirsch, Althaus and Kittel fared as the Nazis lost power and were defeated. The fate of each stands in contrast to the others.

Martinâs brief epilogue mainly works to establish the relevance and application of Third Reich theologians to todayâs religious and political quagmire. The power of the pulpit shines through.

The DVD, available for group showings, comes with an extra photo gallery, an interview with an archivist, and an interview with Rudolf Weckerleng, pastor of the Confessing Church.

Cliff Vaughn is culture editor for EthicsDaily.com.

dhu · 02-13-2008, 02:49 AM

QUOTE(ramana @ Feb 12 2008, 11:17 PM)....
"Theologians under Hitler" Robert Ericksen

The premise of the book is that all of the Church was involved in the anti-Semitism and not just H's personal point of view. To date only the Catholics were named due to Pope Pius's silence on Nazi activities. This book and the documentary point to the Protestants also and their acquiesense
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Antisemitism is simply the ground against which the West constructed its identity; the charade of 'Caesar as Persectued Jew' concealed the intent during the first three centuries BC. With the Advent of Sanskrit studies, the ground has shifted to India, where this process is being repeated. (Even in Antiquity the same was attempted but was unsuccessful d/t lack of Augustine's innovations of Divine Will, and also because the Persian empire always blunted the Alexandrian attempts.)

dhu · 03-28-2008, 10:17 AM

British Education in India 
http://members.tripod.com/~INDIA_RESOURC...ishedu.htm

As has been noted by numerous scholars of British rule in India, the physical presence of the British in India was not significant. Yet, for almost two centuries, the British were able to rule two-thirds of the subcontinent directly, and exercise considerable leverage over the Princely States that accounted for the remaining one-third. While the strategy of divide and conquer was used most effectively, an important aspect of British rule in India was the psychological indoctrination of an elite layer within Indian society who were artfully tutored into becoming model British subjects. This English-educated layer of Indian society was craftily encouraged in absorbing values and notions about themselves and their land of birth that would be conducive to the British occupation of India, and furthering British goals of looting India's physical wealth and exploiting it's labour.

In 1835, Thomas Macaulay articulated the goals of British colonial imperialism most succinctly: "We must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect." As the architect of Colonial Britain's Educational Policy in India, Thomas Macaulay was to set the tone for what educated Indians were going to learn about themselves, their civilization, and their view of Britain and the world around them. An arch-racist, Thomas Macaulay had nothing but scornful disdain for Indian history and civilization. In his infamous minute of 1835, he wrote that he had "never found one among them (speaking of Orientalists, an opposing political faction) who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia". "It is, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England".

As a contrast to such unabashed contempt for Indian civilization, we find glowing references to India in the writings of pre-colonial Europeans quoted by Swami Vivekananda: "All history points to India as the mother of science and art," wrote William Macintosh. "This country was anciently so renowned for knowledge and wisdom that the philosophers of Greece did not disdain to travel thither for their improvement." Pierre Sonnerat, a French naturalist, concurred: "We find among the Indians the vestiges of the most remote antiquity.... We know that all peoples came there to draw the elements of their knowledge.... India, in her splendour, gave religions and laws to all the other peoples; Egypt and Greece owed to her both their fables and their wisdom

But colonial exploitation had created a new imperative for the colonial lords. It could no longer be truthfully acknowledged that India had a rich civilization of its own - that its philosophical and scientific contributions may have influenced European scholars - or helped in shaping the European Renaissance. Britain needed a class of intellectuals meek and docile in their attitude towards the British, but full of hatred towards their fellow citizens. It was thus important to emphasize the negative aspects of the Indian tradition, and obliterate or obscure the positive. Indians were to be taught that they were a deeply conservative and fatalist people - genetically predisposed to irrational superstitions and mystic belief systems. That they had no concept of nation, national feelings or a history. If they had any culture, it had been brought to them by invaders - that they themselves lacked the creative energy to achieve anything by themselves. But the British, on the other hand epitomized modernity - they were the harbingers of all that was rational and scientific in the world. With their unique organizational skills and energetic zeal, they would raise India from the morass of casteism and religious bigotry. These and other such ideas were repeatedly filled in the minds of the young Indians who received instruction in the British schools. 

All manner of conscious (and subconscious) British (and European) agents would henceforth embark on a journey to rape and conquer the Indian mind. Within a matter of years, J.N Farquhar (a contemporary of Macaulay) was to write: "The new educational policy of the Government created during these years the modern educated class of India. These are men who think and speak in English habitually, who are proud of their citizenship in the British Empire, who are devoted to English literature, and whose intellectual life has been almost entirely formed by the thought of the West, large numbers of them enter government services, while the rest practice law, medicine or teaching, or take to journalism or business."

Macaulay's strategem could not have yielded greater dividends. Charles E. Trevelyan, brother-in-law of Macaulay, stated: " Familiarly acquainted with us by means of our literature, the Indian youth almost cease to regard us as foreigners. They speak of "great" men with the same enthusiasm as we do. Educated in the same way, interested in the same objects, engaged in the same pursuits with ourselves, they become more English than Hindoos, just as the Roman provincial became more Romans than Gauls or Italians.."

That this was no benign process, but intimately related to British colonial goals was expressed quite candidly by Charles Trevelyan in his testimony before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Government of Indian Territories on 23rd June, 1853: "..... the effect of training in European learning is to give an entirely new turn to the native mind. The young men educated in this way cease to strive after independence according to the original Native model, and aim at, improving the institutions of the country according to the English model, with the ultimate result of establishing constitutional self-government. They cease to regard us as enemies and usurpers, and they look upon us as friends and patrons, and powerful beneficent persons, under whose protection the regeneration of their country will gradually be worked out. ....."

Much of the indoctrination of the Indian mind actually took place outside the formal classrooms and through the sale of British literature to the English-educated Indian who developed a voracious appetite for the British novel and British writings on a host of popular subjects. In a speech before the Edinburgh Philosophical Society in 1846, Thomas Babington (1800-1859), shortly to become Baron Macaulay, offered a toast: "To the literature of Britain . . . which has exercised an influence wider than that of our commerce and mightier than that of our arms . . .before the light of which impious and cruel superstitions are fast taking flight on the Banks of the Ganges!" 

However, the British were not content to influence Indian thinking just through books written in the English language. Realizing the danger of Indians discovering their real heritage through the medium of Sanskrit, Christian missionaries such as William Carey anticipated the need for British educators to learn Sanskrit and transcribe and interpret Sanskrit texts in a manner compatible with colonial aims. That Carey's aims were thoroughly duplicitous is brought out in this quote cited by Richard Fox Young: "To gain the ear of those who are thus deceived it is necessary for them to believe that the speaker has a superior knowledge of the subject. In these circumstances a knowledge of Sanskrit is valuable. As the person thus misled, perhaps a Brahman, deems this a most important part of knowledge, if the advocate of truth be deficient therein, he labors against the hill; presumption is altogether against him." 

In this manner, India's awareness of it's history and culture was manipulated in the hands of colonial ideologues. Domestic and external views of India were shaped by authors whose attitudes towards all things Indian were shaped either by subconscious prejudice or worse by barely concealed racism. For instance, William Carey (who bemoaned how so few Indians had converted to Christianity in spite of his best efforts) had little respect or sympathy for Indian traditions. In one of his letters, he described Indian music as "disgusting", bringing to mind "practices dishonorable to God". Charles Grant, who exercised tremendous influence in colonial evangelical circles, published his "Observations" in 1797 in which he attacked almost every aspect of Indian society and religion, describing Indians as morally depraved, "lacking in truth, honesty and good faith" (p.103). British Governor General Cornwallis asserted "Every native of Hindostan, I verily believe, is corrupt".

Victorian writer and important art critic of his time, John Ruskin dismissed all Indian art with ill-concealed contempt: "..the Indian will not draw a form of nature but an amalgamation of monstrous objects". Adding: "To all facts and forms of nature it wilfuly and resolutely opposes itself; it will not draw a man but an eight armed monster, it will not draw a flower but only a spiral or a zig zag". Others such as George Birdwood (who took some interest in Indian decorative art) nevertheless opined: "...painting and sculpture as fine art did not exist in India."

Several British and European historians attempted to portray India as a society that had made no civilizational progress for several centuries. William Jones asserted that Hindu society had been stationary for so long that "in beholding the Hindus of the present day, we are beholding the Hindus of many ages past". James Mill, author of the three-volume History of British India (1818) essentially concurred with William Jones as did Henry Maine. This view of India, as an essentially unchanging society where there was no intellectual debate, or technological innovation - where a hidebound caste system had existed without challenge or reform - where social mobility or class struggle were unheard of, became especially popular with European scholars and intellectuals of the colonial era.

It allowed influential philosophers such as Hegel to posit ethnocentric and self-serving justifications of colonization. Arguing that Europe was "absolutely the end of universal history", he saw Asia as only the beginning of history, where history soon came to a standstill. "If we had formerly the satisfaction of believing in the antiquity of the Indian wisdom and holding it in respect, we now have ascertained through being acquainted with the great astronomical works of the Indians, the inaccuracy of all figures quoted. Nothing can be more confused, nothing more imperfect than the chronology of the Indians; no people which attained to culture in astronomy, mathematics, etc., is as incapable for history; in it they have neither stability nor coherence." With such distorted views of India, it was a small step to argue that "The British, or rather the East India Company, are the masters of India because it is the fatal destiny of Asian empires to subject themselves to the Europeans."

Hegel's racist consciousness comes out most explicitly in his descriptions of Africans: "It is characteristic of the blacks that their consciousness has not yet even arrived at the intuition of any objectivity, as for example, of God or the law, in which humanity relates to the world and intuits its essence. ...He [the black person] is a human being in the rough."

Such ideas also shaped the views of later German authors such Max Weber famous for his "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," (1930) who in his descriptions of Indian religion and philosophy focused exclusively on "material renunciation" and the "world denying character" of Indian philosophical systems, ignoring completely the rich heritage of scientific realism and rational analysis that had in fact imbued much of Indian thought. Weber discounted the existence of any rational doctrines in the East, insisting that: "Neither scientific, artistic, governmental, nor economic evolution has led to the modes of rationalization proper to the Occident." Whether it was ignorance or prejudice that determined his views, such views were not uninfluential, and exemplified the euro-centric undercurrent that pervaded most British and European scholarship of that time.

Naturally, British-educated Indians absorbed and internalized such characterizations of themselves and their past. Amongst those most affected by such diminution of the Indian character was the young Gandhi, who when in South Africa, wished to meet General Smuts and offer the cooperation of the South African Indian population for the Boer war effort. In a conversation with the General, Gandhi appears as just the sort of colonized sycophant the British education system had hoped to create: "General Smuts, sir we Indians would like to strengthen the hands of the government in the war. However, our efforts have been rebuffed. Could you inform us about our vices so we would reform and be better citizens of this land?" to which Gen.Smuts replied: "Mr. Gandhi, we are not afraid of your vices, We are afraid of your virtues". (Although Gandhi eventually went through a slow and very gradual nationalist transformation, in 1914 he campaigned for the British war efforts in World War I, and was one of the last of the national leaders to call for complete independence from British rule.)

British-educated Indians grew up learning about Pythagoras, Archimedes, Galileo and Newton without ever learning about Panini, Aryabhatta, Bhaskar or Bhaskaracharya. The logic and epistemology of the Nyaya Sutras, the rationality of the early Buddhists or the intriguing philosophical systems of the Jains were generally unknown to the them. Neither was there any awareness of the numerous examples of dialectics in nature that are to be found in Indian texts. They may have read Homer or Dickens but not the Panchatantra, the Jataka tales or anything from the Indian epics. Schooled in the aesthetic and literary theories of the West, many felt embarrassed in acknowledging Indian contributions in the arts and literature. What was important to Western civilization was deemed universal, but everything Indian was dismissed as either backward and anachronistic, or at best tolerated as idiosyncratic oddity. Little did the Westernized Indian know what debt "Western Science and Civilization" owed (directly or indirectly) to Indian scientific discoveries and scholarly texts.

Dilip K. Chakrabarti (Colonial Indology) thus summarized the situation: "The model of the Indian past...was foisted on Indians by the hegemonic books written by Western Indologists concerned with language, literature and philosophy who were and perhaps have always been paternalistic at their best and racists at their worst.." 

Elaborating on the phenomenon of cultural colonization, Priya Joshi (Culture and Consumption: Fiction, the Reading Public, and the British Novel in Colonial India) writes: "Often, the implementation of a new education system leaves those who are colonized with a lack of identity and a limited sense of their past. The indigenous history and customs once practiced and observed slowly slip away. The colonized become hybrids of two vastly different cultural systems. Colonial education creates a blurring that makes it difficult to differentiate between the new, enforced ideas of the colonizers and the formerly accepted native practices."

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, (Kenya, Decolonising the Mind), displaying anger toward the isolationist feelings colonial education causes, asserted that the process "...annihilates a peoples belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves".

Strong traces of such thinking continue to infect young Indians, especially those that migrate to the West. Elements of such mental insecurity and alienation also had an impact on the consciousness of the British-educated Indians who participated in the freedom struggle.

In contemporary academic circles, various false theories continue to percolate. While some write as if Indian civilization has made no substantial progress since the Vedic period, for others the clock stopped with Ashoka, or with the "classical age" of the Guptas. Some Islamic scholars have attempted to construct a more positive view of the Islamic reigns in India, but continue to concur with colonial scholars in seeing pre-Islamic India as socially and culturally moribund and technologically backward. A range of scholars persist in basing their studies on views of Indian history that not only concentrate exclusively on its negative traits, but also fail to situate the negative aspects of Indian history in historical context. Few have attempted to make serious and objective comparisons of Indian social institutions and cultural attributes with those of other nations. Often the Indian historical record is unfavorably compared with European achievements that in fact took place many centuries later. 

Unable to rise above the colonial paradigms, many post-independence scholars of Indian history and civilization continue to fumble with colonially inspired doctrines that run counter to the emerging historical record. Others more conscious of British distortions and frustrated by the hyper-critical assessment of some Indian scholars, go to the other extreme of presenting the Indian historical record without any critical analysis whatsoever. Some have even attempted to construct artificially hyped views of Indian history where there is little attempt to distinguish myth from fact. Strong communal biases continue to prevail, as do xenophobic rejections of even potentially useful and valid Western constructs, even as Western-imposed hegemonic economic systems and exploitative economic models continue to dominate the Indian economic landscape and often find unquestioning acceptance.

Thus, one of the most difficult tasks facing the Indian subcontinent is to free all scholarship concerning its development and its relationship to the world from the biased formulations and distortions of colonially-influenced authors. At the same time, Indian authors also need to study the West and other civilizations with dispassionate objectivity - eschewing both craven and uncritical admiration and xenophobic skepticism and distrust of the scientific and cultural achievements made by others.

References:

William Carey: On encouraging the cultivation of Sanskrit among the natives of India, 1822 F.I. Quarterly 2-131-37

Thomas Babington (1800-1859),shortly to become Baron Macaulay: Speech before the Edinburgh Philosophical Society in 1846

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), p. 168.

Hegel, Samtliche Werke. J. Hoffmeister and F. Meiner, eds. (Hamburg, 1955), appendix 2, p. 243; op cit. Enrique Dussel, The Invention of the Americas (New York: Continuum, 1995), p. 20.

Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in History, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge University Press, 1975), p.138.

From Hegel's Einleitung in die Geschichte der Philosophie (J. Hoffmeister, ed., Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1962), op. cit. Roger-Pol Droit, L'Oubli de L'Inde, Une AmnÃ©sie Philosophique, Presses Universitaires de France, 1989, p. 189.

Max Weber, "Soziologie, weltgeschichtliche Analyzen, Politik (Stuttgart: Kroner, 1956), p.340.

Dilip K. Chakrabarti (Cambridge University, England): Colonial Indology - Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past, Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi, 2000.

Priya Joshi: Culture and Consumption: Fiction, the Reading Public, and the British Novel in Colonial India

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (Kenya): Decolonising the Mind

M. Abel, (Former Vice-Chancellor, SKD University, Anantapur): Indianisation of Education: Problems and Prospects

Notes:

1. The following extracts from a paper submitted to the Parliamentary Committee of 1853 on Indian territories titled "The Political Tendency of the Different Systems of Education in use in India" by Sir Charles E. Trevelyan, brother-in-law of Macaulay, speaks volumes about the intentions in introducing the English system of education in India:-.

"..... The spirit of English literature, on the other hand, cannot but be favorable to the English connection. Familiarly acquainted with us by means of our literature, the Indian youth almost cease to regard us as foreigners. They speak of great men with the same enthusiasm as we do. Educated in the same way, interested in the same objects engaged in the same pursuits with ourselves, they become more English than Hindoos, just as the Roman provincial became more Romans than Gauls or Italians... Every community has its ideas of securing the universal principal, in some shape or other, is in a state of constant activity; and if it be not enlisted on our side, it must be arrayed against us. As long as the natives are left to brood over their former independence, their sole specific for improving their condition is, the immediate and total expulsion of the English.....' It is only by the infusion of European ideas, that a new direction can be given to the national views. The young men, brought up at our seminaries, turn with contempt from the barbarous despotism under which their ancestors groaned, to the prospect of improving their national institutions on the English model...... The existing connection between two such distant countries as England and India, cannot, in the nature of things, be permanent; no effort of policy can prevent the natives from ultimately regaining their independence. But there are two ways of arriving at this point. One of these is, through the medium of revolution; the other, through that of reform. In one, the forward movement is sudden and violent, in the other, it is gradual and peaceable. One must end in a complete alienation of mind and separation of interest between ourselves and the natives; the other in a permanent alliance, founded on mutual benefits and goodwill.... The only means at our disposal for preventing the one and securing the other class of result is, to set the natives on a process of European improvement, to which they ate already sufficiently inclined. They will then cease to desire and aim at independence on the old Indian footing. A sudden change will then be impossible and a long continuance of our present connection with India will even be assured to us.... The natives will not rise against us, because we shall stoop to raise them; there will be no reaction, because there will be no pressure; the national activity will be fully and harmlessly employed in acquiring and diffusing European knowledge, and naturalizing European institutions. The educated classes, knowing that the elevation of their country on these principles can only be worked out under protection, will naturally cling to us. They even now do so..... and it will then be necessary to modify the political institutions to suit the increased intelligence of the people, and their capacity for self-government.... In following this course we should be buying no new experiment. The Romans at once civilized the nations of Europe, and attached them to their rule by Romancing them; or, in other words, by educating them in the Roman literature and arts and teaching them to emulate their conquerors instead of opposing them. Acquisitions made by superiority in war, were consolidated by superiority in the arts of peace; and the remembrance of the original violence was lost in that of the benefits which resulted from it. The provincials of Italy, Spain, Africa and Gaul, having no ambition except to imitate the Romans, and to share their privileges with them, remained to the last faithful subjects of the Empire;...... The Indian will, I hope soon stand in the same position towards us in which we once stood towards the Romans. Tacitus informs us, that it was the policy of Julius Agricola to instruct the sons of the leading men among the Britons in the literature and science of Rome and to give them a taste for the refinements of Roman civilization. We all know how well this plan answered. From being obstinate enemies, the Britons soon became attached and confiding friends; and they made more strenuous efforts to retain the Romans, than their ancestors had done to resist their invasion. It will be a shame to us if, with our greatly superior advantages, we also do not make our premature departure be dreaded as a calamity......" 

2. Excerpts from Margaret Cameron's: The Impact of the British Empire on the Culture of Publishing at the Turn of the Century, (from The Culture of Publishing, Internet journal by students of publishing at Oxford Brookes University).

Not only was New Imperialist literature successful from a financial point of view, it also helped "sell" the Empire to a significant proportion of the population, who were sceptical about its purpose and aims. The notion that the colonies needed the paternalistic approach offered by a superior white race, coincided with the fashionable views of Darwin, who concluded that some species are more fitted to rule, than others. The direct appeal of these adventure stories where the white Englishman always triumphed and always behaved impeccably, instilled middle-class values in countless public schoolboys, who would always "play the white man". For the working classes, the escapism could be imaginary, or real; between 1890 and 1914, 7 million people emigrated to the colonies from England and Ireland. (Tannenbaum pg 19) Although was probably due as much to social disturbance, as to the effect of publishing, the end result was the same; the crucial populating of the Empire with trustworthy Englishmen.

Lawrence James goes one step further and claims that imperial propaganda was deliberately taught to all classes, through the medium of education. For example. thousands of Henty's books were donated to state and Sunday schools as class prizes. The geography syllabus for state schools in 1896 was dominated by lists of colonies, their products and inhabitants.

"(A Man) ... could read about the Empire and feel that he was important, not just an unrecognized toiler on the industrial anthill, but an Englishman, one of the lords of the world". (Roebuck pg80)

3. Examples of cultural racism in the writings of Hegel 

Hegel is quoted by David Grey in an article: On the Misportrayal of India as saying:

"On the whole, the diffusion of Indian culture is only a dumb, deedless expansion; that is, it presents no political action. The people of India have achieved no foreign conquests, but have been on every occasion vanquished themselves." 

David Grey rightly describes such writings as "ethnocentric justifications of European colonialism", adding that: "The colonial perspective lingers on today in what might be termed the "invasion theory" of Indian history. This narrative assumes (usually implicitly) Hegel's idea that India is an intrinsically static, passive civilization, incapable on its own of having a history." He goes on to counter the notion that India "has only undergone historical change when motivated by outside forces, namely active aggressors." 

4. Comments on Indian Education:

Gandhi wrote in the "Harijan" that Indian education made Indian students foreigners in their own country. The Radhakrishnan Commission said in their Report (1950); "one of the serious complaints against the system of education which has prevailed in this country for over a century is that it neglected India's past, that it did not provide the Indian students with a knowledge of their own culture. It had produced in some cases the feeling that we are without roots, and what is worse, that our roots bind us to a world very different from that which surrounds us".

dhu · 03-28-2008, 10:19 AM

http://www.infinityfoundation.com/ECITmisp...yalframeset.htm
On the Misportrayal of India: Toward a New Look at Indian History
David B. Gray, PhD

ramana · 03-28-2008, 09:03 PM

Dhu, As bad a Macaulized education was the more persistent damage was created by the Marxist interpretation of Indian hisotry. Read Art in a Transitional India by Vinayak Purohit, Popular Prkashan, 1988. Its on Google books. Read chapter 2 &3 of Voulme I.

dhu · (This post was last modified: 03-28-2008, 09:50 PM by dhu.)

Marxism is imbued with the recklessness of "rationalism" and pretends to be non-paternalistic, egalitarian, etc. Secular marxism with its demystifying-mystifying false equivalencies continues the quasi-religious Kipling narrative on a "rational" plane. Nussbaum and Arundhati are always more terrifying than some black label wala chacha. they have filtered out India's history through the rubrics of race, language, and other western imperatives.

What is three line summary of Transitional art? damn thing is v difficult to load for some reason.

read karigar's top line comment on the sulekha board. it's a reveiw of dilip chakrabarti. these things would have been ironed out by now if sulekha had not been sabotaged by Hindustan Times. now John Dayal has sulekha blog.

dhu · 03-30-2008, 02:26 AM

Antiquity Of Cultural Miseducation (The Aryan Invasion Myth)
By Shreekumar Vinekar

dhu · (This post was last modified: 03-30-2008, 02:42 AM by dhu.)

page 24 Transitional art:

1> To subdue, overwhelm and enslave the Indian mind.

2> To develop a stratum in Indian society which would demand goods that would be produced by British industry, and which would thus extend and deepen the market of imported wares.

3> To prevent a feeling of disaffection and rebellion form spreading in the country, to turn Indians away from pursuing goals which would destroy imperialist rule over India, and to direct their energies to peaceful and gradual advance within the system.

4> To gestate an elite which would be Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, opinions, morals and intellect, and one which would provide imperialism witha social base.

5> To effect the economy in the cost of administration of the country by recruiting cheaper Indian educated labour to man the lower ranks of the military-bureaucratic apparatus.

6> To police the youth of the country through educational institutions so as to nip revolutionary actions in the bud.

7> To try to disseminate Christian religious theology and to endeavor to convert Indians to Christianity.

We may note that the educational system of India, both structurally and functionally, has remained unchanged since colonial times. The objectives of education realized under British rule and described above are operative today and this has been admitted by the Kothari Commission Report on Indian education.

**acharya** · 03-30-2008, 09:26 AM

QUOTE(dhu @ Mar 29 2008, 08:56 AM)Antiquity Of Cultural Miseducation (The Aryan Invasion Myth)
Â By Shreekumar Vinekar
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Antiquity Of Cultural Miseducation (The Aryan Invasion Myth)
By Shreekumar Vinekar
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Aug 18, 2005

Abstract: The recent articles by Subhash Kak and N.S. Rajaram in Sulekha and many other media will raise some fundamental questions related to the psychology of human race and the limitations of the human mind to undertake objective investigation of historical and anthropological phenomena. This article will take a superficial overview of areas of miseducation that have plagued human race and the human world-view for several centuries. The article will examine the root cause of such confusion in the liberal arts or Humanities mainly, but also in the scientific literature, from ancient Indian philosophical viewpoint. Some psychoanalytic and neurobiological concepts may also be relevant. These concepts may be parallel to the ancient Indian concepts.

* * *

The recent work of Stephen Oppenheimer based on human genetics has presented evidence that the origin of mankind was in the African continent 150,000 years ago and the human race or the species of Homo sapiens migrated over the millennia 90,000 years ago from the African continent till 40,000 years ago, when the European continent or the geographic areas with temperate climate became populated by the human race. The reader is referred to the articles by Subhash Kak and N. S. Rajaram for further details via âGoogleâ (www.google.com). The Indian subcontinent or the Bharatvarsha as known to us Indians is held to be the cradle of civilization from where all the migrations of non-African human race to all other parts of the world took place from 74,000 years ago till 40,000 years ago and later. The word âAryaâ means nothing more than âhonorableâ and indicates the refined or civilized human being (as is referred to only 40 times in the Vedas and also later in the ancient Sanskrit literature) with no other connotations. The concept of race is uniquely missing in the meanings and nuances attached to the word âAryaâ in the Sanskrit literature. There is no âMister raceâ in the Western world and there need not have been an âAryan raceâ for the East.

There are many political, sociological, and methodological explanations for why this myth of Aryan invasion was created and perpetuated. Also, there are many explanations for why this myth is swallowed lock, stock, and barrel by not only the educated as well as the uneducated Western people, but also by the educated Indians for the last three centuries. Curiously, it is even most vigorously defended by some of our Indian brothers and sisters. Without going into the polemics, I would like the readers to become aware of the process of inquiry that goes awry and how the objectivity is derailed in the normal human educational endeavors.

The famous aphorism, âSatyam Eva Jayateâ is commonly translated as âOnly Truth will prevail.â Jayate refers to victory. Interestingly the victorious people write and propagate the history of the people they have conquered. The definition of âFactâ in modern Law is âthat which the fact-finders believe to be true (fact).â Such translations and paradigms ignore the spirit of the aphorism and leads to polemics about the definition of the âTruthâ or âFact,â and the paradigm leads to fallacies that are difficult to detect. âSat,â in my opinion, stands for that which exists or that which truly existed. The opposite of it is âAsat,â meaning, âthat which does not exist or did not exist.â Anything that is derived from Sat is Satya and anything that is derived from Asat is Asatya. âJayateâ is victory of Satya over Asatya. Simply speaking, human mind will eventually accept only satya and discard asatya. That is also the spirit of science and needs to be the spirit of the Humanities and Liberal education also. Human intelligence is endowed with the ability to distinguish between Satya and Asatya. This faculty develops in very early childhood and continues to sharpen with maturation, education, experience, and training in critical, logical, and scientific thinking. One would legitimately question the nature of the factors that interfere with this discriminating faculty. The âSara Asara Viveka Buddhiâ refers to this faculty of the mind. Viveka refers to discriminating intellect. Sara-Asara refers to essential and nonessential or relevant and irrelevant. How does this faculty become clouded with âAvidyaâ ?

Vidya is commonly translated as âknowledge.â The more apt definition of Vidya is âthat which leads to Vid or Knowing.â Interestingly this Vidya is indeed a faculty of the mind or intelligence just like other faculties of the human intelligence, Prajna and Pratibha. Avidya is translated commonly as ignorance or lack of insight. Insight then stands for Vidya! Or, is it the other way around? Vidya leads to insight. Avidya is usually viewed as absence of vidya, but in the context in which it is used here, it mostly refers to another âaberration of the mindâ or âa derailed faculty,â namely âthat which leads to Avid.â Avid can mean absence or lack of knowledge or erroneous knowledge. Clearly this is an interesting and alternative way of looking at the word âAvidya.â Avidya. Avidya leads to erroneous knowledge. An investigator of facts has to discipline himself in exercising Vidya, and develop abilities to discern the psychological factors that propel Avidya. There is no parallel for these concepts in the Western psychology or cognitive science to the best of my knowledge. The closest parallel in English language for Avidya is the psychological âblind spotâ that the psychoanalysts talk about.

There may be a very valid neurobiological bases or underpinnings for Avidya. The perceptions and memories are continually categorized and âfiledâ in the hippocampus. Hippocampus does what the search engines do for the Internet surfer. The other organ of the brain that has immediate access to memories of survival value is amygdala. From neurobiological viewpoint, the culture is a store-house of accumulated memories of the previous generations. Once ingrained in the hippocampus and amygdala these memories are of survival value. The victorious population has a psychological need to create stories to boost its pride, justify its conduct, and maintain its political power over the vanquished so its future generations will continue to wield the same power over the vanquished populations. Once these memories are stored they become the reference points for the future perceptions. Such locking in of the circuits of the brain in discoloring perceptions to suit the previously ingrained memories leads to spinning on the wheels of familiar paradigms. That is the reason why human beings adhere so steadfastly to previously held paradigms and resist acceptance of new paradigms. This may be viewed as an unfortunate side effect of a function that has survival value from the biological view point. This resistance of the human mind to change is not an excuse for perpetuating antiquated attitudes such as racism, racial superiority, slavery, colonialism, exploitation of the weak, child labor, or proselytization. However, it only is one neurobiological explanation for the biases and prejudices human beings carry. In psychoanalytic parlance these old reverberating circuits lead to quick âtransference.â âTransferenceâ can have positive and negative features. That is a different subject; but the negative transference towards the investigators from other cultures can also impede acceptance of their world-view although it might be more rational and scientifically more correct.

The Chittavrittis or âmentationsâ that lead to cognition are defined to be Klishta and Aklishta. Klish stands for the âinstinctsâ or âgoading.â A scientist or investigator is to exercise every caution to avoid âKlishtaâ vritties from infiltrating his/her reasoning or afflict his/her Viveka buddhi. He is to develop an intellectual discipline to adhere to aklishta vritties. The major driving instincts or kleshas are âRagaâ and âDvesha.â Raga is attachment or over-attachment and dvesha is aversion or hatred. In basic terms these refer to approach-withdrawal tendencies. Freud coined the term âwishful thinking.â The ancient Indian concepts are clearer and caution that the klishta vritties could lead to Avidya.

This brings us to the recently popularized concept of âCultural Mis-education.â When cultural memories are transmitted from one generation to the next the deeper psychological needs, or klishta vritties, of the transmitter discolor the memories and even their perceptions. Even the âpramanaâ and âanumana,â obviously valid assertions and inferences, which have to be thoroughly examined for their âSatyaâ quality. Even pramana (direct and valid perception of reality) and anumaan ( can be distorted by the Avidya springing from klishta vritties. The other derivatives of raga and dvesha are greed, jealousy and envy, etc. that drive the political motives of the victorious population at the conscious and unconscious level. Both the herd instinct or the âracial instinctâ and the most lauded âkiller instinctâ in the Western civilization have a political survival value. Unfortunately, both are valued as âvirtuesâ of comparable importance consciously and unconsciously in the Western psyche. These instincts as well as raga and dvesha, as well as ambivalence drive the faculties of the mind to cloud the investigatorsâ spirit of inquiry and he/she can fall prey to his own or his groupâs âwishful thinking.â The investigators are subconsciously aware of this interference but the killer instinct is quite over-powering and intoxicating. It leads to the tenacious adherence to the self-serving academic theories of the victorious populations. The Aryan Myth is just one of them that can be exposed as an example of the subconsciously and consciously exploited psychological political tool of the Western culture of recent centuries. Let us not forget that it feeds the cultural pride of millions of people and also has been used as a political tool for justifying mass murder and inflicting genocide of âother racesâ (Jewish people in particular) in the 20th century. So Avidya at the cultural level or cultural mis-education is not a benign academic subject of inquiry for the nerds to undertake. It has serious adverse political, social, and cultural consequences for large sections of populations that can be malignant or of an epidemic level of magnitude. The women scholars of âWomenâs Studiesâ also recognize this fact. The very people who bash the âHindusâ from the âsecularâ view-point accusing them for their pride in âHindutvaâ intriguingly adhere to this myth of Aryan invasion espoused by Hitler that has fed the pride of many Eurocentric academicians and racists. These so-called secular âIndiansâ prefer to identify with Hitler, the mass murderer. The Indian academicians like Romila Thapar have a blind spot for their own psychological need to identify with the âAryansâ with whom Hitler identified himself and his people. This is an example of how klishta vritties will make them defend themselves viciously in the face of overwhelming refuting facts. They forget that the Indian nationals and particularly large sections of Hindu population have been the victims of this myth that has glorified âthe Whitesâ as their âsuperiorâ ancestors to whom they obsequiously need to genuflex, though some of them have intriguingly welcomed this myth as a boon in disguise to boost their own mythical âAryanâ identity and pride.

This analysis of psychological factors described in the ancient Indian psychology will allow students of history identify many areas of cultural miseducation besides the Aryan Invasion myth illustrated above. Such psychological factors might have prevailed in promulgating many Asatyas and there are innumerable examples of such cultural miseducation in the history of the human race. One could trace such asatyas and also the efforts of the reformers to correct them, right from the very antiquities. No culture is exempt from it. Even modern Christianity may be a gross distortion of the true message of Jesus Christ. ( see: www.mahatmarandy.com caution: this web-site may have a misleading appearance unless you persist to find the correct references listed therein that expose the myths in Christianity ). Another example, one can view Shri Krishna as attempting to dispel the myth of the importance of âKarmakandaâ in a politically correct manner to suit his contemporaries. However, the Hindus have continued to emphasize âkarmakandaâ and ritualism to an absurd proportion as even Krishnaâs efforts to correct this âVedicâ mis-education has failed. One more example: The history of the United States as written has very little room for the views of the Native Americans and enslaved African Americans. It is only the liberated populations that have the luxury to correct the historical cultural mis-education. Once the psychological factors are thus analyzed, one can understand the resistance to acceptance of the myth of Aryan invasion in the Western world. It is, however, a sad commentary indeed on the âsepoyâ Indian intellectuals and academicians that even after 58 years of independence their avidya resulting from the servile âidentification with the aggressorâ (a psychoanalytic concept) continues to prevail pervades the Indian psyche and they steer away from the very motto that the official Seal of the Government of India proclaims to be its guiding principle: âSatyam Eva Jayate.â This statement, of course, gives them the benefit of the doubt by looking at their unconscious motivations and does not view them as their making a conscious choice to accept a role as the stooges of the Indian communists, who are like termites in India along with the missionaries, whom some of the âsepoysâ admire, with the only difference being that they (communists) do not say the grace before they try to devour their object of infestation. The communists and missionaries, fundamental Muslims and Christian Missionaries, and Indian communists and Indian fundamental Muslims are three kinds of strange bedfellows that can be found only on the Indian political scene. They are not allies in any other countries. The âsecularistsâ and the other three groups have their own agenda to perpetuate their own cultural mis-education as all four of these groups are carrying the psychology of the conquerors who have wielded political domination over large populations of the world with violent means (the secularists have been an exception in this instance) which they have viewed as justifying the end. All four groups are therefore unconsciously motivated to perpetuate cultural mis-education. Cultural mis-education can be thus traced from antiquity to the modern times.

dhu · 04-25-2008, 12:43 PM

The Missionary's Swastika: Racism as an Evangelical Weapon
Aravindan Neelakandan.S.

". . . We reject most strongly the simplistic historical interpretations, which date back to the eighteenth century, that continue to be imposed on South Asian culture history. These still prevailing interpretations are significantly diminished by European ethnocentrism, colonialism, racism, and antisemitism. Surely, as South Asian studies approaches the twenty-first century, it is time to describe emerging data objectively rather than perpetuate interpretations without regard to the data archaeologists have worked so hard to reveal." [1]

''' Of the various theories of history that have over the years been discredited for lack of evidence, ill-founded or baseless assumptions, or have been simply undermined by superior scholarship, few have been dismantled quite so thoroughly as Aryan Race Theory. Yet, as historian James Schaffer notes above, few other discredited theories have so stubbornly and inexplicably retained credence among the public, the media, and even some academic circles, in spite of direct evidence to the contrary.' Aryan race theory is a fabrication, evolved into a myth, that survives today as an unexamined "truth."

''' And few other spurious "truths" have been so insidious -- or so destructive. Responsible for subjugation of millions of Indians under British rule, Aryan Race Theory continued its wretched legacy well into the twentieth century, mutating into the horrific pseudo-science that rationalized Hitler's Final Solution, and lingering in the bloody ethnic convulsions of modern Sri Lanka, Rwanda, and other troubled areas of the post-colonial world.''

''' Far from being merely an academic exercise, though, Aryan Race Theory is in fact the brainchild of Christian evangelist-scholars, fashioned and tempered in the nineteenth century as a weapon for European expansionism in India. ' Promulgated to generations of Indian children in British-created schools, it created, like so many other Western creeds and dogmas, social divisions where none had hitherto existed, resulting in jealousy, mistrust, and suspicion among communities where peaceful coexistence had been the norm. This theory, which posits the invasion of ancient India by a white-skinned race (the "Aryans") who conquer an indigenous, dark-skinned population, therefore worked ingeniously with the British divide-and-conquer strategy for rule in India.' The theory and its variants continue to be used today by the Vatican and other Christian enterprises in their campaign to "harvest" tribals and other vulnerable communities of Hindus. For these spiritual imperialists, spurious racial theories still hold their divide-and-conquer appeal.'

''' The roots of the theory reach back much further than the pseudo-scholarship of European missionaries, however.' As early as 1312 CE, the Ecumenical Council of Vienna declared that "the Holy Church should have an abundant number of Catholics well versed in the languages, especially in those of the infidels, so as to be able to instruct them in the sacred doctrine." This not only defined the early Church's strategy for evangelizing the "infidels," but also established the very study of language, and the linguistic and philological scholarship that would emerge in later centuries, as tools of evangelism. Thus, when the university (as with society's other institutions) was recruited into the national effort of empire-building, its agents -- many of them pious Christians and nationalists, trained in a predominantly parochial (Catholic, Anglican, etc.) academic system -- enthusiastically pursued knowledge not for the sake of truth, but for the sake of Christianity.

''' Throughout its history, Christianity has never been above the endorsement of fabricated "truths" in order to spread its creed throughout the globe.' So, it is not surprising that when the Boden Chair for Oriental Studies was established in Oxford University in 1832, Colonel Boden, who bequeathed 25,000 pounds (a generous sum for that time) to establish that chair, stated explicitly that the aim of study of Sanskrit literature was not for the sake of knowledge, but to "enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion." It was the Boden chair which later emerged as the academic epicenter of Aryan Race Theory. '

''' In fact, it was an Oxford Professor of Sanskrit who vigorously propagated the notion of the Aryan race. Fredrich Max Muller, a staunch German nationalist and Christian missionary, was Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford' labored for years translating the Vedas into English. Muller would comment unequivocally regarding the motives of his life's work,'

". . . [t]his edition of mine and translation of Vedas will hereafter tell to a very great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion and to show them as to what their root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that sprang from it during the last 3000 years." [2]

Muller's objective, it is seen, was not to make the achievements of Hindu civilization accessible to his European fellows, but to expose them to the scrutiny of his fellow evangelists, so that they may become better in deconstructing them.'

''' In 1851 Muller wrote his first article in English wherein he used the word "Aryan" for the first time in the sense of a race. Max Muller's good friend and fellow Indologist Paul then popularized the word "Aryan" in France. Soon many Christian scholars were seized upon by the theory of Aryan race. In 1859 Swiss linguist Adolph Pictet wrote that the Aryan race was the

". . . one destined by Providence to reign one day supreme over the entire earth . . . They were the race of Aryans. . . . The religion of Christ became the torch of humanity. The genius of Greece adapted it. The power of Rome propagated it. Germanic energy gave it new strength. The whole race of the European Aryans came to be the main instrument of God's plan for the destiny of mankind". [3] '

Wrote Ernest Renan, the French historian of religion in 1860, "[t]he Semites are incapable of doing that which is essential. Let us remain Germans and Celts; let us keep our eternal gospel Christianity . .. . After the Semitic race declined, the Aryan race alone was left to lead the march of human destiny." [4] The notion of "Aryan" had become, in a few short years, the emblem of European manifest destiny over the world, a signet coined in the language of scholarship which gave Europeans a racial and religious mantle of superiority.

''' Not all scholars of the time accepted Muller's ideas, however. In 1861, after Muller gave three lectures titled "Science of Languages" in which he justified his theory with quotes from Vedas, American historian Louis B. Synder noted that

"Max Muller repeatedly hammered away at the idea that the terms Indo-European and Indo-Germanic must be replaced by Aryan because the people who lived in India and who spoke the Sanskrit language called themselves Arya. This primitive Aryan language indicated that there was an Aryan race, the common ancestors of Germans, Celts, Romans, Slavs, Greeks, Persians, and Hindus." [5]

Synder then went on to remark that "all attempts to correlate the Aryan language to Aryan race were not only unsuccessful but also absurd". [5]' Even at that time many academics opposed the Aryan invasion theory. Noted scholars such as Jacoby, Hillebrant and Winternitz strongly opposed the racial theory, noting that Indians themselves had had no idea about any distinct Aryan racial identity in their own literature.'

''' Why, then, was a theory that had no grounding in fact so readily accepted and promoted in the Western academic circles and imposed on Indians? Because the theory of the Aryan race and its invasion of India were formulated, and then vigorously promulgated, by Christian missionaries.' As W. W. Hunter, another well-known Indologist of missionary persuasion, candidly admitted, their "scholarship is warmed with the holy flame of Christian zeal." [6]' As an example, some elements of the theory are clearly attributable to Biblical scripture. For instance, ideas like the existence of an Aryan proto-language were associated with and inspired by the Biblical myth of' the tower of Babel.' Even the date of creation of the Vedas was fixed by Max Muller to tailor-fit a Biblical creation time scale. [7]' Clearly, those members of the academic establishment who promoted the theory had vested political and religious interests in mind, and the propaganda of religious and racial superiority sanctified by Aryan Race Theory served those interests well. This marriage of racial superiority and the "holy flame of Christian zeal" would ensure the future development of the ugly racist theories that would culminate in Europe's concentration camps and final solutions.

''' The primary political motive of nineteenth-century Britain was, of course, expansion of its empire, and the theory of Aryan race provided a veneer of benevolence that justified colonial rule in India. Protestant missionary John Wilson, President of the Asiatic Society of Bombay from 1836 to 1846, wanted the Indian population to be divided into Aryan and non-Aryan groups so that special target groups like tribals could be easily identified by the missionaries for conversion. In 1856 Wilson delivered a lecture titled "India 3000 years ago," in which he preached the Aryan invasion of India and the theory of Aryan race as historical facts.' Wilson declared, "[w]hat has taken place since the commencement of the British rule in India is only a reunion, to a certain extent, of the members of the same family."' Naturally, this happy reunion had now brought India into contact "with the most enlightened and philanthropic nation in the world." [8]'

''' The racist "scholarship" conducted by the missionaries also helped to diminish any of the pride Indians had developed for their own heritage. Max Muller in his address to the International Congress of Orientalists openly remarked that, thanks to the work of the missionary-scholars, "a more intelligent appreciation had taken the place of the extravagant admiration of the work of their old poets." [9]' In other words, Indians' appreciation of their own epic literature was to be cut down to size by an application of ' "proper" critical scrutiny, righteously applied by Muller and his Christo-centric cohorts.

''' British cultural "re-education" of the Indian populace was accomplished through imposition of a colonial educational system. To do this the indigenous system of education had to first be eradicated. By the first half of the nineteenth century, the colonial rulers along with their missionaries had already destroyed the vast network of indigenous schools which for generations had proven more efficient and effective than the contemporary British educational system. Parliamentarian Keir Hardie observed, based on the strength of official documents and the reports of missionaries in the field, that prior to British occupation of India, in Bengal alone there had been 80,000 native schools, meaning one school for every 400 of the population. This would change radically once colonization was underway.'Ludlow, in his History of British India, says, "[i]n every Hindoo village which has retained its original form all children were able to read, write and cipher, but where we have swept away the village system as in Bengal there the village school has also disappeared."''

''' The 1823 report of the British Collector of Bellary, A. D. Campbell, is telling.' He first lauds the indigenous education system, saying:

"The economy with which children are taught to write in the native schools and the system by which the more advanced scholars are taught to educate the less advanced and at the same time to confirm their own knowledge is certainly admirable and well deserved the imitation it has received in England,"

but he then goes on to remark, "[o]f nearly a million souls not 7000 are now at school."' The decimation of the Indian education system thus created a vacuum that then had to be filled. Into that vacuum, eager and waiting, went the missionaries, who swiftly set up their own church-sponsored schools and taught Indian children their own literature and history according to the gospel of Max Muller.'

''' It is by now a well-established fact that education was a means to Christianize and "domesticate" the native population and render it loyal to the British empire. Thomas Macaulay, member of the Supreme Council of India and instrumental in destroying the indigenous educational system and in introducing English language education in India, remarked in his now famous Minute of 1835, ". . . the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary nor scientific information," and thus were not worthy of preservation. ' However, Macaulay's interest was not educational, but decidedly religious.' In a letter to his father he proclaimed, "It is my firm belief that, if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence."''

'' Macaulay's boastful predictions, fortunately, would not come to pass. But as the eighteenth century came to a close, Aryan Race Theory had been taught to millions of Indian children in schools operated by the Macaulay-Missionary axis. The damage was done.' The effect of indoctrinating generations of young Indians with a fabricated, racist interpretation of their history was the division of Indian society into "Aryan" and "non-Aryan" communities, polarizing North and South India. In South India, Anglican Bishop R. Caldwell began promoting the idea that South Indians were descendents of a non-Aryan "race," called Dravidians, who were racially different and culturally superior to the Aryans from the North.' Soon many South Indians had accepted these theories, and their new alienation from the Hindi-speaking ("Aryan") North lead to deep political division. Dravidian political parties were formed which, in opposition to the "Aryan" mainstream, were decidedly pro-British. These parties passed resolutions demanding, among other things, that the British should not leave India, even as Indian nationalists were fighting for their country's freedom.*

''' After independence, racial theory continued to be used by the Church as a ploy to further balkanize the Indian populace. As late as the 1950s and 1960s, high Church officials continued to publicly assert that Dravidian Race Theory was a "time bomb" planted by the Church to destroy Hinduism.' Though Macaulay's predictions failed, zealous proselytizers still nurse their bigoted ambitions to eradicate "idolatry."

''' Today, insurgency and terrorism in Northeast India continue to be enflamed by the divisive propaganda of Christian missionaries.' In neighboring Sri Lanka, the violent ethic conflict can also be directly traced to the promulgation of racial theories by Christian missionaries among the Sinhalese and Tamils, who had previously lived together in relative peace. Ana Pararaja Singham, secretary of the Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations, remarked while discussing the ethnic conflict in the island,'

". . . While legends and myths of the [founding of Sri Lanka] formed the basis of Sinhala nationalism, the present nationalism is also due to the considerable influence wielded by Europeans throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. This dealt with racial concepts such as "Aryan". The notion that the Sinhalese were an Aryan people was not a Mahavamsa inspired myth, but an opinion attributable to European linguists who classified the languages spoken by the Sinhala and Tamil people into two distinct categories."

The racial polarization of Sri Lanka began as early as 1856, when Robert Caldwell, in his A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian South Indian Family of Languages , argued that there was "no direct affinity between the Sinhalese and Tamil languages."' Max Muller, meanwhile, weighed in with his Lectures on the Science of Language (1861), in which he declared that after "careful and minute comparison" he was led to "class the idioms spoken in Iceland and Ceylon as cognate dialects of the Aryan family of languages". Though contrary views were expressed by other scholars, Muller's Aryan Race Theory was lent support by a number of prominent European scholars, and the theory therefore held sway.''

'''' Kamalika Pieris , a Sinhalese intellectual, agrees.' In his article, "Ethnic conflict and Tamil Separatism," he examines the origin of the conflict and traces it to the race theories proposed by the missionary-scholars:

There developed the notion of an "Aryan race" consisting of anybody who spoke an Aryan language, the Dravidian race consisting of anybody who spoke a Dravidian language, and the Jews who spoke neither. Max Muller, the German linguist spoke of the 'Aryan Race' in 1888. Earlier Robert Caldwell had spoken of Dravidian languages in 1856. The Portuguese and the Dutch brought into Sri Lanka the prejudices available in their countries. Notably the Christian antagonism to Islam and other "heathen" religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. But the concept of "race" was introduced to the country during the British period, in the 19th century. The British labelled the Sinhala community as "Sinhalese race" and "Tamil race" in 1833 or 1871. 1833 saw the first communal representation in the Legislative Council and 1871 was the year of the first British Census of Ceylon. [10]

'' A century later, the fruits of Aryan Race Theory would be clearly seen in Sri Lanka, with devastating results. One of the first Sri Lankans to realize the enormous political gain to be reaped through exploiting the Mahavamsa mindset was S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, who, ironically, was a member of the elitist Christian Bandaranaike-Obeyasekera clan. At the general election of 1956, Bandaranaike " bulldozed his way into political power by successfully marshalling popular Sinhala support on a chauvinistic platform." [11] ' The polarization of the Tamil and Sinhalese communities would eventually lead to the civil war which ravages the island to this day.

''' It is not only the Indian Subcontinent where Christian evangelists have used dubious pseudo-science to foment racial division.' Missionaries have concocted numerous versions of the Aryan Racial Theory, tailored to the history and circumstances found in various ex-colonial "target" populations. For example, commenting on the recent Hutu-Tutsi conflicts, the French anthropologist Jean-Pierre Langellier reveals:

'

"The idea that the Hutus and the Tutsis were physically different was first aired in the 1860s by the British explorer John Speke. The history of Rwanda (like that of much of Africa) has been distorted by missionaries, academics and colonial administrators. They made the Tutsis out to be a superior race, which had conquered the region and enslaved the Hutus. Missionaries taught the Hutus that historical fallacy, which was the result of racist European concepts being applied to an African reality. At the end of the fifties, the Hutus used that discourse to react against the Tutsis." [12]

'

The horrific ethnic cleansing that occurred in Rwanda in the early 90s, then, can be directly attributed to a mindset of racial superiority engendered by Christian missionary-scholars.'
Conclusion

'' Racial theories and pseudo-science continue to be vigorously employed today by the Vatican and other Western evangelist enterprises in their ongoing campaign to harvest souls for Christianity.' But it is not only in the remote corners of the Third World where the unexamined "truths" of Max Muller and his missionary-scholar contemporaries are still used as weapons of propaganda.' Aryan Race Theory is alive and well in the United States.''

''' Take, for instance, white supremacist David Duke, who in one of his recent books speaks of the hordes of Aryans pouring into ancient India:'

"Aryans, or Indo-Europeans (Caucasians) created the great Indian, or Hindu civilization. Aryans swept over the Himalayas to the Indian subcontinent and conquered the aboriginal people. (. . .) The word Aryan has an etymological origin in the word Arya from Sanskrit, meaning noble. The word also has been associated with gold, the noble metal, and denoted the golden-skinned invaders (as compared to the brown-skinned aboriginals) from the West. (. . .) The conquering race initiated a caste system to preserve their status and their racial identity. The Hindu word for caste is Varna, which directly translated into English means color." [13] '

Never mind that Duke is only regurgitating a spurious and discredited interpretation of history.' The lies of Aryan Race Theory are as useful for white supremacists today as they were for the Christian missionaries a century ago in their campaign not only to convert the infidels but also to justify the colonization of "heathen Hindoostan."
References

1. James Schaffer (Case Western University) concluding his article, "Migration, Philology and South Asian Archaeology," in Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, Interpretation and History, edited by J. Bronkhorst and M. Deshpande' (University of Michigan Press, 1998). [back]
2. The Life and Letters of the Rt. Hon. Fredrich Max Muller, vol I, edited by his wife (London: Longmans, 1902), 328. [back]
3. Adolphe Pictet in Essai de paleontologie linguistique (1859), quoted by Michael Danino in his The Invasion That Never Was (1996). [back]
4. Ernest Renan, L'Avenir religieux des societes modernes (1860), quoted by Michael Danino op. cit. [back]
5. Louis B. Synder, The Idea of Nationalism: Its Meaning and History (New York: Von Nostrand, 1962) [back]
6. See "Genesis of the Aryan race Theory and its Application to Indian History" by Devendranath Swarup, published in Manthan - Journal of Deendayal Research Institute (New Delhi, April-September 1994). [back]
7. N. S. Rajaram, Aryan Invasion of India, The Myth and the Truth (Voice of India, 1993). [back]
8. Sri Aurobindo, "The Origins of Aryan Speech," The Secret of the Veda, p. 554. [back]
9. Quoted in Arun Shourie's Missionaries in India - Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas (New Delhi: ASA, 1994), 149.[back]
10. The article can be found at http://www.lacnet.org/srilanka/politics/de...n/item1342.html. [back]
11. Ana Pararasasingam, "Peace with Justice." Paper presented at proceedings of the International Conference on the Conflict in Sri Lanka, Canberra, Australia, 1996. [back]
12. Quoted by N. S. Rajaram in his book, The Politics of History (New Delhi: Voice of India, 1995). [back]
13. David Duke, My Awakening (Mandeville, LA: Free Speech Press, 1999), 517-518 . [back]

'

Note

*As more and more secular scholars studied these racist theories they started questioning the integrity of Max Muller. During the 1880s Muller began refuting his own racist interpretation of the Vedas. The damage, however, had already been done. [back]

'
Further Reading

Missionaries in India - Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas by Arun Shourie (New Delhi: ASA, 1994).

An excellent book written by a famous Indian intellectual who examines the methods used by missionaries in spreading Christianity in India; how they aided and in turn were aided by the British; how they destroyed the vast existing network of indigenous vernacular language schools to introduce their own schools; how they then used their educational institutions to indoctrinate the students with Christianity, and how the same mindset continues to this day in India. A must read for anyone who wants to understand what Christianity actually stands for in India.

"The Missionary's Swastika: Racism as an Evangelical Weapon" is copyright Â© 2001 by Aravindan Neelakandan.S..
The electronic version is copyright Â© 2001 Internet Infidels with the written permission of Aravindan Neelakandan.S..

dhu · (This post was last modified: 05-15-2008, 12:02 PM by dhu.)

QUOTEA dead end for Aryan Invasion Theory"s Racism - Part I
By: Saurav Basu

Summary: Critical analysis and implication of "Aryans and British India" by Thomas R Trautmann

Aryans And British India by Thomas R Trauttmann represents a remarkable and momentous occasion in Indological studies which deal with the vexed Aryan question.

Trautmann has shown a dexterous historical approach and insight into the framing of those vital questions which mark the evolution of the colonial construct of the role of Aryanism in Indian History and also successfully argues that its evolution "do(es) not reside within the idea itself as a kind of hidden virus or all-determining genetic but code but vary with circumstance and are the creatures of historical conjecture and human purpose"

It is unfortunate, that today throughout the western world the word Aryan conjures up images of devastating horror; a word loaded with the most sinister connotations. So much that you cannot even register a username on the MSN network containing Aryan as prefix or suffix. The mendaciousness of such concepts was challenged even a century ago by Sri Aurobindo who clarified that "All the highest aspirations of the early human race, its noblest religious temper, it"s most idealistic velleities of thought are summed up in this single vocable. In later times, the word Arya expressed a particular ethical and social ideal, an ideal of well-governed life, candour, courtesy, nobility, straight dealing, courage, gentleness, purity, humanity, compassion, protection of the weak, liberality, observance of social duty, eagerness for knowledge, respect for the wise and learned, the social accomplishments. It was the combined ideal of the Brahmana and the Kshatriya. Everything that departed from this ideal, everything that tended towards the ignoble, mean, obscure, rude, cruel or false, was termed un-Aryan. There is no word in human speech that has a nobler history." "

In contrast in modern India, the Aryan word invokes a fiery debate on the origin of the Aryan people; the speakers of the Indo Aryan group of languages. The standard position that Aryans came from Central Asia and invaded and subsequently subjugated the majority native aboriginal population of India now has been largely replaced by an effeminate version - the Aryan migration theory. However, the former view is voraciously applauded by the sectarian Dravidian politicians whose historical consciousness is clouded with a strongly vituperative discontent against the imaginary fair skinned Aryan invader who supposedly destroyed and drove their forefathers with Dravidian blood running in their veins from the lap of the flourishing Indus Valley into their current Deccan abode. Although, DNA and archaeological evidence jettisons them, such claims are steadfastly adhered to for political reasons, if not much else.

Indeed, so much rests on the Aryan question that one cannot but absolutely reject the cynical view of as senior a historian as Romila Thapar who claimed that "the Aryan question is the greatest red herring in studies on Ancient India" For we are certain that unraveling the identity of the Aryan people will cut the Gordon knot of several of the confusing conundrums of Indian and perhaps World History at large, especially those which deal with civilization in the ancient world from an Indo Aryan perspective.

However, there are issues, which transcend the Aryan identity question; and yet are crucial to the Indian history scene but so far have not been satisfactorily tackled by scholars. Foremost, among them is the origin and evolution of the Aryan theory through the vicissitudes of colonial scholarship. The Aryan theory is a colonial construct, but its edifice was always in a flux especially during its formative years. The ground beneath its feet was frequently altered by different brands of orientalism; some having a distinctive doctrinal axes to grind which could range from upholding of Mosaic Ethnology to purely racist white supremacy theories.

Trautmann builds his book as a series of chapters mimicking the swing of the pendulum of oriental scholarship with humble beginning in Mosaic Ethmology, to a fancy for all things old and Indian [British Indophania] to diametrical opposed stirrings in British Indophobia. Trautmann in the next two chapters shows how the latter was heavily spruced up by immature philological and ethnological studies, which consummated into the racial theory of the Indian civilization with all its obnoxious ramifications.

We all know that ever since the publication of Edward Said"s Orientalism; Oriental scholarship has been looked upon as an academic tool to legitimize and perpetuate colonialism, them being western authoritative pronouncements on Asiatic Societies and as a result currently most indigenous scholars work furiously to decolonize their history. India has been no exception; and several Saidian and even Non Saidian influenced authors have indulged in similar exercises to dislodge colonial hegemony in the form of Orientalism.

But what struck me was the virtual absence of Indian encounters of the Orientalists in Said"s book. Said has simply substituted his denunciation of Oriental scholarship in the Middle East to India without building even a generalization, forget demarcating the differences. Trautmann rightly considers the simple inversion of the idea of Orientalism as a monument of colonialism as hardly satisfactory. It seems to betray a feeling that one cannot seriously weight the value of Orientalism"s substance without running the risk of finding some of it good, and in that measure a justification of the colonial power.

Moreover, in the case of India; the orientalists were divided. James Mill and Grant were totally opposed to the Sanskritist orientalists like Jones and Wilson. To say that colonialism and orientalism are mutually interchangeable does not get far. Questions like why the German enthusiasm for oriental studies cannot be explained at all using Saidian motives at play. Especially when Humbolt went so far as to declare in 1827: "The Bhagavadgita is perhaps the loftiest and the deepest thing that the world has to show." (A concise summary of the contribution of the early German indologists can be found in the work of Valentina Stache-Rosen) Yet, Dilip Chakrabarti in his hard hitting "Colonial Indology" considers the German romantics pouring encomiums at even the mention of India as the outcome of their personal search for an acceptable and unsullied past framework of their own reality. India, herself did not have much to do with it. He considers their motives were rooted to political control of India and the conversion of the Indian people to Christianity. I would consider the view as being too cynical as the empirical evidence till date remains unsatisfactory

Oriental scholarship: boon or bane

One point however which Trautmann ignores is the selective rejection of orientalist scholarship models by contemporary scholars depending upon their ideological affiliation. To instantiate; the (self conferred) secular Marxists as also the current crop of eurocentric authors like John Keay excitedly espoused the racial theory of the Indian civilization which Trautmann has critically denounced in the later part of his book. Even others who will not fit any of the above categories like Al Basham and Stanley Wolpert wholeheartedly voiced their support for these mendacious racial theories; although the former modified his view in time. In the past decade, if anything has changed, is the old canard of Aryans bringing civilization to time. Instead, it is now claimed that Dravidian and Mundas are original torch bearers of civilization in India.

In contrast, nationalist Indians a.k.a. Hindu revivalists have been decrying the racial theories of Indian civilization for over a century now- from Swami Vivekananda, to Sri Aurobindo, then Pusalkar, to Sethna and now Rajaram. Trautmann"s analysis has inadvertently vindicated their stand in this matter. Perhaps, it is the potentially damming consequence of Trautmann"s study that has compelled some extremist Marxist historians like D N Jha to dismiss Trautmann as a crypto neocolonialist agent, who has somehow managed to extort a positive review from their finest historian - Romila Thapar. [1]

But the elements of Orientalism which were typical of Indomaniacs - like praise for the qualities of Sanskrit; the acceptance of the existence of a civilization of the highest order in ancient India; critical appreciation for Ancient Indian literature, art and philosophy and their influences over Greek culture have all been vehemently attacked by these secular Marxist historians. While, some of it was surely exaggerative like Sanskrit being the mother of all Indo European languages there is no reason to hold them in such sharp contempt as has been done by our Marxist and secular historian. They lament that these theories were instruments of the divisive divide and rule British government policy which sought to divide Indians into two mutually exclusive groups of Hindus and Muslims; for according to them such social identities had not been effective crystallized prior to the advent of British colonialism. Finally, their voices are shrill in dismissing orientalist beliefs from those quarters where the evils of India had been attributed to Muslim tyranny and despotism. I might add that Hindu revivalists endorse all such Orientalist ideas, invariably with a greater degree of enthusiasm.

The secular and marxists also criticize Hinduism as being the vile product of such colonial encounters. Trautmann again is mature enough to reason that one has to be wary of attitudes which hold the British responsible for the invention of Hinduism. Many of the elements in which Hinduism is construed by the British in the period of Indomania derive from Indians and Indian sources. It cannot be an accident that the superior value of ancient times and sources in British sources is so strikingly consistent with the degenerationist character of brahmin views of the historical process - involving among other thing a decline in virtue and religion. This point is further buttressed by the fact that key indigenous informants played a key role in the construction of modern notions of "the Hindu religion" [Orientalism and the modern myth of Hinduism, Richard King]

Thus, we can discover a distinctive pattern at work here. The Marxist/nehruvian/secular historians aim to undermine that orientalist scholarship which Trautmann dubs as Indomania while espousing Indophobic tendencies in later Orientalist scholarship together with racial theories of Indian civilization. On the other hand, Hindu revivalists would reject the indophobic viewpoints, as also the racial theories; they would be unhesitant in accepting the indomaniac views. As Dilip Chakravarti in Colonial Indology sums up that while Romila Thapar decries attempts to discover an indigenous origin for aryans, she is by no means better in tracing a foreign origin for all positive elements of Indian History.

Naturally, both indulge in posturing themselves as being anti-orientalist in scope for both cannot risk themselves being projected as patronizing orientalism; more especially for the Marxist historians for the are bonded to anti imperialism. Finding worth with orientalism or its defense is considered to be the hallmark of Eurocentric and neocolonialist authors only.

.... Continued

There are some confused issues in the piece eg the alleged anti-orientalism of Marxists and the supposed orientalist indo-mania of Hindus. Colonial construction of Hindusim is an inexact way to state the colonial veneer and interpretation imparted on Hindu practices and traditions. These issues need to be straightened as they keep manifesting again and again and may actually be internal to the colonial dynamic. Apparently, Hindus are not permitted to be anti-orientalists and anti-colonials. This function is reserved for the liberal strains in the catholic (conservative) versus protestant (liberal) internal conservation.

dhu · 05-16-2008, 12:55 PM

The Vedas and Ancient Egypt
by Dr. David Frawley

The Vedas as the Pyramids of the Mind

The Vedas represent a monumental spiritual literature, by far the largest that remains from the ancient world. We could therefore call the Vedas, âthe pyramids of the ancient mindâ. The Vedas are the oldest record of the great dharmic traditions of the East, with not only the Hindu but also Buddhist, Jain, Sikh and Zoroastrian traditions part of the same greater stream of spiritual striving. Apart from the Biblical tradition, this dharmic or Indic tradition is one of the two dominant streams of world spirituality that has endured throughout the centuries and remains vital to the present day, as the global popularity of Yoga, Vedanta and Buddhism clearly reveals.

If we look at the Vedic tradition, we see that it was based upon an ancient priestly order that was extensive and sophisticated, comparable to the priestly orders of ancient Egypt or Babylonia. This priestly order was concerned not merely with rituals but also with spirituality, yoga, philosophy, medicine, astronomy and architecture that form the basis of the various Upavedas and Vedangas.

This spiritual culture of ancient India can easily be compared with that of ancient Egypt, which was similarly guided by extensive priestly orders, their sophisticated rituals and an emphasis of mysticism and magic. As ancient Egypt was arguably the spiritual center of the West in the ancient world, so India can be said to be the spiritual center of the ancient East.

The Greek Bias

One of the main mistakes that western scholars have made is to approach Vedic civilization using ancient Greece as their starting off point. They look at the Vedas like the works of Homer, reflecting traditions like the Greeks who only came on the scene during the late ancient period (after 1500 BCE). They view the Vedic people like the ancient Greeks as mainly a warrior people, on the move, as part of various proposed Aryan invasions/migrations of the time. They place Vedic culture in the mold of the type of primitive tribal Indo-European culture much like what they propose was at the roots of Greek civilization. The Western date of 1500 BCE for the Vedas was made to parallel their 1500 BCE date for the early Greeks (though Biblical constraints also entered into the picture).

However, Homer and the oldest Greek literature of the Iliad and the Odyssey at best resemble Hindu epics like the Mahabharata that came at the end of the Vedic period (but without the same depth of Vedantic thought or a dominant guru figure like Krishna). The Homeric model was of a less spiritual and more recent culture to which the materialistic western civilization could comfortably trace itself. It did not reflect a mystic, rishi or yogi culture like that of the Vedas or that of ancient Egypt.

Language and Culture

Along with this mistake, western scholars have tried to use language as the determinative factor for judging ancient culturesâas if groups that spoke languages belonging to the same language family must possess a similar or contemporaneous culture as well. However, we should note that language families have persisted through various historical ages and different types of cultures. For example, we cannot make medieval Russian and ancient Persian contemporaneous or similar in civilization because of some linguistic affinities. On the other hand, cultures of the same time period have similar civilizations in spite of language differences. The ancient Romans, for example, had much in common culturally with the Carthaginians who had a similar life-style and lived in the same part of the world, in spite of speaking languages that did not belong to the same family.

Therefore, we must look at the Vedas according to the cultural affinities of ancient civilizations, not mere according to linguistic affinities. As a type of spiritual/priestly culture, Vedic civilization resembles more that of earlier Egypt or Babylonia than that of Greece.

The Greeks, though speaking a language with affinities with Vedic Sanskrit, represented a later ancient culture already moving away from the spiritual and hieratic civilizations of the early ancient world.

A Reevaluation

Western scholars invented the term âhenotheismâ to describe how any one of the many Vedic Gods could represent all the Gods (a situation that prevails among the Puranic Gods as well). We should note that they used the same term for the ancient Egyptian religion which had a similar view of multiplicity in unity among its many Gods. The Vedic and Egyptian Sun Gods follow the same model of henotheism, being both the One God in essence and many different Gods in function.

Many symbols are common to ancient Egypt and India including the worship of the Sun and Sun kings, the sacred bull, the hawk or falcon, and the seeking of immortality as the main goal of life. Indeed the Vedic ritual of the Yajur Veda reflects a similar spirit to the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Like the Vedic, the Egyptians not only had a love of magic and the occult, but with their symbols like the cobra at the crown of the head, suggest a knowledge of Yoga as well. Yet such connections have been ignored because they are cultural rather than linguistic in basis.

Egyptian culture endured from before 3000 BCE down to the early Christian era. Isis and Osiris were worshipped in Rome as well as in the Old Kingdom of Egypt. Similarly, Vedic deities need not be limited to the later eras in which they are still mentioned. Their worship could easily extend back to the 3000 BCE date that we commonly find in Puranic texts as marking the beginning of the Kali Yuga.

The archaeological record of India is of a monumental civilization that persisted from 3000 BCE, if not earlier, not only into the late ancient era, like Egypt, but with a modified continuity up to the present day. In India today we find the same types of rituals and temple worship still being practiced as once occurred in ancient Egypt and Babylonia. That this type of spiritual ancient civilization has survived only in India suggests how deep seated and original it must have been in the country.

While ancient India did not leave monuments like the pyramids of Egypt, it did leave extensive urban remains and its great Vedic literature, its pyramids of the mind. Connecting the monumental spiritual literature of the Vedas, not only with the great urban civilization of ancient India, but with a similar spiritual civilizational model as ancient Egypt, will provide us with a better approach to the Vedas that can help unravel their spiritual secrets. Through the Vedas we can reclaim the spiritual heritage of the entire ancient world that can help take us beyond the current materialistic culture and the many problems it continues to bring us.

dhu · (This post was last modified: 07-04-2008, 09:41 PM by dhu.)

QUOTEKnowledge books mistreat Tamil history
[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 July 2008, 07:34 GMT]

The presentation of the History of Eezham Tamils, in some of the international reference material such as Britannica Concise Encyclopedia and The World Factbook by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has become a matter of serious concern for Tamils all over the world. When history is being deconstructed in the portals of knowledge of the postmodern era on one hand, these international sources of information are still harping on colonial brand of Orientalism, by basing history on myths. 

Culture Columnist Akazhaan
Many readers have been emailing excerpts from such publications to TamilNet for quite sometime.

Some of the relevant passages are cited below:

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
âThe Sinhalese people are probably the result of aboriginal inhabitants mixing with Indo-Aryans who began migrating from India c. the 5th century BC. The Tamils were later immigrants from Dravidian India, migrating over a period from the early centuries AD to c. 1200. Buddhism was introduced during the 3rd century BC. As Buddhism spread, the Sinhalese kingdom extended its political control over the island but lost it to invaders from southern India in the 10th century. Between 1200 and 1505, Sinhalese power gravitated to southwestern Sri Lanka, while a southern Indian dynasty seized power in the north and established the Tamil kingdom in the 14th century.â 

CIA, The World Fact Book:
âThe first Sinhalese arrived in Sri Lanka late in the 6th century B.C. probably from northern India. Buddhism was introduced in about the mid-third century B.C., and a great civilization developed at the cities of Anuradhapura (kingdom from circa 200 B.C. to circa A.D. 1000) and Polonnaruwa (from about 1070 to 1200). In the 14th century, a south Indian dynasty established a Tamil kingdom in northern Sri Lanka. The coastal areas of the island were controlled by the Portuguese in the 16th century and by the Dutch in the 17th century. The island was ceded to the British in 1796, became a crown colony in 1802, and was united under British rule by 1815. As Ceylon, it became independent in 1948; its name was changed to Sri Lanka in 1972. Tensions between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil separatists erupted into war in 1983. Tens of thousands have died in the ethnic conflict that continues to fester. After two decades of fighting, the government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) formalized a cease-fire in February 2002 with Norway brokering peace negotiations. Violence between the LTTE and government forces intensified in 2006 and the government regained control of the Eastern Province in 2007. In January 2008, the government officially withdrew from the ceasefire, and has begun engaging the LTTE in the northern portion of the country.â

The excerpts only show that serious students of History are not involved in the making of such literature and documents cited above.

History is a discipline based on verifiable evidence. Historical interpretations may differ, but there is no academic justification to come out with historical myths serving political purposes.

The motive behind the cited passages is obvious. They are nuanced to deny the Tamil parity in the space and time in the human and cultural heritage of Sri Lanka. They deny the inherent participation of Tamils in the evolution of civilisation in this island.

The historiographical claims of Sinhala-Buddhist exclusiveness, stemming from the Aryan migration theory, have been denounced and countered even by many of the Sinhala historians of high academic standards.

The Sri Lankan state, for reasons well-known, may continue with its exploits with history. But why international reference publishers and Agencies of global ambitions have to lose their credibility by upholding invalidated myths as historical facts?

On such matters of contention, it would have been prudent on the part of the editors, had they consulted the recent publications on the evolution of ethnicities in Sri Lanka by eminent Tamil and Sinhala historians and archaeologists of the calibre of K. Indrapala and Sudharshan Seneviratne, before presenting sensitive profile for world readership.

The facts, views and academic debates arising from recent researches cast an altogether different picture on the topic under discussion:

Sri Lanka was not an island when the first human beings inhabited it. There was a land bridge in the Cetu or Adams Bridge region, linking todayâs Tamil Nadu with Sri Lanka, through which animals and humans walked to and fro.

Geological evidences suggest that the land bridge disappeared just five to eight thousand years back. Even afterwards navigational contacts through the shallow waters linked by a chain of sand banks cannot be ruled out, as it was within the means of primitive technology.

The exact time of the first human habitations is yet to ascertained precisely, even though dates have been suggested going back to 70,000 years or more. But an obvious phenomenon repeatedly pointed out in the objective researches starting from 19th century, is the striking affinities between the prehistoric TÄri (red loam and gravel mounds) cultures of the southeastern tip of Tamil Nadu with that of Sri Lanka. (Noons, Zeuner, Deraniyagala and a host of other scholars)

The prehistoric people have not simply disappeared, but it is misleading historiography to link the âaboriginal inhabitantsâ of Sri Lanka only with the formation of Sinhalese as projected in the Encyclopedia Britannica version. Even though the Veddas are said to be the direct descendants, the genetics and physical anthropology of the said prehistoric strain are at the substratum of every native ethnicity in Sri Lanka and the ethnicities on the other side of the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannaar too.

This is a common anthropological heritage not only to Sinhalese, Eezham Tamils and a large majority of Muslims in Sri Lanka, but also to the Hill Country Tamils of Sri Lanka, for they have come in the 19th century from the same region of Tamil Nadu and through the same route of that of the prehistoric people.

The culture that marked the phase between the end of prehistory and the beginning of history (appearance of readable written documents) in the island of Sri Lanka is what has been termed today as the Megalithic Culture.

In the Sri Lankan context it began around the early centuries of the first millennium BCE and continued to the dawn of the Common Era, overlapping in its later stages with the advent of Buddhism and appearance of phonetic writing.

Recent researches have shown the wide prevalence of this culture in the length and breadth of the island. The scholarly perception today is that it was the Megalithic Culture that was at the genesis of urbanization, civilization and the rise of states in Sri Lanka.

Kantarodai in the north, Anuradhapura in the centre and Mahagama in the south were some of the first urban centres, (Vimala Begley, Allchin, Kennady, Coningham, SPF Seneratne, Deraniyagala, Sudharshan Seneviratne, Indrapala, Sitrampalam and Ragupathy)

It is an established archaeological fact that the Megalithic Culture is predominantly a South Indian phenomenon of the first millennium BCE. Its prevalence, and absence of any other cultural trait in Sri Lanka before the advent of Buddhism, makes it difficult to perceive the so-called Indo-Aryan mass migration directly from North India, bringing Sinhala people to the island.

Indo-Aryan and Dravidian are rather linguistic terms in connotations and it is misleading to use them to people of that times who left us with no objective evidence of the language or languages they spoke.

The arrival of Buddhism in mid third century BCE, by the efforts of the Mauryan Emperor Asoka is a historical fact. Written evidences in the form of Brahmi inscriptions, providing the first objective information on the ethnicities of Sri Lanka, also appear around the same time.

The alphabet of these Brahmi inscriptions has both traits: Tamil Brahmi as well as Asokan Brahmi. The language of these inscriptions is largely Prakrit, intermixed with Dravidian terms. Sinhalese at this stage was yet to evolve as an identifiable language.

The genetic relationship between the Prakrits of India and Proto-Dravidian is another area that is yet to receive satisfactory attention from scholars.

There is no mention of the word Sinhala or Sinhala ethnicity in the thousand odd short inscriptions that come to us from this time. On the contrary, a vast majority of the host of clan names and titles that we come across in these inscriptions only show affinities with the clans of the ancient Tamil country (Sudharshan Seneviratne and Indrapala).

There are also instances in these inscriptions where individuals identified themselves as Tamils, made donations to the Buddhist order.

What is inferred is that the people who eventually identified themselves as Sinhala have not come from any distant land. They largely belonged to the same substratum of the people of the neighbouring peninsular India, shared similar cultural sequences and gradually evolved into a distinct ethnicity, similar to that of the ethno linguistic identities next to them.

The continued popularity of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, even when it disappeared in peninsular India and the resultant influence of Pali, which is one of the Prakrits, rendered a different hue to the Sinhala-Buddhist formation.

A definable Sinhala-Buddhist identity along with its associated myths appear for the first time only in the Pali chronicles, DÄ«pavaá¹sa and MahÄvaá¹sa, dateable to 4th-5th century CE. Even such a literature, which projects Tamils as invaders, could not help linking the Pandyas of southern Tamil country in the genesis of Sinhalese in Sri Lanka.

The mythical hero of the chronicles and his associates, said to have come from an unidentified location of the sub-continent, brought wives from the Pandyan country and the descendants were the Sinhalese.

The historical projections of these Buddhist chronicles; compelled by their sectarian needs, loaded with myths and talking of events several centuries prior to their compilations need to be carefully screened before considering them for the writing of objective history.

The earliest written forms of Sinhala, i.e., SÄ«yaá¸·a and SÄ«haá¸·a are rather geographical than ethnic when they first appear in the inscriptions outside of Sri Lanka in the early centuries CE. A little earlier, at the dawn of the Common Era, the word Eezham appear, again outside of Sri Lanka in a Tamil Brahmi inscription and in the Changkam literature.

SÄ«haá¸·a, SÄ«yaá¸·a, Eezha, Iá¸·a, Eá¸·u and Hela seem to be early geographical terms of the island. Maldivians traditionally referred to Sri Lanka as Eá¸·u-dhoo-karaa (the land of Eá¸·u island). Lanka is another geographical term, which simply meant island, probably in aborigine language.

The geographical terms, which in attributed sense stood for anyone who belonged to the island, came to be viewed as exclusive ethnic terms with the polarization of identities. While Eezham became popular with Tamils for the geographical identity, Sinhala became the ethnic identity of the Sinhalese.

The Tamil identity is peculiar in this respect, by basing itself on language and not confining to the general pattern of South Asia where geography is the basis for the ethno linguistic identities.

What is seen from the evidences is that the Eezham Tamil identity of Sri Lanka was not only parallel to the Sinhala identity but also parallel to that of the Tamils of Tamil Nadu.

It is not merely an extension of the Tamil identity of Tamil Nadu. The Eezham Tamil social formation is an evolution and is a result of people interacting with the land of Sri Lanka throughout its phases of history.

A person who caused the writing of a Tamil Brahmi inscription, dateable to the dawn of the Common Era, at Thirupparangkunâram in Tamil Nadu styled himself as Eezha Kudumpikan (the house-holder from Eezham). Another, a poet of the Changkam literature also was titled as Eezhaththu Poothan Theavanaar (the Poothan Theavan of Eezham). The need for these Tamils to assert to their Eezham identity in Tamil Nadu is significant in perceiving the parallel development.

The Eezham Tamil formation was an active partner in the affairs of the state, economy and culture of the island throughout its history. Among the rulers of Sri Lanka there were some Tamils and many with Tamil connections. There were Tamil generals on the side of the Sinhala rulers who fought against invasions and imperial rule of the South Indian dynasties.

Historical developments eventually led the Eezham Tamil formation and the Sinhala formation to polarize separate geographical regions for them and to have separate kingdoms after 13th century CE. There are no evidences that they either waged war or competed on ethnic grounds during this phase. Confrontations were feudal but not cultural. 

Tamil and Saivism received patronage even in the Sinhalese kingdoms without any animosity. The king of Kotte, Bhuvanehabahu VII, signed the treaty with the Portuguese in Tamil. At the fall of the last kingdom of Kandy to the British, one of the Kandian Chieftains, Ratwatta Disawa, the ancestor of Srimao Bandaranayake, signed the treaty in Tamil.

Modern concepts of nationalism based on language, religion, ethnicity etc have come to us especially through British colonialism. 

History, which was evolved as a modern academic discipline in the 19th century Europe to become a handmaid of nationalism and imperialism also was introduced to us by this time.

The colonial Orientalist scholars, who were enthusiastic to invent Indo-Aryan cousins in this part of the world, created enough myths in that process for Brahminism in India and Sinhala-Buddhist elitism in Sri Lanka.

The partiality in historiography brought in new social gaps, confrontations and competition.

It should be noted that none of those Orientalist scholars who translated and brought to light the Sanskrit texts and Buddhist cannons ever attempted to do the same to the Tamil texts. The ancient Tamil texts had to wait for Tamil scholars like Arumuga Navalar, Thamotharam Pillai and Saminathaiyar to see the light of publication. They still wait for a comprehensive translation.

The Tamil and Sinhala formations would have been understood by each other and by outsiders in a better sense, had culture studies been comparative than divisive. An example is that even today we donât have a comparative etymological dictionary between Tamil and Sinhala. The combination of Orientalism and nationalism in Sri Lanka chose the path of being exclusive than inclusive.

The combined result of the forces at work was the mischievous oversimplification of Sri Lankan History that the Sinhalese are Indo-Aryans who came from North India in the 6th century BCE and the Dravidian Tamils are later migrants who came as invaders, traders and mercenaries to snatch a part of the promised land of the Sinhalese away.

For that matter, late Tamil and Malayalee migrants can be found more among the Sinhalese, especially among their elite, as was with the case of the ancestors of the Bandaranayake and Jeyawardane families (James T. Rutnam).

To conclude in the words of a noted Sri Lankan historian, Prof. Leslie Gunawardana:

âIt is important to note that the Aryan theory was not merely something imposed from above by Orientalist scholars. It was eagerly welcomed by most Sinhala scholars who found the Aryan theory flattering in that it elevated them to the ranks of the kinsmen of their rulersâ (Colonialism, Ethnicity and the Construction of the Past, 1994)

dhu · (This post was last modified: 07-25-2008, 10:39 AM by dhu.)

QUOTEHideyoshiâs Imperial Pretensions: Believed himself chosen by heavenâMencius thought. He had unified Japanâdetermined to unify all Asia including India. Letters sent to Philippines, Ryukyu, Taiwan, Ming, Choson all reveal intent to take all of Asia, by conquest if necessary. Hideyoshi regarded Korea and Ryukyu to be vassal states of Japan.

Requested that Korea allow Japanese armies free passage to China. Attacked Korea when response delayed. (see map) link

It's probably time to take these previous developments to unify Asia seriously, instead of dismissing them as feudal, premodern, etc. Was there a role for Buddhism?

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