Shrikant G. Talageri Quotes

Witzel‘s location of the Sarasvatī in Book 2 in Afghanistan is not an honest one: he does it only because he wants a Rigvedic Book which refers only to western rivers, in order to show the Vedic Aryans ―fighting their way through the NW mountain passes in their alleged movement from west to east, and Book 2 is his only option, since the name of only this one river is mentioned in the whole of this Book, and it is a name which can be manipulated from east to west by creating a dual entity (thanks to the existence of a Sarasvatī, the Avestan Harahvaiti, in Afghanistan).

The importance of the Sarasvatī in Indian historical studies has multiplied manifold since archaeological analyses of the Ghaggar-Hakra river bed, combined with detailed satellite imagery of the course of the ancient (now dried up) river, conclusively showed that it had almost dried up by the mid-second millennium BCE itself, and that, long before that, it was a mighty river, mightier than the Indus, and that an overwhelming majority of the archaeological sites of the Harappan cities are located on the banks of the Sarasvatī rather than of the Indus. This has lethal implications for the AIT, which requires an Aryan invasion around 1500 BCE after the decline of the Harappan civilization, since it shows that the Vedic Aryans, who lived ―on both banks (Rigveda VII.96.2) of a mighty Sarasvatī in full powerful flow, must have been inhabitants of the region long before 1500 BCE and in fact may be identical with the indigenous Harappans. Therefore, there is now a desperate salvage operation on, in powerful leftist and "secularist" political circles in India, to put a complete full stop to any further official research on the Sarasvatī (including archaeological and geological investigations), and to launch an all-out Goebbelsian campaign through a captive media to deny that there ever was a Vedic Sarasvatī river in existence in India: the river named in the Rigveda was either completely mythical, or it was the river in Afghanistan, but it definitely was not identical with the Ghaggar-Hakra!

An analytical examination of just the three following assertions by Michael Witzel provides us with a great many examples of this exercise in deception:...Thus there is a regular AIT methodology by which every geographical name or word found in, or missing in, the Rigveda is to be interpreted: every eastern word found in the text is to be treated as indicative of a new area with which the Rigvedic Aryans are newly becoming familiar, and every eastern word not found as indicative of an eastern area not yet known to the immigrating Aryans; every western word found is to be treated as indicative of an area associated with the early days of the Aryan immigrations, and every western word not found as indicative of an area already old and forgotten by the immigrating Aryans

But, at the same time, in spite of all the inegalitarianism and injustice which permeates the laws and the stories which illustrate the application of these laws, there is a thread of basic humanitarianism which runs through the gamut of Indian civilisation, which makes India appropriately qualified to show the path to the rest of the world at this crucial juncture in human history - not on the basis of Hindu precedents, but on the basis of this basic humanitarianism developed to its full potential.

what is generally understood by the term Hindutva: an ideology for the defence of Hindu society and civilisation. As the word defence indicates, the first premise is that Hindu society and civilisation are under attack […] Hindu civilisation is the one civilisation whose inner greatness and resilience enabled it to withstand centuries of Christian and Islamic imperialist attack. It is in fact the last major bastion of the pre-Christian civilisations of the world. For that very reason, Hindu society is today the single major target of all these Imperialisms, which are backed by powerful international forces.... Hindus must be educated, on the one hand, about Hindu civilisation and its rich heritage .... and, on the other, about the forces out to destroy this civilisation, about the textual sources, ideologies, histories, strategies and present activities of these forces, and about the Hindu struggles against these forces and the Hindu heroes involved in these struggles. It is also necessary to alert Hindus to the inner weaknesses which make Hindu society susceptible to these forces, the dangers of Secularism, the self-alienation among the Hindu elites and ruling classes and their indifference to, and contempt for, their own culture and civilisation, the breakdown of the defence mechanism of Hindu society, the perversion of certain Hindu values like tolerance, universalism and humanism, and the abandonment of certain other Hindu values like self-respect, rationalism and capacity for objective analysis....n the past, much evil, injustice and damage has been done in the name of religion; but even more evil, injustice and damage has been done, and is being done even now on an ever-increasing scale, in the name of progress and development. As a result of many of the half-baked, ill-thought of, or plainly mercenary, things which take place in the name of progress and development, the world not only becomes vastly poorer of large parts of its rich heritage, which is lost forever, but it often has to pay a heavy price for it (the lethal effects of deforestation, industrial pollution, and mega-urbanisation, for example, are already apparent; and will become so clear in the days to come, that even the most determined opponent of social and environmental concerns will be compelled to note them; by when, of course, it will be too late, since some things become irreversible after a point of time), and the results, even otherwise, are often pathetic, tragic and depressing....the ultimate basis of any ideology must be Truth, and the ultimate aim Justice. And, all issues of Justice can be broadly classified under two heads: Cultural Justice and Socio-Economic Justice. But, the fact is that vested interests, throughout history, have always conspired to place these two categories in mutually antagonistic slots.... It is time for Hindutva to break out of this vicious circle, and to start representing Right against Wrong, rather than Right against Left.

The primary concern of Hindu Nationalist socio-economic ideology should be to evolve an ideal model of economic development: one which benefits all sections of society, but which gives particular importance to the concerns and interests of the poorer, weaker and more vulnerable sections; and which does everything to encourage initiative and activity among all sections, but does not give unfair leeway to the rich and the powerful to loot the public, or to loot public funds.... To sum up: we must evolve a nationalist socio-economic ideology which will try to (1) make India a rich, prosperous, peaceful and happy nation; and (2) see that, basically, for every Indian, regardless of race, religion, caste, sex, profession, or any other mark of identity, India truly becomes a land “where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high”, in every sense of the term. The primary guiding principle should be sarve bhavantu sukhinah, sarve santu niramayah, sarve bhadrani pashyantu, ma kashchid duhkha bhag bhavet: “may all be contented and happy, may all be free of pain and disease, may all ever see auspicious times, may no-one be unhappy”.

“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”.

Further, Witzel writes about the word Druhyu: “This word means, literally, ‘the ones who seek to cheat’. Non-linguist as he is, T. missed a great chance for a ‘socio-ethnic’ study based on an etymology!” Witzel, “linguist” as he is, is mistaken in the idea that this is the primary meaning of the word: the word had a positive meaning which became negative particularly in the Vedic and Iranian languages. In any case, why should Witzel imagine that I would want to conduct a “socio-ethnic study”? And to what purpose: to show that the enemies of the Vedic Aryans were “cheaters”? Witzel has clearly not understood my book: neither the general tone of my historical study, nor the specific points made by me in this regard...

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.

At another point, Witzel writes: “Talageri also views as interpolations the vAlakhilya hymns of 8.49-59 (although these are, in fact, included and analyzed in zAkalya’s padapATha)” (§1). Is it, to begin with, Witzel’s contention that if a hymn or verse is “included and analyzed in Shakalya’s padapatha”, it automatically means that the hymn or verse in question is not an interpolation? All scholars are in agreement that the Valakhilya hymns are later than the other hymns in Mandala 8, and were inserted later into the middle of the Mandala in the Shakalya Samhita.

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…”

As we can see, Witzel is not writing a review article of my book: he is writing a “review article” of an imaginary book – a book he imagines would be written by an OIT proponent on the basis of principles which Witzel imagines Hindutva represents – and “exposing” the “underlying political agenda” behind this book by letting the imaginary ‘“facts speak for themselves”! ... What stands exposed, by Witzel’s slanderous statements about the political agenda “underlying” my book, is Witzel’s own political agenda and the blatantly dishonest nature of his “review article”.

It is clear, from his complete dependence on abuse, innuendo, misleading statements and lies in his “review article”, that Witzel has no logical argument to offer against my theory, analysis and conclusions. .... Far from launching a crusade against 19th century colonialism (Witzel’s review article is a typical specimen of how a crusading article sounds), I in fact point out at some length why I cannot subscribe to any view which holds the 19th century “colonial” scholars more than superficially guilty for the AIT or its present-day ramifications.

Therefore, until Witzel can produce a new set of Anukramanis, which can be proved to be older than the existing Anukramanis, and which contains distinctly different data (different from the data common to all the existing Anukramanis) which produces a completely different chronological and geographical picture to the one produced by me in my book – but one at least as coherent, complete and integrated as mine – my analysis stands unchallenged and (as Witzel is so fond of repeating) “invincible”.

To see some really “inconsistent statements” and “cavalier” establishment of “divisions” of the composer families of the RV, the reader should read Witzel’s 1995 papers, where Witzel shows himself to be completely and (as his present statements show) irretrievably lost at sea (see pp. 446-449 OF MY BOOK): there, at one point, he “wants to limit the clans involved in the composition of the Rgvedic hymns” to only three families, the Vishvamitras, the Atris and the Angirases (in the third of which, he includes all the other Rishis); and, at another point, his broom sweeps all the Rishis in Mandala 8 into two “divisions”, the Kanva and the Angiras. At another, he counts the Vishvamitras in the Bhrgu family, and then goes on (in the absence of even the faintest hint to this effect anywhere in the RV, or even in any subsequent text) to place Vishvamitra at the head of the coalition against Sudas in the Dasharajna battle (not to mention minor(?) slip-ups like treating the Shaunakas as non-Bhargavas, and Ghora as a son or descendant of Kanva)!