Pargiter’s examination of traditional history produces a picture which tallies perfectly with our theory. He describes the expansion of the Aryans fr… - Shrikant G. Talageri

Supporting Christian missionaries is an article of faith for secularism in India. When the secularist-leftist magazine Tehelka, in one of its early issues, carried detailed reports about the heavily funded and militarily organized subversive activities of foreign missionaries in India, there was a sharp reaction from prominent leftist and secularist personalities who wrote floods of letters to the magazine expressing shock at the publication of such reports in a secularist-leftist magazine, and accusing it of having betrayed secularism. Ever since, Tehelka is in the forefront of “reports” indicting “communal” Hindu organisations for harassing Christian missionaries and neo-Christian converts. ... Furthermore, it is also a fact that Christian converts from the tribals manage to corner most of the seats reserved for the tribals to the disadvantage of non-Christian tribals: there is a detailed report on this, with facts and figures, by S K Kaul, former Deputy Commissioner, Commission for the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, entitled “Christian converts corner the lion’s share of Reservation quota in services for Vanavasis”, in the Organiser, Republic Day Special, 1989.

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…”

”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).