Re: Aryan invasion theory and race

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...> wrote:

>This is entirely BS from A to Z. It reminds me of the claims about links between "race" (an intellectual construct or abstraction that doesn't correspond to anything determibable and measurable empirically) and intelligence made a few years ago by James D. Watson, one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, by that time (2007) in his late seventies. See at

http://tinyurl.com/58zypp
<< Watson was... attributed as having written: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason
as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make
it so. >>


It would seem to me that "racism" defines a political ideology that allots unequal rights to people of different races. In that strict sense, there is nothing racist in Watson's quoted statement, for he doesn't deny people of what he determines to be the lower-averaging races any rights that he allows the higher-averaging ones. But if "racism" is defined loosely as someone who merely accepts the concept of race as meaningfully distinguishing between classes of people, then of course he would be a racist. The story of the term "racist" in the past several decades has been one of voracious expansion.

That "race" doesn't correspond to anything determinable, is open to question. Francesco's compatriot Luigi Cavalli-Sforza bends over backwards in the introduction to his influential book on Genes & Languages to deny "race", then goes on to develop an advanced form of the same concept under a different name, "genetic cluster". Michael Hart fondly quotes him. I don't follow the racist websites, but I am sure that many of them quote Cavalli-Sforza as argument of authority, including against his own introductory rhetoric. Maybe they do him injustice, but doin injustice to scholars by misquoting them, selectively quoting them for ulterior purposes, misinterpreting them etc. are things that hapen all the time in public debate, they form no criterion to exclude anyone, they can only be combated by bringing more enlightenment to the debate.

In my opinion, "anti-racists" make a grave mistake in trying to deny the fact of racial distinction, as if difference and legal inequality were equivalent. Better to accept difference, including biological inequality (compare the number of Kenyan and Japanese marathon winners), but to maintain the principle that all this difference in abilities makes no difference to the equal rights and dignity of all men. Otherwise, any discovery of an unequal ability, overruling the "anti-racist" dogma, would entail an inequality in rights.

>> What struck me when reading [Hart's] book, is that while the rest
> of us have ignored racist thought as cranky for decades, a few
> people in that corner of the opinion spectrum have worked hard to
> get up-to-date and incorporate all the latest in genetics and
> psychometry into their worldview. It does not follow that they
> can't be refuted, only that it will now be a serious job to do so.
> That's the difference with Hindutva crackpots like Kalyanaraman,
> who don't bother to stay abreast of the progress made by their
> opponents and instead stay in a self-congratulatory and other-
> demonizing mood in perpetuity.<<

>The last sentence is, once again, misleading. Kalyanaraman et al.'s real opponents aren't certainly some patently racist pseudo-scholars such as this Dr. Hart you have fished out of some obscure corner, but a lot of distinguished, genuine, and very mainstream scholars who would never dream of associating their sincere thoughts and well-argumented views on IE expansions in general, and on the supposed immigration of IA speakers into the Indian sub-continent in particular (since this is what really concerns you...) with absurd claims about a link between language, "race", and human intelligence.<

Kalyanaraman's position would be that there is no difference between Hart and yourself, that all AIT believers are racists. I don't agree with that, but under the prevailing ideological configuration, he can draw upon a concept recently deployed by the "anti-racists", viz. "subconscious racism". I am sure that Francesco does not hold racist opinions, but along with the "anti-racists", Kalyan could say that you are nonetheless the prisoner of an encompassing racism that goes deeper than your conscious opinions, one that comes to the surface in thin disguise, viz. in your belief in a white invasion of India.

>I am sorry to say, Koenraad, that your insistence on this issue starts to be very suspect after four days spent in such debate. Aren't you trying to lump together scholars like Witzel (whom you have "casually" cited more than once in this series of posts of yours), viz. the *serious* supporters of what you continue to refer to as "AIT", with the above BS-producers? If you aren't, why are you suggesting that said BS-producers are the (apparently most up-to-date) opponents of the Hindutva supporters of the OIT?<

What I am saying here is not instrumental in some strategy. I am rather too slow-witted to think up a strategy (that is an ethnic trait of the Flemish, hard workers and great painters but very lousy strategists). I merely notice that the AIT in Hart's version is simple and consistent, whereas the AIT in Witzel's and Brighenti's version is contrived and in need of special pleading. I am aware that in history, the most plausible and consistent scenario is not always the one that actually happened, so I won't consider this as proof that Hart's version must be the right one. All the more so since I think that both versions are wrong and that there is no need for Hart's explanatory model since there may have been no Aryan invasion at all.

--- On Sun, 8/2/09, Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@...> wrote:

>Right of speech must be denied *today* to *living* racist pseudo-scholars, after any biological base for the racist discourse has been clearly negated by empirical science. The intellectuals you cite in your post did not know this *yet*.<

Racism is bad enough, but this "anti-racism" is a remedy worse than the disease. As former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovski put it: "Anti-racism is the Communism of the 21st century." And now Francesco gives us an illustration of Bukovski's dictum: he wants to "deny right of speech" to "racist pseudo-scholars".

Fortunately for him, he has the ear of people in power positions. For example, the list master of the IndianArchaeology yahoo list. He recently censored some messages of one Francesco Brighenti who protested after some Indians had called him a "racist". Applying Francesco's own principle so forcefully enunciated right here, the list master seems to have judged that no further free speech should be allowed to someone who has been found to be a racist.

Found by whom? Well, by the "victims" of his "racism". Lately the Belgian anti-racism bureaucracy announced that Belgians are "very racist" on the sole ground of the finding that "many immigrants feel treate din a racist manner". Of racism allegations, there is no higher judge than the victim/accuser.

One of those who felt Francesco is a racist was Vishal Agarwal, a medical engineer who has saved many lives, as well as a graduate in Sanskrit studies who has done enormous amounts of labour in digitalizing Sanskrit text corpora. His qualifications are in the same league as Francesco's. If the latter can claim the right to decide who gets to be labeled "racist pseudo-scholar" and who gets to enjoy the right of free speech, then so can Vishal.

I never ever said nor insinuated that Francesco (or the average AIT proponent) is a racist. Much less did I ever call for or support attempts to muzzle him. I am not Hindutva campaigner Mrs. Radha Rajan who tried to have Prof. Witzel (the "white Christian racist") denied entry to the institute in Chennai ("hallowed by the footsteps of Shankara") where he spoke last month. Nor am I Prof. Witzel, who openly supported a call by a group of Indo-American Marxists to deny me a platform when I was to speak at Madison WI on the AIT debate. I don't see anything racist in Francesco's of Witzel's writings, nor would I deny them the right to speak even if they were. But Vishal's (and some other Hindus') allegation is that, whatever theories they believe, they do at any rate treat Indians as inferiors. I always turn off my attention when I see this wrangling and shouting on internet lists, so I don't know the details of the recent slanging matches on IndianArchaelogy; but I do recall similar episodes on the Liverpool Indology list in the late 1990s, where Vishal and other Hindus were indeed given unequal treatment. It was always funny to see Western ("white") AIT defenders foam at the mouth and use foul language, then denounce Vishal c.s. for using foul language.

That Hindu feeling of unfair treatment of course does not actually make Francesco a racist. But now another consideration of the "anti-racist" campaign comes into the picture: the ever-widening semantic domain of the term "racist". For example, anyone who criticizes Islam is nowadays denounced as an "Islamophobe" (a psychiatric term on the model of "claustrophobe", "agoraphobe", "arachnophobe", implying they should have their head examined), which in turn is classified a s a form of "racism". Muslims who want to shut up criticism of Islam, routinely go to the authorities to complain of "racism". In Amsterdam, the brown-skinned Paki immigrant Mohamed Rasoel was sentenced by a white judge as "racist" for having written a book warning the citizens of his newfound home against the political designs of Islam. The website of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the ex-Muslim Somali woman politician aiming to free her sisters from the stranglehold of Islam, has been included in official blacklists of "racist" sites. The "anti-racism" bureaucracy has no patience with people who start fussing about the exact definition of "racist". Anyone who is accused of being racist by someone who feels treated in a racist manner, is ipso facto a racist, basta.

My point in relating this very recent episode from IndianArchaeology is that it shows how there is no (and at any rate, there should be no) authority above the debate who can allow or disallow participants on grounds of being racist. Francesco mentions Nobel Prize winner Watson, co-discoverer of DNA. Using my own judgment, I too can see how Watson's recent statements may be deemed "racist", but I am still modest enough not to pretend to a divine authority empowered to deny free speech to a Nobel winner. What are the recruitment criteria for the judge empowered to decide on this? Two Nobel prizes? And should 70-year-olds be excluded, or is that "agism"? If anyone has the right to censor Watson, then the IndianArchaeology list master has the right to censor our dear comrade Francesco.

Francesco's repressive approach is already law in many European countries. To my objection that there exists no intellectual tribunal that can decide on allowing or disallowing participation in the debate, some might answer that at least there exist judicial tribunals empowered to do so. Yes, they do. We do indeed have thought-crime laws and thought-crime tribunals. But there is a catch: under the rule of law, falsely accusing someone of a punishable offence is itself a punishable offence. Therefore, calling someone a racist in public is itself an offence unless the accused has been convicted for racism by a duly constituted court of law.

I know of at least one instance in Belgium of a politician successfully taking people to court who had called him "racist". And at a lower level, a Moroccan-born Belgian student who had objected to the reading load including a German text (never having learned the language), not gotten the hoped-for exemption, and then called the assistent professor a "racist" for not giving in to his demand, was forced to apologize: he was told students can't get away with loosely accusing professors of legal offences. Formerly, "racism" was an opinion that you could impute to someone; now it's a crime of whom only a judge can declare someone guilty. By that standard, both Francesco and his Hindutva opponents would be guilty of lightly accusing others of the crime of racism, and entitled to getting punished for it. That's another face of the new Communism for you.

Speaking of Communism, a doctrine of hate par excellence, it is still a force to be reckoned with in Indian academe. Next to white racism, it is one of the external driving forces behind the mobilization to defend the Aryan invasion theory. But again, it is perfectly possible to uphold the AIT without being a Communist or having massacred bourgeois elements in the Cambodian killing fields, just as it remains possible to uphold the AIT without being a Nazi. (Conversely, it would also be possible to be a Communist or a Nazi and yet have correct views on the events of ancient history.) I remain convinced that for most people on this list, the reasons for upholding the AIT are entirely internal to the debate, viz. linguistic or literary or archaeological indications.


>Once again, Koenraad: do you live in the 19th or the 21st century?<

It is not me who is advocating 19th-century policies of censorship and repression. I live in the information age, and I am confident that wrong ideas can be combated and defeated in open debate. Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred ideas compete!


--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:

>I don't know about denying right of speech but dumb asses should be regularly ridiculed for their butt-holiness.<

Don't know if that's permitted within list rules, but as for as my libertarian position is concerned, I can only say: please go ahead and ridicule those whom you consider ridiculous.


> The problem is that press too often takes them seriously and doesn't analyze the crap they spout. Then they get into politics and wreak havoc<

Really? After Watson's gaffe, have you read a single editorial writing things like: "As Prof. Watson has explained, Africans are inferior in intelligence"? Exaggerating the threat of undesirable thinking is a common ploy among those pushing for repression. But in this case I am reassured by your explicit doubts about "denying right of speech".

Yes, Mr. Moderator, this had little to do with aorists and sound shifts, but I just couldn't leave a plea for censorship and repression unanswered.

Kind regards,

KE