ARYANS?(EDITED)

ARYAN?
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Do you think Brahmins are Aryans who invaded through Kyber- pass? Do you still believe in that Aryan Invasion Theory(AIT) taught in your history classes when you were in high school?Do you know the other theory, Out of India Theory(OIT), advanced by many historians of world renown?
Vidhya:
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Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) is disproved by evidences from a variety of disparate fields. I would recommend the book "The Invasion that never was" by Michel Danino that details several of the methods used to disprove AIT.
Except for the fanatics (that includes politically motivated secularists and "pseudo-historians" who write our history text-books), all academics and historians have dismissed AIT.
The name arya was used only to extend respect to elders and superiors.valient,noble,powerful were some of the meanings for arya.
www.geocities.com-FRAWLEY
-------------------------------- "It is important to examine the social and political implications of the Aryan invasion idea: 1. It served to divide India into a northern Aryan and southern Dravidian culture which were made hostile to each other. 2. It gave the British an excuse in their conquest of India. They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago. 3. It served to make Vedic culture later than and possibly derived from Middle Eastern cultures. With the proximity and relationship of the latter with the Bible and Christianity, this kept the Hindu religion as a sidelight to the development of religion and civilization to the West. 4. It discredited not only the 'Vedas' but the genealogies of the 'Puranas' and their long list of the kings before Buddha like Rama and Krishna were left without any historical basis. The 'Mahabharata', instead of the great war, became a folk lore. In short, it discredited the most of the Hindu tradition and almost all its ancient literature. It turned its scriptures and sages into fantacies and exaggerations. 5. It served a social, political and economical purpose of domination, proving the superiority of Western culture and religion."

American Anthropological AssociationStatement on "Race"(May 17, 1998)
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The following statement was adopted by the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, acting on a draft prepared by a committee of representative American anthropologists. It does not reflect a consensus of all members of the AAA, as individuals vary in their approaches to the study of "race." We believe that it represents generally the contemporary thinking and scholarly positions of a majority of anthropologists.

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In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within "racial" groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species.
Physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly over geographic areas. And because physical traits are inherited independently of one another, knowing the range of one trait does not predict the presence of others. For example, skin color varies largely from light in the temperate areas in the north to dark in the tropical areas in the south; its intensity is not related to nose shape or hair texture. Dark skin may be associated with frizzy or kinky hair or curly or wavy or straight hair, all of which are found among different indigenous peoples in tropical regions. These facts render any attempt to establish lines of division among biological populations both arbitrary and subjective.
Historical research has shown that the idea of "race" has always carried more meanings than mere physical differences; indeed, physical variations in the human species have no meaning except the social ones that humans put on them. Today scholars in many fields argue that "race" as it is understood in the United States of America was a social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor.
From its inception, this modern concept of "race" was modeled after an ancient theorem of the Great Chain of Being, which posited natural categories on a hierarchy established by God or nature. Thus "race" was a mode of classification linked specifically to peoples in the colonial situation. It subsumed a growing ideology of inequality devised to rationalize European attitudes and treatment of the conquered and enslaved peoples. Proponents of slavery in particular during the 19th century used "race" to justify the retention of slavery. The ideology magnified the differences among Europeans, Africans, and Indians, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive categories underscored and bolstered unequal rank and status differences, and provided the rationalization that the inequality was natural or God-given. The different physical traits of African-Americans and Indians became markers or symbols of their status differences.
As they were constructing US society, leaders among European-Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each "race," linking superior traits with Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Numerous arbitrary and fictitious beliefs about the different peoples were institutionalized and deeply embedded in American thought.
Early in the 19th century the growing fields of science began to reflect the public consciousness about human differences. Differences among the "racial" categories were projected to their greatest extreme when the argument was posed that Africans, Indians, and Europeans were separate species, with Africans the least human and closer taxonomically to apes.
Ultimately "race" as an ideology about human differences was subsequently spread to other areas of the world. It became a strategy for dividing, ranking, and controlling colonized people used by colonial powers everywhere. But it was not limited to the colonial situation. In the latter part of the 19th century it was employed by Europeans to rank one another and to justify social, economic, and political inequalities among their peoples. During World War II, the Nazis under Adolf Hitler enjoined the expanded ideology of "race" and "racial" differences and took them to a logical end: the extermination of 11 million people of "inferior races" (e.g., Jews, Gypsies, Africans, homosexuals, and so forth) and other unspeakable brutalities of the Holocaust.
"Race" thus evolved as a worldview, a body of prejudgments that distorts our ideas about human differences and group behavior. Racial beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the human species and about the abilities and behavior of people homogenized into "racial" categories. The myths fused behavior and physical features together in the public mind, impeding our comprehension of both biological variations and cultural behavior, implying that both are genetically determined. Racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human capabilities or behavior. Scientists today find that reliance on such folk beliefs about human differences in research has led to countless errors.
At the end of the 20th century, we now understand that human cultural behavior is learned, conditioned into infants beginning at birth, and always subject to modification. No human is born with a built-in culture or language. Our temperaments, dispositions, and personalities, regardless of genetic propensities, are developed within sets of meanings and values that we call "culture." Studies of infant and early childhood learning and behavior attest to the reality of our cultures in forming who we are.
It is a basic tenet of anthropological knowledge that all normal human beings have the capacity to learn any cultural behavior. The American experience with immigrants from hundreds of different language and cultural backgrounds who have acquired some version of American culture traits and behavior is the clearest evidence of this fact. Moreover, people of all physical variations have learned different cultural behaviors and continue to do so as modern transportation moves millions of immigrants around the world.
How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a given society or culture has a direct impact on how they perform in that society. The "racial" worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the United States has been that the policies and practices stemming from this worldview succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native Americans, and peoples of African descent. Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances
DAVID FRAWLEY
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"The Indus valley culture was pronounced pre-Aryans for several reasons that were largely part of the cultural milieu of nineteenth century European thinking As scholars following Max Mullar had decided that the Aryans came into India around 1500 BC, since the Indus valley culture was earlier than this, they concluded that it had to be preAryan. Yet the rationale behind the late date for the Vedic culture given by Muller was totally speculative. Max Muller, like many of the Christian scholars of his era, believed in Biblical chronology. This placed the beginning of the world at 400 BC and the flood around 2500 BC. Assuming to those two dates, it became difficult to get the Aryans in India before 1500 BC.
Muller therefore assumed that the five layers of the four 'Vedas' & 'Upanishads' were each composed in 200 year periods before the Buddha at 500 BC. However, there are more changes of language in Vedic Sanskrit itself than there are in classical Sanskrit since Panini, also regarded as a figure of around 500 BC, or a period of 2500 years. Hence it is clear that each of these periods could have existed for any number of centuries and that the 200 year figure is totally arbitrary and is likely too short a figure."
www.hinduwisdom.info
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Yet one of the loudest European voices against the whole Aryan construct was none other than Max Muller, one of its chief creators! In 1888, forty years after he had first hammered the concept of an Aryan race, he conceded that "the home of the Aryans" could not be pinpointed more precisely than "somewhere in Asia."
He flatly denied having ever spoken of an Aryan race:
"I have declared again and again that if I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language...To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is a great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar."
Max Muller also disowned the short chronology he himself had arbitrarily fixed for Indian scriptures, a chronology still in vogue today among Western Indologists
SWAMI AKSHARANANDA
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Swami Aksharananda holds a Ph.D. degree in Hindu Studies from the University of Madison, Wisconsin (USA) has observed:"Not even the Dravidian speaking peoples who are claimed to have lived in India before the supposed Aryan invasion have any memory of this alleged invasion. It is hard to imagine that both the “invading Aryans” and the “conquered native Dravidians” would conspire to eradicate from their collective memory every trace of the invasion and its consequences."
"This theory, given the manner in which it is being defended by its promoters, sounds more like a dogma serving a variety of political and ideological functions. It is invariably summoned into service to explain almost every traditional institution and social conflict in India. While the AIT is avidly and dogmatically advocated by some, in and out of India, the preponderant mass of the Indian population is blissfully unaware of this interpretation of their history. "
"Though it is now seen as heresy to do so, many scholars, both in the West and in the Indian sub-continent, have long challenged the AIT to be essentially a product of 19th century Eurocentric scholarship built on an edifice of speculation. Now with new tools of investigation, including computers and satellites, new discoveries are regularly made and we are in a position to intern the AIT myth, once and for all, among the greatest hoaxes of history. It will require the chipping away of the Aryan Invasion Theory which according to a Cambridge anthropologist, Edmund Leach, is like cutting down a 300-year-old oak tree with a penknife. But it’s a work that has to be done. Ultimately, it will require nothing less than the total overhaul of Indian history. "
REKHA I NAMBIAR
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"The Vedic Age is dated from around 7000 BC to 3000 BC. Now, if the Rig Veda mentions the Saraswati, that dates long before 3000 BC, then the Vedas would have been in existence prior to 3000 BC…which is the period of the Mahabharata. This mighty river, over seven kilometers wide, flowed from the Himalayas through the western deserts and into the ocean. When this river dried up, as has been proven by satellite images, it is logical to assume that the people who lived on its banks were forced to move elsewhere. During the time of the Pandavas and Kauravas, the mighty Saraswati is referred to as a ‘dying’ river. It is the drying up of this river and not an invading race that led to the decline and subsequent disappearance of the civilization"
The Case Against the AIT-- SUDHEER BANDODKAR
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"There are conflicting theories of the origin of the Aryans regarding their geographical placement and chronology. There is one school that believes that the Aryans originated in India - hence the name Indo-Aryan or Indo-European.
One finding that lends credence to India being the original home of the Aryans is the observations of Nakshatras (star patterns of the Zodiac) that are mentioned in the Vedas, and the Upanishads, which according to modern astronomical techniques are supposed to have existed around 7000 B.C.E. to 9000 B.C.E. This would mean that those who made those observations had not only developed the keen sense of observing and noting down what they saw in the skies, but that they lived in between 7000 B.C.E. and 9000 B.C.E. This pushes back the age of Indian civilization to a much older date than that of the Mesopotemian and Egyptian civilizations which are generally considered to be the birthplaces of human civilization.
Another finding used to support India being the original home of the Aryans is the deciphering of the script of the Saraswati Sindhu valley civilization to be in fact Sanskrit. This is also used to support the theory that the founders of this civilization were in fact Sanskrit speakers. Sanskrit is the language of the Aryans. Thus if the founders of the Saraswati Sindhu Valley civilization spoke and wrote in Sanskrit, then they must be Aryans. This point is used to support the theory that India is the original home of the Aryans.
Thus it was from India, which according to this school, was the cradle of civilization, the Aryans spread all over the globe. And as India was the original home of the Aryans the AIT (Aryan Invasion Theory of India) stands disproved. But for our discussion, it is irrelevant as to where and exactly when the Aryans originated. It is sufficient to say that they followed a certain way of life in which the caste system was born in an embryonic state and then evolved to ultimately reach its present form."
www.ivarta.com
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"some recent archeological discoveries in India, Russia and Japan have pushed back the antiquity of the Aryans to at least 6000BC and proved beyond doubt that the ancient Aryans were not nomadic tribes from central Asia but had very advanced urban civilizations. Russian archeologists and linguists also proved that the Aryans have migrated not from the Russian steppes but came to Russia via Armenia and Georgia. There are increasing evidence that India was the original home of the Aryans.
VIKIPEDIA
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Max Müller is often identified as the first writer to speak of an Aryan "race" in English. In his Lectures on the Science of Language in 1861 he referred to Aryans as a race of people. However, when this was interpreted to imply a biologically distinct sub-group of humanity, he soon clarified that he simply meant a line of descent, insisting that it was very dangerous to mix linguistics and anthropology. "The Science of Language and the Science of Man cannot be kept too much asunder…I must repeat what I have said many times before, it would be wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar". He restated his opposition to this method in 1888 in his essay Biographies of words and the home of the Aryas
DAVID FRWLEY
------------------"That the archaeological record and ancient oral and literate traditions of South Asia (ie. the Vedic tradition) are now converging has significant implications for regional cultural history. A few scholars have proposed that there is nothing in the 'literature' firmly placing the Indo-Aryans, the generally perceived founders of the modern South Asian cultural tradition(s), outside of South Asia, and now the archaeological record is confirming this.
Within the context of cultural continuity described here, an archaeologically significant indigenous discontinuity occurs due to ecological factors (ie. the drying up of the Sarasvati river). This cultural discontinuity was a regional population shift from the Indus Valley, in the west, to locations east and southeast, a phenomenon also recorded in ancient oral (ie. Vedic) traditions. As data accumulates to support cultural continuity in South Asian prehistoric and historic periods, a considerable restructuring of existing interpretive paradigms must take place. We reject most strongly the simplistic historical interpretations, which date back to the eighteenth century, that continue to be imposed on South Asian culture history. These still prevailing interpretations are significantly diminished by European ethnocentrism, colonialism, racism, and antisemitism. Surely, as South Asian studies approaches the twenty-first century, it is time to describe emerging data objectively rather than perpetuate interpretations without regard to the data archaeologists have worked so hard to reveal."
Is this the statement of a Hindu political ideologue? No, it is by a noted Western archaeologist specializing in ancient India, James Schaffer of Case Western University, who has nothing to do with Hindutva or even Hindu spirituality. It is part of his new article Migration, Philology and South Asian Archaeology soon to appear in Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, Interpretation and History, edited by J. Bronkhorst and M. Deshpande, University of Michigan Press 1998.
STEPHEN KNAPP
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One of the major reasons why a consideration of the idea of an Aryan invasion into India is prevalent among some Western researchers is because of their misinterpretation of the Vedas, deliberate or otherwise, that suggests the Aryans were a nomadic people. One such misinterpretation is from the Rig-veda, which describes the battle between Sudas and the ten kings. The battle of the ten kings included the Pakthas, Bhalanas, Alinas, Shivas, Vishanins, Shimyus, Bhrigus, Druhyas, Prithus, and Parshus, who fought against the Tritsus. The Prithus or Parthavas became the Parthians of latter-day Iran (247 B.C.–224 A.D.). The Parshus or Pashavas became the latter-day Persians. These kings, though some are described as Aryans, were actually fallen Aryans, or rebellious and materialistic kings who had given up the spiritual path and were conquered by Sudas. Occasionally, there was a degeneration of the spiritual kingdom in areas of India, and wars had to be fought in order to reestablish the spiritual Aryan culture in these areas. Western scholars could and did easily misinterpret this to mean an invasion of nomadic people called Aryans rather than simply a war in which the superior Aryan kings reestablished the spiritual values and the Vedic Aryan way of life.
Let us also remember that the Aryan invasion theory was hypothesized in the nineteenth century to explain the similarities found in Sanskrit and the languages of Europe. One 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 Aryan invasion was certainly not a matter of misguided research, but 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.
DR.B.R.AMBEDKAR
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DO YOU KNOW DR. BABA SAHIB B.R.AMBEDKAR , OUR MODERN LAW GIVER,DID NOT FAVOUR THE ARYAN NVASION THEORY?
He concluded: "the Brahmins and the Untouchables belong to the same race."Only one among our great political leaders saw through the hollowness of the Aryan theory. In his book Who were the Shudras? in 1946 B. R. Ambedkar famous for his work on the Indian Constitution, as well as his campaign in support of the Harijans, studied the Vedas. He devoted a complete chapter - Shudras versus Aryans -to an examination of the issue. Citing extensively the Vedic sources which suggest that the distinction between an Arya and Dasa/Dasyu was not a racial distinction of color and physiognomy and thus the origin of Sudra could not have anything to do with race, Ambedkar conclusion are unequivocal, though regrettably they are largely ignored. This is what he said:"The theory of invasion is an invention. This invention is necessary because of a gratuitous assumption that the Indo-Germanic people are the purest of the modern representation of the original Aryan race. The theory is perversion of scientific investigation. It is not allowed to evolve out of facts. On the contrary, the theory is preconceived and facts are selected to prove it. It falls to the ground at every point. ' Dr. Ambedkar concludes:"The Vedas do not know any such race as the Aryan race.There is no evidence in the Vedas of any invasion of India by the Aryan race and its having conquered the Dasas and Dasyus supposed to be the natives of India.There is no evidence to show that the distinction between Aryans, Dasas and Dasyus was a racial distinction.The Vedas do not support the contention that the Aryans were different in color from the Dasas and Dasyus.....""If anthropometry is a science which can be depended upon to determine the race of a people...(then its) measurements establish that the Brahmins and the Untouchables belong to the same race. From this it follows that if the Brahmins are Aryans the Untouchables are also Aryans. If the Brahmins are Dravidians, the Untouchables are also Dravidians...."Ambedkar was aware of the hold of this theory over the masses and scholars alike. He offered a succinct explanation. "why the Aryan race theory is not dead because of the general insistence by European scholars that the word varna, means color and the acceptance of that view by a majority...""The British were visualized as being the last of the invaders in a chain beginning with the Aryans. 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. (source: The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino and Sujata Nahar and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches. Reprint of Pakistan or The Partition of India. Education Department. Government of Maharashtra 1990 Vol. 7 p.302). Refer to chapter on First Indologists and European Imperialism.
THIS IS FROM www.hinduwisdom.info.

Racial Theories
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"Nineteenth century was the era of Europeans imperialism. Many Europeans did in fact believe that they belonged to a superior race and that their religion, Christianity, was a superior religion and all other religions were barbaric, particularly a religion like Hinduism which uses many idols. The Europeans felt that it was their duty to convert non-Christians, sometimes even if it required intimidation, force or bribery.
Europeans thinkers of the era were dominated by a racial theory of man, which was interpreted primarily in terms of color. They saw themselves as belonging to a superior 'white' or Caucasian race. They had enslaved the Negroid or 'black' race. As Hindus were also dark or 'colored', they were similarly deemed inferior. The British thus, not surprisingly, looked upon the culture of India in a similar way as having been a land of a light-skinned or Aryan race (the north Indians), ruling a dark or Dravidian race (the south Indians).
About this time in history the similarities betweeen Indo-European languages also became evident. Sanskrit and the languages of North India were found to be relatives of the languages of Europe, while the Dravidian languages of south India were found to be another language family. By the racial theory, Europeans natuarally felt that the original speakers of any root Indo-European language must have been 'white', as they were not prepared to recognize that their languages could have been derived from the darker-skinned Hindus. As all Hindus were dark compared to the Europeans, it was assumed that the original white Indo-European invadors of India must have been assimilated by the dark indigenous population, though they left their mark more on north India where people have a lighter complexion.
Though the Nazis later took this idea of a white Aryan superior race to its extreme of brutality, they did not invent the idea, nor were they the only ones to use it for purposes of exploitation. They took what was a common idea of nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe, which many other Europeans shared. They perverted this idea further, but the distortion of it was already the basis of much exploitation and misunderstanding."------------DAVD FRAWLEY
THE ARYAN INVASION THEORY IN INDIAN POLITICS
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AIT and the anti-national forces-There are quite a few cases worldwide of late-medieval and modem history having repercussions on contemporary politics, witness the role of bad memories in ex-Yugoslavia. By contrast, I do not know of any question of ancient history which is as loaded with actual political significance as is the AIT in India. The AIT was turned into a political tool in order to question the Indian identity of the Indians, and thereby weaken the claims of Indians to their own country. This political use of the AIT continues till today, especially at the hands of what Hindu nationalists call ?the anti-national forces?. Christian ?liberation theologians?, Islamic missionaries, assorted separatists and like-minded anti-Hindu or anti-India activists are still highlighting the AIT in order to:
1) Mobilize lower-caste people, supposedly the subdued natives forced into the Apartheid prison house of caste by the invaders, against the upper-caste people, supposedly the progeny of the invading Aryans. All this propaganda is carried out in the name of the low-caste leader Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, eventhough Ambedkar himself had strongly rejected the AIT and the notion that caste status has a racial origin: European students of caste , themselves impregnated by colour prejudices, very readily imagined it to be the chief factor in the Caste problem. But nothing can be farther from the truth, and Dr. Ketkar is right when he insists that all the princes whether they belonged to the so-called Aryan race or to the so-called Dravidian race, were Aryas. Whether a tribe or a family was racially Aryan or Dravidian was a question which never troubled the people of India until foreign scholars came in and began to draw the line.
2) Mobilize Dravidian-speakers against speakers of IE languages, esp. through the Dravidian separatist movement which was started under British patronage in 1916 as the Justice Party, later refounded as the Dravida Kazhagam, and which reached its peak in the 1950s. One of its gimmicks was the glorification of the black Dravidian hero Ravana against the white Aryan hero Rama, disregarding the Ramayana information that Ravana was actually an Aryan coloniser of Sri Lanka and a performer of Vedic rituals, while Rama was dark-skinned.33 Its most consequential success was the sabotage (masterminded by the English-speaking elite in Delhi, not in the Dravidians but in its own interest) of the implementation of the Constitutional provision that Hindi, a North-Indian IE language, replace English as official language by 1965.
3) Mobilize the tribals, who have been given the new name ?aboriginals? (AdivAsI) as part of this strategy, against the non-tribals, who are to be treated on a par with the European invaders of America and Australia. This in spite of the demonstrable foreign (East-Asian) origin of the Munda and Tibeto-Burmese languages spoken by the most vocal tribes.
4) Mobilize Indian politicians towards delegitimizing Sanskrit, that foreign language brought by the Aryan invaders, as India's culture language and as a school subject, in order to further dehinduize India and weaken her cultural unity: Sanskrit should be deleted from the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution because it is a foreign language brought to the country by foreign invaders - the Aryans!!
5) Mobilize world opinion against the Aryans, meaning the Hindus, since they are theAryan invaders who imposed the caste system as a kind of Apartheid to preserve their racial purity and dominance, never mind the fact that the association of Aryan? with race is a strictly European invention unknown to Hindu tradition. Now that ?idolater? and heathen have lost their force as swearwords, racist is a brilliant new way of demonizing Hinduism.
Implication of Aryan Invasion Theory-
-------------------------------------------According to Belgian scholar Koenraad Elst (1959 -) Dutch historian, born in Leuven, Belgium:"The Aryan invasion theory was used to prove that Hindus were ultimately foreigners, exactly like their "Aryan cousins" the British. This alleged foreign origin of Hinduism is widely used to delegitimize the Hindu claim on India, and back then it was also used by the British and by their Indian loyalists to justify colonization. By showing that the Hindus are mere upstarts and squatters on the land (as they themselves are in America, Australia and other places), they can set up their own claim. For then neither the Hindus nor the Europeans are indigenous and as to who should possess this land, becomes merely a matter of superior might..
For the British, it seems illogical that a backward country like India, badly in need of the White Man's civilizing mission could have brought forth the superior European culture. "Decidedly, the English did not want to affiliate themselves to "Mother India."
In this period, race theories conquered the intellectual scene, fitting neatly with the Europe-to-India scenario for the spread of Indo-European. It all fell into place: the Aryans had been white Nordic people who, with their inborn superiority, had developed a culture and technology which allowed them to subdue less advanced races: dark haired Mediterraneans and West-Asians, and dark-skinned invaders from Europe formed a complete case study of all that the upcoming racist worldview stood for.
British colonialism immediately put the emerging Aryan vision at the service of its propaganda, viz to tell the Indians that colonization by the British Aryans was but a second instance of the Aryan invasion which had made India into what it was; and that the Raj was nothing but a reunification of the oldest and the brightest branch of the Aryan family. Thus in his famous speech in 1862, Samuel Laing, Finance Minister of the Government of India, rejoiced that "the two races so long separated meet once more", though now "the younger brother has become the stronger, and takes his place as the head and protector of the family", coming to India "on a sacred mission, to stretch out the right hand of aid to our weaker brother, who once far out-stripped us, but has now fallen behind in the race."
While on one hand wooing the upper castes and North Indians with this Aryan rhetoric, the British along with the Christian missionaries also used the Aryan theory to pit the lower castes and South Indians, supposedly the progeny of the victimized non-Aryan natives, against their "Aryan fellow-countrymen. Contrary to the freedom movement, the anti-Brahmin and Dravidian movements were the fruits of British patronage. "
S.V.SEKAR
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Sri. S.V .Sekar is a Tamil drama trouper and a small time cine actor.His name is famous as a comedian.He had the urge to" serve" people. So he joined the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and managed to get the Mylapore assembly constituency. He won by his community vote, that is ,Brahmin votes.Emboldened by this, he started a Feeration of Brahmins' Association(FEBAS) over the heads of already existing Tamil Nadu Brahmins Association(TAMBRAS). Now S .V. Sekar has fallen from the grace of party boss Selvi J. Jayalalitha. He acts as if he is an independent member of the assembly.
So much so good. My concern is S.V. Sekar had been reported as telling that he is in pressure to start a political party to be named as " Aryan Mmunnetra Kazhagam"(Aryan progressive party). Here comes my concern. Are we Aryans who came thruogh the Kyber pass? I have compiled many sayings about this. THE MISTAKE NOW S.V. Sekar TRYING TO DO WAS EARLIER DONE BY ONE SECTION OF THE BRAHMIN COMMUNITY.THAT WAS WHEN HITLER CLAIMED HIMSELF BELONGING TO A SUPERIOR ARYAN RACE! THE BRAHMINS FROM INDIA, SOME OF THEM --NOT ALL,BLINDLY ECHOED THE HITLER'S VOICE.THEY ASSUMED AN IMAGENERY SUPERIOR RACE CALLED ARYAN! THEN FURTHER RESEACH AND ADMISSION OF DR. MAX MULLER HIMSELF, THAT HE MEANT ONLY A LANGUAGE GROUP AND NOT ANY RACE, THE BRAHMINS OF INDIA SLOWLY BACKED OUT.
THERE IS NO RACE CALLED ARYAN. THERE WAS NONE. THERE WILL NOT BE ANY IN FUTURE.
SIMILARLY DRAVIDIAN IS ONLY A GEOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE AND NOT A RACE.
THE RACE THEORY ITSELF WAS A CUNNING INNOVATION OF THE COLONIAL LORDS TO DIVIDE PEOPLE AND RULE THEM AS SLAVES.
SO, SRI. S.V.SEKAR DO NOT CALL BRAHMINS ARYANS!!
I WANTED TO PERSONALLY TALK TO SRI.S.V.SEKAR. I MANAGED TO GET HIS PERSONAL MOBILE NUMBER. AETER MANY TRAILS, HE CAME ON LINE THIS MORNING. HE CUT ME SHORT BY TELLING THAT HE WILL TALK TO ME ONLY IF I BECOME A MEMBER OF HIS FEDERATION "FEBAS".SO, NOW BRAHMINS HAVE ANOTHER SUBSECT CALLED "FEBAS"!IF THIS IS THE ATTITUDE OF ONE MLA WHO HIMSELF ADMITS THAT HE IS IN A STATE OF 'THRISANGU'OH! BRAHMINS! PLEASE THINK WHETHER YOUR INTEREST IS SAFE IN THE HANDS OF SUCH SELF STYLED PROTECTORS OF OUR COMMUNITY.HOW A PERSON WHO IS NOT EVEN PREPARED TO HEAR THE VIEWS OF OTHERS CAN TAKE CARE OF OUR INTEREST?IF HE IS STILL GOING TO NAME HIS COMMUNAL PARTY AS "ARYAN PARTY", HE WILL SOW THE SEEDS OF FURTHER DIVISION BETWEEN BRAHMINS AND NON BRAHMINS.ONE DAY BRAHMINS WILL BE ASKED TO GO BACK TO IRAN VIA KYBER PASS. BEWARE OF PEOPLE LIKE S.V. SEKAR.IF ANY OF YOU IS FEBAS MEMBER TAKE THIS PROBLEM TO S.V.SEKAR'S ATTENSION. I DO NOT WANT TO JOIN HIS FEBAS BECAUSE OF HIS ATTITUDE.