Mr. Piotr,
Namaste! In your various posts on the Cybalist, of which I became a
member very recently, I noticed your tendency to caricature the
opponents of AIT and its siamese twins (like AMT) as petty
nationalists. While I personally do not believe in OIT, your
caricaturing of opponents of AIT and upholders of OIT is as dogmatic,
fanatical and erroneous as the caricaturing of AIT/AMT believers by
OIT'ers.
I think your own diatribe is based on selective reading of such
caricaturing by Indian Marxists like Romila Thapar, R S Sharma, D N
Jha etc., and by clearly prejudiced authors outside India. While
you may not share their prejudices, you might have interiorized their
views regarding OIT supporters. Besides, such a diatribe is a
reflection of mental immaturity, and is nothing better than giving
vent to one's own pent up frustrations.
If we just look at the record, the proponents of AIT and its
euphemisitic versions are the ones responsible for the holocausts,
white supermacism, genocides and so on. Which OIT upholder has
committed even a fraction of these crimes? If anything therefore,
we ought to fear AMT, AIT and other such siamese twin theories. I
could allege, for that matter, that all those who propose the PIE
homeland in Europe are Eurocentric bigots, those who propose it in the
Balkans are sympathetic to Pan-slavic movements like the Serbian
dictator, and those who propose it in a German speaking area are
German Superpatriots and descendants of Nazis. Do you like that?
Please do some introspection and see if you are not merely venting
your prejudices, insecurity and snobbery in rushing to caricature
scholars from India, while not passing such remarks against dissidents
from UK (e.g. Renfrew) and other countries. It is said that Victor
Mair, an Austrian speaking German, prefers the PIE homeland near his
country (Austria). Should we then characterize him as a descendant of
Nazis, considering also his apparent fascination with the blonde and
blue eyed Tocharian Mummies? I am sure and other IE scholars would
frown at any such attempts, just as I would.
Before deciding whether OIT or AIT is correct, let the linguists
figure out the PIE homeland first. Theoritically and logically,
data from ALL the IE languages should converge directly, and
unquivocally and lead us straight to the PIE homeland. The fact that
there are more than 30 proposals for the location of the homeland
itself shows the poor quality and quantity of the available
data at hand, even if the methodology is brilliant. Determining the
PIE homeland would put at rest the controversy over AIT/OIT and the
broad range of intervening spectrum.
Is it then fair to speculate uselessly and pass non-verifiable and
subjective linugistic conjectures on tax-payer's money?
I want to draw your attention to the latest books on this topic:
1. Title: The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture. The
Indo-Aryan
Migration Debate
Author: Edwin Bryant
Publisher: Oxford University Press, New York
Year: 2001 pp. 387, price = $55.00
Available from Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com
2. The Rigveda and History of India; David Frawley; Aditya Prakashan;
New Delhi; 2001
3. The Rigveda- A Historical Analysis
Available on-line at
http://voi.org/books/rig/
Chapter 9 shows how the International 'experts' cannot get even their
elementary facts correct when it comes to the Rigveda.
I would also appreciate your remarks on the following URL's
1. The Aryan Migration Theory - Fabricating Literary Evidence
http://www.voi.org/vishal_agarwal/AMT.html
2. What is the Aryan Migration Theory
http://www.voi.org/vishal_agarwal/What_is_AMT.html
3. Mr. Talageri's response to Professor Michael Witzel's EJVS 7.2
http://sarasvati.simplenet.com/talageri01.pdf
(You will find very extensive comments on Professor Witzel's errors
in the comprehension of the Vedic literature from me in the July 2001
archives of the IndianCivilization list. In any case, if you can
wait for two more weeks, I will post them as an accessible URL).
Historically speaking, Indian nationalists have infact supported AIT
and its versions for a greater part of the 20th century. Followers of
Hindutva have also supported AIT for various reasons. In fact, the
most promiment website on Hindutva maintained by a Mr. Sudheer
Birodkar actually supports AIT. Besides, AIT is upheld rather
forcefully by various groups to this day in India - Indian Church,
Muslim Ulema, Dalit ideologues, Marxist historians etc. Hence, you do
need to brush up your information on the political and ideological
uses of Aryans by various factions and groups in India.
Let us now look at the question of Nationalism in the Indian context:
For Europeans and N Americans, Nationalism might be equivalent to
Jingoism leading to territorial expansion and war. This is due to the
bad experience Europe has had with Pan-German Nationalism, pan Slavic
movements, French Nationalism (the Nepoleon variety) and so on. In the
age of Colonialism and Imperialism, we had people like Stephen Decatur
say: "May my country be always right. But my country, right or wrong".
Thus, when Europeans and Americans criticize Indian nationalism,
certain Eurocentric notions hover at the back of their minds. They do
not realize that in the Indian context, Nationalism merely means
fighting centrifugal forces and combating the spectre of bloody
terrorism and violent militant separatist movements - which are result
in the lost of 1000's of lives every year even today. India and
Indians do not really have any hegemonistic ambitions.
In short, this 'Nationalism-phobia' of even 'scholars' on 'South Asia'
is but another instance of Eurocentric paradigm. Such concepts
actually mean quite different in the Indian context and are positive
in connotation rather than negative.
It is only theologians of the bigoted variety who must find simple,
cut and dry categorizations and a 'correct place in the scheme of
things' for God, man and the creation. When you ask even simple,
harmless questions to these theologians that might upset their nice
little comfortable world-view, they get upset. We find many such
theologians amongst Indo-Europeanists who really get upset when
someone questions their 'consensus', and then they start throwing
labels like 'nutcase nationalists', 'dangerous Hindutva fascists'.
IMHO,
Vishal Agarwal