Arun Shourie – A Contemptible Mercenary

 

Arun Shourie – A Contemptible Mercenary

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Recently, Arun Shourie published a book on Savarkar, doing what he does best: spewing hatred and bile against India’s greatest and most revered figures, as he had done in respect of Ambedkar earlier. Yes, both Savarkar and Ambedkar are India’s greatest national heroes of the Independence era, and, in my article “The Twelve Indian Political Figures I Like, Respect and Admire the Most”, I named these two at the top of my list.

About Savarkar, I clarified in this very article: “Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, called Swatantraveer or simply Veer Savarkar, is definitely the greatest political figure in India, the perfect epitome of a popular term "intellectual kshatriya". To begin with, not only did he fight for India's freedom all his life, but he also fought for Hinduism, Hindus and Hindu interests: in fact, he coined or popularized the word Hindutva. He suffered physical and mental tortures for several years in the Andaman islands for his activities. And the greatest and most unique thing about him is that after India became free (or I should say, free from British rule) he never once sought any position of power or profit, which he could have done with the very greatest of ease.

And not only did he fight valiantly for freedom and for Hinduism, he also actively and continuously  worked against the evil social practices associated with casteism, and he was a rationalist to the extent that after his death his body was cremated without any religious rituals as per his wishes. Although Mahatma Gandhi is credited with the swadeshi movement and the boycott of British goods, it is Savarkar who initiated the movement long before him in 1905 by publicly burning British goods in a bonfire. His fruitful interactions with Subhashchandra Bose and Dr. Ambedkar are also well documented. And his call for Hindus to join the army in large numbers during the second world war, so that (after the British left India) India would have a well-trained and experienced army, was truly prophetic and timely. And after all this he was a great litterateur and poet: listen to his two extremely touching and stirring songs "jayonstute shri mahanmangale" and "ne mazasi ne parat matrubhumila" so beautifully song by the Mangeshkar family.

It is amusing to see rabid leftists and other Hindu-haters berating him for "tendering an apology to the British government" to get out of the Andamans after spending almost 13 years in the Andamans as a prisoner, and even, ludicrously (and taking as a fact that he had orchestrated the assassination of Gandhi, in spite of the court verdict rejecting such an idea), for "turning his back on his lieutenants" after this assassination. It is obvious these rabid Hindu-haters would have wanted to see Savarkar rotting to death in the Andamans (rather than remaining alive to carry out his role in India's history) or convicted for Gandhi's assassination, but their frustration at neither of these two events taking place cannot be held as a black mark against Savarkar.

This is not to say that I agree fully with everything Savarkar said or felt: I am a vegetarian by ethical conviction (although my mouth still waters at the smell of non-vegetarian food which I gave up in 1973) and cannot agree with his views on meat-eating being necessary for Hindus to be a strong race. I agree with Ambedkar's call for an exchange of population (in 1947) rather than Savarkar's call for a United and undivided India. And obviously I cannot agree with Savarkar's views (though not fully developed) on the AIT.

But none of this detracts from his being the greatest political figure in the history of India.”

 

About Ambedkar, I clarified in another article, “Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: A much-Misappropriated Scholar”: “Dr. Ambedkar is indeed one of the most misunderstood and even most misappropriated leaders of the Independence era. On the one hand, all kinds of casteist hate-politics (most of which goes blatantly against whatever he stood for and whatever he wrote and expressed in his writings) is played in his name by self-styled "followers" and "Ambedkarites". On the other hand, he is an object of hatred for many misguided Hindus. That he should be hated by casteist upper-caste Hindus is understandable. But even many more scholarly Hindus are lacking in respect for this very great man. I remember a popular and prominent Hindu writer (now long dead) once telling me: "Oh, you must not pay much attention to what Ambedkar wrote and said. He was often in a state of inebriation, and wrote anything at all", which shocked me by the degree of sweeping contempt which that writer seemed to have for Dr. Ambedkar. Other Hindu writers (and of course the BJP Parivar, which uses every trick ever invented if it can be used to its advantage) have misappropriated him whenever and wherever they could do so.”

 

Even in this article on Ambedkar, I again wrote about Savarkar: “Before Ambedkar,  I must mention (as I did in my reply to the comment on my last article) Veer Savarkar, my most respected leader from the Independence era, who was not only a great revolutionary freedom-fighter, Hindutva exponent, social reformer, outspoken rationalist, poet and writer, and whose stirring songs set to music by the Mangeshkar family (Ne Mazasī  Ne  and Jayonstute) can bring tears to the eyes, and who suffered isolated imprisonment in the Andamans for 13 years, but also a person who never sought any kind of material reward or position from Independent India (which he could very easily have angled for and got) as a reward for having devoted his entire life to the nation: in this respect he stands out from all the rest.

There have been plenty of scurrilous writings on Veer Savarkar, as a search of the internet will immediately bring to anyone's notice, by people not worthy of even taking his name or wiping his shoes. That all these slanderous writings have been completely destroyed by the deeply researched and truly great recent two-volume magnum opus, "Savarkar: A Contested Legacy 1924-1966" by Vikram Sampath, only serves to highlight the fact that truly great people will always be the target of scandal-mongering hate-writers, who can pick up small incidents (true or false) and distort and magnify them to any extent to malign them.

On a personal note, I remember that when I "joined" the RSS in 1977 (after the Emergency, when I had read the book "Freedom at Midnight" by Collins and Lapierre, and decided that I would become a member of both the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, both of which were much maligned in that book) I was uncomfortable with most of the things that I saw in the organization. I realized it was a purely political organization, a kind of recruitment-and-volunteer organization for the then Jana Sangh, with mindless activities (calculated to inculcate a kind of blind cult of affiliation, devotion and obedience to the "Sangh"), and no intellectual pursuits (beyond the most juvenile ideas of history, religion and nationalism): all the organizations emanating from it were only calculated to enlarge the recruitment-and-volunteer base in different fields (students, farmers, workers, etc.). There was actually no commitment to any aspect of Indian Culture: no organization for protecting and propagating Indian flora, fauna and environment, or Indian history or philosophy, or India's extremely rich heritage in music, dance, architecture, handicrafts, etc. (and nor for social reform or social work). I spent most of my time asking the elders in my "shakha" why the uniform (which I refused to wear), the marching instruments and music, etc. of the organization were based on British cultural models rather than on Indian cultural ones — and was told each time that all these aspects of culture were irrelevant to nationalism, and definitely to the "Sangh's" ideas of nationalism ("we are not nationalistic in that way"): ironically the same answer I continued to receive in later years when swayamsevaks criticized Rajiv Gandhi's "Festival of India" or defended the Shiv-Sena-BJP Maharashtra Government's active sponsoring of the Michael Jackson show in Mumbai. Now, with the BJP Parivar actively carrying on all over India the active mercenary destruction of India's forests and natural heritage, this is doubtless the unspoken logic behind it.

And, on every single point, I realized that the swayamsevaks had two sets of rules and principles, not just different from each other but diametrically opposite to each other, to judge the acts of Congressmen and Jana Sanghis. The only positive thing I can say is that I made many new friends and acquaintances in and through the RSS.”

 

About Ambedkar, I went on (in this article on him): “But, since this article is about Ambedkar, let me point out that he was genuinely one of the deepest and most intelligent thinkers of his time, the most genuine scholar among all the political leaders of that era, and in many respects, his scholarship, perception and insight was far ahead of the times, and far above that of even Savarkar (which, again, does not reduce Savarkar's greatness). If he often wrote things that a Hindu activist would not like, well, it is not surprising and only what one should expect from an intelligent thinker belonging to a "lower" caste in the mid-twentieth century when "upper" caste politics was at its height. Which is what makes the following all the more admirable and impressive:” And I dealt with the greatness of Ambedkar in the following Sections in that article, which I will not repeat here in full (and will give only the names of those Sections):

“I. The Aryan Invasion Theory.

II. Caste as a Non-Racial Division.

III. Conversion to Christianity or Islam as Denationalization.

IV. Rejection and Criticism of Islam and the Koran.

1. On Islamist Assassinations and the Moplah Riots of 1921.

2. On the burqa and related Islamic female apparel.

3. On Islamic Invasions and Destruction.

4. Specifically on the Destruction of Buddhism in India.

5. On Casteism, Slavery and the Koran.

V. On the Partition of India.”

 

Can it be a coincidence that these are the very two Indian leaders this megalomaniac has chosen to target, just as, in another earlier book, he targeted two of the most revered spiritual leaders of the Independence (or rather pre-Independence) era: “Two Saints: Speculations Around and About Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharishi” (Harper Collins, 1917).

All this stands out in sharp contrast to his sycophantic and kid-gloves treatment in respect of Mahatma Gandhi, whose much greater and much more devastatingly destructive acts and actions are conveniently ignored by Shourie, who places him on a pedestal in all his writings.

Is there something innately wrong with this man? I did not really want to criticize him because some of his books are still, and will always be, among the greatest and most emphatically must-read books for all Indians and Hindus:

1. Eminent Historians…

2. Falling Over Backwards…

3. Harvesting our Souls…

4. The Only Fatherland…

5. The World of Fatwas…

Also, he was a close associate of Sita Ram Goel, and almost all his above books were printed in Sita Ram Goel’s printing press.

Also, one can sympathize with him in his personal tragedies, with his son suffering from cerebral palsy, and his wife from Parkinsons' Disease, and himself shattered by various severe financial problems. This left him embittered.

 

But embitterment is no excuse for ideological turncoatism. As I wrote in a mail to someone a year or so ago: “Even otherwise, despite his extremely high degree of intelligence and scholarship, there is something perverse and turncoatish in Arun Shourie's nature. I noticed this long ago from two incidents. First was when Rajiv Gandhi was the PM, he went on a visit to Pakistan, accompanied by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, PA Sangma.  After returning, Sangma gave a flowery and sycophantic speech in the Lok Sabha about how much the Pakistani public really loves India, giving some examples of the sentimental reactions that he encountered there. Shourie immediately wrote an article castigating him for falling a prey to Pakistani machinations in seeing "Love" and "friendly sentiments" for India in Pakistan. However, later, when Vajpayee was the PM, he also visited Pakistan, and Arun Shourie accompanied him. After coming back, Shourie wrote an article about the love and friendly sentiments for India that he noticed in Pakistan!

However that was nothing to the way he executed a u-turn when he fell out with Modi. The same man who had earlier written the brilliant book "Harvesting our Souls" about the activities of Christian missionaries and their victim-card games in India where even when they were the attackers, the Christians were portrayed as victims, now started singing the opposite tune: he held joint press conferences with leftists and Christian missionaries to claim that helpless Christians were being attacked and killed all over India!”

And this is the crucial point: the same man, whose brilliant book on missionaries, “Harvesting our Souls…” simply cannot be praised enough, suddenly went out of his way to hold joint press conferences with leftists and Christian missionaries to say exactly the opposite of everything he had written in that book, and to display in himself the same mercenary tendencies he had exposed in that book.

Can personal tragedies, or disillusionment with a particular political party or leader, or personal political setbacks, justify such brazen and blatant u-turns on purely ideological issues or issues of right and wrong? Can there be anything more unprincipled than this?

 

And does a man of this type have the right to fling mud on the greatest political and spiritual leaders India has seen in the last century? What was the last straw to me was the following disgusting interview given by him to another Hindu-hater, Karan Thapar:

https://x.com/thewire_in/status/1884257625359241685

I feel truly disgusted to see the level to which he has fallen, and I am sure If Sita Ram Goel were alive, he would have been equally disgusted to see him venting his personal frustrations on great people from the past whose shoelaces he is not even fit to tie.     

Discovery of the Oldest Iron in the World in Tamilnadu: What Does it Prove or Disprove?

 

Discovery of the Oldest Iron in the World in Tamilnadu: What Does it Prove or Disprove?

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Historians, and archaeologists, and in fact all people interested in the history of India, have been electrified by recent media reports that the oldest iron objects in the world have been discovered in Tamilnadu.

There are numerous press reports on the subject. Just a few of them:

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/tamil-nadu-iron-age-new-study-importance-9797046/ 

“In an announcement that challenges long-held assumptions about the origins of the Iron Age, a new study has found evidence that the use of iron in the area that is now Tamil Nadu dates back to the first quarter of the 4th millennium BCE. This revelation, based on rigorous radiometric dating from multiple international laboratories, positions the region as a pioneering hub of early metallurgy, surpassing global timelines by nearly two millennia.”

 

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/did-the-iron-age-actually-begin-in-tamil-nadu-study-reveals-some-groundbreaking-facts/articleshow/117520245.cms?from=mdr

“A groundbreaking study has revealed that the Iron Age may have begun in present-day Tamil Nadu as early as 3,345 BCE, challenging previous historical assumptions by pushing back the timeline of iron usage in the region by over a millennium.”

 

https://www.deccanherald.com/india/tamil-nadu/indias-iron-age-began-in-tamil-nadu-5300-years-ago-report-3370356

“Chennai: Carbon dating of artefacts unearthed from recent archaeological excavations in Tamil Nadu have established that use of iron was widespread in the state and dates back to at least 5,300 years ago, making it the oldest date for Iron Age in India”

Note that two of the above call this the oldest iron discovered “in the region” and “in India”, while one of them clearly writes: “This revelation, based on rigorous radiometric dating from multiple international laboratories, positions the region as a pioneering hub of early metallurgy, surpassing global timelines by nearly two millennia.” And clearly, this last is the actual truth.

Even the Economic Times report which only speaks here about it “pushing  back the timeline of iron usage in the region by over a millennium”, almost immediately specifies that the actual dates of these iron objects “establish Tamil Nadu as the site of the earliest known Iron Age civilization, making it potentially the oldest in the world.”

 

The actual dates are “as early as 3,345 BCE”. Compare this with what the Wikipedia article on “Iron Age” has to say:

“The earliest tentative evidence for iron-making is a small number of iron fragments with the appropriate amounts of carbon admixture found in the Proto-Hittite layers at Kaman-Kalehöyük in modern-day Turkey, dated to 2200–2000 BC. Akanuma (2008) concludes that "The combination of carbon dating, archaeological context, and archaeometallurgical examination indicates that it is likely that the use of ironware made of steel had already begun in the third millennium BC in Central Anatolia".^[13] Souckova-Siegolová (2001) shows that iron implements were made in Central Anatolia in very limited quantities about 1800 BC and were in general use by elites, though not by commoners, during the New Hittite Empire (≈1400–1200 BC).^[14]

Similarly, recent archaeological remains of iron-working in the Ganges Valley in India have been dated tentatively to 1800 BC. Tewari (2003) concludes that "knowledge of iron smelting and manufacturing of iron artifacts was well known in the Eastern Vindhyas and iron had been in use in the Central Ganga Plain, at least from the early second millennium BC".^[15] By the Middle Bronze Age increasing numbers of smelted iron objects (distinguishable from meteoric iron by the lack of nickel in the product) appeared in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and South Asia.”

In short, before this, the “earliest tentative evidence for iron-making is a small number of iron fragments with the appropriate amounts of carbon admixture found in the Proto-Hittite layers at Kaman-Kalehöyük in modern-day Turkey, dated to 2200–2000 BC.” But these findings in Tamilnadu date to “as early as 3,345 BCE”.

 

This is one of the greatest discoveries from numerous scientific and historical points of view. It again points to India as one of the greatest pioneers, if not the greatest, in almost every aspect of human civilization and culture.

But beyond this, what does it prove about major and much debated “controversial” Indian historical issues?

Let me just quote from the Economic Times article above to put it in a nutshell:

“The discovery suggests that a contemporary Iron Age civilization existed in southern India at the same time as the Indus Valley Civilization in northern and northwestern India.

[…] Rajan, one of the co-authors of the report, explained, "The recent radiocarbon dates indicate that when the Indus Valley experienced the Copper Age, south India was already in the Iron Age. In this sense, the Iron Age of south India and the Copper Age of the Indus were contemporary."

Rakesh Tewari, former Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), called the Sivagalai findings a "turning point" in Indian archaeology. "For a long time, it seemed that when the Indus Valley was flourishing in the western part of the country, other areas did not have contemporary cultures. But now, things are changing," he said.”

And this is the crux of the whole matter.

Indian history has been extremely politicized, and everyone draws all kinds of conclusions about India’s internal history from all kinds of facts and new discoveries: note the conclusion of the CM of Tamilnadu, as per the Economic Times report: “"We have scientifically established that iron was introduced 5,300 years ago in the Tamil landscape. The Iron Age began from Tamil land," Stalin stated on Thursday”. So far he is absolutely right.

But then he goes on to link this with the Harappan civilization and Harappan script. Many people claim that inscriptions found in Tamilnadu have Harappan signs on them. From this they conclude that the Harappan civilization was linguistically a  Dravidian one. But have the “Harappan” signs in Tamilnadu been conclusively deciphered revealing a Dravidian language? If they have, then it should be a few logical steps backwards to conclusively decipher the Harappan inscriptions in the northwest as well, but no-one reports that this has been conclusively deciphered. If they have not, it can still be logically claimed that the “Harappan” signs in Tamilnadu represent a Dravidian language, but this does not automatically lead back to the conclusion that the language of the Harappan cities was also Dravidian: after all, in later times, different varieties of the Brahmi alphabet were later used all over India to write different languages (both “Aryan” and Dravidian).

But this new discovery (and the very logical conclusion drawn from it by both Prof Rajan and Rakesh Tewari) in fact completely disproves the claims of all those people whether scholars or politicians, whether historians or geneticists, whether supporters of the AIT or the OIT, and whether interpreters of the Harappan language as being “Aryan” or as being Dravidian”, who, whatever their different opinions on every other point, are unanimous in declaring that the Harappan civilization was the fountain-head of all of Indian culture, and that all Indians have the Harappans as their “ancestors”. And, if the CM of Tamilnadu puts forward the claim that (before the “arrival” of “Aryans”) the whole of India, i.e. both the South and the Northwest shared a common identity and culture, the discovery completely disproves his claims as well. The culture of the Northwest and the culture of the South, were distinctly different from each other during the period of the Harappan civilization.

 

What does it prove then? It proves what I have been saying from my first book: India is a mini-representative of the world: it has the widest range and variety of topography and climate, of flora and fauna, and of culture (every branch of culture): it cannot and should not be reduced to a single-source entity.

In my first book (1993):

“The oldest Dravidian traditions speak of ancient prehistoric kingdoms in the South itself, extending, in fact, even further south into a land now sunk under the seas. There is no trace of Dravidian place-names in the Indus region even in the very ancient past. "Excavation in the South has hitherto revealed no trace of the Indus Valley Civilization." There is no Dravidian tradition of any conflict with the speakers of Indo-European languages in ancient times. That Tamil has the names Vaḍamozhi (northern language) for Sanskrit and Tēnmozhi (southern language) for ancient Tamil is also significant”.

I have throughout all my books and articles in the last thirty years been strongly reiterating that the Vedic/Harappan cultural area of the Northwest of India is just one branch of the great banyan tree that we call Hindu civilization, and that it is not the root of the religion, culture and civilization of the whole of India, which had its own rich cultural traditions which formed other branches of this single banyan tree: in particular the eastern Gangetic areas and the South, which had rich and independent traditional cultures of their own.

In the context of the discoveries from the exacavations at Keezhadi, I had pointed out in an article published in Swarajya on 4th April 2017 that independent civilizations (independent of the Harappan civilization) existed in the eastern Gangetic areas and the South, and if they had not been discovered and identified yet, it was, among other things, mainly because archaeologists and scholars were determined that any civilization could only be of the Harappan type (with its great cities, international trade and inscribed seals), and I have repeatedly pointed out that there were civilizations of other types. As I do not claim to be an Indian Nostradamus, I could not have identified then what would be the unique identifying features of these other branches of our civilizational banyan tree (though that unique identifying feature now turns out to be iron technology!):

https://swarajyamag.com/culture/leave-history-alone-why-an-archaeological-discovery-in-tamil-nadu-has-ruffled-feathers 

To be specific, I wrote (on the attempts to link the Keezhadi site with the Harappan civilization) as follows:

“The only difference between the official paradigm of the western (and corresponding Indian) academic scholars and the paradigm of those who reject the AIT is that the latter reject the external origin of the Vedic language and its speakers. Otherwise both see the story of Indian Civilization as a linear story commencing with the Vedic age.

The idea that the Dravidians of the South represent the descendants of the original IVC people driven to the South, or their kindred, is a leftist sideshow adopted by the so-called "Dravidian movement" in Tamilnadu (and its academic supporters in India and the west), and not necessarily a part of the official AIT. But anything which seems to challenge the linear story tends to make "Hindutva groups" "uncomfortable": whether the idea that the Vedic language is not the ultimate ancestral "Aryan" language, or the idea that Dravidian languages and Indo-European languages belong to different language families - and now, apparently, the discovery of Keezhadi (even when it represents a late date in the Sangam period, around 200 BCE, and has nothing really to do with the IVC).

The fact is that this linear story is itself wrong, and totally out of line with the facts and with Indian historical traditions recorded in the Puranas. And until this is officially understood and accepted by the alleged "Hindutva groups" (as well as by their opponents), the politics of both sides will continue to play havoc with Indian historical studies.      

The truth is that the Vedic civilization commencing with the Rigveda is not a civilization or culture brought in by "Aryan invaders" in 1500 BCE (as alleged by the AIT proponents). And nor is it an ancient primordial civilization (as alleged by "Hindutva groups") which represents the ancestral starting point of Indian Civilization as a whole. It is one of many branches (although the oldest and most detailedly recorded and most widely spread one) of the magnificent banyan tree that we call Indian or Hindu Civilization: it is the Civilization or culture of the Pūrus, one of the many native tribes of ancient India. For the detailed and unchallengeable evidence, see my books or my following blog "Who were the Vedic Aryans?":

http://talageri.blogspot.in/2016/07/the-recorded-history-of-indo-european.html 

According to the Puranas (which contain core historical details heavily interspersed with myths, cosmology, philosophy and religion), the different parts of ancient-most historical India were ruled by the ten sons of the mythical Manu Vaivasvata (or inhabited by the descendant tribes of these ten mythical sons). Of these, the texts only really give details about the descendants of two of these sons: the Ikṣvākus (the "Solar Race") who inhabited eastern U.P and Bihar, and the Aiḷas or Saudyumnas  (the "Lunar Race") who are divided into five main groups: the Pūrus (in the Central area in Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh), the Druhyus (to their west, in the Greater Punjab or present-day northern Pakistan, but later driven out westwards and northwards by the southward movement of ) the Anus (to the north, in Kashmir and the western Himalayas, but later expanding southwards into the Greater Punjab and driving out the Druhyus westwards and northwards), the Yadus (to the southwest, in Rajasthan western Madhya Pradesh and areas to their south), and the Turvasus (to the southeast, i.e. to the east of the Yadu-s).

As per the accounts in the Puranas, at the same time as the Pūru (actually the Vedic) civilization and culture was flourishing in the Haryana-western UP  area, there were kingdoms and civilized tribes (obviously with different kinds of civilizations and cultures) flourishing in different parts of India. The cultural and civilizational picture always becomes clear when a culture or civilization described in texts is complemented and corroborated by archaeological finds fitting the space-time aspects of that culture or civilization: this is the case in respect of other ancient civilizations outside India. As I have conclusively demonstrated in my blog "The Chronology and Geography of the Rigveda" referred to earlier, the "Indus Valley"/"Harapan"/ "Sindhu-Sarasvati" civilization is proved by a study of the Mitanni records of Syria/Iraq, the Avesta, and the New Books of the Rigveda, to be the "Indo-Iranian" culture described by the common data in those texts: a joint culture of the (Vedic "Indo-Aryan") Pūrus and the (pre-Zarathushtrian proto-Iranian) Anus of Puranic records. The recent find in Keezhadi is naturally the archaeological testimony to the Sangam-era Tamil culture described in the Sangam texts. This is admittedly of a much later date (post 400 BCE), but there is always the strong possibility that diligent archaeological excavations in Tamil Nadu in future may throw up evidence of the much older ancient Tamil civilization of Tamil traditions: stretching from Tamil Nadu further south into the sea (into areas which are believed to have submerged into the sea), different from but as old as the Harappan civilization. Certainly, many recent excavations in eastern UP and Bihar have exposed sites as old as the Harappan sites, or older, with (obviously) cultural and civilizational features not exactly identical or even similar to those of the Harappan sites. But our Puranic accounts do tell us that there were different kingdoms and cultures at the same time all over India. The eastern sites undoubtedly represent the Ikṣvāku cultural and civilizational areas, and any sites equally ancient discovered and excavated in future in eastern and far southern parts of India will represent the cultural and civilizational areas of the people classified in the Puranas as descendants of some other of the "ten sons of Manu".”

 

I did not expect that such a discovery (I am assuming that all these reports turn out to be accurate) would take place in my lifetime. It is thrilling indeed. It not only proves once more the greatness of our Hindu/Indian civilization which (at least as of now as per these reports) introduced the Iron Age in the world, but also shows again that our Hindu/Indian civilization is a great and spreading banyan tree which represents through its different branches, World Culture in microcosm.

Will the east (the eastern Gangetic Valley of the Ikṣvākus) yield equally thrilling evidence of India’s third great branch of Hindu civilization? I hope and pray it does, and, again, I hope it happens within my own lifetime.  

     

Is India Aiming to be the Land with the Most Toxic Work Culture in the World?

 

Is India Aiming to be the Land with the Most Toxic Work Culture in the World?

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

A few days ago, I read a news report about Narayana Murthy, founder (or co-founder) of Infosys Ltd., calling (directly or indirectly) for a 70-hour weekly working schedule for workers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VyWRDIrixo 

From stating “I have done it for 40 years” to attributing the willingness to work for 70 hours per week to an assertion of patriotism and love for the country, Narayana Murthy did his best to justify this kind of expectation from workers.

 

Shortly after that, another CEO called for an 84-hour weekly working schedule for workers:

https://www.ndtv.com/video/not-70-hours-indian-origin-ceo-calls-for-84-hour-work-week-869221

 

This was followed by an article on reddit.com, reportedly by an employee of the “quick commerce” company (or should I call it a “start-up”) Zepto on the toxic work-culture in that company:

https://www.reddit.com/r/StartUpIndia/comments/1h5h79n/toxic_work_culture_ft_zepto/

 

One wonders, how do these top elite Indians all of them undoubtedly multi-millionaires and multi-billionaires and more, can speak from their cushy ivory towers, advocating a modern-day slavery where large sections of humanity are expected to spend all their living hours for the service of their astronomically wealthy masters. I wonder how many of these pompous advocates of national progress and slave-“patriotism” would have liked it if they were living in huts and slums and mofussil villages and had to see their children (or their parents or close siblings or spouses) being made to work to these slave-conditions. Even if the person advocating this kind of satanic and hellish “work-culture” happens to be himself working in that manner and to that extent, it does not excuse advocating it for others, and most certainly does not excuse calling for it to be imposed on others: a musician or dancer who practices his art for 14 hours every day and has no other likes or hobbies, or a person who has given up all pleasures and possessions and become a sanyasi or muni living a life of complete worldly denial, likewise, does what he/she does because he/she likes it and wants to do it: in those circumstances smug claims like “I have done it for 40 years” show a cold-blooded and self-centred ruthlessness and lack of humanity which, in the attitude of the powerful, is dangerous for India.

 

Today Mumbai has become probably the most polluted place in India: half the area of the city (of almost every part of the city) seems to be in a state of semi-construction (with “redevelopment” of old buildings, construction of all kinds of public utilities and infrastructure projects, and permanent digging up and re-digging up of roads is the most characteristic feature of Mumbai today), and Mumbaikars in the last few years (and increasingly so with each passing day) inhale more dust and cement-powder than air, and more than they must ever have done in the whole of the previous hundred years combined. In the process, I see the conditions of the thousands (lakhs?) of workers who take part in all these activities: they (the actual physical or manual workers) are paid 12000-18000 rupees per month, have to work for 12 hours every single day of the week with no weekly offs, and absence from work (or even late coming for unavoidable reasons, since most of them stay in the other end of the city from their workplace) results in hefty cuts in the pay. I am sure the CEOs are not talking about these workers, who are already demonstrating their great patriotism and love for India on a daily basis. But then, instead of raising the living standards of these workers, the ideal “patriotic” response seems to be to somehow try to reduce all workers to the same level as these workers.

 

Then one wonders: why do people work or seek jobs: why do they not try to engage in self-employment (taking of course the success stories of these great CEOs as their ideals)?

This brings us to another great achievement of “liberalization” post-1993 in India: “the end of the permit-licence raj”, as some people fondly describe it. Yes, it is true, the erstwhile permit-licence raj has indeed loosened up to a phenomenal extent: certainly for extremely enterprising individuals who can manage to rise from the dust and pose as models for “rags to riches” stories. But not for the ordinary, illiterate, semi-literate, English-illiterate, and other categories among the teeming millions (especially those who are not agile and savvy enough to be able to take advantage of the countless goodies and freebies distributed by vote-hungry politicians, or are not in a position to take advantage of “reservations” of any kind). But go onto the streets of any city, town or village in any part of India and look around and see the condition of the ordinary poor people for whom the permit-licence raj has not only not ended, but has become much more terrible and toxic. Self-employment is impossible: see the condition of hawkers, (probably one of the oldest professions in the world) who are not only burdened with endless permit-licence raj rules and regulations and red-tapism, but permanently and continuously at the mercy of extortionist criminals as well as local government employees (civic staff, policemen, etc.). Every day, in the streets of Mumbai (and countless other places), we see scenes reminiscent of the old Hindi movie scenarios where the inhabitants of a village run for cover when a dacoit-gang invades the village: only here, it is hawkers running for cover when a gang of civic staff set out on their extortion and goods-confiscation rounds.

I had written about this as long ago as in my article in the Sita Ram Goel Commemoration Volume published by Voice of India in 2005:

I had quoted an article by Tavleen Singh (admittedly not one of my favorite journalists) from 2004 as follows: “There are other reasons to fight for our right to property, and they concern the poorest of the poor. Because Indians do not have the right to own property, policemen and municipal officials routinely confiscate and destroy property belonging to pavement hawkers, rickshawallahs and streetchildren. These are people who constitute what our politicians like to call the ‘weakest sections’ of the society, so let us have no qualms in acknowledging that the Prime Minister’s move to introduce reservations for ‘weaker sections’ in private companies is for political and not compassionate reasons. Had any Prime Minister one ounce of compassion for the ‘weaker sections’, he would have arrested officials and policemen who steal from pavement hawkers and rickshawallahs”.

Further on, (it was a long article, and I only quote the bit on hawkers) I added my own views: “If all this had been accompanied by genuine freedom to work, earn and live according to their talents and capacities, that would have been some compensation, at least to the more enterprising sections among them; but as pointed out earlier, there is genuine freedom only for foreigners, and for the elite sections of society: for the rest, the official step-motherly treatment of street hawkers (perhaps the oldest and most traditional examples of self-employed people in India) and cottage industries (in urban slum areas and in villages all over the country) today illustrates how “liberal” the Indian economy is becoming for the common people”.

I gave my own idea of a truly liberal Hindutva socio-economic policy: “Can a state which promotes perpetual terrorism against its citizens protect those citizens from other terrorists? Not from the “Islamic” or “Pak-sponsored” terrorists, so dear to the discourse of our politicians, but from the terrorists who more directly affect the common man and make his life perpetually miserable: lower caste people in remote villages from the dominant castes in their areas (read, for example, Nalini Singh’s “Aankhon Dekhi ¾ Booth-capturing viewed from a BSP field office” in the Times of India, 18/4/2004); any linguistic, religious, caste, or other minority in any area from the majority in that area; women from predator men; children from predator adults; aged people from ruthless youth; physically or mentally handicapped people from other, “normal”, people; inmates of prisons, orphanages, old age homes, mental asylums and boarding schools, workers in factories and offices, or even residents of ordinary homes, localities or villages, from their various tormentors; and the common man from injustice and insecurity, crime and oppression, hunger and want, diseases and natural disasters, ignorance and illiteracy, superstitions and oppressive traditions?

Providing protection, security and aid, to one and all, from all these things, is not a part of any “liberalisation” or “reform” agenda or program. But, it should be a very important and basic part of any Hindu Nationalist socio-economic agenda”

So. it is time to stop forcing people to become first workers and then slaves; and to start encouraging people to be self-employed and removing the terror-atmosphere that is faced by common people who genuinely try to be self-employed. For those who are employed, it is necessary to see to it that they remain employees and do not become either pampered leeches sucking the blood of the economy (as, to be frank, large sections of government employees actually are today)  or bonded slaves.

 

Interesting Point: Whom to Blame and Whom to Credit

 

Interesting Point: Whom to Blame and Whom to Credit

Shrikant Talageri

 

A tweet sent to me just now was interesting:

https://x.com/RandomTheGuy_

-Scam was done by AAP

-Case was filed by Congress

-Investigation was done by agencies

-Kejriwal was jailed by courts

Then why are you blaming me?

https://x.com/i/status/1882597081615044774

6.41 AM · Jan 24, 2025

I fully agree: both blame and credit should always be given to the right people.

 

I wonder if there was another earlier tweet that I missed out on! Like those reconstructing proto-languages, let me try my hand at reconstructing it:

-From the days of the Mughals the fight for recovery of the Ram Janmabhoomi site was carried on by several generations of Hindus

-A Ram idol was (re)installed in the Ayodhya site on 22/11/1949, by Abhiram Das

-The courts were petitioned in 1949-1950 for the right to worship the Ram idol, by Gopal Singh Visharad and Paramahamsa Ramachandra Das

-The present Ramjanmabhoomi movement was initiated at a VHP sponsored Hindu Sammelan in Muzaffarnagar in 1983, on a call by former Congress leaders Dau Dayal Khanna and Gulzarilal Nanda

-The opening of the gates of the structure to Hindu worshippers by Shivratri on 8 March 1986, was ordered by then PM of India, Rajiv Gandhi  

-The combined suit for the ownership of the site (clubbing together all the different suits till then) in 1989 was instituted by the Allahabad High Court

-The campaign to turn the Ramjanmabhoomi issue into a national movement was initiated by the VHP in the mid-nineteen-eighties, and was given a strong push by the rathayatra organized in September 1990 by L.K.Advani

-The Ayodhya structure was stormed by Hindu volunteers/karsewaks (drawn from all strata of Hindu society (and especially from Hindu organizations like the RSS, VHP, Hindu Mahasabha, Shiv Sena, etc.) in late 1990, and the movement gained force after karsewaks were killed in police firing in Ayodhya on 30/10/1990 and 2/11/1990

-The structure was demolished on 6/12/1992 (to the vocal opposition of many BJP leaders, many of whom cried publicly and disclaimed responsibility for the demolition, while a few others, and top leaders of the Shiv Sena, VHP and others claimed credit for the demolition) by the same karsewaks.

-Detailed studies were conducted on the subject by scholars including European scholars like Koenraad Elst and Muslim archaeologists like K.K.Muhammed for the consideration of the courts

-The court cases continued for two more decades after that until the verdict was returned in favour of the Hindu side on 30/9/2010, during the regime of Congress PM Manmohan Singh, by the Allahabad High Court

-The verdict of the Allahabad High Court judgment was upheld and the construction of the Ayodhya temple was allowed on 9/11/2019 by the Supreme Court.

I only awarded a Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award in India, in 2023, to Mulayam Singh Yadav (the then CM of U.P. who had ordered the shooting of the karsewaks in 1990) and advanced the date of inauguration of the unfinished Ayodhya temple to a date before the Lok Sabha elections for obvious reasons.    

Then why are you crediting me (for the Ayodhya temple)?

Must the AIT-vs.-OIT Debate be Converted into a Battle of the Absurdities?

 

Must the AIT-vs.-OIT Debate be Converted into a Battle of the Absurdities?

 

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

I often carp about those who abuse me and act like sepoys of the western academia-media-woke-mafia by accepting things as divine revelations only because they are said/written by western academics and printed in western academic journals and rejecting things as wrong only because they are said/written by people who are stonewalled by this mafia. What is being said, what proof is being given – none of these things matter to sepoys: the General Dyers of the academic mafia have given instructions, and these sepoys shoot without blinking an eyelid.

But occasionally I find it funny to see how some of the alleged battles between members of the AIT side and members of the OIT side turn out to be a Battle of the Absurdities: OIT supporters keep attacking Linguistics which has everything to do with the AIT-vs.-OIT Debate, and which conclusively proves the OIT, and AIT supporters keep citing the non-evidence of Genetics which has nothing to do with the AIT-vs.-OIT Debate or with Language Spread, and which can neither conclusively prove or disprove either the AIT or the OIT.

I have already written much, perhaps more than enough, on this matter, so I will not bother to repeat myself in any detail, but it is really funny to see each of the two sides struggling to prove themselves more absurd than the other side. A twitter “debate” sent to me runs as follows (I will only quote a less-than handful of a few of the most illustrative tweets):

 

On the OIT (or generally anti-AIT) side:

https://x.com/ProfVemsani

It’s appalling to see some educated Indians still believing in the racial construct, Aryans, & the linguistic construct PIE (Proto Indo European) another colonialist construct. They are constructs only not truth. The truth is Arya is not Aryan and definitely not a race in the Vedas; PIE never existed it was constructed by putting together some words from existing languages mainly Sanskrit. PIE is an imaginary construct, maybe smart theory, but nonexistent nonetheless….

9.33 PM · Jan 17, 2025

https://x.com/american_dharma

It’s extremely annoying to come across PIE proponents. They talk with great confidence about something that’s utterly made up by conjecture ALONE, with absolutely no primary support of any kind.

10.31 PM · Jan 17, 2025

 

On the AIT side:

https://x.com/DPrasadMJ148

"So as far as Indian history is concerned all origins including the original contributors are Indigenous Indians" So, humans living in India just fell out of the sky one fine day?

11.17 AM · Jan 18, 2025

"And archaeology & genetic history shows no invasions/migrations for the period 1900-1300 B.C.E." There is no such conclusion. AMT is disputed by Hindu nationalists who claim that Indians existed in India since beginning of time and as a separate entity from rest of humanity

11.22 AM · Jan 18, 2025

https://x.com/GrumpyD3133

How can you possibly be a professional and be allowed to lie constantly, you know you are lying when you claim no evidence of migration in genetics, that’s all you leftist do is lie and that’s why trump won because literally everyone with a brain can see it.

2.30 AM · Jan 18, 2025

And he/she presents the following extract from a “genetics” report:

So here, we have a classic example of the ridiculous spectacle of an alleged AIT-vs.-OIT discussion with OIT supporters categorically rejecting Linguistics which has everything to do with the AIT-vs.-OIT Debate, and which conclusively proves the OIT, and AIT supporters keep citing the non-evidence of Genetics which has nothing to do with the AIT-vs.-OIT Debate or with Language Spread, and which can neither conclusively prove or disprove either the AIT or the OIT.

[As an aside, it is amusing to see Prof. Lavanya Vemsani being classified as a “leftist” and Trump being brought into the discussion!]

 

Let us take up the pseudo-OIT obsession first: these people claim that “Aryans, & the linguistic construct PIE (Proto Indo European) another colonialist construct…. are constructs only not truth….PIE never existed it was constructed by putting together some words from existing languages mainly Sanskrit. PIE is an imaginary construct, maybe smart theory, but nonexistent nonetheless”; “something that’s utterly made up by conjecture ALONE, with absolutely no primary support of any kind”:

Of course PIE was a construct: it is not recorded anywhere. But the name, address, occupation, photograph, and other details of my ancestors twenty generations before me are also not recorded anywhere. If I try to reconstruct (how?) these things, I will definitely end up very badly wrong. But that would not justify me saying that the idea that I could have any ancestors twenty generations before me is “something that’s utterly made up by conjecture ALONE, with absolutely no primary support of any kind”. If I am here now I had ancestors twenty generations ago (and more).

In the case of PIE, it has been reconstructed from the data available in all the known IE languages: it is perfectly possible that many languages which could have contributed many more factors in the reconstruction have never been found recorded anywhere, that even in the languages known and recorded many features have escaped the calculations of the linguists, and that there have been even otherwise many mistakes in the reconstruction for various different reasons. So we certainly cannot take the reconstructed PIE as an exact representation of PIE as it actually was (though many linguists may actually be doing so: again the divine revelation syndrome). But certainly, as far as possible, it is an educated reconstruction, useful in tracing out the history of the IE languages, and most certainly you simply cannot say PIE never existed.

But unfortunately this scholar continues to compound the folly:

https://x.com/ProfVemsani

They said there should be some Proti-Indo-European language that gave rise to Indo-European languages, (mind you, this is a group designation not a single language) the oldest of which is Sanskrit. Only evidence for oldest Indo-European language is #Sanskrit and Sanskrit is Indian language. What does that tell you? The proto-whatever is created to deny Sanskrit its credit. Is there any evidence for the PEI anywhere? No, just a reconstruction! Is there any PIE speakers? Where is PIE culture? There is no evidence but they tell you, “trust me− I make good charts−. Reconstructed evidence is no evidence. that’s the only truth here. #No Aryans.

6.14 PM · Jan 21, 2025

I have already dealt with the IE-family-and-PIE question in several articles (apart from my books). Here I will give just one example for the fat-headed to answer. Just take the example of the forms (I) am, (thou) art and (he/she/it) is in one representative language from each of the twelve IE branches:

English:  (I) am, (thou) art, (he/she/it) is:

Sanskrit: asmi, asi, asti.

Avestan: ahmī, ahī, astī.

Homeric Greek: eimi, essi, esti.

Latin: sum, es, est.

Gothic: em, ert, est.

Hittite: ēšmi, ēšši, ēšzi.

Old Irish: am, at, is.

Russian: esmy, esi, esty.

Lithuanian: esmi, esi, esti.

Albanian: jam, je, ishtë.

Armenian: em, es, ê.

Tocharian: -am, -at, -aṣ.

The Sanskrit asmi, asi, asti become Russian esmy, esi, esty and Lithuanian esmi, esi, esti, with the simple change of “a” to “e”, and Avestan ahmī, ahī, astī with the simple change of “s” to “h”. Greek eimi, essi, esti also is immediately recognizable, as also Hittite ēšmi, ēšši, ēšzi. The other languages require a slightly longer look, and, yes, also some knowledge of sound changes in those languages.

Surely all those other languages some of which are ancient languages and some modern ones, and which are separated from each other by thousands of miles and by diverse and independent histories and no known ancient prehistorical contacts with Sanskrit cannot have simply borrowed their basic verbal conjugational forms from “some words from existing languages mainly Sanskrit”? No language in the known history of the languages of the world has ever borrowed these basic conjugational forms from some other language:

Even the Dravidian languages within India have forms totally dissimilar to Sanskrit:

Tamil: irukkiŗēn, irukkiŗāy, irukkiŗān/irukkiŗāḷ/irukkiŗadu.

Kannada: iddēne, iddi, iddāne/iddāḷe/ide.

Telugu: unnānu, unnāvu, unnāḍu/unnadi/unnadi.

And even the modern Indo-Aryan languages have distinct forms from Sanskrit (though related ones):

Marathi: āhe, āhes, āhe.

Konkani: āssa, āssa, āssa.

Hindi: hũ, hai, hai.

Gujarati: chũ, che, che.

Bengali: āchi,  ācha,  āche.

Sindhi: āhyẫ,  āhĩ,  āhe. 

Punjabi: hẫ,  haĩ,  hai.

 

To drive the point in further, just one word will illustrate the picture much more clearly: Sanskrit tu-, Hindi tū, Marathi tū, Konkani tūȗva, Sindhi tuȗ, Punjabi tūȗ, Gujarati tū, Bengali tui, Oriya tu, Assamese toi, Kashmiri tsa, Romany (Gypsy) tu. In Iranian, we have Avestan tū, Persian tu, Pashto tu, Kurdish tu, Baluchi tæw.

Here are the words in the other distant branches: Latin tū, Italian tu, Spanish tu, Portuguese tu, French tu, Romanian tu, Catalan tu, Irish tu, Scots-Gaelic thu, Welsh ti, Old English thū (later English thou), Icelandic thu, German du, Norwegian du, Danish du, Swedish du, Old Church Slavic ty, Russian ty, Belarusian ty, Polish ty, Czech ty, Slovak ty, Ukrainian ty, Bulgarian ti, Serbian ti, Croatian ti, Slovenian ti, Macedonian ti, Bosnian ti, Armenian du, Albanian ti, Doric Greek tu, Lithuanian tu, Latvian tu, Tocharian tu, Hittite ta/du.

Compare this flood of Indo-European words with the Dravidian equivalents: Tamil nī, Malayalam nī, Toda nī, Kota nī, Brahui nī, Kurukh nīn, Kannada nīnu, Kolami nīv, Naiki nīv, Telugu nīvu.

 

It is extremely unnatural for languages to borrow personal pronouns from other languages.

Very obviously, the IE language family is a fact, and, by all logic of natural common sense, all the diverse IE languages must have had a common ancestral speech-form, which, very logically, has to be called PIE. 

The fact that a person who is a professor – in her twitter bio she apparently calls herself not only Dr. and Ph.D., but also describes herself as a “Distinguished Univ Professor@SSU multi-award Fulbright Honorary Prof@JNU 8Books Board:OAH,HAF,HUA,ICHRRF; Editor-in-Chief, Intnl Jrnl of Indic Rel;Pres,OAH,AAIS” – can repeatedly and emphatically make the extremely foolish assertion that “PIE never existed” and reject Linguistics totally, and yet claim to be in the vanguard of the anti-AIT or the OIT side, is a pathetic pointer to why the anti-AIT or the OIT side is so utterly rudderless against a fully organized AIT army which likewise does not bother about facts but knows it can rely on its academic, media and political power.

And the reason why it can rely on academic, media and political power is because they make full use of that power, while the OIT academics try to keep in the good books of their opponents by following all the monopolistic rules established by them. This professor, Dr. Lavanya Vemsani, Ph.D. is the same person who refused to publish my following article (regarding which I challenge any AIT supporting scholar or sepoy to be able to even inflict one scratch of destructive criticism against it, much less produce a full-fledged study of the Rigvedic vocabulary which could pose even an illusory competitor to it) because I did not have a Ph/D. (at the time) from any recognized University and nor was I ever peer-reviewed in the academic journals controlled by AIT writers:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/08/final-version-of-chronological-gulf.html

 

And on the other side, we have religious fundamentalists who believe that the DNA, genes and haplogroups within any human body have the language or language-family spoken by that human being as a genetic component embedded within their DNA, and that by locating the geographical area of origin (or likely origin) of that particular genetic component, and the migratory expansions of that DNA, they can categorically trace the geographical area of origin (or likely origin) of a particular language or language family, and the routes of its migratory expansions.

In one of the above tweets, one of the AIT sepoys writes: “AMT is disputed by Hindu nationalists who claim that Indians existed in India since beginning of time and as a separate entity from rest of humanity”. This is a garbled version of what his master Witzel had written about me: foolishly, as it were, since I have never made any eternal claims of this kind, and my only claims are about the origins of PIE, which cannot go back “in India since beginning of time” and as a separate entity from rest of humanity” (and I certainly would not claim it does. There is a definite time limit to the formation of the IE family of languages].

On the other hand, even if not expressively put in those words by the AIT supporters, their stand amounts to a religious dogma that a person’s DNA contains a particular language embedded within it, and if that is so, who else can have put it there other than God?

Until OIT supporters get out of this illiterate rut of opposing Linguistics, and AIT supporters get out of this illiterate rut of resorting to Genetics (even when it blatantly contradicts all the Linguistic data), most AIT-vs.-OIT debates will continue to remain Battles of the Absurdities.     

 

Postscript:

Incidentally, sometimes even in these discussions, we get some intelligent people giving intelligent and to-the-point responses to foolish questions. The question, “So, humans living in India just fell out of the sky one fine day?” above is answered by someone as follows:

https://x.com/5suspended6th

You mean like how humans fell out of the sky in central Asia/Europe before coming to India? Good question.

4.98 PM · Jan 18, 2025

To this, the AIT proponent typically asks (since the right to expect logical answers, according to him, lies only with sepoys) with “OK. Answer the question deflection will not work here”

To which, again, the intelligent questioner points out:

You need to answer your own question first. Did humans fall from the sky in Europe before they came to India? After you answer this only your question makes sense. Otherwise you have nothing to contribute other than simply muddying the waters. Try again.

12.37 AM · Jan 19, 2025

Needless to say, the AIT sepoy can only keep bleating out the same special plea following the same one-sided logic where the AIT supporter is the judge and the OIT supporter is in the dock.

And this is the biggest and most fundamental problem  with the mental functioning of AIT sepoys (following their academic masters): they demand answers to questions, and evidence for claims, about the OIT which they refuse to answer or provide in respect of the AIT claims which they demand should be unquestioningly accepted as divine revelations. This kind of attitude is expected and natural in religious discussions by religious fundamentalists, but should have no place in discussions on factual historical issues.

But until the OIT supporters get their perspective on, and their knowledge of, the different aspects of the debate, as well as their priorities, right, it is not enough to just be able to point out the fallacies in the opponents’ cockeyed pronouncements. Whether the opponents accept our points or not, we should never put ourselves in the wrong on any point. Ultimately, the advocates of a Genetic solution to this Linguistic question will be proved as outdated and injudicious as those who at one point of time believed that outward racial features represented the “original Aryan” or, at an earlier date, those who cited the opinions of Church scholars about the earth being flat.