History Forum / General / General Topics / May 2007

Aryan invasion of California: Global background

Forwarded message from M Kelkar

Thursday, May 31, 2007

ARYAN INVASION OF CALIFORNIA: GLOBAL BACKGROUND

N. S. Rajaram

[The] Fall of the Third Reich did not put an end to
academic race theories that formed the core of its
ideology. In various guises, their legacy continues in
Western academia as well as in the politics of countries
formerly under European rule. While avoiding overtly racial
terms, scholars in disciplines like Indo-European Studies
continue to uphold scientifically discredited and
historically disgraced theories built around the Aryan
myth. Some academics have resorted to media campaigns and
political lobbying to save their theories and the
discipline from natural extinction -- a tactic that came to
the fore when California education authorities attempted to
remove these theories from their school curriculum. The
legacy of racism persists in sectarian politics in South
India, and most insidiously in Africa where it gave rise to
the horrific Hutu-Tutsi clashes in one of the worst
genocides in modern history. A singular feature of this
neo-racist scholarship is the replacement of anti-Semitism
by anti-Hinduism.

Mutated racism

In a remarkable article, "Aryan Mythology As Science And
Ideology" (Journal of the American Academy of Religion1999;
67: 327-354) the Swedish scholar Stefan Arvidsson raises
the question: "Today it is disputed whether or not the
downfall of the Third Reich brought about a sobering among
scholars working with 'Aryan' religions." We may rephrase
the question: "Did the end of the Nazi regime put an end to
race based theories in academia?" An examination of several
humanities departments in the West suggests otherwise:
following the end of Nazism, academic racism may have
undergone a mutation but did not entirely disappear. Ideas
central to the Aryan myth resurfaced in various guises
under labels like Indology and Indo-European Studies. This
is clear from recent political, social and academic
episodes in places as far apart as Harvard University and
the California State Board of Education.

Two decades after the end of the Nazi regime, racism
underwent another mutation as a result of the American
Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King. Thanks
to the Civil Rights Movement, Americans were rightly made
to feel guilty about their racist past and the indefensible
treatment of African Americans. U.S. academia also changed
accordingly and any discourse based on racial stereotyping
became taboo. Soon this taboo came to be extended to Native
Americans, Eskimos and other ethnic groups.

In this climate of seeming liberal enlightenment, one race
theory continued to flourish as if nothing had changed.
Theories based on the Aryan myth that formed the core of
Nazi ideology continued in various guises, as previously
noted, in Indology and Indo-European Studies. Though given
a linguistic and sometimes a cultural veneer, these
racially sourced ideas continue to enjoy academic
respectability in such prestigious centers as Harvard and
Chicago. Being a European transplant, its historical
trajectory was different from the one followed by American
racism. Further, unlike the Civil Rights Movement, which
had mass support, academic racism remained largely confined
to academia. This allowed it to escape public scrutiny for
several decades until it clashed with the growing Hindu
presence in the United States. Indians, Hindus in
particular saw Western Indology and Indo-European Studies
as a perversion of their history and religion and a thinly
disguised attempt to prejudice the American public,
especially the youth, against India and Hinduism to serve
their academic interests.1  

The fact that Americans of Indian origin are among the most
educated group ensured that their objections could not
brushed away by "haughty dismissals" as the late historian
of science Abraham Seidenberg put it. Nonetheless, scholars
tried to use academic prestige as a bludgeon in
forestalling debate, by denouncing their adversaries as
ignorant chauvinists and bigots unworthy of debate. But
increasingly, hard evidence from archaeology, natural
history and genetics made it impossible to ignore the
objections of their opponents, many of whom (like this
author) were scientists. By the turn of the millennium,
there was an uneasy stalemate, with science chipping away
at the edifice of the Aryan theories with its advocates
tenaciously clinging to them and postponing the inevitable.
But in November 2005, there came a dramatic denouement, in,
of all places, California schools. Academics suddenly found
it necessary to leave their ivory towers and fight it out
in the open, in full media glare -- and under court
scrutiny. This is what we may look at next.  

Aryans invade California

To summarize the California invasion by 'Aryan' academics:
Aryans, a mythical race of people which science and the
defeat of Nazi Germany had consigned to the fringes of
academia and politics found a temporary refuge in the
history texts to be used in California schools. Led by the
Harvard based linguist Michael Witzel, a motley group of
mostly European scholars successfully lobbied the
California State Board of Education (CSBE) to save the
theory of an 'Aryan' invasion of India from being removed
from schoolbooks. It was to prove a Pyrrhic victory and a
public embarrassment; California education authorities were
soon forced to retract Witzel's 'expert' suggestions. They
also had to face lawsuits from which they came out badly
bruised.

This was the aftermath of an acrimonious editing process in
which Witzel, with possible support from the California
Education Secretary Alan Bersin, put pressure on California
officials to have this scientifically discredited theory
included in textbooks. This curious affair raises doubts
about the role played by Secretary Bersin who serves also
on the board of the Harvard Corporation which employs
Witzel. Willingly or unwittingly, Bersin came to be seen as
the fulcrum of support for Witzel and his colleagues in
their dubious campaign that went on to embarrass both
Harvard and the California Department of Education.

While the media covered the story as a case of newfound
assertiveness on the part of the Hindus, Witzel and his
colleagues claimed they were motivated solely by
objectivity and scholarly integrity. According to them it
was a case of faith against scholarship. The cloud of
controversy though tended to obscure the real story -- of a
desperate campaign by Witzel and his colleagues to save the
Aryan myth, which happens to be central to the academic
discipline known as Indo-European Studies. Indo-European is
a politically correct euphemism for Aryan. (Another is
Caucasian.)

It all began innocently enough, when Grade VI textbooks
used in California schools came up for revision in 2005.
Some Hindu, Islamic and Jewish groups objected to the way
their religions were depicted in some of the textbooks.
Hindus objected also to the history portion for including
the scientifically discredited, nineteenth century theory
of the Aryan invasion of India. California school
authorities asked the Hindu groups along with others to
suggest suitable changes.  

After some discussions, mostly with regard to the format,
the California Department of Education (CDE) released a
memorandum detailing the changes submitted to the State
Board of Education (CSBE) on November 8, 2005. It was at
this point that Michael Witzel intervened uninvited. On the
very next day, November 9, CSBE President Ruth Green read
out a petition submitted by Witzel and co-signed by 46
other scholars claiming to be experts on India, objecting
to the edits suggested by the Hindu groups charging they
were unscholarly and politically motivated. Changes
submitted by Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups were
passed without discussion, but Green withheld those
submitted by the Hindus. She went a step further and
appointed Witzel to a super-committee, to review the
changes relating to Hinduism and India. All its members had
actively colluded with Witzel in his propaganda and
lobbying campaign.

It was a mystery how Witzel, within a day, could get so
many signatures from all over the world. Most petitioners
were from Europe with nothing at stake in what California
schools teach their children. A few (non-Europeans) later
retracted. This suggests that Witzel's move was pre-
planned, helped by insiders and not a 24-hour wonder. It
was soon apparent that the signatories, including Witzel
himself, had not read the changes they were objecting to.
He was coy about it when questioned at a public meeting in
Harvard, claiming that the subject was sub judice. (This
was because of law suits filed against the CSBE's 'flawed
and illegal' review procedure.)  

The next meeting in January 2006 was held in secret, from
which Hindu groups were excluded. Witzel took advantage of
the secrecy to reverse many of the changes. While some of
it related to Hinduism, it became clear that his real
concern was saving the Aryan invasion theory from being
axed. Witzel trumpeted the outcome as a victory, but the
celebration proved to be premature. The unusual procedure
by which it was done and Witzel's own unscholarly language
and rhetoric landed the California Department of Education
in several law suits. A judge hearing the case slammed the
CSBE for following 'underground procedures' using 'hostile
academics'. Witzel too paid a heavy price, being
increasingly seen as less a scholar than a propagandist and
political lobbyist. His credibility as scholar stood
shattered.

Given Education Secretary Bersin's position at Harvard,
Witzel's immediate appointment to the super-committee with
virtual veto power over the contents comes as no surprise.
The real question is what Witzel and Bersin hoped to gain
by having the disgraced Aryan theories taught in California
schools. To see this one needs to recognize the precarious
state of the discipline called Indo-European Studies. It is
a nineteenth century European creation that has been losing
ground to science. Witzel and his European colleagues are
among its last holdouts. Both students and funds have been
declining in the department where Witzel teaches. As a
member of the Board of Overseers of the Harvard Corporation
Bersin has responsibility for fund raising.

Ever since Witzel moved to Harvard from Europe (he is
German by birth), its Department of Sanskrit and India
Studies has been in a state of turmoil. He was forced to
step down as department chairman in 1995, following student
complaints about his conduct. Enrica Garzilli, whom Witzel
had brought in as a faculty member was fired by Harvard as
unqualified. She sued the university. Witzel himself
threatened to sue a student for asking some questions. Now
Hindu parents and groups have sued the State of California
for violating their children's civil rights. Curiously for
an academic, legal troubles seem to dog Witzel wherever he
goes.  

We may never know who initiated Witzel's California
campaign -- whether Alan Bersin gave Witzel a chance to
redeem himself following his disastrous performance at
Harvard, or if Witzel saw an opening to get students and
funding with Bersin at the helm of the Department of
Education in California. Email traffic surrounding IER
(Indo-Eurasian Research), an Internet group co-founded by
Witzel, suggests that the idea came from some of its
members, possibly one Steve Farmer, Witzel's closest
associate following Enrica Garzilli's expulsion from
Harvard. Farmer lives in California from where he has been
reporting on developments in the state.

Problems at Harvard are part of a wider problem in Western
academia in the field of Indo-European Studies. Several
'Indology' departments -- as they are sometimes called --
are shutting down across Europe. One of the oldest and most
prestigious, at Cambridge University in England, has just
closed down. This was followed by the closure of the
equally prestigious Berlin Institute of Indology founded
way back in 1821. Positions like the one Witzel holds
(Wales Professor of Sanskrit) were created during the
colonial era to serve as interpreters of India. They have
lost their relevance and are disappearing from academia.
This is the real story, not teaching Hinduism to California
children.  

Witzel's California misadventure appears to have been an
attempt to have his version of Indian history and
civilization introduced into the school curriculum in the
hope that some of them may later be drawn into his
department when they graduate. Otherwise, it is hard to see
why a senior, tenured professor at Harvard should go to all
this trouble, lobbying California school officials to have
its Grade VI curriculum changed to reflect his views.  

To follow this it is necessary to go beyond personalities
and understand the importance of the Aryan myth to Indo-
European Studies. The Aryan myth is a European creation. It
has nothing to do with Hinduism. The campaign against
Hinduism was a red herring to divert attention from the
real agenda, which was and remains saving the Aryan myth.
Collapse of the Aryan myth means the collapse of Indo-
European studies. This is what Witzel and his colleagues
are trying to avert. For them it is an existential
struggle.

Americans for the most part are unaware of the enormous
influence of the Aryan myth on European history and
imagination. As previously observed, while the defeat of
Nazi Germany put an end to its political influence, it has
survived in various guises in Western academia under the
umbrella of Indo-European Studies. This was the point
raised by scholars like Stefan Arvidsson cited earlier.
Central to Indo-European Studies is the belief -- it is no
more than a belief -- that Indian civilization was created
by an invading race of 'Aryans' from an original homeland
somewhere in Eurasia or Europe. This is the Aryan invasion
theory dear to Witzel and his European colleagues.
According to this theory there was no civilization in India
before the Aryan invaders brought it -- a view increasingly
in conflict with hard evidence from archaeology and natural
history.

The politics of Aryanism

Given the Aryans' importance to their worldview, it is
extraordinary that after two hundred years of voluminous
outpourings, these scholars are unable to identify them.
Originally they were claimed to be a race related to
Europeans but science has discredited it. After the defeat
of Nazi Germany, scholars avoid overtly racial arguments
but the basic idea of an invasion by Europeans bringing
civilization to India is retained even if they acknowledge
that ancient Indian records know nothing of any such
invasion. All we have are dogmatic assertions of their
central belief. According to the late Murray Emeneau, a
leading figure in Indo-European linguistics: 2

At some time in the second millennium B.C., probably
comparatively early in the millennium, a band or bands of
speakers of an Indo-European language, later to be called
Sanskrit, entered India over the northwest passes. This is
our linguistic doctrine which has been held now for more
than a century and a half. There seems to be no reason to
distrust the arguments for it, in spite of the traditional
Hindu ignorance of any such invasion. (Emphasis added.)

This is typical of the field, with arguments closer to
theology than to science. Aryans are needed because there
can be no Aryan invasion without the Aryans and also no
Indo-European Studies. It is a case of the tail wagging the
dog.

Scientists had long ago dismissed the idea of the Aryan
race. As far back as 1939, Sir Julian Huxley, one of the
great biologists of the twentieth century wrote: 3

In England and America the phrase 'Aryan race' has quite
ceased to be used by writers with scientific knowledge,
though it appears occasionally in political and
propagandist literature.... In Germany, the idea of the
'Aryan race' received no more scientific support than in
England. Nevertheless, it found able and very persistent
literary advocates who made it appear very flattering to
local vanity. It therefore steadily spread, fostered by
special conditions. (Emphasis added.)

These 'special conditions' were the rise of Nazism in
Germany and British imperial interests in India. Its
perversion in Germany leading eventually to the Nazi
horrors is well known. The fact that the British turned it
into a political tool to make their rule acceptable to
Indians is not generally known. A recent BBC report
acknowledged as much (October 6, 2005): 4

It [Aryan invasion theory] gave a historical precedent to
justify the role and status of the British Raj, who could
argue that they were transforming India for the better in
the same way that the Aryans had done thousands of years
earlier.

That is to say, the British presented themselves as 'new
and improved Aryans' that were in India only to complete
the work left undone by their ancestors in the hoary past.
This is how the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin put
it in the House of Commons in 1929: 5

Now, after ages,...the two branches of the great Aryan
ancestry have again been brought together by Providence... By
establishing British rule in India, God said to the
British, "I have brought you and the Indians together after
a long separation,...it is your duty to raise them to their
own level as quickly as possible...brothers as you are..."

All this makes abundantly clear that theories based on the
Aryan myth are modern European creations that have little
to do with ancient India. The word Arya appears for the
first time in the Rig Veda, India's oldest text. Its
meaning is obscure but seems to refer to members of a
settled agricultural community. It later became an
honorific and a form of address, something like 'Gentleman'
in English or 'Monsieur' in French. Also, it was nowhere as
important in India as it came to be in Europe. In the whole
the Rig Veda, in all of its ten books, the word Arya
appears only about forty times. In contrast, Hitler's Mein
Kampf uses the term Arya and Aryan many times more. Hitler
did not invent it. The idea of Aryans as a superior race
was already in the air -- in Europe, not India. 6

Indo-Europeans: elusive or non-existent?

To understand Witzel's California campaign we need to place
these Aryan theories in their historical context -- as part
of some European thinkers' striving to give themselves an
identity based on their history and folklore. In his recent
book Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and
Science (2006, University of Chicago) Swedish scholar
Stefan Arvidsson tells us:

For over two hundred years, a series of historians,
linguists, folklorists, and archaeologists have tried to
re-create a lost culture. Using ancient texts, medieval
records, philological observations, and archaeological
remains they have described a world, a religion, and a
people older than the Sumerians, with whom all history is
said to have begun.  

These are the mythical Aryans, now being called Indo-
Europeans. After two hundred years of intensive search,
they remain elusive, while science has shown them to be
non-existent. But Indo-European scholars have not given up
on them. Just as they created an Aryan invasion without
Aryans they have created Indo-European Studies based on the
non-existent Indo-Europeans. As Arvidsson observes:  

No objects can definitely be tied to them, nor do we know
any 'Indo-European' by name. In spite of that, scholars
have stubbornly tried to reach back to the ancient 'Indo-
Europeans, ' with the help of bold historical, linguistic,
and archaeological reconstructions, in the hopes of finding
the foundation of their own culture and religion there.

The only literature we have that goes back to such
antiquity is Indian literature. But Europeans of the
colonial era could not conceive of an Indian source for
their culture. India was taken out of Indo-European
Studies, and made the recipient of European thought,
culture and even language via the Aryan invasion. In
Arvidsson's words: "The theory about India as the original
home of the Indo-Europeans, and the Indians as a kind of
model Aryans, lost supporters during the nineteenth
century, and other homelands and other model Aryans took
their place instead." (Emphasis added.)  

The Aryans (or Indo-Europeans) and their homeland were
gradually moved westward until they were made to settle in
Eurasia and even Germany. In the hands of German scholars,
Aryans and their language became "Indo-Germanische. " It is
this worldview, and its academic incarnation calling itself
Indo-European Studies that Witzel and his colleagues are
fighting to save from extinction.  

To summarize, the goal of Indo-European studies is not so
much to understand India as it is to "show that there
existed a rich 'German' mythology that could successfully
compete with classical Judeo-Christian traditions." It is
hardly surprising that anti-Semitism was tied up with it.
Now anti-Hinduism has now taken its place. This anti-
Hinduism too is more cultural than religious, like anti-
Semitism in pre-War Europe. Its goal is to detach their
mythical Indo-European ancestors from India, just as pre-
war Aryan theories sought to erase the Judaic heritage of
Christian Europe. This lies at the root of the 'ideological
abuse' (in Arvidsson's words) that Indo-European Studies
has been guilty of:

There is something in the nature of research about Indo-
Europeans that makes it especially prone to ideological
abuse -- perhaps something related to the fact that for the
past two centuries, the majority of scholars who have done
research on the Indo-Europeans have considered themselves
descendants of this mythical race.  

This 'ideological abuse' reached its climax in the Nazi
regime. The recent California campaign must also be seen in
the same light: ideological abuse in the name of
scholarship to support a worldview combined with a concern
for survival.  

For a brief, transient period, advocates of the Aryan myth
succeeded in saving their theory from being axed, but in
the process they have undermined the credibility of the
textbooks and public confidence in the California education
system. The wide publicity that their campaign received and
the law suits that followed have dealt a severe blow to
teacher morale. The real victim in this farcical tragedy is
not Hinduism, which will survive the assault, but the
children of California who have been used as pawns in the
struggle for survival of a discredited academic discipline
and its priesthood.

An African tragedy: Tutsi invasion theory

While race theories have led to stereotyping and academic
and ideological abuse, they are also guilty of horrendous
crimes. The Nazi Holocaust is justly infamous, but not many
are aware of their contribution to the more recent Hutu-
Tutsi conflicts in Africa. What Indologists could not do in
India with their Aryan theories, ethnologists succeeded in
doing in Africa with their race-based Tutsi invasion theory
-- trigger genocide. Here is the story in brief.

When we look at the map of middle Africa, we see two little
countries named Rwanda and Burundi, bordering on Zaire (or
the Democratic Republic of Congo). Few Indians know the
recent history of these unfortunate countries or the cause
of the recent catastrophes that engulfed them. As reported
in the Western media, these countries are inhabited by two
supposedly different ethnic groups, the so-called Hutus and
Tutsis. The ethnic composition of these two countries is as
follows.

Rwanda: Hutu 84%, Tutsi 15%, Twa (Pygmies) 1%

Burundi: Hutu 85%, Tutsi 14%, Twa 1%

In other words, their compositions hardly differ at all.
But according to Western anthropologists, mainly colonial
bureaucrats and missionaries, the Tutsi are supposed to be
a Hamitic people, a race that was often intermixed with the
whiter races of the North, notably from Ethiopia and Egypt,
which in their turn were intermixed with some West Asiatic
people, mainly the Hittites, by repeated invasions from the
North. These people, the Tutsis, are supposed to have
arrived from the North and not native to Rwanda. The
analogy to the invading Aryans is immediate and striking,
but doesn't stop here.  

The majority of Hutus are said to be Bantu, of original
African race, which spilled out from the middle of the West
African coast of Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Togo, Benin,
Cote d'Ivorie (Ivory Coast) and the inland countries of
Burkina Faso and its neighbors.

In this scenario, which is contradicted by genetic
analysis, the Tutsis (like the Aryans) are foreign invaders
or migrants in the Rwanda-Burundi region. The Hutus, like
the Indian Dravidians, are said to be much older people,
but not the original inhabitants. The original inhabitants
are said to be the Pygmies (or Twa), who constitute barely
1 percent of the people. The interesting part of the theory
is the role assigned to the Tutsi minority. They are made
into a superior race of invaders, just like the Aryans, and
supposedly constitute the aristocratic elite and the
oppressors of the Hutu majority.

According to this theory, the minority Tutsi have
subjugated the indigenous, but not too indigenous (compared
to the Pygmies) Hutus for centuries and forced them into
the inferior position of agriculture. Now the key notion:
Hutus and Tutsis are really two completely separate races,
with the 'black' Hutus forming the oppressed majority, and
their relatively fair invaders, the Tutsi, forming the
oppressors.

This in essence is the Tutsi invasion theory, the African
version of the Aryan invasion theory. The similarities are
startling, even to the extent of the Dravidians in India
being preceded by earlier inhabitants, the aborigines (the
so-called adi-vasis), who have their African counterpart in
the Pygmies. So we have the African Pygmy-Hutu-Tutsi
sequence corresponding to the Indian aborigines-Dravidia n-
Aryan scheme.

It is a curious experience to look at the political
evolution of this grotesque theory and its monstrous
fallout. Until the coming of the Europeans, the Tutsis and
the Hutus never saw themselves as different. Nor were they
engaged in any racial wars. With the European scramble for
Africa, Rwanda-Burundi became part of the short-lived
German East Africa. After Germany's defeat in the First
World War, it became part of the Belgian colonies in
Africa. This notion of the Tutsi-Hutu racial difference
began to be drilled into the natives by colonial
administrators, some academics (not unlike present day
Indologists) and missionaries known as the Pere Blancs
(White Fathers). (There are no Pere Noirs or Black
Fathers.) They invented the Tutsi invasion theory and
labeled the Hutus as the victims of Tutsi invasion and
oppression.

It is worth noting that this period, between the two world
wars, was the heyday of race theories in Europe. It seems
the notion of superiority due to difference in skin color -
- imagined in this case -- is indelibly ingrained in the
European psyche. Its politics has collapsed, not due to any
dawn of enlightenment on its proponents but the defeat of
Nazi Germany. It has continued however in Western academia
as Indo-European Studies and in other guises.

As with the Aryan theories and their various offshoots,
this Tutsi-Hutu division has no factual basis. They speak
the same language, have a long history of intermarriage and
have many cultural characteristics in common. Differences
are regional rather than racial, which they were not aware
of until the Europeans made it part of their politics and
propaganda.  

The division if any was occupational. Agriculturists were
called Hutu while the cattle owning elite were referred to
as Tutsi. The Tutsi, like the Indian Aryans, were supposed
to be tall, thin and fair, while the Hutu were described as
short, black and squat -- just as the Indian Dravidians are
said to be. Since the Tutsi today don't fit this
description, scholars claimed that their invading ancestors
did. They offered no proof but, being based on no evidence,
their claim cannot be disproved either. In fact, it is
impossible today to tell the two people apart. They are
separate because government records carried over from
colonial days say so.  

This fictional racial divide was created and made official
by colonial bureaucrats during Belgian rule. The Belgian
Government forced everyone to carry an identity card
showing tribal ethnicity as Hutu or Tutsi. This was used in
administration, in providing lands, positions, and
otherwise playing power politics based on race. This
divisive politics combined with the racial hatred sowed by
the Tutsi invasion theory turned Rwanda-Burundi into a
powder keg ready to explode.  

The explosion came following independence form colonial
rule. Repeated violence after independence fueled this
hatred driven by this supposed ethnic difference and the
concocted history of the Tutsi invasion and oppression.
Some 2.5 million people were massacred in this fratricidal
horror of wars and genocides. Unscrupulous African leaders,
like the self-styled Dravidian politicians of India,
exploited this divisive colonial legacy to gain power at
the cost of the people. Hutu leaders described the Tutsis
as cockroaches, telecasting their tirades on the radio
during the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis. This led ordinary
Hutus to massacre the Tutsis en masse in a bid to
annihilate them completely.

So a peaceful, placid nation with a common populace,
sharing a common language, culture and history was
destroyed by colonialist, racist concoction called the
Tutsi invasion theory. It was entirely the handiwork of
colonial bureaucrats, missionaries and pseudo-scholars
building careers on the discredited notion of race.

It is of course no coincidence that ideas that led to the
Holocaust in Europe should have led to genocide in Africa.
The disgrace is that they continue to exist in Western
academia in various guises, ready to come out of the closet
at an opportune moment. This is what was seen during the
recent California school curriculum revision.

History lesson: transplanting the poison tree  

Why should we learn all this? Because the Tutsi invasion
theory has ominous parallels to the Aryan invasion theory
and the Aryan myth, which scholars are trying desperately
to save using linguistics or, Indo-European Studies or some
similar fig-leaf. Sectarian tension and violence,
thankfully not on the same horrific scale, was incited
between North- and South Indians by self-styled Dravidian
parties like the DMK, AIDMK and their many offshoots and
incarnations. These are the poisonous legacy of the
colonial-missionary racist offspring.  

Why did India not go the way of Rwanda-Burundi? Not for
lack of trying but because the cultural foundation of
Hinduism proved too strong. It defeated the designs of
politicians and propagandists masquerading as scholars. It
is no coincidence that Rwanda and Burundi had been
converted to Christianity, preparing the ground for
sectarian conflict. Several church figures, including
priests and nuns have been found guilty of complicity in
the Tutsi massacres. As in India, Christianity was a
colonial tool and missionaries little more than imperial
agents.

Their failure in Hindu India is also what is behind the
visceral anti-Hinduism of Witzel and his colleagues. It
came to the fore during the recent California school
controversy. This is enhanced by the fact that Hindu
scholars have been at the forefront of exposing their
designs and debunking their scholarly claims. An Internet
group (IER or Indo-Eurasian Research) co-founded by Witzel
has been doing little more than spewing venom at Hindus and
their practices, in language and style that bear comparison
with Nazi era publications like Julius Streicher's Der
Strummer.

They may have been defeated this time, but there is no room
for complacency. The divisive politicians of India and
their friends and colleagues in academia can come together
to defend the Aryan-Dravidian divide. California last year
was an example of such an unholy nexus. 7 Had Witzel and
his colleagues succeeded in planting their poison tree in
California schools, it would have become fertile ground for
demagogues to turn the ethnically diverse California into a
powder keg of animosities.

This brand of pseudo-scholarship cannot survive once their
Aryan theories end up in the dustbin where they belong.
Recognizing this, their advocates no longer engage in
debate but resort to name calling. Any opposition to the
Aryan theories is denounced as emotional, chauvinistic, and
the handiwork of Hindu nationalists and fundamentalists.
Like the artificial Aryan-Dravidian divide, the Tutsi-Hutu
divide is also denied by respectable scholarship, including
Western scholarship. Are we to denounce these -- and a
million Tutsi victims of the genocide -- as the handiwork
of these nationalistic chauvinistic Tutsis who deserved
their fate?

The Aryan myth -- and its advocates -- have both been
exposed, but it would be a serious error to assume that it
has been put to rest. Bad ideas have a way of resurfacing
especially when self interest is at stake. Writing about
the persistence of superstitions like belief in witches and
witchcraft in Europe, Charles Mackay, in his famous book
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and Madness of Crowds
observed (1841):

So deeply rooted are some errors that ages cannot remove
them. The poisonous tree that once overshadowed the land
might be cut down by the sturdy efforts of sages and
philosophers; the sun may shine clearly upon spots where
venomous things once nestled in security and shade; but
still the entangled roots are stretched beneath the
surface, and may be found by those who dig. Another King
like James I [a self professed expert on demonology] might
make them vegetate again; and more mischievous still,
another Pope like Innocent VIII [who initiated the
Inquisition against witches] might raise the decaying roots
to strength and verdure.

One may add that scholars and academics are no more immune
to the lure of obscurantism than medieval popes and kings,
especially when their survival is at stake. With their base
crumbling in Europe, these purveyors of hate are looking
for fresh soil in places like California to plant their
poison-bearing trees.

Acknowledgement: I am grateful to Shri Pankaj Saksena for
valuable information relating to the Tutsi invasion theory
and its legacy of horrors.  

NOTES

1. Curiously the very success of the Civil Rights Movement
in the United States has helped these European race
theories by shielding them from scrutiny. In the U.S.,
Aryan theories are associated with fringe groups like the
Ku Klux Klan, not prestigious institutions like Harvard. It
must be added that this is not official Harvard policy but
a negative fallout of academic freedom, with a tenured
faculty member misusing his position. Still one hopes that
Harvard authorities can reign in someone who is
increasingly a blot on its liberal image.

2. Quoted in Sarasvati River and the Vedic Civilization:
History, science and politics by N.S. Rajaram (2006), New
Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, page 31. The original source
(cited in the book) is not easy to access.

3. Op. cit. p. 127. Some recent claims of a genetic basis
for the Aryan invasion are easily refuted. See Sarasvati
River... (Op. cit.) for a discussion of the current state of
Aryan theories.

4. Op. cit. p. 128.

5. Ibid.

6. It is important to note that Hitler and the Nazis
appropriated their ideas and symbols from European
mythology, not India. Hitler's Aryans worshipped Apollo and
Odin, not Vedic deities like Indra and Varuna. His Swastika
was also European ('Hakenkreuz' or hooked cross) not
Indian. It was seen in Germany for the first time when
General von Luttwitz's notorious Erhardt Brigade marched
into Berlin from Lithuania in support of the abortive Kapp
Putsch of 1920. The Erhardt Brigade was one of several
freebooting private armies during the years following
Germany's defeat in World War I. They had the covert
support of the Wehrmacht (Army headquarters).

Several fringe groups from the Communists to those claiming
to represent 'Christian Dalits' (an oxymoron) ranged behind
Witzel

End of forwarded message from M Kelkar

Jai Maharaj  
http://tinyurl.com/yhjyp5  
http://www.mantra.com/jai  
http://www.mantra.com/jyotish  
Om Shanti  

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http://www.mantra.com/holocaust

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http://www.hindu.org
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http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate

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