Shrikant G. Talageri Quotes

In short, if powerful and super rich foreign missionaries enter into the interior heartland of India, and mass-convert large sections of tribals to their foreign religion by telling them that the religions, gods, beliefs and practices of their ancestors are “satanic” and will take them to hell, and that the only way to escape hell and attain heaven is to accept Christ and convert to their alien religion, this does not amount to “baiting” or provoking anyone, such as the tribals in particular or Hindus in general, or violating their civil rights. In fact, it amounts to turning the tribals “into proud men and women”! But if Hindu organisations (automatically “diehard communal”, since Hindu, in opposition to the presumably “tolerant and secular”, since Christian, missionaries!) enter these areas within their own country, and appeal to the local people in the name of their ancestral religions, and actually have the gall to “organize Hindu festivals”, it naturally amounts to gross “baiting” and provocation of the foreign missionaries and violation of their civil rights. And if there is any “retaliation” by the missionaries to this “baiting”, it is of course excusable as a perfectly natural and justifiable “reaction” to these gross provocations by the communalists. And of course civil rights organisations have to rush to the protection and defence of these poor, helpless and oppressed missionaries, and the hapless plight to which they have been reduced by “minority baiters” from the RSS has to be propagated in our secular press! ... Another example from a second leading national newspaper: (...) Doesn’t this sound like a description of Christian missionaries, who claim to have a “monopoly over spiritual knowledge” since their religion and God are the only true ones (all others being false religions and Gods who can only lead to hell), who “move into” different areas of the world to spread this message, who compel people to leave their “age-old ways” of worship and religion because these are “‘corrupt’, ‘evil’, or simply ‘wrong’”, and seek to obliterate everywhere “the uniqueness of the local culture” by trying to paint the whole world in one international imperialistic “fundamentalist” colour? Wrong! This is a description (in an Indian Express article, 11/10/98, “Converting History”, by Rajesh Sinha, describing the situation in certain parts of Rajasthan) condemning the VHP and other Hindu organisations for having “started competing with Christian missionaries in establishing schools [etc.]”, thereby leading to “most Christian converts now returning to the Hindu fold”. The writer, with a straight face, tells us: “In the process, the saffron hawks are changing the face of Rajasthan, where once communal identity was a matter of little importance”. Is this some kind of incurably perverted mental sickness, or is it the power of the dollar?

What Witzel actually does is as follows: he draws up a geographical picture for each MaNDala of the Rigveda; and then, on the principle “the more western the geography of a MaNDala, the older the MaNDala”, he prepares a chronological grid arranging the MaNDalas in such a way as to show a movement from west to east. “Pedigrees of chiefs and poets” play no role at all in this chronological grid!... What is more, even the geographical picture for each MaNDala, as drawn up by Witzel, is based on the manipulation and misinterpretation of geographical data, manipulated to show this movement.

What adds to the force of the archaeological evidence (of continuity in material and ethnic culture) is the fact that there is considerable acceptable archaeological, as also hydronomic, evidence, for the Indo-European intrusions, in the case of the earliest habitats of most of the other Indo-European branches,...So here, more than in any of the other cases, we should have found massive and unambiguous evidence of the "Indo-Aryan" intrusions, if they ever took place. The total absence of any indications in the material remains of the area, of such a cataclysmic transformation, constitutes massive evidence for the rejection of the very idea that such a transformation took place at all.

“Indian culture being the greatest and richest is not a narrow or chauvinistic idea; it is a demonstrable fact. It would be chauvinistic if it acquired an imperialist tinge: that other cultures are inferior and Indian culture must dominate over or replace them. In fact, I am opposed to even internal cultural imperialism. The idea that Vedic or Sanskrit culture represents Indian culture and that other cultures within India are its subcultures and must be incorporated into it, is wrong…. all other cultures native to this land: the culture of the Andaman islanders, the Nagas, the Mundas, the tribes of Arunachal Pradesh, etc. are all Indian in their own right. They don’t have to be – and should not be – Sanskritised to make them Indian”.

Quite apart from the Aryan angle, the decipherment of the Indus Script by Dr. Rao is of great significance for Indian culture in another way: it proves that the South Arabic and Old Aramaic alphabets of West Asia, as well as the Indian Brahmi, are all derived from the Indus Script. Between themselves, these three alphabets are the ancestors of every single alphabet and script in use in the world today with the sole exception of the Chinese script (and the Japanese Katakana and Hiragana...). This means that India's contribution to the world include ... also the Alphabet (...).

As we saw, there is a large class of personal names and name-elements common to the Late Books and hymns of the Rigveda (386 hymns in the Late Books of the Rigveda and 8 Late hymns in the earlier Books), and to the Avesta (the bulk of the names, right from the name of the first composer of the Avesta, and the names of his closest associates), the Mitanni (including every common name element known), and the Kassites (the only known name). These names and name-elements are fundamental to all four groups, but completely absent in the Early and Middle Books of the Rigveda (apart from the 8 Late hymns mentioned earlier). And all these names and name-elements are very common in post-Rigvedic texts.

In my earlier book on the Rigveda, I examined the Rigvedic data in detail, and showed that the chronological order of the ten Books of the RV is: 6,3,7,4,2,5,8,9,10, with different parts of Book 1 covering the periods of all but the three earliest Books. I also showed in systematic detail that Family Books 6, 3 and 7 belong to the Early period, Family Books 4 and 2 to the Middle period, and the rest (Book 5 among the Family Books, and all the other, ie. non-family, Books, 8, 9 and 10, and most of Book 1) belong to the Late period

”Nor is there any group, caste or community in India which can be directly identified ethnically with the Purus: neither the inhabitants (or particular castes from among them) of present-day Haryana, U.P. or Punjab, nor the different Brahmin groups, found in every part of India, which claim direct descent from the different families of rsis of the Rigveda….In short, the history of Vedic times is just that: the history of Vedic times. It has to do with the history of civilizations and language families, and must be recognized as such; but it does not have anything whatsoever to do with relations between different ethnic, caste or communal groups of the present day. The biases and conflicts of ancient times are the biases and conflicts of ancient peoples with whom present day peoples have no direct connections” (TALAGERI 2008:365-6).

Hinduism is the name for the Indian territorial form of worldwide Sanatanism (call it Paganism in English). The ideology of Hindutva should therefore be a Universal ideology: On the international level, the Sangh, as the apex organisational body of Hindutva ideology, should spearhead a worldwide revival, rejuvenation and resurgence of spiritualism, and of all the religions and cultures which existed all over the world before the advent of imperialist ideologies like Christianity, Islam, Fascism, Marxism, etc.

To begin with...: “a) Each Mandala (or upam). contains hymns ascribed to the descendants of earlier mandalas (or upam.s), or the ancestors of later mandalas (or upam.s). b) Each Mandala (or upam.) contains references to composers from earlier or contemporaneous mandalas (or upam.s)” And “in not one of these respects do we find the allegedly ‘concocted’ Anukramani ascriptions …. differing from the allegedly ‘original’ ascriptions”.

"Indian 'secularism' is basically a linear descendant of Leftist ideology, and derives its inspiration from Leftist terminology and thought categories, so that 'secularism' boils down to anti-Hinduism" (TALAGERI 1993:10).

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.

In such a situation, where any scholar, Indian or Western, who finds that the facts indicate an Indian homeland, has to struggle against a strong tide of prejudice in Western academic circles (not to mention the deeply entrenched leftist lobby in Indian academic circles), it is clear that establishing the truth about the original homeland is, practically speaking, an uphill task.

After chapter 9 (etc) of my book, his unfruitful “offer”, and our rather acrimonious e-mail debate, and now this “review article” that he was compelled to write as a natural sequel to all this, Witzel cannot easily admit that he finds my analysis and conclusions acceptable.... To sum up: when it comes to indulging in “inane accusations and outright slander”, even under cover of writing a “review article” of a book, Witzel is second to none! .... Throughout the whole debate, Witzel epitomizes the kind of scholar described by Max Muller (in his book “India – what it can teach us”) as being very rare in India, but not so rare in the west (a generalization which need not be true in general, but is definitely true in this case): the scholar who indulges in “rudeness of speech … quibbling….. special pleading ….. (and) untruthfulness” and who “writes down what he knows perfectly well to be false, and snaps his fingers at those who still value truth…”

Witzel is apparently secure in his knowledge that (as he put it in his e-mail letter of 3 August 2000): “Nothing of all this is of any importance to our daily life. Nobody cares, neither in the University, nor outside, what we write on such matters.” This leaves him free to indulge himself to the utmost without bothering about his academic reputation.