BBC proves Vivekananda right after a century

[Guest guest]

Dear Advaitins,

 

Please go through the follwoing interesting info.

 

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Uttishthata Jagrata <uttishthata

Nov 17, 2005 12:06 AM

[uttishthata] BBC proves Vivekananda right

after a century

 

As BBC proves Vivekananda right after a century...

- S. Gurumurthy

 

 

 

''Do not believe such silly things as there was a race

of mankind in South India called Dravidians differing

widely from another race in northern India called the

Aryans. This is entirely unfounded .'' This is not

from a saffron scholar of the 21st century. But Swami

Vivekananda said it before an audience in the then

Madras city as the 19th century was drawing to a

close.

 

Not knowing where the bright Aryans came from, ''of

late, there was an attempt made to prove,'' he laughed

and said: ''Aryans lived on the Swiss lakes.'' Yet the

theory trotted out by F.Max Mueller in 1848 tracing

the history of Hinduism to the invasion of indigenous

people by Aryans around 1500 BC has obsessed India

since then.

 

It is now well known that the scholarly work of Max

Mueller, once considered independent, was bought by

the East India Company, and was thus a colonial view.

Even as Swami Vivekananda dismissed Max Mueller's

theory as silly, he lauded Mueller's work on Indian

scriptures as next only to that of Sayanacharya .

 

Max Mueller's theory dominated the Indian academic and

intellectual debate and politics of the 20th century

and wrought havoc in the national psyche since then.

It divided and disturbed the national mind; even

threatened to sever southern India from the rest. Any

dissent towards this view is even now castigated and

isolated, as a sort of intellectual terrorism holds

sway. But sustained and strenuous work by dedicated

scholars has decimated this silly theory over the last

hundred years.

 

Yet, billions of pages of instruction in schools and

colleges have, since Max Mueller expounded this view,

enduringly poisoned and damaged the Indian psyche .

And here comes a confession from a source linked to

the very perpetrators of this intellectual crime, the

ex-colonisers, that the theory, which Swami

Vivekananda dismissed as silly, seems silly after all!

 

 

Weeks back the BBC website came out with the startling

disclosure that ''there is now ample evidence to show

that Max Mueller and those who followed him were

wrong.'' Answering ''why the theory is no longer

accepted,'' the BBC says that ''the Aryan invasion

theory was based on archaeological, linguistic and

ethnological evidence' and ''later research has either

discredited this evidence or provided new evidence

that combined with the earlier evidence makes other

explanations likely.''

 

More important, the BBC admits that ''modern

historians of the area no longer believe that such

invasions had such great influence on Indian

history.'' Even more important, it says that ''it is

generally accepted that the Indian history shows a

continuity of progress from the earliest times to

today.'' More, ''the changes brought to India by other

cultures'' are no longer thought to be a major

ingredient of the development of Hinduism.

 

The confession is an honest one. For the BBC does not

only agree with Swami Vivekananda, it also points to

the 'dangers' of the theory. It says that the theory

''denies the Indian origin of India's predominant

culture''; ''gives credit for the Indian culture to

the invaders from elsewhere.'' It ''teaches that the

most revered Hindu scriptures are not actually

Indian'' and ''devalues India's culture by portraying

it as less ancient than it actually is.''

 

It goes further and says that the 'theory was not just

wrong', but 'included unacceptably racist ideas.' It

suggested or asserted that Indian culture was not a

culture in its own right but a synthesis of elements

from other cultures; that Hinduism was not

authentically Indian in origin, but the result of

cultural imperialism; that Indian culture was static

and only changed under outside influence; that the

Dravidians were a nobody and got their faith from the

Aryan invaders; that the indigenous people could

acquire new ideas only from invaders or other races;

that race was a biological, not a social, concept and

thus rationalised ranking people in a hierarchy and

the caste system; that the north Indian people

descended from invaders from Europe, and so socially

were closer to the British, thus rationalising

colonialist presence; that the British were reforming

India like the Aryans did thousands of years ago, thus

justifying the role and the status of the Raj. Finally

it says, ''it downgraded the intellectual status of

India and its people by giving falsely a later date to

the elements of Indian science and culture.'' Believe

it?

 

This confession of wrong done to India and high praise

for India's endogamous antiquity from an unlikely

source approves of not just what Swami Vivekananda

said over a century ago, but validates the 'saffron'

view. This endangers the 'secular' scholarship whose

bread and butter is now under threat. How will they

continue to assert that India is more a khichadi than

a continuity of undated antiquity?

 

How will they go on asserting that there is nothing

Indian about India; that there was never anything

called India at all; that there is today an India

courtesy the invaders – the Aryans, Turks, Moghuls or

the British; that thanks to the British we are a

nation....

 

Yes, the secular scholarship is in deep trouble. But

they have a solid reason to feel assured that it will

take decades for this truth to overcome the billions

of pages of falsehood printed and circulated so far.

For the grains of truth to emerge from this mountain

of falsehood will take a life's time.

 

(Courtesy: The New Indian Express; October 29, 2005)

 

HARI OM TAT SAT

 

Yours in the Lord,

 

Br. Vinayaka.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Great! But can anyone provide a link to the said article on the BBC website?

I have not been able to find it yet.

 

Of course, there is no doubt that this racial theory has done tremendous

damage to the Indian psyche. Tamil Nadu has been particularly affected, and

even now there are numerous textual and internet sources that refer to

Hinduism, north Indians and southern Brahmins as "Aryan".

 

On 18/11/05, br_vinayaka <vinayaka_ns wrote:

>

> Dear Advaitins,

>

> Please go through the follwoing interesting info.

>

[Guest guest]

here is the link

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/history5.shtml

 

 

santosh

 

-

"Ramesh Krishnamurthy" <rkmurthy

<advaitin>

Thursday, November 17, 2005 11:32 PM

Re: BBC proves Vivekananda right after a century

 

> Great! But can anyone provide a link to the said article on the BBC

website?

> I have not been able to find it yet.

> >

>