True Research versus Mercenary Sabotage-Writing

 

True Research versus Mercenary Sabotage-Writing

Shrikant G. Talageri 

 

Yesterday night, just before going out for a dinner program, I wrote an article about Jijith’s latest tweet on the “Talageri-says-Vedic-people-originated-in-Kashi” theme. I had decided never to write about Jijith anymore, and in fact had decided my recent articles on 5^th April 2026 on the subject of raga-based film music would be my last major research-based articles articles, and that I would henceforward only write impulsive articles on issues not requiring intense back-breaking research. Three such articles followed. But the sudden emergence of Jijith’s latest tweet, brought to my attention, annoyed me so much that I swiftly wrote a short reaction to it, uploaded it and left for the dinner program.

While enjoying the dinner, I realized that I was again letting this maniac spoil my mood and my writing agenda, leading me to write “hyper” reactions to his mischievous tweets, and after I came back I wrote a more modulated reaction to his tweet. But when I opened my blogspot, I saw an abusive comment by an admirer of Jijith named Pramod, as follows:

“All your blog posts have become bitter and angry. That too, at people who don't abuse you. Others also face similar misapprehensions or mirepresentations, but I've seen only you react so bitterly in a public space. Mr. Talageri, please consider getting some medication. And if you're on medication, please ask your psych to increase the dose. And I say this as someone on meds myself.”

 

This made me realize that manipulative Jijith, knowing my volatile reaction to lies about my writings, had played his cards again to make me out to be someone abusing and persecuting him rather than someone whose OIT case he has been deliberately misrepresenting and spreading deliberate disinformation about. He had successfully played this victim-card game on an internet discussion before over a period of months, needling me again and again into reacting to his lies, while acting as a persecuted innocent, finally leading to the group itself closing down because of the toxic environment created.

 

After reading this comment, I could not put up my modified version (which would have looked like a reaction to this abusive comment), so I decided to briefly reply to this proxy attack and sleep over the issue. Today morning I decided not to fall once more into Jijith’s trap and spoil my mood and my resolutions, and to cancel the article altogether and put it up in a different way. This is it: a pure question of letting people choose between True Research and motivated Pseudo-research built on lies.

 

Apparently a tweeter tweeted as follows in reply to a tweet by Jijith:

https://x.com/BharatDharma7/status/2045532123700838670

“But it's also true that the authors of the Rig Veda (which was composed on the Saraswati) referred to their ancestors who migrated West from Kashi. (ref: Shrikant Talageri's books)”.

Jijith, in his typical ungrammatical English (see “has” and “counter” below) jumped at the chance to lie in even greater detail than before, in the process even hinting that it is I who am the liar:

https://x.com/Jijith_NR/status/2045546806411698623

“Yes I too has seen it. Dr Elst has seen it. All his old books in 1990s say it. But, westwards from Kashi part is wrong while rest of Talageri is wrong [corrected later to rest of Talageri is right]. After my arguments with him, he now says he never said it and instead now counter it saying his Purus migrated from Sarasvati to eastwards. But he still says Ikshvakus migrated westward from East/ Central UP. I get even Ikshvakus migrating from Sarasvati Eastwards to Yamuna, Ganga and Sarayu.”

10:25 PM · Apr 18, 2026

 

Honestly, Jijith seems totally lacking in shame and self-respect, and so desperately into self-promotion and profiteering from his writings, and so abysmally stupid that he cannot see how he is exposing his unscrupulous saboteur-tactics by repeating lies again and again and again, which even the most cursory examination (and definitely a detailed examination) of available records of my writings will prove to be disgustingly brazen and blatant lies. Yes, in my reactions to his lies, I was exposing myself to be hyper in my reactions to lies, but is that satisfaction enough to him to compensate for being exposed as a liar? 

The lie he has been repeating since the last three years, first on that internet discussion group and on Twitter (X), which he repeated again two days ago, is that “all” my “old books in 1990s say” that “the authors of the Rig Veda (which was composed on the Saraswati) referred to their ancestors who migrated West from Kashi”. And “now” he additionally alleges that I am lying by claiming I “never said it and instead now counter it saying …. Purus migrated from Sarasvati to eastwards”.

His earlier list of persistently repeated lies included the claims that in my 1990s books, I had said Manu ruled in Ayodhya, and that Divodāsa and Sudās were kings of Kashi!

If I had really written these things, what has happened to all those “old books in 1990s” written by me which say that “the authors of the Rig Veda (which was composed on the Saraswati) referred to their ancestors who migrated West from Kashi” (or that Manu ruled in Ayodhya or that Divodāsa and Sudās were kings of Kashi)? Have all those books disappeared into thin air and gone out of existence? Why is it he (and Elst and any others who supported him in his lies) cannot produce a single one of these references? My books are available not only with my publisher (unlike Jijith, I do not encourage people to spend money on buying my books) but even on the internet in pdf form, including on Jijith’s own site! Not only have I, in that now-defunct internet-discussion group but also in my blogs in the last few years, stridently challenged their lies and asked them to produce quotes to these effects from my books, but I have also written articles giving all the actual quotations from my “old books in 1990s” which state exactly the opposite of their lying claims.

Any genuine scholar would have felt some amount of shame, and would have either admitted that he had been lying or that his memory played tricks with him; and admitted that I had not written any of the things falsely attributed to me, and (but this I know is too much to expect from this mercenary) even apologized for carrying on a sustained campaign of lies over a period of years. But this man seems completely devoid of shame and self-respect, and has repeated the lies two days ago.

I cannot keep reacting every time he writes lies against me. But I can caution the readers to recognize his level of “scholarship” very precisely. If he can continue to repeat the same easily disprovable lies in public repeatedly over a period of years even after being exposed every time, how much credence can be placed on the honesty and “scholarly” value of what he writes in his books on topics of which his readers do not have expert knowledge? So my advice to people interested in Vedic history is: caveat emptor!