“what the history establishment has done through the models it has proposed for both the ancient and the medieval periods is to exactly reverse the h… - N. S. Rajaram

Indian Marxists in particular are singularly touchy about the whole thing and hate to be reminded that their pet dogma of the non-indigenous origin of the Vedic Aryan civilization is an offshoot of the same race theories that gave rise to Nazism.

Eminent Historians makes for depressing reading. It leaves one wondering as to what must be stirring in the minds and souls of these ‘eminent historians’, to make them sink to such depths of intellectual and moral degradation as would place them in the company of Lysenko and Goebbels... their disloyalty to the nation and the culture that has sustained and nourished them, and without which they would be nothing. Unlike Indian scientists and technologists who are recognized everywhere, in the world of humanities, these ‘eminent historians’ are utter nonentities, little more than crooked reflections of colonial stereotypes.

Thapar's comments are portrayed as "vintage Marxist rhetoric," which has "gratuitously drag[ed] in the bogey of the 'Aryan nation' . . . [as] a blatant attempt aimed at divert- ing attention away from the real issue" (Rajaram 1993, 33).