After reading his article, I am more convinced that lawyers or judges should not be let anywhere outside their court rooms and especially into history lectures. Such generalizations and inaccuracies.
India =/= North America.
Main reason : What happened in North America was , in no uncertain terms, an ethnic cleansing of the local population by outsiders using all forces at their disposal. That was no immigration dammit. That was plain genocide.
On the contrary what happened in the Indian subcontinent is :
first of all is not clear as there is no definitive conclusion reached on it yet. What exists are various hypothesis by various anthropologists with each having their own explanations, strong points and weaknesses.
And again comparing/equating what happens gradually over many thousands of years with small groups of moving in search of pasture,water and fertile soil, settling down and gradually assimilating themselves into the local society with no difference visible with invasions/conquests that happened over a relatively short span of time is a dumb thing to do.
AIT..? Seriously ?
Please some one tell him that his 'beliefs' actually dont stand upto scientific scrutiny. In Indian context, Aryan and Dravidian are linguistic terms and nothing to do with ethnicity.
The so-called Aryans and Dravidian races of India are members of the same Mediterranean branch of the Caucasian race, which prevailed in the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Sumeria and is still the main group in the Mediterranean area, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Caucasian race is not simply white but also contains dark skinned types. Skin color and race is another nineteenth century idea that has been recently discarded.
Darker skin color is commonly found in peoples living in more southern regions and appears as an adjustment mechanism to hotter climates and greater sunshine. For example southern Europeans are darker in skin color than northern Europeans, though they are not a different race because of this. This suggests that the Dravidian branch of the Mediterranean race must have lived in South India for some thousands of years to make this adjustment, and the same thing could be said of the people of North India as well if we would make them originally light-skinned invaders from the north.
Solid Evidence Debunking Aryan Invasion
What in the holy hell is Sanskrit-Urdu culture ? :shocked:
Urdu has been in the Indian subcontinent for about 650-700 years now with a minimal impact on the Indian culture. Lumping it with Sanskrit is in itself a great mistake. He says Sanskrit-Urdu culture and then he himself admits 70% of vocabulary in Urdu is from Sanskrit !
And what does he mean by "our" culture ? For him born in Allahabad it might be his culture, what does a Southie whose culture was neither influenced much by Sanskrit or Urdu got to do with them ?
As lurker said Sanskrit-Tamil culture would have been a much more precise description of whatever he wanted to say. These two languages formed the real deal with mutual exchanges and influence. Shaivism as said was much more of Tamil/Dravidian origin and Gods like Ram, Krishna were thought to be of sanskrit (north Indian origin) and those ideas spread from one region to another.
Bull.
AFAIK Urdu never had much of a traction in South (except Deccan), West or Eastern part of India. It flourished in areas of modern day UP,Bihar,parts of Rajasthan,MP and Haryana under the patronage of the Nawabs and only people from those parts studied that language. Infact it was not Urdu,
rather Persian, which was considered the language of the high class - the poets,aristocrats and royalty.And I strongly doubt the Sikh part he said. For Sikhs, Gurmukhi is a part of their religious identity (I think GGS was written in Gurmukhi only) and it was patronized by the Sikh royalty long before partition of independence. And another nitpick..its not called Urdu script..its called Shahmukhi.
Such arrogance.
He has studied history of whole world ? And no emperor like Akbar.? What a load of crap. Did he even know that this one-of-a-kind emperor slaughtered 30000 Rajput civilians in Chittor after conquering them ?.
Religious tolerance was not proclaimed explicity in India before the Islamic invasions...because there was no need for it in the first place. The kings in those days rarely indulged in persecution of other religions and it was common to see kings patronizing all three faiths - Hinduism,Jainism and Buddhism simultaneously.
Does this chap even know of the existence of great kings like Karikalan, Raja Raja Cholan, Mamallan Narasimhan who would put Akbar to shame in any given field. And I've not even brought in kings like Samudragupta, Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka etc in this.
The running joke is there were only two followers of Din-e-lahi...Akbar and Birbal. Birbal because Akbar followed it. It was just a mish-mash of all the available faiths at that time without a serious philosophical/spiritual backing behind it.
Disingenuity at best.
80-90% of the population were never one homogenous block to resist any move. The truth is they were hopelessly divided into clans, castes,different vassal states with internecine feuds that was the prime reason for India getting conquered in the first place. Also the soldiery of the Mughals was dominated by Afghans,other pashtuns,central asian mercenaries and local muslims that a revolt in the ranks was never a serious threat.
Regarding the bolded part, I dare him to come to Kerala and repeat what he just said. That Tipu was good to Hindus.
Mischief was done ? Yes. But not in the way MK seems to insinuate. Many atrocities that were committed during the Islamic/European conquest of India has been whitewashed for the sake of "communal harmony". One example is there is no mention in any of our history books about the
Inquisition in Goa by the Portuguese. While we read about the sacking of the Somnath Mandir, we dont see Kashi,Mathura or Ayodhya temples being sacked. Another example.
And contrary to what he says , Aurangazeb is not exactly portrayed as a zealot (which he exactly was). Shahjahan and Jahangir are portrayed as some luminaries , which they most certainly are not.
The medieval history - Delhi sultanates and Mughal Empire stretch for about 3 chapters in history books (one I studied), while the Maurya,Gupta empires under whose period India saw much advancement in literature,science are contained into half a chapter..
Moreover the Marathas get half a chapter and there is only a passing mention about the Sikh empire. The less said about the Chera,Chola,Pallava,Pandya kingdoms - which are actually our history - the better. We, who should be studying about it the most, actually study the least about that.
yeah its time to rewrite our history books for the following blunders.
:bs:
