Casteist Brahmin Supporters of the AIT on the Internet

 

Casteist Brahmin Supporters of the AIT on the Internet

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

The very first article on my blogspot, dealing with historical and socio-political topics, was uploaded on 5/5/2016 (before that my blogspot only had four articles on Lists of Hindi/Marathi songs in Jhaptaal/Roopaktaal, uploaded in April 2012). I was compelled to upload my article " Manasataramgini on the Aryan Invasion Theory" on my blogspot after the article (written in reply to an abusive article by the blogger Manasataramgini, which referred to a whole list of writers, including, among others, Koenraad Elst, David Frawley, Dr. S. Kalyanaraman, Dr.SR Rao, Prof. BB Lal, and myself, as "idiots" for opposing the AIT) was rejected for publication by the editor of a prominent Hindu internet journal. The editor had himself asked for permission to post the article in his internet journal, and, after I readily agreed, wanted me to delete all references to Manasataramgini from the article as it would alienate and anger the myriad "Hindu" fans of that blogger. As the whole point of the article was that it was a reply to his abusive reference to so many Hindu writers as "idiots" (which apparently was perfectly acceptable to his myriad "Hindu" fans!), I saw no sense in this ridiculous demand. I then decided that my blogspot, lying dormant for four years, was the only spot to upload my articles freely and fully in my own words without fear of  "politically correct" editing, censoring and modifications.

The amazing thing was that this motivated propagandist (Manasataramgini) for the AIT, of which he seemed to know only the oldest and most outdated arguments, was a militant Brahmin, and one who, as I was repeatedly told by some mutual fans, had a large and devout following consisting of orthodox Hindus (mainly, but not only, Brahmins). They apparently considered him as some kind of great spiritual giant with high spiritual powers — on which point that gentleman was apparently in full agreement, if one were to go by his pompous writings (in the first-person plural!): e.g. ""We sat in front of Agni making the preliminary offering with the ancient mantras, where Agni is described as being that of Bhṛgu, Apnavāna, and Aurva, our illustrious ancestors. The observant individual would note, as we had done, that these mantras contain a key reference that gives the identity of the original homeland of the Indo-Iranians, and now likely all Indo-Europeans. We have never been to that place, but if one realizes those mantras of the Bhṛgus, or the Bharadvājas or the Vaiśvāmitras one immediately sees the land it corresponds to – the land where there is fire within water"!!

I had thought that the colonial days when Brahmins, as "Brahmins", were strong supporters of the theory which linked them and their "illustrious ancestors" with the colonial rulers and gave them a sense of superiority distinguishing them from other lesser Indians with less illustrious (or even inferior) ancestors, was long over. There were strong groups of such Brahmins in colonial India, and there is a very important article by Madhav Deshpande (DESHPANDE 2005) titled "Aryan origins: arguments from the nineteenth-century Maharashtra", which deals with the writings of Brahmins from Maharashtra and Goa who militantly espoused this connection or identity.

Lokmanya Tilak was one of those militant Brahmins who, in his book "Arctic Home in the Vedas" (1903) likewise described the "Aryan" composers of the Vedas as "the ancient worshippers and sacrificers of our race" (TILAK 1903:138), meaning the Brahmin race (!), and described with pride "the vitality and superiority of the Aryan races, as disclosed by their conquest, by extermination or assimilation, of the non-Aryan races with whom they came into contact in their migrations in search of new lands from the North Pole to the Equator"!! (TILAK 1903:431). And again: "the very fact that [….the Aryans….] were able to establish their supremacy over the races they came across in their migrations from the original home, and that they succeeded, by conquest or assimilation, in Aryanising the latter in language, thought and religion under circumstances which could not be expected to be favourable to them, is enough to prove that the original Aryan civilization most have been of a type far higher than that of the non-Aryan races" (TILAK 1903:409).

Dr. Ambedkar reacted sharply and critically to "the support which this theory receives from Brahmin scholars". As he pointed out, "this is a very strange phenomenon.  As Hindus they should ordinarily show a dislike for the Aryan theory with its expressed avowal of the superiority of the Aryan races over the Asiatic races. but the Brahmin scholar has not only no such aversion, but he most willingly hails it.  The reasons are obvious.  The Brahmin claims to be a representative of the Aryan race and he regards the rest of the Hindus as descendants of the non-Aryans.  The theory helps him to establish his kinship with the European races and share their arrogance and their superiority.  He likes particularly that part of the theory which makes the Aryan an invader and a conqueror of the non-Aryan races.  For it helps him to maintain his overlordship over the non-Brahmins" (AMBEDKAR 1990:80).

[It is one of the ironies and tragedies of casteist Indian politics that "dalit" leaders who swear by Ambedkar today reject his anti-AIT views, and form an alliance with the Breaking India Forces to propagate the AIT on a most militant and vicious political level].

 

But apparently, though Brahmins in general have completely lost this casteist obsession to link Brahmins as a "race" with invader elements "superior" to other castes, there are still some mindless orthodox groups of people, even among the most educated sections of Brahmins native to (and living in) different parts of India or even living abroad, who like to believe they are the scions of superior invaders from the past, and abusively oppose the OIT and militantly support the AIT. And the internet is full of the pompous discussions of these fossils. They use fossilized arguments, showing the outdated nature of their knowledge on the subject, and make ignorant critical comments on different aspects of the OIT, showing that they are unacquainted with the details of the OIT data and arguments. And they give plenty of references to textbook Indological studies of the Vedic language, and to the latest "scientific" genetic arguments, without showing or knowing how these arguments in any way pertain to the movements of the IE languages. Or, more important, how these genetic arguments fit in with, or explain in any way, the linguistic and textual data and facts.

One funny aspect of many of these Brahminical AIT warriors is their fondness for having twitter handle names based on Rigvedic names and words, which emphasize and underline their ignorant status without in any way connecting them with the Vedic composers. There is, to give just one example, an Indra Vrtrahaana. I assume the double a signifies ā, but there is no such word as Vṛtrahāna in the Rigveda, or in any other Veda Samhita, or even in the later Vedic texts. We only have Vṛtrahan and Vṛtrahā.

And the points they discuss are as illiterate as possible: one tweeter, calling himself Sudās Paijavana Respecter, refers to my having "insulted Witzel's wife". As I have already, long ago (on 17/2/2021) uploaded an article on this stale allegation, titled "False Allegation About My Insulting Witzel's Wife", this slander is inexcusable:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2021/02/fake-allegation-about-my-insulting.html

Yet another person suggests that I place the Bharadvāja Maṇḍala (Book 6) as the oldest — he insists the Vasiṣṭha Maṇḍala (Book 7) is the oldest — because my own gotra must be a Bharadvāja gotra. Actually my gotra is a Vasiṣṭha gotra: Kauṇḍinya!

Although many such ridiculous tweets by ignorant AIT warriors on twitter (and not all necessarily Brahmins, but definitely Brahminists: the person who argued with me loudest and longest after my article on Manasataramgini was uploaded was a Reddy from Hyderabad, who had met me earlier in Mumbai and had expressed his admiration for Brahmins), and no doubt equally ignorant comments, claims and allegations on other internet sites and social media, are being regularly brought to my notice, I do not find it necessary to reply to them since they are too petty, childish or irrelevant to waste time on, besides usually already having been answered by me earlier in my books and articles. However, I will take this opportunity to point out a few hard facts about ancestry to those AIT warriors who think they have some special caste pedigree, starting out with this business of gotra. I know I may displease many supporters also in the bargain, but I think logical thinking is of primary importance.

 

My gotra, as I pointed out, is a Vasiṣṭha gotra: Kauṇḍinya. Is this then my Brahminical gotra identity: that I am a descendant of Vasiṣṭha? Well, logically, as my father's gotra was Kauṇḍinya, and my mother's was expressly not (since gotra is exogamous), I am only half a Kauṇḍinya even at the stage of my parents. Of my four grandparents, only one was a Kauṇḍinya, and of my eight great-grand-parents, only one was a Kauṇḍinya, and if I go up ten generations, only one of my ancestral strands, out of 1024 ancestral strands, is Kauṇḍinya. [Of course, I am speaking simplistically: there could have been many other Kauṇḍinyas up the different lines, since we don't have anything even remotely close to a total of 1024 different gotras in our entire community]. So if I base my ancestral identity on only one out of 1024 ancestors ten generations ago, there is something very seriously wrong, and very seriously ridiculous, in such a presumptuous self-identification.

And this goes not just for gotra, but for surname, caste, community, language, race, religion, and countless other identity factors. Ultimately our present identity is based only on the identity we had at birth, and the identity of our parents and our closest ancestors as far as personal or recorded knowledge goes. Therefore, it is extremely presumptuous to talk about remote hypothetical people supposedly living in the Polar region, or even in the Vedic area or the area of the Harappan civilization, as "my" personal ancestors or the ancestors of "my race", distinguishing me and my "race" (or "caste") as a distinct entity since thousands of years from the "race" or "caste" of other people around me.

I remember a Kannada film "Vamsha Vriksha" (Family Tree) from 1971, which we as a family had gone to see in a theatre since a second or third cousin of my father's (distant relations were well known and familiar in those days, unlike today when millennials in our community know few relatives beyond their immediate family circles), Venkatarao Talageri, won the National Award for Best Actor for the year 1971 for his role in that film. The film (among other things) was mainly about an old orthodox Brahmin who is extremely proud of his pure pedigree until he discovers an old letter which reveals that he is not the actual son of his legal father, but the son of some unknown Brahmin who was invited by his father to impregnate his wife (he himself being impotent) simply in order to prevent the property passing over to his brother after him! The point, at least as relevant to this article, is that we do not know all the different unknown factors which may have intervened in the course of history during so many thousands of years leading to the present human population. So let everyone be proud of his/her own identity, whatever it is, and respect the identity of others, again whatever it is, without trying to draw out actual personal (as opposed to general civilizational) conclusions about direct connections with ancient entities and identities.

Which is why I find it extremely strange when people enthusiastically try to claim that the Vedic culture was the ancestral culture of all Indians, or that the Harappans were the ancestors of all Indians. All Indian cultures (as opposed to distinctly foreign cultures in India which still forge exclusivist connections with their foreign cultural origins) are as much our culture and as much Indian culture as the Vedic or Harappan, without necessarily being "descended" from either of the two. Thus, the Andamanese culture (which sadly is dying out, with a hard push from "Hindutvavadi" ruling politicians who want to herd the remaining Andamanese tribes out from the land their ancestors have lived on for almost 60,000 years into settlements and camps so that that land can be utilized for commercial purposes to generate wealth for these politicians) is the oldest Hindu culture in India, as Hindu and Indian as the Vedic or Harappan or any other, even if it does not have the slightest connections with either of the two.

So Brahmins are not necessarily descendants of particular Vedic rishis, whatever they may like to believe. Even in my third book in 2008, I had written as follows:

"there is no direct ethnic connection between the identities of different peoples of the Rigvedic period and the identities of actual different peoples living in present-day India, or indeed in the world today.

Thus, we saw the history of the Pūrus, Anus, Druhyus, Yadus and Turvasus of the Rigvedic period, but there is no logical way in which any modern or present-day group of people can be identified with any of those ancient groups. This fact is instantly clear in the case of the groups which migrated out of India: obviously the present-day speakers of Germanic languages in northern Europe are not direct lineal ethnic descendants of the ancient Druhyus of northwestern India even though their languages are distant descendants of the speech-forms of those Druhyus. It is nobody’s case that the ancient Druhyus of northwestern India were blonde, blue-eyed Nordics (although Witzel presumptuously assumes that such would be the argument of OIT writers: “autochthonists would have to argue that mysteriously only that section of the Panjab population left westwards which had (then actually not attested!) ‘non-Indian’ physical characteristics, ― very special pleading indeed”: WITZEL 2005:368), and it would be as ridiculous for a present day Germanic speaker to personally identify with the trials, triumphs and biases of the ancient Druhyus (vis-à-vis the other peoples mentioned in the Rigveda) as it would be for an English language speaking black or native (Red) Indian of present day America to personally identify with the trials, triumphs and biases of the Anglo-Saxons of mediaeval England (vis-à-vis, say, the Normans).

Likewise, the Zoroastrians of the present day (the Parsis) are not only the inheritors of the Iranian language descended from the speech-forms of the ancient Anus (although almost all of them now speak the Indo-Aryan Gujarati language due to a long stay of many centuries in Gujarat), they are also the proud and direct inheritors of the Zoroastrian religion and traditions which developed among the ancient Anus. But, ethnically, they are definitely not linear descendants of the Anus of Kashmir, or later of the Punjab, or even later of Afghanistan, in the “racial” or biological sense. They are basically linear descendants of different ethnic groups in ancient Iran which, at different times, adopted the language and culture of the expanding Anus.

What is so clearly true in the case of the ancient Druhyus and Anus is equally true, if not so instantly clear, in the case of the other ancient peoples closer to home as well. No caste, community or ethnic group of the present day is identifiable with the tribal or communal groups in the Rigveda. Not even when they bear the name of Rigvedic groups: the Yadus of the Rigveda, for example, have nothing whatsoever to do with the different caste groups, found in different parts of the country, including in the southern and eastern states of India, who are known as Yadavs. Nor are the Anus identifiable with the inhabitants of present-day Punjab or Pakistan.

Nor is there any group, caste or community in India which can be directly identified ethnically with the Pūrus: neither the inhabitants (or particular castes from among them) of present day Haryana, U.P. or the Punjab, nor the different Brahmin groups, found in every part of India, which claim direct descent from the different families of ṛṣis of the Rigveda. To take a direct example, the Saraswat Brahmins of the south (to which community this writer belongs) has a strong traditional history of having migrated from the areas of Kashmir and the Sarasvatī river, and even the name of the community testifies to this claim. Moreover, a linguistic analysis of the Konkani language spoken by the Saraswats shows different archaic features (pitch accents, an inflexional morphological structure, and many crucial items of vocabulary) which corroborate this tradition. But are the Saraswats themselves actually direct ethnic linear descendants of the Pūrus or their priestly classes? Clearly not: the physical features of the Saraswats are clearly identifiable with the physical features of other castes and communities of Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka.

In short, the history of Vedic times is just that: the history of Vedic times. It has to do with the history of civilizations and language families, and must be recognized as such; but it does not have anything whatsoever to do with relations between different ethnic, linguistic, caste or communal groups of the present day. The biases and the conflicts of ancient times are the biases and conflicts of ancient peoples with whom present day peoples have no direct ethnic connections." (TALAGERI 2008:363-366).

But these Brahminical chauvinists go even beyond the Vedic period and identify themselves as direct descendants of remote hypothetical "Aryans" in places far outside India. And feel impelled to support the most absurd claims of the AIT in order to glorify these "superior ancestors" who distinguish them from the rest of the hoi polloi of the Indian masses. Their support for the AIT is not based on any linguistic, textual or even "genetic" evidence, however much they may insist it is: it is simply a case of casteist bias disguised as a "scholarly" outlook.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

AMBEDKAR 1990: Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches, volume 7. Ambedkar, B.R. ed. Vasant Moon, Education dept., Government of Maharashtra Publications, Mumbai 1990.

DESHPANDE 2005: Aryan origins: arguments from the nineteenth-century Maharashtra, p.407-433 in “The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and inference in Indian history”, Routledge, London and New York (Indian edition), ed. E.F.Bryant, L.L.Patton, 2005.

TALAGERI 2008: The Rigveda and the Avesta―The Final Evidence. Talageri, Shrikant G. Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 2008.

TILAK 1903: Arctic Home in the Vedas. Tilak, Bal Gangadhar. Tilak Bros., Poona, 1903. Arctic Theory. My pp.].