Who
Deserves to be tweeted or Written About, and Who Doesn’t
Shrikant
G. Talageri
1.
When two sadhus were killed in the most brutal way in Palghar in Mumbai on 16-4-2020, some
b**** tweeted to a militant Muslim tweeter (who always tweeted on every
"atrocity", "injustice" or "discrimination"
concerning any Muslim in India) asking him why he was not tweeting in protest
against this. His reply was "First show me Modi's tweet on this issue".
The b****.who had taunted him naturally ignored this stupid question. [The
word in asterisks, please note, is not an seven-letter or four-letter word, but a five letter
one]
2.
When Shabana Azmi fell off a scooter and got a scratch on her nose, Modi ji
tweeted:
There
was a huge mass of thousands of reply tweets by b****s in awe at the
magnanimity of this great man and leader who was so concerned about a person
who was his bitter critic and hater.
3.
Today, an Indian was appointed as a Cardinal by the Pope. There was this
immediate tweet by Modi ji:
“A matter of great joy and pride for India!
Delighted at His Eminence George Jacob Koovakad being created a
Cardinal of the Holy Roman Catholic Church by His Holiness Pope Francis. His
Eminence George Cardinal Koovakad has devoted his life in service of humanity
as an ardent follower of Lord Jesus Christ. My best wishes for his future
endeavours.”
Great
indeed is the magnanimity of this greatest of Hindu leaders, who blesses the
newly appointed Cardinal with his best wishes in his task of converting Hindus
to Christianity!
May
we all join our palms together in echoing this joy and pride in this great
achievement by a humble Indian, and give our blessings and best wishes that he
may fully succeed in his holy task of converting all Indians to the true and
only path of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And
may we all be blessed by Lord Jesus Christ with the holy ability to understand
which issues and persons are important enough to be written about and tweeted
about, and which issues and persons are not.
“Talageri Is Not
Published in “Peer-Reviewed Academic Journals””:
Another Stale Meaningless
Cliché
Shrikant G.
Talageri
As I have pointed out many times,
I have written on every relevant issue concerning the AIT-OIT issue, not once
but many times over, and I have decided to stop repeating myself again and
again for people who are totally deaf or incurably illiterate. Unless some
genuine new point is raised which requires an answer or detailed clarification
from me (thought honestly, I do not see such a contingency arising), I have
finished writing on the AIT-OIT issue. But it is true that something I have
already written in detail may escape the attention of interested readers. Which
is why I took the trouble of writing the previous article on the subject of my
knowledge − or
alleged lack of it −
on the subject of linguistics, or specifically on the linguistic knowledge
required in studying the AIT-OIT issue and the Rigvedic data, in order to list
out my earlier articles on the subject. Let me add here another article that I
missed out mentioning in my previous article:
In
this present article (basically meant, like my previous article on the subject
of my knowledge of Sanskrit and linguistics, to list out my earlier articles
relevant to the point), I will deal with:
A.
“Peer Review”.
B.
The OIT (or anti-AIT) Illiterates.
C.
A Word on the Genetic
Evidence.
A.
“Peer Review”
I am writing this article mainly to
deal with another oft-repeated complaint against me: that my articles are
not published in “peer-reviewed journals”.
This complaint shows an extreme
degree of empty-headedness. That my articles are not published in
“peer-reviewed journals” is not because I have prevented them from being so
published or from being “reviewed” by anyone: but because all these journals
are controlled and financed by vested interests who have a strong “academic”
stake in the prevalence of the AIT paradigm. Expecting my articles to be
published in these journals is tantamount to expecting that my opponents in
this debate (or on this AIT-OIT issue) will themselves give publicity to
research that they are trying their hardest to stonewall and to suppress, and assuming
that their failure to do so reflects not on their integrity but on my
scholarship. And as for critically reviewing my work, everyone who has (it is
unfortunate that I have to put it in this way) “crossed swords” with me have
retired licking their wounds. The lack of honesty and objectivity in others
cannot be laid at my doors. It is not (as some may try to claim) that they do
not want to give publicity to “unscholarly” writings and fear that they will be
doing so by writing critiques of my work: none of these AIT enthusiasts
hesitate to attack and criticize in detail any rubbish written by OIT
proponents (or AIT opponents), or to expose wrong arguments made against
the AIT. It is just that they like to pick easy targets, or attack straw men,
and I am not an easy target and my evidence does not present them with any
straw men to attack: so stonewalling is the only alternative.
Giving undue weightage, or rather
giving full monopoly of authority, to “peer-reviewed journals” shows a certain
kind of intellectual immaturity:
1. There is something medieval or
intellectually primitive about giving a veto power to some “authority” for
deciding whether a work is scholarly or not. In medieval Europe, this power
vested in the Pope or the Catholic Church, which even had the power to ban or
“proscribe” certain writings which went against the official doctrines or
beliefs – even to
the extent of sentencing the disapproved writer to imprisonment or the death
sentence. Academic institutions and journals seem to have taken on that role
today, and only the power to imprison or sentence to death is missing.
Strangely, to half-baked modern minds, the diktats of the academic institutions
and journals are as fully authoritative as the diktats of the Church were to
half-baked medieval European minds. While imprisonments and death sentences are
not possible in the modern day, more subtle but powerful psychological “peer”-pressures
are equally effective: for just one example, see the effective “partial
retraction” u-turn by Johanna Nichols detailed in my article (“The new
western academic crusaders…”) below.
2. I have written plenty of
articles on “peer reviews” in general, or in reply to fake “academic” critics
and critiques of my work, or actually reviewing other articles on the subject:
This does not include the
articles already listed by me in my previous article, or other articles written
by me in reply to twitter attacks.
B. The OIT (or
anti-AIT) Illiterates
Is this kind of illiterate
attitude restricted only to the “opposite side”. i.e. the AIT side? No, it
is the attitude of all illiterate people, with pompous academic pretensions,
who think that an article which says “2+2=5” published in an “academic
journal” by a writer whose “scholarship” is given the stamp of approval by a
university doctorate or another “academic journal” is more scholarly
than an article which says “2+2=4” by a writer whose “scholarship” does
not have this stamp. All pretentious “academic scholars”, whether nominally
supporting the AIT or the OIT, are equally illiterate in issues of genuine
research and study, and equally bursting with disdain for genuine research and
with reverence for pompous establishmentarianism and officialese-filled
discourse. A person who is outside this privileged circle will never get his
article showing that “2+2=4” published in any self-declared “academic
journal”, while a person who is already inside this privileged circle will
always be able to get his article showing that “2+2=5” published in
“academic journals” and repeatedly “peer-reviewed” and cited as academically
sound.
I remember Sita Ram Goel telling
me (when I was actually invited for a Seminar on Sanskrit organized by the HRD
Ministry of the Government of India in April 2001), that these seminars,
conferences and official journals are just so much bureaucratic claptrap, and
that I should avoid them and simply concentrate on doing genuine research and
study and putting my findings on written record. So, I never paid any attention
to these things and simply concentrated on research, study and writing.
The absolute similarity of all
pompous “scholars” in control of journals – regardless of “ideology” or “side” − was
nevertheless confirmed for me in 2018, when I received this forwarded message
on my mail on 17-8-2018 in an Indic discussion group (the only discussion group
of which I was and remain a member):
Dear Esteemed Colleagues,
On behalf of Prof. Lavanya Vemsani,
editor-in-chief, pleased to invite you all to send your papers for
consideration for publication in the AJIS. Deadline: September 9, 2018.
Please check the Call for Papers for the Winter
issue of American Journal of Indic Studies
Please register on the journal website included
in the link above. Papers can be submitted directly on the journal
website.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if there
are any additional questions.
Thanks
Pankaj Jain
On being urged by certain people on the group to
give an article, I wrote as follows, in a mail dated 27-8-2018, addressed to
this Pankaj Jain and to the concerned person in the group who had forwarded
this mail:
I
have just yesterday completed my latest article "India's unique place in
the World of Numbers and Numerals", which I intend to upload on my blogsite
in a day or two (after some last-minute checking). I prefer to publish on my
blogsite because I don't generally feel that the academic Truth has to be told
only on official academic fora, passing through all kinds of bureaucratic
formalities, etc. And I prefer the immediate or at least direct response and
feedback I get on a blog, the pleasure of knowing people are actually reading
the article, the ability to make corrections whenever necessary, and the
freedom to write without editing and censorship of any kind. So I definitely
want to publish the article on my blogsite in a day or two.
However,
I was advised by a few scholars to whom I sent the article for their critical
views, that this article is too important to be stuck only to the level of a blog.
So, is it possible for the article to be included in your journal even after it
is published on my blog? Please let me know. I am sending a pdf of the article
for your appraisal.
This
mail was forwarded by the concerned person in the
group (who had forwarded the earlier mail):
Shrikantji,
I’m forwarding it to Dr. Lavanya Vemsaniji. She is the editor in
chief of AJIS.
On
the very same day (27-8-2018) within 12 hours, I received the following mail
from Pankaj Jain, presumably after consulting with Dr. Lavanya Vemsani:
Thanks, sir, for considering our newly launched
journal for your article. I have heard your name a lot but never got a chance
to read your work yet...
For our journal, we have decided to accept
articles only from scholars who have PhDs in Humanities or Social Sciences from
an American, Indian, or other universities. Sorry for this inconvenience.
With best regards,
Pankaj Jain (with Prof. Lavanya Vemsani,
editor-in-chief)
In
short, “academic journals” only accept for publication, and “peer-review”,
articles by people who have already received the stamp of approval from
other “academic” institutions and journals. And this is not just academic
journals headed and controlled by people who have already written or taken
“sides” – i.e. the AIT “side” − in the AIT-OIT debate, but even by
establishment-conscious “scholars” who are self-proclaimed opponents of the AIT
(I have read some of the pedestrian stuff written by Lavanya Vemsani on the
AIT-OIT issue. And, I am told, she still feigns total ignorance of my very
existence, let alone of my work).
The
reader can go through the article which I was willing to offer to these people,
which was rejected by them, to see what these “academic journals” are all
about:
Time and again, I have observed
the wisdom behind Sita Ram Goel’s advice on the subject of genuine academic
research and scholarship as opposed to the stranglehold of establishmentarian
“academics”. I genuinely feel nothing but contempt for people, critics or
otherwise, who hold academic approval over scholarship, and degrees and
“peer-reviewed” articles over facts, data and evidence.
C. A Word on the Genetic
Evidence
A final word on those who talk
about “genetic evidence” of an Aryan invasion of, India, or of an IE migration
into India: these are clods who will never be able to understand the simple
fact that any evidence (based on genetic or DNA factors) showing the arrival of
certain genetic features into India from outside along with the people carrying
those genetic features, are just that: evidence (based on genetic or DNA
factors) showing the arrival of certain genetic features into India from outside
along with the people carrying those genetic features.
They are in no way,
by any stretch of the imagination, evidence of the arrival of Indo-European
(“Aryan”) or any other languages into, or even out of, India.
Genetic data merely shows the movement of certain genetic features
(haplogroups, etc.) from one place to another, without in any way showing
that certain languages also moved from one place to another along with the
people carrying those genetic features. In most cases, the greater and more
natural explanation is that people who moved into different regions and more likely
adopted the language, religion and culture of the native people while retaining
(and perhaps even spreading into sections of the original population which
lived there before their arrival) their genetic features. Language does not
enter into the genetic picture at all, and people who draw linguistic
conclusions from genetic features are nothing but racist or extremely bigoted
persons whose conclusions are nothing short of fraudulent.
I have already written a few
articles on this, and will not waste any more time on this senseless subject:
Postscript: I forgot to mention above that
I was (later to the above events) awarded a Doctorate, “Doctor of
Literature (D.Lit) Honoris Causa”, by IndusUniversityAhmedabad
on 18-1-2020. And some Indian academic journals have also published my
articles, notably the paper presented by me at the 3-day ICHRNationalConference on “Indian History: Emerging National Perspectives” at
the IGNCA, 5-7-2018, has been (or is being published) in the journal of the
ICHR along with other papers presented at the Conference.
“Talageri Does Not
Know Sanskrit” –
A Hackneyed Issue Which Never Stales For Empty Brains
Shrikant G.
Talageri
Here I am back again with another
reply to another illiterate clownish tweeter on “X/Twitter”: i.e. to one more
of those jokers who adopt pompous titles for their twitter handles: this one
combines three strong words: Deva, Raja and Indra, obviously under the
impression that pompous titles serve as impenetrable disguises to hide empty
and outdated brains.
I have just been sent the
following tweet by this joker, who struts around under the name DevarajaIndra@DevarajaIndra:
“Then, Mr Bhaskar, you are quite severely
underread. Griffith, Jones, Mueller, Jamison and even Witzel have done
extremely comprehensive analysis.
Talageri, as per his own admission, doesn’t
even know Sanskrit!!
This was apparently in reply to a tweet by another tweeter, who wrote as
follows:
“Talageri's analysis is the most comprehensive,
logical & rational analysis of Rig Veda. None of the AryaN Myth founders,
promoters, supporters, have analyzed RV as Talageri has done.
I have been researching and writing on the Rigveda since over 30 years
(my first book published in 1993), and my studies started even earlier. In
fact, I doubt if there is any scholar whose study of the vocabulary of the Rigveda
can go deeper into the subject and produce a more revolutionary criterion for
the study of the Rigvedic language and history than my following article:
That
some pipsqueak squeaking for attention thinks he can refer to what he calls my
lack of knowledge of “Sanskrit”, speaks volumes for the presumptuous boldness
which the pompousness of his adopted title seems to have given him.
To start with, about my “not knowing Sanskrit”: I have already written
on the value of this half-witted and lame-brain “accusation” in many articles, notably
even in the following full article:
On specific issues regarding my analysis of the Rigveda, many twitter
sepoys (conjoined twins to this pompous DevarajaIndra) have tried to claim that
my analysis, where it differs sharply from the analyses of some or most of the
western Indologists, is wrong because I “do not know Sanskrit” (apart,
of course, from my being a “bank clerk”, and my not having had my papers
“peer-reviewed” by my academic opponents in “academic journals”
controlled by them), and have ended up with egg on their faces when I showed
them how not only their second-hand knowledge of “Sanskrit” but even the “first-hand”
knowledge of the western Indologists and scholars whom they quote and cite,
stands exposed as shoddy and faulty:
Apart from the fact that the Indologists worshipped by all these Indian
sepoys failed to give the correct interpretations in each of the above cases
where I got it right, here is my irrefutable indictment of the latest and most
touted (even by Witzel) of these wrong-interpreting western “expert scholars”:
I simply do not understand how these Indian sepoys who are so completely
ignorant of anything and everything, in spite of the pompous titles and
attitudes they adopt, do not feel even a bit ashamed of their pathetic selves.
Ultimately, for lack of any other explanation, I have to fall back on the
favorite verdict/explanation of one of my aunts: “This is Kaliyug”.
APPENDIX added evening 22-11-2024:
should have stopped there, but I have now been sent another tweet by
another conjoined twin blockhead of DevarajaIndra, named Prashant Natarajan
(possibly another Dravidian language speaking Brahmin who identifies with what
he considers to be his “Aryan invader ancestors”) apparently from the same
twitter conversation, a vacant headed person who styles himself: Prashant
Natarajan @AIML4Health. This idiot again shows the vacant-headedness of these
Indian sepoys:
Talageri doesn’t have an amateur’s understanding of linguistics, let
alone Sanskrit & Vedas. In this interview, he claims to have learned
languages such as “African” and “Red Indian.” Enough said about his
credentials. https://youtu.be/DKEpERD_U4I?feature=shared… (5:15 onwards)
This illiterate joker clearly does not have the intelligence of a
cockroach, and interprets my words in the above video as meaning that I am
claiming to have learned languages such as “African” and “Red Indian”, implying
that I am so ignorant trhat I think there are two languages
spoken in the world named “African” and “RedIndian”
respectively!!
He gives two glaring examples of his stupidity here:
Firstly, I did not say I learnt two languages named African and Red
Indian respectively: I clearly said that I learnt numbers 1-100
in over a hundred languages (including African and Red Indian=American Indian
ones). This shows the utter inability of this clown to understand what is being
said.
Secondly, he also demonstrates
his illiteracy about my writings which he dares to presume to have the right to
criticize. In my article “India's
Unique Place in the World of Numbers and Numerals”, I have actually
given a great number of examples of numbers 1-100 from these African and Red
Indian languages. Long and boring though this is, let me repeat those examples
here for the reader to understand the extent of this Prashant Natarajan’s
illiteracy. I leave it to the readers to decide whose linguistic “credentials”
are more genuine: mine or those of these twitter clowns:
Other
numbers in between 10-60 are formed by the tens word
followed by the following secondary forms of 1-9: obbo, are,
ogüni, ungwun, oimiet, oīille, nabishäna, oissiet,
nawdo
[the
four letters c, v, q, and x represent four
different types of clicking sounds. Clicking sounds as part of the language are
unique in the whole world to the Khoisan languages, though some non-Khoisan
neighboring languages like Zulu have also borrowed this feature from them]
Swahili
(NigerCongo):
1-9: mosi,
pili, tatu, 'nne, tano, sita, saba, nane,
kenda
30, 50,
70, 90: lahu-ca-kal, lahu-ox-kal, lahu-cankal, lahu-hokal
(10 less than 40, etc.).
Other
numbers:
21-39
(except 30): 1-19 + tu kal. Thus: 21 is hun tu kal (1+tu+20).
Other
numbers (after 40, except the actual non-vigesimal tens numbers 50, 70,
90, etc., where the word tu is dropped): 1-19 + tu and the
followingvigesimal. Thus:
41: hun
tu ox-kal (1 below 60), 99: bolon-lahun tu ho-kal (19 below 100).
[Some
additional, but not necessary, euphonic variations in
speech are:
a) 15, ho-lahun,
is sometimes contracted to ho-lhun
b) a y
is sometimes inserted between a word ending in u and a following ox
or ho. Thus: lahu-oxkal and lahu-hokal (50 and 90) become lahu-y-oxkal
and lahu-y-hokal, and similarly hun tu ox-kal, 41, becomes hun
tu y-ox-kal]
c) l
of lahun is dropped before tu. Thus bolon-lahun tu kal,
39, becomes bolon-lahu tu kal]
[Note:
This is important since the Mayans were the only people to invent a vigesimalnumeral system. Hence also, perhaps, the system of forming the other
numbers (21-99) is slightly less regular or more complicated (but still
explicable by certain rules]
[Note: the x is pronounced "sh" and the c
as well as k as "k"].
Finally, here is a link to my most original linguistic research on
the Konkani language, which is the subject on which I started my journey down
the linguistics road in 1973 (when I was still in high school). The linguistic
facts that I discovered about Konkani phonology (tonal accents) and the unique
(among all modern Indian languages) inflexional complexity of Konkani are my
first linguistic "credentials":
The abysmally, incredibly and
breath-takingly low level of intellectualism which tries to dominate twitter /
X can be seen from the two following tweets by this clown Prashant Natarajan
(who I am beginning to believe is really and incurably mentally retarded as
well as a sick and pathological liar) even after my above article.
Today he has put up two tweets where he reiterates that I referred to a
language called “Red Indian”:
The first:
Koenraad, stick to deceiving Hindutva fellow
travelers w/ Talageri, True Indology, Savitri Momo, etc. None of you have any
evidence - let alone the intellectual temper or even amateurish knowledge. Your
“linguistics” expert Talageri claims to have mastered “Red Indian.”
The second, after he accused
Koenraad Elst of not having any degrees in linguistics, and Koenraad replied “You
are worse than an amateur. You are a liar. I do have several degrees in
linguistics, among them specifically Indo-European linguistics. Now you owe me
(& the readers whom you tried to misinform) an apology”, the liar
continues to lie through his teeth (see the stupidity which does not even seem
aware of the spelling of Koenraad’s name!):
Blocking replies tells us about ur
intellectual honesty, Conrad. U have degrees in Sinology, Indology, & philosophy
+ a PhD in Hindu Revivalism! What “several” linguistics degrees are u referring
to? U can’t include teaching “Red Indian” to Talageri as a degree.
Final Appendix added
23-11-2024:
The abysmally, incredibly and
breath-takingly low level of intellectualism which tries to dominate twitter /
X can be seen from the two following tweets by this clown Prashant Natarajan
(who I am beginning to believe is really and incurably mentally retarded as
well as a sick and pathological liar) even after my above article.
Today he has put up two tweets
where he reiterates that I referred to a language called “Red Indian”:
The first:
Koenraad, stick to deceiving Hindutva fellow travelers w/
Talageri, True Indology, Savitri Momo, etc. None of you have any evidence - let
alone the intellectual temper or even amateurish knowledge. Your “linguistics”
expert Talageri claims to have mastered “Red Indian.”
The second, after he accused
Koenraad Elst of not having any degrees in linguistics, and Koenraad replied “You
are worse than an amateur. You are a liar. I do have several degrees in
linguistics, among them specifically Indo-European linguistics. Now you owe me
(& the readers whom you tried to misinform) an apology”, the liar
continues to lie through his teeth (see the stupidity which does not even seem
aware of the spelling of Koenraad’s name!):
Blocking replies tells us about ur intellectual honesty, Conrad. U
have degrees in Sinology, Indology, & philosophy + a PhD in Hindu
Revivalism! What “several” linguistics degrees are u referring to? U can’t
include teaching “Red Indian” to Talageri as a degree.
In these two articles, I show how DevarajaIndra’s clown friend, among other things (like adopting two blatantly
opposing principles for the postulated PIE forms for elephant and fox),
discovers the incredible theory that the PIE words for “elephant” are mixtures
of African and (pre-AIT) Indian words!
As I pointed out at the end of
the second of my two above responses to that clown:
“Sameer refuses to accept that the four
Indo-European words are derived from *ṛbha/ḷbha (ivory, elephant),
from an original root (I am giving the Vedic form of the root rather than
reconstructing a "PIE" one) *rabh/*labh: Vedic ibha,
Latin ebur, Greek erepa/elepha, Hittite laḫpa, each of the four word words
individually bearing a distinct resemblance to the word *ṛbha/ ḷbha.
But his pretence to be a
textbook citer gets completely shattered when he is not able to explain how
these four Indo-European languages happen to have such similar words for ivory/elephant when the elephant was not
found either in the Steppes or in the historical areas of any of the branches
other than Indo-Aryan. Then, without bothering to cite a single scholar,
without giving a single protoform (or even a group of different protoforms)
from Africa or "pre-Aryan" India, and without showing how and by
which rules of phonetic derivation these words were derived from any such
protoforms, he very breezily informs us that "words for “elephant;
ivory” were getting borrowed around in the area in antiquity. The ultimate
origin might be an Afroasiatic (or another African) language, or it might be
India, or a mixture of both".
For someone who so very
pompously and superciliously rejects the derivation from *ṛbha/ḷbha,
in spite of (a) the very close resemblance of the four Indo-European words to *ṛbha/ḷbha,
(b) the parallel semantic example of hastin, and (c) the connected
etymology of the Vedic ṛbhu from *ṛbha/ḷbha, in a show of being a
stickler for strict phonetic rules of derivation, Sameer does not find it
necessary to be equally circumspect when suggesting alternate derivations.
So, I again
put it as follows: the discussion can only proceed further (although I can
sense many people yawning already and wondering when this quibbling will end),
and/or Sameer can only save his face, by providing textbook quotations from
other scholars of such words which are "mixtures" of
"both" African and Indian words, and giving the
specific African and (non-IE) Indian words which got "mixed" together
to produce these four Indo-European wordsfor ivory/elephant, and naming
the specific African and (non-IE) Indian languages from which those words
arose. A short description of the way in which those diverse words met together
before getting "mixed" and the phonetic rules explaining these
"mixtures" would also help.
Like it or
not, the common Indo-European words for ivory/elephant prove the
Indian Homeland or OIT.
It is not my call to "reconstruct PIE". It is his call to reconstruct the "mixtures" of "non-Aryan" Indian words and African words, to point out which Indian and African languages they came from, how they managed to join together and get "borrowed" only by four IE languages (but not by the Caucasian, Uralic, Altaic, Sumerian, etc. languages), and so on. While going about it, he could also reconstruct one common PIE word for "fox", explaining all the anomalies”
