this is part 4 that was not published for unknown reasons.
see, i am such an agreeable person. i even agree with prof. steve farmer, phd.
The theory that refuses to die: "Aryan" invasion or migration or influx or tourists?
Rajeev Srinivasan on the durable and dubious 'Aryan'
In the schoolbook situation, there is an entire institutional setup that supports Witzel. Therefore one has to fall back upon the 'hidden agenda' theory. Why all this histrionics? One possible answer, by Occam's Razor: to maintain the fairytale of the 'Aryan' Invasion Pipedream, which, according to one of its acolytes, posits that "tall, fair, handsome 'Aryans'" from Europe and Central Asia came "thundering down the Khyber pass in their horse-drawn chariots". And why would anybody care about this archaic detail of where Indians originally came from? What matters is who is in India now, one would think.
But no, it turns out it matters a whole lot to certain constituencies – to the Christians and Marxists and peripherally to the Muslims. To the Christians, the 'teeming masses' of India have always been a tempting target for conversion, but they had had a dismal time because the darned natives just kept adding Jesus to their collection of gods! I mean, the nerve! So they had to try something different, which was the attempt to uproot Hinduism from the ground up.
The earliest proponent of this was a missionary, one Abbe Dubois, whose 1806 CE book Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies was the first serious attempt by Christians to attack Hinduism http://www.sabha.info/research/aif.html . He was lionized by the adoring Max Mueller, who, incidentally, was exactly like Witzel – the similarities are startling: a Germanic professor of Sanskrit at a major Western university, who is accused of promoting a racist and Christian-fundamentalist perspective. Except Mueller was a little more genteel in his writings, although in moments of weakness he did confess that the objective of his work was to uproot and destroy Hinduism.
The missionaries and their hired-gun scholars had their reasons: they correctly identified that by dividing and ruling they would be able to breach the wall of Hindu resistance to their blandishments. Besides, at that time, Britannia ruled the waves, and whites were going everywhere, trouncing the natives with their 'guns, germs and steel', usually committing genocide and cultural annihilation in addition to large-scale looting. Why, it stood to reason that must have been how the world functioned millennia ago as well.
As literalist Christian fundamentalists, Dubois and Mueller and other missionaries/acolytes believed the Bible was an accurate historical text. Therefore, following some British bishop's calculations, these people were certain that the world was created in 4004 BCE, on October 25th, at 10am, despite much fossil evidence to the contrary. In short, they were purveyors of blind faith. And they twisted and turned the historical, textual, and philological evidence about Indian history to fit it, square peg in round hole, into their theory of invasion.
The entire edifice of the 'Aryan' conceit was built up at the height of the colonial era, as part of the intellectual justification for the loot and subjugation of what obviously was the remains of a very great civilization in India. The discovery of the impressive and highly advanced ancient cities of Mohenjo-daro, Channu-daro, and Harappa showed that a superior civilization had existed here once upon a time. Unlike other colonies where the Christian vanity of being on a civilizing mission held a little more water, it was fairly clear that Indians did not need any civilization from whites.
Therefore, lo and behold, the brilliant marketing invention of the 'Aryan' Invasion Fairytale, which, in short, said: "Whatever you have in India was brought by us white people today, or by our ancestor white people long ago. Therefore, it is your job as Indians to be our slaves and our job as whites to be your masters." A very satisfying conceit, that is, if you are white.
There were murmurs of dissent even in early days, based on the fairly clear dating in the Hindu epics that implied that India was an advanced civilization much earlier than 4004 BCE. Even Mueller, repenting in his old age, recanted his dating of the Rg Veda at 1500 BCE, which was based on nothing more substantial than: "world created in 4004 BCE; flood happens; takes a 1000 years to dry the land after the flood; takes Europeans (obviously the first humans) another 1000 years to travel to India; give a fudge factor of 500 years, and lo, the Rg Veda was written in 1500 BCE. QED".
But the white missionaries went further, delighting in the guilty pleasures of 'Aryan' invasion. One Bishop Caldwell invented the whole idea of 'Dravidian', another marvelous and major hoax. Obviously, a superlative idea to pit fictional 'Aryans' against non-existant 'Dravidians', benefiting real people. The white Christians were genuinely good at fiction leading to divide-and-rule. As a bonus, this theory enabled the white Christians to pit lower-caste Hindus against higher-caste ones.
This whole approach was a success, in that it did succeed in brainwashing a lot of well-meaning Indians. But it did not quite reach the desired goal of large-scale conversion to Christianity, as in, for instance, East Timor and South Korea. Thus, today, the 'Aryan' Invasion Fantasy has the complete support of the aggressive evangelists targeting India, as well as their local fifth-columnists.
There is more and more scientific evidence that there was no 'invasion' of India from Central Asia in 1500 BCE, or indeed, any time before that, based on detailed genetic studies. The genetic evidence, while not fool-proof, is overwhelming that there was no large-scale invasion from Central Asia or Europe, and the only migration is of very early homo sapiens from Africa 85,000 to 60,000 years ago. Genetic evidence collected by Oxford University's Stephen Oppenheimer (www.bradshawfoundation.com) actually suggests a reverse migration of humans from India to Central Asia and Europe, which would explain the philological and genetic similarities. Yes, whites may be mutant Indians!
Furthermore, archeological evidence shows that there was no violence in the Indus-Sarasvati valley cities: no signs of war, no skeletons bearing marks of sharp instruments, not even any fortifications. It is increasingly believed that the great cities of the Indus-Sarasvati were abandoned not because of war, but because the Sarasvati, its lifeline, dried up as the result of a major tectonic shift around 1900 BCE.
Thus, when it became clear that the 'Aryan' Invasion Theory was not tenable, a new theory was created, that of 'Aryan' 'Migration'. This is old wine in new bottles: apparently the illiterate nomadic 'Aryans' (previously "thundering down the Khyber Pass in their horse-drawn chariots") now are claimed to have trickled in peaceably to the Indus-Sarasvati cities, which, despite their sophistication, did not have a literature or culture. The 'Aryans' allegedly brought Sanskrit and the Vedas with them and the grateful Indus-Sarasvati people adopted them wholesale. This is the new snake-oil being purveyed currently by Indian Marxists.
With all due modesty, I present, free of charge, my trademarked alternative theory, the 'Aryan' Tourist Theory. I posit that 'tall, fair, blond, blue-eyed, handsome' 'Aryan' men went to India as tourists, married local women and settled down, and worked as language teachers teaching the locals Sanskrit and the Vedas. Thus the presence of a few white people's genes in Indian male lineages. Why, I see young white American men do exactly this, for instance in Japan and China, where they marry locals and earn a living modeling and teaching English. So why should this not have worked in 1500 BCE?
All that is missing is to decipher the tourist visas written in the yet-to-be unraveled Indus-Sarasvati script, and we'll be home free. Fortunately, Steve Farmer has found that the Indus-Sarasvati glyphs do not form a language. I agree totally. These seals must be passports and visas for 'Aryans', so that particular conundrum is solved too. Even if I say so myself, this is a totally satisfying theory that fits all the known evidence, and I expect awards and accolades to arrive by email – my id is given below – any day now.
Comments welcome at Rajeev.srinivasan@gmail.com
1194 words, January 22, 2006
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