Romila Thapar’s BS
Monday, 23. March 2009 - 2:52 AM
A million thanks to JK for pointing me to a rather aptly titled piece, Lunch with BS: Romila Thapar. BS stands for Business Standard but from the tone, tenor, and content of the piece and the person it eulogizes, it more than deserves the other pejorative substitute: Bull Shit.
The article’s structure is quite fascinating: an extended review of an exotic Japanese meal interspered with liberal doses of undisguised fawning over Romila Thapar.
Romila Thapar was never really a historian. Post Eminent Historians, she became history. Romila Thapar is one of the reasons why ancient Sanskrit proverbs like Vruddha nari pativrata (An aged woman is always faithful to her husband) still have wide currency. But the secular press loves anybody who doesn’t make it take foolish risks.
The piece begins with a mention of blogs critical of Thapar.
Entire blogs have been devoted to Romila Thapar describing her as, among other things, the “High Priestess of Indian Marxism†and “a flat-earth type†and a “deeply mendacious enemy of the Hindusâ€.
Now, I’ve never taken a terrible pride in my blog nor do I harbour illusions that I’m doing some great service to a cause through my blog. But to my delight, I notice that this article mentions a term I applied to Romila Thapar five years ago: The High Priestess Speaks Again! Either my blog is that popular (which I seriously doubt) or it is a tribute to the blog-unearthing skills of the Business Standard guys. But lest we be misled, the authors add a quick but mandatory clarification that most of these blogs are “of a saffron shade, about Thapar’s “pinko†views on ancient Indian history..” The saffron shade explains everything. It does more. It shows her in an almost angelic halo–the harsher the Saffron criticism, the greater she must be is the default conclusion.
Business Standard is fully within its rights to slobber over Romila’s greatness as an alleged historian. Yet its readers deserve at least a balanced picture of a historian. This isn’t a gossip magazine where the sole intent is to only elevate a person to Demigodhood. No. History is a serious affair, and if Business Standard means business, it needs to stop reducing itself to the level of Filmfare or Stardust or Savvy or Society. The authors seem to be on a warlike mission to highlight Romila’s “achievements” like getting the Kluge chair, and simultaneously, take the cudgels on her behalf by belittling “communal” historians. In this laughably vain attempt, the authors descend to ridiculous depths like calling the Kluge prize “…a sort of “Nobel†for disciplines such as history, philosophy, politics, anthropology, sociology, religion and so on.” The Business Standard is not alone in this. Most Indian media houses seem to have assigned for themselves a God-given right to assume that their readers are ignorant by default. I challenge Business Standard to show me exactly one evidence that proves that the Kluge prize is a Nobel equivalent. Or perhaps it seems to suggest that it was transformed into a Nobel equivalent after Romila Thapar won the prize.
This piece is further evidence that Romila Thapar is only an alleged historian. A few examples are in order.
Her regret, she says, is that so much emphasis in modern times is put “only on the Valmiki version both in India and outside, that we’ve forgotten the fact that there were and are multiple versions.†What is interesting is not just that the Valmiki version travelled all over but “how people varied the story to express their concerns in their own versionsâ€
I’ve already spoken about the hollowness of the claims of “different versions” of the Ramayana. While it is commonsense that when a popular epic traverses both geography and culture, the latter assimilates it and gives it its own shape. Because there are multiple versions doesn’t mean that the original is no big deal. Would these versions exist without the foundation of Valmiki’s original? But such is the insidious nature of Thapar’s ilk, who want us to believe that the original itself is insignificant.
No Romila Thapar Encomnium is complete without her “expert” view on the Aryan Tourist Migration Theory. Once a fierce proponent of the Aryan “Invasion” Theory, her gigantic ego must’ve been irreparably ruptured after she was forced to acknowledge that it was no longer sustainable. Hence the Aryan “Migration” Theory. But it is also a testimonial to the ignorance of the nitwits who wrote this piece de disgrace when they uncritically quote her
Thapar’s was among the first, for instance, to counter the conventional “oriental despot†view of Indian monarchy and demonstrate that the “Aryan†was a linguistic grouping, not a fair-skinned master race, that migrated to, and did not “invadeâ€, north India and occasionally ate beef (this last point exercising Hindutva votaries the most).
Note again how the H word automatically proves Thapar’s thesis? An eminent linguist, Sanskritist, and scholar par excellence, the late Sediapu Krishna Bhatta conclusively proves how even Thapar’s fanciful linguistic theory actually proves the opposite: i.e. there was no invasion or migration.
Then we arrive at Exhibit 3:
The problem began with the British periodising Indian history into Hindu, Muslim and British and maintaining that Hindus and Muslims were always antagonistic towards each other. “This cannot be sustained historically.
And this another of the favourite Marxist construct, which conveniently blames the British for every real and imaginary communal conflict that existed historically. Also, she interestingly doesn’t give us one evidence to show how “it cannot be sustained historically.” If anything, the peaceful living conditions of Muslims under Hindu kings should be attributed to the tolerance of those Hindu rulers. On the opposite side of the scale, every Muslim king who conquered a Hindu kingdom first broke all its religious institutions, and symbols and enslaved its Hindu population. But we’re talking to a person who advocates that Aurangzeb was the progenitor of secularism. Here’s the deal: I challenge Romila Thapar to prove using the rigors of the scientific method that there was at least one period in Indian history that witnessed the Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai phenomenon.
Exhibit 4 is more fascinating and revealing:
Which raises the issue of her rebuttal of the “Golden Age†theory — another point that rankled with historians of a religious nationalist persuasion. “Golden ages all over world in various histories were a fashion among nineteenth-century historians. Most historians of present times have given up the idea. Nationalist thinking didn’t pay enough attention to the implications of the description nor was any attempt made to define it in detail. They just went on saying ‘it was a marvellous age of harmony and prosperity’. It’s like today when one hears talk about India Shining; few analyse what it means and what the implications are for the Indian citizen.â€
This is in reality a tired tactic to dismiss genuine achievements of Hindu history. Look at what we lose when you dismiss the Golden Ages.
- The Mauryas, a period close to 150 years of unparalled achievement
- The Guptas, a period of roughly 300 years, perhaps the greatest empire under whom most of India rose to stupendous heights in all fields of human endeavour
- The Chalukyas, again, about 200 years of accomplishment in art, music, poetry, philosophy, commerce and military
- The Rashtrakutas–ditto as Chalukyas
- The Cholas and Pandyas, between them more than a thousand years of development, prosperity, and high culture
- The Vijayanagar Empire–perhaps the real reason for Romila Thapar’s angst against the “golden age” theory as she calls it. I leave it to your knowledge about the Vijayanagar Empire’s achievements.
In a line, you are asked to discard these because most historians have given up this theory. Yet, she doesn’t name even a single such historian. I suppose we should believe it because she says so. So what does that leave Indian history with? No prizes for guessing the correct answer. But the clue lies in “religious nationalist historian.” This choice of words automatically implies that the non-religious non-nationalist historian is the only “true” historian. In other words, the only historians are the Eminent Historians with Romila Thapar as the head honcho. But she’s too modest to say it in so many words. So, let’s see what a commonsense definition of a historian is. JK nails it in one of his best posts till date:
Any historian who identifies himself with a label – Orientalist, Marxist or Nationalist – has already pigeon-holed himself. They are bound by dogma and cannot accept any evidence which goes contrary to their predefined concepts. At that point they cease to be historians and become politicians. Historians like Upinder Singh now perpetuate such labels, implying that a historian has to belong to one such fraternity… We cannot live without historians and our choice is not between Orientalists, Marxists or Nationalists, but between good historians and bad ones.
Commit these lines to memory. It is evident which light this shows her in. The problem is Romila Thapar’s bullet has to take a circuitous route to hit the target. She can no longer openly call herself a Marxist historian because Marx’s pet “history” has so miserably failed his followers. She can no longer repeat the lies about Babri Masjid and Muslim atrocities and historical evidences. That leaves her with impotent invectives against a faceless beast called Hindutva, which she hasn’t managed to clearly define. But she is a past master of labelling and that’s what she does here.
Since she’s a “controversial†historian in a country that is witnessing a resurgence of muscular patriotism we feel compelled to ask her views on India as a “future superpower†and the rise of Hindutva. On the first, she says, “I think we’ve got a long way to go.†But more to the point, “America has behaved so outrageously in matters concerning the rest of the world that if this is written into being a superpower, one would not wish it for India.â€
And yet, she had no qualms accepting the Kluge prize and serving on its chair. Nice. And therein lies a hint at the real problem as we shall see.
It is now time to remind Business Standard that it does its readers tremendous disservice by choosing selective facts about Romila Thapar and omitting the mountain of evidence that shows her in less than flattering light. By dismissing genuine criticism against this alleged historian as the rants of “saffron” bloggers, this paper actually insults the efforts of the really eminent men like Arun Shourie, Sita Ram Goel, and Koenraad Elst. Arun Shourie stands tall in this list because his book more than anything else, exposed the Marxist misdeeds in the ICHR. Does Business Standard have a factually convincing response to this?
This prima donna of Marxist history-writing now speaks about her own victimhood at the hands of the dreaded Hindutva votaries. Yet, in her peak, she and her clique routinely spat fire at everybody who had a different view. Monomaniacal, Communal, Nazi, Neo-colonialist, Laughable, Garbage, Bullheaded, Brawler, are but some of the fine terms her gang applied to those to “dared” to differ.
That this proud, card-carrying Marxist expounded her rehashed tripe over a Rs.3400 meal shows what she really is: neither a historian nor a Marxist but a self-serving fraud academic who made it big by latching on to the political fashion current in her youth.
It’s time Business Standard renamed itself.
Tags: Business Standard, Commentary, Eminent Historians, Fraud, High Priestess of Indian Marxism, History, History Writing, India, Indian Politics, Leftist History, Marxist History Writing, Pseudosecularism, Pseudosecularism Hall of Shame, Romila Thapar
23. March 2009 - 6:29 AM
Excellent post Sandeep. JK said it excellently too. We need good historians. Romila Thapar’s arrogance to label anyone who apposes her as ‘communal’ etc, shows her scholarship level, rather the lack of it. Such arrogance and egoism are usually attributed local goondas.
23. March 2009 - 1:20 PM
Very good post Sandeep…
One of our biggest problems is that we are not fulltime politicians like Romila Thapar. She has all the time in the world to play scheming games and playing victim.
It would be better if she would spend time instead, on study of history in the context of archaeology, rather than some urdu pamphlets published by mughal court jesters..
23. March 2009 - 2:47 PM
Thanks for another excellent post Sandeep. Only Ishwar/Krishna/God knows how much I have educated myself thanks to your blog.
This is the comment I left on the interview page, lets see if they have the b@lls to publish it:
Is this magazine Business Standard, or Marxist Standard? You people should be embarassed if not downright ashamed to have published such a nonsensical piece about an “alleged” historian such as Thapar. This woman is neither historian, neither emminent. She is too weighed down by her Marxist political agenda to be treated with respect. My readership of this magazine is questioned as I sat and read this pathetic interview. Sorry for the harsh post, but Romila Thapar should be serving a prison sentence at the very least, for her fradulent “assessment” of Indian history, which is very very far from facts. Again, I regard this magazine highly (total bull, I never read it, but what the hell), but I am slightly disturbed by seeing this interview of a highly questionable woman whose theories are a house of cards, prone to give way at the first signs of logical reasoning. I recommend all Indians to read Arun Shourie’s book: Emminent Histories: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud. Once she can give a sufficiently logical/reasonable response to even half of the points made there, she may deserve some respect.
23. March 2009 - 4:03 PM
Simply Superb.
PI.
23. March 2009 - 7:50 PM
No doubt, this post is vintage sandeep. Great work!
For all readers of this post, I’d very strongly recommend reading “Eminent Historians” by Arun Shourie, as rightly pointed out by desigyrl. It is not just another book on our historians, but is actually a treatise on our servitude to “western/middle-eastern” imperialism. The unfortunate reality of this entire circus is that there exists a “demand an supply” situation. Unless Hindus, who’ve lately started to assert themselves and stop taking their BS, things are not going to change. As for the supply side, there is no dearth, as there have never been. Romilas and Habibs of yesterday are being substituted by the Anganas and Vijay Prashads of today. We cannot control that, but we surely can control the demand side.
23. March 2009 - 9:43 PM
Thappad maro Thapar ko
Koenraad Elst does so at this webpage, metaphorically.
- koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/ayodhya/harshakashmir.html
Some excerpts, (with emphasis added by self):-
“…No less than seven times does she denounce Shourie’s alleged (and unproven) incompetence: Shourie has “not the faintest idea”, is “unaware”, “untrained”, and “does not know”, and what he does is “laughable”, “a joke”, “garbage”. But what exactly is wrong in his writing, we are not allowed to know. If history is now a professional discipline, one couldn’t deduce it from this letter of hers, for its line of argument is part snobbish and part medieval (relying on formal authority), but quite bereft of the scientific approach..”
“..If she herself has read it at all, she must be knowing that it doesn’t support the claim she is making. Either she has just been bluffing, writing lies about Kalhana’s testimony in the hope that her readers would be too inert to check the source. Or she simply hasn’t read Kalhana’s text in the first place..”
“..It is not the first and only time that Romila Thapar is caught tampering with the sources..”
“.. she conceals that Alberuni, who had widely travelled in India and was as contemporary to Ghaznavi as can be, has confirmed Ghaznavi’s general policy of Islamic iconoclasm and specifically his destruction of the Somnath temple. Alberuni writes (Edward Sechau, tra.: Alberuni’s India, London 1910, vol.1, p.117, and vol.2, p.103) that the main idol was broken to pieces, with one piece being thrown into the local hippodrome, another being built into the steps at the entrance of the mosque of Ghazni, so that worshippers could wipe their feet on it. Mahmud’s effort to desecrate the idol by all means shows that his iconoclasm was not just a matter of stealing the temple gold, but was a studied act of religious desecration.”
23. March 2009 - 10:09 PM
Good post Sir!
Were it not for Amar Chitra Kathas and childhood conversations with my granny, I would have been a pin-head soaked in the “CBSE” history…of Romila Thappar… thinking… “hindutatva-wadis” as the ultimate villains !
screw her…
more strength to you… and yeah..Business Standard… i think it has no Business being in Business anymore…
so there!
24. March 2009 - 3:54 AM
What we have to think is how can we counter such a false account of history? Only by being more educated than Thapar and having real sources to back one’s findings. Until someone can come up with an eminently readable book, no one will take our rebuttal of Thapar seriously.
She has done great damage by falsifying history, but who is the brave one that can counter her by writing a well-researched account, that is better than hers in terms of erudition? Until we are able to come up with such a thing, then criticizing Thapar will lead to nowhere. There are a lot of dedicated people who can write well and are vell-versed with history–why do they not come up with something to counter Thapar and expose her pseudo-scholarship? Collect money for scholars who can come up with someone to counter her claims–but it has to be from a very erudite, respectable source—
24. March 2009 - 7:53 AM
Comrade Larissa, it is difficult to take you seriously. You sound very silly to me. You consider Thapar “educated”. I wonder what your definition of “education” is.
If having a PhD is “educated”, several people are very very educated, including yours truly.
But note a CRUCIAL point: being a Marxist is NOT to “educated”. That’s like believing in witchcraft and worse. Comrade Thapar is a Marxist fundamentalist.
While on the subject, _you_ need to educate yourself on Thapar’s superstitious belief system if you have to acquire the ability to debate rationally. You have to learn about genocidal ideologies like Marxism. You will need to know facts such as that communism/marxism killed more people than nazism/fascism.
Once you educate yourself on these facts and acquire the intellectual fire-power to look at left loonies critically — and not be in foolish awe of their “education” — you will also discover that Thapar was more than adequately answered, and that she in fact chose to run away from battle, and that if she speaks to journos at all, it is only to friendly journos, so that she can fool simple folks like you. You’ll perhaps then understand why Comrade Thapar could not counter Arun Shourie’s well-researched book. You will understand why Comrade Thapar does not want historical truths about communism taught in textbooks, or the facts about how her party, CPIM, sabotaged the Indian freedom struggle.
I encourage you to make a beginning in your education by reading Shourie’s “Eminent Historians”, “Only Fatherland” and then follow it up with reading “The Blackbook of Communism”, written by European ex-Marxists. Best wishes.
24. March 2009 - 9:51 AM
As always – wonderful analysis Sandeep. I wish more power to your quill (or keyboard).
However, I feel that Thapar and her ilk are finished (as a friend recently told me; they may have a Kluge but they really have no clue). These people are to be disregarded now – they are not to be taken seriously. Time will consign them to the dustbin – BS or no BS.
As someone trying to do his bit for Hinduism’s intellectual regeneration – I hope you will move on. There are many positive projects that require your skill and labor. I know you are doing work on translating Dr. Bhyrappa’s work (which I, a non-Kannadiga eagerly await). I hope one day you will write an easily digestible, popular version of Srikanth Talageri’s new book (reviewed here by Koenraad Elst – http://koenraadelst.blogspot.com/2009/01/great-book-about-great-book.html). Popular history books (the kind put out by Stephen Ambrose or Doug Brinkley) can be a very powerful genre. As soon as I read Elst’s review and realized the difficulty the average reader will face in understanding it, I immediately thought of you. I can think of no one better to undertake this task. If you will take up this task, I promise to help in any way that I can – including participating in larrisca’s Scholar Fund!
24. March 2009 - 5:28 PM
Ot,
I know–I am just saying that Thapar’s ideas are echoed by a lot of influential people–you might not like these people–but they do command an audience, a large one in the West, such as Amartya Sen. Why do you think all the new books written about India by Westerners gloss over the history of Islam in India? Because Hindus themselves have not make it a big issue. Most Indians are apathetic from what I have seen and do not know their history, so their attacks on people that do publish history on India, ends up as just ad hominem attacks. I know about Arun Shourie, and you do not need to tell me what to read–but when history books just remains eclectic and only very educated people know the truth, how will that affect the mainstream? Until you can shape majority opinion, you can be as erudite and arrogant as you want, but no one will listen to you–and that small portion of Indians that do understand is increasingly decreasing with the new liberal education–so do not be so arrogant. I am saying that someone has to write a history book on a grand scale–a book that will be respected for its truth even by the general reader if you are to counter Thapar’s views for the mainstream audience—Where did I approve of Thapar’s view? READ COMMENTS properly before you respond. It is this same neglect of the larger audience that cause the BJP to lose elections and never command a majority–
Apart from some books such as by Arun Shourie, when have you great a great History of India in recent times? Maybe people should collect money to support scholars to make history known to the public on a mass scale, so they can fight to shape public awareness about its history, just as the liberal press fights to shape public opinion–that is what I am saying. HIndus are people that never put up an adequate fight in anything–that is why they always have lost in history–and they still do not learn the lesson. Look at the Jews–how much effort Jews from all walks of life give to preserving their history–
Most Indians are uneducated about their history–that is why views like Thapar’s gain popularity–that has to be countered, in a well organized way–BJP is not well orgazined enough in terms of bringing the best and brightest to write a proper Indian history—
Ever read the Last Mogul? You might not like it, but it is very well researched–when was the last time you read a book by an Indan with a similar level of scholarship?
24. March 2009 - 5:55 PM
I think it stupid to attach too much importance to the Aryan Invasion theory. The ancient Greeks also went to Greece from Central Asia, but why are Greeks not fixated on the idea that the Greeks came from the East? Because they do not need to be–they created something that was distinctly Greek and thus in a sense broke from what they had absorbed from Egypt and the Near East. Similarly, whoever came to India, created a uniqe civilization in India–too much importance is attached to the Aryan Invasion theory so that the larger issues such as the impact of Islam on India is ignored. Who cares where various peoples came from into India? India has had a steady stream of invasions. What is important is that they created something that is distinctly Indian which did not exist elsewhere. Why not focus on the distinct culture they created? Focusing on agreeing with or refuting the Aryan Invasion theory is a waste of time. The Greeks do not care that they came from Central Asia, why should Indians make a big deal? Why not focus on the uniqueness of India?
Too much time is wasted arguing about inconsequential matters, and too little time focused on the Muslim invasions–which is when India begins to decline or enter the dark ages which it clearly has not got out of.
24. March 2009 - 6:00 PM
What is scarier than Thapar is Frawley, a hack who also commands a large audience–I was shocked to learn that my father in law, an eduated man, went to his lectures–
24. March 2009 - 6:04 PM
Larissa and all other like minded people,
The need of the hour is to publicize the gross damage done to Indian history. My understanding of Indian History was similar to any “Secular-Liberal” person , till 1.5 years back. It changed the day I finished reading SLB’s Avarana. Later i bought books by Shourie and read them. There are millions of such misguided souls in India. We can only do this by creating awareness. of course we wont get help of “Secular” media to spread the message. Rather than books, I feel audio-video is the best way to reach people. Its very difficult to expect people to read books on history, when its considered the most boring subject by most youngsters. I have a few ideas, let me know your thoughts on these.
1. Youtube channels on Indian history, with people like arun shourie, SLB and other like minded people elucidating the injustice done in the name of secularism. All we “fascists” need to do is publicize the same to all friends through forwards.
2. Online signature petition to revise Indian history text books.
3. Exclusive website exposing the Marxist historians. And advertising the website on all leading news channel websites and news papers. I think parties like BJP,RSS should fund that though.:)
We cant sit here and crib about Romila’s BS. Someone needs to start something concrete that will connect with the masses.
The fact is people who have read Shourie, Konerad etc are very few. Most people think what they learnt in school is golden, because either they havent heard of shourie or they dont have time to read shourie.
24. March 2009 - 8:35 PM
nice and eye-opening …
as u had sed .. we need a more comprehensive site to access all of arun shourie’s works in all forms written and spoken and one that will update his readers on a day to day basis about his mission … the voiceofdharma and worpress pages are passe …. this one needs to have arun shourie himself intereacting with us … high-time u and other fellow bloggers got togather to do this aslo u need to hyperlink to koenrad elst’s blog on ur and similar sites too .. keep up the good work … a systematic compilation of this and similar blogs would itself provide an amazing look at the true history and polity of the nation … keep up the good work guys and do remember to back-up ur files guys , just in case a secular virus wiggles in to taste them ….. in time ur blogs will become a national treasure in themselves …
24. March 2009 - 8:54 PM
larissa,
I have no idea why you would call Frawley a hack. He commands great respect for his knowledge in Vedic sciences and has greatly contributed in the spread of Vedic knowledge abroad. If you would call him a hack for some of his controversial statements, I would like to remind you that same was stated regarding 20th century nationalists like Rishi Aurobindo et.al. who disregarded the Aryan mythology. Of course you might ask what proof Frawley has. But, the same question was asked by the “scientific British or Germans” who themselves showed no proof.
PS – I hope we are talking of the same Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri)
24. March 2009 - 9:12 PM
Comrade Larissa, you surely are in awe either of this Marxist “historian”, or in awe of the fact that white people courted her. Face the fact: a Marxist can only be as objective a scholar as a Fascist or a Nazi can be. Nazism, Fascism and Marxism are all destructive, millennial ideologies. It is inconceivable how anyone blinded by the prejudices and superstitions of these ideologies can produce anything in the nature of scholarship in the first place. No wonder Comrade Thapar does not want the record of communism taught in schools. I suggest you read “All These Years” written by the Comrade’s sis-in-law to get to know how deeply into communism the whole family was.
History writing as an academic discipline is dying out in India, partly because Comrade Thapar and gang destroyed it with their politicization, and partly because smart people (perhaps as a consequence of the above) aren’t attracted to that profession anymore. In universities across India, mediocre students rejected by more sought-after departments are ending up in the history department. The political pamphleteering of the JNU types has a short shelf-life. Good, accurate history in the future will be written by people who don’t have any formal degrees in history, and who don’t have any agendas either.
And by the way, it is amusing to see you declare that racist Aryan Invasion Theory is not “important”. You wouldn’t have thought it “unimportant” if the facts of the case forced Thapar et al to give it up to save face. Communists were at one point in time clinging to it to dearly though. Have you heard of the “African-Aryans”? _That_ Aryan theory paved the way for the Rwandan genocide of 1994. A pointer to what Thapar/Max Mueller school of history can do to human beings. (Of course, the original Aryan theory too, swallowed by the Fuhrer hook line and sinker, led to its own genocide).
24. March 2009 - 11:42 PM
What is scarier than Thapar is Frawley, a hack who also commands a large audience–I was shocked to learn that my father in law, an eduated man, went to his lectures–
So what exactly is the “problem” with Frawley, and why should simply attending a lecture by him would shock you? By that logic, we should simply reject others without even listening to what they have to say, which would be considered close-minded at best.
25. March 2009 - 12:43 AM
Sandeep,
Excellent post.If i may say so I am no judge of that!- Your writing has become much better and i am an old time lurker here.
Larrissa,
The judgemental tone of your posts makes you seem like a comrade-in-hiding.How can you be so dismissive of David Frawley ? Ot may be right.
Ot “All These Years†written by the Comrade’s sis-in-law”
Are you talking about Raj Thapar ? Pls confirm as i would like to read that book.
25. March 2009 - 3:05 AM
Has anyone read the works of Max Meuller? He may have not been correct in everything, but he was the first person to translate our epic books into English–which is a great feat–it was the product of lifelong dedication.
Frawley is a hack. Period.
One who can criticize a great scholar is one who has similar great achievements.
Frawley is a hack. I have read his works. Thapar is a hack as well.
25. March 2009 - 3:36 AM
Frawley is a hack just like Romila Thapar, but in a different manner.
If Hindus can but produce a Frawley (a Westerner claiming to be Hindu) to write Indian History, then GOD help us!!!
OT- History writing in India is dying out because most serious Indians are pushed towards engineering and medicine. If you study history you might not get the job at the outsourcing company and keep up with your neighbors. Good scholarship is a life-long labor and involves sacrifice. It means being poor, just as theoretical sciences also entails this in the pursuit of learning. While I grant Thapar is a hack, don’t blame her that Indians do not study their own history. I do not see how Frawley is serious scholarship. Arun Shourie’s book though is well written.
Capiche?
25. March 2009 - 3:47 AM
I like to see just how much Sanskrit those attacking Max Meuller know? He might not have been right in everything, but he was a great scholar. Produce scholarship on that level and crtique him if you do not agree–no one listens to hacks which is the point of this post.
Frawley vs Meuller–can there even be a comparison in terms of scholarship? Great scholars can be wrong–challenge them by producing even greater scholarship. Ot, how much Sanskrit do you know. Can you translate the Rig Veda? If not, then first learn Sanskrit before you challenge Meuller.
I have read a great deal of Max Meuller–he was wrong in some things, but overall he says many good things about India as well.
You need to read ALL of a scholar before you start critiquing his views with excerpts taken out of context.
25. March 2009 - 3:51 AM
Frawley is a hack, whether he or Thapar is the greater hack is debatable.
As for Arun Shourie, his book is well written, no denying that.
Just because Frawley says fawning things about Indians does not mean that his scholarship is not suspect. This is a trap that I have noticed that Hindutva people fall into all too often.
25. March 2009 - 3:56 AM
Sandeep, great post as always. Please keep up the good fight.
Slighly off-topic, but this may be of interest to you: the Church in Kerala is going to field candidates of its own in the LS polls as they are not happy with the Congress or the Commies:
http://www.indiaenews.com/religion/20070128/37281.htm
There’s not even a pretense of secularism in Kerala anymore – it’s all about anti-Hinduism. I am so disappointed that Hindus in Kerala continue to support these monsters who are just going to destroy their way of life. Of course, none of the leading sickular members of the ELM is carrying this story.
25. March 2009 - 4:07 AM
“The judgemental tone of your posts makes you seem like a comrade-in-hiding.How can you be so dismissive of David Frawley ? Ot may be right.”
Oh? Did not know you have to be a Marxist when you disgree with pseudo-scholarship. Many people listen to Frawley, many gullible people unfortunately.
As for Frawley, it is the conclusion I have come to from my study of Sanskrit and the classical Indo-European languages, Greek and Latin.
I do not think most people care who came to India or did not come. I think people want to fight against the whitewashing of the coming of Islam. This is the urgent matter. Why dissipate energies on things that only those who can reconstruct Rid-Vedic texts are in a good position to judge?
We are Brahmins. As far as I am concerned, they were Hindus for as far back in time as I care about…If they were something else before they were HIndus, so? How far back in time do you want to go? You will go to Africa if you go back hundreds of thousands of years. Get the point?
25. March 2009 - 5:38 AM
“We cant sit here and crib about Romila’s BS. Someone needs to start something concrete that will connect with the masses.”
Exactly. The question what can we do and how can we react to the falsification of Indian history? Produce TV programs, hand out pamphlets to the masses, petition to add what is neglected in textbooks. Only by overcoming apathy will Hindus move anywhere. However such actions should be carried out in a highly rational organized manner.
If Indians do not care about their history, it will be written for them.
There has to be something to attract mass support–and this is usually achieved through service to the public….
25. March 2009 - 7:31 AM
Larissa, you never mentioned **WHY** exactly is Frawley a hack?
Except because you came to that conclusion …
“As for Frawley, it is the conclusion I have come to from my study of Sanskrit and the classical Indo-European languages, Greek and Latin.”
Please tell us your reputation and recognition as a Sanskrit scholar? As for Frawley, he’s been awarded numerous awards by *Sanskrit scholars* (Google search will tell you).
I DO know sanskrit (not an expert though) and did not come to any such conclusion. Please cite some sources before telling a widely reputed scholar as a hack.
“Just because Frawley says fawning things about Indians does not mean that his scholarship is not suspect.” Doesn’t same things apply to Max Mueller? Especially when you say “I have read a great deal of Max Meuller–he was wrong in some things, but overall he says many good things about India as well.” This sounds like the secular elites – presumption of innocence applies to terrorists, not Varun Gandhi
“You need to read ALL of a scholar before you start critiquing his views with excerpts taken out of context.”
Sorry, but this is not necessarily true always. This is why the Thapars got away with their lies – No one had the patience to unearth all of their lies. If someone says that the Sun goes around the earth, he’s wrong. Period.
“I do not think most people care who came to India or did not come.”
DEAD WRONG there. History matters. You may not care, others do. The Nazis did believe that Aryans went around the world. 6 million+ people died out of their supremacist theory, thanks to your Max Mueller. Similarly, Indians were told by the Brits that they were inferior till the Europeans civilized them. Its a question of national morale!
25. March 2009 - 8:11 AM
Dear Larissa,
“I like to see just how much Sanskrit those attacking Max Meuller know? ”
You shot yourself in the foot, Comrade Larissa.
How much Sanskrit does Comrade Thapar know? How many Sankrit texts did she read in the original? She was one of those who canvassed against setting up a department of Sanskrit studies in JNU (an NDA government initiative) where even Russian is taught.
Which shows that any nutjob can become an academically-qualified historian in India without knowing a word of Sanskrit.
25. March 2009 - 8:36 AM
>>Are you talking about Raj Thapar ? Pls confirm as i would like to read that book.
Yes the same one. One needs to read it to understand how the seeds of commie domination in Indian media and academia were sown, though documenting this phenomenon was not Raj Thapar’s intent. Her hubby (and Comrade Romila’s brother) was a close pal of Rajni Palme Dutt, the chief of British communist party.
25. March 2009 - 3:02 PM
Does anyone know how an online petition is done? We should start a global online petition to discard the CBSE and ICSE History textbooks written by Marxists such as Thapar, as these books put Indian National Identity in danger and are filled with lies, which have been debunked over and over again by the likes of Shourie, Elst, Goel, Swarup, Gautier….
Please reply if someone here knows how to start an online petition.
25. March 2009 - 5:38 PM
Ot,
You shot yourself in the foot, Comrade Larissa.
How much Sanskrit does Comrade Thapar know?
Why do you keep making it as if I am defending this woman Thapar? READ PROPERLY before you comment.
Suddenly, some amateurs are more knowledgeable that scholars who have dedicated their entire lives to sanskrit like Meuller. That is all that I am saying. Both Frawley and Thapar are junk to me.
25. March 2009 - 5:51 PM
“Just because Frawley says fawning things about Indians does not mean that his scholarship is not suspect.†Doesn’t same things apply to Max Mueller? Especially when you say “I have read a great deal of Max Meuller–he was wrong in some things, but overall he says many good things about India as well.â€
No, I am saying this is response those who dismiss Max Meuller as a racist without reading what he wrote. I have read his works. He displays prejudices of his times, but he dedicated his life to bringing India to the West. It is largely because of him that we have standardized versions of certain texts.
Frawley also displays opinions for which he has no backing whatsoever. You cringe when you read his books–full of assertions backed by nothing, just as you accuse Thapar. But since he “appreciates Vedic science” (whatever that happens to be), perhaps it strokes the egos of Hindutva folk who need to be reassured that there was “science” in Vedic times.
25. March 2009 - 6:03 PM
‘The Nazis did believe that Aryans went around the world. 6 million+ people died out of their supremacist theory, thanks to your Max Mueller.’
Max Meuller never argued for an Aryan race–he argued that Sanskrit shares linguistic affinities to Greek and Latin. He never argues that Aryans constitute a distinct race–READ someone before you criticize him. Aryan is a language group used by scholars to denote a linguistic family, Meuller emphasized that it does not constitute a race. If Nazis want to call themselves Aryans why is Meuller to be blamed? And do not compare a scholar of the stature of Meuller to Thapar. This is why I dislike arguing with HIndutva folk–they rally on emotional charges that someone is a racist.
25. March 2009 - 8:38 PM
Desigyrl@30: I’m not sure if online petitions help at all. Especially in cases like you mentioned, because the conversion factor is too low. Either way, here’s the link:
http://www.petitiononline.com/create_petition.html
25. March 2009 - 9:20 PM
larissa@32: You are taking this debate to a subjective platform. Both Frawley and Mueller said a lot of “allegedly rubbish thing” which may/may not be true. Both fawned Indians. Yet, you support one while tell the other one is a hack. I won’t start hair-splitting on why one is better than the other, etc and NO we don’t need to read ALL of one’s work to say who is rubbish and who isn’t. I never told Max Mueller is a hack like you did for Frawley. I respect the contribution of both. No pseudo-sekoolarism here, huh?
“Frawley also displays opinions for which he has no backing whatsoever.”
This is just not true. I’ve read some of his books and been to one of his lectures. He claims he has evidence on his controversial ideas, but they are not accepted by “mainstream” acads. dominated by the Thapars of the west – Nassbaum, Doniger, et. al. Plus, he has made opinions, conjectures, suggestions, which he clearly states.
““appreciates Vedic science†(whatever that happens to be), perhaps it strokes the egos of Hindutva folk who need to be reassured that there was “science†in Vedic times.”
Please don’t insult our history without learning about it. A simple google search will tell you about the contribution of Vedic era. I don’t claim to know it all, but I’ve READ about vedic maths (as a scientist by training) and it *IS* ming boggling! Not just pythagorean theorem (Baudhayana), entire ideas stolen and are known today to be from “greek mathematicians”. This is Aryan mythology all over again. If you are really *REALLY* interested in learning about VEDIC SCIENCE I will be very happy to create a post about it in my personal blog with all the details. Please ask for it!
****************************************
larissa@33:
“If Nazis want to call themselves Aryans why is Meuller to be blamed?”
Because he propounded that rubbish that there is an Aryan race. YES he did. Reference 5 in wiki article on Max mueller. I’m pasting the reference below.
^ Mull Max, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas (1888), Kessinger Publishing reprint, 2004, p.120; Dorothy Matilda Figueira, Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority Through Myths of Identity, Suny Press, 2002, p.45
Sure, you may not want to blame him entirely. I don’t. But it is a fact that his ideas are responsible for this. At least partly. Just like Gandhiji’s khilafat movt. in good heart joined Indian muslims to world islamic brotherhood forever.
“This is why I dislike arguing with HIndutva folk–they rally on emotional charges that someone is a racist.”
Sorry friend, no emotion here. All facts with citations, references, links. If you want, more will follow!
26. March 2009 - 10:30 AM
Well, Max Mueller definitely had a colonial agenda:
Johanna Nichols is at least one “educated” person who has located the IE homeland very close to India. Her argumentation is rather rock solid.
26. March 2009 - 11:55 AM
“Suddenly, some amateurs are more knowledgeable that scholars who have dedicated their entire lives to sanskrit like Meuller.”
Do you know that Mueller never visited India in his whole life. He “learnt” Sanskrit from other Englishmen who had brief stints in India as bureacrats. It is like I learn French in India from other Indians who went briefly to France on vacation, and then French consider me a “French scholar” for the next 200 years. According to one Indian historian (who lives in Germany) whom I know, Mueller never came to India because he felt the Brahmins will laugh him out of the town at his “knowledge” of Sanskrit and whatever translations he was inflicting on Indian spiritual literature.
26. March 2009 - 12:01 PM
In a letter to his wife, Mueller said:
“The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years.”
Is this the “standardized version of certain texts” that is being celebrated here by certain entities?
26. March 2009 - 12:21 PM
Mueller was a quack among historians. I quote here from a paper presented by Dr. BB Lal, ex-DG, ASI, about Mueller’s dating of the Vedas:
“Way back in the 19th century, the renowned German scholar Max Muller dated the Vedas to circa 1200 BCE. This he did on a very ad-hoc basis. Having accepted that the Sµutra literature could be as old as the sixth century BCE, he assigned a duration of two hundred years to each of the preceding periods, namely those of the Araynakas, Brahmanas and Vedas. Thus, 600+200+200+200= 1200 BCE was his ready-made date for the Vedas.
However, when his contemporary scholars, such as Goldstucker, Whitney and Wilson raised objections to this kind of ad-hocism, he relented and came out with the following statement:
“I have repeatedly dwelt on the merely hypothetical character of the dates, which I have ventured to assign to the first periods of Vedic literature. All I have claimed for them has been that they are minimum dates, and that the literary productions of each period which either still exist or which formerly existed could hardly be accounted for within shorter limits of time than those suggested.â€
But when even this explanation-cum-apology did not satisfy the scholars, Max Muller threw up his hands in sheer desperation. His confession, as follows, is worth noting (Max Muller 1890, reprint 1979):
“If now we ask how we can fix the dates of these periods, it is quite clear that we cannot hope to fix a terminum a qua [sic]. Whether the Vedic hymns were composed [in] 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth will ever determine.â€
In so far as Max Muller was concerned, the matter was closed from his side. But the greatest irony is that his original fatawa of 1200 BCE, given in the 19th century, is sill ruling the roost in certain quarters even in the 21st century!
The disastrous effect of this fatawa was seen in the 1920s when the Harappan Civilization was discovered and attempts were made to identify its authors. On the basis of the occurrence of several objects of this civilization in deposits of certain already-dated West Asian cultures, it was assigned to the 3rd millennium BCE.
The net result was that the Vedic people were never even considered to have been the authors of the Harappan Civilization, since according to Max Muller’s fatawa the Vedas were only as old 1200 BCE. Simultaneously, without any sustainable reason the authorship was thrust on the Dravidian-speaking people. And this is how the first major distortion took place in interpreting ancient Indian history!”
26. March 2009 - 5:57 PM
Sanjay,
There are a lot of things than can be taken out of context. Lal is not a respectable source like Shourie. Today any mule can write a book with the result that the serious stuff is diluted with the stuff hacks produce. I suggest you read Max Meuller’s diary about Indian students–how he tried to show the West that India had greatness–you read how supportive he was of the students abroad studying at Cambride at the time, you read his works basically, and not prove something by quotes taken out of context. I see a lot of these kinds of quotes taken out of context floating–I do not believe in anything until I have examined a person’s work. You try translating and reconstructing a 3000 year work out of the blue–Many of Max Meuller’s translations are unparalleled to this day. Max Meuller says his fascination with India began since the days when as a young boy in Germany he saw the Ghats of Benares and that started him dreaming–that dream became a life long dedication to translating the works of the East. Max Meuller certainly carried certain prejudices of this times–I can quote just as many favorable things he said about India also out of context.
Max Meuller a quack? Try reconstructing the Vedic texts and translating them for the first time—then perhaps you can be on the same level as a man to call him a quack. This is why no one takes such people seriously–
Max Meuller’s contribution lay in that he translated the sacred books of the East for the first time. When I need to read some Vedic texts–I often still read his translations. Quack he was not.
Besides, Meuller started the study of India–which itself is a great contribution.
AS for some faults, I am sure all scholars are prone to mistakes. I certainly have learned more about India by reading the old Indologists than from hacks currently writing, and I recommend them to anyone who can read German. One can see what rigorous scholarship entails. When it comes to ancient languages, unless you have a mastery of it, arguing with amateurs is futile.
26. March 2009 - 6:06 PM
As for the charge of never visiting India–well the Greatest of the Scholars who translated the Greek and Latin works never visited Greece or Italy. Even Paul Deussen only visited India once after he wrote his books. Rather, it tells about the seriousness of the person, that he was able to do so much without seeing a place. As for being laughed at by Brahmins which you assert Meuller was afraid of–this is laughable, very few Brahmins have a historical understanding of their own language, even if they can read Sanskrit–you need to be a linguist for that.
Indians never wrote much about ther history unlike the Greeks and even the Chinese.
26. March 2009 - 6:16 PM
With people like Frawley–who as you say mainstream academics do not take seriously, there are also a lot of new age types that the mainstream scientists do not take seriously, Frawley falls in the category of such types–so even begin placing a Frawley and a Meuller on the same level–already displays great ignorance to me. Once is a great linguist and falls among the great linguists in history–the other?
If you have some valid criticism, write a book–any hack seems to do so these days…
But for people who do not even have a command of Sanskrit to call Meuller a quack, displays why no one takes such people seriously—
26. March 2009 - 10:31 PM
what I am curious about is, why are you acting like the PR consultant of the colonial whites? Whose side are you on? For every charge against the colonials, you have some excuse to exonerate them. What is the reason? It is quite unnatural for a brown skinned dude to work himself / herself into a lather defending the discredited historians of the White race. What gives?
26. March 2009 - 10:35 PM
“Indians never wrote much about ther history unlike the Greeks and even the Chinese.”
Allow me to disabuse you. Pls go throough this post on my blog:
“Indians have no sense of History.†Is that right?
http://indianrealist.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/indians-have-no-sense-of-history-but-is-this-correct/
26. March 2009 - 10:42 PM
“Max Meuller’s contribution lay in that he translated the sacred books of the East for the first time.”
My dear friend, translating the books “correctly and honestly” is more important than translating them “for the first time.” You are still reading a translation of Rig Veda that was meant to uproot our faith, as claimed by the translator himself. But that shouldn’t distract you. You should remain thrilled and tickled reading the “first translation.”
Pls read “Lies with Long Legs” by Prodosh Aich to blow away some cobwebs.
26. March 2009 - 10:51 PM
“As for being laughed at by Brahmins which you assert Meuller was afraid of–this is laughable, very few Brahmins have a historical understanding of their own language, even if they can read Sanskrit–you need to be a linguist for that.”
Hmmm…. so Brahmins of India have no idea about Sanskrit, so they have to learn it from White colonials who never visited India!! And of course, a language cannot be understood by the native speakers till they have learnt its history from people of another race. Are you smoking something? Your arguments are those of a brown native sepoy guarding the fortress of the Whites. This kind of drivel is beneath contempt.
There is no glory in becoming a PR consultant of another race and argue its case forcefully among your own people and try to convince them to gain wisdom from outsiders and submit to their authority for all matters relating to thier own history and culture! Truly you are a product socially engineered by Nehru and his tribe of jholawalas after independence.
26. March 2009 - 10:54 PM
“But for people who do not even have a command of Sanskrit to call Meuller a quack, displays why no one takes such people seriously—”
Could you explain what kind of reasoning and investigation do you see in Mueller’s fixing the date of Rig Veda to be 1200 BC? The man will be laughed out of any university today with his theories.
26. March 2009 - 11:14 PM
Ahem, ever heard of Panini? Tadbhava versus Tatsama? Now, do not fault Panini for not knowing English.
27. March 2009 - 3:26 AM
Could you explain what kind of reasoning and investigation do you see in Mueller’s fixing the date of Rig Veda to be 1200 BC? The man will be laughed out of any university today with his theories.
What date do you ascribe to it?
“Ahem, ever heard of Panini? Tadbhava versus Tatsama? Now, do not fault Panini for not knowing English
Panini was a creator–we are using Sanskrit that has changed over time at least in terms of vocabulary–which is why the Sanskrit of the Rig Veda is difficult to master as opposed to classical Sanskrit of the Ramayana…An average Brahmin while able to read some texts will not know the evolution of the language unless he has been trained as a linguist.
But why quibble over such things. We are faced with greater dangers. Have you heard of the saying that a poor man’s wisdom is held in scorn? The greater problems are political–Indians being diverse are not as nationalistic as the Chinese–if they were, they would not allow themselves to be pushed around, and they would not be home to the largest population of poor people on the globe. India can barely control its borders with its neighbors, it cannot protect Hindus native to Kashmir, it cannot protect its borders in Assam. Look at the Chinese–they are ready to fight the moment they are provoked in the slightest degree. As long as India remains poor and backward, it will allow itself to be pushed around–and now the seculars are making it as if India never had a unified culture–whatever peoples are part of the indian subcontinent, they have given brith to a unique culture that comprises Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism and even Zoroastrianism in that Parsis have adapted to the culture of India–the world views arising out of these religions is being threatened by seculars who claim that India never had a distinct culture native to it…
Once a nation is strong, the rest follows–do you think the Chinese care how they are perceived by others? They care about what is in their national interest.
We all ought to be concerned with India being a strong Nation–no one takes a weak nation seriously…
What about organizations like the RSS? Can someone explain to me why they are losing appeal…these days? Is there a better way to organize?
India has to win the economic battle first…the rest follows when a Nation is strong..
27. March 2009 - 3:44 AM
Hmmm…. so Brahmins of India have no idea about Sanskrit, so they have to learn it from White colonials who never visited India!!
Don’t put words in my mouth– If we loved Sanskrit so much, why do we wait for others to make standardized works of our own language? Why is it that Indians cared very little to write about and preserve their history? I do not see how learning from genuine scholars is bad, wherever they might be from…Indians have to get over the colonial complex. When I read Meuller, I ignore parts that I disagree with and am enriched by what he wrote that was of substance–and there is a great deal of substance in his works–I am not going to not read him because he is a “white colonial”. Then I would not be reading many works by foreigners on India–
Should I not enjoy Rudyard Kipling’s works because he was a “white colonial”? There is a difference between reading critically and dismissing people because you did not like some statements they make. In this instance you would have to dismiss many things in our own culture including parts of our own texts that talk of pouring hot oil into the ear of a shudra if he tries to learn Sanskrit….
As for racism, Indians can be very racist as well…
27. March 2009 - 4:59 AM
Alright we get it, you are Max Mueller’s stooge. Your silly logic is shredded and you shift the argument to your ground of choosing by using the well known tactic of digressing and introducing new topics that you *think* you can defend better against. China and nationalism? Wow that took the cake. You also keep repeating the same things over and over like a broken record. Sanjay and Kishkindhaa had very good rebuttals, but I still haven’t seen you say anything new other than you love max mueller and as of the latest comment, you also love China. Anything else?
27. March 2009 - 6:48 AM
How am I Max Meuller’s stooge?
I believe in reading people and judging for myself–not listening to someone who tells me I am reading a “white colonial”. How do I love China? Indians are weak compared to the Chinese who are full of nationalism. And I doubt with the attitude that some display here Indians will ever progress on the matters that count which hinge on political action–why are they so concerned with what some scholars think of them? When you are a weak nation, everyone takes you for granted this is reality–
At our college, we organized an association for Indian students–it did not last because everyone wanted to run things their way–
Perhaps you also should not read John Stuart Mill, Hegel, and countless other who also had a lot of negative things to say about HIndus by your logic?
Sanjay did not tell me when was the Rig Veda dated? 10,000 years ago as I have found some Hindutva people claliming? Is that what he believes? I have also heard them saying that calculus was invented in India before Newton and there was Vedic “science.” The Vedas had a great deal of insights but what they contained was not “science”, just as the pre-Socratics of Greece cannot be called scientists in the modern world.
But it is perhaps futile to argue to argue with those whom Frawley sets up the standards of scholarship.
27. March 2009 - 7:01 AM
Bye the way, Frawley is not even Indian–reminds me of a fake Swami–So for the one who says I am a stooge of Max Meuller, they are a stooge of Frawley by that logic.
27. March 2009 - 7:36 AM
By the way how about the Max Meuller quotes often found in feel good Indian sites, for sense of reaffirmation?–You know some people only read the quotes and not the important work of a man–just as some people judge RSS without reading what Savarkar had to say, and judge based on pamphlets.
“If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India‖Max Meuller
27. March 2009 - 9:49 AM
“How do I love China? Indians are weak compared to the Chinese who are full of nationalism.”
That tells me everything I need to know about the quality of debate anyone can expect from you. Your categorical statements are neither objective nor rational. Just passionate rants made in the same vein you ascribe the supposed hindutva vadis to possess.
I don’t know where you come from (literally and figuratively). But if you are of Indian origin, then you don’t deserve my respect as a commentator because you don’t respect yourself, your heritage. And if you are a “firangi” then I know exactly why you say the things you say and I don’t need to engage you further.
27. March 2009 - 10:36 AM
Phrased another way, this rhetoric translates as ” why didn’t it occur to the native to enslave himself by standardizing his culture and narratives in the colonizer’s language (and thereby save the master so much trouble)? ” Standardizing native narratives is part and parcel of the colonial project to deculturate natives.
27. March 2009 - 5:17 PM
Ahem, ever heard of Panini? Tadbhava versus Tatsama? Now, do not fault Panini for not knowing English.
Ahem. The land of Panini today is in modern day Afghanistan. Why did Hindu/Buddhist Afghanistan become Muslim? Seeing the gist of these comments, I am not surprised why large parts of India are gradually becoming Christian/Muslim? Who is to blame when Indians cannot attract the natives to their own religions? Is this the fault of “white colonials”? Indians perhaps need to take a hard look at themselves instead of blaming everything on “white colonials”. If large portions of Indians are becoming Christian and Muslim, organize and do something about it so they are attracted to the native religions.
It is easy to blame others. Is the Sanskrit Oxford Dictionary is also a product of rapacious colonial interests? Believing in hacks like Frawley does not make you nationalistic–
If you are so against white colonials, why do you use english as a language and why do you not write in your local language–your logic is absurd.
27. March 2009 - 5:26 PM
I don’t know where you come from (literally and figuratively). But if you are of Indian origin, then you don’t deserve my respect as a commentator because you don’t respect yourself, your heritage. And if you are a “firangi†then I know exactly why you say the things you say and I don’t need to engage you further.
Why do I not respect my heritage? My family are all Hindus, have been nothing but Hindus for 3000 years. I bother to read and learn about my heritage and am willing to see the bad things as well as good about it, unlike people like you who believe all scholarship about India coming from the West is a product to enslave the Indian mind. I am open to reading anything that is worth reading.
27. March 2009 - 6:06 PM
“The land of Panini today is in modern day Afghanistan. Why did Hindu/Buddhist Afghanistan become Muslim?”
Don’t spread your deranged, illiterate garbage here. Get some education first.
The Hindushahi dynasty of Afghanistan, especially the tiny states of Kabul (Kapisa) and Zabul (Jabal), battled for 300 years with Arabs before succumbing. No state in the world fought as hard and long with Muslims as the Afghan Hindus did.
To put this in perspective, Palestine and Syria fell to Muslims within 5 years of Mohammad’s death in 632 AD. Persia fell in 637. Egypt fell in 640. Mongolia and Samarkand fell in 650.
By 643, the Muslims had arrived at the borders of Hindu Afghanistan. Here their march was halted. To make the first breach, the Muslims had to struggle for 70 long years. Even then they were immediately repulsed. They couldn’t destroy Kabul and Zabul till 900 AD. And then they could’t take on the Rajput Hindus till 1200 AD despite attack after attack.
Take your missionary crap elsewhere.
27. March 2009 - 6:18 PM
You do not seem to get what I am saying. READ before commenting.
Why did the Hindus and Buddhists fall to the Muslims? Because many Buddhists did not wish to fight because of their ideals of non-violence. Look what became of them. Many Hindus did not forsee the barbarian threat and were largely unprepared–this is that civilization can do to you–people get too civilized and forget about the arts of war and national defense.
Consider what is happening today.
Why do Hindus fail to put up a fight politically today and why do you see them failing to contain borders today?
Because they are UNAWARE of what is happening or if they are aware, they are not doing anything about it.
Most HIndus I have seen are not aware of what is going on in parts of India.
It is this apathy and unability to organize and quiblle about Aryan Invasion theory that will allow China to take parts of India and Bangladesh parts of Assam. Hindu culture has literally been wiped out in places like Kashmir. Hindus are a pathetic lot who cannot even protect their own.
27. March 2009 - 6:20 PM
Why did the Hindus and Buddhists fall to the Muslims? Because many Buddhists did not wish to fight because of their ideals of non-violence. Look what became of them. Many Hindus did not forsee the barbarian threat and were largely unprepared–this is that civilization can do to you–people get too civilized and forget about the arts of war and national defense.
Consider what is happening today.
Why do Hindus fail to put up a fight politically today and why do you see them failing to contain borders today?
Because they are UNAWARE of what is happening or if they are aware, they are not doing anything about it.
Most HIndus I have seen are not aware of what is going on in parts of India.
It is this apathy and unability to organize and quiblle about Aryan Invasion theory and ignore what is in front of your nose that will allow China to take parts of India and Bangladesh parts of Assam. Hindu culture has literally been wiped out in places like Kashmir. Hindus are a pathetic lot who cannot even protect their own–ask any Hindu in Kashmir.
When the barbarian is at the gates do you quibble about Aryan Invasion theory or do you find ways to organize properly and face the threat?
27. March 2009 - 6:37 PM
Don’t spread your deranged, illiterate garbage here. Get some education first.
Deranged garbage? If India had been mostly Buddhist as well, it would have fallen to Islam like Afghanistan and Central Asia. I fail to see why Indians are so concerned with the colonial exploitation and do not see the immediate threats before of them?
Missionary garbage for telling Hindus that they are weak and that they cannot and do not care to protect their own people?
When you get kicked out of your home you have been living for 3000 years and your nation makes you a refugee in your own country–you expect to say that your nation is strong?
You take your arrogance and blindness to yourself.
27. March 2009 - 6:44 PM
Many foreigners make fun of HIndus as the wimpiest people–when I look at my fellow Hindus, I wonder if that is not indeed correct.
27. March 2009 - 7:52 PM
“Either my blog is that popular (which I seriously doubt) …”
Hey Sandeep quit being so modest, your blog is very popular:)
27. March 2009 - 7:55 PM
“Many foreigners make fun of HIndus as the wimpiest people–when I look at my fellow Hindus, I wonder if that is not indeed correct. ”
Okay you can stop wondering now. Convert already and get on with your life.
27. March 2009 - 8:21 PM
larissa,
I wonder what is that you are trying to convince others.
At times you are asking others to defend Hinduism and at times your are advising people to embrace “the colonial empire”.
Read Sanjay’s comment and give some counter facts/argument to show that Hindus were weak to give a fight to protect their faith. If Hindus were weak indeed, how did Hindusthan became one of the few countries where the native civilization (and religion) still prevails surviving the aggression from Christianity and Islam?
27. March 2009 - 9:02 PM
@ larissa-63,
>>>”…Many foreigners make fun of HIndus as the wimpiest people–…”
Since it is inferred that you are speaking from personal experience, would it not be correct to conclude that it is your personal example that the foreigners are benchmarking..?
27. March 2009 - 9:11 PM
Ravi,
Let’s break decorum and inquire into the possible “reasoning” behind some of Larissa’s, now familiar, statements.
Larissa is saying Hindus are “weak” because they have not zealously embraced “the colonial empire” and all its manifestations including AIT, English language, Oxford-English dictionary, toilet paper, and so on. IMHO, this is just another form of Hindu baiting and appears an attempt to demoralize Hindus from within, as well as an apology for Britishers and their holy “civilizing” mission. Seriously, what does pointing out that Kentum can only lie in the periphery have do with opposing Chinese incursions?? This form of rhetoric, and that is what it is, also deflects all inquiry into the western sponsorship of various subcontinental entities such as Pakshaitan, Muslims, Maoists, and so on, as well into the dynamics of the Abrahamic/secular/colonial threat. Merely saying that they are “powerful” and we are “weak” and giving umpteen “examples” is obviously not helpful and, in the absence of any paradigm on abrahamic colonialism, can only serve to demoralize Hindus.
27. March 2009 - 11:01 PM
Blaming Hindus for the failings and fiascos of the seculars (who are nothing but western colonial products) is an old nehruvian trick (“Hindu” rate of growth).
28. March 2009 - 3:12 AM
Since it is inferred that you are speaking from personal experience, would it not be correct to conclude that it is your personal example that the foreigners are benchmarking..?
People say this all the time about HIndus–It makes me think of why HIndus are perceived this way. Perhaps they seem to tolerate a lot…which others would not tolerate?
When a people’s cannot defend itself, do you think a cultue deserves to survive?
Regarding the Chinese, how does China act when someone acts against its interest? If Indians continue to be poor and weak no one will take them seriously.
“Read Sanjay’s comment and give some counter facts/argument to show that Hindus were weak to give a fight to protect their faith. If Hindus were weak indeed, how did Hindusthan became one of the few countries where the native civilization (and religion) still prevails surviving the aggression from Christianity and Islam?”
What you do not realize is that it does not prevail in many places…Take a stroll out in Kashmir–it has already been completely lost to Islam–not a trace of the native culture left or even the Hindu and Buddhist ruins. The other day some Indians were telling me that things are fine there…This is the typical attitude. I think there has to be an active effort to prevent the conversion of peoples to Christianity and check the growth of Islam–How can this be done?
The fact that Hindus are divided over issues such as Aryan invasion theory shows how much engergy they spend on incnsequential matters…The rise of Islam is a greater concern…
I know a woman who became Christian because the Church paid for her child to go to school and the Church gives her family a certain amount of $$$$ every month for being Christians.
Now if you are a poor person whom your fellows have not helped at all, would you not be attracted? So while conversions are bad, what have Hindus done to retain poor folk within scope of native religions? They have to do more.
So Hindus have to organize organizations like the RSS in a different manner:
1)They have to focus on charitable works on a very large extent just like Missionaries.
2) The have to be more politically active.
3) They seem to disagree with each other–I remember when we formed a Hindu organization in our University, it fell apart because Indian students could never agree upon anything. A miniature of what is enacted on a grand scale nationally.
4)The RSS has to be clever and has to avoid negative press…you have to play the same game that Missionaries play to outwit them. Only then can they be defeated. All this can be done without attracting negative press…Better tactics need to be learned..
The challenge is great because Islam is funded by Arab $$$–millions go to erect mosques all over India. If you look at Srinagar, after the expulsions of HIndus, mosques have been erected in HIndu and Sikh cremation sites and houses of Hindus have been usurped…The Muslim population of Nepal is 10% from 1% fifteen years ago…
Indians have to stop being smug because India is not as strong a country as most think and the culture will not necessarily survive unless the people take stern steps…
Anyway, what is everyone doing for the elections? Or has everyone resigned himself to the fact that politicians are corrupt and the elections are not worth worrying about? These things concern me more than Aryan invasion theory.
Don’t be so smug about India preserving its culture for too long…from what I am seeing Hindus are losing out on many fronts…Indians were smug in the past and were attacked by barbarians—
28. March 2009 - 5:20 AM
Don’t be so sure that India is so strong. Why is Kashmir all Muslim now? Anyway a country that cannot protect you and makes you a refugee in your own country is not a strong or admirable country by any means.
You can also live in your dreamland–don’t be so sure that your culture is going to last–
Most people who write a good account of India have written with pessimism…V.S. Naipaul writes clearly with pessimism. I cannot see how anyone can think they are patriotic by blaming missionaries and “white colonials” who are out to get them for their own inadequacies. India has been independent for the last 70 years. Whose fault is it? Why are people unwilling to accept collective responsibility?
Is it the missionaries fault that India contains the largest #of poor people in the world? What have you done for the poor so that they do not take money from the missionaries as a return for being Christians? You get angry when Missionaries lure them, but what did YOU do to help those people?
I have seen how people are treated in India. There is no justice for the common man there. Anyone who thinks there is lives in is own fantasies.
Anyway, HIndus being wimpy is a joke I have heard a lot–perhaps the negatives about India are deserved?
I do not think any Hindu who has lost their homes permanently in India can think of India as a strong country–there is very little justice in India and democracy of illiterates is a farce.
28. March 2009 - 9:23 AM
Larissa, your latest comment makes me very sad. If your family has been driven out of Kashmir then I think I can understand your low opinion of the Indian state and Hindus in general. However, I would like to believe that just as we have survived the last few thousand years, we will continue to thrive for many more to come. It may not be as bleak as you think it to be. Where there is an intellectually dishonest Romila, we have an Arun Shourie to counter her and her ilk. If there is a monster like Karunanidhi, we also have Subramaniam Swamy who stands up to him.
You ask what the Hindus did to counter the missionaries? The RSS and all other “saffron” tainted orgs are doing just that… countering the evil missionaries and instead of acknowledging that you spew hatred on the RSS itself. Why? Wasn’t Swami Lakshmanananda fighting against conversion in Orissa? Try not to paint everything either black or white and recognise good work when it is being done, even if you don’t agree with some of their methods.
Lastly you are only weak if you think you are weak. You cannot claim to speak for India’s billion when you say they are weak. The other commenters on this blog are proof enough.
28. March 2009 - 9:33 AM
“He “learnt†Sanskrit from other Englishmen who had brief stints in India as bureacrats.”
That is a joke right?
What are your achievements that you laugh at a scholar like Meuller? There is a limit to arrogance–.
Could you explain what kind of reasoning and investigation do you see in Mueller’s fixing the date of Rig Veda to be 1200 BC? The man will be laughed out of any university today with his theories.
He might be laughed at the college you attended but he certainly is not laughed at Harvard, Oxford, at the German and French Universities, at Japanese Universities and is not laughed by intelligent people who have actually bothered to read him in India. Something tells me your major might have been subaltern studies or some such —-
You never told me when is the time of the Rig Veda?
“you don’t respect yourself, your heritage.”
Actually I consider it my sacred duty to defend the sacred language used my by forefathers as a medium of learning from being defiled by false scholarship as in the case of Frawley. He cannot fool everyone. There are people who do bother to read serious scholarship on India–yes even those “white colonials” who might not always say the best things about India.
28. March 2009 - 10:02 AM
The RSS and all other “saffron†tainted orgs are doing just that… countering the evil missionaries and instead of acknowledging that you spew hatred on the RSS itself. Why?
Do you guys even read fully what I write? I support what the RSS stands for–it has noble aims–just read Savarkar. If it can produce people like Modi then we need many RSS’s.
However, their strategy needs some changing in view of the fact that they are encountering bad press. Organize a bit differently and the negative press can be avoided–a lot of Hndutva people are not smart–If missionaries can win over people, why aren’t Hindus making proper efforts to win over their country men? It is shameful that so many people are in wretched conditions and even need to take what is offered by Missionaries.
I think India is very weak at the moment. This is due to the apathy of HIndus who were enslaved for 1000 years and have become disconnected with their proper roots due to slavery, the liberalism that is imported, and by the agressive non-native religions, that have $$$ to back them.
I think it is all to easy to blame people outside and not look within–
But given the dangers India is facing–it cannot even respond to a terror attack properly–what other country puts up with this? If this is not wimpy then what is? Is is not shameful that the leader of the Congress is a lady with a high school education? Are HIndus not wimps to be ruled by such a one–?
28. March 2009 - 1:44 PM
Larissa – You are saying “Is it the missionaries fault that India contains the largest #of poor people in the world? What have you done for the poor so that they do not take money from the missionaries as a return for being Christians? You get angry when Missionaries lure them, but what did YOU do to help those people?”
So, you mean to say Rich can do whatever they want because they have money… So, Poor afgans can also kill rich americans because what have americans done for Afgans? Missionaries are political… trying to buy people with their money. dont justify their actions by citing people that do not give money to convert people to their religion… Next, they will give sex and liquor…so you will say ‘why dont you also give sex and liquor’.
You say – “I have seen how people are treated in India. There is no justice for the common man there. Anyone who thinks there is lives in is own fantasies”.
Yes, we ahve a problem. We are not the best.. but we are not the worst either…. We will try to take care of ourself… If you want to do service, please come at your own will not with a hidden agenda of converting people to your religion… hindu org that does service, does not demand conversion. It is so easy to bring many from rich countries and lure the power… It is difficult to lure them intellectually.
28. March 2009 - 2:19 PM
Found this amazing quote by Dr Shivaji Singh at indianrealist.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/indians-have-no-sense-of-history-but-is-this-correct/-
  Bharatiyata or Indianness cannot be defined in geographical and political terms.
It can be defined only culturally as a set of values based on intuitive recognition of transcendental spirituality.
Spirituality, it may be noted, is a category of perception higher than religion or even morality.
Bharatiyata or Indianness is distinguished by a spiritual vision of life, which the Vedic rishis have bequeathed to humanity.â€
It is this vision that people such as Max Mueller and Romila Thapar failed to grasp.
And people such as David Frawley though foreign born, is able to.
The Vedas, bequeathed by the Vedic Rishis to humanity, cannot be understood without the intuitive recognition of a perception that transcends religion and mortality, to use the words of DR Singh.
That is why what goes by the name of ‘Vedas’ translated by Max Mueller is really only something created by Mueller bereft of the perception of Vedic rishis that transcended religion and mortality and like Mueller, it does not inspire an intuitive recognition of the perception of the Rishis nor their spiritual message.
28. March 2009 - 9:19 PM
“Bharatiyata or Indianness is distinguished by a spiritual vision of life”
Actually it was this that Meuller most appreciated about India…and thought was India’s unique contribution to the world…
But it is hard to convince people who are persuaded by quotes and do not read the acutal works of a man.
I have noticed that certain overly partiotic Hindus often circulate quotes that have been fabricated and feel the need to be convinced about India’s greatness with fake quotes. You do not need fake quotes to prove India has a great civilization.
Here is one instance of a fake one attributed to Maucalay–whatever negative opinions he had about India this quote has been shown to be spurious although it also fooled me at first. Here it is:
“I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.�”
Now Sanjay who quoted Max Meuller, can you point to me where you got the quote from? I am not saying it is fake, but I like to check on these things. Where is it taken from and how do you know that Meuller did not mean that Indians by reading the Vedas would come to understand the bad aspects of their religion–such as excessive ritualism etc. etc., which is also a Vedic product, as well as the good aspects? We had a Buddha because of the Vedic excesses. Please tell me from what edition of his work you lifted the quote. I am curious to see the context in which appears, if it is at all genuine.
You quoted the following”
“The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years.â€
28. March 2009 - 10:25 PM
Well, well, well… what do I say of this marathon discussion!! I am no student of Indian history but may I please get away with saying this:
@Larissa: I have never seen anyone here take the trouble of countering each and every question/argument he/she has been posed. That says something about your passion or zeal to excel (or maybe even just persist) in an argument. And I laud your efforts.
@others: While the specifics of whether Mueller or Frawley can be debated endlessly by those who are in the know, what matters is what is being done about the real challenges that the India and her Indic traditions face. For instance, amongst many other things, educating the people about the truer version of the history of Islam/Christianity in India and countering propaganda that still continues till today. And I agree with Larissa when she seems to indicate that collectively the Indian psyche is weak. I have a recent example to substantiate this position. The movie Slumdog Millionaire; and as you all know that movie is a slap in the face of Indians and yet the movie was hailed as a sort of Indian entry to the Oscars with what I think was a large majority of urban dwelling citizens of India hoping and praying for its success at the Oscars. I am sure the people over at the RSS and other organizations espousing the Hindu cause could have done much better (easy to say but given the larger implications of how this movie can and it will change the image of India) in making all the people who matter aware of what exactly this movie was about.
I can safely come to a conclusion that it is best for us to stop fighting/arguing amongst each other about what would be deemed as inconsequentials in the world of operational details where the problem at hand needs to be dealt with immediately.
29. March 2009 - 3:57 AM
Sandeep, Larissa
This is an excellent post. I also liked the discussion thread although I have not gone through all the comments as yet.
Sandeep, you should publish this article, slightly modified to fit a newspaper structure, in the Pioneer in order to have a broader readership. Well done!
Romila Thapar has one thing going for her. She is a trained historian who relies, albeit highly selectively, on material evidence to present her case. In that sense, she is more equipped than say a Ramachandra Guha. Her diction is good and she is trained in the historic method.
This said, Romila Thapar is also ideological, left-wing and very selective in the evidence she relies on to craft her narrative.
I agree with Larissa that India needs to produce other historians, trained in the school of historical empiricism, to counter Romila Thapar. David Frawley and N. Rajaram do not meet the standard.
Arun Shourie, Koenraad Elst and Sita Ram Goel did have rigor and presented an excellent critique of Romila Thapar. But what India needs today is a historian who combines the rigor of a Arun Shourie and the explicit training as a scholar from a recognized Department of History. History, like law and medicine, is a profession with its own rules. It too is a modern day guild.
The Business Standard is a magazine on finance, private sector development and corporate development. It is ill-suited to deliberate on Indic classicism or history. It is probably just as superficial as CNN-IBN when it comes to the social sciences!
How does one explain then why Romila Thapar had gone unchallenged in the portals of Indian history since the 1970s. The earlier historians in India – both Indian and British – were trained in the historical method and had rigor. But the Marxists have completely dominated the study of history in India since the 1970s. Romila Thapar is just one individual, albeit the foremost one, of the Marxist school of Indian history. How did this eminence come about?
I attribute this to the Indian Council of Historical Research which was dominated by the left. It chose to sponsor left-wing historians alone. It black-listed alternate points of view. It channeled grant funds to those who met the Marxist ideological test alone. The Nehruvian elite created this institution and sponsored it to ensure ideological conformity. This explained the Marxist monopoly in the study of Indian history and the uncontested rise of Romila Thapar. The Indian Council of Historical Research was but one arm of the Nehruvian world view.
Indian academia is fairly mediocre in the non-science and non-medicine fields. It was the lack of objective historical research that led to the Romila Thapars of India going unchallenged for so long.
Romila Thapar remains flawed in her vision. She lacks an understanding of the grand Indic narrative. She deconstructs India to deprive it of a larger civilizational unity. Hindu civilization influenced Cambodia and Indonesia. The Hinduized Khmers and Madjapahit empires in the classical age spawled over vast extent of territory. One can talk of Indic navigation, trade, empiricism, science and technology. There was an inner coherence to this civilization.
Hindu civilization is like the Sinic world view, the Judeo-Christian world view and the Islamic world view.
Romila Thapar refuses to recognize this inner civilizational unity in Hinduism, one that was temporarily eclipsed with the Muslim interlude in Indian history. She selectively uses historical evidence to negate the big picture in order to strip India of any inner unity. India then becames an artificial construct created by the British East India Company in the late 1700s.
This also explains her de-emphasis on the Valmiki Ramayana and the exaggerated importance given to the so-called Buddhist and Jain versions which hardly had the same impact!
Thapar has not read the Puranas to understand the grand synthesis (i.e. the Sanskritic, the folk, the tribal etc) that those texts represented in India.
The refusal to recognize the big civilizational picture has political connotations. It has ideological significance. It has religious implications. It was Churchill who argued that India is but a geographic expression – like the Equator. Romila Thapar when stripped of her diction and historical learning is nothing but a repeat of the earlier missionary and colonial view of India as a land created by the English. It was perhaps for this reason that she was awarded the Kluge Prize – hardly an achievement.
I partly blame Murali Manohar Joshi. The BJP governed from 1998 to 2004. Joshi was the Minister of Human Resource Development. He was unable to roll back the Marxist stranglehold in the Departments of Indian History and to de-Nehruvianize Indian scholarship using a long term perspective. He should have entirely reconstituted the Indian Council of Historical Research! Joshi was unable to combat the media attacks on the alleged ’saffronization’ of the Indian education curriculum. He was not equal to the task of fighting the media battle.
And so we have the Romila Thapars largely unchallenged until today but by the modern day creations of the like of Ramachandra Guha who represents a different perspective in that it is pro-American but simplistic! I call it the CNN-IBN of Indian history!
Let me conclude by repeating – excellent post Sandeep. Keep up the good work.
Best regards
29. March 2009 - 5:30 AM
HIndus cannot afford to be passive much longer–their culture survives because they made efforts to protect it in the past. But they have to cleverly face the missionaires who are backed by $$$$ and Islam which is backed by oil $$$. If they are divided amongst themselves they will never be strong. Most Indians do not realize the threats India faces both from outside and from within. We have to try to attract our fellow Indians to the fold of our native religions and not antagonize or isolate them so they turn hostile to our native heritage—
India is not a violent place like the Middle East. It is not hard to change it owing to the passive nature of the native population, which is why it is a tragedy that India is the way it is–good leadership and organization can do a lot for India. Those of us who are educated have to become more aggressive and active when it comes to political and social issues that affect us and we have to take an active interest in the governance of the country–this is the only way. Our religion and way of life survives because our ancestors did something to protect it, but we can’t take for granted it will continue to survive faced with the neighborhood India finds itself in and faced with the repeated cultural assault of our native way of life–We all have a moral responsibility to do our part…
29. March 2009 - 8:14 AM
@ larissa-77
>>>“Bharatiyata or Indianness is distinguished by a spiritual vision of lifeâ€
Actually it was this that Meuller most appreciated about India…and thought was India’s unique contribution to the world…“”
If so, one would find it in the texts he created.
What spiritual insight have you received reading Mueller’s works.
>>>”But it is hard to convince people who are persuaded by quotes and do not read the acutal works of a man.”
That is an ambivalent statement. It does not indicate if it refers to the quotes of Dr Singh posted at post-76 or of Mueller at post-38.
As regards the quotes of Dr Singh at post no 76, they are gems due to the wisdom that is inherent in them.
Those quotes reflect the deep level of thought and understanding of ancient indian culture. They are also revealing of the nature of the spiritual philosophy that guided ancient indians.
A single quote sometimes convey meanings that volumes of books may not.
>>>”I have noticed that certain overly partiotic Hindus often circulate quotes that have been fabricated and feel the need to be convinced about India’s greatness with fake quotes. “
Isn’t it presumptous to state that about some other people and their feelings?
>>>”Here is one instance of a fake one attributed to Maucalay–whatever negative opinions he had about India this quote has been shown to be spurious…”
How can we be sure that it is a fake one until Macaulay himself denies having made it, or until it is proven that somebody else made it and attributed to Macaulay.
>>>”… how do you know that Meuller did not mean that Indians by reading the Vedas would come to understand the bad aspects of their religion–such as excessive ritualism etc. etc., which is also a Vedic product, …
Mueller’s version of Vedas does convey the impression that he meant Indians to come to that conclusion.
It appears he succeeded in doing so in your case.
>>>”We had a Buddha because of the Vedic excesses. ”
Siddhartha in his childhood was denied all information of spiritual kind by his father the king who feared that such information will make him want to leave his throne and go on the spiritual path as predidcted by some astrologers.
Siddhartha therefore grew up bereft of all knowledge of the wisdom in the Vedas.
That is why when he grew up he felt the need to find a way in which people could be relieved of suffering and thus embarked on a solitary quest.
Had he been aware of the wisdom in Vedas, chances are, he would have become one among the innumerable self-realised persons this land has produced.
It is interesting to note here that Wikipedia mentions the following about Siddhartha’s childhood- “His community does not seem to have had a caste system, and their society was not structured according to Brahminical theory. ” apparently quoting Richard Gombrich in his book ‘Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo’.
That Buddha was a product of Vedic excesses is apparently a deliberate misinformation campaign orchestrated by colonial historians.
29. March 2009 - 10:42 AM
OK. Larissa, I get your point about the need for Hindus to be united etc etc. Now, why don’t you, in the same spirit, after having loads of evidences directed at your way offer to re-evaluate your seemingly dogmatic beliefs?
Btw, for someone who is a self professed fan of Max Mueller; getting his name spelt wrong seems some sort of a joke. Any explanations forthcoming on that one, Larissa?
29. March 2009 - 11:13 AM
“a self-serving fraud academic who made it big by latching on to the political fashion current in her youth”
Devastating!
29. March 2009 - 6:51 PM
Larissa,
I agree to your point that the lack of unity among us (Bharatiy) forced us to lose lot of “battles”. And our government’s lack of will to protect Kashmiri Pandits from being persecuted is again an example of cacophony among us.
But can we always term the losers a weak side? I agree that only winners will be glorified. But can we neglect the fighting spirit shown by those who sacrificed their life in defending their cause (country, culture, belief etc.)?
About foreigners considering Indians as weak creatures (I don’t worry about their opinion about us) :
Most of them associate India with “ahimsa way of fighting” which they consider as weakness. None of them might have heard of Bose who managed to form an army outside India to fight for it. None of them might have heard about Bhagath Singh who happily sacrificed his life to awake the people of his country. None of them might have heard about women of India (Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi or Rani Chennamma of Kittur) who dared to fight against the colonial British Empire. Even most of the Indians might not have heard about Rani Chennamma as our government was eager to portrait the people who fought against British rule (with arms) as terrorist.
About Patriotism :
It is very difficult imbibe the feeling of Patriotism into somebody’s mind unless he or she is willing, specially in a country which was ruled (at least partly) by foreigners for more than 800 years. If you choose to be a patriot you will be a patriot. Likewise if you believe that you are strong you will be.
In past we were ruled by Britishers with the help of people among us as soldiers. Today our thoughts are being dictated by westerners through a bunch of intellectuals and a group of foreign funded media. Don’t you see any similarities? One of our ‘great’ writers (= intellectuals) came-out openly with pro-separatist slogans and still we can see her books in our bookstalls!
Instead of making it just a topic of discussion let us take the responsibility of making our country better than any other country, so that future India can be proud of there forefathers. Lets take the responsibility of protecting our culture in whichever way we can.
29. March 2009 - 7:48 PM
OK. Larissa, I get your point about the need for Hindus to be united etc etc. Now, why don’t you, in the same spirit, after having loads of evidences directed at your way offer to re-evaluate your seemingly dogmatic beliefs?
I do not think Aryan Invasion theory is important–all countries have had migrations when you go far back in history–the people of India are very diverse. Whoever came into India, they sing of the Himalayas not of the Caucuses–so why do Indians dwell on the fact that there were migrations into India? So? The people of India created a distinct culture –why don’t we focus on that uniqueness? Even the ancient Greeks went from Central Asia to Greece–you can see this in their mythology–but when they went to Greece, the interaction of the old culture in Greece and the one brought in by the ones migrating from the Caucuses created something distinctly Greek. But do the modern day Greeks dwell on where their ancestors came from? No. Similarly, the culture that was created in India was distinctly Indian–does not really matter who came to India and who did not for our purposes, just as only anthropologists might be interested in the fact that we all came from Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago–what you find in India in terms of culture is unique–
Also when I see scholars such as Frawley making up all kinds of nonsensical claims and making a political issue of such matters, I see that serious scholarship is threatened—
I do not know about you guys but I know my ancestors were Brahmins. I do not really care if they were anything before that–they are Indian enough for me–so I do not see why the issue of who migrated into India thousands of years ago has been made into a political issue to divide Indians by Indians themselves. Max Meuller noticed that there were linguistic similarities between Avestan Persian, Greek and Latin. That is all–and from a linguistic point of view, it is very interesting how Sanskrit develops from the very archaic Sanskrit(very similar to Avestan Persian) to the classical Sanskrit of the Ramayana.
Moreover, I do not wish to argue with people about linguistics–just as a physicist cannot argue with a lay person about Physics, a linguist will find it difficult to argue with people who do not know any languages…
I do not think Frawley is a linguist–I wonder why people who know nothing about linguistics get all exited about Aryan Invasion theory–how does it matter for present day politics in India? What country in the world has not had migrations of peoples?
Those who get all excited about Aryan invasion theory remind me of Nazis who made a political issue of the ideas of their scholars they could not properly understand and used it as a pretext to introduce half-baked theories of their own.
29. March 2009 - 8:02 PM
We should be concerned that India today is threatened by enemies from outside and by enemies from within…The biggest enemies are the Mao-Marxists and Islamic terror groups and mass poverty and illiteracy. We should be concerned that the largest amount of poor people in the world reside in India.
When a nation becomes strong, culture etc., take care of itself. I am concerned to see India a strong Nation.
29. March 2009 - 9:01 PM
larissa,
I respect your feeling , that you want india to be strong. But your approach is very simplistic. If you cannot see the political damage done by AIT. I will advice you to read from
koenraads Elst’s book update on AIT
http://voiceofdharma.org/books/ait/ch12.htm
we cannot just sit there and let people crush our spirit by telling us again and again that we don’t have any history and culture. The battle of strong india needs to be fought at many fronts. Academics , politics, spritual, religious and social level.
you cannot unite hindus by taking out their sense of culture and history. That is what these guys and doing and hence they need to be countered.
Today an average hindus knows only what these clowns want him to know.
29. March 2009 - 9:47 PM
But it also goes the other way which can be dangerous, such as some Hindutva groups claiming that calculus was invented in India before Newton and that everything popped up in India miraculously–no culture in the world is isolated–there is always give and take–You also cannot allow people to spread lies in the name of patriotism, and have serious scholarship degenerate into hocus-pocus stuff of the type Frawley champions. Who is taking HIndus’ sense of culture and history away? Types like Thapar and Amartya Sen (who should stick to economics and not history). And also types like Wendy Doniger who has a very naive understanding of India.
29. March 2009 - 11:31 PM
Amazing post n original too… specially Madame Thapar’s incessant labeling of anyone who has a different viewpoint than her talks heaps about her real self.
30. March 2009 - 2:00 AM
“I do not think Aryan Invasion theory is important–all countries have had migrations when you go far back in history–the people of India are very diverse.”
***********
larissa, it’s not about *you* – good for you if you don’t care for AIT. But when we have scholars and other prominent people still espousing AIT and many Indians believing it, as well as the implications of AIT affecting people’s attitude about many other aspects, then it becomes important to counter it.
30. March 2009 - 6:27 AM
Who is countering it? People like Lal and Frawley? Well people read according to their level of intellect–so you are right, it is futile to argue about such things. You know these days anyone can write books which is why we have such mule scholarship…
30. March 2009 - 11:19 PM
larissa, you still haven’t given any specific instance of why Frawley, in your opinion, is a hack. This is the second time I’ve put this question to you, and all you’ve given are general, vague answers and repeated your assertion.
31. March 2009 - 8:30 PM
Yo Kaffir,
I asked larissa several times why *exactly* is a hack and got no reply. Please let me know if you can get the info from her.
It is not surprising though, because most of the time I talk to someone from the secular lobby/anti-Hindutva group, thats what they typically do – instead of answering the question objectively, they just divert it into another issue, and when you give a fitting reply, then move onto something else. Then after a while, anyone with some brains would say enough is enough and give up. Thus the secular guy will win!
31. March 2009 - 8:31 PM
Sorry, I meant why someone would call Frawley a hack in my last comment
31. March 2009 - 11:29 PM
“But it also goes the other way which can be dangerous, such as some Hindutva groups claiming that calculus was invented in India before Newton and that everything popped up in India miraculously–no culture in the world is isolated–there is always give and take–You also cannot allow people to spread lies in the name of patriotism”
What nonsense is this?
Don’t let Dr. C.K. Raju hear you or he will skin you alive. He spent seven years doing research in Kerala and archives of Rome and Spain to unravel how Jesuits lifted calculus and trignometric tables from kerala mathematicians and took them to Rome.
There are original letters written by the Jesuits still housed in archives in Spain and Rome where they explain to their patrons how they are taking the amazing calculus to Europe to help in preparing accurate navigation tables. They also confessed they don’t understand its working.
It took Europeans 200 years to understand how calculus works. Even Western mathematicians have not disputed this research. In fact, the University of Manchester has included this in its syllabus.
I have interviewed Dr. Raju. He is a brilliant and very highly respected mathematician. You are throwing ignorant crap at us.
Here is Dr. Raju’s website: http://ckraju.net/
Here is an article about how Jesuits took calculus to Europe.
http://indianrealist.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/how-jesuits-took-calculus-from-india-to-europe/
31. March 2009 - 11:48 PM
Here are excerpts from Dr. Raju’s path breaking book about how Jesuits took calculus to Europe.
http://ckraju.net/IndianCalculus/book_details.htm
1. April 2009 - 5:02 AM
Bhavananda, I agree. Let’s wait and see if larissa comes up with some specific instances of why she thinks Frawley is a hack.
1. April 2009 - 8:55 AM
Ahem. This is from the most respectable and scholarly BBC:
1. April 2009 - 10:01 PM
I am not justifying theories–I have said repeatedly that Frawley is not a linguist–yet he speaks like he is one. Simple as that. I believe Witzel showed up the fraud of those who tried to change the seals a long time ago….no need to repeat.
Not agreeing with Frawley does not mean you agree with the above by BBC
And BBC is speaking just like the PC news it as degenerated to–trying to please all of its readers so it can make more $$. I do not obtain my news from BBC–no one takes BBC seiously.
1. April 2009 - 10:04 PM
Here are excerpts from Dr. Raju’s path breaking book about how Jesuits took calculus to Europe.
If that were so, why does no one else read such books outside of Sanjay’s college of arts and science–wherever that happens to be—
1. April 2009 - 10:09 PM
Accepting migrations of peoples into India means none of the above quoted by BBC. It is Indians themselves who make an issue out of a non-issue–India has had migrations–does not mean that accepting this makes you accept the above by BBC. Why is everything framed in a colonial context including the works of scholars that non linguists no not properly understand? Is this why subaltern studies and other such nonsense are gaining in popularity?
1. April 2009 - 10:57 PM
Enjoy.
1. April 2009 - 11:03 PM
Larissa, you have no idea of the implications of Aryan Migration Theory on today’s India, do you? Indians have always been strategically blind, so it is natural for you not to comprehend the terrible mischief and social destabilisation that can be casued in today’s India by AIT theory. It is a recipe for north-south civil war, and trust me the Goras and their church are leaving no stone unturned to launch it. Rwanda genocide is a recent example of what can happen by these migration theories based on race invented by missionaries. But let not that bother you as migration / tourism of races is normal for you.
Dr. C.K. Raju is a quite well known academic. He is the one who set up the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) at Pune which is India’s only agency producing super-computers. Even the communists don’t claim that he is a Hindutwa-wadi.
As I said before, you are just a brown sepoy guarding white man’s fortress.
1. April 2009 - 11:26 PM
As I said before, you are just a brown sepoy guarding white man’s fortress.
HAA! Because I do not believe calculus was invented in India before Newton? What are you going to accuse me of next?
1. April 2009 - 11:32 PM
And you are a sepoy guarding half-baked theories which are of no importance including the one you claim to protest–there is no need to protest it as scholars do not claim what you state. Believing in migrations into India does not imply India’s culture wholly came from outside…. You seem to battle self created obstacles formed out of our own mind based on misunderstandings of the work of scholars–why do you not battle other real obstacles worth fighting?
1. April 2009 - 11:46 PM
everal kinds of evidence for the PIE locus have been presented here. Ancient loanwords point to a locus along the desert trajectory, not particularly close to Mesopotamia and probably far out in the eastern hinterlands. The structure of the family tree, the accumulation of genetic diversity at the western periphery of the range, the location of Tocharian and its implications for early dialect geography, the early attestation of Anatolian in Asia Minor, and the geography of the centum-satem split all point in the same direction: a locus in western central Asia. Evidence presented in Volume II supports the same conclusion: the long-standing westward trajectories of languages point to an eastward locus, and the spread of IE along all three trajectories points to a locus well to the east of the Caspian Sea. The satem shift also spread from a locus to the south-east of the Caspian, with satem languages showing up as later entrants along all three trajectory terminals. (The satem shift is a post-PIE but very early IE development). The locus of the IE spread was therefore somewhere in the vicinity of ancient Bactria-Sogdiana
Sanksrit is akin linguistically to the other classical Indo-European languages such as Greek and Latin–. This does not mean that Greeks and others created Indian culture. Indians did. What exactly are you trying to prove? Linguistic similarity says nothing about racial similarities–as people migrate and intermarry their genetic strains also changes and you also have linguistic variation. If you go further back you will end up in Africa. So? Name one country that has not had migrations?
1. April 2009 - 11:51 PM
everal kinds of evidence for the PIE locus have been presented here. Ancient loanwords point to a locus along the desert trajectory, not particularly close to Mesopotamia and probably far out in the eastern hinterlands. The structure of the family tree, the accumulation of genetic diversity at the western periphery of the range, the location of Tocharian and its implications for early dialect geography, the early attestation of Anatolian in Asia Minor, and the geography of the centum-satem split all point in the same direction: a locus in western central Asia. Evidence presented in Volume II supports the same conclusion: the long-standing westward trajectories of languages point to an eastward locus, and the spread of IE along all three trajectories points to a locus well to the east of the Caspian Sea. The satem shift also spread from a locus to the south-east of the Caspian, with satem languages showing up as later entrants along all three trajectory terminals. (The satem shift is a post-PIE but very early IE development). The locus of the IE spread was therefore somewhere in the vicinity of ancient Bactria-Sogdiana
Sanksrit is akin linguistically to the other classical Indo-European languages such as Greek and Latin–. This does not mean that Greeks and others created Indian culture. Indians did. What exactly are you trying to prove? Linguistic similarity says nothing about racial similarities–as people migrate and intermarry their genetic strains also changes and you also have linguistic variation. If you go further back you will end up in Africa. So? Name one country that has not had migrations?
2. April 2009 - 12:05 AM
Dear “brown sepoy” Larissa, all I can say is, I pity your intelligence. You are blind to the obvious.
2. April 2009 - 1:21 AM
The linguistic argument has been convincingly debunked by Talageri in his latest book “Rigveda and Avesta: the final evidence”
The banker has finally out-punched the Harvard professor
2. April 2009 - 1:26 AM
@Kishkindhaa
Man, you guys should really keep away from quoting BLOGS! [BBC has nothing to do with the BLOG] Yes, the AIT is dead but your incompetence of people like you [no offense] more than keeps it alive.
And please don’t quote Frawley as he is not as much of an expert like Talageri and Kazansas
@larissa
have u read Talageri 1993,2000 and 2008? Or even Nicolas Kazansas? Or Elst? And why does a linguist involve himself denying the authenticity of a horse seal?
2. April 2009 - 1:29 AM
@larissa
http://rac.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/45/4/45
[Eurocentrism in the History of Mathematics: the case of the Kerala school by Dennis Almeida and George Joseph]
2. April 2009 - 1:35 AM
Calculus Was Developed in Medieval India
by Stephen Ornes
Discover, January 2008
2. April 2009 - 1:36 AM
he AIT is dead but your incompetence of people like you [no offense] more than keeps it alive.
I have been hammering it into these people that no one takes this seriously so why should they waste time on it and why are they fixated on it?
2. April 2009 - 1:46 AM
@larissa
I told him not to quote blogs in the name of BBC.
Nevertheless, a few moments ago, you defamed C K Raju only because he does not belong to a “white man’s” university.
Similarly, linguistics is no absolute science and can be understood through secondary sources too. Witzel is only an expert in Linguists so how can he counter B B Lal, the doyenne of Indian archaeologists who was the second, after Dales to deny Wheeler’s AIT.
You never understood the politics which sustained the AIT, which was used by the British to create imaginary 19th century Arya-Dravida divide, myth of white skinned arya, dark coloured dasyu divide and was (is) used by your Islamist friends to justify the Islamic invasions
Moreover, the entire chronological substructure of Indian History is being rewritten in the light of the OIT. If we place RV at 3000-4000 B.C, it automatically makes the RV posterior to the IVS
2. April 2009 - 1:54 AM
Well regarding Calculus, there was debate as to whether Newton or Liebnitz came up with it first, and there was a huge quarrel at the time—and the verdict was they developed it independently of each other…and this is entirely likely…
Moreover, when someone comes up with something they can be influenced by many ideas, but unless they have directly plagiarized those ideas, it would be wrong to say that the influences were the ones which directly lead to the novel work, as in the case of those that claim calculus was invented already before Newton—you would have to show that Newton directly lifted someone’s work and plagiarized which I think would not be likely.
Moreover, how come India produces so few nobel laureates now of of a nation of one billion? Should we not be concerned with this? Why no Indian institution ranks the top in the world? My interest is why India is backward now….
I am sure as Indians progress and become a strong country, then people other than Indians will be interested in what they contributed in the past. The growth of China has resulted in an interest in Chinese history–this is what happens when a nation becomes strong–others start to look at it for inspiration–but when a nation is poor–even its past contributions to go dust–So India should be a strong country and the rest follows–but with the current politics in India, one can only be pessimistic. You know people voted for Congress even after bomb blasts in places like Delhi–so Indians can also disappoint.
2. April 2009 - 2:03 AM
Sauravji,
The following is the link for the BBC site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/history_4.shtml
2. April 2009 - 2:04 AM
Moreover, how come India produces so few nobel laureates now of of a nation of one billion?
->> Between 1901-1950, India produced three nobel prize laureates. In an independent nation, the tally might have touched even double digits [J C Bose, Sarat Chandra, Subramanyam Bharati, Gandhi, etc would have automatically qualified for the nobel prize]
However between 1951-2010 India produced virtually none. Teresa won because of the Catholic connection, and Amartya Sen is the most un-Indian of all Indian nobel prize winners. [except one Dr Subhas Mukherejee who committed suicide when his colleagues and the government conspired to deny him his due in the making of 'Durga'.] Our ’secular’ educational system and reservations will only produce imitative minds
2. April 2009 - 2:11 AM
@kishkindaa
2-3 yrs back [dont remember exactly], this was put up as a blog although I can now find no such evidence. I retract my words….but i still believe quoting an anonymous BBC article which could have been written by a non-expert does not do justice to our stand when we have a wealth of evidence to now deny both AIT and AMT. [except a few pseudoscholars and authors who dont upgrade their books no one believes in the former]
Regards,
2. April 2009 - 2:12 AM
The fact that they lied about the seals is well known. Has nothing to do with if someone is a white man or not.
The fact that Raju is not white has nothing to do with the fact that his books are not read out of India–Naipaul is not white, but he won the nobel prize in literature, although literature is not perhaps an apt comparison owing to its subjectivity. What are you trying to prove?
In science, does not matter if you are white or not, similarly, in linguistics and archaeology, it does not matter if you are white or not–if you write something compelling people of merit will recognize it. If Lal is a great scholar according to you, then I find the implications of that I find rather scary.
Anyway, I do not wish to discuss further, as this conversation always reverts to not being recognized because one is not white? I find this absurd.
2. April 2009 - 2:21 AM
“Two British researchers challenged the conventional history of mathematics in June when they reported having evidence that the infinite series, one of the core concepts of calculus, was first developed by Indian mathematicians in the 14th century.”
Actually, these two british researches plagiarised Dr. C.K. Raju’s research. Dr. Raju complained. Both these dudes were sacked from their jobs. Maybe this can cure Larissa from treating Western professors as demi-gods.
Here is the link to the news report:
http://ckraju.net/press/HT25Aug07.jpg
Larissa, nobody is alleging that Newton lifted calculus from Kerala (even though he said “I could see this far only because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.”)
Dr. C.K. Raju’s research is that Calculus has existed in India for thousands of years and Jesuits lifted it and took it to Europe. He has given proof for this in terms of Indian manuscripts that still exist and the archived letters of Jesuits. Newtwon may or may have not seen the Indian manuscripts. What exactly is the problem that you are having with understanding this?
2. April 2009 - 2:28 AM
“it does not matter if you are white or not–if you write something compelling people of merit will recognize it.”
This is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. Have you been anywhere near Western universities, especially their South Asian Studies departments?
You may have suckled on the milk of human kindness, but trust me there is a lot of mischief, racialism and politics in this world. Truth doesn’t matter one bit. All that matters is who is controlling the power and patronage structure. It has taken 150 years by Westerners just to admit that there is no proof for Aryan Invasion Theory.
The problem is you are again and again making Western recognition the test of any man’s worth. This is nothing but mental slavery.
What is this fetish with Nobel prize? It is just a Swedish award. Did Gandhi get a Noble Prize for peace? Do you have any idea why not? And here you are gassing about “it does not matter if you are white or not–if you write something compelling people of merit will recognize it.”
2. April 2009 - 3:50 AM
Sauravji,
Larissa does not accept any argument coming from an Indian or pro-Indian source. In her case, Talageri and Kazanas would both be suspect. Therefore, it is necessary to quote more “neutral” sources such as Nichols and BBC ( in the hopes that she will momentarily abandon her ‘India is “poor” and “weak”‘ and ‘there is no such thing a colonialism, only pursuit of truth’ rhetoric ). Larissa affects a Meera Nanda-type Modernity and Neutrality facade. IMO, she needs a primer on colonial dynamics and how Christianity, Islam, and “Liberal Modernity” are all part of the same Abrahamic colonial spectrum, rather than a rehashing of Talageri.
A lot of Indians suffer from this same “Modernism” bug. The truth of OIT or any particular topic is just a side issue for this subset. These fellows are even incapable of seeing the psyops in such western projects as ‘Slumdog’ and ‘Indiana Jones’; forget more advanced topics like western geopolitics in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Northeast, South, and how these relate to constructed Hindu versus tribal -or- Aryan versus Dravidian. Any problems will automatically be blamed on Indian “weakness” “callousness” “corruption” “insecurity” …….
2. April 2009 - 10:13 AM
Talageri’s latest book expands upon his “archaism of the fringe” arguments. These arguments are devastating for all scenarios which place the homeland to the west of Afghanistan.
2. April 2009 - 6:47 PM
Cant do much about what larissa claims.
The common assumptions made by folks who accept the aryan theories propagated by people like Romila Thapar and Witzel or even Max Mueller are
1. These ‘popular people’ are the best available experts on Sanskrit and vedic heritage
2. That linguistics has come to the level of Mathematics whereby all axioms are listed and anybody can verify the theories based on these axioms
3. That humanities is a subject whose experts do not have any kind of ideological biases
4. That there is sufficient evidence available for the current theories and people like witzel make staments based on irrefutable evidences
For all this-
1. Firstly, neither was max mueller anywhere close to being the best vedic scholar nor were any of the so called indologists half as good as some of the best Indian Vedic scholars in the past century. Nor are the former as intelligent as the latter. Some of the Indian vedic schoalrs were among the most intelligent people in the 19 th century, whereas the best people in the west were busy with more modern vocations. Moreover these Indian scholars have learnt the traditions and the language ever since the age of five and considering their intelligence, it is hard to believe that a westerner who initially had no idea on vedic culture could understand better than an intelligent native expert. Thus it is but natural for Indians to feel outraged by the ridiculous interpretation of biased western scholars. And when educated Indians see obvious issues with the translations by half baked western scholars there is good reason to be irritated.
2. lingistics and history as we read today is anything but science. any one who reads a book written by romila thapar will be able to understand why only if they think! Book is full of references and the reference are usually from another literature- but the reliablity of the account in the material is just an unknown factor- things are worse when there are rival accounts which are skipped!
3. As numerous people have pointed out romila has herself committed to her bias. Mueller has openly admitted his belief in the greatness of his christian faith and so on.
4. Witzel and his samudra is a classical example of how shaky a so called expert’s opinion can be. Another example is romila’s opinion on aurangazeb. If we go by their methods then I should not consider that my grandfather was really my grand father’s father because he was the only child of his parents and there is no one else I can confirm(based on genes). Any unbiased individual would accept my statement based on indirect evidences and well known family history. If someone tells me that since there is no concrete genetic evidence, I should disown my ancestor, it is ridiculous and the other person has to come up with something concrete to dislodge this view. If all Indians considered that sanskrit and brahmins were native of India and if there was nothing in its literature or in India’s culture to Indicate otherwise, no matter how well read max mueller or witzel may be they will have to come up with something concrete (clinching evidence and until then they should not make much noise ). They should stringly indicate to their readers that their theories are based on assumption x, y, z and that x ,y,z assumptions are yet to be substantatiated though there may be things that could indicate that these assumptions are true. An unbiased scholar is given away by the tone of his language. Moreover if these scholars have really established x, y,z then the logic should be so crystal clear that any one should be able to verify. Its true that only experts can propose a meaningful theory, but if the theory has been substantiated by atleast 10% , then every body will be in a position to accept it.This is currently not the case
2. April 2009 - 8:52 PM
ave you been anywhere near Western universities, especially their South Asian Studies departments?
Yes I have. Not all what comes out of there is good. The quality of scholarship has deteriorated generally even in the West, but there is some good that comes out as well.
It is not a question of not accepting arguments by Indians–I have read some good scholars from India, but most are not interested in Aryan debates–As as for trying to locate a precise homeland, no one engages in that sort of thing, as culture is fluid and changing and you will have to go even further back…and it is like trying to place a stick in quicksand…
I was telling some American friends about Indian contributions in mathematics. They all laughed and said, such as how Indians discovered calculus and all the other Vedic maths?
While HIndutva might be a good thing as a political movement, they have certainly caused a lot of damage as far as people taking Indians seriously, by coming up with a lot of voo dooo when it comes to scholarship–
As soon as India becomes a very strong nation, people will start to become interested in things Indian, just as everyone is interested in things Japanese, although the culture of Japan is very recent. This is how this works.
2. April 2009 - 8:59 PM
Someone told me about spelling Max Muller–I don’t know how to use the umlaut on the computer–But it is spelled Mueller as well by some.
2. April 2009 - 10:23 PM
in other words, anywhere but India!!!
2. April 2009 - 10:41 PM
No. That’s not what I am saying. If you want to go back 3000 years, why not go back 30,000 years, and 300,000,000 years, we all came from Africa, now does this result in the fact that Indian culture is just Arfican culture? No–showing how illogical it is–I don’t understand why Indians are so obsessed–the fact that there might have been migrations into India, does not make the any group less Indian—that is my point. Why not go further back when India smashed as a sub-continent into Asia and created the Himalayas? Your logic is circular and I am going to stop replying to mono-minded peoples who do not think there is anything wrong in India apart from the question of who migrated to India.
2. April 2009 - 11:03 PM
And why should we care for the opinions of your “White” American friends? An average American is not mathematical whizkid, and need Not appreciate Indian contribution to mathematics. They can even ignore Ramanujam?
The argument on ’strength of civilizations’ is akin to brute force survival of the fittest scenarios which is befitting for anglo saxons, not Hindus. America’s military bluff has been called in Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan
2. April 2009 - 11:05 PM
If you want to go back 3000 years, why not go back 30,000 years, and 300,000,000 years, we all came from Africa, now does this result in the fact that Indian culture is just Arfican culture?
->> Why don’t u ask this very question to those who framed and perpetuated the hoax of the Aryan Invasion theory? The Aryan homeland question is the single most important historical conundrum faced by experts, and its answer has immense implications; it would actually change completely our perception of the Ancient past
2. April 2009 - 11:06 PM
Larissa does not accept any argument coming from an Indian or pro-Indian source.
->> She has a problem (sigh)
2. April 2009 - 11:54 PM
They are already “interested” in India. Crore upon crore of “funds” are pouring into India at the behest of not just missionaries but “secular” western agencies as well. I kindly suggest you to read Rajiv Malhotra’s The Axis of Neocolonialism to see the extent and purpose of their “interest”. The British did not just magically pack up and leave 50 years ago. They left behind their Apparatchiks and passed the baton to their cousins across the Atlantic. This is how things really work. AIT is an imperialist project in India AND it is a false account of India as well.
Just as the Missionary declares his “love” for the Damned Heathen (as well as little children), the western modernist declares his “interest” in the native; Liberalism and Orientalism are just the western and modern versions of Abrahamic Taquiya or propaganda.
3. April 2009 - 12:25 AM
The Aryan homeland question is the single most important historical conundrum faced by experts,
Which experts? You battle problems which are old and settled already.
And why should we care for the opinions of your “White” American friends? An average American is not mathematical whizkid, and need Not appreciate Indian contribution to mathematics. They can even ignore Ramanujam?
Excuse me, I have friends who are mathematicians. They all appreciate Ramaanujam, just not your claims that calculus existed in India for thousands of years ago and other such nonsense.
3. April 2009 - 12:28 AM
I have said what I need to say–for in arguing with foolish people one only harms oneself, so I am going to stop responding.
3. April 2009 - 12:56 AM
Liberalism and Orientalism are just the western and modern versions of Abrahamic Taquiya or propaganda.
->> I think we should be careful while rejecting orientalism. Why do you think guys like Edward Said have made a career out of criticizing orientalists. Many western critics of orientalists are nothing but Wahabi sponsored “Islamic apologists” The counter-critique of Orientalism by Bernard Lewis and Ibn Warraq has exposed Said’s mendacity
->> Some early orientalists believed Sanskrit was the IE homeland. At least, they clearly blamed the dark forces of radical Islam for the demise of the “Hindu civilization” until Mill and Charles Grant taught the English to think differently. Modern orientalists are keen to criticize orientalists who exposed the moral vacuity of islamists, but gleefully accept every objection they attributed to Hinduism, ethically, morally and spiritually.
3. April 2009 - 1:02 AM
“They all appreciate Ramaanujam, just not your claims that calculus existed in India for thousands of years ago and other such nonsense.”
Is this lady having some psychological problem? There are actual manuscripts in Cochin dating from the 11th century that have calculus equations written on them. What more proof does she want?
3. April 2009 - 1:44 AM
She just wants you to agree with her on everything she says. Deluded creature. Or maybe a feminist who thinks women are always right;)
3. April 2009 - 2:08 AM
Infinite series was also developed by Zeno, and does not comprise all of calculus. It takes a Newton to unify everything and put it together, and in the West you see calculus revolutionize Mathematics, which it did not in India. Keeping an open mind about the development of mathematics is different from saying calculus existed in India for thousands of years–you can say that about the Greeks also who developed infinite series…
3. April 2009 - 3:40 AM
Dr. C.K. Raju writes in his blog the following revealing post:
“Newton was an honest theologian. For fifty years he diligently researched all the manipulations which entirely transformed the Bible. Brought up virtually as an orphan, and living unmarried, he had no confidante to turn to. Afraid of the backlash, he understandably hid his work: an 8-volume history of the church.
What is inexcusable is the way Newton’s 50-year effort remained hidden even after his death. Suppressed for over 250 years! It is Western historians I accuse of utter dishonesty, not Newton. If they could knowingly hide Newton’s lifework for so long, and continue trying to keep it hidden as Whiteside more recently did, nothing that Western historians say should be trusted or accepted on faith. For several centuries, European historians were mainly priests, writing in times of intense religious fanaticism, so their mindset was that of missionaries, out to glorify themselves and belittle others by any means possible, and without any regard for the facts.
Of course, Newton did not invent the calculus, but neither does he claim credit for it. (It is Western historians who credit him for it.) Newton acknowledges a whole series of earlier mathematicians, including Cavalieri. Newton claims credit mainly for having made the calculus rigorous .
Newton’s claim to rigour was wrong, even by Western standards of proof, and his more discerning contemporaries like Berkeley were well aware of it. However, Newton’s attempt at “rigour” socialised the imported calculus, and made it socially acceptable in the West. (Descartes and Galileo had earlier rejected it.)
It is interesting to see the effect this had on his physics. Hoping to make calculus rigorous, Newton made time metaphysical. (“Absolute, true, and mathematical time” which flows on “without regard to anything external” is obviously a metaphysical notion, in fact, a religious one.) As pointed out in my expository paper (“Time:What is it that it can be Measured?” in Science and Education , 2005) this was a step backward from Newton’s predecessor, Barrow, who had called Augustine a “quack” for evading a clear physical definition of time. Barrow himself tried to supply such a definition, later corrected by Poincaré.
The failure to define time properly led to the failure of Newtonian physics, and its replacement by Poincaré’s special theory of relativity. (The speed of light is postulated a constant, just to be able to measure time.)
Newton, in the course of his priority dispute with Leibniz, over calculus, did claim credit for the sine series, and we know that this was factually false, for the sine series was known in India from a couple of centuries earlier.
However, this claim too has to be put in the context of the prevailing Doctrine of Christian Discovery: according to which only Christians could be regarded as discoverers. The church decreed that ownership of a piece of land must go to the first Christian to spot it. (Hence, the claim that Columbus “discovered” America, or that Vasco da Gama “discovered” India.) The people already living on the land did not matter, and the church encouraged their killing on a mass scale, where possible, as actually happened on three continents. This doctrine was made into a law by the US supreme court, and that is where the current US law on land-ownership vis-a-vis the “Red Indians” stands.
So, the point is this. Despite the horrendous historical injustice involved, it would be completely incorrect to say that anyone who owns a piece of land in the US today is a thief. It is not a matter of personal dishonesty, at all, but a matter of systematic appropriation.
The same thing applies to what I have said about Newton. His claim to the sine series was part of a systematic process of intellectual appropriation during the centuries of extreme religious fanaticism in Europe: it was not a matter of personal dishonesty. Copernicus did nothing different, nor did Clavius, Tycho Brahe; in fact, these three directly knew the sources from which they were appropriating.”
http://ckraju.net/blog/?p=30
3. April 2009 - 7:43 AM
Hey why am I not allowed to comment? I don’t understand.
4. April 2009 - 8:52 AM
13. May 2009 - 12:13 AM
Just a small note – the Kluge Prize was directly and intentionally set up as an arts & humanities equivalent of the Nobel Prize, and indeed attempts to match it financially. It clearly does not have the cachet or publicity of the Nobel Prize, but it is fair to call it an “equivalent” as that is stated in Kluge Center’s description of the Prize.
4. June 2009 - 5:46 PM
There will always be as many points of view as people.
Ramchandra Guha says that the Indian middle class loves to judge other people. I’ve seen that this is true. Here is an example of the lofty being judged by the (presumably?) lowly.
Here’s an opposing point of view. Yes, I mean the lofty judging the lowly.
http://1conoclast.blogspot.com/2008/06/deconstructing-arun-shourie.html
5. June 2009 - 12:04 AM
Just a small note – the Kluge Prize was directly and intentionally set up as an arts & humanities equivalent of the Nobel Prize, and indeed attempts to match it financially. It clearly does not have the cachet or publicity of the Nobel Prize, but it is fair to call it an “equivalent” as that is stated in Kluge Center’s description of the Prize.
Wow! Then anyone can get the prize such as Thapar? Who is next on line? Sen’s Argumentative Indian? Another piece of leftist hogwash? What about giving it to Andre Wink who does not write trash like Thapar and writes on the same topics with erudition and dedication and not the desire to push an ideology? Did they feel the need to be PC to give it to a historian like Thapar who distorts history without factual basis, makes personal assertions with nothing to back them up? It seems like they have lowered their standards in any case. Which is why such prizes can never be compared to a Nobel in Physics–you will not be able to get a prize for trash in the sciences….
5. June 2009 - 2:21 AM
Opinionated – I read through your piece on Arun Shourie and found it not distasteful but silly.
Try harder next time.
5. June 2009 - 9:11 AM
Pala,
Dont accord any importance to Opinionated’s blog. Remember heckler who used opinionated’s blog link to point fingers @ modi and how they made fools out of themselves.
8. June 2009 - 6:31 PM
palahalli & kharaharapriya,
Fast bowlers hunt in pairs. You seem to be emulating that strategy.
Question: You’re not fast bowlers. What do you consider yourselves? What’s making you pair up?
12. November 2009 - 7:52 PM
Underhill’s latest study clearly shows R1a1 (M17) expansion out of South Asia.
http://bit.ly/2JkKPI
27. February 2010 - 1:24 PM
The marker which was suppose to indicate AIT turns out to have originated in India.
27. February 2010 - 4:26 PM
Kinshkindhaa
Personally I think that the genetic evidence being substantially ancient refers to the general direction of human movements and therefore may not be as relevant to the AIT debate – except as pointers to the fact that :-
a. There were no large scale movements into India to leave a genetic imprint.
b. The general pattern of human movements can be said to be from India outwards.
I am consistently amazed by these folks’ strident “anywhere but India” position – usually only based on the alleged linguistic evidence. Johanna Nichols’ at least places the locus of IE spread in BMAC practically at the doorsteps of India. It is a short step from there to considering India as the locus. One wonders how long “scholars” are going to hold on to the necessity of a cultural-linguistic injection into India across the khyber. The sheer impossibilty of such a complete transfer of the cumulative IE lore, language, religion (unaltered inspite of millenia of wandering through a massively heterogenous linguistic terrain) by such a miniscule group of people ( so as to find no genetic trace) into an area as vast as the indian subcontinent inhabited by an established population, without leaving any other evidence whatsoever – is plainly obvious.
Isnt it amazing that AIT supporters selectively quote genetics to support thier position, and all while AIT scholars are busy devising positoins to circumvent the evident spoke in the wheel that archeo-genetic has introduced. By containing the issue exclusively within linguistics they have made the problem unfalsifiable – that is it cannot be proven or disproven by any other discipline. Especially when it is noticiable that this has been done in light of hostile genetic, archeological and geological research it evident these scholars have special agendas that have nothing to do with history archeology or language.
27. February 2010 - 5:51 PM
It took one full day to go thru this blog. sandeep you really touch the nerves. I have only one info which many may know. There is a book published by Dravida University, Kuppam originally Edi Charitra in telugu and its translation by babu krishnamurthy in kannada Yavudu Charitre. It has been well researched and written. All references are given at the end. I suggest every one should read it whether you agree with it or not is a different matter. I do not know if there are translations into other languages.
28. February 2010 - 12:58 AM
Rajiv,
I agree with your positions, of course, but I think we need to twist the knife in these AIT supporters some more, so that this religio-colonial theory does not manage to resurrect itself in the popular space.
The evidence is that there was a massive genetic input into Europe from S Asia in the Holocene around 10K. This is roughly the expected time date for the initial kentum migration/expansion out of Greater S Asia, with Satem as a straggler or, more probably, an in situ transformation of the kentum. Nichols’ and Talageri’s scenario is superior because there are no quasi-monotheist herrenvolk movements associated with it, merely expansion and internal transformation. R1a1 out of India at 10K is a near perfect complement of this expansion scenario. It really cannot get any better for us.
Theory is fine up to a point, but eventually must be made to dovetail with the actual evidence, especially when rigid adherence to the letter of theory has become the refuge for these guys (which, incidentally, is a theological necessity for them – similar to their insistence on conceptualizing the heathens in a conservative-liberal framework). Otherwise, some of these guys will not be satisfied unless migration is shown exactly at 1500BCE out of India, since that is the theory. And it is definitely necessary for us to put the final stake in this beast. For that, it must be made clear that the out of India theory is not simply the AIT with all the arrows reversed.
As a counterexample, hg-N in Europe is widely acknowledged as originating in E Asia and correlates with the introduction of Uralic into Europe by the E Siberians. The only reason why a parallel assessment is not made for out of India R1a1 is the IE issue.
If the situation were reversed and a clear majority of Indian lines originated in eurostan, then the case would be shut and closed by them; they would easily adapt their idiosyncracies to the greater goal of AIT. In fact, they once tried to push a “Neolithic package” out of the ME as the AIT, which quickly disintegrated with many of the hg-s actually originating in India (or with coalescence times greater in India than in Europe). I can guarantee that they are busily working away at every level (individual, university, and agency) to chip away at the R1a1 out of India scenario. R1a1 out of China is the latest craze, consistent with the anywhere-but-India syndrome. In contrast, there is almost no one on the Indian side, and the few are subject to constant sniper fire from Indians themselves.
Even those who acknowledge 1) the southern route, 2) differential settlement of Asia versus its european extension, and 3) r1a1 out of india – are obliviously self-assured about the AIT. Many will acknowledge Jawalapuram at 74K (far exceeding anything in Europe) as well as an Asian origin for European lines while denying the southern route simply because a shell midden has not been found! The same will insist on paleolithic R1b in europe while insisting on 1500 BCE r1a1 in India! Pure Madness!!
Against such farcical standards of evidence, the OIT scenario has still managed to emerge as the clear choice. It is quite superior to any other scenario. Let us take the available scenario and build it up. The phase for overturning it has passed (further resolution in r1a1 will be local not transcontinental) and we need to slay the AIT beast from as many angles as possible..
1. March 2010 - 7:16 PM
Keir Said:
” It clearly does not have the cachet or publicity of the Nobel Prize, but it is fair to call it an “equivalent” as that is stated in Kluge Center’s description of the Prize.”
No need to be over awed by Kluge prize. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington who finally chose the finalists for the prize has impecable evangelical credentials.
“”Dr. Billington was a longtime member of the editorial advisory boards of Foreign Affairs and of Theology Today, and a member of the Board of Foreign Scholarships in 1971-76 (chairman, 1971-73), which has executive responsibility for academic exchanges worldwide under the Fulbright-Hays Act. He is on the Board of the Center for Theological Inquiry and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.”
This librarian was also a member of editorial advisory board of Theology Today which is a ecumenical journal of Christian theology.
With such impeccable evangelical credentials, is it any surprise that he chose Ms Thaper. His deep seated internalised racism against the pagans and Hindus being the last of the pagans shows in his choice for the prize.
Ofcourse the other prize was awarded to PETER ROBERT LAMONT BROWN who wrote autobiography of Augustine, “Augustine of Hippo” in 1966 and in 1988 he wrote “The Body and Society” in 1988 again about Augustine. Since Augustines reputation has taken a beating by Sam Harris’s best selling “End Of Faith” it was time to prop up ‘St Augustine’.