Al Jazeera: “Arundhati Roy ‘shocked’ by jury’s Gaza remarks, quits Berlin film festival”

Al Jazeera: “Arundhati Roy ‘shocked’ by jury’s Gaza remarks, quits Berlin film festival”

Shrikant G Talageri 

 

Basically Israel is able (at least I hope so) to counter Jew-hater woke leftists and their anti-Jewish propaganda. There is no need for me to write on it. But on seeing one of the more “eminent”, and among the most rabidly slavering Hindu-hating Indian woke leftist, writers, and a darling of the International Breaking India Forces alliance, choosing to spew venom on Israel, I could not resist the urge to shove in my oar.

An article in Al-Jazeera with the above headline (“Arundhati Roy ‘shocked’ by jury’s Gaza remarks, quits Berlin film festival”) tells us: “Indian author Arundhati Roy has announced that she is withdrawing from the Berlin International Film Festival after what she described as “unconscionable statements” by its jury members about Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Writing in India’s The Wire newspaper, Roy said she found recent remarks from members of the Berlinale jury, including its chair, acclaimed director Wim Wenders, that “art should not be political” to be “jaw-dropping”.”

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/14/arundhati-roy-shocked-by-jurys-gaza-remarks-quits-berlin-film-festival

 

What she means basically is not just that “art should be political” but that “art should be militantly and viciously anti-Hindu and anti-Jewish in political matters”, and that any failure to be so is “jaw-dropping”.

 

As the article explains: ““It is a way of shutting down a conversation about a crime against humanity even as it unfolds before us in real time,” wrote Roy, the author of novels and nonfiction, including The God of Small Things.

“I am shocked and disgusted,” Roy wrote, adding that she believed “artists, writers and filmmakers should be doing everything in their power to stop” the war in Gaza.

“Let me say this clearly: what has happened in Gaza, what continues to happen, is a genocide of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel,” she wrote.”

 

What anyone not completely overpowered by hatred would notice is that seeing the way in which Hindus are being wiped out of Bangladesh she should have been saying: “I am shocked and disgusted…artists, writers and filmmakers should be doing everything in their power to stop the ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh. Let me say this clearly: what has happened in Bangladesh, what continues to happen, is a genocide of the Bangladeshi Hindu people by the State of Bangladesh.” Does she say this, and does she have the common decency to acknowledge that her failure to say it represents the standard attitude and behavior on the part of hate-obsessed woke leftist pseudo-intellectuals which should lead to “jaw-dropping” all around? How many countless times have these hate-filled sub-human beings not “shut down conversations” in the matter of what is happening to Hindus in Bangladesh, or Pakistan or Afghanistan? They even opposed the extremely lame-duck “Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA)” that was passed by the Parliament of India on December 11, 2019, and received Presidential assent on December 12, 2019, on the ground that even a “conversation about a crime against human Hindus in neighboring Muslim countries, even as it unfolded before us in real time”, and (even pretended) attempts to help the victims, somehow amounted to a “crime against Muslims in India”.

 

For the record again (already pointed out by me in many articles before this), the population of Muslims in India has only been increasing. In an earlier article I had quoted another Aljazeera article which inadvertently admitted that “the share of the Muslim population in India increased by 43.15 percent, from 9.84 percent to 14.09 percent. By contrast … the share of the majority Hindu population decreased by 7.82 percent between 1950 and 2015, from 84.68 percent to 78.06 percent.”

 

And in Bangladesh, a question on Google “percentage of Hindus in Bangladesh in 1946 as compared to 2025” gives us the following data: “In 1946, Hindus constituted approximately 28% to 30% of the population in the region that is now Bangladesh (then East Bengal). By 2025, this figure is estimated to have declined significantly to approximately 7.9% to 8%.”

 

Millions of Hindus in Bangladesh did not evaporate into the air between 1946 and 2025: they fell from 28-30% of the population to 8% because of ongoing “genocide of the Bangladeshi Hindu people by the State of Bangladesh”. At the same time, Muslims in India did not multiply like Raktabeej with new Muslims springing up from every drop of Muslim blood spilt by Hindus in genocides: they multiplied because they are not only not ill-treated but they are given special privileges denied to India’s Hindus.

 

Exactly the same is the case with Israel: a question on Google “percentage of Muslims in Israel in 1948 as compared to 2025” gives us the following data: “In 1948, Muslims made up approximately 9% to 10% of the population in the newly established State of Israel, whereas in 2025, they represent approximately 18% of the population.”

 

Contrast this with the case in Arab Countries: A question on Google “percentage of Jews in Arab countries in 1946 as compared to 2025” gave the following AI Overview answer:

“The Jewish population in Arab countries has experienced a near-total collapse between 1946 and 2025, dropping from a population of approximately 850,000 to 1,000,000 in the mid-1940s to fewer than 13,000 by 2025. This represents a decrease of over 99% of the population, leaving many of these regions, including Libya, Iraq, and Yemen, almost entirely "Jew-free". 

Jewish Population in Arab Countries (1946–1948 vs. 2025)

The following estimates reflect the major Jewish populations across the Arab world and Iran, which was often included in regional statistics. 

Region/Country	Approx. Population (1946–1948)	Estimated Population (2025)
Morocco	~265,000 (1948)	~2,500
Algeria	~140,000 (1948)	~0
Iraq	~135,000 (1948)	~5
Tunisia	~105,000 (1948)	~1,500
Egypt	~75,000 (1948)	~2
Yemen (incl. Aden)	~55,000 (1948)	~1
Libya	~38,000 (1948)	~0
Syria	~30,000 (1948)	~3
Lebanon	~5,000 (1948)	~50
Iran (Non-Arab)	~100,000 (1948)	~8,756
Total (Approx.)	~950,000+	~13,000

Key Drivers of Demographic Change

·         1946–1950s: The first large-scale exoduses took place following the 1947 UN Partition Plan and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Over 90% of Jews left countries like Iraq, Yemen, and Libya.

·         Persecution and Political Shifts: The rise of Arab nationalism, anti-Jewish riots (such as the 1941 Farhud in Iraq and 1945 riots in Libya), and anti-Zionist policies created an unsafe environment.

·         Emigration: Many Jews were expelled, had their citizenship revoked (e.g., Libya), or faced severe restrictions, leading to mass migration to Israel, France, and the United States.

·         2025 Status: The remaining populations are elderly and heavily concentrated in just a few countries (primarily Morocco and Tunisia). 

Note: In 1946, the Jewish population in the British Mandate of Palestine (which became Israel) was roughly 543,000 (about 30% of that area's population), which was a separate demographic trend from the rapid decline of communities in neighboring Arab states.”

 

The complete wiping out of Jews from Arab countries also “unfolded before us in real time” without any comments from these hate-merchants, and the slow wiping out of Hindus from Pakistan and Bangladesh, “what has happened… and what continues to happen… a genocide of the Bangladeshi Hindu people by the State of Bangladesh”, is also “unfolding before us in real time” without any comments from these hate-merchants, who in fact continue to fully support the perpetrators of these genocides by firstly completely blanking out the details of these slow genocides in the woke-controlled media, politically providing full support to the perpetrators of the genocides, and finally portraying the victims of the genocides as perpetrators of genocides.

 

And note: the millions on millions of Muslim refugees crowding European countries and slowly and irrevocably changing the demographic situation in Europe to their advantage are not refugees from “genocides” in Israel or India (as already pointed out by me in an earlier article): Muslims are happily thriving and prospering in Israel and India. They are (or claim to be) refugees from “genocides” in Muslim countries:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2025/10/israel-palestinians-and-india-some.html 

So these highly privileged and mercenary merchants of hate pretending to be flag-bearers of “humanitarianism” can stop their “jaw-dropping” dramas and crocodile tears. No-one will be fooled except those predisposed and determined to be fooled.

 

“Neutral Linguistic Terms” in the AIT-OIT Debate

 

“Neutral Linguistic Terms” in the AIT-OIT Debate

 Shrikant G. Talageri 

 

Someone just sent me a series of tweets by Jijth Nadumuri Ravi posted between 7 February and 8 February 2026 (i.e. yesterday and today). I was not going to comment on Jijith’s tweets any more, having said everything there was to say. But here some points fundamental to the idea of Linguistic Terms in the AIT-OIT debate have been made which require to be corrected.

His first or so in the series of tweets starts out as follows:

https://x.com/Jijith_NR/status/2019998803554890106

“Are “Indo-Aryan” and “Dravidian” divisive terms? - Clearing some misconceptions:

Many people automatically assume that using neutral linguistic terms such as "Indo-Aryan" or "Dravidian" automatically implies support for the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT). This assumption is incorrect. It is true that AIT-era colonial scholarship weaponised these terms to construct a North–South civilisational divide in India. However, terminological abuse does not invalidate linguistic classification. Today, the same terms are used within frameworks that explicitly reject AIT, including the Out of India Theory (OIT).”

So far so good. Also, a map showing the distribution of language families in India, shown in the tweet, is fine (see map at the end of this article).

 

But then the fallacies start:

He, of course, starts out by repeating his usual lies about the locations given by me. Now on the model of “Shrikant Talageri places Manu in Ayodhya”, he writes:

“In Indian-origin models PIE is located within India, not outside it. Shrikant Talageri places PIE in eastern Uttar Pradesh. But we locate it in the Sarasvatī basin.”

Right from my first book in 1993, I have put it as follows:

“The original Indo-European language, which we will here call “proto-proto-Indo-European” to distinguish it from the hypothetical language (proto-Indo-European) reconstructed by European linguists, was spoken in interior North India; but in very ancient times it had spread out and covered a large area extending to Afghanistan, and had developed a number of dialects, which may be classified as follows:

1. Outer Indo-European dialects: Spoken in Afghanistan and northern Kashmir and the adjoining north Himalayan region.

2. Central Indo-European dialects: Spoken in what we may call the “Punjab region” and in southern Kashmir,

3. Inner Indo-European dialects: Spoken in the expanse of northern India from the Gangetic region to Maharashtra and from Punjab to Orissa and Bengal.” (TALAGERI 1993:185)”

In short I located ““The original Indo-European language ……. in interior North India” without assigning any specific part of North India to it, and only specified the locations of three groups of IE proto-dialects.

Subtle modifications to this scheme in my later books and articles led to a stratification into three groups of dialects (Druhyu, Anu and Pūru) constituting the 12 extant IE branches used in the reconstruction of the “hypothetical language (proto-Indo-European) reconstructed by European linguists” not including the “Inner Indo-European dialects: Spoken in the expanse of northern India from the Gangetic region to Maharashtra and from Punjab to Orissa and Bengal” which existed but were not used by the European linguists in their reconstruction.

Nowhere does “Shrikant Talageri place PIE in eastern Uttar Pradesh”.

 

But there are other fallacies in his tweets:

1. He writes: "Multiple Dravidian homeland models exist: --------- In Central Indian homeland theory Dravidian expands north-westward to Gujarat and Balochistan. In Elam (south-west Iran) origin theory, Dravidian migrates from Iran to Balochistan, Gujarat, and Central India. In both models Dravidian reaches South India from Central India.".

There is no theory which locates the original Proto-Dravidian in Central India and then has the Dravidian languages moving into "South India from Central India." The two extant “theories” locate the original Proto-Dravidian in Elam in southern Iran (and in an exaggerated version even taking it further back into Africa!) and in South India respectively. Even western AIT supporters like Witzel, Hock, Southworth and others now accept that the minor Dravidian languages spoken in Central India and Baluchistan migrated there from South India.

 

2. He also writes: "Within OIT, the linguistic sequence remains structurally valid: Proto-Indo-European (PIE) > Proto-Indo-Iranian > Proto-Indo-Aryan > Vedic Sanskrit"

I have always completely rejected the concept of an "Indo-Iranian" intermediary between PIE and the Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches, so his claim is completely wrong, I have shown how all the similarities between Indo-Aryan and Iranian are not because of a parent "Proto-Indo-Iranian" but because one of the Anu branches (Iranian) in a late period, after the migration of the other Anu branches (Greek, Armenian, Albanian) remained behind and interacted with Pūru Indo-Aryan which produced all these common elements which the linguists wrongly assumed to be common elements from an earlier period and therefore wrongly postulated a common “Proto-Indo-Iranian”.

So, while “Proto-Indo-Iranian” may be part of the linguistic sequence in the AIOIT, it does not even exist in the OIT. [He writes: “These are two dominant OIT models of today.” No, there are not: there is one OIT model and one AIOIT model.

Further, note the muddled use of the word in the tweets: “From this Indian homeland, Indo-Iranian migrated westward into Iran. Other Indo-European branches moved into Eurasia. Indo-Aryan remained and spread within India”. Should he not say “Iranian migrated westward into Iran”?

 

3. There is more trivialization of terms and issues:

“Those uncomfortable with the label PIE may simply call it the "Sarasvatī language", but the linguistic relationships remain unchanged.”

“Don't like the name PIE? NO PROBLEM. CALL IT THE SARASVATI LANGUAGE.”

So, because Jijith locates the original PIE on the Sarasvati, the language can be called “Sarasvati language”? No promulgator of Homeland theories has made such a suggestion: I have never suggested that it can be called “Interior North Indian language” (or, as per Jijith’s fabrication, “Eastern UP language” or "Ayodhya language"), supporters of a Steppe Homeland have never suggested it should be called “Steppe language”, and supporters of an Anatolian Homeland have never suggested that it should be called “Anatolian language”.

In a previous article, I had pointed out to someone (who insisted that PIE should instead be called Proto-Sanskrit or Proto-Vedic), that PIE was the (reconstructed) ancestor of all the known IE languages − of Latin, Greek, English, Sinhalese and Tocharian as much as of Vedic/Sanskrit – and could equally well be called Proto-Latin, Proto-Greek, Proto-English, Proto-Sinhalese or Proto-Tocharian. Proto-Indo-European is the only correct name because it is a neutral academic term covering all the IE languages, and is not based on pandering to any particular Homeland theory.

So Jijith basically has the concept of “neutral linguistic terms” correct does not seem to have understood it himself in his zeal to promote his own AIOIT case.

And, his map is also a nice one: 

NADIYA DHEERE BAHO – FROM RIGVEDA TO FOLK CULTURE, CONCERTS, AND BOLLYWOOD

 

NADIYA DHEERE BAHO – FROM RIGVEDA TO FOLK CULTURE, CONCERTS, AND BOLLYWOOD

Shrikant G. Talageri 

 

As I am preparing my three articles on music (to be uploaded on 5 April 2026 in memory of my parents on the day on which my father would have completed 100 years), I noticed once more this theme reverberating through Indian poetry and music from the Rigveda to the present day.

In the Rigveda, in hymn III.33, the Bharata king Sudās, after conducting a massive horse-releasing ceremony (not yet fully the famed aśvamedha of the New Rigveda and the Epics) in modern-day Haryana at the hands of his (first) priest Viśvāmitra, has just started out on his expansive and imperialistic journey of conquest westwards into the Punjab, land of the Anus (linguistic ancestors of the Iranians, Greeks, Armenians and Albanians).

The first obstacle he faces is the riverine obstacle of the easternmost two tributaries of the (yet unreached and far-off) Sindhu / Indus river, which are flowing in full spate: the Śutudrī (present-day Sutlej) and the Vipāś (the Hyphasis/Hypasis/Hybasis of the later classical Greek texts, the present-day Beas).

Viśvāmitra addresses this famous hymn (III.33) to the two rivers, asking them to flow gently or cease flowing altogether, in order to allow Sudās and his army of Bharata soldiers to pass over from east to west in safety.

Verses 9 and 11 of the hymn (III.33.9,11), addressed to the two rivers, as translated by Jamison:

“Listen well to the bard, sisters. He has driven to you from afar with his wagon and chariot. Bow down, become easy to cross, staying below his axle(s) with your currents, you rivers.

When the Bharatas should really have crossed you entirely – the horde seeking cattle, propelled, sped by Indra – then certainly your forward thrust, launched in a surge, will rush (again). I wish for the favor of you who deserve the sacrifice”.

Griffith’s translation:

“List quickly, Sisters, to the bard who cometh to you from far away with car and wagon. Bow lowly down; be easy to be traversed stay, Rivers, with your floods below our axles.

Soon as the Bharatas have fared across thee, the warrior band, urged on and sped by Indra, Then let your streams flow on in rapid motion. I crave your favour who deserve our worship.”

  

This theme, asking the river waters to slow down or cease flowing in force so as to enable someone to cross over in safety, is one which has reverberated down the centuries right from the very first book in the world, the Rigveda, as a consistent theme in poetry and music.

Here is the popular theme expressed in our semi-classical musical forms like the thumri:

Dagar Brothers (two versions):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vctZ7VOkKME

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-buDsyjV-g

Prabha Atre:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCWMfeqyxqM

Girija Devi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejx7J-cilos

Padmavati Shaligram:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV9kQrYNQn8

Roshanara Begum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qonU8Th2R8&list=PLMYQ2DE1_LdaOWOVrrGGDYwFQxhp0woiX&index=97

Shruti Sadolikar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRqfm50Dzts

Iqbal Bano:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgjPrzkiCF8

Faraz Nizami:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdskwouIhwU

Manali Bose:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9O0nUccpC4

Sangborti Das:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBi0BV7-avY

 

Here are a few examples of bhajan/folk versions (arbitrarily chosen from youtube):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbRFuANBA3A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSFB3AJJZBU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhC8flf5j_0

 

The theme has been popular in our film industry from very early times, starting with Ashok Kumar’s famous film Acchut Kanya:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08IcQgSUxnY

And of course the most famous version of the song by Lata Mangeshkar in the film Udan Khatola: both in the original Hindi and in its Tamil version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JNlj1qkRf8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFHMUuw0NRw

A theme stretching from the Rigveda to present-day folk/religious/classical/film music, and from the North to the South! There may be such songs in regional languages as well, unknown to me.

 

POSTSCRIPT:

Of course, crossing a river in full spate is not an obstacle to someone aided by the Gods or driven by strong and overpowering passion.

Vasudeva, the father of Krishna, crosses a flooded river (which parts and creates a path for him), the Yamuna in full spate to, take the baby Krishna to safety. Even the Bibilical Jehovah parts the waters of the Nile to enable the Jews to escape from the wrath of the Pharaoh.

The famed story of Bilwamangal, maddened with passion, crossing through a river in full spate (no divine intervention here) to reach his beloved is well known. Hindi films have many songs where equally passionate lovers cross flooded rivers to reach their beloved. A few examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To5cvtn0JZE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQIO-SNvEe4

 

A Comical Book on “Presence of Ancient Tamil Words In Other Indian Languages”

 

A Comical Book on “Presence of Ancient Tamil Words In Other Indian Languages”

Shrikant G Talageri 

 

Someone gave me a book “Presence of Ancient Tamil Words In Other Indian Languages” by a writer named R Madhivanan, pubished by Central Institute of Classical Tamil, Chennai, 2023, which he had apparently picked up on a recent visit to Chennai.

About the writer of the book (priced at Rs. 300), the back cover gives the following information:

“Dr. R. Madhivanan specializes in Tamil etymological studies and formerly served as the Chief Editor of the Tamil Etymological Dictionary project initiated by the Government of Tamil nadu. He has authored four books on the decipherment of the Indus script., with his latest work titled “Indus Script among Dravidian Speakers published in 1995.

Madhivanan’s approach to deciphering the Indus script is based on several fundfamental principles. He posits that the Indus civilization originated in Kumari Kandam, an ancient Tamil land, and that the people inhabiting the Indus Valley were Tamils. He also asserts that the language of the Indus civilization was Tamil. Madhivanan suggests that the Indus script is syllabic and written from left to right, similar to the Tamil script. He applies the grammatical rules of Tolkāpiyam to the Indus language”.

 

I gave a quick glance through the book as soon as I took it, and even that cursory glance showed me that the writer was very evidently a super-hyper-P.N.Oak, whose etymological claims would completely put in the shade the original P.N.Oak, and would replace the name of P.N.Oak with his own name as the King of Comical Etymologies. P.N.Oak, of course, did not have behind him the power of government Ministries and agencies to give an official stamp to his comical claims, but this writer, as we can see from the above description of his position and career, very clearly does.

Although I immediately realized what the intellectual level of the book was likely to be, I was still in the hope that I would perhaps get (hidden within the piles of rubbish) at least a few inadvertent clues to some genuine Dravidian borrowings into Vedic, Classical Sanskrit and modern Indo-Aryan languages which would be useful in any historical study of inter-language influences in India. Alas! The book is indeed pure rubbish, and I realized that going through the entire over-170-pages of lists of alleged “ancient Tamil” borrowings into other Indian languages would be a totally fruitless task absolutely not worth the trouble.

Nevertheless, a short picture of what the book has to say will be interesting and useful.

The book gives lists of allegedly “ancient Tamil” words in various “other Indian” languages as follows:

Hindi (pp.1-5)

Sindhi (pp. 6-10)

Marathi (pp. 11-13)

Gujarati (pp. 14-17)

Punjabi (pp. 18-22)

Santali (pp. 23-29)

Malayalam (pp. 30-33)

Kannada (pp. 34-37)

Telugu (pp. 38-41)

Tulu (pp. 42-43)

South Dravidian - Non Litrary (sic) Tribal Languages (pp. 44-59)

Central Dravidian - Non Litrary (sic) Tribal Languages (pp. 60-99)  

North Dravidian - Non Litrary (sic) Tribal Languages (pp. 100-110)

Dogri (pp. 111-115)

Bengali (pp. 116-118)

Odia (pp. 119-121)

Sanskrit (pp. 122-128)

Prakrit (pp. 129-134)

Pali (pp. 135- 139)

Kashmiri (pp. 140-154)

Assamese (pp. 156-158)

Angami Naga (pp. 159-162)

There follow a few pages of mixed multi-lingual lists (pp. 164-174) followed by alleged non-lexical (i.e. phonological, grammatical, etc.) borrowings from Tamil (pp. 174-180).

That someone can sit down and write so many pages of utter piffle and publish them as books, and occupy important positions in academic bodies, is testimony to the low level of academic research and study in such fields in India, especially when they have the backing of half-baked political ideologies and parties.

To go to the actual content of his “ancient Tamil words”:

1. He devotes 81 pages (pp. 30-110) to giving lists of words in other Dravidian languages, and instead of recognizing that such words must be native words in those languages (since they are also Dravidian languages sharing the same common proto-Dravidian ancestry with Tamil, so that these words are cognate words and not borrowed words) he treats them as borrowings from Tamil.

[Incidentally, it is even possible, since I did not look too deeply into these lists (in these other Dravidian languages), that the lists may also include not just Dravidian words native to these languages but also all kinds of Sanskrit words borrowed into these Dravidian languages].

2. He also devotes 55 pages (pp. 6-10, 14-29, 111-121, 140-162) to words in other Indian languages (Indo-Aryan as well as Santali and Angami Naga) that I do not know and cannot comment specifically on.

Likewise, another 11 pages deal with Prakrits (129-139), and while it is perfectly possible that Prakrits (like various modern Indo-Aryan languages) must have borrowed from Dravidian languages (as distinct from “Tamil” as a specific source), I cannot sift through the chaff: again, because I do not know the Prakrits concerned or sources to check the claims.

3. That leaves 8 pages of Hindi and Marathi words, and 7 pages of Sanskrit words that I could have gone into if this book had represented a serious intellectual, academic and scientific study into the subject.

There are indeed very many words in Marathi (being a border-language with the Dravidian languages) that are borrowed from neighboring Kannada: off-hand, and without going into detailed studies at the moment, one word that immediately comes to my mind is the word huḍuk (“search out”). Strangely, this word is missing in the 3-page list.

But (along with some possible genuine borrowings) the list includes a whole lot of purely Indo-Aryan words with cognates in Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages as well. To take a few of the most blatant examples:

a) tēthē/tithē “there” (Sanskrit tatra, English there/thither, Greek tê), weirdly spelt as de:te, is claimed to be borrowed from Tamil avviḍam!

b) śāḷā “school/room” (Sanskrit śālā , Latin cella, Greek kella/kalia, English hall, etc.), spelt as sa:la, is claimed to be borrowed from Tamil ca:lai (actually borrowed by Tamil from Sanskrit)!

c) ghar “house” (Sanskrit gṛha, Avestan gərədō, Russian gorod, Lithuanian gardas, etc.), spelt as gar, is claimed to be derived from Tamil nagar!

d) śēt “field, cultivable land” (Sanskrit kṣetra, Hindi khēt, Old Iranian forms kšaθra, shōithra) spelt as ce:t, is claimed to be derived from Tamil cey! 

Likewise zā (spelt ja:) “go”, yē (spelt e:) “come”, dalit (translated as “worker”), magar (spelt mahara) “crocodile”, darwāzā (spelt darwa:ja) “door”, jahāz (spelt jaha:j) “ship”, and many other clearly Indo-Aryan (one or two even in Persian-Urdu forms) words are given as borrowings from extremely unlikely Tamil words.

To illustrate the utter incongruity, extreme unlikeliness and inanity of the connections sought to be drawn, Marathi hāk mār “call out” (in which the word hāk means “call”, and mār “beat” makes it a compound verb “call out”) is wrongly reduced to ma:r translated as “to call”, and this is claimed to be borrowed from Tamil viḷi “to call” (through a mysterious intermediate form mili – mi:r)!!

Likewise, it is perfectly possible that there are countless words in later Sanskrit and also in modern North Indian Indo-Aryan languages borrowed (either via Sanskrit or through some other via media) from Dravidian languages. There are many studies on this subject, and I have referred to many of these words in my articles, including certain Dravidian words borrowed even into the New Rigveda (brought by rishis originating in the Dravidian south who became part of the New Rigvedic/Late Harappan culture of the northwest by migration).

But any hopes, that this book will prove useful in searching out, or preparing lists of, these words, get destroyed by a glance at the very first page (page one) of the book which starts to list the “Tamil” words borrowed into Hindi. This list freely includes Hindi words of pure Sanskrit or other Indo-Aryan (and even Persian-Urdu) origin as borrowings into Hindi from extremely unlikely Tamil words and forms.

Some gems from page one (I will not bother to proceed further beyond page one): akēlā (spelt ake:la:)  acchā (spelt achcha)  adhik (spelt adik), āgē (spelt a:ge), idhar (spelt idar), āj (spelt a:j), lēkin (spelt le:kin), udhar (spelt udar), ūpar (spelt u:par), rūpa (spelt ru:pa), lē (spelt le:), mat (spelt math).

I cannot go on!

Sorry, P.N.Oak, you are no more the King of Comical Etymologies. Already you were facing very stiff competition from western academicians (like Witzel to name just one) who were churning out lists of Dravidian and Austric origin words in the Rigveda. Who knows, you may already have lost the title to some of them already. But now you have been beaten hollow by this book.