Nehru retailed the same fables as history

Wednesday, December 07, 2005 ARYAN INVASION THEORY AND INDIAN NATIONALISM SHRIKANT G. TALAGERI FOREWORD: Sita Ram Goel10 February, 1993

History of India is available in several versions - Hindu, Muslim, Christian, British, Marxist, NehruvianEach of these version has created its own characteristic politics and is, in turn, sustained by that politics.

• Of these, the Hindu version alone is based on indigenous sources, literacy and archaeological. The others have been floated by various imperialist ideologies that have flooded this country in the wake of foreign invasions.
• The Nehruvian version which has been sold as secularist in post-independence India, and which is being proclaimed as sacrosanct, is no more than a mix of the imperialist versions. It has been served as smokescreen for the remnants of Islamic, Christian, British and Communist imperialisms to play their politics with impunity, indeed with self-righteous aggressiveness.
• The imperialist versions of India’s history differ among themselves as to what India has been, what it has to be, and what it is to be saved from. But they are all agreed that something is seriously wrong with the “native” society- Kufr (infidelism) and Shrik (idolatry), sin and fornication with false gods, Brahmanism and black magic, primitive superstition and puerile priestcraft, caste discrimination and class oppression Sati and infanticide, child marriage and excessive breeding, diseases and destitution, Asiatic mode of production and feudalism, capitalism and servitude to American imperialism, etc; the list is endless. They also agree that the “native” society is incapable of coming out of this morass on its own, and some ideology or agency from outside is badly needed to rescue it from its plight.
• The Hindu version of India’s history, on the other hand, says that Hindu civilization was the dominant civilization of the world for several millennia before the birth of Christ, the same way as western civilization had been dominated since the nineteenth century; that Hindu presence can still be seen in the language and literature, religion and Philosophy, science and technology of almost all people east and west, north and south, that Hindus became complacent at some stage due to a long spell of unrivalled power and prosperity, neglected the art of warfare and border defenses, and invited invaders from far and near to swarm towards their homelands; that while the earlier invaders were beaten back from India’s frontiers, the later ones, who came in and caused turmoil, were absorbed rather speedily in the socio-cultural fabric of the country; that the Islamic invaders were the first to succeed in inflicting great havoc in most parts of the country imposing an alien rule over large areas and for long periods, and spreading on same scale a closed and inhuman ideology which was at war with whatever the Hindus had valued and preserved for ages past, that the Christian-western imperialism intervened with equally alien regimes and ideologies at the very time when Hindus had just succeeded in breaking the stranglehold of Islamic imperialism after a long-drawn-out war of resistance followed by a swift war of liberation; and that the illsfrom which Hindu society had come to suffer in due course were the consequences rather then the causes of foreign invasions.This version of India’s history was vindicated by modern scholarship. Swami Dayananada, Bankim Chandra and Vivekananda confirmed it in a forceful manner.

Finally, it found its full voice during the short-lived Swadeshi Movement (1905-10) led by Sri Aurobindo, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Lokamanya Tilak. Mahatma Gandhi, too, was inspired by it to a very large extent. Unfortunately, this version suffered a setback when the Indian National Congress started wooing the Muslim in India in a vain bid to win them over to the fight for freedom against British imperialism. Hindus were told not to take too much pride in their ancient heritage, to honour Islam as a religion as good as Hinduism, and to accept the Muslim rule in medieval times as a native dispensation. The Muslim, however, remained far from satisfied by these minor concessions. Tampering with recorded history had failed in achieving Hindu-Muslim unity. But the misguided effort had set up an evil precedent, namely, that history could be tampered with for political purposes. That gave an opportunity to the Marxist brigade to launch their insidious operation.

The theory of an Aryan invasion of India was floated by western scholars at a time when Hindus lay helpless under the heel of British imperialism, and the memories of the Muslim rule in India were still alive. It was difficult for them to conceive that Hindus could be the authors of a magnificent civilization such as the ancient texts testified. Even so, this theory was no more than a tentative hypothesis, and so it was no different when Pandit Nehru started (1931) writing to his daughter the letters which were subsequently published as Glimpses of world history. In fact, supporters of the theory had started shifting their ground in view of what had been recently discovered at Harappa and Mohenjodaro.

But the scholarly debate carried no weight with Pandit Nehru. He wrote to his daughter with great aplomb, “can you not see them [the Aryans] trekking down the mountain passes into the unknown land below?” in the next letter, he went on, “it is possible that the caste system was partly based on the desire of the Aryan to keep themselves aloof from the conquered people… the very words for caste in Sanskrit is varna, colour. This also shows that the Aryan who came were fairer in complexion than the original inhabitants of India.”

Nehru retailed the same fables as history in his second book, The Discovery of India (1946). He had remained blissfully unaware of the acrobatics which invasionist scholars had been staging in order to accommodate inconvenient facts of the Indus civilization in their pet theory, and it was perhaps beneath his contempt to take note of what Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had already made known on the subject. Dr. Ambedkar had made a thorough and first-hand study of the Rigveda and the Avesta. He had examined the context and counted the frequency of the few words such as Arya, Dasa, Dasyu, Mrdhravak Anasa Kranayoni, Varna etc. which the invasionists had picked up from a bulky text in order to prop up their propositions. posted by Anandita Sen 12:09 AM