The similarities between Sanskrit and other European languages (noted by William Jones in the 18th century and Jesuit scholars) originated the idea of a common precursor Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language and a common homeland to which the language belonged. From here, people and languages apparently migrated to different lands. Ironically, the original homeland speculated in 1800 was India but went into hibernation as the AIT (Aryan Invasion Theory) theory became popular.
This dominant, but extremely problematic, theory regarding ancient Indian civilization postulates a group of horse-riding invaders called the Aryans speaking an early form of Sanskrit from Central Asia invading North India around 1500 BCE. The fair-skinned Aryans then defeated the dark skinned racially different indigenous natives of the Harappan Civilization called Dasas and Dasyus driving them South (where they became the Dravidians) or the mountains and forests (where they became the tribals). The subjugated population adopted the language, religion, and the Vedic culture of these foreigners agreeing to stay at the bottom of a hierarchical scale as slaves and sudras in the Aryan devised varna system. The Dasas and Dasyus correlate to the Harappans and were the ancestors of today’s tribals, Sudras, Dalits, and Dravidians.
Some Aryan proponents, late in the 20th century, in the face of overwhelming lack of archaeological evidence, made an invasion into a slow wave like migration. Thus, in the newer and softer versions, the Aryans migrated peacefully into the subcontinent (the Aryan Migration Theory or AMT). The implications remain the same. Michael Witzel (2001) proposes something even more radical: a ‘trickle-in by just one Afghan Indo-Aryan tribe that did not return to the highland’. Large-scale invasion is undetected in archaeology, bioanthropology and genetics. The migrations and ‘trickle ins’ overcome this obstacle but can such small-scale influences overturn the subcontinent’s cultural and linguistic landscape so radically? Even substantial invasions of Persians, Greeks, Scythians, Kushanas, Huns could not affect such a change.
The original homelands proposed in the 19th century shifted from India (the first proposed homeland, in fact) across various regions to settle now in the Russian Steppes. The AIT constructions involved German Indologists too but racism informed their ‘scholarly’ speculations. Max Mueller speculated, ‘how the [British] descendants of the same [Aryan] race, to which the first conquerors and masters of India belonged, return … to accomplish the glorious work of civilization, which had been left unfinished by their Aryan brethren.’ The British justifications portrayed their rule as one more Aryan wave. Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee (The Nay Science) emphatically show that racism in the humanities clearly started with linguistic studies and Indology in the German Universities. More recent versions have abandoned the ‘race’ concept, keeping only the arrival of ‘Indo-Aryan’ speakers.
Aryans from Russian Steppes starting after 3000 BCE, reaching India within thousand years, and then composing the most pristine Vedas within less than 1000 years suggests an incredulously ‘speeding’ and not ‘spreading’ Aryans. The standard story speaks of the Aryan settlers, in a remarkably brief time after 1500 BC, first creating the near perfect language of Sanskrit and then composing the Rig-Veda around 1200 BCE. They later moved into the Ganges Valley by clearing the thick forest cover of the Gangetic plains with their strong iron tools. This AIT/AMT story has a two-century history of propagation relying on disciplines like archaeology, linguistics, and textual/inscriptional data.
However, the evidence for the Aryans remains slim especially in archaeology. The discovery of the Harappan civilization much before independence flew in the face of the Aryan invasion theory. Yet, the powerful post-independent Marxist historians continued with the ‘invading’ Aryans and the ‘exploited’ Dravidians fitting well with their exploiter-exploited paradigm. The Aryans simply filled our textbooks. Selective and convenient application of archaeological and genetic findings; torturing Vedic texts to find racially themed discourses on Aryans and Dravidians; selective linguistic analyses; closed circle of academic scholarships disallowing alternative voices; ad-hominem attacks; and prominent power positions have all helped in perpetuating this account of the Aryans across centuries. Problematically, the Aryan theory has constructed a super edifice over decades, and if the foundational base rips out, the entire edifice collapses. Therefore, there is a huge resistance to discard the theory.
At the heart of all AIT arguments is the injection of a foreign non-existent Aryans into an existing culture implying a discontinuity and denial of the longest civilizational continuity. Aryan proponents counter any criticism by accusing others of being super-sensitive to the idea of foreign arrivals into India and an unjustifiable belief in an originally ‘pure’ Indic civilization. A Hindu claim of being an original native of the country has the whole of AIT coming down to prove that he or she is a foreigner in equal measure if anybody else is.
Scholars like Talageri (The Rigveda and the Avesta: The Final Evidence; Genetics and the Aryan debate), Michel Danino (The Lost River), Koenraad Elst (Still No Trace of an Aryan Invasion), and Marianne Keppens (Western Foundations of the Caste System) show extensive evidence against the Aryan theory. They also show that the Aryan linkage to the ‘caste system’, propagated by political concerns mainly, are faulty and bogus. The evidence is more in favour of a Vedic civilization continuing into the Harappan and the later post-Harappan eras too. There is more evidence of a migration from the original Indian homeland to other parts of Europe based on textual, archaeological, and linguistic data; this is the OIT or the Out Of India Theory. Of course, the one-sided hegemonical discourses in the academia does not even allow a discussion on the OIT as it completely destroys the huge structure built on the foundations of the AIT.
Genetics shows a ray of hope and this has a vigorous promotion to silence the AIT/AMT critics. Selective genetic evidence now bats for the Aryan theory even as archaeology solidly rejects the Aryans. However, equally valid genetic evidence shows a reverse migration to other parts of the world from India. Genetics, an important science, clearly shows migrations across the world but it should not contradict other established findings. It is only proper science that if experiments do not match the data, the theories and experiments need rejection and not the data. Unfortunately, in the application of genetics, there is ignoring of the archaeological, linguistic, and textual data itself. As a double-edged sword, Dr Lavanya Vemsani, based on genetic studies, shows India as the original Homeland with migrations to Australia and South-East Asia. AL Chavda and Priyadarshi have pointed in detail the many flaws to the original genetics paper on which the Aryan proponents stand upon.
Many scholars consider the debate on the Aryans as irrelevant as it does not really matter to the present or the future India. This may be true but the major repercussion of this theory has of course been a near permanent fissure in relations between the North and the South with political movements based on a ‘pure’ Dravidian sentiment. The Aryan-Dravidian debate has the unfortunate consequence of a false division in the country either by intention or by ignorance. It was simply a colonial narrative which our unthinking intellectuals carried forward. The entire Dravidian politics, based on condemned concepts like ‘race’, creates unnecessary fissures in the great Indic civilization, an amalgamation of many cultures and traditions. Unlike the recorded history of migrations and invasions in places like America and Africa, ‘Aryan’ Indo-European languages arriving and driving the ‘original’ Dravidian inhabitants base themselves on speculations and cherry-picking of data. The Aryan proponents use selective evidence and convenient interpretations to deny the civilization roots of the country.
Invasions and migrations do constantly shape the world but the difference in the Indian context is its political use to divide the nation. The Aryan theory has been responsible for vicious narratives of race and caste. Indic civilization, an inseparable and an amorphous mix of both Vedic and non-Vedic cultures, subcultures, and traditions is an unbroken continuity for thousands of years. Trying to weed out individual elements from this homogenous mix is extremely dangerous to the integrity of the country. Everyone of this land is a part and inheritor of this great culture irrespective of what tradition or religion they may be following. Instead of accepting our common and great civilizational past, the Aryan proponents are keen to show that some groups are ‘foreigners’ and perennially exploiting some other ‘indigenous’ groups.
The evidence for Aryan invasion or migration is weak from literary, archaeological, anthropological, or genetic disciplines. And yet we continue with the divisive narratives as we reach the 75th year of our independence. Political uses of the Aryan scenario are wholly illegitimate and unnecessarily divisive; they are an extension of the colonial agenda. Today’s persistent conflation between race, language and culture is misleading and dangerous for the country.
British anthropologist Edmund Leach (1989) sums it all up: ‘Even today, the Aryan invasions of the second millennium BC are still treated as if they were an established fact of history. Why do serious scholars persist in believing in the Aryan invasions? Why has the development of early Sanskrit come to be so dogmatically associated with an Aryan invasion? The details of this theory fit in with racist framework. The origin myth of British colonial imperialism helped the elite administrators to see themselves as bringing ‘pure’ civilization to a country in which civilization of the most sophisticated (but ‘morally corrupt’) kind was already nearly 6,000 years old. The Aryan invasions never happened at all. Of course, no one is going to believe that.’
RANDOM MUSINGS 