The Whitewashing of History, by Nithin Sridhar
The history of India has been whitewashed and distorted, first by European rulers, and after independence by eminent historians of India and their supporters the Leftists, Seculars and self-claimed Progressives of India to meet their own ends. They have painted the pre-Islamic invasion period as a Dark Age and have glorified the Islamic period to be very peaceful and prosperous.
Ram Swarup says, “Marxists have taken to rewriting Indian history on a large scale and it has meant its systematic falsification. They have a dogmatic view of history and for them the use of any history is to prove their dogma. Their very approach is hurtful to truth…. The Marxists’ contempt for India, particularly the India of religion, culture and philosophy, is deep and theoretically fortified. It exceeds the contempt ever shown by the most die-hard imperialists.”1 Some of the common claims of these eminent historians are:
1] The Aryan Invasion Theory is true2
2] Large scale destruction of Buddhists and Jain temples was done by Hindus in pre-Islamic India.3
3] The Muslim rulers were religiously tolerant and Islamic rule was prosperous. The eminent historians deny the destruction of Hindu temples or the killing of Hindus at the hands of Muslim rulers. They also deny the religious motive behind the killing of Hindus at the hands of Muslim rulers.4
Let us examine the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT).
The AIT was introduced to justify the presence of the British among their Aryan cousins in India as being merely the second wave of Aryan settlement there. It supported the British view of India as merely a geographical region without historical unity, a legitimate prey for any invader capable of imposing himself. It provided the master illustration to the rising racialist worldview: “The dynamic whites entered the land of the indolent dark natives and established their dominance and imparted their language to the natives; they established the caste system to preserve their racial separateness; some miscegenation with the natives took place anyway, making the Indian Aryans darker than their European cousins and correspondingly less intelligent; hence, for their own benefit they were susceptible to an uplifting intervention by a new wave of purer Aryan colonizers.”5
Dr. Koenraad Elst, in “The Vedic Evidence,”6 after examining the Vedic corpus for any evidence of Aryan invasion theory proposed by the Marxist school, concludes, “The status question is still, more than ever, that the Vedic corpus provides no reference to an immigration of the so-called Vedic Aryans from Central Asia….” He further provides astronomical and literary evidence against the AIT in his other essays.
Jim Shaffer in “The Indo-Aryan Invasions: Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality,” wrote, “Current archaeological data do not support the existence of an Indo-Aryan or European invasion into South Asia any time in the pre- or protohistoric periods. Instead, it is possible to document archaeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous cultural developments from prehistoric to historic periods…”7 Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, a U.S. expert who has extensively studied such skeletal remains, observes, “Biological anthropologists remain unable to lend support to any of the theories concerning an Aryan biological or demographic entity.”8
David Frawley, while commenting on the political and social ramifications, asserts, “First it served to divide India into a northern Aryan and southern Dravidian culture which were made hostile to each other… Second, it gave the British an excuse for their conquest of India. They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago. This same justification could be used by the Muslims or any other invaders of India. Third, it served to make Vedic culture later than and possibly derived from the Middle Eastern… Fourth, it allowed the sciences of India to be given a Greek basis… Fifth, it gave the Marxists a good basis for projecting their class struggle model of society on to India, with the invading Brahmins oppressing the indigenous Shudras (lower castes).” He further concludes, “In short, the compelling reasons for the Aryan invasion theory were neither literary nor archeological but political and religious, that is to say, not scholarship but prejudice.”9
Archaeological evidence in no way contradicts Indian tradition, rather it broadly agrees with it (except for its chronology). Whether from North or South India, tradition never mentioned anything remotely resembling an Aryan invasion into India. Sanskrit scriptures make it clear that they regard the Vedic homeland to be the Saptasindhu, which is precisely the core of the Harappan territory. As for the Sangam tradition, it is equally silent about any northern origin of the Tamil people. These show that AIT which Marxists have been propagating is based on assumptions and pre-conceived notion, rather than hard evidences.
About the alleged destruction of Buddhist and Jain temples by Hindus, Sita Ram Goel observes,10 “It is intriguing indeed that whenever archaeological evidence points towards a mosque as standing on the site of a Hindu temple, our Marxist professors start seeing a Buddhist monastery buried underneath. They also invent some Saiva king as destroying Buddhist and Jain shrines whenever the large-scale destruction of Hindu temples by Islamic invaders is mentioned. They never mention the destruction of big Buddhist and Jain complexes which dotted the length and breadth of India, Khurasan, and Sinkiang on the eve of the Islamic invasion, as testified by Hüen Tsang.” He asks the historians to produce epigraphic and literary evidences to suggest the destruction of Buddhists and Jain places by Hindus, the names and places of Hindu monuments which stand on the sites occupied earlier by Buddhist or Jain monuments. Yet, till today no concrete evidence has been given by historians to substantiate their claim.
But, there is enough evidence to show that Buddhist and Jain temples and monasteries at Bukhara, Samarqand, Khotan, Balkh, Bamian, Kabul, Ghazni, Qandhar, Begram, Jalalabad, Peshawar, Charsadda, Ohind, Taxila, Multan, Mirpurkhas, Nagar-Parkar, Sialkot, Srinagar, Jalandhar, Jagadhari, Sugh, Tobra, Agroha, Delhi, Mathura, Hastinapur, Kanauj, Sravasti, Ayodhya, Varanasi, Sarnath, Nalanda, Vikramasila, Vaishali, Rajgir, Odantapuri, Bharhut, Champa, Paharpur, Jagaddal, Jajnagar, Nagarjunikonda, Amravati, Kanchi, Dwarasamudra, Devagiri, Bharuch, Valabhi, Girnar, Khambhat Patan, Jalor, Chandravati, Bhinmal, Didwana, Nagaur, Osian, Ajmer, Bairat, Gwalior, Chanderi, Mandu, Dhar etc were destroyed by the sword of Islam.11
It should be noted that though Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jain sects and sub-sects had heated discussions among themselves, and used even strong language for their adversaries, the occasions when they exchanged physical blows were few and far between. The recent spurt of accusations that Hindus were bigots and vandals like Christians and Muslims seems to be an after-thought. Apologists, who find it impossible to whitewash Christianity and Islam, are out to redress the balance by blackening Hinduism.
The Islamic conquest has been described as the “Bloodiest,”12 “monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions,”13 as well as “bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.”14
Irfan Husain in his article “Demons from the Past” observes, “While historical events should be judged in the context of their times, it cannot be denied that even in that bloody period of history, no mercy was shown to the Hindus unfortunate enough to be in the path of either the Arab conquerors of Sindh and south Punjab, or the Central Asians who swept in from Afghanistan…The Muslim heroes who figure larger than life in our history books committed some dreadful crimes. Mahmud of Ghazni, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, Balban, Mohammed bin Qasim, and Sultan Mohammad Tughlak, all have blood-stained hands that the passage of years has not cleansed..Seen through Hindu eyes, the Muslim invasion of their homeland was an unmitigated disaster. Their temples were razed, their idols smashed, their women raped, their men killed or taken slaves. When Mahmud of Ghazni entered Somnath on one of his annual raids, he slaughtered all 50,000 inhabitants. Aibak killed and enslaved hundreds of thousands. The list of horrors is long and painful. These conquerors justified their deeds by claiming it was their religious duty to smite non-believers. Cloaking themselves in the banner of Islam, they claimed they were fighting for their faith when, in reality, they were indulging in straightforward slaughter and pillage…”
Dr. Koenraad Elst, while summarizing the Hindu losses at the hands of Muslim invaders, concludes,15 “There is no official estimate of the total death toll of Hindus at the hands of Islam. A first glance at important testimonies by Muslim chroniclers suggests that over 13 centuries and a territory as vast as the Subcontinent, Muslim Holy Warriors easily killed more Hindus than the 6 million of the Holocaust. Ferishtha lists several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India (1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a minimum goal whenever they felt like “punishing” the Hindus; and they were only a third-rank provincial dynasty. The biggest slaughters took place during the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi (ca. 1000 CE); during the actual conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori and his lieutenants (1192 ff.); and under the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The Moghuls (1526-1857), even Babar and Aurangzeb, were fairly restrained tyrants by comparison. Prof. K.S. Lal once estimated that the Indian population declined by 50 million under the Sultanate, but that would be hard to substantiate; research into the magnitude of the damage Islam did to India is yet to start in right earnest.”
From Mohamud Quasim to Tipu Sultan, every Mohammedan invader killed, converted, took as slave or put Jiziya on Hindus. Entire cities were burnt down and the populations massacred, with hundreds of thousands killed in every campaign, and similar numbers deported as slaves. While describing the conquest of Kanauj, Utbi, the secretary and chronicler of Mahmud Gahzni, sums up the situation thus: “The Sultan[Ghazni] levelled to the ground every fort, and the inhabitants of them either accepted Islam, or took up arms against him. In short, those who submitted were also converted to Islam. In Baran (Bulandshahr) alone 10,000 persons were converted including the Raja”. The conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000 was followed by the annihilation of the Hindu population; the region is still called the Hindu Kush, i.e. Hindu slaughter. The Bahmani sultans (1347-1480) in central India made it a rule to kill 100,000 captives in a single day, and many more on other occasions. The conquest of the Vijayanagar empire in 1564 left the capital plus large areas of Karnataka depopulated.
About the conversion of Hindus to Islam, K.S.Lal observes, “The process of their conversion was hurried. All of a sudden the invader appeared in a city or a region, and in the midst of loot and murder, a dazed, shocked and enslaved people were given the choice between Islam and death. Those who were converted were deprived of their scalp-lock or choti and, if they happened to be caste people, also their sacred thread. Some were also circumcised. Their names were changed, although some might have retained their old names with new affixes. They were taught to recite the kalima and learnt to say the prescribed prayers”.16
When Mahmud Ghaznavi attacked Waihind in 1001-02, he took 500,000 persons of both sexes as captive [This figure is given by Abu Nasr Muhammad Utbi, the secretary and chronicler of Mahmud Gahzni]. Next year from Thanesar, according to Farishtah, the Muhammadan army brought to Ghaznin 200,000 captives [Tarikh-i-Farishtah, I, 28]. When Mahmud returned to Ghazni in 1019, the booty was found to consist of (besides huge wealth) 53,000 captives. The Tarikh-i-Alfi adds that the fifth share due to the Saiyyads was 150,000 slaves, therefore the total number of captives comes to 750,000. In 1195, when Raja Bhim was attacked by Aibak, 20,000 slaves were captured, and 50,000 at Kalinjar in 1202. Sultan Alauddin Khalji had 50,000 slave boys in his personal service and 70,000 slaves who worked continuously on his buildings. In the words of Wassaf, the Muslim army in the sack of Somnath took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens, amounting to 20,000, and children of both sexes. Iltutmish, Muhammad Tughlaq and Firoz Tughlaq sent gifts of slaves to Khalifas outside India. To the Chinese emperor Muhammad Tughlaq sent, besides other presents, 100 Hindu slaves, 100 slave girls, accomplished in song and dance and another 15 young slaves. Firoz Tughlaq collected 180,000 slaves.17
About the destruction of Hindu Temples, Sita Ram Goel writes -“Mahmûd of Ghazni robbed and burnt down 1,000 temples at Mathura, and 10,000 in and around Kanauj. One of his successors, Ibrãhîm, demolished 1,000 temples each in Ganga-Yamuna Doab and Malwa. Muhammad Ghûrî destroyed another 1,000 at Varanasi. Qutbu’d-Dîn Aibak employed elephants for pulling down 1,000 temples in Delhi. “Alî I ‘Ãdil Shãh of Bijapur destroyed 200 to 300 temples in Karnataka. A sufi, Qãyim Shãh, destroyed 12 temples at Tiruchirapalli. Such exact or approximate counts, however, are available only in a few cases. Most of the time we are informed that “many strong temples which would have remained unshaken even by the trumpets blown on the Day of Judgment, were levelled with the ground when swept by the wind of Islãm”.18
Some of the Temples converted into Mosques are:19
Epigraphic evidences:
1. Quwwat al-Islam Masjid, Qutb Minar, Delhi by Qutbud-Din Aibak in 1192 A.D.
2. Masjid at Manvi in the Raichur District of Karnataka, Firuz Shah Bahmani, 1406-07 A.D
3. Jami Masjid at Malan, Palanpur Taluka, Banaskantha District of Gujarat: ?The Jami Masjid was built? by Khan-I-Azam Ulugh Khan, The date of construction is mentioned as 1462 A.D. in the reign of Mahmud Shah I (Begada) of Gujarat.
4. Hammam Darwaza Masjid at Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh, Its chronogram yields the year 1567 A.D. in the reign of Akbar, the Great Mughal
5. Jami Masjid at Ghoda in the Poona District of Maharashtra, The inscription is dated 1586 A.D. when the Poona region was ruled by the Nizam Shahi sultans of Ahmadnagar
6. Gachinala Masjid at Cumbum in the Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh, The date of construction is mentioned as 1729-30 A.D. in the reign of the Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah.
Literary evidences:
7. Jhain[name of the place], Jalalud-Din Firuz Khalji went to the place and ordered destruction of temples, mentioned in Miftah-ul-Futuh.
8. Devagiri, Alaud-Din Khalji destroyed the temples of the idolaters, mentioned in Miftah-ul-Futuh.
9. Somanath, Ulugh Khan, mentioned in Tarikh-i-Alai
10. Delhi, , Alaud-Din Khalji , Tarikh-i-Alai
11. Ranthambhor, mentioned in Tarikh-i-Alai
12. Brahmastpuri (Chidambaram), Malik Kafur, Tarikh-i-Alai
13. Madura, mentioned in Tarikh-i-Alai
14. Fatan: (Pattan), mentioned in Ashiqa
15. Malabar: (Parts of South India), Tarikh-i-Alai
16 The Mosque at Jaunpur. This was built by Sultan Ibrahim Sharqi
17 The Mosque at Qanauj it was built by Ibrahim Sharqi
18 Jami (Masjid) at Etawah. it is one of the monuments of the Sharqi Sultans
19 Babri Masjid at Ayodhya . This mosque was constructed by Babar at Ayodhya
20 Mosques of Alamgir (Aurangzeb)
According to the reports of Archeological survey of India:
21 Tordi (Rajasthan)- early or middle part of the 15th century
22 Naraina (Rajasthan)- The mosque appears to have been built when Mujahid Khan, son of Shams Khan, took possession of Naraina in 1436 A.D
23 Chatsu (Rajasthan)- At Chatsu there is a Muhammadan tomb erected on the eastern embankment of the Golerava tank. The tomb which is known as Gurg Ali Shah’s chhatri is built out of the spoils of Hindu buildings. The inscription mention saint Gurg Ali (wolf of Ali) died a martyr on the first of Ramzan in 979 A.H. corresponding to Thursday, the 17th January, 1572 A.D.
24 SaheTh-MaheTh (Uttar Pradesh)
25 Sarnath (Uttar Pradesh)- the inscriptions found there extending to the twelfth century A.D
26 Vaishali (Bihar)
27 Gaur and Pandua (Bengal)- The oldest and the best known building at Gaur and Pandua is the Ãdîna Masjid at Pandua built by Sikandar Shãh, the son of Ilyãs Shãh. The date of its inscription may be read as either 776 or 770, which corresponds with 1374 or 1369 A.D? The materials employed consisted largely of the spoils of Hindu temples and many of the carvings from the temples have been used as facings of doors, arches and pillars
28 Devikot (Bengal)- The Dargah of Sultan Pir, The Dargah of Shah Ata are the Muhammadan shrines built on the site of an old Hindu temple
29 Tribeni (Bengal)
This whitewashing of history, the policy of “Suppresio Veri, Suggestio Falsi” followed by ‘eminent historians’ of India is not only dangerous to national integration but also the future of the entire nation. It is time that the self interests are kept aside and the facts of history is made known to the masses.
Footnotes:
1 Indian Express, January 15, 1989, quoted in book “Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 1” by Sita Ram Goel
2 For example, JNU historian Romilla Thapar.[Article titled “Romila Thapar Defends the Aryan Invasion Theory!” by Vishal Agarwal published here- http://www.india-forum.com/articles/60/1 ]
3 In letter published in The Times of India dated October 2, 1986, Romilla Thapar had stated that handing over of Sri Rama’s and Sri Krishna’s birthplaces to the Hindus, and of disused mosques to the Muslims raises the question of the limits to the logic of restoration of religious sites. How far back do we go? Can we push this to the restoration of Buddhist and Jain monuments destroyed by Hindus? Or of the pre-Hindu animist shrines? [ Quoted in book- Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 The Islamic Evidence by Sita Ram Goel]
4 In his book Medival India [NCERT 2000], Satish Chandra writes- “The raid into India (by Timur) was a plundering raid, and its motive was to seize the wealth accumulated by the sultans of Delhi over the last 200 years… Timur then entered Delhi and sacked it without mercy, large number of people, both Hindu and Muslim, as well as women and children losing their lives.”, but Timur repeatedly states in his memoirs, the Tuzuk-i-Timuri, that he had a two-fold objective in invading Hindustan. “The first was to war with the infidels,” and thereby acquire, “some claim to reward in the life to come.” The second motive was “that the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth and valuables of the infidels.” He further says “Excepting the quarter of the saiyids, the ulema and other Musulmans, the whole city was sacked.”
5 Koenraad Elst, in “The Politics of the Aryan Invasion Debate”
6 “The Vedic Evidence - The Vedic Corpus Provides no Evidence for the so-called Aryan Invasion of India” by Koenraad Elst
7 Jim G. Shaffer, “The Indo-Aryan Invasions : Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality,” in Michel Danino “The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Question”
8 Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from
South Asia ?” in Michel Danino “The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Question”
9 David Frawley, in “Myth of Aryan Invasion Theory of India”
10 Sita ram Goel, Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2-the Islamic Evidence
11 Sita ram Goel, Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 -the Islamic Evidence
12 Will Durant in “Story of Civilization” observes- “The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.”
13 “Histoire de l’ Inde” - By Alain Danielou; he notes- “”From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of ‘a holy war’ of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races.” Mahmoud Ghazni, continues Danielou, “was an early example of Muslim ruthlessness, burning in 1018 of the temples of Mathura, razing Kanauj to the ground and destroying the famous temple of Somnath, sacred to all Hindus. His successors were as ruthless as Ghazni: 103 temples in the holy city of Benaras were razed to the ground, its marvelous temples destroyed, its magnificent palaces wrecked.” Indeed, the Muslim policy vis a vis India, concludes Danielou, seems to have been a conscious systematic destruction of everything that was beautiful, holy, refined.”
14 Francois Gautier
15 Dr. Koenraad Elst in “Was There an Islamic “Genocide” of Hindus?”
16 K.S. Lal in “Indian Muslims Who Are They”
17 K.S. Lal in “Muslim Slave System in Medieval India”
18 Sita Ram Goel, in “Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 2 The Islamic Evidence”
19 It is taken from the large list of places documented by Sita Ram Goel in his magnum Opus “Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them Vol. 1- The Preliminary Survey”
The author of this article, Nithin Sridhar, is studying civil engineering in Mysore, India. You can contact him at nkgrock@yahoo.co.in.
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May 1st, 2008 18:22
I congratulat Nithin Sridhar on the rxcellence of his article and in particular, for his clear explanation that the Aryan Invasion Theory is false and was fabricated by the British for propagandisic reasons. I wish howver that Sridhar had mentioned a masterly book - “RETURN OF THE ARYANS” by Bhagwan Gidwani, published by Penguin Books India, which clearly shows that Aryans originated from India - and no where else - and how these Aryans travelled to countries in West Asia and Europe, including, Iran, Turkey, Lithuania, Finland, Russia, Swede, Nirway, Denmark, Greece, Italy and Germany, and how after long periods of stay there, many of these Aryans retuned to their hoetown abd hertage of BHARAT VARSHA (INDIAN SUBCONTINENT) This book is written the form of a novel but is based on extensive research. See also the website which summarises under ‘Projects’ some of the Themes in “RETURN OF THE ARYANS”. Clearly, the book shows the motivation of these Aryans of BHARAT VARSHA and their adventures, exploits and successes in those distant countries
May 1st, 2008 18:51
In my response to the excelent article “The Whitewashing of History”, by Nithin Sridhar, i had also said, as follows:
“See also the website which summarises under ‘Projects’ some of the Themes in “RETURN OF THE ARYANS”.
I am sorry I had not given the identification of the wsbsite which gives some of the Themes in “RETURN OF THE ARYANS”. Kindly note, the website is . Please click on the ‘Projects’ and a list of Themes from “RETURN OF THE ARYANS” will appear. You can then click the Theme that you wish to see.
Once again, my congratulations on the excellence of the Article, “The Whitewashing of History”, by Nithin Sridhar
May 1st, 2008 21:32
Nithin Sridhar’s article-The Whitewashing of History- is honest and objective. I fully agree that the Aryan Invasion Theory is a hoax and I am grateful to Tattava for bringing such matters out in the open so that the falsehoods and distortions in our history are clearly named as such. I fully agree with Nithin Sridhar’s observation that “It is time that the self interests are kept aside and the facts of history made known to the masses”. The conclusion drawn by David Frawley is absolutely correct that “In short, the compelling reasons for the Aryan invasion theory were neither literary nor archeological but political and religious, that is to say, not scholarship but prejudice.”
It is necessary also to read and learn from the very iluminating writing of Koenraad Elst who conclusively shows that there is no Evidence for the so-called Aryan Invasion of India” .
It is necessary also to refer to Bhagwan S. Gidwani’s book , Return of the Aryans which clearly demonstrates with thousands of clues and evidence that the Aryans of Sanatan Dharma (the root of Hinduism) emanated from India and traveled from India to foreign lands not only of West Asia and Europe in 5,000 but even to other countries to the East such as Mingolia, China, Indonesia etc. It is true that a large number of foreigners who joined the Aryans locally came with them when Aryans finally returned to India but is that an not ‘invasion’? No, they came with goodwill and friendship.
The book, Return of the Aryans, is written in the form of a story to dramatise the birth and beginnings of the roots of Hinduism at the dawn of civilization in 8,000 BCE, and the origin of the Aryans in India in 5,000 BCE and is described as a ‘novel’. YET it is based on solid research. I have come across even many Hindus even who have said that since the book is not based on Vedas or historical Hindu epics or literature, it cannot be taken seriously BUT they forget the fact that Vedas were written in or after 4,000 BCE and all Hindu epics and iterature came thereafter while Return of the Aryans deals with period of 8,000 BCE to 5,000 BCE, which may be described as a pre-Vedic age which itself must be regarded as a somewhat settled society to have given birth to the Vedic Age in which the Hindu & Aryan literature blossomed. Remember, thre was no witten language in the period of 8,000 BCE to 5,000 BCE and the book, Return of the Aryans, bases itself on oral traditions and memory songs that possibly survive and therefore the author of the book, with due honesty, himself gives it the lable of Fiction, choosing to write it in story form or a novel. Unfortunatly, there exists no book other than the Return of the Aryans which writes about the PreVedic times of India - neither by an Indian author nor by even a foreign author. Oral traditions are themselves regarded as a foundation of history everywhere but our people sometimes become dogmatic, coming under the influence of foreign dogma, and they try to tell us that what is NOT written in a certain Religious book or books CANNOT be true and therefore they close their minds to all other evidence.
In closing, i again refer to Nithin Sridhar’s observation that the facts of history must be made known to all and therefore I request Editor Tattava to kindly consider inviting and requesting the emient personalities like Koenraad Elst and David Frawley to write articles for Tattava so that the theory of Aryan Invasion of India is laid to rest as false and propagadistic .These are writers from whom many draw inspiration and their contribution will be truly worthwhile.
May 1st, 2008 22:38
Nithin Sridhar’s article-The Whitewashing of History- is impressive. Equally, I find the comments by Jagjit Mirchand and Bhowmick Narayan very useful.
I would wholeheartedly agree with the suggestion that Koenraad Elst and David Frawley may be requested for updated articles for Tattava so that the theory of Aryan Invasion of India is understood and analysed.
As far as Bhagwan Gidwani’s book Return of the Aryans is concerned, the author called it a novel because he said in his preface that he invented the dialogues in order to tell the story of the drama of the roots of our civilization otherwse, as I see it, the story is well-researched has the air of plausibility apart from being a very enjoyable book to read - which is successful in India and even more abroad and is being translated in French. But frankly, the jury is still out in my mind about the Aryans having originated in India only or was it a mass migration and movement from many parts of the world at about the same time?
Tattava can do much to have all these matters brought to light. They are most important matters as they relate to roots of our society, religion and civilization.
May 2nd, 2008 02:47
Very nice article by Nithin Sridhar with nice quotations from many writers to show how faulty is the Aryan Invasion Theory of India. But the writer who totally demolishes the Aryan Invasion Theory of India is Bhagwan S. Gidwani - see his book ‘Return of the Aryans. With Gidwani’s theory that Aryans were actually Indians and they are the ones who traveled all over the then known world, in search of th Land of the Pure, makes the Aryan Invasion Theory of India, absolutely ridiculous. Is Gidwani’s theory of foreign travel by Aryans of India, correct? I don’t know for certain but his book makes a fine- even beautiful - reading and the case he makes for Aryans traveling out of India quite convincing. Also what it proves to the hilt is that the Aryan Invasion Theory of India is utterly and hopelessly wrong and ridiculous.
May 2nd, 2008 08:56
Great info - but - how are we making sure this gets passed onto our children or to the common man in India ? Scholarly treaties, novels or articles are not read by the masses and we need to make sure this info gets to the masses. What is the proposal for that ? Are we going to make sure the education system in India and abroad takes note of these findings and research ? If so, how ?
We continue to shout in the cyber space, but, in the schools and universities around the world - including India, none of this matters. They are still sticking to the old books. What are the plans to change them ?
Sadly, our religious leaders are not concerned with this research or spreading this info. Our politicians are definitely not interested as there are no votes in this (Hindus vote bank does not exist for them !!!!). Our educationalists are not interested as they don’t want to have to re-read and re-educate themselves, besides, they are brought up on old prejudices and are unwilling to change it. Saddest of all, our masses are not interested. They do not care about anything beyond the next bollywood release and cricket score. To them our ruined temples and ruined histories are of no consequence at all.
Until we start to educate the new generation and do so on a wide scale, this info will be limited to the elite and will not help us lift our country, culture or religion out of the mire its in at present. We have to do this in India and outside India. Don’t wait for the gov or religious bodies to do this, I propose we do this ourselves. We are happy to send our children to tennis and piano lessons, we should also send them to Indian culture lessons.
If need be, we have to start these lessons ourselves and use the research on-line to educate our children. Having tried different institutions, I eventually started my own classes in London to teach children of my own friends and family. We can’t wait for others. We have to do this for ourselves.
May 2nd, 2008 20:08
I appreciate what Bhagwat Shah says. His views deserve respect, consideration and action. We are sadly neglecting the cultural enlightement of our youngsters and of the common man in India.. I hope Tattava will kindly give consideration to the views of Bhagwat Shah and take action to the extent it can. Tattava, as I see it, has eminent and highly educated editorial team which can do much to encourage all, including Education authorities to disseminate correct information about India and its cultural past.
Bhagwat Shah is correct that our religious leaders, politiciansand educationists are unconcerned. But I do not blame the masses so much. They have simply been let down by their leaders - religious and political.
I also agree to some extent with Mirchand, in the comments as above, when he says that “our people sometimes become dogmatic, coming under the influence of foreign dogma, and they try to tell us that what is NOT written in a certain Religious book or books CANNOT be true and therefore they close their minds to all other evidence”. I recall one instance where a foremost Hindu Magazine refused to publish information about “Return of the Aryans” on the ground that the book is marked ‘fiction’ and the information there is not in Vedic literature. But as corrctly pointed out by others, the book is about an era much prior to Vedas and the author clearly has researched his material though to present it in story form with invented dialogues for a film or TV Sscript, he has been honest enough to mark the book as ‘Fiction’. People of dogma - Christian, Muslims, Jews, and others - happily quote from novel and other literature to glorify the cultural heritage of their own people, but our Hindu preachers act with dogma and put on a ‘holier than thou’ attitude to remain aloof from such great literature. I, for one, whenever anyone talks of Aryan Invasion Theory of India thrust on to them the thesis in “Return of the Aryans” that Aryans originated in India and civilized to an extent many regions and countries in their extensive travels abroad.
Be that as it may, I repeat that the comments of Bhagwat Shah should be considered by all and in particular by the TATTAVA editorial team and there should be focus on bringing matters of cultural awareness to all.
May 5th, 2008 02:16
We fully subscribe to the view that Gidwani’s Return of the Aryans gives a well-deserved body blow to the Aryan Invasion Theory of India and clearly shows how ridiculous and false that Theory is.The Return of Aryans goes ahead to show that the people of Bharat Varsha were the original Aryans ad they traveled to far countries in Asia and Europe.
For the rest, one has to agree with fine article by Nithin Sridhar and very sensible response by Bhagwat Shah.
May 5th, 2008 18:18
Bhagwat Shah is right. Religious leaders and writers have certainly let down India, Hinduism and its cultural awakening. The Internet has given birth to so many Hindu organizations to place their ever-growing website on it. But what is the value of those websites? They write in an idiom and style which cannot appeal to the modern day youth or the masses. In short they write for themselves or for those who are already fully and wholly committed to the Hindu cause. There is nothing in them to reach out and have a popular appeal. Nothing fresh except the Sanskritized rehash of old literature made even more obscure by difficult phrases and complex language with the object of showing how learned and educated they themselves personally are. Their object seems to be to draw attention to their own personal learning rather that to meet the needs of others for enlightenment.
Hinduism is a great religion. But when Religious leaders in their websites take it out of the popular field, they do grave harm to it. What we have to have is popular appeal – TV, Films, Dramas and Novels. For instance, the TV on Ramayana and Mahabharta has done more for the popular understanding of Hinduism than all the Hindu websites put together. Similarly, the novel Return of the Aryans by Gidwani has done more to popularize Hinduism throughout the world.
Anyone who reads the Hindu websites , with all their ponderous language, will not know if the Aryan Invasion Theory is true or not. But anyone reading the Return of the Aryans will clearly know that the Theory is false and foolish and nothing but propaganda.
I note the suggestion made by Bhowmick Narayan that
the emient personalities like Koenraad Elst and David Frawley to write articles for Tattava so that the theory of Aryan Invasion of India is laid to rest as false and propagadistic
May 6th, 2008 18:23
Nithin Sridhar in his excellent article on The Whitewashing of History, writes:
“The history of India has been whitewashed and distorted, first by European rulers, and after independence by eminent historians of India and their supporters the Leftists, Seculars and self-claimed Progressives of India to meet their own ends. They have painted the pre-Islamic invasion period as a Dark Age and have glorified the Islamic period to be very peaceful and prosperous.. . ”
The above statement is undoubtedly correct. BUT THE QUESTION ONE MUST ASK IS: Who do we blame? If enemies are throwing stones at us, should not our own people do something to put a stop to it? Or is it some strange form of AHIMSA we have got in our brains that we should not put a stop to stones being flung at us by our enemies but instead we should shed tears and loudly cry out to public that stones are being flung at us by enemies.
The fault, I submit, is ours. Enemies will do what enemies are supposed to do. But if we have self-respect and legitimate pride, we should retaliate or at least expose their lies, fabrications and propaganda. If we cannot do that, then there is something fundamentally wrong with us.
I am glad that David Frawley, Koenraad Elstand many others who originally belonged to foreign cultures but have taken to heart the Hindu cause and faith, are doing so much against ‘Enemy’ propaganda. What about the rest of us. What about the rest of us? What is our function? - to cry out and seek public sympathy for propaganda against Hinduism. PLEASE WAKE UP. The public goes by, uncaring, or in contempt or simply laughing.
I like and admire the counter-punch in Bhagwan Gidwani’s “Return of the Aryans”. Those of us who see only falsehood in a novel know nothing of history, literature or dramatic presentation
May 6th, 2008 22:48
To me it is a matter of surprise that when motivated and hostile commentators in the garb of historians, propound a false and propagandist theory like the Aryan Invasion Theory of India, our religious and spiritual leaders, politicians as also our writers, simply beat their breasts and try to say that there was no such invasion. Instead why not write about those times with research and
honesty, and show the idiocy and ridiculousness of the Theory. Can you in such a case, separate an alleged event from the context of those times?
The English Rulers were smart. They not only planted the Story in the garb of history in order to show that Indians are incapable of governing themselves and it is always the foreigners who came to their rescue and it was, as they put it, the foreign Aryan who displaced the dark and terrible misery of India and so it is that the Britsh and Muslims came again to civilize Indians and to bring enlightenment to them. The British saw to it that Indian teachers, professors, writers, historians, commentators and others were well paid to subscribe to that theory with scholarships, promotions, Government-aid, official praise and publication of their works. Thus, with Government patronage, hundreds of voices rose to claim the ‘truth’ of the Aryan Invasion Theory of India. Did they offer any proof? It was not necessary. With so many hundreds of articles and books supporting the Aryan Invasion Theory of India , who could ask for Proof? - how could so many learned books and serious articles by countless British and Indian historians be wrong!
True, Swami Vivekanand, Lokmanya Tilak, Veer Savarkar, Gurudev Rabindra Nath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and others, questioned the theory but their comments were ignored as they were staunch nationalists and no doubt had a nationalistic outlook.
In any case, the problem always was and is: how do you disprove a theory without writing about those times? It can only be dismissed when you know the context and the period in which such an event is said to have occurred.
Fortunately, very fortunately, one writer – but only one - has come forward to write about those pre-Vedic times in which this False theory was supposed to have come to life. The writer is Bhagwan S. Gidwani and his book is ‘RETURN of the ARYANS’ published by Penguin Books in India. This book gives a mortal body-blow to the Aryan Invasion Theory of India. But the book has a much larger theme and canvas. Its 1,000 pages tell the fascinating story of the Birth and Beginnings of the roots of Hinduism (Sanatan Dharma) with a thrilling account of how, in 5,000 BC, the Aryans originated from India, and from nowhere else - and why they moved out of their home-land; their trials and triumphs overseas; and finally their return to India. Thus, Gidwani demolishes the theory of Aryan invasion of India. He traces the Hindu ancestry of Aryans from 8,000 BC, and shows that Aryans were born, grew up, and died as citizens of Bharat Varsha, anchored in the timeless foundation of Sanatan Dharma. With equal clarity, the Book also demolishes the theory of North/South Divide, and shows how the people of Ganga, Madhya, Sindhu, Bangla and other regions were together with the Dravidian regions, in a spirit of equality and mutual respect, as a part of Bharat Varsha (India).
Clearly, ‘RETURN of the ARYANS’ explains how the racial differences, like the skin colour, between North Indians and South Indians arose, and how Sanskrit has some words with foreign origin unlike Tamil. The book also shows how Bharat Varsha of 5,000 BC was far more extensive than the present-day territory of India, Pakistan & Bangladesh, as it included additionally Avagana (Afghanistan), parts of Iran, beyond Lake Namaskar (now known as Namaksar), where many Hindu hermits resided; in North, Bharat Varsha territory went across soaring peaks of Himalayas to Tibet to reach Lake Mansarovar, Mount Kailash, upto the source of mighty Sindhu and Brahmaputra rivers, and beyond; Also, Bharat Varsha included Land of Brahma (Burma) and beyond; Kashmir; Lands of Sadhu Newar (Nepal); Bhoota (Bhutan); and Land of Vraon (Sri Lanka).
Note also that RETURN of the ARYANS’ covers a vast panorama to reveal dramatic stories behind the origins of Om, Namaste, Swastika, Gayatri Mantra, and Soma Wines. It tells how Tamil and Sanskrit developed, and how they influenced world-languages; also it has tales of discovery and disappearance of Saraswati River, and founding of Ganga, Dravidian, and Sindhu civilizations; the battles and blood-shed that led to fall and rise of Benaras, Hardwar, and many cities. Besides, Gidwani sheds light on pre-history establishment of legal and constitutional systems; development of ships and harbours; gold-mining; chariots; Yoga; mathematics; astronomy; medicine; surgery; music, dance, drama, art and architecture; and material advancement of the pre-ancient India.
The book speaks of ideals that took shape in those early times, to become the foundation of Sanatana Dharma - and among those ideals were: recognition of spiritual nature of man, wherever he is from; acceptance of every culture as an expression of eternal values; and man’s obligation to respect and protect environment, and all creatures, tame and wild.
Gidwani also explains how the country came to be known as Bharat Varsha.
Unfortunately, ‘RETURN of the ARYANS’ has not been presented as a formal historical text as the author has chosen to present it in story-form with even dialogues to fully focus on the drama of those times and hence has, withintegrity and objectivity, marked it as fictional, though fully explaining the extent of the fiction in the Preface. This has given a handle to Hindu Organizations and others to dismiss the book; and as some one has said these organizations suffer from some dogma while all other dogma-ridden faiths and religions fully use novels and dramatic presentations to advance their message.
Even so, why do our organizations fail to advance to research our history thoroughly. Why should ‘RETURN of the ARYANS’ be the one and only book to deal with our pre-Vedic times? This book shows a settled Society in our Pre-Vedic times. It shows that
1. Bharat Varsha is the most ancient civilization in the world - more ancient than China, Japan, Mesopotamia, Iran and Egypt.
2. Bharat Varsha, was there before Rome was built, and before Jerusalem, Carthage, Greece, Damascus and Istanbul were founded
3. It has tales of battles and romance, adventures and exploits, valor and sacrifice, art and culture, of Pre-Vedic India, well before the dawn of recorded history.
4. When Europeans lived in caves, our people had two-story houses of brick and stone, with drainage system, public parks, public baths, art-works, fountains and granaries.
5. Our ancestors founded the ancient order of Sanatanah, well before 8,000 BC, and again, from this root of Sanatanah sprang Sanatana Dharma, the ageless religion of the Hindus
There is much more I could add to bring out the glory and greatness of Bharat Varsha as told in ‘RETURN of the ARYANS. But let this suffice.
I conclude with the hope that TATTAVA will be the foremost among the organizations to promote the idea of a thorough research of our pre-ancient civilization in Pre-Vedic times. Meanwhile my congratulations to Nithin Sridhar for his excellent article and Bhagwat Shah for his great contribution. I too shall await articles from the emient personalities like Koenraad Elst and David Frawley to whom others have referred.
May 6th, 2008 22:56
To me it is a matter of surprise that when motivated and hostile commentators in the garb of historians, propound a false and propagandist theory like the Aryan Invasion Theory of India, our religious and spiritual leaders, politicians as also our writers simply beat their breasts and try to say that there was no such invasion. Instead why not write about those times with research and honesty, and show the idiocy and ridiculousness of the Theory.
The English Rulers were smart. They not only planted the Story in the garb of history in order to show that Indians are incapable of governing themselves and it is always the foreigners who came to their rescue and it was, as they put it, the foreign Aryan who displaced the dark and terrible misery of India and so it is that the Britsh and Muslims came again to civilize Indians and bring enlightenment to them. The British saw to it that Indian teachers, professors, writers, historians, commentators and others were well paid to subscribe to that theory with scholarships, promotions, Government-aid, official praise and publication of their works. Thus, with Government patronage, hundreds of voices rose to claim the ‘truth’ of the Aryan Invasion Theory of India. Did they offer any proof? It was not necessary. With so many hundreds of articles and books supporting the Aryan Invasion Theory of India , who could ask for Proof? - how could so many learned books and serious articles by countless British and Indian historians be wrong!
True, Swami Vivekanand, Lokmanya Tilak, Veer Savarkar, Gurudev Rabindra Nath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and others, questioned the theory but their comments were ignored as they were staunch nationalists and no doubt had a nationalistic outlook.
In any case, the problem always was and is: how do you disprove a theory without writing about those times? It can only be dismissed when you know the context and the period in which such an event is said to have occurred.
Fortunately, very fortunately, one writer – but only one - has come forward to write about those pre-Vedic times in which this False theory was supposed to have come to life. The writer is Bhagwan S. Gidwani and his book is ‘RETURN of the ARYANS’ published by Penguin Books in India. This book gives a mortal body-blow to the Aryan Invasion Theory of India. But the book has a much larger theme and canvas. Its 1,000 pages tell the fascinating story of the Birth and Beginnings of the roots of Hinduism (Sanatan Dharma) with a thrilling account of how, in 5,000 BC, the Aryans originated from India, and from nowhere else - and why they moved out of their home-land; their trials and triumphs overseas; and finally their return to India. Thus, Gidwani demolishes the theory of Aryan invasion of India. He traces the Hindu ancestry of Aryans from 8,000 BC, and shows that Aryans were born, grew up, and died as citizens of Bharat Varsha, anchored in the timeless foundation of Sanatan Dharma. With equal clarity, the Book also demolishes the theory of North/South Divide, and shows how the people of Ganga, Madhya, Sindhu, Bangla and other regions were together with the Dravidian regions, in a spirit of equality and mutual respect, as a part of Bharat Varsha (India).
Clearly, ‘RETURN of the ARYANS’ explains how the racial differences, like the skin colour, between North Indians and South Indians arose, and how Sanskrit has some words with foreign origin unlike Tamil. The book also shows how Bharat Varsha of 5,000 BC was far more extensive than the present-day territory of India, Pakistan & Bangladesh, as it included additionally Avagana (Afghanistan), parts of Iran, beyond Lake Namaskar (now known as Namaksar), where many Hindu hermits resided; in North, Bharat Varsha territory went across soaring peaks of Himalayas to Tibet to reach Lake Mansarovar, Mount Kailash, upto the source of mighty Sindhu and Brahmaputra rivers, and beyond; Also, Bharat Varsha included Land of Brahma (Burma) and beyond; Kashmir; Lands of Sadhu Newar (Nepal); Bhoota (Bhutan); and Land of Vraon (Sri Lanka).
Note also that RETURN of the ARYANS’ covers a vast panorama to reveal dramatic stories behind the origins of Om, Namaste, Swastika, Gayatri Mantra, and Soma Wines. It tells how Tamil and Sanskrit developed, and how they influenced world-languages; also it has tales of discovery and disappearance of Saraswati River, and founding of Ganga, Dravidian, and Sindhu civilizations; the battles and blood-shed that led to fall and rise of Benaras, Hardwar, and many cities. Besides, Gidwani sheds light on pre-history establishment of legal and constitutional systems; development of ships and harbours; gold-mining; chariots; Yoga; mathematics; astronomy; medicine; surgery; music, dance, drama, art and architecture; and material advancement of the pre-ancient India.
The book speaks of ideals that took shape in those early times, to become the foundation of Sanatana Dharma - and among those ideals were: recognition of spiritual nature of man, wherever he is from; acceptance of every culture as an expression of eternal values; and man’s obligation to respect and protect environment, and all creatures, tame and wild.
Gidwani also explains how the country came to be known as Bharat Varsha.
Unfortunately, ‘RETURN of the ARYANS’ has not been presented as a formal historical text as the author has chosen to present it in story-form with even dialogues to fully focus on the drama of those times and hence has, withintegrity and objectivity, marked it as fictional, though fully explaining the extent of the fiction in the Preface. This has given a handle to Hindu Organizations and others to dismiss the book and as some one has said these organizations suffer from some dogma while all other dogma-ridden faiths and religions fully use novels and dramatic presentations to advance their message.
Even so, why do our organizations fail to advance to research our history thoroughly. Why should ‘RETURN of the ARYANS’ be the one and only book to deal with our pre-Vedic times? This book shows a settled Society in our Pre-Vedic times. It shows that
1. Bharat Varsha is the most ancient civilization in the world - more ancient than China, Japan, Mesopotamia, Iran and Egypt.
2. Bharat Varsha, was there before Rome was built, and before Jerusalem, Carthage, Greece, Damascus and Istanbul were founded
3. It has tales of battles and romance, adventures and exploits, valor and sacrifice, art and culture, of Pre-Vedic India, well before the dawn of recorded history.
4. When Europeans lived in caves, our people had two-story houses of brick and stone, with drainage system, public parks, public baths, art-works, fountains and granaries.
5. Our ancestors founded the ancient order of Sanatanah, well before 8,000 BC, and again, along the banks of Sindhu, from this root of Sanatanah sprang Sanatana Dharma, the ageless religion of the Hindus
There is much more I could add to bring out the glory and greatness of Bharat Varsha as told in ‘RETURN of the ARYANS. But let this suffice.
I conclude with the hope that TATTAVA will be the foremost among the organizations to promote the idea of a thorough research of our pre-ancient civilization in Pre-Vedic times. Meanwhile my congratulations to Nithin Sridhar for his fine article and the articles by the eminent personalities like Koenraad Elst and David Frawley, to whom others have referred.
May 8th, 2008 21:41
So much has been said so elegantly in response to a very interesting and informative article by Nithin Sridhar that I recomend what others have urged, thai is, all these comments be immediatelysubmitted to Koenraad Elst , David Frawley and other well-known writers of Hidu ethos, to give us an objective view of the Aryan history and in particular of their origin in India and travel westwards.
May 11th, 2008 22:48
Not many Indians are likely to buy an expensive, bulky book -Return of the Aryans - published by Penguin Books, India and its sale is largely confined to foreign countries, and therefore the best course is to view the Themes from that book which are shown at http://www.sindhulogy.org. (They appear in that website under “Projects”.).These themes will give an idea of how the roots of Hinduism began in Bharat Varsha (Indian subcontinent) in 8,000 BCE and how the Aryans who originated in India in 5,000 BCE travelled to a large number of countries in Asia and Europe, including Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Russia, Finland, Lithuania, Sweden, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Greece and Germany and their adventures and exploits there. These Themes will give an idea of how art and and development flourished in that period of pre-History in India
Anyone reading the Themes on website will clearly come to the conclusion that the Aryan Invasion Theory of India is false and was designed as a propagandist hoax.
We will of course look forward to articles from the learned and eminent personalities like Koenraad Elst , David Frawley and other great writers such as Gautier and we hope Tattav will not fail to invite all such celebrated thinkers to contribute so that such ugly propaganda does not rear its vicious head again
May 12th, 2008 21:14
American Institute of Sindhulogy (AIS) invites all educationist/ academics/scholars Indians/non Indians to read themes from RETURN OF THE ARYANS on web site http://www.sindhulogy.org and will be happy to publish /circulate their findings.
AIS is non political/non religious/ non profit institute to promote awareness of Sindhu Saraswati Civilization in the USA and else where. AIS is anxious to reach out and encourage our 3/4 th generation in theireducation and knowledge about our ancient civilization.
AIS will circulate Mr. Nithin Shridhar’s article to its net work. Great educational article.
September 5th, 2008 02:21
greatings…
disagree…
November 3rd, 2008 05:11
I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100%, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong.