In 1994, the Churches created a similar stir, on the occasion of a very small incident in the Chennai area. After reading Ishwar Sharan's book The My… - Koenraad Elst

The expansion of the kurgan culture over Europe, in three successive waves, is fairly well-attested archaeologically. About the supposed spread of the Indo-Europeans to India and Iran, Mrs. Gimbutas does not give details, and in the extant literature no archeaologically supported scenario of the Asian movement of the Indo-Europeans is available, the way we have mapped their spreading into Europe. On the contrary, when it comes to Asia, we find even the topmost indo-europeanists relying on the outdated theories à la Mortimer Wheeler, the chief proponent of the “Aryans destroyed Harappa” scenario, without fully checking the factual basis of these theories... While the Indo-European expansion in Europe is being researched thoroughly, their presence in Asia is still perceived through the misty glasses of outdated but uncritically accepted hypotheses, Much of current thinking on early Indo-European history in Asia is a projection of the better-known patterns of their expansion in the Balkan.

The theory of which we are about to discuss the linguistic evidence, is widely known as the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ (AIT). I will retain this term even though some scholars object to it, preferring the term ‘immigration’ to ‘invasion’. They argue that the latter term represents a long-abandoned theory of Aryan warrior bands attacking and subjugating the peaceful Indus civilization..... What makes an immigration into an invasion is not the means used but the end achieved: after an invasion, the former outsiders are not merely in, as in an immigration, but they are also in charge. If the newcomers end up imposing their (cultural, religious, linguistic) identity rather than adopting the native identity, the result is the same as it would have been in the case of a military conquest, viz. that outsiders have made the country their own, and that natives who remain true to their identity (such as Native Americans in the US) become strangers or second-class citizens in their own country.” ....It is entirely reasonable to call this development an ‘invasion’ and to speak of the prevalent paradigm as the ‘Aryan invasion theory’.”

To be sure, economic and political dimensions of religious activity also exist, and may present legitimate objects of study. We can’t hold it against Jacobsen individually that he chose this theme, but having followed the scene for decades, we know that the academic authorities in this field do channel all scholarly energy towards this reductionist view of Hinduism. This is much less true for other religions: it is Hinduism that is very disproportionately targeted for reduction to its external dimension.