From: vishalsagarwal
Message: 13917
Date: 2002-06-23
--- In cybalist@..., "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:
I stated what I believed to be
> true - namely that the publishers of the claim that a city from
before the
> Ice Age had been found off India, had also been involved in previous
> excessive claims about the antiquity of Indian civilisation.
VA: First of all, there was NO CLAIM of a pre-Ice Age city. The claim
merely said that the artifacts and 'city' dated to 7000 BCE, which is
not pre-Ice Age.
I did more
> than "merely" report what was in The Times, I actually believed it,
and
> repeated it in language that, I admit, may have been intemperate.
>
> Incidentally, I now have a dilemma. Do I continue to believe The
Times, a
> generally reputable newspaper with no bias on this issue, or do I
believe
> Vishal, who seems to have an interest in the matter?
VA: It is rather possible that Times reporter misreported, just as it
happens so very often. Reporters who write on history, archaeology
etc., are not always learned in these subjects.
I've not kept track
> of this discussion. Didn't someone else on this list say that the
> publishers had made other claims for the antiquity of India? Is,
perhaps,
> the unbiased "Times" right after all?
>
> Peter
VA: I repeat that that NONE of the names have made any grandiloquent
claims of the antiquity of the Indian civilization. The only thing to
be noted here is that S P Gupta tends to club pre-Harappan
(aka 'Early Harappan' in many 'mainstream' publications), Mature
Harappan and Late Harappan (aka 'post-Harappan' in many publications)
together as 'Harappan', and proposes a renaming of the IVC as 'Indus-
Sarasvati', which incidentally is also supported by several Western
Archaeologists.
This hardly warrants him being called as someone who wants to push
back the date of Indian civilization, although these accusations have
been hurled against him by self professed Marxist historians R. S.
Sharma and D. N Jha in print, against him. S P Gupta's response is
also available in print, wherein he merely restates the calibrated C-
14 dates (which tend to be a few decades or centuries older than the
non-calibrated ones). That is all. This controversy between S P Gupta
and the Marxist historians is however old - from 1977-78. Note also
that while S P Gupta is an archaeologist, his critiques are mostly
armchair historians also professing Marxist, and for the latter,
anything which tends to shed favorable light on ancient Indian past
is an anathema.
Going in detail into these matters, quoting chapter and verse from
the works from R S Sharma et al would not be in keeping with the
scope of this list. Suffice it to say that the Marxist historians
alone adhere to most of the Aryanist fantasies dear to some Western
Indologists, hence the mutual bonhomie.
Regards
Vishal