Post-colonial Indology

Post-colonial Indology was political at all levels
By Dr NS Rajaram
Organiser Weekly

In this academic and political conundrum it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the Aryan myth is a modern European creation. It has little to do with ancient India. The word Arya appears for the first time in the Rig Veda, India’s oldest text. Its meaning is obscure but it seems to refer to members of a settled agricultural community.

Ever since he moved to Harvard from Germany, Witzel has seen the fortunes of his department and his field, gradually sink into irrelevance. Problems at Harvard are part of a wider problem in Western academia in the field of Indo-European Studies. As previously noted, several ‘Indology’ departments-as they are sometimes called-are shutting down across Europe.

Max Müller’s career illustrates how Indology and Sanskrit studies in the West have always been associated with politics at all levels. He was by no means the only ‘diplomatist’ scholar gracing colonial Indology, only the most successful. It is remarkable that though his contributions are all but forgotten, his political legacy endures. His successors in Europe and America have been reduced to play politics at a much lower level, but in India, his theories have had unexpected fallout in the rise of Dravidian politics. It is entirely proper that while his scholarly works (save for translations) have been consigned to the dustbin of history, his legacy endures in politics. This may prove to be true of Indology as a whole as an academic discipline.

Post colonial scene: passing of the Aryan gods

The post colonial era may conveniently be dated to 1950. In 1947 India became free and the great Aryan ‘Thousand Year Reich’ lay in ashes. In Europe at least the word Aryan came to acquire an infamy comparable to the word Jehadi today. Europeans, Germans in particular, were anxious to dissociate themselves from it. But there remained a residue of pre-war Indology (and associated race theories) that in various guises succeeded in establishing itself in academic centers mainly in the United States. Its most visible spokesman in recent times has been one Michael Witzel, a German expatriate like Max Müller, teaching in the Sanskrit Department at Harvard University in the United States. In an extraordinary replay of Max Müller’s political flip-flops Witzel too is better known for his political and propaganda activities than any scholarly contributions. Witzel’s recent campaigns, from attempts to introduce Aryan theories in California schools to his ill-fated tour of India where his scholarly deficiencies were exposed in public highlight the dependence of Indology on politics.

While the field of Indo-European Studies has been struggling to survive on the fringes of academia, lately it has become the subject critical analysis by scholars in Europe and America. Unlike Indians who treat the field and its practitioners with a degree of respect, European scholars have not hesitated to call a spade a spade, treating it as a case of pathological scholarship with racist links to Nazi ideology. This may be attributed to the fact that Europeans have seen and experienced its horrors while Indians have only read about it.

In a remarkable article, "Aryan Mythology As Science And Ideology" (Journal of the American Academy of Religion 1999; 67: 327-354) the Swedish scholar Stefan Arvidsson raises the question: "Today it is disputed whether or not the downfall of the Third Reich brought about a sobering among scholars working with ‘Aryan’ religions." We may rephrase the question: "Did the end of the Nazi regime put an end to race based theories in academia?"

An examination of several humanities departments in the West suggests otherwise: following the end of Nazism, academic racism may have undergone a mutation but did not entirely disappear. Ideas central to the Aryan myth resurfaced in various guises under labels like Indology and Indo-European Studies. This is clear from recent political, social and academic episodes in places as far apart as Harvard University and the California State Board of Education. But there was an interregnum of sorts before Aryan theories again raised their heads in West.

Two decades after the end of the Nazi regime, racism underwent another mutation as a result of the American Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King. Thanks to the Civil Rights Movement, Americans were made to feel guilty about their racist past and the indefensible treatment of African Americans. U.S. academia also changed accordingly and any discourse based on racial stereotyping became taboo. Soon this taboo came to be extended to Native Americans, Eskimos and other ethnic groups.

In this climate of seeming liberal enlightenment, one race theory continued to flourish as if nothing had changed. Theories based on the Aryan myth that formed the core of Nazi ideology continued in various guises, as previously noted, in Indology and Indo-European Studies. Though given a linguistic and sometimes a cultural veneer, these racially sourced ideas continue to enjoy academic respectability in such prestigious centers as Harvard and Chicago.

Being a European transplant, its historical trajectory was different from the one followed by American racism. Further, unlike the Civil Rights Movement, which had mass support, academic racism remained largely confined to academia. This allowed it to escape public scrutiny for several decades until it clashed with the growing Hindu presence in the United States. Indians, Hindus in particular saw Western Indology and Indo-European Studies as a perversion of their history and religion and a thinly disguised attempt to prejudice the American public, especially the youth, against India and Hinduism to serve their academic interests.

The fact that Americans of Indian origin are among the most educated group ensured that their objections could not be brushed away by ‘haughty dismissals’ as the late historian of science Abraham Seidenberg put it. Nonetheless, scholars tried to use academic prestige as a bludgeon in forestalling debate, by denouncing their adversaries as ignorant chauvinists and bigots unworthy of debate. But increasingly, hard evidence from archaeology, natural history and genetics made it impossible to ignore the objections of their opponents, many of whom (like this writer) were scientists. But in November 2005, there came a dramatic denouement, in, of all places, California schools. Academics suddenly found it necessary to leave their ivory towers and fight it out in the open, in full media glare- and under court scrutiny.

It is unnecessary to go into the details of the now discredited campaign by Michael Witzel and his associates trying to stop the removal of references to the Aryans and their invasion from California school books. What is remarkable is that a senior tenured professor at Harvard of German origin should concern himself with how Hinduism is taught to children in California. Witzel is a linguist, but he presumed to tell California schools how Hinduism should be taught to children. It turned out that Hinduism was only a cover, and his concern was saving the Aryan myth from being erased from books.

Ever since he moved to Harvard from Germany, Witzel has seen the fortunes of his department and his field, gradually sink into irrelevance. Problems at Harvard are part of a wider problem in Western academia in the field of Indo-European Studies. As previously noted, several ‘Indology’ departments-as they are sometimes called-are shutting down across Europe. One of the oldest and most prestigious, at Cambridge University in England, has just closed down. This was followed by the closure of the equally prestigious Berlin Institute of Indology founded way back in 1821. Positions like the one Witzel holds (Wales Professor of Sanskrit) were created during the colonial era to serve as interpreters of India. They have lost their relevance and are disappearing from academia. This was the real story, not teaching Hinduism to California children.

Witzel’s California misadventure appears to have been an attempt to somehow save his pet Aryan theories from oblivion by making it part of Indian history and civilization in the school curriculum. Otherwise, it is hard to see why a senior, tenured professor at Harvard should go to all this trouble, lobbying California school officials to have its Grade VI curriculum changed to reflect his views.

To follow this it is necessary to go beyond personalities and understand the importance of the Aryan myth to Indo-European Studies. The Aryan myth is a European creation. It has nothing to do with Hinduism. The campaign against Hinduism was a red herring to divert attention from the real agenda, which was and remains saving the Aryan myth. Collapse of the Aryan myth means the collapse of Indo-European studies. This is what Witzel and his colleagues are trying to avert. For them it is an existential struggle.

Americans and even Indians for the most part are unaware of the enormous influence of the Aryan myth on European history and imagination. Central to Indo-European Studies is the belief-it is no more than a belief-that Indian civilization was created by an invading race of ‘Aryans’ from an original homeland somewhere in Eurasia or Europe. This is the Aryan invasion theory dear to Witzel and his European colleagues, and essential for their survival. According to this theory there was no civilization in India before the Aryan invaders brought it- a view increasingly in conflict with hard evidence from archaeology and natural history.

In this academic and political conundrum it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the Aryan myth is a modern European creation. It has little to do with ancient India. The word Arya appears for the first time in the Rig Veda, India’s oldest text. Its meaning is obscure but it seems to refer to members of a settled agricultural community. It later became an honorific and a form of address, something like ‘Gentleman’ in English or ‘Monsieur’ in French. Also, it was nowhere as important in India as it came to be in Europe. In the whole the Rig Veda, in all of its ten books, the word Arya appears only about forty times. In contrast, Hitler’s Mein Kampf uses the term Arya and Aryan many times more. Hitler did not invent it. The idea of Aryans as a superior race was already in the air- in Europe, not India.

Suggested Readings Below:

19th Century Paradigms @ http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/19th-century-paradigms.html

Invading Sacred @ http://worldmonitor.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/invading-the-sacred/

url: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=315&page=34

** An Aryan invader

http://newstodaynet.com/printer.php?id=18010
An Aryan invader from America - I
V. Sundaram

Professor Dr.Michael Witzel, a racist scholar wedded to the cause of Evangelization of India and the world (if that is feasible) and total distortion of Indian History, divorced from all known principles of classical historiography is now in Chennai city delivering lectures on the languages and cultures revealed by the Rigveda.

Yesterday he delivered his lecture at Madras Sanskrit College in Mylapore. I understand that he is delivering two lectures at the University of Madras and Roja Muthiah Library tomorrow. It is understood that he will be going to New Delhi in the next few days to deliver some more talks.

In my article in these columns in News Today on 20 February 2009, I had commented on the dubious academic credentials of Professor Witzel: ‘There is an organized gang of evangelical anti-Hindu academic gangsters in United States led by one Professor Witzel. Any one can see that he is a man with a closed mind on all things relating to Hindu Religion, Hindu Civilization, and Hindu Culture. He seems to be very upset (not intellectually but religiously and culturally in the evangelical sense or nonsense!) over the great initiative taken by Dr Nalini Rao and Dr Christopher Key Chapple to organize an international conference on Vedic Sarasvati Hindu Civilization at Los Angeles in June 2009. He has said ‘Whenever the Harappan or Indus civilization is relabeled ‘SINDHU-SARASVATI CIVILIZATION’, everyone involved in the field, if not the public, recognizes that he or she has stumbled into extremists HINDUTVA (Hindu nationalist and/or fundamentalist) Territory…. This being said, why—besides all-too-familiar Hindutva apologists including Subhash Kak, Nicholas Kusanas, BB Lal etc.—are a handful of major Western archaeologists including most notably Mark Kenoyer, Maurizio Tosi and Carl Lamberg-Karlovsky, taking path in the Conference? Certainly not because any of them would personally endorse the absurd ‘SINDHU-SARASVATI CIVILIZATION’ label in print—since they wouldn’t. Instead, to put it frankly, it is due to (1) money and (2) in some cases earlier access to Harappan Archaeological sites on the Indian side of the Indian-Pakistan divide. It takes enormous funds to run these conferences, doled out freely for honoraria and expenses (the invitees are flown in at huge expense by the rich NRIs (non-resident Indians) who fund them from Europe, India and the United States’ Evangelical academics like Professor Witzel are known internationally for their simple and Spartan living and tortuously complicated anti-Hindu thinking!”

Michael Witzel was born in 1943 at Schwiebus, Germany, now Poland. He studied Indology under Professors Paul Thieme, H. P. Schmidt, K. Hoffmann and J. Narten in Germany from 1965 to 1971. Later in 1972-73, he also studied under Mîmâmsaka Jununath Pundit in Nepal. From 1972 to 1978, he led the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project and the Nepal Research Centre at Kathamandu. Subsequently, he has taught at Tübingen (1972), Leiden (1978-1986), and at Harvard since 1986. He is Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University (USA).

Many well known Sanskrit scholars and responsible citizens in USA have told me that Witzel is a viciously brazen and brazenly vicious anti-Hindu evangelical racketeer. All this came to open public light in a Court of Law when an important Hindu Civil Rights case was fought in UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA. This case related to the textbook and educational material prepared by California State Board of Education (CBE) to teach Hindu civilization to 8th grade students. The legal complaint of Hindu Groups in California was that the school textbooks indoctrinate children with Abrahamic religions and teach biblical events as actual facts while treating Hinduism in a derogatory manner. It was also pointed out that the CBE failed to provide equal opportunities and equal representation to every religion and culture. CAPEEM (California Parents for the Equalisation of Education Materials) was formed to represent parents in California in a lawsuit against the State Board of Education.

It was clearly presented in the California court with irrefutable documentary evidence that this evangelical Professor Dr Witzel who was engaged as a consultant by CBE had worked with the Church in Colorado and even edited their Wikipedia entry to suppress the evangelical nature of the church. Asian Invasion Theory is Biblical and that is why Witzel and his anti-Hindu hate group cohorts support it. The intervention of Witzel and co. in California textbook content was part of a plan to induct Biblical beliefs into the curriculum. Witzel was a central figure in the motivated evangelical effort!

Harvard Donkey Trial pits Science against Creationism with Hindus on the side of Science and the Harvard professor Witzel, who has been some sort of a volunteer for a fanatical evangelical group in Colorado, on the side of Creationism. Witzel famously claimed that horses in India were donkeys in order to push the Biblical Japhetic Race Theory into textbooks.

CAPEEM (California Parents for the Equalisation of Education Materials) which is fighting the text book case, which I call Harvard Donkey Trial, served a number of subpoenas to various parties including textbook publishers, Hotmail, Dalit Freedom Network, Michael Witzel, Stanley Wolpert, Charles Munger, and Dalit Solidarity Forum operating out of St. Alban’s Church in New Jersey. The CAPEEM also sought documents from the officials of California Department of Education (CDE) and CBE. In the emerging discovery process, Witzel turned over some more documents including an email uncovering the fact that the CDE had conducted a secret meeting that was previously unheard of. This meeting with anti-Hindu groups was in addition to the secret meeting that CDE had conducted with Witzel and others.

CAPEEM also uncovered a link between Michael Witzel and Dalit Freedom Network (DFN), a group that operates out of a Church in Colorado. I have myself carefully scrutinized many of the e-mails sent by Witzel which are available on the internet. He coordinated his campaign with DFN and planned in advance the details of what would be spoken at meetings. Witzel also sent an email alerting DFN to the description of their organization on Wikipedia and stated that whenever he erased the description, it kept coming back. An office bearer of DFN followed up on this email by saying that she did not want to ‘start being identified as a missions organization’ and wanted to know if they could edit it themselves. (Source: http://capeem.org). All this goes to show that Professor Dr.Michael Witzel is an unabashed evangelist who endeavours to be singularly unscrupulous just in order to be magnificently successful in his underground evangelical mission!!

I asked Dr Kalyanaraman as to what he has to say about Professor Witzel’s views on Hindu Culture: ‘Michael Witzel is a controversial person for his association with Christian evangelical churches and his contribution to a journal started by Roger Pearson who is the founder of a Nazi group named Northern League. He is also a believer of the discredited Aryan Invasion Theory which has its origins in the Biblical belief that everyone on earth today is a descendant of one of the three sons of Noah and hence came from Central Asia. The most recent controversy he was embroiled in was at Harvard when he taught the Devanagari alphabet as one of his courses for doctoral candidates. Leading critics have even gone so far as to question his intellectual abilities if he believed that something fit for elementary schools should be part of the instructional material for doctoral candidates.’

Witzel has also attacked those who opposed Biblical indoctrination in California’s history textbooks. For example, the textbooks teach that the ‘Lord made the wheels fall off the chariots’ and this was the reason the Egyptians could not capture the Jews. When several parents opposed such indoctrination, Witzel attacked them and defended the textbooks. He also criticized those who opposed the textbooks for using ‘hard science,’ a stance that did not go well with scientists. A lawsuit followed in which Witzel’s connection to a church was uncovered. After many racist remarks by Witzel surfaced, including one stereotyping all the people of Uttar Pradesh as ‘proud and empty,’ the State of California decided not to fight out the lawsuit and instead paid the group of parents a massive sum of one lakh and seventy five thousand dollars.

I put this question to Dr.Kalyanaraman: What do you think of Dr.Witzel’s controversial and contentious scholarship? He replied:

‘What type of scholarship is this, even if it is said to be from Harvard? Lokahitam is the touchstone which determines true scholarship. Just as Satyam is truth that is pleasing, scholarship is transparent action which is loka-hitaaya ‘for the well-being of the society’. How should such action be performed or such responsibility be discharged? Scholarship should be governed by dharma, that is ethical conduct, a social ethic which respects the responsibilities being discharged by everyone in society. In Witzel, we have evidence of the very antithesis of such scholarship, motivated as he is by a Christian evangelical mission (as exposed during the Harvard Donkey Trial, also called the CAPEEM California textbook case), working for the Colorado church engaged in ‘Dalit Freedom Network’ to denigrate Hindusthan. Engaged in a motivated act of faith in the Japhetic Race theory of the Bible to be pushed into the textbooks, Witzel ends up arguing that horses in ancient Hindusthan were donkeys. India can do without such scholarship or emulation of such pseudo-scholarship by those researchers engaged in civilization studies, because such scholarship is a scourge on the academe, particularly when it is evangelical peddling promoted by self-proclaimed ‘well-known scientists’.

In my view Dr.Witzel today is a true representative of the Colonial, Imperialist, Racist and Evangelical anti-Hindu scholars like James Mill, Lord Macaulay, Max Mueller and many other English administrators of British India in the 19th century. He shamelessly clings to the Imperialist Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), even after it has been overthrown, with assistance from sordid Missionary Agencies like the Colorado Church. The stern, grim and scorching story relating to this lurid drama will have to be told in the larger public interest of the gullible Hindus of India. vsundaram@newstodaynet.com

Also Read:

Motivated Indology

** 19th Century Paradigms

http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/19th-century-paradigms.html
Let not the 19th century paradigms continue to haunt us!

Inaugural Address delivered at the 19th International Conference on South Asian Archaeology,held at University of Bologna, Ravenna, Italy on July 2-6, 2007.

Distinguished fellow delegates and other members of the audience, I am most grateful to the organizers of this conference, in particular to the President, Professor Maurizio Tosi, not only for inviting me to participate in this Conference but also for giving me the additional honour of delivering the Inaugural Address. Indeed, I have no words to thank them adequately for their kindness. Perhaps this is the first occasion when a South Asian is being given this privileged treatment by the European Association of South Asian Archaeologists.

The conference hall is full of scholars from all parts of the world – from the United States of America on the west to the Land of the Rising Sun, Japan, on the east. All these scholars have contributed in a number of ways to our understanding of the past of South Asia, and I salute them with all the humility that I can muster.

However, I hope I will not be misunderstood when I say that some amongst us have not yet been able to shake off the 19th-century biases that have blurred our vision of South Asia’s past.

As is well known, it was the renowned German scholar Max Muller who, in the 19th century, attempted for the first time to date the Vedas. Accepting that the Sutra literature was datable to the 6th century BCE, he gave a block-period of 200 years to the preceding three parts of the Vedic literature, namely the Aranyakas, Brahmanas and Vedas. Thus, he arrived at 1200 BCE as the date of the Vedas.

However, when his contemporaries, like Goldstucker, Whitney and Wilson, objected to his ad-hocism, he toned down, and finally surrendered by saying (Max Muller 1890, reprint 1979): “Whether the Vedic hymns were composed [in] 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth will ever determine.”

But the great pity is that, in spite of such a candid confession by the savant himself, many of his followers continue to swear by his initial dating, viz. 1200 BCE.The ultimate effect of this blind tenacity was that when in the 1920s the great civilization, now known variously as the Harappan, Indus or Indus-Sarasvati Civilization, was discovered in South Asia, and was dated to the 3rd millennium BCE, it was argued that since the Vedas were no earlier than 1200 BCE, the Harappan Civilization could not have been Vedic. Further, since the only other major linguistic group in the region was the Dravidian, it was held that the Harappans were a Dravidian-speaking people.

Then came the master stroke. In 1946, my revered guru Mortimer Wheeler (later knighted) discovered a fortification wall at Harappa and on learning that the Aryan god Indra had been referred to as puramdara (destroyer of forts) he readily pronounced his judgment (Wheeler 1947: 82): “On circumstantial evidence Indra [representing the Aryans] stands accused [of destroying the Harappan Civilization].” In further support of his thesis, he cited certain human skeletons at Mohenjo-daro, saying that these were the people massacred by the Aryan invaders. Thus was reached the peak of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory.And lo and behold! The very first one to fall in the trap of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory was none else but the guru’s disciple himself.

With all the enthusiasm inherited from the guru, I started looking for the remains of some culture that may be post-Harappan but anterior to the early historical times. In my exploration of the sites associated with the Mahabharata story I came across the Painted Grey Ware Culture which fitted the bill. It antedated the Northern Black Polished Ware whose beginning went back to the 6th-7th century BCE, and overlay, with a break in between, the Ochre Colour Ware of the early 2nd millennium BCE. In my report on the excavations at Hastinapura and in a few subsequent papers I expressed the view that the Painted Grey Ware Culture represented the early Aryans in India.

But the honeymoon was soon to be over. Excavations in the middle Ganga valley threw up in the pre-NBP strata a ceramic industry with the same shapes (viz. bowls and dishes) and painted designs as in the case of the PGW, the only difference being that in the former case the ware had a black or black-and-red surface-colour, which, however, was just the result of a particular method of firing. And even the associated cultural equipment was alike in the two cases.

All this similarity opened my eyes and I could no longer sustain the theory of the PGW having been a representative of the early Aryans in India. (The association of this Ware with the Mahabharata story was nevertheless sustainable since that event comes at a later stage in the sequence.) I had no qualms in abandoning my then-favourite theory.

But linguists are far ahead of archaeologists in pushing the poor Aryans through the Khyber / Bolan passes into India. In doing so, they would not mind even distorting the original Sanskrit texts.

A case in point is that of the well known Professor of Sanskrit at the Harvard University, Professor Witzel. He did not hesitate to mistranslate a part of the Baudhayana Srautasutra (Witzel 1995: 320-21). In 2003 I published a paper in the East and West (Vol. 53, Nos. 1-4), exposing his manipulation.

Witzel’s translation of the relevant Sanskrit text was as follows:"Aya went eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and Kasi Videha. This is the Ayava(migration).(His other people)stayed at home in the west. His people are the Gandhari, Parasu and Aratta. This is the Amavasava (group).

Whereas the correct translation is:
Ayu migrated eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and the Kasi-Videhas. This is the Ayava (migration). Amavasu migrated westwards. His (people) are the Ghandhari, Parsu and Aratta. This is the Amavasu (migration).

According to the correct translation, there was no movement of the Aryan people from anywhere in the north-west. On the other hand, the evidence indicates that it was from an intermediary point that some of the Aryan tribes went eastwards and other westwards. This would be clear from the map that follows(Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.(http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/19th-century-paradigms.html)

Professor Witzel and I happened to participate in a seminar organized by UMASS, Dartmouth in June 2006. When I referred, during the course of my presentation, to this wrong translation by the learned Professor, he, instead of providing evidence in support of his own stand, shot at me by saying that I did not know the difference between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Should that be the level of an academic debate? (Anyway, he had to be told that I had the privilege of obtaining in 1943 my Master’s Degree in Sanskrit (with the Vedas included), with a First Class First, from a first class university of India, namely Allahabad.)

Next Page
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** Indo-European Aryanism

Revisiting the hoopla of Indo-European Aryanism
By Ratnadeep Banerji
Weekly Organiser

Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science; Stefan Arvidsson; The University of Chicago Press; Pp.354; Price not mentioned.

This book is a historiographic tour-de-force traipsing Indo-European grounds harping on a posteriority analysis of a contentious issue.

For the last two centuries religious historians, archaeologists and philologists have dealt upon the menagerie of Indo-Europeans. One faction of scholars has been upbeat about the uniqueness of the Indo-Europeans while the other faction has mingled them along with the mainstream human race.

The author, Stefan Arvidsson in his book ropes in Jacob Bryant and William Jones with their concepts of ‘Japhelites’ and ‘Hamites’ as precursors of myths and god figures of Greeks, Romans and Indians. Jones forged a linguistic similarity amidst the Indian and the European languages – ‘the cultural-heroic heathens came to be known as Indo-Europeans and Indo-Germans’. Stefan arraigns Frederick Max Müller of cleaving languages and religions into Semitic, Aryan and Turanian categories.

Max Müller and Father Schimdt hold that an ‘original monotheism had survived beneath the surface of the Indo-European mythologies’. Various scholars recreated a rift between the Aryans and Semitic lineage. Shem’s family line was attributed to monotheism, intolerance, irrational rituals coupled with a lack of feeling for art and culture.

The Indo-Europeans were hailed as spiritual, imaginative and philosophical. This dichotomy set anti-Semitic vigour during the second half of the nineteenth century.

The nineteenth century imperialism and its squalor skewed upon the scholars’ depiction of how the Indo-European colonizers in ancient times conquered a dark, primitive original population’.

The Indo-Europeans were portrayed as humanity’s cultural heroes who remained invincible throughout the annals of history ruling over lower people and spreading knowledge and thus should be ‘predestined to remain rulers even in the future’. This exalted solipsism created ‘the Aryan colony’ of India. This was an outcome of the scholars’ racist overture to cite evidences in the Vedic texts about the racial fetish Aryan immigrants and their ingrained apartheid system.

Max Müller was overzealous to ‘Indo-Europeanise’ the Indian society. He espoused to amalgamate Europeans and Indians to reform the Hindu culture and revamp its ‘medieval’ and ‘Turanian’ worship of idols with the old Aryan, Vedic religion.

Thus ‘Müller’s modernistic Protestantism also coloured his notions about Indo-European mythology’ that he held ‘irrational and immoral’. Most scholars have condoned the idea of ‘all people have a common origin….and as such, subject to the same material and cultural circumstances as all other peoples’.

And so the face-off between universalism and pluralism has been about sense-perception and predilection –‘whom one wants to include in “us” and where one chooses to draw the line between relevant and irrelevant ancestors’.

There have been deliberate insinuations to whittle apart the Indo-Europeans, Semites and Jews. The culturalistic and naturalistic attack perpetrated by Aryans upon the Jewish and Semitic religion is highly contentious. Though, one strand of Aryanism throughout the last two centuries ‘had liberal and universalistic overtones, and interpreted the Semitic tradition as the incarnation and antiquated pluralistic chauvinism’.

The flipside of cleaving humanity into ‘families’ and charting their characteristics backfires because then the families are construed upon as ’opposite and complementary parts of the whole human race’. The psychologist Andrew Samuels has exemplified the notoriety of this tradition in Carl Gustav Jung’s theories that tear asunder Jewish and Germanic. And the author is emphatic – ‘In any case, Indo-European scholarship has often been afflicted by the ethos of complementariness’.

If the Aryans are imaginative, then why should Semites lack imagination? Why should the Pelasgians be docile and submissive if the Aryans turn out a marshal race? Can farming by Aryans turn Turanians into nomads? The readers are to pit their jurisprudence against these oddities that intrigued history and misled minds.

Subtle ratiocination can envisage a figment of ‘Platonic idea of cosmos as a totality, of humanity and the world as being shaped by certain definite, almost geometrical ideals’.

Stefan invigorates the veracity of Indo-European genealogy of the Noachian triad. All the hoopla research conducted hitherto upon Indo-European religion and mythology has preconceived notion of a scion that bore the blueprint of ‘Indo-European’.

And thus the imprint it has bore throughout is flawed. History is not an absolute piece of fact. Scholars colour it with their own sense perception and thus vent it out as a relative projection that requires a review in different climes and locations by eggheads spread over a passage of time. Facts have been repudiated and concocted for stashed vendetta to flourish solipsism. History needs to be rewritten in its true colours.

This volume strives to steer clear of all obtrusions and parochialities that have so far occluded the clear stream of history. (The University of Chicago Press; )

RELATED ARTICLES:

Myth of Aryan Invasion @ http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/vedic-upanisads/aryan-invasion.html

19 th Century Paradigms @ http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/19th-century-paradigms.html

David Frawley on Aryan Invasion @ http://www.hindubooks.org/david_frawley/myth_aryan_invasion/index.htm

Motivated Indology @ http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2007/12/26/communal-clash-13-arrested/
Invading the Sacred @ http://worldmonitor.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/invading-the-sacred/

Europe’s Civilising Mission @ http://www.neurope.eu/articles/87642.php

URL:http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=278&page=25

A search for India's true history

A search for India's true history
By Pramod Kumar
Itihaas Bharati

International conference on Indian history, civilisation and geopolitics.

"Indians are being cheated of their true history. The time has come to write an authentic and unbiased history of India free from ideological or colonial biases,” said former Union Minister Dr Subramanian Swamy while giving a call to reorient the policy of the Indian state to purge from history books’ false chronology of ancient India and myths such as Aryan invasion and racial divide of north and south Indians.

Dr Swamy was addressing the valedictory session of a three-day international history conference in New Delhi on January 11. The conference was organised on Indian history, civilisation and geopolitics by the US-based Indic Studies Foundation and the Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY) at Indian International Centre from January 9 to January 11. Apart from historical themes, the conference also discussed India’s modern geo-political landscape and strategic affairs.

More than 100 distinguished scholars and historians from India, Greece, Belarus, US, UK, France, Sri Lanka, Nepal, etc. participated in the conference. The scholars challenged many aspects of ancient Indian history as it is taught today and exposed various myths that have been presented as facts by the Raj historians of the 19th century. The Indic Studies Foundation seeks to propagate a more accurate approach based on reason and rationality for the study and dissemination of the Indian civilisational ethos in the world, particularly to the USA and India.

The ABISY is dedicated to researching and writing Indian history spanning the last 5000 years. Major projects undertaken by it include determining the exact date of the Mahabharata as the sheet anchor of ancient Indian history, researches into kaalaganana (time-reckoninig) in Hindu traditions and researches into the now-lost Saraswati river.

Dr Swamy further said willful distortions in writing Indian history have been occurring solely due to state support and patronage since the British times until today. “The British rulers wrote our history to divide and rule us. But what is the excuse of Indian governments after Independence to continue with the same policy?”, he asked.

He said myths spread by biased historians have overtaken Indian history while actual events and places in our history have been declared myths! “Not long ago, the Saraswati river, the submerged city of Dwarka and Ram Sethu were ridiculed as myths. But their reality has been proved by archaeology and satellite imagery,” he added.

Lashing out at colonial historians for creating a vicious myth that women were discriminated against in ancient India, noted scholar Dr S Ram Mohan said scriptures such as Manu Smriti accorded a very high status to women and deprived sections. Quoting dozens of slokas from the three major code books of Hindus to prove the exalted and enlightened status women enjoyed in ancient India, Dr Mohan, who is also Additional Member (Finance), Railway Board, said: “Women had no rights in ancient India is a vicious myth spread by colonial historians. The reality is that all the three ancient code books of Hindus—Manu Smriti, Narad Smriti and Yajnavalkya Smriti—have a common theme of social welfare and an egalitarian society, with a very high status assigned to women and the deprived sections.”

He said all three Smritis have recommended lenient penalties for women compared to men and have prescribed death penalty for rape of a woman under police custody. Such kind of enlightened status of women was not found anywhere else in the world during the ancient times,” he added.

Dr BB Lal, former Director General of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), said in a paper presented at the conference on first day that there is absolutely no proof that the Vedas were written in around 1200 BC and that the invading Aryans massacred the people of the Indus Valley. Unfortunately, these malicious distortions are still being taught in our schools as facts, he said. Stating that new distortions in Indian history are being created even today, he said it is the duty of Indian historians to set these distortions right through cogent evidence and sustainable arguments.

Though the perception and mindset of historians play a dominant role in history writing, it is important for Indians to identify and challenge the distortions that have been deliberately introduced into their historical narrative over the centuries, he said.

Prof. Shivaji Singh, former Head of Department, Ancient History, Gorakhpur University, and president of ABISY, rejected the oft-repeated charge that Indians have no sense of history. “Ancient Indians had a robust historical tradition that originated in the Rig Vedic times and continued to develop and proliferate till the end of the medieval period. This tradition has created a rich and huge mass of historical literature that is unparalleled in the world,” he said. He explained that the indigenous Indian sense of history is unique because its main purpose is man’s self-fulfillment and self-realisation instead of vague objective such as furtherance of freedom, rationalism and individualism that are prevalent in the West. “You have to understand that the Indian sense of history is grounded in Indian culture and it should not be judged by the yardstick of how the Westerners write their history,” he added.

According to Kosla Vepa, executive director of Indic Studies Foundation, the objective of the conference was to decolonise various aspects of ancient Indian history and its chronology which were deliberately distorted and misdated during the British Raj with a view to causing confusion and a sense of inferiority among Indians.

The conference aimed to contribute towards correcting this mangled historical narrative of the Indian civilisation. “Much of the ancient Indian history taught to our youth today has absolutely no basis in fact and is not supported by modern research. This is causing terrible cultural damage to our society and has to be set right urgently by taking a more rational view of the past,” he added.

He also spoke about the demeaning condescension that many Western historians have bestowed upon India. “Books on Indian history sold abroad deliberately neglect our ancient history so as to minimise and sideline its contributions. At the same time, they try to whitewash the horrors that the British rule inflicted on India, such as the large-scale famines triggered by colonial policies. Changing the content of the textbooks worldwide and especially in the West to correct these distortions should be our goal,” he added.

Speaking at the conference on second day, Prof. Narahari Achar said most of the previous attempts at astronomical dating of the famous epic made the critical error of equating the Sanskrit word graha with a planet. “However, graha actually meant not only a planet but an heavenly object moving through the sky that can ‘grasp’ such as a comet or asteroid. Once we understand this, all apparent confusion and contradiction in the planetary positions given in the Mahabharata disappears. Though the epic has been variously dated from 5000 BC to 1000 BC by historians, this is for the first time that a scholar has taken into account the movement of planets excluding the comets to reproduce by simulation the astronomical references given in the Mahabharata. The year 3067 BCE arrived at by this method is consistent with the Hindu tradition and correlates perfectly with the time references given in Rigveda and Puranas for the epic,” he added.

Internationally acclaimed mathematician and philosopher Prof. CK Raju revealed that calculus was an Indian invention that was transmitted by Jesuit priests to Europe from Cochin in the second half of 16th century. “Indian infinite series has been known to British scholars since at least 1832, but no scholar tried to establish the connection with the calculus attributed to Newton and Leibnitz. When the Europeans received the Indian calculus, they couldn’t understand it properly because the Indian philosophy of mathematics is different from the Western philosophy of mathematics. It took them about 300 years to fully comprehend its working. The calculus was used by Newton to develop his laws of physics,” he added.
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Defalsification of Indian history
By Dr. Subramanian Swamy
January 25, 2009

In this falsified history, it is made out that Hindus capitulated to Islamic invaders. But on the contrary,unlike Iran, Iraq and Egypt where within decades the country capitulated to become 100 per cent Muslims. India despite 800 years of brutal Islamic rule, remained 80 per cent Hindu.

The fabrication of our History begins with the falsification of our chronology. The accepted history of no country can be structured on foreign accounts of it. But Nehru and his Leftist cronies did just that, and thus generations of Indians have been brainwashed by this falsified history of India.

The UPA has succeeded in persuading more state governments to accept the NCERT texts. A report on Monday (January 5, 2009) said 12 more state governments have accepted to teach NCERT texts in their schools. For the last two weeks the Organiser is carrying a series of articles on the NCERT textbooks prescribed for students at the primary, secondary and higher secondary schools. We have found these books written with a peculiar mindset, to denationalise and deculturise the young Indian. These books fail to make the children aware of their true heritage. These books seem to distort even India's freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi's role and try to divide the society into different caste and class segments. Their idea is to convince the children that India as a nation came to exist only after August 15, 1947.

We request the parents, teachers, students and scholars to join this academic exercise to expose the shenanigans behind promotion of these books in Indian schools. —Editor The identity of India is Hindustan, i.e., a nation of Hindus and those others who acknowledge with pride that their ancestors were Hindus. Hindustan represents the continuing history of culture of Hindus. One’s religion may change, but culture does not. Thus, on the agenda for a national renaissance should be the dissemination of the correct perception of what we are. This perception has to be derived from a defalsified history.

However, the present history taught in our schools and colleges is the British imperialist-sponsored one, with the intent to destroy our identity. India as a State is treated as a British-created entity and of only recent origin. The Indian people are portrayed as a heterogeneous lot who are hopelessly divided against themselves.

Such a “history” has been deliberately created by the British as a policy. Sir George Hamilton, Secretary of State for India, wrote to the Home Office on March 26, 1888 that “I think the real danger to our rule is not now but say 50 years hence….. We shall (therefore) break Indians into two sections holding widely different views….. We should so plan the educational text books that the differences between community and community are further strengthened”.

After achieving Independence, under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru and the implementing authority of the anglicized ICS, revision of our history was never done, in fact the very idea was condemned as “obscurantist” and Hindu chauvinist by Nehru and his ilk. The Imperialist History of India What is the gist of this British imperialist-tailored Indian history? In this history, India is portrayed as the land “conquered” first by the ‘Dravidians’, then by the ‘Aryans’, later by Muslims, and finally by the British. Otherwise, everything else is mythical. Our history books today exhibit this obsession with foreign rule.

For example, even though the Mughal rule from Akbar to Aurangzeb is about 150 years, which is much shorter than the 350 year rule of the Vijayanagaram empire, the history books of today hardly take notice of the latter. In fact the territory under Krishna Devaraya’s rule was much larger than Akbar’s, and yet it is the latter who is called “the Great”.

Such a version suited the British rules who had sought to create a legitimacy for their presence in India. Furthermore, we were also made to see advantages accruing from British rule, the primary one being that India was united by this colonialism, and that but for the British, India would never have been one country. Thus, the concept of India itself is owed to the plunder of colonialists. In this falsified history, it is made out that Hindus capitulated to Islamic invaders.

But on the contrary, unlike Iran, Iraq and Egypt where within decades the country capitulated to become 100 per cent Muslims. India despite 800 years of brutal Islamic rule, remained 80 per cent Hindu.

These totally false and pernicious ideas have however permeated deep into our educational system. They have poisoned the minds of our younger generations who have not had the benefit of the Freedom Struggle to awaken their pride and nationalism.

It has thus to be an essential part of the renaissance agenda that these ideas of British-sponsored history of India, namely,
(1) that India as a State was a gift of the British and
(2) that there is no such thing as a native Indian, and what we are today is a by-product of the rape of the land by visiting conquerors and their hordes and
(3) that India is a land that submitted meekly to invading hordes from Aryan to the English, are discarded.

Falsification of Chronology in India’s History The fabrication of our History begins with the falsification of our chronology. The customary dates quoted for composition of the Rig Veda (circa 1300 B.C.), Mahabharat (600 B.C.), Buddha’s Nirvana (483 B.C.), Maurya Chandragupta’s coronation (324 B.C.), and Asoka (c.268 B.C.) are entirely wrong.

Those dates are directly or indirectly based on a selected reading of Megasthenes’ account of India. In fact, so much so that eminent historians have called if the “sheet anchor of Indian chronology”. The account of Megasthenes and the derived chronology of Indian history have also an important bearing on related derivations such as the two-race (Aryan-Dravidian) theory, and on the pre-Vedic character of the so called Indus Valley Civilization.

Megasthenes was the Greek ambassador sent by Seleucus Nicator in c. 302 B.C. to the court of the Indian king whom he and the Greek called “Sandrocottus”. He was stationed in “Palimbothra”, the capital city of the kingdom. It is not clear how many years Megasthenes stayed in India, but he did write an account of his stay, titled Indika. The manuscript Indika is lost, and there is no copy of it available. However, during the time it was available, many other Greek writers quoted passages from it in their own works. These quotations were meticulously collected by Dr. Schwanbeck in the nineteenth century, and this compilation is also available to us in English (J.M. McCrindle: Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian).

The founder of the Mauryas, however, is not the only Chandragupta in Indian history, who was a king of Magadh and founder of a dynasty. In particular, there is Gupta Chandragupta, a Magadh king and founder of the Gupta dynasty at Patliputra. Chandragupta Gupta was also not of “noble” birth and, in fact, came to power by deposing the Andhra king Chandrasri. That is, Megasthenes’ Sandrocottus may well be Gupta Chandragupta instead of Maurya Chandgragupta (and Xandremes the same as Chandrasri, and Sandrocryptus as Samudragupta). In order to determine which Chandragupta it is, we need to look further. It is, of course, a trifle silly to build one’s history on this kind of tongue-gymnastics, but I am afraid we have no choice but to pursue the Megasthenes evidence to its end, since the currently acceptable history is based on it. In order to determine at which Chandragupta’s court Megasthenes was ambassador, we have to look further into his account of India. We find he was at Pataliputra (i.e. Palimbothra in Megasthenes’ account).

We know from the Puranas (which are unanimous on this point) that all the Chandravamsa king of Magadh (including the Mauryas) prior to the Guptas, had their capital at Girivraja (or equivalently Rajgrha) and not at Pataliputra. Gupta Chandragupta was the first king to have his capital in Patliputra. This alone should identify Sandrocottos with Gupta Chandragupta. However some 6-11th century A.D. sources call Pataliputra the Maurya capital, e.g., Vishakdatta in Mudrarakshasa, but these are based on secondary sources and not on the Puranas. Pursuing Megasthenes’ account further, we find most of it impossible to believe. He appears to be quite vague about details and is obviously given to the Greek writers’ weakness in letting his imagination get out of control. For example, “Near a mountain which is called Nulo there live men whose fee are turned back-wards and have eight toes on each foot.” (Solinus 52.36-30 XXX.B.) “Megasthenes says a race of men (exist in India) who neither eat or drink, and in fact have not even mouths, set on fire and burn like incense in order to sustain their existence with odorous fumes…..” (Plutarch, Frag. XXXI).

However, Megasthenes appears to have made one precise statement of possible application which was picked up later by Pliny, Solinus, and Arrian. As summarized by Professor K.D. Sethna of Pondicherry, it reads: “Dionysus was the first who invaded India and was the first of all who triumphed over the vanished Indians. From the days of Dionysus to Alexander the Great, 6451 years reckoned with 3 months additional. From the time of Dionysus to Sandrocottus the Indians reckoned 6452 years, the calculation being made by counting the kings who reigned in the intermediate period to number 153 or 154 years. But among these a republic was thrice established, one extending…..years, another to 300 and another to 120. The Indians also tell us that Dionysus was earlier than Heracles by fifteen generations, and that except for him no one made a hostile invasion of India but that Alexander indeed came and overthrew in war all whom he attacked.”

While there a number of issues raised by this statement including the concoction that Alexander was victorious in battle across the Indus, the exactness with which he states his numbers should lead us to believe that Megasthenes could have received his chronological matters from none else than the Puranic pundits of his time. To be conclusive, we need to determine who are the “Dionysus” and “Heracles” of Megasthenes’ account. Traditionally, Dionysus (or Father Bachhus) was a Greek God of wine who was created from Zeus’s thigh. Dionysus was also a great king, and was recognised as the first among all kings, a conqueror and constructive leader. Could there be an Indian equivalent of Dionysus whom Megasthenes quickly equated with his God of wine?

Looking through the Puranas, one does indeed find such a person. His name is Prithu. Prithu was the son of King Vena. The latter was considered a wicked man whom the great sages could not tolerate, especially after he told them that the elixir soma should be offered to him in prayer and not to the gods (Bhagavata Purana IV.14.28). The great sages thereafter performed certain rites and killed Vena. But since this could lead immediately to lawlessness and chaos, the rshis decided to rectify it by coronating a strong and honest person. The rshis therefore churned the right arm (or thigh; descriptions vary) of the dead body (of Vena) to give birth to a fully grown Prithu. It was Prithu, under counsel from rshi Atri (father of Soma), who reconstructed society and brought about economic prosperity. Since he became such a great ruler, the Puranas have called him adi-raja (first king) of the world. So did the Satpatha Brahmana (v.3.5 4.). In the absence of a cult of soma in India, it is perhaps inevitable that Megasthenes and the other Greeks, in translating Indian experiences for Greek audiences, should pick on adi-raja Prithu who is “tinged with Soma” in a number of ways and bears such a close resemblance to Dionysus in the circumstances of his birth, and identify him as Dionysus. If we accept identifying Dionysus with Prithu, then indeed by a calculation based on the Puranas (done by DR Mankad, Koti Venkatachelam, KD Sethna, and others), it can be conclusively shown that indeed 6,451 years had elapsed between Prithu and a famous Chandragupta. This calculation exactly identifies Sandrocottus with Gupta Chandragupta and not with Maurya Chandragupta. The calculation also identifies Heracles with Hari Krishna (Srikrishna) of Dwarka.

This calculation must be necessarily long and tedious to counter the uninformed general feeling first sponsored by Western scholars, that the Puranas spin only fair tales and are therefore quite unreliable. However, most of these people do not realise that most Puranas have six parts, and the Vamsanucharita sections (especially of Vishnu, Matsya, and Vagu) are a systematic presentation of Indian history especially of the Chandravansa kings of Magadha.

In order to establish these dates, I would have to discuss in detail the cycle of lunar asterisms, the concept of time according to Aryabhatta, and various other systems, and also the reconciliation of various minor discrepancies that occur in the Puranas. Constraints of space and time however, prevent me from presenting these calculations here.

However, on the basis of these calculations we can say that Gupta Chandragupta was “Sandrocottus” c.327 B.C. His son, Samudragupta, was the great king who established a unified kingdom all over India, and obtained from the Cholas, Pandyas, and Cheras their recognition of him. He also had defeated Seleucus Nicator, while his father Chandragupta was king. On this calculation we can also place Prithu at 6777 B.C. and Lord Rama before that.

Derivation of other dates without discussion may also be briefly mentioned here: Buddha’s Nirvana 1807 BC, Maurya Chandragupta c. 1534 BC, Harsha Vikramaditya (Parmar) c. 82 BC.

The European scholars have thus constructed an enormous edifice of contemporary foreign dates to suit their dating. A number of them are based on misidentification. For instance, the Rock Edict XIII, the famous Kalinga edict, is identified as Asoka’s. It was, however, Samudragupta’s (Samudragupta was a great conqueror and a devout admirer of Asoka. He imitated Asoka in many ways and also took the name Asokaditya. In his later life, he became a sanyasi). Some other facts, which directly contradict their theories, they have rather flippantly cast aside.

We state here only a few examples – such facts as (1) Fa-hsien was in India and at Patliputra c. 410 AD. He mentions a number of kings, but makes not even a fleeting reference to the Gupta, even though according to European scholars he came during the height of their reign. He also dates Buddha at 1100 BC. (2) A number of Tibetan documents place Buddha at 2100 BC. (3) The Ceylonese Pali traditions leave out the Cholas, Pandyas, and Cheras from the list of Asoka’s kingdoms, whereas Rock Edict XIII includes them. In fact, as many scholars have noted, the character of Asoka from Ceylonese and other traditions is precisely (as RK Mukherjee has said) what does not appear in the principal edicts.

The accepted history of no country can be structured on foreign accounts of it. But Nehru and his Leftist cronies did just that, and thus generations of Indians have been brainwashed by this falsified history of India. The time has come for us to take seriously our Puranic sources and to re-construct a realistic well-founded history of ancient India, a history written by Indians about Indians. Such a history should bring out the amazing continuity of a Hindu nation which asserts its identity again and again.

It should focus on the fact that at the centre of our political thought is the concept of the Chakravartian ideal – to defend the nation from external aggression while giving maximum internal autonomy to the janapadas. A correct, defalsified history would record that Hindustan was one nation in the art of governance, in the style of royal courts, in the methods of warfare, in the maintenance of its agrarian base, and in the dissemination of information. Sanskrit was the language of national communication and discourse.

An accurate history should not only record the periods of glory but the moments of degeneration, of the missed opportunities, and of the failure to forge national unity at crucial junctures in time. It should draw lessons for the future generations from costly errors in the past.

In particular, it was not Hindu submission as alleged by JNU historians that was responsible for our subjugation but lack of unity and effective military strategy. Without an accurate history, Hindustan cannot develop on its correct identity. And without a clearly defined identity, Indians will continue to flounder.

Defalsification of Indian history is the first step for our renaissance.


Invading the Sacred @ http://worldmonitor.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/invading-the-sacred/

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