Seriously Sandeep

The High Priestess of Indian Marxism has spoken again! This time however, she speaks in a different language, but the meaning is the same. She leads us to believe that she is moving–surprise, surprise!–towards an honest examination of the infamous Aryan Invasion Theory.

But first, let me thank JK for providing this link.

All right, now to business.

The High Priestess (err…have I told that her name is Romila Thapar?) speaks in a language that is analogous to the twisting alleys of the slums of any large city: you think an alley will lead you to your destination, but it only opens up further alleys, and so you go on in a maze until you find it impossible to trace back the road where you originally started.

She bandied about the Aryan Invasion Theory for decades, unopposed, when she was in command of the ICHR despite facing overwhelming evidence to the contrary. When she could no longer defend it, she tried to quickly cover her tracks by changing her script: the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) changed to the Aryan Migration Theory (AMT)!

The AIT states that a group of white-skinned, ferocious tribals called Aryans came into North-Western India from Central Asia (Iran and surrounding areas), destroyed the existing civilization and imposed its own. They are said to have used chariots for transporation, and iron for carrying out warfare.

A summary of how this theory is untenable is given below (courtesy, Dr.David Frawley):

The Vedic culture was thus said to be that of primitive nomads who came out of Central Asia with their horse-drawn chariots and iron weapons and overthrew the cities of the more advanced Indus valley culture, with their superior battle tactics. It was pointed out that no horses, chariots or iron was discovered in Indus valley sites.

Moreover, the whole idea of nomads with chariots has been challenged. Chariots are not the vehicles of nomads. Their usage occured only in ancient urban cultures with much flat land, of which the river plain of north India was the most suitable. Chariots are totally unsuitable for crossing mountains and deserts, as the so-called Aryan invasion required.

Frawley also cites several factual observations pertaining to anthropology, evidence from racial studies and metallurgy to disprove the AIT.

After this demolition, the High Priestess spoke as follows. I’ve reproduced the following from Romila Thapar’s Archaeology and Language at the Roots of Ancient India, published by the Journal of Asiatic Society, Bombay.

I did support the idea of a graduated migration of Aryan-speaking peoples from the Indo-Iranian borderlands into north-western India. This resulted in an interface of various cultures and this interface needs to be explored — and many of us have done so, as would be apparent from our other publications on the subject.

The change in Thapar’s script is noted well, again, by Frawley:

From the ferocious Aryan hordes we have come down to mild pastoral migrants coming not with iron and chariots but only herds of cattle. This Aryan migration theory I call the “fourth birth of the Aryan invasion theory.”
How small groups of pastoral migrants can accomplish changing the language of a subcontinent - which already had given birth to its own great civilization and imposing their own culture and social system upon it, is highly improbable and almost absurd. An existent complex cultural order such as ancient India indicates can easily assimilate a few cattle herders moving in, but such groups cannot be given the credit to assimilate the whole culture of a subcontinent.

But wait, her doublespeak doesn’t end here. She vindicates the “truth” of her “reasoning” by shifting stances again: and whom does she pick? The RSS, of course!

The mentors of the RSS spoke of race and the race spirit with reference to the Aryans in the 1920s and 1930s. If the RSS has now decided, as Dr. Swamy asserts, that Aryan is a language label and not a racial category, they are stating what many of us have been saying for some decades now.

So there! The founders of the RSS never spoke of Aryans in terms of race. It was Savarkar who briefly mentioned about the Aryan spirit, not in terms of racial superiority, but as a noble spirit that has made valuable contributions to human thought and evolution. And it was Hedgewar who founded the RSS, not Savarkar. But it is the same Romila Thapar who when she earlier supported the AIT, spoke of Aryans as primitive barbaric tribes who roughshod over the “indigenous” Indian people: by indigenous Indian people she means the tribals, and the Dalits (Dravidians if you will).

Sadly, no one except her pinko friends is willing to buy her theories anymore.