Shrikant G. Talageri Quotes

There is no direct ethnic connection between the identities of different peoples of the Rigvedic period and the identities of actual different peoples living in present-day India, or indeed in the world today. (TALAGERI 2008:363)

My book was published in early 2000, and I sent a copy of it to Witzel (not in a nasty spirit, and certainly not in anticipation of bouquets, but only to facilitate a healthy dialogue, or, at the very least, as a matter of courtesy). Earlier, I had also sent a copy to another scholar at Harvard (with whom I had earlier established indirect and temporary contact). Within a month I received an e-mail letter from that scholar ...relating that there had been a discussion between Witzel and himself “about the possibility of Talageri coming to study with him (Witzel) in Harvard to do advanced study or a Ph.D.” Witzel, the scholar wrote, “is the Vedic scholar par excellence, and Shrikant could get proper training and academic credentials if he were to be accepted”. I was asked to “contact Michael Witzel directly”. There was a proviso – as discreetly phrased as the rest of the letter – “provided he is open-minded and flexible in his views, and does not show himself to be intransigent or predisposed to certain ideas”.

In sharp contrast to these intimate references to typically Indian animals are the references to an animal which is restricted to the extreme northwest: the bactrian camel of Afghanistan and beyond. This camel, uSTra, is referred to only in the following verses: ... The distribution of these references is restricted only to hymns belonging to the Late Period.

They, therefore, postulate that some time had elapsed since the actual invasion and conquest, and it was the close ancestors of the composers of the hymns who had come from outside, and the composers themselves were already settled in the area. The invasion and conquest, they conclude, is not recorded in the Rigveda, since the composition of the hymns of the Rigveda commenced after the period of the actual invasion and conquest.

The rise has been most phenomenal in Arunachal Pradesh, where the Christian percentage has grown from 0.79% in 1971 to 18.72% in 2001: this does not include the figures for crypto-Christians who are many in number in this state due to strong opposition from local tribals opposed to this massive proselytization... It can be seen that there is a complete sweep of conversion to Christianity among the tribal populations of Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram: 96.8%, 98.5% and 90.5% respectively (the Chakma tribe of Mizoram alone representing a Buddhist survival of 8.3% in that state)... In Arunachal Pradesh, there is an even bigger survival of the original tribal religion: Here we have the traditional Donyi Polo religion followed by almost 47.2% of the tribal population of the state, or 30.3% of the total population of the state. In Manipur, as we saw, there is a clean sweep of conversion to Christianity as in the case of Nagaland and Mizoram, with 96.8% of the tribals converted to Christianity... There are other miniscule populations among the tribes of these five states of the North East still practicing their ancestral religious or belief systems, but they have been reduced to a micro-minority by the time of the 2001 census itself, and may by now be almost completely decimated... The facts are crystal clear: except for followers of these five religions, all the tribal population of India (except converts to Christianity) consists overwhelmingly of Hindu Category One tribals. As the religious population figures of the 2011 Indian Census are still undisclosed, we do not know what the situation is today (2013) and what it will be at some point of time in the future. We do not know how far the efforts to break off the tribals from Hindu society, by converting them to Christianity or trying to convince them even otherwise that they are not Hindus, will be successful. But the fact is that as of the data now available, they are full-fledged Hindus, self-declared, and any change in the situation can only be a change brought about by Goebbelsian and diabolical machinations, and can not represent the original situation... Yet the billion-dollar funded political and academic campaign to cut off the tribal population of India from the non-tribal population by branding the tribals as non-Hindu, often branding them with innocuous names like “animists”, is in full flow... And these figures are faithfully reported in the data provided by the Joshua Project, whose aim is to give the genuine religious population figures for all the ethnic peoples of the world, so as to enable missionaries to formulate their strategies accordingly. The Wikipedia article, like articles in the Indian media or in books meant for consumption in India, obviously have different aims: the primary one being the old policy of “Divide and Conquer”.

Witzel takes up two verses which clearly refer to eastern rivers, misinterprets them as references to the Indus, further misinterprets them as references to crossings of the Indus river from west to east, and then reconstructs an entire saga of the immigration of the Rigvedic Aryans into India on the basis of these misinterpretations. He even pinpoints the exact area “eastern Iran” from which specific immigrants, “the Bharatas and VasiSTha”110, led this historical exodus across the Indus.... Is “gross misrepresentation” an adequate word to describe this whole exercise?... His sole criterion in preparing a chronological arrangement is his own geographical grid prepared on the basis of deliberate misinterpretations of Rigvedic geography.

But Jahnāvī is typically a Rigvedic form of the post-Vedic Jāhnavī, and it does not require any "Epic/Purāṇic concepts" to recognize it as the name of a river: a river is a geographical feature, not a mythological entity whose identity is based on traditional historical or mythological texts. On the other hand, Witzel‘s claim that ―Jahnāvī was the wife or a female relation of Jahnu or otherwise connected to him or his clan is definitely based on Epic/Purāṇic concepts: no person named Jahnu is mentioned anywhere in the Rigveda,...Jahnu himself is an Epic/Purāṇic figure...Not only does Witzel accept this Epic/Purāṇic person as the source of the Rigvedic word Jahnāvī, he even visualizes, in the manner of the Amar Chitrakatha comic books, a mysterious lady named Jahnāvī, "the wife or a female relation of Jahnu or otherwise connected to him or his clan", whose very existence is completely unknown to the whole of Vedic and Epic/Purāṇic literature and Indian tradition, but who is apparently so very important in the Rigveda that she is mentioned twice (how many other ladies are mentioned twice in the Rigveda outside of references to people aided by the Aśvins?) in special references, which are worded so peculiarly (what, after all, unless she was a symbol of the motherland, like the present-day Bhāratmātā, has this lady to do with an ―ancient home), that they can be more conveniently and logically translated as references to a river!

Witzel’s attitude towards this evidence is typical of the generally cavalier attitude of Western scholars towards inconvenient evidence in the matter of Indo-European origins: he notes that the evidence is negative, finds it “surprising” that it should be so, makes an offhand effort to explain it away, and then moves on.

“I have shown in my books that the ten books of the Rigveda were composed in the following order: 6,3,7,4,2,5,8,9,10 (with parts of book 1 spanning the periods of composition of books 4,2,5,8,9,10); and that they were composed as follows: books 6,3,7 in the Early Rigvedic period, books 4,2 in the Middle Rigvedic period, and books 5,1,8,9,10 in the Late Rigvedic period (the hymns of book 1 having been given their final form in the Late Rigvedic period, this book must be included in that period).
To begin with, the western academic scholars themselves (see TALAGERI 2008:132-135 for details) have classified the books of the Rigveda into two groups: the family books (2-7) and the non-family books (1, 8-10), and testified, on the basis of their own analyses, that the family books were composed and compiled before the non-family books. Further, they have detached book 5 from the other family books and concluded that it agrees with the non-family books rather than with the other family books. By their analysis, the books of the Rigveda can be classified into three categories: the earlier family books (2-4, 6-7), the later family book (5), and the later non-family books (1, 8-10). This fully agrees with my own classification into Early books (6,3,7), Middle (4,2) and Late books (5,1,8,9,10); except that the Early and Middle books are clubbed together in one category in the western classification, and the internal order within the groups is not analyzed. [In sum, we get four categories: Early family books 6,3,7; Middle family books 4,2; Late family book 5; and Late non-family books 1,8,9,10]

But Witzel, desperate to send my present book hurtling to its “doom” (to the fate he fondly and wishfully assumes overtook my “heavily criticized earlier effort”) finds a persistent “purANic mindset” in my book which reminds him of “the popular comic books, Amar Chitra Katha” (§8)! Well, we find a Biblical mindset in his depiction of Vasistha (Moses) leading an exodus of the Bharatas (Jews) from Iran (Egypt), across the mountains of Afghanistan (Sinai), and finally entering, occupying and transforming the face of the Punjab (Palestine).

When the Ramayana was being shown as a serial on TV, Leftist and progressive artists, led by doughty warriors like A.K. Hangal and Dina Pathak, organized a march in Bombay to protest against this "communal" act of Doordarshan (Rama being a pre-Islamic Indian hero, any serial on him would obviously be a "communal" one). Addressing a rally at the conclusion of the march, Dina Pathak bitterly castigated Doordarshan for showing another "communal" item on its network—a report of the archaeological discovery, by Dr. S.R. Rao, of the remains of ancient Dwarka, under the sea, off the coast of Gujarat (Dwarka, having sunk under the sea long before the birth of Islam, any report on it would obviously be a "communal" one). Need we say more?" (TALAGERI 1993:32-34).

The totality of the alleged transformation itself is clearly unparalleled and unprecedented, and in every way contrary to the normal: Witzel himself, see above, repeatedly describes different aspects of it as "surprising", "relatively rare" and against what "one would have expected" in such cases. The case becomes impossible when we consider all the aspects together: (a) the transformation was total, (b) the people who brought about this transformation were illiterate, pastoral nomadic tribes "on the move" who "trickled" into the area in miniscule numbers, (c) the people who were transformed were the inhabitants of the most densely populated urban civilization of the time, covering a larger area, and having a relatively longer continuity without much change, than any other contemporary civilization, (d) the change took place within a few hundred years, and (e) it left absolutely no traces in the archaeological record, either of the conflicts and struggles involved or the necessarily resultant changes in ethnic and material composition of the areas after the transformation. It requires extraordinary "special pleading" to advocate such a case.

All these points are so obvious that anyone who says that Hinduism is as foreign to India as Islam or Christianity, deserves to have his head examined. The followers of both Islam and Christianity have full knowledge of and pride in the time and place of origin of their religions outside India, the early history of their religions outside India, the arrival of their religions into India (brought in by invaders and imperialists), and the manner in which their religions were established in India. On the other hand, until the Aryan invasion theory was mooted by the European imperialists, no Hindu had ever suspected that any foreign connection could be attributed to his religion. Even today, with the Aryan invasion theory being instilled into every Hindu brain right from childhood, no Hindu worth his salt would accept the contention that Hinduism is of foreign origin.

Witzel claims to arrive at his conclusions on the basis of a combination of a geographical grid and a chronological grid, but, as we have seen, he does not prepare a chronological grid at all: else, he would never place MaNDala II before MaNDala VI (when the very eponymous RSi of MaNDala II is a descendant of a composer, Sunahotra BhAradvAja, in MaNDala VI) or MaNDala VIII before MaNDala III (when the very eponymous RSi of MaNDala VIII is a descendant of a composer, Ghora ANgiras, in MaNDala III).

Note what Witzel is writing shortly before reading TALAGERI 2000:....But immediately after reading the analysis of the Rigveda in TALAGERI 2000, there is a magical transformation in Witzel‘s attitude:...The fact is that writing in historical subjects has become a front for pursuing political agendas or personal ego-trips. Before the year 2000, also, Witzel was an AIT writer; but this was not his main battlefront. It had genuinely never occurred to him, any more than it could have occurred to any other AIT writer, that there could be a serious and fundamental threat to the AIT model on which the analysis of the ancient history of South Asia, and of the Vedic texts, had so far been based. Therefore, they could indulge in academic quibbling on other minor points within the AIT framework....But, after the publication of TALAGERI 2000, priorities changed rapidly: it became necessary to close AIT ranks in a holy crusade against the new case and the new evidence for the OIT. The identity of the Harappan language could wait ― or could be pursued separately in different articles; after all, Witzel has a limitless capacity for writing mutually contradictory things, sometimes on the very same page, without causing the slightest dent in the faith and loyalty of his admirers ― what was important now was to rapidly drag the Vedic Aryans of the early period all the way back from the area of the Gangā to the safety of Afghanistan. Hence, all the post-2000 assertions and conclusions about the Gangā! Clearly, such writing can not be called scholarly writing under any circumstance, and one must be very, very careful indeed before placing the slightest credence in the views, interpretations and conclusions of such writers, howsoever high a position they may hold in the academic world.