"In the days when historian supposed that history had begun with Greece, Europe gladly believed that India has been a hotbed of barbarism. In 1924 the world of scholarship was again roused by news from India. Sir John Marshall announced that he had discovered at Mohenjo-daro, on the western bank of the lower Indus, remains of what seemed to be an older civilization than any yet know to historians. The indications are that Mohenjo-daro was at its height when Cheops built the first great pyramid; that it had commercial, religious, and artistic connections with Sumeria, and Babylonia. It survived over 3000 years, until the third century before Christ." (source: "The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage - By Will Durant ISBN 1567310125 p 394-396).

Since the nineteenth century, India's ancient history from Vedic times and the true content of the Veda have both been distorted by a blinkered and unsympathetic scholarship. British rulers, European scholars and missionaries combined in a campaign to disparage the roots of Indian civilization, and used the wholly groundless Aryan Invasion theory to sow seeds of division in the Indian society - "divide and rule," but also "divide and convert." The same fallacies continue to be promoted today. Unfortunately, many of the wounds the Aryan invasion theory inflicted on Indian society are still painfully open today, nurtured as they have been by missionaries, Marxist historians and politicians, who together have made sure that divisions between castes have been sharpening rather than subsiding - for the simple reason that without such divisions they would all be out of business. Today, it is necessary to examines the birth of the Aryan myth, and the misuses it has bred; it then gives a fresh look at the invasion theory in the light of recent scientific evidence, and shows how it now stands overwhelmingly disproved. (source: The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino and Sujata Nahar p. 26). 

Sardar Kavalam Madhava Panikkar (1896-1963) Indian scholar, journalist, historian from Kerala, administrator, diplomat, Minister in Patiala Bikaner and Ambassador to China, Egypt and France. He was the author of Asia and Western Dominance and has written in his book, 'A Survey of Indian History’ (1954):

‘One thing, however, is certain and can no longer be contested—civilization did not come to India with the Aryans. This doctrine of the Aryan origin of Indian civilization which finds no support in Indian Literature which does not consider the Dasyus (Dravidians) as uncivilized, is the result of the theories of Indo-Germanic scholars who held that everything valuable in the world originated from the Aryans. Not only is Indian civilization pre-Vedic, but the essential features of Hindu religion as we know it today were perhaps present in Mohenjo-Daro."

It is gratifying to note that people like Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghosh and Dadabhai Naoroji did not have appetite for racial theories, because, as Naoroji put it, they were unrealistic and often used to prove the inferiority of Asians. Only one among our great political leaders saw through the hollowness of the Aryan theory. B R Ambedkar who observed: “That the theory of the Aryan race set up by Western writers fails to the ground at every point goes without saying….Anyone who comes to scrutinize the theory will find that it suffers from a ‘double infection.’ He could clearly see the implications of such ill-founded hypotheses which colonial Indology imposed on India and which Indian scholars went on repeating ad nauseam.


Introduction
Oriental Renaissance
 Motives of the British East India Company 
Implication of Aryan Invasion Theory
Voices of dissent
Indian protests
Challenging the infallible façade of Western scholarship
Indological MacCarthyism  
Race, Religion and Philology in the 19th Century 
Colonial Indology - Acceptance of A Racist Theory

The rest of the chapter continues -  Aryan Invasion Theory II

***

For more information, please read the articles at the link listed below:
Articles on Aryan invasion theory

Introduction

"History is the propaganda of the victors" -  Ernest Toller (1893 - 1937) playwright.

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"Archaeology has been used as a tool for intellectually dominating the subjugated nations and minorities. During the colonial period the history of the colonized nations was perceived in such a way as to relegate them in various ways to the static backwaters of human development. In this sense the interpretation of the archaeological data from these nations or colonized areas was the direct handmaiden of the political reality of the period. This plank was laid down at the height of Western political hegemony over India, and the fact that this still has been left in its place speaks a volume for the post-1947 pattern of the retention of Western dominance in various forms."

         -  Dilip K Chakrabarti - archaeologist, historian and author of Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past

Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (1880 – 1936) was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West in which he puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations.

 

Spengler observed this about Eurocentrism:

 

“The Western European area is regarded as a fixed pole, a unique patch chosen on the surface of the sphere for no better reason, it seems, than because we live on it – and great histories of millennial duration and mighty faraway Cultures are made to revolve around this pole in all modesty. It is a quaintly conceived system of sun and planets. We select a single bit of ground as the natural center of the historical system, and make it the central sun. From it all the events of history receive their real light; from it their importance is judged in perspective.”

 

(source: The Decline of the West - By Oswald Spengler  p. 13).

 

Refer to Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America - By Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas and Aditi Banerjee.

***

The first point to note is that the idea of the Aryans as foreigners who invaded India and destroyed the existing Harappan Civilization is a modern European invention; it receives no support whatsoever from Indian records - literary or archaeological. 

The same is true of the notion of the Aryans as a race; it finds no support in Indian literature or tradition. (And genetics demolishes it.) The word 'Arya' in Sanskrit means noble and never a race. In fact, the authoritative Sanskrit lexicon (c. 450 AD), the famous Amarakosha gives the following definition:         

mahakula kulinarya sabhya sajjana sadhavah .

 

 Statue of a Serene Lord Vishnu.

An Arya is one who hails from a noble family, of gentle behavior and demeanor, good-natured and of righteous conduct.

Aryan Invasion theory has no support whatsoever from Indian records - literary or archaeological. 

Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge

***

An Arya is one who hails from a noble family, of gentle behavior and demeanor, good-natured and of righteous conduct. And the great epic Ramayana has a singularly eloquent expression describing Rama as:         

arya sarva samascaiva sadaiva priyadarsanah  - Arya, who worked for the equality of all and was dear to everyone. The Rig Veda also uses the word Arya something like thirty six times, but never to mean a race. The nearest to a definition that one can find in the Rigveda is probably:    

praja arya jyotiragrah ... 

Children of Arya are led by light  - Rig Veda VII. 33.17.

Thus, the modern notion of an Aryan-Dravidian racial divide is contradicted by ancient records. We have it on the authority of Manu that the Dravidians were also part of the Aryan fold. Interestingly, so were the Chinese. Race never had anything to do with it until the Europeans adopted the ancient word to give expression to their nationalistic and other aspirations.

Please refer to Naimisha Journal for interesting articles on Aryan Invasion Theory). 

Sir Aurobindo (1872-1950) most original philosopher of modern India. He has said: "It distresses us to see Indian inquirers with their great opportunities simply following in the path of certain European scholars, accepting and adding to their unstable fantasies, their huge superstructures founded on weak and scattered evidence and their imaginative "history of our prehistoric ages." 

(source: India's Rebirth - Sri Aurobindo  p. 110-111). 

The term 'aryan' has never been used in a racial sense anywhere in the vast compendium of Hindu literature. In the whole of the Rig Veda the word arya occurs no more than four times. It stands for whatever is regarded as eminent and ennobling. The term was used in a racial sense for the first time by Western historians who cooked up the theory of an Aryan invasion of India around 1500 B.C. They also popularized in a racial sense, the term Dravidian which had earlier had only a linguistic connotation.

(source: Story of Islamic Imperialism in India - By Sita Ram Goel Voice of India ISBN : 81-85990-23-9  p. 8).

It is not a wise or correct view that the Hindus had no historical sense. When they excelled in many difficult sciences and arts, it cannot be that they were deficient in the comparatively crude and primitive art of keeping chronicles, in which much lesser peoples have excelled. 

Colonel Jame Tod (1782-1835) author of Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western Rajput States of India  ISBN 8120612892 says well:

"If we consider the political changes and convulsions which have happened in Hinduism since Mahmud's invasion and the intolerant bigotry of many of his successors, we shall be able to account for the paucity of its national works on history, without being driven to the conclusion, that the Hindus were ignorant of an art which was cultivated in other countries from almost the earliest ages. Is it to be imagined that a nation so highly civilized as the Hindus, amongst whom the exact sciences flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts, architecture, sculpture, poetry and music were not only cultivated but taught and defined by the nicest and most elaborate rules, were totally unacquainted with the simple art of recording the events of their history, the chapters of their princes and the acts of their reigns?"

Though it is often said glibly that India has never had any historical instinct and that she has never kept any record of her achievements, such a view is incorrect.

The fact seems to be that the so-called Dravidians and the so-called Aryans were indigenous people in India and that the theory of their immigration and incursion into India is a figment of occidental scholarship.

In Tamil words Dravida is said to be the name of the Southern portion of India from Tiruvenkatam (Tirupati) to Kumari (Cape Comorin). The ancient Tamil works speak of a flood which destroyed the land south of the Kumari. The term Pancha Dravidas include the Tamils, the Telegus, the Karnatahas, the Maharastrians, and the Gurjaras, just as the term Pancha Gowdas include the people of the north of the Vindhyas. Thus the term Dravidas relates to a tract of land and not to a race.

The theory of the Aryan immigration into India from somewhere has been so often repeated by the western savants that it has become an article of faith even with the Indian scholars! But the Vedas refer to the Himalayas as the Uttara Giri i.e. the northern border and and contain no hints of an Aryan immigration into India from abroad.

(source: Indian Culture and the Modern Age - By Dewan Bahadur K. S. Ramaswami Sastri  Annamalai University. 1956 p. 46-51).

Several eminent personalities including Swami Vivekanand, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and  Shri Aurobindo  firmly believed that Aryans were homegrown, born and brought up in India.  Many chose to dismiss those views simply as irrational, inspirational or ultra-nationalistic. Yet, the archeological finds being uncovered presently, year after year, supported by continuing historical & scholarly research seem to prove that Swami Vivekanand, Rabindranath Tagore and  Shri Aurobindo, and many learned personalities were correct to raise pointed questions against the Aryan Invasion Theory.   

 

The theory of the Aryan immigration into India from somewhere has been so often repeated by the Western savants that it has become an article of faith even with the Indian scholars!

If there were similarities in certain features of Indian people and people from Central Europe, then automatic inference drawn was that the Aryans coming from Europe invaded India and settled here. No one dared of thinking in any other way. Therefore, there is urgency for the historians and all other intellectuals to stop reducing Indian history to myth. There is need to gather, dig out, search, unearth and analyze all the evidences, which would throw more light on ancient Indian civilization and culture.

Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge
Watch The Saraswati River - youtube.com  

Refer to Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America - By Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas and Aditi Banerjee. Refer to Ram was for real – By  Saroj Bala The Pioneer October 12, 2003

***

The British, in presenting the Aryan Invasion Theory offered no proof. They did not need to. Hundreds of Indian historians rushed forward to earn their doctorates, promotions, patronage and government-aided jobs and positions for supporting the British theory of Aryan Invasion of India.  Their Proof?  Largely quoting those very hundreds of articles and books –and asking - how could so many learned books and serious articles by countless British and Indian historians be wrong! 

Some did murmur that the British-created Myth was aimed at proving to the Indians that they have always been ruled by foreigners, being incapable of ruling themselves and that it was always the foreign invader, like the Aryans (and in later times, other foreigners and finally, the British), who brought progress and enlightenment – and therefore never must Indians aspire for self-rule unless the intention is to bring back darkness, decadence and ruin on themselves. 

(source: Return of the Aryans - By Bhagwan S Gidwani - Book reviewed by Prof. Jagjit Mirchand).

Refer to chapters on First Indologists and European Imperialism.

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Oriental Renaissance

In the 18th century, India was regarded as the origin of civilization, by thinkers like Voltaire and Schlegel. 

Voltaire Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1774) France's greatest writer and philosopher wrote: 

" I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, - astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc." " It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe..."

Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829) German philosopher, critic, and writer, declared in 1803: 

"Everything without exception is of Indian origin.." "whether directly or indirectly, all nations are originally nothing but Indian colonies."  

(source: The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino and Sujata Nahar  p. 12 - 13 and 90 - 91).

Refer to Voltaire, Lettres sur l'origine des sciences et sur celle des peuples de l'Asia (first published Paris, 1777), letter of 15 December 1775. and Voltaire, Fragments historiques sur l'linde, p. 444 - 445.

Refer to Out of India Theory - wikipedia.org and refer to chapter on Survarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

Count Magnus Fredrik Ferdinand Bjornstjerna (1779-1847) author of Die Theogonie, Philosophie und Kosmogonie der Hindus says:

"It is there in (Aryavarta) we must seek not only for the cradle of the Brahmin religion but for the cradle of the high civilization of the Hindus, which gradually extended itself in the west to Ethiopia, to Egypt, to Phoenicia; in the East to Siam, to China and Japan; in the South to Ceylon, to Java and to Sumatra; in the North to Persia, to Chaldea, and to Colchis, whence it came to Greece and to Rome and at length to the distant abode of the Hyperboreons."

Five years later, Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) aide-de-camp to George Washington and first secretary of the Treasury, epitomized this attitude in these words: 

"When we read in the valuable production of those great Oriental scholars...those of a Jones, a Wilkings, a Colebrooke, or a Halhed - we uniformly discover in the Hindus a nation, whose polished manners are the result of a mild disposition and an extensive benevolence."

Frederick Eden Pargiter (1852-1927) in his well-known work Ancient Indian Historical Tradition says that the Aryan civilization is the civilization of the Aila or Lunar race which lived in Ilavrita in mid-Himalayas: that the Vedic culture reflects a blend of both Aryan and Dravidian and that the Aryan civilization did not come from beyond; and that it spread to Afghanistan and Persia and further west from India.

(source: Indian Culture and the Modern Age - By Dewan Bahadur K. S. Ramaswami Sastri  Annamalai University. 1956 p.39).


Theodor Benfey (1809-1881), a German linguist, was of the opinion that India is the origin of ancient civilization that spread to Europe along with its language and the religious stories. 

Benfey's fame rests on his Pantschantantra, Fuenf Buecher indischer Fabeln, Maerchen und Erzaehlungen. ("Pancatantra, five books of Indian fables, fairy tales and stories), 1859. In the Introduction he showed that many Oriental and Occidental fairy tales are of Indian origin. He traced their route to the West: they were firs translated into Pahlevi, then into Arabic to be later rendered into Greek, Persian, Hebrew, Latin and German. 

According to Benfey, the Pancatantra is a nitishastra, a book on statesmanship for kings and ministers. He concludes the introduction by saying "my research in the field of fables, fairy stories and tales of Orient and Occident have convinced me that not few fables, but a large number of fairy tales and stories, was spread from India all over the world." 

(source: German Indologists: Biographies of Scholars in Indian Studies writing in German - By Valentine Stache-Rosen p.32 - 33).

Refer to Out of India Theory - wikipedia.org.

Historian Thomas R. Trautmann explains, its proponents hoped that "the study of Sanskrit and Indian antiquities would bring a second renaissance to the West, as the study of Greek learning had been the foundation of the first Renaissance." 

The French scholar Maurice Olender agrees: "Hebrew, whose centrality had been challenged for some time, finally gave way to Sanskrit," and, for a time, Sanskrit texts "with an air of eternity about them came to supplant the Bible." Well, almost. 

***

However, this generous estimate of Indian civilization and its possible contribution to the West started changing as Britain's hold over India grew more firm and widespread. While most 18th century European travelers to India described her as "flourishing," less than a century later she had sunk into depths of dismal misery. The Mahabharata has this pregnant image: "If spent ceaselessly even the Himalayas would be exhausted." The British were anxious to clothe their greed in lofty ideals" the "white man's burden" of civilizing (and, naturally, Christianizing) less enlightened races, the "divinely ordained mission" of bringing to India the glory of Europe's commercial and industrial civilization, and so forth. 

As Thomas R. Trautmann American historian, puts it: 

"Evangelical influence drove British policy down a path that tended to minimize and denigrate the accomplishments of Indian civilization and to position itself as the negation of the (earlier) British Indomania" that was nourished by belief in Indian wisdom."

(Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com).

That is how the short-lived "Indomania" gave way to what the French scholar Raymond Schwab called "British Indophobia." Sadly, but mistakenly, most of Europe's Sanskrit scholars were now certain that these translations would "carry their own condemnation." The British could even less accept that they owed their language and civilization to a benighted India - that would have been dealing a blow to the very foundation of Europe's mission in India, and particularly to the British Empire now at the height of its glory. Thus, the Rig-Veda was seen as "rather Indo-European than Hindu, and representing the condition of the Aryans before their final settlement in India." 

Never mind that all this was mere conjecture, that the Rig-Veda itself made it clear that the wars between Aryans and Dasyus, were battles between powers of light and darkness, that the word "Arya" was plainly used in the Veda to describe not a racial group, but a quality of being and a culture, a dedication to the truth and readiness to fight for it - all this was simply brushed aside, and whole edifice was promptly erected on these non-existent foundations. 

This theory was used to cut down the Indian's pride in his past and nation - since India was no longer the source of Indian civilization - and make him all the more willing to accept the white man's rule: now that the Hindus were shown to be descendants of former invaders who belonged to the same "Aryan race" as the Europeans' ancestors, it was easier to legitimize Britain's conquest of India as merely as one more "Aryan wave" which, this time would bring true light to the subcontinent. John Wilson, a leading Christian missionary of the time, declared in all seriousness in 1858, and naturally this happy family reunion had now brought India into contact "with the most enlightened and philanthropic nation in the world." 

Lord Derby, then Secretary of State for India, declared that the scholars who had discovered and proved the close relationship between Sanskrit and English, had rendered more valuable service to the (colonial) Government of India than many a regiment." 

Sir William Wilson Hunter 1840-1900)  He was educated at Glasgow University (B.A. s86o), Paris and Bonn, acquiring a knowledge of Sanscrit, and passing first in the final examination for the Indian Civil Service in 1862. Author of  A Brief History of the Indian Peoples and editor of Imperial Gazetteer of India.wrote in 1868: 

"The aboriginals would be a good target group for conversion to Christianity. They have yet to start on the path of progress. It remains for us to decide whether the path is to lead them to Hinduism, or the purer faith and civilization which we represent." 

(source: The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino and Sujata Nahar).

Thomas R Trautmann author of Aryans and British India (1997) and The Aryan Debate in India, points out that the racial theory of Indian civilization is the product of the late 19th century, when the relations between whites and other ethnic groups in the Anglo-Saxon world were being reconfigured with ideological support from a spate of racial essentialism. 

Trautmann concludes: “That the racial theory of Indian civilization still lingers is a miracle of faith. Is it not time we did away with it.” (215).

(source: The Quest for the Origin of Vedic Culture - By Edwin F Bryant  p. 51 – 62).

 


 

(source: The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino/Sujata Nahar p. 44).

Refer to Out of India Theory - wikipedia.org. Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge  

Refer to Defaming of Hinduism-I – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com and Defaming of Hinduism-II – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com  Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com

For more on Christian Intolerance refer to chapters on The Goa Inquisition, European Imperialism, Conversion, and First Indologists. Refer to Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America - By Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas and Aditi Banerjee. 

***

Henri Cordier (1849 - 1925) French scholar quoted in The Adventures of Ibn Battuta

“Westerners have singularly narrowed the history of the world in grouping the little that they know about the expansion of the human race around the peoples of Israel, Greece and Rome. Thus have they ignored all those travelers and explorers who in their ships ploughed the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, or rode the immensities of Central Asia to the Persian Gulf. 

In truth the larger part of the globe, containing cultures different from those of the ancient Greeks and Romans but no less civilized, has remained unknown to those who wrote the history of their little world under the impression that they were writing world history."

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Motives of the British East India Company - Divide and Convert

Lord Thomas Babbington Macaulay (1800-59) was the first Law Member of the Governor-General's Legislature and is best known for introducing English education in India. 

In his address to the British Parliament 2nd February 1835 he said:  

“I have traveled 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 caliber, 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.”  

For more refer to chapter European Imperialism and First Indologists.

***

Francisco Gil-White is an anthropologist who was Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and lecturer at the Solomon Asch Centre for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict. He holds a Masters Degree in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Biological and Cultural Anthropology from UCLA.

He has observed:

"The evidence supports the view that the ancient Iranians were a development of ancient Indian culture, emerging into their own as a result of population movements out of the Indian subcontinent, where civilization began. 

However, this is poorly understood because for the last 150 years a remarkably tenacious but unsupported theory of Indian history has been taught in the West. It has also been taught in India, because the dominant educational system there was set up by the British colonialists and did not undergo significant changes after independence.  

This mistaken picture of Indian history is a direct product of nineteenth-century European politics—especially German politics, combined with the colonial and missionary interests of the British Empire. 

It has little to do with India."

"The British were looking for ways to undermine Indian culture and pride in order more effectively to rule India."

(source: The Crux of World History - By Francisco Gil-White).

Lord Canning (1812 - 1862) Governor General of India from 1856 - 1862 and the first Viceroy in India. In the middle of the 1857 uprising, he wrote to a British official: 

“As we must rule 150 millions of people by a handful (more or less small) of Englishmen, let us do it in the manner best calculated to leave them divided (as in religion and national feeling they already are) and to inspire them with the greatest possible awe of our power and with the least possible suspicion of our motives.”  

(source: The Muslims of British India - By P Hardy p. 72).

Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com

Cannibalizing Cultures - Pests from the West 
Its Imperialism, Stupid

Sesha Samarajiwa ( ? ) from Sri Lanka is interested examining foreign religious agents’ role as Fifth Columnists of neocolonialism/neoimperialism. He has written:

"Evangelists belong to a long line of pests from the West who have come and keep coming like locusts to colonize our souls and cannibalize our cultures.

The latest incursions are merely a continuation of the 500-year-old sorry saga of Asia, Africa and South America, which began with the arrival of the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Some have never recovered from the machinations of their priests and the savagery of their conquistadors. The baton of imperialism has passed from the Europeans to the Americans. That is not to say that the rest of the West has dropped out. They have not. They are very much in the game. It’s just that the Americans are in the lead, the new Romans on the rampage. 

We know well how the Europeans won the West. They won it through mass genocide of the native populations in North and South America. In South America, hundreds and thousands of natives who resisted conversion were garroted. There is a poignant painting depicting such conversions. It shows armored Spanish soldiers garroting native priests, while a Spanish priest holds up a large cross. More terrified natives await their turn. On the side, another Spanish priest feeds stacks of ancient gold-leaf books of the Mayans into a fire. On the face of the Mayan priests, a look of utter sadness mixed with resignation.

In places like India and Sri Lanka, they were no better. They too faced abject horrors. In his book, Christianity's scramble for India, Navaratna Rajaram says that “the Christian Missionary is neither a Christian nor a missionary. In fact, he is a racist and a white supremacist in priestly guise.” Their Buffalo Bills and their Wild Bills, their Custers and their Cortezes, and the long line of predators and priests made sure that the sorry remainder of once-proud nations would remain so, while they ruled the roost in lands drenched with native blood. Many weaker cultures succumbed to the relentless onslaught from the West. They either slaughtered those who resisted or they sowed the seeds of abjection and their eventual self-destruction. Even today, we see the pathetic dregs of once-noble nations staggering around native reservations and barrios in North and South America, in Australia, in Canada, in New Zealand. They have lost their spirit. They have lost their will to live. They seem embarrassed to be alive. They are self-destructing. At best, they are performing monkeys titillating whites with a thirst for the exotic. These are abject peoples, vanishing tribes. Now, not satisfied with ruling their large chunk of raided real estate, they are hell-bent on extending their hegemony over the whole world. They howl in protest when the natives resist. Human misery is happy hunting grounds for these spiritual cartels. They strike when their targets are at their weakest or bomb them to submission to make sure they are at their weakest. Thus softened up, they are susceptible to inducements and brainwashing. They are canny. To ‘convert’ people, you must first make them despise and reject what had sustained their people for millennia. So they vilify their faith or convince them it is a spent force or dark superstition. In so doing, they make us spit on our heritage."

(source: Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing - By Sesha Samarajiwa - Asian Tribune October 9, 2007). Refer to Year 501: The Conquest Continues - By Naom Chomsky and It's Imperialism, Stupid - By Noam Chomsky.  

***

K. M. Panikkar (1896-1963) Indian scholar, journalist, historian from Kerala, administrator, diplomat, Minister in Patiala Bikaner and Ambassador to China, Egypt and France. Author of several books, including Asia and Western Dominance, India Through the ages and India and the Indian Ocean.

In 'A Survey of Indian History’ (1954) he says:

‘One thing, however, is certain and can no longer be contested—civilization did not come to India with the Aryans. This doctrine of the Aryan origin of Indian civilization which finds no support in Indian Literature which does not consider the Dasyus (Dravidians) as uncivilized, is the result of the theories of Indo-Germanic scholars who held that everything valuable in the world originated from the Aryans. Not only is Indian civilization pre-Vedic, but the essential features of Hindu religion as we know it today were perhaps present in Mohenjo-Daro."

(source: A Survey of Indian History - By K M Pannikkar p. 4).

***

The year was 1783, nearly 217 years ago, that the British had lost its 13 colonies in America, and now it was necessary to fully concentrate on India. The East India Company representing the British, was trading since 1690, and it now became necessary to plan a strategy whereby a British rule can be established in a country inherently different from Canada, America and Australia.  

 

Sir William Jones with Brahmins at his feet. 

The picture symbolizes how academic Indians today often remain under the glass ceiling as “native informants” of the Westerners. Yet in 19th century Europe, Sanskrit was held in great awe and respect, even while the natives of India were held in contempt or at best in a patronizing manner as children to be raised into their master's advanced “civilization.”

Sir William Jones (1746-1794) the first British to master Sanskrit and study the Vedas, wrote to Sir Warren Hastings how to spread "our pure faith" (Christianity) as "no mission from the Church of Rome will ever be able to convert the Hindus."

Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge
Watch The Saraswati River - youtube.com  

Refer to Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America - By Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas and Aditi Banerjee.

Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com

Refer to The Myth of Aryan Invasion of India - By M L Goel

***

In the year 1784, under the patronage of Governor General Warren Hastings, the Asiatic Society of Bengal was formed with a membership of 30 Europeans, headed by Sir William Jones as president. In the very year, he wrote to Sir Warren Hastings how to spread "our pure faith" as "no mission from the Church of Rome will ever be able to convert the Hindus." He wrote about translating into Sanskrit and "then quietly to disperse the work among the well-educated natives." He goes on to state that "all the 14 Menus (Manus) are reducible to one," and that "a connection subsisted between the old idolatrous nations." 

(source: West Asian languages derived from Indus script - By Bhikhu Patel). Refer to Geopolitics and Sanskrit Phobia - By Rajiv Malhotra - sulekha.com and chapters on Conversion, First Indologists and European Imperialism.

The Ayran Invasion Theory - AIT specifically justified the presence of the British among their “Aryan cousins” in India, being merely the second wave of Aryan settlement there.  It supported the British view of India as merely a geographical region without historical unity, a legitimate prey for any invader capable of imposing himself.  It provided the master illustration to the rising racialist worldview:

(1) the dynamic whites entered the land of the indolent dark natives; 
(2) being superior, the whites established their dominance and imparted their language to the natives; 
(3) being race-conscious, they established the caste system to preserve their racial separateness; 
(4) but being insufficiently fanatical about their race purity, some miscegenation with the natives took place anyway, making the Indian Aryans darker than their European cousins and correspondingly less intelligent and less dynamic; 
(5) hence, for their own benefit they were susceptible to an uplifting intervention by a new wave of purer Aryan colonizers.

Questioning the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) is now widely presented as a part of the alleged hinduization or “saffronization” of history by the BJP-led government in India.  Through the media, the West has vaguely heard an echo of the commotion about this development among Indian Marxist historians trying to hold on to their power positions. 

Indo - Anglian snobbery:  English education and more recently the westernization of the workplace, of popular music and other everyday circumstances have generated a class of Indians quite alienated from and ignorant of native culture. More than the English-employed Babus of yore, they delight in mocking and belittling native culture.  In their hands, the AIT is simply an instrument to tease Indian “chauvinists” and deconstruct the very notion of a distinct Indian or Hindu civilization.  With the decline of ideology and the rise of the commercial outlook in the media, this supercilious and nihilistic attitude is now a rising force in the opinion landscape, but it has always been around in non-Marxist sections of independent India’s anglicised elite.

(source: The Politics of the Aryan Invasion Debate - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - bharatvani.org - Indology Review). 

Refer to chapters on First Indologists and European Imperialism.

The Fiction of Aryan Invasion Theory 

The preplanned scheme of Jones to introduce the idea that Sanskrit was an outside language gave birth to the speculation of the imagined existence of some Central Asian (Aryan) race who spoke Sanskrit and who brought Sanskrit language to India when they forcefully entered the country. In this way, the fiction of the Aryan Invasion was created much later, sometime in the 1800’s by the same group of people and was extensively promoted by Max Muller.    

Manu Smriti (2/21,22) describes the exact location of Aryavart which lies from the south of the Himalayas and all the way up to the Indian Ocean. 

Its inhabitants are called the Arya. 

Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge
Watch The Saraswati River - youtube.com  

Watch Lost / Submerged city of Dwaraka – The Learning Channel video

Refer to The Myth of Aryan Invasion of India - By M L Goel

***

It is a well known fact that India is called Aryavart. Manu Smriti (2/21,22) describes the exact location of Aryavart which lies from the south of the Himalayas and all the way up to the Indian Ocean. Its inhabitants are called the Arya. But it is not a locally spoken name. But it is not a locally spoken name. Commonly, we write Bharatvarsh for India in general and scriptural writings. The territory of India (or Bharatvarsh for Aryavart) during the Mahabharat war (3139 BC) was up to Iran. So the ancient Iranian people also used to call themselves the Aryans.    

People of the British regime using this information, fabricated a story that some unknown race of Central Asia who came and settled in Iran were called the Aryans and they were Sanskrit speaking people. They invaded India, established themselves permanently, and wrote the Vedas. Those who introduced this ideology never cared to produce any evidence in support of their statement because it never existed, and furthermore, fiction stories don’t need evidences as they are self-created dogmas. 

If someone carefully looks into the ancient history of India, he will find that there was no such thing as an Aryan invasion. Since the very beginning of human civilization, Hindus (Aryans) are the inhabitants of Bharatvarsh (India) which is called Aryavart. In the Bharatiya history there are descriptions of Shak and Hun invasions and also of the Muslim invasions but never an Aryan invasion.  

Max Muller promoted this invasion story and formulated his dates of Vedic origin accordingly.  

(source:  The True History and the Religion of India: A Concise Encycloedia of Authentic Hinduism - By Swami Prakashanand Saraswati  p.  266- 267). 

 

An Englishman getting a pedicure from his Indian servants.

The Tyranny of British Rule: "The British have set themselves up as the master race in India. British rule in India is fascism, there is no dodging that." 

"It is in India, of all places on the earth, that the superiority of the white over the colored races is most strikingly demonstrated."

The Aryan Invasion Theory served as a theoretical underpinning of the historical legitimacy of the British presence in India. That the British appeared at the end of a long line of invaders of the land, beginning with the Aryans. 

Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com

 Refer to the chapter on European Imperialism

***

The Aryan Invaders - Hindu historical records as fiction?

The Western experts concluded, somewhere between 1500 and 1000 BE, the primitive barbarians who composed the Veda invaded northern India, driving the helpless Dravidians into the southern part of the subcontinent where they live today. There are two difficulties with this popular theory: 

  1. Today’s northern Hindus have absolutely no memory of having ever driven the Dravidians out of north India. None of their ancient manuscripts mentions any such thing.
  2. Today’s Dravidians have absolutely no memory of ever having lived in North India. In fact, their ancient traditions suggest that their forebears came from the south, not from the north.

Minor problems like these did not discourage the Europeans and American scholars of the time. Thousands of pages of the Hindu’s own historical records were simply dismissed as fiction.

Over and over the Vedas mention a mighty river called the Saraswati where Aryan communities flourished and Vedic priests sang hymns of glorious gods, like Indra. Western scholars speculated that the Saraswati might have been one of the rivers to the east of the Aral Sea in Soviet Central Asia. Perhaps, some even speculated, it had never been anything but a figment of the ancient poet's imaginations! 

In the early 1980's proponents of the Aryan Invasion Theory, got a terrible shock. Satellite imaging was revolutionzing our knowledge of Earth's geography. It allowed scientists to get a look at the planet from low orbit out in space. Satellite photos of the dry bed of an enormous river, so huge it may have been five miles across at one site. While that river was in business, it may been the largest in the world, bigger even than than the Amazon today. The geologists quickly established the river had dried up around 1900 BCE. Yet according to our friend Max Muller the Veda hadn't been composed till at the very least 700 years after the river disappeared. What was this?  Poets pretending they still lived alongside a river that vanished centuries before? Not darn likely!

(source: Hinduism - By Linda Johnsen p. 20 - 24). Refer to chapter on First Indologists and European Imperialism.   

Refer to Out of India Theory - wikipedia.org

Westward movement?

Shrikant Talageri  proceeds to demonstrate that the fragmentary Vedic data and the systematic Puranic account tally rather splendidly. The Puranas relate a westward movement of a branch of the Aila/Saudyumna clan or Lunar dynasty from Prayag (Allahabad, at the junction of Ganga and Yamuna) to Sapta Saindhavah, the land of the seven rivers.  There, the tribe splits into five, after the five sons of the conqueror Yayati: Yadu, Druhyu, Anu, Puru, Turvashu.  All the rulers mentioned in the Vedas either belong to the Paurava (Puru-descended) tribe settled on the banks of the Saraswati, or have come in contact with them according to the Puranic account, whether by alliance and matrimony or by war.  Later, the Pauravas (and minor dynasties springing from them) extend their power eastward, into and across their ancestral territory, and the Vedic traditions spread along with the economic and political influence of the metropolitan Saraswati-based Paurava people.

This way, the eastward expansion of the Vedic horizon, which has often been read as proof of a western origin of the Aryans, is integrated into a larger history. The Vedic people are shown as merely one branch of an existing Aryan culture, originally spanning northern India (at least) from eastern Uttar Pradesh to Panjab.  The approximate and relative chronology provided by the dynastic lists allow us to estimate the time of those events as much earlier than the heyday and end of the Harappan cities.  Later the Anavas are said to have invaded Panjab from their habitat in Kashmir, and to have been defeated and expelled by the Pauravas in the so-called Battle of the Ten Kings, described in Rig Veda 7:18,19,33,83.  The ten tribes allied against king Sudas (who belonged to the Trtsu branch of the Paurava tribe) have been enumerated in the Vedic references to the actual battle, and a number of them are unmistakably Iranian: Paktha (Pashtu), BhalAna (Bolan/Baluch), Parshu (Persian), PRthu (Parthian), the others being less recognizable: VishANin, AlIna, Shiva, Shimyu, BhRgu, Druhyu. 

(source: Aryan Invasion Theory, a Reappraisal - By Shrikant Talageri).

 

Excavations at Mohenjadaro.

The Vedic Corpus provides no evidence for the so called “Aryan Invasion” of India

Thousands of pages of the Hindu’s own historical records were simply dismissed as fiction by European and American scholars.

Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge
Watch The Saraswati River - youtube.com

***

Koenraad Elst, Belgian scholar, as pointed out, no Indian until the mid-nineteenth century had heard of the notion that his ancestors were invaders from Central Asia who had destroyed the native Indian civilization and culture. But almost every history book now proclaims so. There was no Aryan-Dravidian divide before, but many people in the south now believe they were the original inhabitants of India who were pushed around and down south by the invading Aryan tribes who imposed their Vedic culture and rituals on the rest of India. 

 Winston Churchill who opposed any policy giving independence to India, belligerently points out: 

"We have as much right to be in India as anyone there, except perhaps for the depressed classes, who are the native stock."  

He also points out how such a theory was swallowed hook, line and sinker by a variety of Indians for a variety of purposes: from Jyotirao Phule, the low-caste leader from Maharashtra, who said that the "...Aryans came to India not as simple emigrants with peaceful intentions of colonization, but as conquerors. to Keshab Chandra Sen leader of the reformist Brahmo Samaj, who welcomed the British presence as follows: "In the advent of the English nation in India we see a reunion of parted cousins, the descendents of two different families of the ancient Aryan race."

(source: Secular "Gods" Blame Hindu "Demons" - By Ramesh N. Rao Har Anand pub. ISBN 81-241-0808-0  p. 242 - 246).

The Aryan Invasion Theory served as a theoretical underpinning of the historical legitimacy of the British presence in India. That the British appeared at the end of a long line of invaders of the land, beginning with the Aryans. 

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) poet, author, philosopher, Nobel prize laureate as early as 1902 (Bengali Samvat 1309) wrote that:

"There was no Indian in the history of India written by foreigners: as if Indians do not exist; only those who have fought and killed among themselves are real...we are not parasites of India; through hundreds of centuries we have put down tens of thousands of roots in the heart of this land, but unfortunately we have to read a type of history which makes our children forget exactly this."

It appears that in (the history of) India we are nobodies; only those who have come from outside matter in (the history of this) land"

Tagore, whose view of India and Indian history is rarely highlighted wrote a seminal essay entitled ‘The History of Bharatavarsha’. In it he struck a cord parallel to R C Majumdar’s: 

“The history of India that we read and memorize for our examinations is really a nightmarish account of India . Some people arrive from somewhere and the pandemonium is let loose. And then it is a free-for-all: assault and counter-assault, blows and bloodletting. "

“If Bharatvarsha is viewed with these passing frames of dreamlike scenes, smeared in red, overlaid on it, the real Bharatvarsha cannot be glimpsed. These histories do not answer the question, where were the people of India ? Our real ties are with the Bharatvarsha that lies outside our textbooks. If the history of this tie for a substantially long period gets lost, our soul loses its anchorage. After all, we are no weeds or parasitical plants in India . Over many hundreds of years, it is our roots, hundreds and hundreds of them, that have occupied the very heart of Bharatavarsha. But, unfortunately, we are obliged to learn a brand of history that makes our children forget this very fact. It appears as if we are nobody in India …”

(free translation from original Bengali in Tagore's Collected Works, vol. 4, 1965: 378 and A Thematic View of Indian Civilization - By Michel Danino - The Hindu Renaissance Makar Sankranti Yugabda 5108  p 10 - 11).

If Tagore were alive after Independence and if he had then written like this, he would no doubt have been accused of chauvinism or fundamentalism by the new India's "mainstream" historians. 

 

 

     

Rabindranath Tagore poet, author, philosopher, Nobel prize laureate. Tagore with Albert Einstein in New York.
'A mathematician and a mystic meet in Manhattan.'

If Rabindranath Tagore were alive after Independence and if he had then written like this, he would no doubt have been accused of chauvinism or fundamentalism by the new India's "mainstream" historians. 

***

K. M. Panikkar, the author of A Survey of Indian History has written:

"Brought upon text books written by foreigners whose one object would seem to have been to prove that there was no such thing as India, we had each to 'discover' India for ourselves. 

Even today there is a persistent attempt of Western scholars to argue that "India was not a country but a congeries of smaller states, and the Indians were not a nation but a conglomeration of peoples of diverse creeds and sects. Anybody familiar with the relevant situation will know that this attitude still forms the major undercurrent of Western scholarship on India.

(source: Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past - By Dilip K. Chakrabarti p. 98, 122, 214 -240 and  The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino and Sujata Nahar p. 45). Refer to Distortion of Indian History and School Textbooks.

The Aryan invasion theory was hypothesized in the 19th century to explain the similarities found in Sanskrit and the languages of Europe. One such person who reported about this is Deen Chandora in his article, Distorted Historical Events and Discredited Hindu Chronology, as it appeared in Revisiting Indus-Sarasvati Age and Ancient India (p. 383). 

He explains that the idea of the AIT was certainly not a matter of misguided research, by was a conspiracy to distribute deliberate misinformation that was formulated on April 10, 1866 in London at a secret meeting held in the Royal Asiatic Society. This was "to induct the theory of the Aryan invasion of India, so that no Indian may say that English are foreigners...India was ruled all along by outsiders and so the country must remain a slave under the benign Christian rule." This was a political move and this theory was put to solid use in all schools and colleges. As can be expected, most of those who were great proponents of the Aryan invasion theory were often ardent English or German nationalists, or Christians ready and willing to bring about the desecration of anything that was non-Christian or non-European. 

(source: Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence - By Stephen Knapp  p. 39).

Guy Sorman (1944 -  ) French intellectual, writer, economist and a professor of political science at Paris University, visiting scholar at Hoover Institution at Stanford and the leader of new liberalism in France.  

He writes:

"The Invasion theory has today become the standard explanation for the caste system, though it came up only in the 19th century. Besides, all we have to attest the Aryan invasion is a specious interpretation of the Mahabharata, which is like searching the origins of European aristocracy in the works of Homer! In any case, it is doubtful whether a single invasion, which was more likely a slow infiltration of the North, could have succeeded in structuring so perfectly Indian society along ethnic lines for over three thousand years. Finally, in South India the caste system among the dark, skinned Dravidians is as rigid as it is in the North, though the Aryans in all probability never reached there. 

The racial origin of caste hypothesis tells us little about India but it does tell us a great deal about the 19th century Westerners who invented the Aryan invasion theory.  

It was at the same time that Sieyes and Augustin Thierry claimed that the French nobility was of Germanic stock, whereas the lower classes were of Gallic origin; so the 1789 Revolution was a race war rather than a class war! 

It was also in the 19th century that appeared the myth of the Indo-Europeans being at the source of all Western civilization and for this we have to thank British authors who were taken up with evolutionist theory. Indian historians trained in Europe have fallen victim to this myth but that does not make it any more authentic. Later on, at the beginning of the 20th century, it became fashionable to support the Marxist theory which replaced race with class, though its premises were just as shaky.

(source: The Genius of India - By Guy Sorman  ('Le Genie de l'Inde') Macmillan India Ltd. 2001. ISBN 0333 93600 0  p. 60-61). Refer to chapter on First Indologists and European Imperialism. 

Dr. Subhash Kak (1949 - ) is a widely known scientist and a Indic scholar. Currently a Professor at Louisiana State University, he has authored ten books and more than 200 research papers in the fields of information theory, quantum mechanics, and Indic studies. He is a Sanskrit scholar and is author of Astronomical Code of the Rig Veda, and India at Century's End: Essays on History and Politics, has observed: 

Max Muller is credited with the popularization of the theory that nomadic hordes of horse-riding Aryans invaded India in mid-second millennium B.C.E., subjugated the original inhabitants and imposed their culture and language on them. This theory explained the fact that the language of North India and Europe belong to the same family and that the myths of the Indian and the European worlds have some commonality.  

While this theory provided an explanation within the framework of the then emerging filed of archaeology, it suffered from serious flaws. Also the context in which the word Aryan was used was wrong because this word in the earliest Indian literature refers to culture and not any specific race or linguistic background. A major flaw of the invasion theory was that it had no explanation for why the Vedic literature that was assumed to go back into the second millennium had no reference to any region outside of northwest India. Furthermore, the astronomical references in the Vedic literature allude to events in the third millennium B.C.D. and earlier. Then there was the fact that the earliest Indian sciences and literature and philosophy were very advanced indicating a very long tradition of scholarship which the invasion model did not posit. Most importantly, the discovery of the archaeological sites of the Indus-Saraswati tradition, which go back to at least 6500 B.C.E. and which show cultural continuity with the later Indian civilization, created a fundamental contradiction for the model. If one could explain the cultural continuity by arguing that the invading Aryans eventually adopted the culture of the original inhabitants then how was one to explain the fact that they were able to impose their language on the same people. 

Once the theory of this horse riding invaders, took root, any evidence that went against this view was ignored or simply brushed aside as being ambiguous. But the main reason that the Aryan invasion theory survived so long is because questions about the process supporting the hypothesis were not asked. 

Another reason for the popularity of the invasion theory was that parallels were seen with the conquest of the Americas by the Europeans. The fundamental differences between the two situations were ignored. Europe of five hundred years ago was densely populated unlike the steppes of Central Asia thirty five hundred years ago. European expansion was imperial in design i