It was the testimony of the Bible that originally led scholars to propose the existence of a linguistically unified group of people living somewhere … - Edwin Bryant

However, the interpretation of evidence being presented by the Indigenous Aryan group cannot be opposed because of the Hindutva element: that would equally be allowing ideological beliefs to manipulate historical interpretation. Critical scholarship is man- dated to attempt to detach debate on this topic from political orientations concerning personal visions for a modern Indian nation-state.

On the other hand, and again on a personal note, I am also concerned at what I perceive to be a type of Indological McCarthyism creeping into areas of Western, as well as certain Indian, academic circles, whereby, as will be discussed in chapter 13, anyone reconsidering the status quo of Indo-Aryan origins is instantly and a priori dubbed a nationalist, a communalist, or, even worse, a Nazi.

Perhaps this is an opportune moment to reveal my own present position on the Indo- European problem. I am one of a long list of people who do not believe that the avail- able data are sufficient to establish anything very conclusive about an Indo-European homeland, culture, or people. I am comfortable with the assumptions that cognate languages evolve from a reasonably standardized protoform (provided this is allowed con- siderable dialectal variation) that was spoken during a certain period of human history and culture in a somewhat condensed geographic area that is probably somewhere in the historically known Indo-European-speaking area (although I know of no solid grounds for excluding the possibility that this protolanguage could have originated outside of this area).