Anil Seal: ‘Congress high command demanded Partition, not Jinnah’ – Udit Hinduja

March 6, 2025September 19, 2025VOI

“If you did not have Partition, you would have to give the Muslim-majority provinces a degree of provincial autonomy.” – Dr. Anil Seal.

In a tightly packed conference room at the India International Center, the blame for India’s Partition in 1947 was placed firmly in the hands of the Indian National Congress.

“It was Congress who said they wanted Partition,” said Anil Seal, founder of the Cambridge School of Indian History, at a speaker session Between the Crown & Congress: Rethinking the Politics of Late Colonial India on 24 February, co-hosted by Caucus: The Discussion Forum, Hindu College. “Why? If you did not have Partition, you would have to give the Muslim-majority provinces a degree of provincial autonomy.”

The silence in the room was palpable after Seal’s declaration. He was met with stares and frowns from the audience, some of whom asked whether Muhammad Ali Jinnah was at least partly to blame.

Holding court at the centre of a long table, Seal started off with a solemn, passionate speech on the cruel rise of imperialism in India, before transitioning to the national movements that were inherited from it.

“Every country has to have an enemy,” said Seal. “Jinnah didn’t even know the Quran. I remember as a child, him coming to our house saying he had a bad day and needed a glass of whiskey.”

Imperialism and politics

Anil Seal, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, initially downplayed the impact of imperialism before proceeding to analyse its mechanisms.

He claimed there was one thing in common between the apologists and critics of imperialism—they both exaggerate its omnipotence.

“Imperialism’s power to do bad, we’ve all heard about. Steal, rob, loot, rape—yes,” said Seal. “But to fundamentally reshape society—no.”

He went on to explain how the British Empire, formed for “profit, power and prestige”, thrived in India.

“The rule or dominance of the alien few over the indigenous many depends on the collaboration with people in whose interests it is to work with the British Raj,” said Seal.

He was referring to princely states, prominent businessmen and landowners of the time, who decided to align with the British for their self-interest.

Even neutrality, the keeping quiet of the many, helped solidify Britain’s chokehold on the Indian subcontinent.

“If all of you, during the freedom movement, stood together and I said “spit”, you could have drowned the 3,000 British ruling India in a sea of phlegm,” said Seal, soliciting laughs from the audience.

“There are more British running Cambridge University’s student body of 12,000 today than those governing colonial India in the 1900s,” he said, underscoring this point.

Hindu College students, many of whom were Indian Administrative Services (IAS) aspirants, furiously took down notes as Seal expounded on just how the British maintained the neutrality of India’s population.

First, they kept places localised and unconnected. “They didn’t rock the boat,” said Seal. “They left people sitting on their own thrones, whipping their own dogs.”

And finally, to extract power and profit, the British could not govern a hundred different localities. Instead, they strengthened the chain of command from the district level, through provinces all the way back to their homeland.

“That is why the British built all these roads, railways and telegraphs. Not for the benefit of the people, but to strengthen the centralised state,” said Seal, emphatically slapping the table to drive home his point.

Partition propaganda

The British Empire’s decline, spread over nearly half a century, was caused by both international forces and internal pressure.

During this time, pushback from national movements picked up, and India’s political movement employed a dual strategy, according to Seal.

“Agitation and constitutionalism are often put as choices. But they were two tactical sides to the same coin,” he said, before adding that non-cooperation, civil disobedience and the “Quit India” movement were not opposing forces to constitutional politics.

However, according to Seal, Indian politics until Independence and even after, have not been mass movements.

“The idea that Britain was driven out of India by mass movements is wrong,” he commented. “We are still waiting for a mass movement that energises the base of the pyramid.”

His focus shifted briefly to contemporary India, where he commented that even the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and INDIA are a khichdi (mixture) of many different elements. To him, the broader an alliance’s base, the weaker its ideology becomes.

But it was the big question of the night—who was responsible for the Partition—that elicited an emotional response from Seal. He questioned whether the horrors, bloodshed, loss of lives and property could have been avoided.

“I am going against all the present things you are fed in films, propaganda,” said Seal. He also joked with the audience that they all may have to accompany him to jail for being “anti-national”.

“It was not what Jinnah had spent his life fighting for,” said Seal, absolving Jinnah of responsibility for the Partition. “It wasn’t even the Brits in the end game.”

According to him, Britain was bankrupt at this time. “Mountbatten was ready to lay anything on the table, including his wife, to get out of India quickly.”

It was the Congress high command who demanded Partition, afraid of the power from Muslim-dominated states that would challenge the central government, he insisted.

“The great prize for which every nationalist movement has been fighting is to inherit the one real legacy of imperial rule—the mechanism of a centralised state,” said Seal, arguing that this is what the Congress wanted, and what the BJP is striving for today.

He said it suits India’s political and national narrative to blame the Partition on Jinnah, which has fueled animosity toward Pakistan to this day.

“Change it. Challenge it. Look at the truth”, said Seal. – The Print, 3 March 2025

› Udit Hinduja is a journalist in New Delhi.

Sita Ram Goel: A wronged man redeemed by history – Makarand R. Paranjape

February 4, 2025February 4, 2025VOI

Goel defined the three main threats to Sanatana Dharma—political Islamism, proselytising Christianity, and anti-national Marxist-Leninism. It has taken over 40 years, without adequate credit, for his ideas to be mainstreamed. – Makarand R. Paranjape

1 – The wronged man who turned right

On October 16, 2024 India ought to be marking the 103rd birth anniversary of one of our greatest, but still least recognised, post-independence intellectuals. The one who almost single-handedly created an enormous and powerful body of work against the “history men” and “eminent historians.” But he was not even recognised as a historian. Indeed, he was never a part of the academy. He carried out his lonely crusade from outside the safety and comforts of well-funded and influential institutions. The establishment tried to erase him by what has famously come to be called “strangling by silence”.

Who was he? His name is Sita Ram Goel. It may ring a bell in the minds of some, but his huge and impressive body of work remains mostly unknown among the thinking and reading public. Today, this name is bandied about freely in right-wing circles. There are even courses being taught on him. Suddenly, we notice many champions and followers of his line of thinking. But none of them, as far as I know, has engaged with his work in depth. Most of the secondary material is informative and ideological, characterised by borrowed plumes and virtue signalling. The only volume I know on his work that makes a worthwhile contribution has not even been edited by an Indian. It is the work of the redoubtable and indefatigable Koenraad Elst. Who has also been strangulated by silence.

Indeed, “right-wing” India, despite being in power for over 15 years at the Centre and much longer in several states, is yet to produce scholars who, far from matching Goel’s competence or persistence, have even bothered to engage seriously with his oeuvre. Despite massive government, institutional, and private funding. In the meanwhile, we must be content with fiery, even incendiary, expositions such as appear frequently on web platforms like the Dharma Dispatch.

Goel was born in a Vaishnava Bania Agarwal community in the Chhara village of present-day Haryana. His own family tradition was based on the Granth Sahib of Sant Garibdas (1717-1778). But by the time he was 22, he says, “I had become a Marxist and a militant atheist. I had come to believe that Hindu scriptures should be burnt in a bonfire if India was to be saved.” He also became an Arya Samaji and, then, Gandhian before turning seriously to Marxism. Living in Calcutta, where his father worked in the jute business, such an attraction and affinity was natural.

Elst’s eponymous opening chapter, “India’s Only Communalist,” eloquently spells out the extraordinarily uncompromising and exceedingly courageous challenge that Goel posed to what was akin to India’s prevailing state religion—Nehruvian secularism. Goel called it a “perversion of India’s political parlance”, in fact, nothing short of rashtradroha, or treason. In that sense, he was India’s only true communalist. For everyone else, RSS and VHP included, were tying themselves into knots to prove how truly secular they were—and still are.

It was Goel who spelled out clearly that what went by the name of secularism was actually what Elst has termed negationism. The denial of the life-and-death civilisational, religious, spiritual—and, yes, secular— conflict between a conquering Islam and a resistant Hindu society. Nehruvian secularism, to Goel, was not only an attempt to whitewash this horrifying history of Islamic conquest, vandalism, plunder, conversion, and genocide, but it was also the continuous appeasement of a Muslim minority in India till it held the Indian state and the Hindu majority to ransom.

Despite his early commitment, Goel’s disillusionment with the Communist Party of India (CPI) was triggered by their support of the Muslim League in its demand for a Muslim state of Pakistan. Goel himself, along with his family, narrowly missed the murderous Muslim mob fury of Direct Action Day during the great Calcutta killings of August 16, 1946. Independence came exactly a year later, with Goel on the verge of joining CPI. But the Communists took a belligerent stance against the Indian government, calling for an armed revolution. Consequently, Nehru banned the CPI in 1948. In the meanwhile, Goel’s intellectual mentor and the major influence on his life, Ram Swarup, himself a rising intellectual, weaned him forever from Communism.

Goel soon turned 180 degrees into one of India’s prominent anti-Communists, actively working for the Society for the Defence of Freedom in Asia. Several of his early works warned of the dangers of Communism, both the Soviet kind and, closer home, of Red China under Mao Zedong. Ram Swarup fired the first salvos, publishing the pamphlet Let Us Fight the Communist Menace in 1948, following it up Russian Imperialism: How to Stop It (1950). Then it was Sita Ram Goel’s turn. His amazingly prolific output in the 1950s include: World Conquest in Instalments (1952); The China Debate: Whom Shall We Believe? (1953); Mind Murder in Mao-land (1953); China is Red with Peasants’ Blood (1953); Red Brother or Yellow Slave? (1953); Communist Party of China: a Study in Treason (1953); Conquest of China by Mao Tse-tung (1954); Netaji and the CPI (1955); and CPI Conspire for Civil War (1955).

The Communist threat, looming large after the occupation of Tibet, materialised in China’s invasion of India in 1962.

The war lasted barely a month. Chinese troops of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) crossed the McMahon Line on October 20. After capturing an area the size of Switzerland, some 43,000 square kilometres in Aksai Chin, they declared a ceasefire on November 21. Nehru was a broken man. He died less than two years later, on May 27, 1964, his dreams of a united Asian front against global capitalism shattered. The border standoff still continues with over 20,000 Indian and 80,000 Chinese troops massed on either side, with periodic skirmishes and casualties.

Goel was proven right; Nehru was wrong. Yet, during the Chinese aggression against India, quite ironically, established Leftists and highly placed bureaucrats, including P.N. Haksar, Nurul Hasan, I.K. Gujral, called for Goel’s arrest. During the 1950s, Goel wrote over 35 books, of which 18 were in Hindi. He also translated six books. He stood for elections from the Khajuraho constituency as an independent candidate in the 1957 Lok Sabha elections—but lost. He then embarked upon a publishing programme upon the suggestion of Eknath Ranade of RSS. However, according to Elst, RSS refused to sell or promote his books after the initial encouragement.

In 1957, Goel moved to Delhi, taking up employment with the Indian Cooperative Union (ICU) started by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. But Goel’s attack on Communists, both of the Chinese and Soviet Union varieties, had made him many enemies.

Goel, instead, trained his guns on Nehru, whose deep Communist sympathies and miscalculations had cost India so dear. He had been criticising Nehru in a series in the RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, under the pseudonym Ekaki (Alone). In 1963, he published these with the provocative title, In Defence of Comrade Krishna Menon. Why? Because V.K. Krishna Menon, as defence minister, had not only presided over India’s debacle but had also been an avowed Communist and Nehru favourite. In supposedly defending him, Goel traced the malaise back to Nehru himself, as a confirmed Fabian Socialist and consistent supporter of Leftist regimes across the world. As a result of this open attack, Goel lost his job in the state-funded ICU.

Jobless and free to pursue his own interests full-time, Goel went into publishing himself. In 1963, he started Biblia Impex, a book publication, distribution and import-export business. Apart from his own and Ram Swarup’s books, he also published Dharampal’s Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century and The Beautiful Tree. Later, in 1981, Goel also founded Voice of India (VOI), a non-profit publishing house, dedicated to the defence of Hindu society. VOI still continues with his grandson, Aditya Goel, at its helm. It has published over hundred titles in the ideological defence of Hindu society. – Open Magazine, 11 October 2024

2 – The unsung scholar extraordinaire

The threat of Communism’s taking over India receded after the hugely unpopular Chinese invasion. The Communist Party of India itself split into two, one section affiliated with the Soviet Union, and the other with Maoist China. Sita Ram Goel now turned his attention to the Hindu-Muslim fault line that had divided India for centuries. It was an unhealing wound that needed the nation’s urgent attention. Instead, we were in constant denial, eager to erase the fact that Hindu society had endured an existential threat under two waves of colonialism, Islamist and Western.

Hindu secularists and Leftists tried almost obsessively to blur the theological and civilisational line between the invading and colonising Islamic empires and Hindu society. They come up with all kinds of artifices and subterfuges, including mile-jule sanskriti, Ganga-Jamuni tahzeeb, aman ki asha, and so on. Commenting on Sita Ram Goel’s work, Koenraad Elst explains this almost suicidal folly: “Contrary to the fog-blowing of the secularists and their loudspeakers in Western academe, who always try to blur the lines between Hinduism and Islam, a line laid out ever so clearly by Islamic doctrine, Goel firmly stuck to the facts: Islam had waged a declared war against infidelism in India since its first naval invasion in AD 636 and continuing to the present.”

This line so openly and clearly drawn between Muslims and non-Muslims by both the precepts and practice of Islam through the ages confronts us in every conflict situation. It turned into a bloody conflagration during and after the Partition. It still simmers as an incarnadine boundary between India and its Muslim neighbours. The latter born, as we are never tired of repeating, of the same stock as the Hindus. It was Goel who first enunciated with the greatest clarity that India had been subjected to two waves of colonialism, Western, and prior to that, Islamic. His classic exposition of the latter, The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (Voice of India, 1994), should be compulsory reading in every course on post-colonialism. Instead, it is erased altogether.

That is why Goel focused his energies on the breaking-India efforts of the two Abrahamic and adversarial faiths which, to him, were the greatest threats to Hindu society, Islam and Christianity. Not as religions per se but as religious and political ideologies. Christianity worked against the native populace through the well-organised and funded enterprise of conversion. The difficulty with Islam was much deeper and historical. The unresolved conflict between a conquering Islam and a resistant Hindu society led not only to India’s Partition on religious lines, but also to continuing violence, riots, appeasement, and separatism within the country.

The decisive shift in Goel’s intellectual career occurred in 1981 when he retired from his mainline book business and created the non-profit Voice of India publishing platform. His aim, as stated in an early book from that period, Hindu Society Under Siege (1981), was to define the three main threats to Sanatana Dharma—political Islamism, proselytising Christianity, and anti-national Marxist-Leninism. As Elst puts it, “The avowed objective of each of these three world-conquering movements, with their massive resources, is diagnosed as the replacement of Hinduism by their own ideology, or in effect: the destruction of Hinduism” (ibid). It has taken over 40 years, without adequate credit, for his ideas to be mainstreamed. But today they have become commonplace, on the minds and tongues of most right-wing or Hindutva intellectuals and activists. Only a few of them say them or think them through as well as he did. Worse, very few of them acknowledge—or even read—Goel’s works.

What is, however, noteworthy is how different Goel was from these latter-day crusaders in one important aspect. Though he believed that Mahatma Gandhi had misunderstood and underestimated the threat of political Islamism, Goel never denounced him as a British stooge, charlatan, father of Pakistan, let alone a paedophile. Nor, in fact, did he advocate a Savarkarite Hindutva. Goel’s position remained firmly liberal, rational, democratic, and spiritual. He never preached hatred toward or between communities, nor did he wish to demonise any group of citizens because of their religion or ethnicity. Instead, he was interested in truth-seeking and truth-telling, holding the state and the political class accountable to the first principles of the republic, not playing havoc with the future of the nation with appeasement, favouritism, or identity politics.

Readers, especially those who are quick to typecast the right-wing, would be surprised to know that he had quite a few run-ins with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates, though he was sympathetic, overall, to their role in Hindu character-building and nationalism. Though he wrote often for Organiser and Panchajanya, he often found the RSS outlook narrow-minded, not to speak of muddled. He accused them of confusion and double-speak, using the same tired and dishonest cliches about secularism and national integration which falsified both history and ground reality. Unlike them, Goel had the guts to call a spade a spade.

His astonishing output during this phase, which lasted right till the end of his days, borders on the incredible; he was an intellectual giant and his was a giant’s labour. It is not possible to engage seriously with his enormous output in these two pages, let alone do justice to it. Suffice it to say that there is enough published material by him to support several PhDs. Here is a list, drawn up by Elst, of his major writings. It does not include essays or chapters published in books edited by others or, indeed, the first Hindi translation of Taslima Nasreen’s Lajja, published in instalments in Panchajanya. I have already mentioned some of his works earlier, but a more detailed listing is salutary: Hindu Society Under Siege (1981, revised 1992); Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1982); How I Became a Hindu (1982, enlarged 1993); Defence of Hindu Society (1983, revised 1987); The Emerging National Vision (1983); History of Heroic Hindu Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders (1984); Perversion of India’s Political Parlance (1984); Saikyularizm, Rashtradroha ka Dusra Nam (1985); Papacy, Its Doctrine and History (1986); Preface to The Calcutta Quran Petition by Chandmal Chopra (a collection of texts alleging a causal connection between communal violence and the contents of the Quran; 1986, enlarged 1987, and again 1999); Muslim Separatism, Causes and Consequences (1987); Foreword to Catholic Ashrams, Adapting and Adopting Hindu Dharma (a collection of polemical writings on Christian inculturation; 1988, enlarged 1994 with new subtitle: “Sannyasins or Swindlers?”); History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1989, enlarged 1996); Hindu Temples, What Happened to Them (1990 vol 1; 1991 vol 2, enlarged 1993); Genesis and Growth of Nehruism (1993); Jesus Christ: An Artifice for Aggression (1994); Time for Stock-Taking (1997), a collection of articles critical of RSS and BJP; Preface to the reprint of Mathilda Joslyn Gage: Woman, Church and State (1997, ca. 1880), an early feminist critique of Christianity; Preface to Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report (1998), a reprint of the official report on the missionaries’ methods of subversion and conversion (1955).

Though polemical, even provocative and pugilistic, each of these books is thoroughly researched and comprehensively argued. Very unlike today’s TV debaters and other credit-hogging activists who pretend that they have come up with “original” ideas and arguments which are already found in plenty of Goel’s writings. Without reading Goel or citing him, they repeat these ideas and arguments in a much worse and less persuasive manner. Indeed, the idea of the intellectual Kshatriya itself originates in Goel, though others now appropriate it as if they pioneered it. Thus, they end up doing injustice to Goel and a disservice to the cause that they profess to champion—performing the same U-turn manoeuvre that they condemn in others.

Mainstream academics and media, of course, continue completely to ignore Goel’s work. But Hindu organisations too, far from engaging with his massive output, also neglect to give him adequate credit. One might wonder why. In my view, the answer is simple. No one has Goel’s intellectual calibre, stamina, or capacity. In the prevailing anti-intellectual climate, politics, slogan-shouting, and ideological posturing become much easier to friend and foe alike. The skills required for reading, writing, research, exposition, analysis, and argument are sorely lacking in Indian society. Goel is a victim of this glaring deficit.

Moreover, during the heyday of his intellectual activism, there was no internet, Wikipedia, or Google Baba. Indians were so brainwashed by sarva dharma samabhava—regarding all religions equally—that they understood neither the basic texts or the intent of the two imperialistic Abrahamic faiths, Christianity and Islam. Goel acquainted a large body of naïve and mistaken members of the public with the historically verifiable theology and teleology of these proselytising faiths. Which was to exterminate Sanatana Dharma, as they had other Pagan traditions that they had encountered. Also, the naked admission of global conquest and dominance.

A posthumous Padma Award for Sita Ram Ji? That is the least we can do to honour the memory and legacy of this scholar extraordinaire. – Open Magazine, 25 October 2024

› Makarand R. Paranjape is an author, poet, a former director at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and former professor of English at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

New evidence suggests Harappan civilisation is 7,000 to 8,000 years old – Dheeraj Bengrut

November 4, 2024VOI

The evidence found in the third phase of excavations at Rakhigarhi in Haryana shows that the culture dates back 7,000 to 8,000 years.- Prof. Prabhodh Shirwalkar

Researchers from Deccan College Pune along with the central Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have established that human remains discovered at an ancient site of Rakhigarhi—a village in the Hisar district of Haryana—date back around 8,000 years. The discovery has been made during the third phase of excavations carried out by the ASI along with various teams across the country, including researchers from Deccan College Pune.

The first phase of excavations at Rakhigarhi was carried out by Dr Amarendra Nath of the Indian Archaeology Department from 1997 to 2000 during which evidence of the North Harappan culture dating back to 2500 BC was found. The second phase of excavations at Rakhi Garhi was carried out by professor Vasant Shinde from Deccan College Pune from 2006 to 2013 during which Shinde’s team collected evidence and conducted DNA tests to establish that this culture could be over 4,000 years’ old. Over the past two years, the ASI and Deccan College Pune have jointly carried out the third phase of excavations at Rakhigarhi through a team led by ASI joint director Sanjay Kumar Manjul and Deccan College Pune assistant professor Prabhodh Shirwalkar.

Shirwalkar said, “There are three parts to the Harappan culture; East Harappan, Middle Harappan, and North Harappan (Modern). The earlier two excavations found evidence of the Middle and Modern Harappan cultures dating back around 4,000 years. But now, the evidence found in the third phase of excavations shows that the culture dates back 7,000 to 8,000 years. The final report of the work is being prepared by our team.”

Shirwalkar said that the research on this will continue for many more months. “Human DNA has remained the same for 8,000 years which we have found during our research. When human traps were found here, they were thoroughly tested. Scientists have drawn conclusions based on this. A large burial ground was found here and it had human traps as well as animal traps,” Shirwalkar said.

The ASI is actively involved in excavations at the Rakhigarhi archaeological site, and the primary goal of these excavations, according to Ajay Yadav, additional director-general of the ASI, is to make the site accessible to the public. This involves exposing and conserving the structural remains for future viewing and providing amenities for visitors.

About utensils of various metals including gold and silver found during the excavation, Shirwalkar said that old silver and copper ornaments, too, have been found. “The most beautiful are the clay pots. A dinner set from that period has been found,” Shirwalkar said.

“We think that the words bedroom and kitchen are of recent origin. Whereas in Rakhigarhi, an even larger settlement of the largest ancient houses ever was found underground. A courtyard and a drainage system were also found in it. There were two to six- bedroom houses that were also available at that time. The clothing fashion of the people of that time is also known. A colourful worn piece of cloth, a shawl and skirt were also found,” he said.

“This research has found strong evidence that the Harappan civilisation is 7,000 to 8,000 years old. Scientists from the Department of Archaeology of India and Deccan College have worked together on the project. It is agreed that there was human habitation or civilisation in our country 8,000 years ago. The evidence shows that the people of that time were as advanced as they are today,” said Shirwalkar.

Earlier this year, union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had highlighted Rakhigarhi in her budget speech of 2023, emphasising on the development of five iconic sites of archaeological significance, including Rakhigarhi, with on-site museums. The plan is to showcase the antiquities uncovered at Rakhigarhi, now considered the largest Harappan site spanning 350 acres, in an under-construction museum near the site. The museum is estimated to be worth ₹23 crores. – Hindustan Times, 23 December 2022

› Dheeraj Bengrut is a senior correspondent at the Hindustan Times in Pune.

Dating Indian history all over again – Nanditha Krishna

October 19, 2024November 4, 2024VOI

Today, science gives us advantages that William Jones lacked. But sadly, some accounts of Indian history are still stuck in outdated methods of dating – Dr. Nanditha Krishna

In 1650, Irish theologian James Ussher claimed that the world was created on Sunday, October 23, 4004 BCE. Ussher based his calculation on a correlation of the Christian holy writ and West Asian and Mediterranean histories.

Tragically, his unscientific dating became a basis for dating Indian history—and, for some, continues even today.

In 1783, William Jones was appointed judge at Fort William in Bengal. He studied Sanskrit, the Vedas and ancient Hindu laws. He was captivated by Indian culture and founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. He proposed a relationship between European and Indo-Aryan languages, now known as the Indo-European languages. He suggested that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin had a common root and postulated a proto-Indo-European language uniting Sanskrit, Iranian, Greek, Latin, Germanic and Celtic.

Jones, a follower of Ussher, believed that “the foundation of the Indian empire (sic) was about 3,800 years” before 1790 CE, that is, between Ussher’s date of 4004 BCE and the Great Flood that Jones believed took place in 2350 BCE. He dated the Rig Veda unscientifically to 1500-1000 BCE and proposed an Aryan invasion of India, an idea that lacked any evidence.

For a long time, the West supposed India jumped from the Stone Age to the Buddha, whose date became very important for ancient Indian history. Eastern Buddhist tradition in China, Japan, Vietnam and Korea dated Siddhartha between his birth in 1026 BCE and his death in 949 BCE.

In 1821, John Davy chose the Sinhalese date of Buddha’s Nirvana as 543 BCE, when the Sinhalese system of reckoning time begins. This gave time between Jones’s date for the Vedas (1500 BCE) and the Buddha; hence it was “chosen”. Mahavira was never properly dated and was regarded merely as Buddha’s contemporary.

Alexander’s foray into Punjab in 326 BCE turned up yet another date. Jones decided that Sandrocottus, mentioned by Megasthenes as Seleucus Nicator’s Greek ambassador to Pataliputra, was Chandragupta Maurya. Why not Chandragupta I or II of the Gupta dynasty? They too ruled from Pataliputra. But that did not suit the British dating of the Vedic period, the Buddha and later Ashoka.

Jones decided that Megasthenes had visited Chandragupta Maurya’s empire, founded in 322 BCE. But we know of Chandragupta’s life only from Vishakhadatta’s Mudrarakshasa, where there are no Greeks or Megasthenes, and which was written over a thousand years later.

It is only with Ashoka’s inscriptions that scientific methodology entered Indian archaeology. James Prinsep worked at the Calcutta mint in 1819 and stayed for a while in Benares. He interpreted the three stages of Indian numismatics as punch-marked, die-struck and cast coins. But his greatest contribution was deciphering the Brahmi script.

Edicts from all over India were sent to him. The edicts mentioned a King Devanampiyadasi who filled Indian rocks and pillars with messages of dharma. Prinsep initially assumed him to be Sri Lankan.

The identification of Devanampiyadasi and Ashoka as the same person was established by the Maski and Gujarra inscriptions, which used both the names Devanampiyadasi and Ashokaraja. In his inscriptions, Ashoka also mentions Antiochus, Ptolemy, Antigonus, Magas and Alexanderas as receivers of his message of dharma. But they lived beyond India. The names on this list, though intriguing, were ignored in the dating process.

In the early 20th century, the ruins of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro were discovered by Indian archaeologists Daya Ram Sahni and Rakhal Das Banerji. Overnight, Indian civilisation went back in time from the 6th century to 3300-1300 BCE, and to 2600-1900 BCE in the ‘mature Harappan’ phase. It was spread over an area larger than the contemporary Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations.

It extended from Balochistan in the west to western Uttar Pradesh in the east, from Afghanistan in the north to Maharashtra in the south. Later, agriculture was found to have emerged in 7000 BCE in Balochistan. The dating was based on archaeology, and not 4004 BCE.

It was declared as pre-Vedic and Dravidian, but when was Vedic and what was Dravidian? It remains an enigma.

In the 19th century, the river Sarasvati, described in the Rig Veda as a ‘mighty’ one flowing from the hills to the sea, was identified with the Ghaggar-Hakra river system that now ends in the Thar desert. ISRO observed from satellite pictures that most Indus civilisation sites from Haryana and Rajasthan to Gujarat lay along its course. When the monsoons diminished, the river dried up some 4,000 years ago and the Harappan civilisation declined.

Now archaeology was used to delineate Indian history. New discoveries cropped up all over India: Arikamedu and Poompuhar in the south, Dwarka under the sea off the coast of Gujarat and so on. Mahabharata was identified with painted greyware sites dating to 1200 BCE. So the Vedas had to be much older.

Yet, students are still taught dates that are calculated from 4004 BCE. Their textbooks say that the Aryans came to India in 1500 BCE, the date of the Vedas, that the writing of the Mahabharata dates back to 500 BCE, that Chandragupta Maurya met Alexander and so on.

No effort has been made to study the dating system of Indian kings as mentioned in their inscriptions or their chronology lists. This too needs archaeological corroboration. The Buddha died in Kushinagara. His remains could be scientifically tested to find out the exact date of his death.

Today, science gives us advantages that William Jones lacked. But sadly, some accounts of history are still stuck in outdated methods of dating. – The New Indian Express, 29 September 2024

› Dr. Nanditha Krishna is an author, historian, and environmentalist based in Chennai

Max Mueller distorted the Vedas to pave way for India’s Christian conversion – Priya Arora

October 1, 2024October 2, 2024VOI

The disdain for Vedic philosophy with which German philologist Friedrich Max Müller embarked on his translation of the Vedas is apparent: “The ancient religion of India is doomed, and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?” – Priya Arora

In 1847, the British East India Company hired a philologist, Max Mueller, to translate the Vedas specifically to make the Hindu intelligentsia dismiss them as barbaric, backward and fanciful. The hope was that the changed attitude of some influential groups will soon spread throughout Indian society, liberating it from its perceived paganism.

Mueller was not a missionary but seemed to have a religious zeal. We realise this intent in his letters. He wrote to his wife: “I feel convinced, though I shall not live to see it, that this edition of mine and the translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India, and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what that root is, I feel sure, the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3,000 years.” (Oxford, December 9, 1867)

Along the same lines, Mueller wrote to the theologian, Chevalier Bunsen: “India is much riper for Christianity than Rome or Greece were at the time of St. Paul. The rotten tree has for some time had artificial supports. … For the good of this struggle, I should like to lay down my life, or at least to lend my hand to bring about this struggle. … I do not at all like to go to India as a missionary; that makes one dependent on the parsons. … I should like to live for ten years quite quietly and learn the language, try to make friends, and see whether I was fit to take part in a work, by means of which the old mischief of Indian priestcraft could be overthrown and the way opened for the entrance of simple Christian teaching.” (August 25, 1856)

The disdain for Vedic philosophy with which Mueller embarked on his translation of the Vedas is apparent: “The ancient religion of India is doomed, and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?” (Written to the Secretary of State for India, the Duke of Argyll, December 16, 1868)

“The worship of Shiva or Vishnu and the other popular deities, is of the same, nay, in many cases of a more degraded and savage character than the worship, of Jupiter, Apollo and Minerva; it belongs to a stratum of thought which is long buried beneath our feet, it may live on like the lion and the tiger but the mere air of free thought and civilised life will extinguish it.” (Westminster Lectures on Missions, December 1873)

Excerpts from Mueller’s letters express his opinion that the culture of the Aryans brought by earlier European conquest sorely needed replacement. In a communication to the Duke of Argyll, he wrote: “India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again, and that second conquest should be a conquest by education. Much has been done for education of late, but if the funds were tripled and quadrupled, that would hardly be enough… A new national literature may spring up, impregnated with Western ideas, yet retaining its native spirit and character. … A new national literature will bring with it a new national life, and new moral vigour. As to religion, that will take care of itself. The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of.”

With this mindset, Mueller propounded the famous Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) in the mid-19th century, based on two main factors: racial eminence and comparative linguistics. Alleging the Vedic people’s European origin, he claimed that a band of tall, fair-skinned nomadic pastoralists from the Russian steppes, called the Aryans, crossed the Himalayas on horse-driven chariots in 1500 BC. Being a superior race, they subjugated the unsophisticated dark-skinned aboriginals, whom they pushed south of the Vindhyas to become the Dravidians.

The colonising Aryan invaders then settled in the north and civilised the land, completely eradicating the local culture. They imposed Sanskrit and the Vedic lifestyle on the natives and were responsible for all ancient Sanskrit literature.

According to Mueller, the conquering Aryan race began composing the Vedas soon after their arrival, starting with the Rig Veda, which he dated at 1200 BC. They also formed the Vedic caste system, declaring themselves the upper-caste Brahmins and the natives the lower-caste Shudras.

This hypothesis implied that Brahmins and Shudras were of different racial ancestry, and since genetic study was unknown at the time, the supposition was accepted as fact. Then, in the 1920s, Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, dating back to 3000 BC, were excavated.

Although the discovery of these highly advanced urban civilisations demonstrated that the indigenous people were far from unsophisticated aboriginals as previously believed, surprisingly, it did little to cast doubt on the Aryan Invasion Theory.

Instead, the narrative was neatly amended to fit the new information suggesting that the Indus Valley inhabitants, although evolved, were the peaceful dark-skinned pre-Vedic natives. They fled south when the Aryans, who had a technological edge in the form of horse-driven chariots unknown to the locals, attacked and defeated them. As a result, the prevailing culture was entirely replaced by an imported Vedic one indicating the invaders’ superiority.

The concept of Aryan supremacy fuelled white nationalism in Europe. Hitler notably adopted the false narrative of a master race, along with a distortion of the word Arya and the holiest of Vedic symbols, the swastika. Finally, in the latter part of the 20th century, when archaeological evidence proved conclusively that no invasion had occurred, the theory was modified to a peaceful migration and then further amended to a “trickling in”.

Despite the many iterations of how the Vedic culture came to India, whether by violent invasion, peaceful migration or people trickling in, the core assertion has remained that in 1500 BC, foreigners replaced the pre-Vedic local culture and language of North India with their own. The claim that the Vedic culture was imported rather than indigenous is still touted, though it is refuted by literature, archaeology and science.

Motivating factors for AIT at inception

The thought that the language of a subjugated people was the source of most European languages, including English, was abhorrent to imperialists. In his 1650 work, The Annals of the Old Testament, Archbishop James Ussher propounded that the first day of creation was October 23, 4004 BC. Most Christian scholars firmly held this belief during the colonisation of India, and the Vedic civilisation did not fit into this.

According to the biblical timeline, a highly evolved people could not have lived thousands of years before the Earth was supposed to have come into existence. Furthermore, the ecclesiastic chronology insisted that God destroyed the whole world by a flood around 2348 BC, so the Vedic civilisation posed a considerable problem.

To tie in with biblical events, Mueller fixed the anomaly by ascribing 1500 BC for the Aryan invasion when Sanskrit and the Vedic culture ostensibly came to India. The Aryan Invasion Theory was politically convenient.

It served to divide and rule, effectively controlling the natives by justifying British colonisation with an ancient precedent. The concept of invading Aryans was fed to the Indian population through the westernisation of education, beginning with Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Indian Education Act of 1835.

While the theory had apparent advantages for the ruling power, many Indians also embraced it, as it put them on the same racial footing as their rulers. The idea that foreigners displaced native Indians had far-reaching effects.

It effectively divided the nation, with north and south Indians believing they were racially, linguistically and culturally distinct from each other. The ancient varna system’s meritocracy was also replaced with birth-based caste and Brahmin eminence based on their perceived superior Caucasian ancestry. – News18, 27 September 2024

› Excerpts from Priya Arora’s book, Rama: A Man of Dharma.

Democracy in ancient India – Rakesh Goyal

August 15, 2024August 15, 2024VOI

The Greek writer Diodorus Siculus mentions that at the time of Alexander’s invasion (326 BCE), he mostly came across cities which practiced a democratic form of government, though some were ruled by kings. – Rakesh Goyal

The Vedic Origin

Evidence of a democratic system of government in India is originally found in the Vedas. There is distinctive evidence from Rig Veda, which mentions a thriving republican form of government in India. We may quote a few beautiful slokas from Rig Veda which were to be sung in unison at the beginning of the republican assembly:

“We pray for a spirit of unity; may we discuss and resolve all issues amicably, may we reflect on all matters (of state) without rancor, may we distribute all resources (of the state) to all stakeholders equitably, may we accept our share with humility.” – Rig Veda 10:191:2

However, in the absence of any corroborating material evidence because of a pre-historic nature of this source, most Western historians tend to dismiss this foundation and instead inclined to concentrate on the Buddhist period of Indian history, which they believe has more reliable sources of corroboration. Moreover, the Buddhist period was contemporary to the Greek city states and their republics, which make it easier for them to accept. A Vedic origin indicates a time period which preceded the Greek city states by a very wide margin, telling on the Western pride in Greek civilization as the fountainhead of all modern learning.

Buddhist Records

As per Buddhist texts in Pali, politics was vigorous during the Buddhist period, 600 BCE – 200 CE. During this period, India witnessed widespread urbanization, which was almost synonymous with a republican form of government. The Buddhist scriptures in Pali provide a vivid depiction of the city state of Vaishali during 5th century BCE.

As per these sources, various warrior kings often sought to exploit this amorphous structure of the society, sometimes with a measure of success. As per Buddhist literature in Pali and Brahminical literature in Sanskrit, republican system of government was almost universal.

These ancient classics offer a complex scenario to describe the different groups that managed their own affairs. Some of these groups were probably warrior formations; others were groups with avowed economic aims; some were religious fraternities. These organizations, of whatever type, were usually designated as a gana or a sangha; while less important political structures were known by such terms as shreni (guilds).

The terms gana and sangha initially meant multitude, but gradually with the passage of time, these words come to mean a self-governing multitude by 6th century BCE. In this system, all decisions were taken by the sangha members themselves, and the governing style was stabilized by convention for such groups. The strongest of these groups functioned as sovereign governments, who were generally known as “republics.”

Various sources indicate an almost universal presence of sovereign republics in India during that time. Commenting on the authenticity of these sources, the Western historians find the Greek sources as the more credible, as the texts of those writers are more familiar to the modern Western historian.

The Greek references

While describing Alexander’s campaigns in great detail, the Anabasis of contemporary Greek Historian Arrian refers to “eyewitness accounts of Alexander’s companions and describes him coming across free and independent Indian communities at every turn.” The historian further mentions that many Indian republican states controlled much larger territories and enjoyed a broader mandate at that time, as compared to the contemporary Greek city states. Some other Greek writers writing about the exploits of Alexander refer to a people who practiced a democratic form of government but were not monarchial, though their sway encompassed a large area. They maintained a large army comprising of 60,000 infantry, 500 chariots and 6,000 cavalry. This indicates that Indian republics of late 4th century BCE were much larger than the Greek city states of that time. It seems that republicanism was at that time the standard practice in the northwestern part of India. Alexander’s historians refer to a handful of kings, but they are lavish in their praise of a large number of republics; some of them are named, while some are not.

The Greek writer Diodorus Siculus mentions that at the time of Alexander’s invasion, he mostly came across cities which practiced a democratic form of government, though some were ruled by kings. This statement assumes importance as it apparently refers to a first-person account of India by the noted Greek traveler Megasthenes. It is important to note that Greek king Seleucus Nicator deputed Megasthenes as his ambassador to the court of Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya at around 300 BCE, i.e. hardly 20 years after the invasion of Alexander. In the course of his duties, he travelled through northern India to the Mauryan capital Patliputra, where he stayed for some time. Thus, if this statement is drawn from Megasthenes, this indicates that entire northwestern India was dominated by republics at that time, signifying almost half of Indian subcontinent.

The Testimony of the Grammarian Panini

The Indian sources scrupulously support these observations. The most important indigenous sources describing north India during that time are three: The Buddhist scriptures in Pali, which describe the state of Gangetic plains during the 6th and 5th centuries BCE; Panini’s Sanskrit classic Ashtadhyayi, which discusses entire north India, focusing on the northwest during the 5th century; and Kautilya’s Arthashastra, which got shape during the 4th century BCE, i.e., almost contemporary to Megasthenes. These three indigenous sources enable us to independently identify various ganas and sanghas, some minor, while some large and powerful.

Dwelling at length on these republican polities, Panini informs us that “the states and regions (janapadas) in north India were established in his time by the conquest of a particular area by a specified invader group, which continued to hold sway on the polity of that area.” Some of these communities (in Panini’s terms janapadins) were ruled by a king, who was of one of their own kinsmen and who was dependent on their support. However, in case of many other communities, the janapadins were organized as republics. In both these kind of states, the governance was dominated by Kshatriyas, or say, the warrior caste.

The Nature of Republics

Interestingly, the term raja is used in both the instances, which obviously denotes a king in case of the monarchy, but in a republican state, it could be someone deputed to assume sovereignty.

In republican states, it might mean that political power was confined to the heads of a handful of “royal families” (rajakulas) among the ruling elite. The leaders of these family groups were sanctified as kings. On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that in some polities, the empowered group was wider. Kautilya’s Arthashastra provides such an indication. According to this treatise, there were two kinds of janapadas, one predominantly martial, i.e. those constituted by soldiers, and the other constituted by craftsmen’s guilds, or by traders guilds and agriculturalists. The first were predominantly political entities where military might was the sole criteria to define those worthy of power; on the other hand, the second group appears to be such communities where wealth earned from trade and commerce provided the impetus to the political process.

The Republican Process

The gathering of the members of a sovereign gana or sangha worked together with each other as present day members of a legislature. Both the Brahminical and Buddhist literature provide details about the working of these ancient legislatures. Panini (5th century BCE) mentions explicit terminology as regards the process of decision-making in these polities. Panini provides various terms for voting, decision making through voting, and the requirement for a quorum. Another group of terms hints that the assemblies were divided on the basis of political parties. Panini also mentions that sometimes a smaller group of selected people within a sangha were given special functions, e.g. acting as the chief functionary or probably as a select committee for some specific purpose.

Panini also indicates that these republics functioned on an egalitarian basis during the 5th century BCE, and he mentions that “there was no consideration of high and low.” Kautilya’s Arthashastra specifies that ganas were an important factor in the polity of his time.

The Decline of Republics

It is remarkable to note that for several centuries, the avarice of monarchs, even of the greatest, impacted the sovereign republics only to a limited extent, with not much effect on the internal management of guilds, or religious sanghas, or the social life in the villages. As a matter of fact, the conquerors were hardly interested in restructuring the society, or to carve out kingdoms as we visualize them today. The kings were often satisfied with the acquiescence of their neighborhood states, whether they were republics or other kings. The defeated adversaries were often let off to look after their own realm, but were asked to pay a tribute or to provide troops in support of the conquerors’ war efforts.

It is therefore interesting to note that the existence of an aggressive warlord in the neighborhood did not pose much of a problem for the republican politics. We have to look elsewhere to search for the reasons for the gradual breakdown of sanghas. Apparently, a major stimulus came from within, as the republicans themselves gradually forsake the republican ethics by the 3rd and 4th centuries CE. In some instances, some well established republics gradually transformed and subjected themselves to hereditary chieftains. In due course, these republics transformed as monarchies.

The Disintegration

If we try to explore further into the underlying causes of the disintegration of these republics, we come across instances where members of ganas themselves sought this transformation due to various reasons. Quite frequently, the impetus to transform grew out of the ongoing frustration caused by inter-gana equations among the equal and often competing polities. It can be visualized that ganas claiming certain territory as their own were obstructed by other corporate groups. In the event of any territorial disputes, which were many, there was no arbitrating force which could sort out the tangle and reconcile the differences.

In a vast country like India and the number of equal and often competing republics many, there was apparently an inchoate wish in these circumstances to seek to identify some centralized coordinating authority, which could arbitrate in case of any inter-state conflict, even by preparing to relinquish a part of their sovereignty. Such an authority could take up the challenge of safeguarding their legitimate interests and protecting the weaker ones, by arrogating to itself imperialistic pretensions.

This was perhaps the political environment of the sub-continent, which supported the emergence of the first pan-India empire in India, in the shape and form of the redoubtable Mauryan Empire (322 BCE – 185 BCE). The stage had in any case been set by Alexander’s invasion (327-326 BCE) into the north-western flank of the country. Although Alexander decided to turn back instead of facing the mighty Magadha Empire ruled at that time by the powerful Nanda Dynasty, the writing on the wall was evident for the indigenous republicans.

The Republics Transformed

Thus, we see the republics withering away gradually. The political discourse was henceforth dominated by powerful empires. Though the ganas and sanghas continued to exist in theory, but now their sovereignty was compromised, giving way to a new social order, based on hierarchy at the cost of the former egalitarian structure of the country.

However, this spirit of republicanism continued to thrive at the grassroots at village level, which were left undisturbed to their own devices in the new political order. Likewise, the economic guilds organised on a republican pattern continued to function and to thrive even during the powerful Mauryan Empire. – Pragyata, 3 January 2017

› Rakesh Goyal is a former state civil servant who has extensive experience of writing on subjects such as Spirituality, Hinduism, Lifestyle, Handicrafts, Travel, Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedic Astrology.

Aryan invasion theory and Dravidian distortions – Santishree D. Pandit

July 20, 2024January 20, 2025VOI

We were civilised when Europe and the West were still picking stones. We were an outward-looking civilisation, we civilised them and not the reverse. Science and other evidence are disproving all these divisive conjectures constructed for the colonial-church-conversion project. Why are we still parroting the same? – Dr. Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit

Regardless of the domains, a theory is never considered the final word; it remains subject to criticism and debunking as they are just conjectures. The Aryan Invasion Theory is one such conjecture in history that stands out as one of the most flawed and divisive interpretations of Bharatiya civilisation and its rich history. For such reasons, the theory is increasingly treated with scepticism and disdain due to its lack of academic rigour and the ideological agenda it entailed. Moreover, other critical factors that caused the theory to lose credibility include the availability of archaeological evidence that has debunked the theory; and an increasing public interest in discovering the truth about India’s past, which has long been written by outsiders with vested interests. Unfortunately, the theory still lingers in small yet vocal circles of Left-leaning academics and intellectuals who view it as a potent tool for dividing the people based on the concept of race, caste and religion which is based on faulty assumed and prejudiced conjectures.

This theory has given rise to the faulty construct of a divide between Aryans and Dravidians by Bishop Robert Caldwell, whose purpose to convert was primary in his colonial-church agenda. What is surprising is, this false conjecture was constructed on Aryan invasions that never took place. This is the mainstay of the “distorians” of the Dravidian parties. Rationalism and atheism are anti all religions, but the hypocrisy of these parties is that many of them are faithful in Abrahamic faiths and attack only Hinduism. Hence, should one conclude that the Dravidian parties are the followers of Caldwell’s colonial-church-conversion construct and are creating Hinduphobia? Recent archaeological excavations at Rakhigarhi, Dwarka and many other places have proved by carbon dating that we are 8,000-10,000 years old. The geological theories prove the lost lands at the end of the Ice Age due to massive flooding especially in the Indian peninsula. So we were civilised when Europe and the West were still picking stones. We were an outward-looking civilisation, we civilised them and not the reverse. Science and evidence are disproving all these divisive conjectures constructed for the colonial-church-conversion project. Why are we still parroting the same?

A fallacious theory

The Aryan Invasion Theory (also referred to as the Indo-Aryan Migration Theory), often championed by Leftist historians, constitutes a part of a broader theoretical framework aimed at diminishing the historical significance of the ancient Bharatiya civilisation by attributing its establishment to an external race depicted as invaders. This theoretical perspective seeks to leverage linguistic connections among various contemporary and ancient languages, interpretations derived from philology, and findings from archaeological and anthropological research. This colonial endeavour reduced the millennia-old developments in the subcontinent to imagined notions of race that colonial powers believed in and employed during their imperial conquests. Also worth mentioning here is the pernicious Aryan-Dravidian divide that AIT encouraged and that was propagated by figures like Caldwell with his A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages and Bishop Campbell, in the mid-19th century. This divisive narrative aimed to segregate Indian society along racial and caste lines, thus sowing seeds of divisions.

Erroneous to the core

The Aryan Invasion Theory has indeed been criticised endlessly for its flawed assumptions and ideologically driven agenda that transposed colonial ideas and racial divides onto the Indian subcontinent. Basically, the theory has been used to legitimise British colonialism in India by proposing a fallacious disposition that suggests Aryans colonised India. This narrative could arguably be seen as an effort to justify or normalise the British presence and actions in India by drawing parallels with an alleged ancient Aryan colonisation. Moreover, the theory seems to deflect colonial blame and shame from British shoulders. By suggesting that Aryans were historical colonisers, the theory sought to argue that Britain was not doing anything different from what India had seen in the past. In other words, the theory served as an attempt to diffuse the criticism of British colonialism by asserting that even Indians were guilty of colonisation and, therefore, Indians under British rule should accept British suzerainty without complaint.

In addition to the evident harm caused by such a pernicious theory, it is crucial to highlight the implicit strategies employed by the British to normalise it as the ultimate and unquestionable truth. As part of their so-called educational reforms aimed at undermining and demotivating the young populace of India, the British actively promoted the theory in schools and colleges. The relentless dissemination of the theory, without presenting credible evidence, critical viewpoints or alternative perspectives, led individuals of that time to accept it at face value. While the British, guided by their colonial interests, bear responsibility for these actions, perhaps more significant blame has to be assigned to Left intellectuals and historians who played an essential role in perpetuating this divisive narrative post-Independence.

Leftist embrace of AIT

A distorted mentality has influenced the propagation and spread of the AIT, mainly after Leftist ideologies gained prominence in India in the early 20th century and solidified under the Nehruvian government post-Independence. During this period, the AIT and the Aryan-Dravidian schism were embraced with enthusiasm by the Left, providing them with a tool to foster division, turning communities against one another and ushering in self-inflicted hate towards their own ancestors and history. As a result, a complex Indian consciousness emerged in the mid-20th century when numerous Indians began to harbour disdain for their history and origins. Essentially, these Leftist historians, wielding authoritative control over narratives, inherited and continued the interpretative legacy left by the British. Their influence further exacerbated existing divides by propagating views to keep the country divided. The authoritarian control over historical narratives allowed these scholars to shape and disseminate perspectives that reinforced divisive notions, contributing to the fragmentation of the Indian identity.

What remains most encouraging in discussions on the AIT and the Aryan-Dravidian divide is the transformed academic environment that today’s India provides, where such fallacious theories and misrepresentations are countered and debunked through facts, evidence, and logic. Recent archaeological excavations at Rakhigarhi, Dwarka and Keeladi have systematically dismantled myths surrounding these erroneous theories. In the spirit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at the Ram Mandir Pran Pratishta (2024), where he united Indians under the roof of development and progress and urged citizens to “lay the foundation for the next thousand years of Bharat,” this foundation must be built on high intellectual traditions free of ideology, sycophancy, and falsehoods. Uprooting and debunking theories like AIT is a crucial part of this effort, and the youth must take the lead in challenging colonial-led assumptions and narratives that have beleaguered India for so long. A genuine history of the Bharatiya civilisation, rooted in truth and evidence, is the precursor for realising the vision of Viksit Bharat, which is a saga of continuity with change, realm with region, diversity and unity, tradition with modernity, balance with chaos, spiritual with the material, a holistic vision for all from the unique to the universal and the cosmos. – The Sunday Guardian, 10 March 2024

› Dr. Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit is the Vice-Chancellor of JNU.

A reasonable date for Adi Shankara – Venu Gopal Narayanan

March 7, 2024March 15, 2024VOI

We see that there is nothing in Shankara’s works which contradict his dating to the 6th century BCE, nor historical evidence to either support or disprove a belief that Bimbisara, the Buddha, and Mahavira were his contemporaries. – Venu Gopal Narayanan

Historians have spent a century trying to determine when Adi Shankaracharya lived. Thus far, a total lack of archaeological evidence has frustrated their efforts. Instead, many have employed linguistic tools to assume that he lived sometime in the 8th to 9th centuries of the common era (CE).

While these arguments may appear convincing to the lay reader, they are all no more than inconclusive guesstimates; the simple truth is that we do not yet know when this remarkable mind bound our sacred land together using the logic of Advaita.

On the other hand, the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham at Kanchipuram, in Tamil Nadu, maintains a list of head seers which says that it was founded by Shankara in 509 BCE. That is about 1500 years earlier than modern guesstimates. The lineage list of the Govardhana Matha in Puri, Odisha, starts in 484 BCE. Similarly, the Dwaraka Matha in Saurashtra, Gujarat, maintains that it was established in 475 BCE.

The natural response for a Left Liberal thinker would be to declare a date of 6th century BCE as preposterous, and instantly dismiss it out of hand as some hoary tradition with no scientific basis. But the dharmic approach would be to test this thesis: what would be the impact on our history as we know it, if Shankara had indeed lived in the time of King Bimbisara of Magadha, Gautama the Buddha, and Mahavira the Tirthankara?

The most important test is whether such a date clashes with the dates of those texts referred to by Shankara in his works. Let us take the main ones:

One, the Brahma Sutra of Rishi Badarayana, which encapsulates the essence of the Upanishads—the concept of Brahman, and Vedanta—into dense aphorisms. Its opening line is, athato brahma jignyasa (then, therefore, the enquiry into Brahman). The basis of Shankara’s Advaita is his commentary on this work, called the Brahma Sutra Bhashya.

In the absence of any evidence, historians have dated this text with “great accuracy” to either the 5th or 2nd centuries BCE, or the 5th century CE.

Two, the Purva Mimamsa Sutra of Rishi Jaimini, who was an older contemporary of Rishi Badarayana. It aphoristically condenses the essence of the Brahmanas, Vedic texts detailing rituals and the concept of Dharma. Its opening line is, athato dharma jignyasa (then, therefore, the enquiry into Dharma). According to some legends, Shankara bested Mandana Mishra, the greatest proponent of Mimamsa, in a debate once, to establish the validity of Advaita with the ritualists.

Dating this text with any degree of assurance is an absolute non-starter because of nil epigraphical evidence till the medieval period. All we know is that it was composed in the same time period as the Brahma Sutra, since one cross-references the other.

Three, the Bhagavad Gita, and by extension, the two Epics. Shankara interpreted this celestial song using the logic of Advaita to demonstrate that it is the epitome of Vedic thought.

Once again, certain schools of historiography have gone to great pains to try and peg the Gita to a time after the Buddha, all without evidence of course. Assumptions chase conjectures through hoops of linguistics and philology to emerge as fact on the stages of academia.

There is a central reason why so much futile effort is expended: the date of the Vedas has to be held to 1500 BCE. Only then can horse-riding Aryans move from the steppes of Central Asia to the subcontinent. Only then can a yawning gap be created between the Vedic age and the supposedly earlier, supposedly different-in-every-way, Harappan/ Sindhu-Saraswati era.

Only then can Videgha Madhava of the Satapatha Brahmana carry Agni eastwards from the Saraswati River, around 1000 BCE, clear the forests along the Gandak, and settle his steppe folk in the Gangetic Plains. Now, in a tearing rush, the civilization can take root, compose the Upanishads, give birth to kingdoms, dynasties, legends, and initiate a lengthy intellectual journey which leads some millennia later to Shankara and Advaita.

However, if Shankara can be dated to the 6th century BCE, this elaborately fabricated historiography goes for a toss. Instead, and to the horror of our Marxist brethren, the date of Agni’s eastward journey gets pushed back by a thousand years at least, to well before the date they set for the Rig Veda, and bang in the middle of the Harappan era.

What Aryan invasion or migration theory then? This is what happens when our history is written for us by others, and what will persist if we allow that nefarious process to continue blithely forth without rigorous, scholarly contestation.

But mindsets are rapidly changing. The old assumptions are being hotly questioned, on merit. New data and new research show that Sanskrit is older than the Indus Valley Civilization, and, that Pali had evolved as a separate language by 4000 years ago. The discovery of the Sinauli chariot is both a new chapter of our ancient history waiting to be written, and the rewriting of conventional historiography; and one which points towards a far older date for Vidhega Madhava’s eastward passage.

Thus, we see that there is nothing in Shankara’s works which contradict his dating to the 6th century BCE, nor historical evidence to either support or disprove a belief that Bimbisara, the Buddha, and Mahavira were his contemporaries. But if this is so, then it turns some preconceived notions on their heads.

Rather than someone who contested the metaphysical intricacies of Buddhism only when it was deep into terminal decline in the subcontinent, which is how Shankara is popularly portrayed in modern scholarship, it means that he could have been there at the start, when the proliferation of heterodox sects began.

A date of 6th century BCE actually makes a lot more sense than one of 8th to 9th CE, because the motivations become a lot clearer, for bringing Brahman and Dharma—in essence, knowledge and action—together under one philosophical roof, for reinforcing the supremacy of the Vedas, and, for logically establishing with clear deductions, the umbilical Vedantic linkages between the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita. It is all the philosophical protection Sanathana Dharma has ever needed to fend off the vagaries of history, and to preserve our way of life in our sacred land.

We may probably never know for sure which era Shankara lived in, but it feels good to imagine that a Malayalee sannyasi from Kaladi may have met and conversed with some great Biharis, in Sanskrit, in Uttar Pradesh, at a time of tremendous intellectual churn. – Swarajya, 25 February 2024

› Venu Gopal Narayanan is an independent upstream petroleum consultant who focuses on energy, geopolitics, current affairs and electoral arithmetic.

James Prinsep: The Englishman who mapped the Adi Vishwanath Temple in Kashi – Yudhajit Shankar Das

February 8, 2024February 27, 2024VOI

James Prinsep first served in Calcutta and then in Benaras for ten years. Prinsep’s stay in Varanasi—from 1820 to 1830—is what is of interest and importance against the backdrop of what is unfolding today. – Yudhajit Shankar Das

At a walking distance from Kolkata’s Eden Gardens is the Prinsep Ghat on the banks of the River Hooghly. One gets a close view of the Vidyasagar Setu and can take a boat ride on the Hooghly from Prinsep Ghat.

The ghat is named after James Prinsep, a British numismatist and archaeologist, who made significant contributions to India’s historiography. He came to India when he was 28 and was the youngest fellow of the British Asiatic Society.

It was Prinsep who deciphered the Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts and helped the world know about Emperor Ashoka’s reign. It was he who established that King Devanampriya Piyadasi, who is mentioned in several inscriptions from Sri Lanka to Afghanistan, was none other than Emperor Ashoka.

The ghat in Kolkata was named after Prinsep as a way to recognise his contributions after he passed away in London in 1840 at the young age of 41.

James Prinsep and his ‘Benares Illustrated’

James Prinsep first served in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and then in Benaras (now Varanasi) for ten years. Prinsep’s stay in Varanasi (from 1820 to 1830) is what is of interest and importance against the backdrop of what is unfolding now.

Prinsep built Varanasi’s underground sewage system, which is still operational, restored the Alamgir Mosque, built by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1669, and drew the city’s maps. He also brought out a book, Benares Illustrated, A Series of Drawings, in 1831.

That book and the map will be used as part of evidence by the Hindu side in the legal battle for the Gyanvapi complex, IndiaToday has been told.

In Benares Illustrated, James Prinsep used lithography to engrave every scene on paper and present information with evidence. Chapters and illustrations include Munikurnika Ghat, Bruhma Ghat, Procession of the Tazeeas and Hindoo Nach Girls.

Most importantly, James Prinsep, in Benares Illustrated, discussed the architecture of the old Vishweshwar Temple, and how the original place of worship was converted to the present Gyanvapi Mosque. Vishweshwar or Lord of the Universe is another name for Lord Shiva.

Prinsep on Auranzeb’s bigotry

In Benares Illustrated, Prinsep details how Aurangzeb’s men used the material from the destroyed Kashi Vishweshwar Temple to build the Gyanvapi Mosque.

“The bigotry of Aurungzeb did not allow many vestiges of this more ancient style to remain. In 1660, for some trifling resistance to the imposition of a capitation tax, he took occasion to demolish the principal Shiwalas, and constructed Musjids or mosques with the same materials and upon the same foundations, leaving portions of the ancient walls exposed here and there, as evidence of the indignity to which the Hindoo religion had been subjected,” Princep writes.

The Kashi Vishweshwar Temple is of immense significance in Hinduism as it is one of the 12 Jyotirlingas or temples where Lord Shiva is said to have appeared as a column of light. Lord Shiva is said to have created a water-producing spot there hence the name Gyanvapi (well of knowledge).

The Adi Vishveshwara Temple was destroyed by Qutb ud-Din Aibak, the general of Muhammad Ghori, in 1194 but was rebuilt. It was Aurangzeb who razed the Kashi Vishweshwar Temple again in 1669 and built the Gyanvapi Mosque using the same foundations and materials.

It is very similar to the use of materials from the destroyed 12th-century temple that was used to build the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. The Babri Masjid was constructed in 1528 by Babur’s commander, Mir Baqi.

Babur was the first Mughal ruler in India, while Aurangzeb was the last of that family to hold sway.

Prinsep’s 200-year-old map of Gyanvapi Temple

Prinsep then went on to reveal the old plan of the Vishweshwar Temple by drawing a map and marking on it how the Aurangzeb-built mosque stood on it.

But how could Prinsep, who came to Varanasi in the 19th century, come up with the map of the old Kashi Vishweshwar Temple, which was destroyed by Aurangzeb in the 17th Century, after a gap of about 160 years?

Prinsep explains in Benares Illustrated how he exactly managed to draw the map of the old Vishweshwar temple.

“Antiquarians will be well pleased that the Moosulmans, in their zeal for the triumph of their own religion, discovered a method of converting the original structure into a capacious Musjid, without destroying above one-half of its walls; so that not only the ground plan but the entire architectural elevation, may still be traced out,” he writes.

Shiva linga found in a well in Gyanvapi Mosque. According Muslims it is a wazukhana fountain (though there is no water connection and the top nozzle is added recently).

Women doing abhishek to lingam in the Adi Vishwanath Temple (Peter Mindy 1632).

Why a nation and its people must know their true history – Makkhan Lal

November 8, 2022November 8, 2022VOI

India History Cartoon

No country can become a great nation, a world guru and a world leader on borrowed ideas, borrowed cultures and borrowed systems. The greatness and leadership is built upon the solid foundation and the pride of their own past. – Dr. Makkhan Lal

History, history writing and history teaching have, indeed, become newsworthy not only in India but also in most other parts of the world. The reasons may be varied—construction of a national history curriculum in India, England and Wales, the design of national history standards in the US, the content of history textbooks in Japan, China, Korea, Pakistan, Israel, and Germany, the approach to invasion of Latin American countries by the Europeans, the development of new curricula in the successor states of the former USSR, or even the rewriting of history textbooks in Russia after the collapse of the former USSR. Issues of identities, heritage, and citizenship, all rooted in the past, have become the hot stuff of politics.

Similarly, an issue can be raised about the conquest of peaceful people belonging to Inca, Aztec and Maya civilisations by the gun-trotting Europeans. Whether the victory should be viewed as the discovery of a new world and new economic resources for Europe, as is generally viewed by European and North American historians, or it should be seen as the destruction of the independently developed three native civilisations by technologically more advanced nations that have an unending lust for looting others’ treasures and making other people subservient.

A South American historian may well say: “It may be a subject of celebrations for Europeans but for us it is a subject of mourning because just in a few years the Europeans destroyed our civilisation developed over several thousands of years!”

Why study history

Questions have often been raised that when there are so many problems and differences of opinions among historians why should we study history at all.

History is all about the past. In almost every country, city, town and village throughout the world, a large number of existing buildings were built in the past to meet the needs and aspirations of people, now dead. This is most obvious in existing temples, churches, mosques, fireplaces, houses, public buildings, and so on. The systems of governments, political ideas, religious beliefs, art, architecture, cultural practices, educational systems, customs and behaviours are all products of the past, recent or remote.

The past is all-pervasive which, indeed, means that we cannot escape from it. The past signifies what actually happened—events that have taken place, societies that have risen and fallen, ideas and institutions, eating habits, dressing habits, etc. History is precisely the study of this human past. The past is our heritage; we are part of it and the past is part of us in all aspects: Be it culture, behaviour, religious faith and practices, be it rituals, be it the tradition of political, social and economic systems. It is reflected in our day-to-day living.

History is also about roots. It provides societies and individuals with a dimension of longitudinal meaning over time which outlives the human life span. It connects us with our past. History also allows us to peep into the future by providing precedents for contemporary actions and forewarning against the repetition of past mistakes. From its sense of continuity, history offers the apparent form and purpose to the past, the present and the future. In the words of E.H. Carr: “The past is intelligible to us only in the light of the present, and we can fully understand the present only in the light of the past.” He further says that history is needed “to enable man to understand the society of the past and to increase his mastery over the society of the present.” There is a need for history. It has a deeper social value and meaning.

The study of history is not a luxury. It is a necessity. This necessity has been best summed up by Arthur Marwick. He writes: “Individuals, communities, societies could scarcely exist if all knowledge of the past is wiped out. As memory is to the individual, so history is to the community or the society. Without memory, individuals find great difficulty in relating to others, in finding their bearings, in taking intelligent decisions—they lose their sense of identity. A society without history would be in a similar condition. … A society without knowledge of its past would be like an individual without memory. … It is only through a sense of history that communities establish their identity, orientate themselves, understand their relationship to the past and to other communities and societies. Without history (knowledge of the past), we, and our communities, would be utterly adrift on an endless and featureless sea of time.”

We all move ahead through the past of our own cultures, own civilisations, and values and it is this accumulation of ideas and experience, transmitted through education and sheer daily living that gives our thoughts meaning and the patterns and purpose of our actions. It is not that we live in the past but we are defined by it, and so the success of even the most forward-looking developments must inevitably rest on their relation to the ideas and practices of the society they are meant to serve. Science may forget its own history, but a society cannot.

History is neither a simple chronicle of the past nor a list of rulers and kings and the narratives of their rules. The past is not simply a collection of distinct ages or a hotchpotch of facts. History is an extremely complex discipline. Another point that needs to be emphasised is that a historian’s job is not that of a cook who prepares dishes as per the liking of his customers and adds spices accordingly. It is not the job of a historian to write politically correct history. His obligation is to write factually correct history.

It will be helpful if all historians remember what Sir Jadunath Sarkar wrote about the job of a historian: “I would not care whether the truth is pleasant or unpleasant, and in consonance with, or opposed to, current views. I would not mind in the least whether the truth is, or is not, a blow to the glory of my country. If necessary, I shall bear in patience the ridicule and slander of friends and society for the sake of preaching the truth. But still, I shall seek truth, understand truth, and accept the truth. This should be the firm resolve of a historian.”

This brief discussion on the nature of history as an academic discipline should make it abundantly clear that history is neither a static discipline nor can the writings on and of history be put into a set mould. Each generation views and writes about the past in the light of its own experience. Therefore, all interpretations and explanations are and must be as temporary and provisional as the descriptions. But in all these endeavours the sanctity of truth and facts should not be forgotten. Unanimity or one’s efforts to make others surrender is a recognisable characteristic of dictatorships, and not that of a free state. Open and continuing discussions and debates are the essence and strength of history and, for that matter, a great strength of an open society of an intellectually vibrant nation.

And now a word of caution! There is a tendency among historians to act as judges and give moral sermons. Historians must write and rewrite history. They are not supposed to be moral judges. Benedetto Crose has rightly said: “Those, who on the plea of narrating history, bustle about as judges, condemning here and giving absolution there, because they think that this is the office of history … are generally recognised as devoid of historical sense.”

Problems in history writing

Historians recognise that they are all culturally and socially influenced in their endeavour to write history but make all efforts to deny that their work is culturally, or socially, determined or constructed. As has been discussed briefly in the Introduction, EH Carr in chapter two of his book What is History provides a useful summary on this aspect of history writing. He quotes Donne Devotion that society and individuals are inseparable. “No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” Like any other individual, a historian too is a social phenomenon, both the product and the conscious and unconscious spokesperson of the society to which he belongs. It is in this capacity that he approaches the facts of the historical past.

Therefore, we must not forget that we cannot fully understand or appreciate the work of a historian unless we have first grasped the standpoint from which he himself approaches it, and that standpoint is itself rooted in social and historical background. It is, therefore, essential that before we study history, we must study the historian and study his historical and social environment. When some historians claim that they are writing scientific history, or that only their version of history is correct, one must conclude immediately that the historians are not only being untruthful but are also hiding their political agenda under the garb of a “scientific” history. There exists nothing like scientific history. On similar lines, Benedetto Croce also spoke with his characteristic bluntness:

“The historian must have a point of view, … an intimate personal conviction regarding the conception of the facts which he has undertaken to relate. … It suffices to read any book of history to discover at once the point of view of the author if he is a historian worthy of the name and knows his own business. … Absolutely historical historians do not and cannot exist. Can it be said that Thucydidus and Polybius, Livy and Tacitus, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, Giannone and Voltaire were without morals and political views; and in our own time, Guizot or Thiers, Macaulay or Balbo, Renke or Mommson? … If the historian is to escape from this inevitable necessity of taking sides, he must become a political and scientific eunuch; and history is not the business of eunuchs. … Historians who profess to wish to interrogate the facts without adding anything of their own, are not to be believed.”

The problem with Marxist historiography and its relationship with history is much more curious. For Marx and his followers, i.e. Marxist historians, the problem of history is not just understanding “what happened”, “how it happened” and “why it happened”. For them, the problem is “how to change the world” by the use of history. At the core of this view lie two fundamental beliefs. Firstly, the Marxists believe in five universal stages of history.

These five stages are:

Primitive Communism
Slavery
Feudalism
Capitalism
Communism

Secondly, they believe that the society we inhabit is a bad bourgeois society and, fortunately, this society is in a state of crisis. The good society which lies just around the corner can be easily attained if only “we” work systematically to destroy the language, the value, the culture, the ideology of this “bourgeois” society. This necessitates a massive, radical left-wing political programme, and everything the historians write, every criticism they make, is determined by that overriding objective. In this, the post-modernists are exceptions. They are fully convinced of the utterly evil nature of the “bourgeois” society but have lost all hope of change and have fallen back into destructive nihilism. They assert that the only way to achieve Marxism is to destroy society if it cannot be changed.

Marxist historians have failed to understand and appreciate the fact that the society we live in has evolved through a complex historical process, very different from the Marxist formula of the rise of feudalism over slavery and bourgeoisie overthrowing the feudal aristocracy. It is highly complex with respect to the distribution of power, authority, and influence. Just as it was not formed by the simple overthrow of aristocracy by the bourgeoisie, so, in its contemporary form, it does not consist simply of a bourgeois ruling class and a proletariat. The idea that we are now in the final period of the late-capitalist crisis is simply absurd. Marxists have been looking forward to the final capitalistic collapse for over a century—in 1848, 1866, 1918, 1946, 1963 and 1968, to mention just a few dates, but as fate would have it, they are themselves doomed forever.

Statements like “The pursuit of history is, whether practitioners choose to acknowledge it or not, a political occupation,” indeed, is not only exceptional but also far-fetched. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that the experience of colonisation around the world has shown that domination by a more powerful culture—which defines its reality in quite different ways—either totally destroys, or at least drives, the less powerful ones into a subservient role. What was considered culturally “valid” can be rendered “invalid”, and the politically weaker ones are somehow required to modify their reality to fit within the constraints of the new codes.

We, as historians, must learn to recognise: “The past is perceived in different ways by different cultures. Methods of interpreting, recording, managing and protecting the past also differ between cultures. … The way people define their existence, their world view and their creation stories, and how they value, interpret, manage and transmit their past will continue to be handed on from generation to generation.”

Conclusions

Let us remember that no country can become a great nation, a world guru and a world leader on borrowed ideas, borrowed cultures and borrowed systems. The greatness and leaderships are built upon the solid foundations and the pride of the past; deeper the foundations, taller are the superstructures. Even globalisation is built upon this foundation. Many countries are part of globalisation on a much larger scale than India without abandoning their history, culture and heritage. It is on this basis they are able to assert their authority and influence the world order. – Firstpost, 6 January 2022

› Prof. Dr. Makkhan Lal is a historian and the founder director of the Delhi Institute of Heritage Research and Management.

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James Prinsep: The Englishman who mapped the Adi Vishwanath Temple in Kashi – Yudhajit Shankar Das

Why a nation and its people must know their true history – Makkhan Lal

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