BBC admits Aryan Invasion was a myth

BBC admits Aryan Invasion was a myth
By Arabinda Ghose

Ever since the German philosopher Max Muller had propounded the theory that the Aryans were not indigenous Indians and had actually come from outside, probably Central Asia, the whole world believed in it. Even eminent Indian historians had religiously given credence to this theory and Muller’s assertion that the Vedas were composed sometime during 1500 BCE or later.

The following paragraphs, downloaded from the internet by the quarterly magazine Asian Agri History edited by Dr. Y.L. Nene and others,Vol.10.No.2 (April-June,2006) unambiguously accepts that Max Muller was entirely wrong. We give the website details at the end of this article.

Here is the full text of the paragraphs published by magazine: “One of the most controversial ideas of Hindu History is the Aryan Invasion theory, originally devised by F. Max Muller in 1848,traces the history of Hinduism to the invasion of India’s indigenous people by lighter skinned Aryans around 1500 BCE. The theory was reinforced by other research over the next 120 years, and became the accepted history of Hinduism, not only in the West but in India. There is now ample evidence to show that Muller, and those who followed him, were wrong.

Why is the Theory no longer accepted?
“The Aryan invasion theory was based on archaeological, linguistic and ethnological evidence. Later research has either discredited this evidence or provided new evidence that combined with the earlier evidence and makes other explanations more likely. Modern historians of the area no longer believe that such invasions had such great influence on Indian history. It is now generally accepted that Indian history shows a continuity of progress from the earliest times to today. The changes brought to India by other cultures are not denied by modern historians, but they are no longer thought to be a major ingredient in the development of Hinduism.

“Danger of the Theory
The Aryan Invasion Theory denies the Indian origin of India’s predominant culture, but gives credit for Indian culture to invaders from elsewhere. It even teaches that some of the most revered books of Hindu scripture are not actually India, and it devalues India’s culture by portraying it as less ancient that it actually is. The theory was not just wrong, it included unacceptably racist ideas:

1.

It suggested that Indian culture was a culture in its own right and a synthesis of elements from other cultures;
2.

It implied that Hinduism was not an authentically Indian religion but the result of cultural imperialism
3.

It suggested that Indian culture was static, and only changed under outside influences;
4.

It suggested that the dark-skinned Dravidian people of the South of India had got their faith from light-skinned Aryan invaders;
5.

It implied that indigenous people were incapable of creatively developing their faith;
6.

It suggested that indigenous people could not acquire new religious and cultural ideas from other races, by invasion or other processes;
7.

It accepted that race was a biologically based concept (rather than, at least in part, a social construct)that provided a sensible way of a ranking people in a hierarchy, which provided a partial basis for the caste system;
8.

It provided a basis for racism in the Imperial context by suggesting that the peoples of Northern India were descendants from invaders from Europe and so racially closer to the British Raj
9.

It 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;
10.

It downgraded the intellectual status of India and its people by giving a falsely late date to elements of Indian science and culture”.

The website is :http://www.bbc.co.UK/religion/religions/hinduism/history/history5.shtml

Organiser has carried in the past scholarly articles by, among others, N.S. Rajaram. However, the admission by the British Broadcasting Corporation that Max Muller had deliberately given a “falsely late date to elements of Indian science and culture, should now open the eyes of those scholars who still swear by the Aryan Invasion Theory.

One may add here that in the articles of the date of Lord Rama’s date of birth published in the Organiser of February 5 and 26, 2006,this writer had quoted a researcher Pushkar Bhatnagar of Delhi as claiming that the date was January 10, 5114 BCE. This showed that the Ramayana written by sage Valmiki places Indian civilisation at least seven thousand years from present. One has to add that it must have taken Indians of those days to develop the society in which Lord Rama was born at least two to three thousand years from primitive state. This puts Indian civilisation to at least ten thousand years from the present. Since the Rigveda is older than the Ramayana, the date of its composition should be at least the seventh millennium before Christ. Shri Bhatnagar’s claim that the remnants of the bridge built by Lord Rama’s army for the invasion of Lanka also proved its antiquity to seven thousand years before present.(This remnant is not the one said to have been photographed by NASA, the American Space Agency, which had denied that the photograph taken by it pertained to the old “Setu” built by Nala and other engineers accompanying Lord Rama).