<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Nov 2 2006, 12:16 PM-->QUOTE(ramana @ Nov 2 2006, 12:16 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->So at the root the AIT is about the non-Semetic (code Judeo-Christian) origins of the European people and the struggle with Western Christianity. AIT will be dumped only if there is an alternate theory or a higher intellectual evolution of the European mind beyond Western Christianity.
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No its different. Its an end-result of what they call 'renaissance' - the act of secularizing and normalizing xtianity.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->No its different. Its an end-result of what they call <b>'renaissance' - the act of secularizing and normalizing xtianity</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please clarify the bold part. What exactly does that mean?
Renaissance was already full developed before the AIT was propounded. I submit that AIT allowed Western Europe to break free from the shackles of J-C Western Christianity. One needs to understnad the Pope Benedict's recent speech about faith and reason and how they contributed to Western Christianity.
Has anyone figured out if the Aryans were from the Steppes then how come the Russians were considered backward?
11-03-2006, 04:57 AM (This post was last modified: 11-03-2006, 05:04 AM by Husky.)
Many of the believers in IE have been and continue to be Christians. To say that it is anti-christian is not right, although non-christians from Europe have used it as such well.
The reason that IE still fits in with Christianity is because of Replacement Theology: Christians believe their religion is valid in spite of serious doctrinal differences with the Old Testament (Judaism), because they think they have the New Covenant with gawd: the New Testament. They believe that their religion has effectively replaced Judaism, which is why they didn't and don't understand why Jews don't convert and why they have always thought it okay to genocide the Jews whose existence and standing vis-a-vis the biblical god the supposed NT has nullified anyway.
Replacement Theology was also the natural outcome of their self-created envy about Jews being the Chosen People of the biblical deity. Their new covenant also allowed them to break the commandments set by their gawd in the OT (circumcision, and upholding the laws of the Judaic deity) and allowed anyone to convert without having to become Jewish themselves. The early Jewish followers of a Jesus (Ebionites, wrongly called Jewish 'Christians') who still exist, insist on circumcision and following their God's laws. They've also always been a thorn in the side of Christianity because their existence during the early centuries of Christianity (and today) also keep disproving this fraud of a religion.
Belief in IE does not negate the belief of that 'universal' religion christianity: anyone of any background can become christian, and it allows the upper hand in religion to christians over anything Jews might have. Look at how WASPYs believe the US is the Promised Land and they are now the Chosen People because they hold to the imaginary new covenant. Many neonazi movements, in the US at least, are actually completely christian movements. A documentary on them showed some WASPy children make a chalk-drawing of the hakenkreuz (the famous nazi symbol) and dance around it singing some lame songs to jeebus creepus.
The devoutly christian and racist KKK also believes their White racial group is god's gift to humanity. That was even before their acceptance of IE, but IE now fits in well with their views.
11-03-2006, 06:07 AM (This post was last modified: 11-03-2006, 06:10 AM by Husky.)
Also, Christian theologians have a tendency to argue, after a new theory or fact has been established in science, that the bible always stated or supported the same discovery or at least that it does not contradict the bible. Christos initially fight, tooth and nail, every idea thrown up in science. Then, when they can no longer keep their flock from buying into the facts or ideas contrary to the contents of the bible, they argue that 'the bible always said so'.
Secularism, religious tolerance, non-violence, respect for animals, anti-racism, rational thinking, scientific endeavours are all non-christian and opposed by the bible's teachings and church doctrine for centuries (some of them for millennia). Whenever the church lost out to common sense, they 're-interpreted' scripture to say that 'yes, the bible has always advocated secularism'. And then in time they pretend that christianity gave rise to secularism. To be fair, modern western secularism <i>is</i> in consequence to christianity: it arose as a way of preventing another genocidal war between protestants and catholics. In truth, secular Europeans gave rise to the idea that belief (or disbelief) is every man's private affair. Until then, the church had insisted that a person's belief was indeed the church's holy affair.
Christianity's habit of appropriating all contrary teachings that it cannot defeat is another hallmark of this religion. Anything that is popular or popularly accepted, it has to lay claim to. This is where IE studies fits in as well. Also illustrated in chapter 17 of <i>A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom</i> by Andrew Dickson White (referred to by Mudy earlier). http://www.infidels.org/library/historical.../Chapter17.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->There was much wrangling, but little earnest controversy. Here and there theologians were calling out frantically, beseeching the Church to save the old doctrine as "essential to the truth of Scripture"; here and there other divines began to foreshadow the inevitable compromise which has always been thus vainly attempted in the history of every science. But it was soon seen by thinking men that no concessions as yet spoken of by theologians were sufficient. In the latter half of the century came the bloom period of the French philosophers and encyclopedists, of the English deists, of such German thinkers as Herder, Kant, and Lessing; and while here and there some writer on the theological side, like Perrin, amused thinking men by his flounderings in this great chaos, all remained without form and void.[192] <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->While at the middle of the nineteenth century the theory of the origin and development of language was upon the continent considered as settled, and a well-ordered science had there emerged from the old chaos, Great Britain still held back, in spite of the fact that the most important contributors to the science were of British origin. Leaders in every English church and sect vied with each other, either in denouncing the encroachments of the science of language or in explaining them away.
But a new epoch had come, and in a way least expected. Perhaps the most notable effort in bringing it in was made by Dr. Wiseman, afterward Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. His is one of the best examples of a method which has been used with considerable effect during the latest stages of nearly all the controversies between theology and science. It consists in stating, with much fairness, the conclusions of the scientific authorities, and then in persuading one's self and trying to persuade others that the Church has always accepted them and accepts them now as "additional proofs of the truth of Scripture." A little juggling with words, a little amalgamation of texts, a little judicious suppression, a little imaginative deduction, a little unctuous phrasing, and the thing is done. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Other examples of this (parts of this) process which are given in the same link:
- the consecutive paragraphs starting with "Nothing better reveals to us the darkness and duration of this chaos..." and ending with "making short work of the sacred theory--in fact, throwing it overboard entirely."
- And
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->On the other hand, the more thoughtful men in the Church endeavoured to save something from the wreck of the old system by a compromise. They attempted to prove that Hebrew is at least a cognate tongue with the original speech of mankind, if not the original speech itself; but here they were confronted by the authority they dreaded most--the great Christian scholar, Sir William Jones himself. His words were: "I can only declare my belief that the language of Noah is irretrievably lost. After diligent search I can not find a single word used in common by the Arabian, Indian, and Tartar families, before the intermixture of dialects occasioned by the Mohammedan conquests."
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->This constant process that Christianity goes through - from denying new theories/facts to compromising with them little by little, until they were finally 180 degrees from the biblical teaching (at which point the church and christianity appropriate the discovery as their own) - is also evident in the belief that (1) Adam was the first to write (2) Adam impossible, therefore Moses was first give writing to the world (3) Both are impossible, have to settle for what science has shown ('but gawd still gave writing to man somehow.') This example is also from Dickson White.
This does not mean I support the 'discoveries' of IE philology or linguistics, it's only to show the pattern of the Church's behaviour when dealing with increasingly popular beliefs (IE) or with the discoveries of actual facts.
Very quickly while that may be true in what christos do, AIT is through and through bible - it originated in bible and has always followed what the current theological debates. Theologicians spent hours and hours pondering over what was the adamite language and the tower of babel and which of today's language was the closest to the ursprache.
Jones, Muller, Dubois, Leibniz - all they did was work within this framework. The debates were -> yindoos are japhetic or hametic ? Mullers whole argument was due to language yindoos lost the monotheistic concept (due to dynamism/creativity/etc) while jews being desert dwellers didnt have much to do and werent that creative in any way so they were able to hold on to the original monotheism.
11-03-2006, 07:12 AM (This post was last modified: 11-03-2006, 07:13 AM by Husky.)
Rajesh_g, I do concur. The example I chose (the particular chapter of Andrew Dickson White) was an unfortunate one, I should have chosen education and medicine as examples instead. But the stuff that I highlighted in blue in my previous post is generally true, in that it showcases the process that Christianity indulges in.
Theologians don't just appropriate <i>full-fledged</i> ideas, because sometimes different members of the church jump on the bandwagon of any discovery <i>early</i> on - not because they believe in it (though they may sometimes), but because they want to control its direction, making sure it does not drift too far away from biblical teachings.
So, even as Voltaire and some others hoped the ancientry of India's languages might be the undoing of the stifling grip Christianity had over Europe which prevented progress, indologists loyal to the one true religion (I don't mean islam, I mean the <i>other</i> one true religion, christianity) saw that 'field' of philology after Samskritam's discovery ought to still be controlled by injecting biblical nonsense into it. After all, the initial inclinations of 'philology' - whatever there was of this before Samskritam - were entirely based on the bible too.
Do agree that the AIT is christian in origin, being founded on the bible. I'd say that IE studies most definitely is too - in origin, even if IE has taken on an independent life at times.
There are some arguments that can be made that IE studies was used to pave another path than the christian one, but that is afterwards. There are arguments, that are at least as valid, for IE having had strong christian impulses throughout the field's history. In either case, IE serves and has served all these purposes. Look at the Indian communists clinging to the AIT, even as that Roger Pearson you mentioned (founder of the anti-communist league) did the same. IE today is flexible enough, probably because it is vague enough.
But no doubt we will eventually see christians trying to extricate their lame religion from being culpable for the AIT, arguing that the secularists or anybody else were to blame for it and its evils. Just like a WASPy reviewer (highlighted in acharya's post) argued that racism and race theories were not christian inventions but blamed the Jews instead.
There is Christianity and then there is the Church. Starting from renaissance you will see the grip of church being weakened however xtianity's hold is as strong as ever. Voltaire didnt want xtianity to weaken, he wanted the church to weaken. This is 'renaissance' in action. This struggle between church and xtianity still continues today. I see benedicts stmts that Ramana mentions just an attempt to reestablish the church.
In other words as much as we might see some disagreements we have to see the meta-issues and realise that this whole thing is within the biblical framework.
11-03-2006, 09:32 AM (This post was last modified: 11-03-2006, 10:19 AM by Husky.)
I see. Hope that when you have the time you will post about this in more detail.
About Voltaire, was he not a French Deist (as opposed to mainstream English/American Deism)? Was he still proposing a form of Christianity: the religion minus the church? I'll have to go over his stuff that I read, but from memory I thought he was a free-thinker. But then, most in Europe are after all conditioned by christianity and to some extent it is inextricable from their outlook. That might well include Voltaire. Western secularism itself was an anti-christian movement that makes little sense outside of a christoislamic milieu.
Concerning Benedict the 16th's recent statements, they are most definitely the Roman Church's attempt to reach out the typical christo hand of 'reconciliation' to wayward Europe: a 'compromise' only at its most superficial level, consisting of round-about words on reason and faith, where reason is still expected to submit to faith on everything.
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In other words as much as we might see some disagreements we have to see the meta-issues and realise that this whole thing is within the biblical framework.
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In the last 40 years there is an attempt to bring the all the ideas under the Christian biblical meta framework. AIT and everything else is being brought under this framework.
But the actual architecture of this framework is fuzzy and looks more like medival christian Europe which is oppressive.
At the same time Christian Occident was shaken by the first words of sanskrit, imported along with spices in the pouches of Italian, English and French Jesuits towards the end of sixteenth century. This may have led at the conclusion of the eighteenth century to the invention of Indo European idea. Finally reformation and counter reformation contributed to the remodelling of intellectual and political landscapes, defining hutherto unheard of rules for reading the Bible, and thus eventually permitting other approches, new observation of natural and cultural data and prompting the dawn of new language.
11-03-2006, 10:40 PM (This post was last modified: 11-03-2006, 10:41 PM by acharya.)
Europe, or How to Escape Babel
Maurice Olender
History and Theory, Vol. 33, No. 4, Theme Issue 33: Proof and Persuasion in History (Dec., 1994), pp. 5-25
11-03-2006, 10:44 PM (This post was last modified: 11-03-2006, 11:02 PM by acharya.)
Europe, or How to Escape Babel
MAURICE OLENDER
History and Theory, Theme Issue 33 December,1994), 5-25
Since William Jones announced the kinship of Sanskrit and the European languages, a massive body of scholarship has illuminated the development of the so-called "Indo-European" language group. This new historical philology has enormous technical achievements to its credit. But almost from the start, it became entangled with prejudices and myths--with efforts to recreate not only the lost language, but also the lost--and superior--civilization of the Indo-European ancestors. This drive to determine the identity and nature of the first language of humanity was deeply rooted in both near eastern and western traditions. <span style='color:red'>The Bible described the perfect, transparent language of Adam and followed its degeneration, caused by human sin, into the multiple, opaque languages of later nations. </span>The three sons of Noah became, for Jewish and early Christian writers, the founders of three distinct human groups. By the sixth and seventh centuries, historians began to magnify the deeds of certain later peoples, such as the Scythians and Goths, and to connect them with the biblical genealogy of languages and races. And in the Renaissance, speculative historical etymology took root and flourished, as national pride led European intellectuals to assert that their own modern languages--for example, Flemish--either could be identified with the original one or offered the closest surviving approximation to it. Japheth, Noah's favorite son and the forefather of the Europeans, emerged as the hero who had preserved the original language in its purity. A new history of the European languages developed, one which traced them back to the language of the barbarian Scythians and emphasized the connections between Persian and European languages. It came to seem implausible that the European languages derived from Hebrew. By the eighteenth century, in short, all the preconditions were present for a discovery that the ancestors of the Europeans, like the common ancestor of their languages, had been independent of Semitic influence. <span style='color:red'>A modern scholarly thesis whose political and intellectual consequences are still working themselves out reveals the continuing impact of a millennial tradition of speculation about language and history.
</span> http://www.wesleyan.edu/histjrnl/archives/dec94.html
11-03-2006, 10:50 PM (This post was last modified: 11-04-2006, 03:43 AM by acharya.)
<span style='color:red'>They want to connect Sanskrit the pure language with Adam, the Origin of Bible and Noah to create the new history of Christianity which will make the religion perfect.</span>
There is only one obstacle for this. They need to destroy the link between Sanskrit, Indus valley civilization and Hindus and the Indian sub continent.
THUS ARYAN INVASION THEORY WAS CONCOCTED
The speculation of the language and history is millennium years old. This will not go away if anybody thinks so since the full history of the Christianity is still incomplete.
The "AIT more to it than meets the eye" has to be updated to include the Olender refs and the message that AIT is about the Europeans and the Christianity find its universal message. This essay has to be published in short one two page versions in every forum.
The big picture is that Indians should leave the Europeans to argue among themselves about the AIT and whatever in order to find themselves and be out of the AIT issue.
11-04-2006, 09:37 AM (This post was last modified: 11-04-2006, 09:52 AM by Husky.)
Post 156 (Acharya),
that does make sense (although I never saw it coming). It explains a lot of puzzling things: why western universities are teaching Samskritam but not extinct Gothic, for instance.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The big picture is that Indians should leave the Europeans to argue among themselves about the AIT and whatever in order to find themselves and be out of the AIT issue.
Let Indians be out of the AIT.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Agreed. Want Indians, Hinduism, to be let out of IE-theory as well. That won't happen unless they let go of Samskritam. And if Acharya is correct, that won't happen at all.
<b>EDIT:</b>
Post 156 again:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->There is only one obstacle for this. They need to destroy the link between Sanskrit, Indus valley civilization and Hindus and the Indian sub continent.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->But won't this take time? What is the time-frame that you estimate they are allocating to this plan?
And it will have witnesses. Bible-mad believers all over the world won't suddenly take to Samskritam having been the divine language all along when there are still people around that remember it belonged to Hinduism and Hindu India. How will they avoid this problem?
Also, not a single ancient document outside of India that is not of Hindu, Dharmic (Indian) origin is in Samskritam. Manichaean literature can be traced back to Hindu and Buddhist influence on Persian ideas in this form of 'christian' heresy.
How will they tie Samskritam back to Christianity after having divorced it from India? Christian literature has never been in Samskritam. Any translations they might do will only be recent, more than a millennium after the non-existent jeebus and thousands of years removed from Moses' and from the earlier Noah and Adam.
11-04-2006, 09:59 AM (This post was last modified: 11-04-2006, 10:01 AM by acharya.)
<!--QuoteBegin-Husky+Nov 3 2006, 04:07 PM-->QUOTE(Husky @ Nov 3 2006, 04:07 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Post 156 (Acharya),
that does make sense (although I never saw it coming). It explains a lot of puzzling things: why western universities are teaching Samskritam but not extinct Gothic, for instance.
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I was looking for some document which would explain this fascination for vedic and sanskrit studies in the western universities. This article from Olender clearly explains the reason. This search for explaining the origins has been going on for 300-400 years now.
There are signs that they may abondon this project and go back to evangelical christianity to liberate all humankind and make it the blessed religion in the world.
The reasons are that they are faltering in sanskrit and sanksrit skills in the universities.
But if they can wipe out sanskrit in India and all Indic traces to ancient past then they may not really need to explain the origin of their christian traditions since there will be no other competitor for origin. All humankind will beleive in Adam and Noah in 200-300 years! Converted Indians will claim that they are the blessed one since they preserved the original language as told in the Bible.
11-04-2006, 04:22 PM (This post was last modified: 11-24-2006, 11:12 PM by acharya.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->But if they can wipe out sanskrit in India and all Indic traces to ancient past then they may not really need to explain the origin of their christian traditions since there will be no other competitor for origin. All humankind will beleive in Adam and Noah in 200-300 years! Converted Indians will claim that they are the blessed one since they preserved the original language as told in the Bible.
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This might be happening already at some level, albeit in a slow seemingly inconsequential way - not so much toward wiping out sanskrit and the ancient texts, but to replace them with christian interpretations. There are efforts by evangelists to claim that some verses in the Vedas and the Gita were basically references to Jesus. The ''christian' yoga movement in the west might be another attempt at such effort - to remove the hindu aspect in the yoga and introduce the 'christian' elements into it. With the vast majority of Indians ignorant on the vedas and other ancient hindu scriptures, it won't be hard for christians and other anti-hindu groups to disconnect the hindu aspect from these texts and replace them with 'christian origins.'
That way, the concern may no longer be 'what is the origin' of sanskrit or the ancient texts, (or rather, the issue becomes no longer relevant); but the focus is the allegedly 'correct' interpretations of these texts; that is, from the christian point of view - the great language of sanskrit and the ancient texts all point to christianity in some ways.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>RACIST THEORY BEHIND GENOCIDE IN AFRICA</b>
<i>An African version of the infamous Aryan invasion theory propagated by missionaries and colonial rulers triggered the Hutu-Tutsi massacres </i>
Pankaj Saksena
(Edited with comments by N.S. Rajaram)
<b>Editor's introduction</b>: Most Indians are familiar with the Aryan invasion theory and its political misuse. Some are familiar also with its demolition by science, especially genetics, and the recent British admission that it was a political ploy used by them in their policy of divide and rule. While the theory has been fully discredited, some Western academics and their Indian followers are clinging to it out of concern for their academic survival. This was what was really behind the recent controversy over the California school curriculum. What most Indians, however, don't know is that the Aryan-Dravidian racial divide was only one instance of the colonial-missionary tactic of divide and rule combined with divide and convert.
A similar artificial division created in Africa was to have horrific consequences. The recent Hutu-Tutsi conflicts in which millions of lives were lost was a direct result of such a tactic applied by academics, colonial bureaucrats and missionaries as Pankaj Saksena's following account describes. (N.S.R.)
The concept of the Aryan invasion theory being the handiwork of British colonialists for the sake of proving the superiority of the European Caucasian races is not an isolated case. There exist similar theories in other parts of the world involving other nations and other (imaginary) ethnic groups as the following shows. One has to wonder why it has received so little attention from scholars. (Perhaps they are worried that their dubious record would be further damaged by the exposure of more such skeletons in their already rotten closet.)
When we look at the map of middle Africa, we see two little countries named Rwanda and Burundi, bordering on Zaire (or the Democratic Republic of Congo). The name Rwanda brings to mind in a flash the image of ethnic violence, civil war, military juntas and genocide on a horrific scale. Few Indians know the recent history of these unfortunate countries or the cause of their tragic history. As reported in the Western media, these countries are inhabited by two supposedly different ethnic groups, the so-called Hutus and Tutsis. The ethnic composition of these two countries is as follows.
Rwanda:Â Â Â Â Â Hutu 84%, Tutsi 15%, Twa (Pygmies) 1%
Burundi:Â Â Â Â Â Â Hutu 85%, Tutsi 14%, Twa 1%
In other words, their compositions hardly differ at all. But according to Western anthropologists, mainly colonial bureaucrats and missionaries, the Tutsies are supposed to be a Hamitic people, a race that was often intermixed with the whiter races of the North, notably from Ethiopia and Egypt, which in their turn were intermixed with some West Asiatic people, mainly the Hittites, by repeated invasions from the North. These people, the Tutsis, are supposed to have arrived from the North and not native to Rwanda.
<i>(The analogy to the invading Aryans is immediate and striking, but it doesn't stop here. Read on. N.S.R.) </i>
The majority of Hutus are said to be Bantu, of original African race, which spilled out from the middle of the West African coast of Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Cote d'Ivorie (Ivory Coast) and the inland countries of Burkina Faso and its neighbors.
In this scenario, which incidentally is contradicted by genetic analysis, Tutsis are foreign invaders or migrants (like the Aryans) in the Rwanda-Burundi region. The Hutus, like the Indian Dravidians, are said to be much older people, but not the original inhabitants. The original inhabitants are supposed to be the Pygmies (or Twa), who constitute barely 1 percent of the people. The really interesting part of the theory is the role of the Tutsi minority. They are made into a superior race of invaders, just like the Aryan invaders, and supposedly constitute the aristocratic elite and the oppressors of the Hutu majority.
According to this theory, the minority Tutsi have subjugated the indigenous, but not too indigenous (compared to the Pygmies) Hutus for centuries and forced them into inferior position of agriculture. Now the key notion: Hutus and Tutsis are really two completely separate races, with the 'black' Hutus forming the oppressed majority, and their relatively fairer invaders, the Tutsi, forming the oppressors.
This in essence is the Tutsi invasion theory, the African version of the Aryan invasion theory. The similarities are startling, even to the extent of the Dravidians in India being preceded by earlier inhabitants, the aborigines (so-called adi-vasis), who have their African counterpart in the Pygmies. So we have the African Pygmy-Hutu-Tutsi sequence corresponding to the Indian aborigines-Dravidian-Aryan scheme.
It is highly illustrative to look at the political evolution of this grotesque theory and its monstrous consequences. Until the coming of the Europeans, the Tutsis and the Hutus never saw themselves as different and were not engaged in any racial wars. With the European scramble for Africa, Rwanda-Burundi became part of the short-lived German East Africa. After Germany's defeat in the First World War, it became part of the Belgian colonies in Africa. This notion of the Tutsi-Hutu racial difference began to be drilled into the natives by colonial administrators, some academics (Witzel-types) and missionaries known as the Pere Blancs (White Fathers). They invented the Tutsi invasion theory and labeled the Hutus as the victims of Tutsi invasion and oppression.
It is worth noting that this period, between the two world wars, was the heyday of race theories in Europe. It seems the notion of superiority due to skin colorâreal or imagined as in this caseâis so deeply ingrained in the European psyche that they cannot get out of it. Its politics has collapsed, not due to any dawn of enlightenment on its proponents but the defeat of Nazi Germany. It has continued however in Western academia as Indo-European Studies and other guises.
As with the Aryan theories and their various offshoots, this Tutsi-Hutu division has no factual basis. They speak the same language, have a long history of intermarriage and have many cultural characteristics in common. Most differences are regional rather than racial, which they were not aware of until the Europeans made it part of their politics and propaganda.
The division if any was occupational. Agriculturists were called Hutu while the cattle owning elite were referred to as Tutsi. The Tutsi, like the Indian Aryans, were supposed to be tall, thin and fair, while the Hutu were described as short, black and squatâ just as the Indian Dravidians are said to be. Since the Tutsi today don't fit this description, scholars claimed that their invading ancestors did. They offered no proof but, being based on no evidence, cannot be disproved either. In fact, it is impossible today to tell the two people apart. They are separate because government records carried over from the colonial days say so. (More of this below.)
This imaginary racial difference was emphasized by colonial officials during Belgian rule. The Belgian Government forced everyone to carry an identity card showing tribal ethnicity as Hutu or Tutsi. This was used in administration, in providing lands, positions, and otherwise for playing power politics based on race. This divisive politics combined with the racial hatred sowed by the invasion theory turned Rwanda-Burundi into a powder keg ready to explode.
The explosion occurred, following independence form colonial rule. Repeated violence after independence fueled this hatred based on this supposed ethnic difference and the concocted history of the Tutsi invasion and oppression. Some 2.5 million people were massacred in this fratricidal horror of wars and genocides. Unscrupulous African leaders, like the so-called Dravidian leaders of India, have exploited this divisive colonial legacy to gain power at the cost of the people. Hutu leaders described the Tutsis as cockroaches, telecasting their tirades against the Tutsis on the radio during the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis. This led ordinary Hutus to massacre the Tutsis en masse in a bid to annihilate them completely.
So a peaceful, placid nation with a common populace, with a common language, culture and history was destroyed by colonialist, racist concoction called the Tutsi Invasion Theoryâ entirely the handiwork of colonial bureaucrats, missionaries and Witzel-like pseudo-scholars.
It is of course no coincidence that ideas that led to the Holocaust in Europe should have led to genocide in Africa. The disgrace is that they have found a home in Western academia in various guises, ready to come out of the closet at an opportune moment, as for instance during the recent California school curriculum controversy.
Why should we learn all this? Because the Tutsi Invasion Theory has ominous parallels to the Aryan Invasion Theory which Witzelite pseudo-scholars are trying desperately to save in the name of linguistics, Indo-European Studies or some such fig-leaf. Also, ethnic tension and violence, thankfully not on the same horrific scale, was incited between North- and South Indians by self-styled Dravidian parties like the DMK, AIDMK and their many offshoots and incarnations. These are the poisonous legacy of the colonial-missionary racist offspring.
Why did India not go the way of Rwanda-Burundi? Not for lack of trying but because the cultural legacy of Hinduism proved too strong. It defeated the designs of politicians and propagandists masquerading as scholars. It is no coincidence that Rwanda and Burundi had been converted to Christianity, carrying with it the message of intolerance. But there is no room for complacency. The anti-Hindu politicians of India and the Marxist-missionary academia have come together to defend the Aryan-Dravidian divide. They have been joined by the Witzelites, concerned for their academic survival.
Their failure in Hindu India is also what is behind the visceral anti-Hinduism of the Witzelites. This is enhanced by the fact that Hindu scholars have been at the forefront of exposing their designs and scholarly pretensions.
The Witzelite brand of pseudo-scholarship cannot survive once the Aryan theories end up in the dustbin where they belong. They have found useful stooges in Indian politics and academia. They no longer engage in debate but in name calling. Any opposition to the Aryan invasion is denounced as emotional, chauvinistic, and the handiwork of Hindu nationalists and fundamentalists. Like the artificial Aryan-Dravidian divide, the Tutsi-Hutu divide is also denied by respectableânon-Witzeliteâscholarship, including Western scholarship. Are we to denounce theseâand a million Tutsi victims of the genocidesâas the handiwork of these nationalistic chauvinistic Tutsis who deserved their fate?Â
The answer lies in the correct reading of the indigenous history through the various new tools available today, from science, genetics and archaeology. It calls for the deconstruction of the colonial edifice that has promoted this racist, hate filled theories to appeal to the vanity of a few and help the careers of some pseudo-scholars. Above all, it calls for exposing the charlatans who fatten on the misery of victims of colonial horrors carrying pompous names like anthropology, Indo-European Studies and the like. These are the parasites of colonialism.
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