Origins Of The Aryan Dravidian Divide

[Guest guest]

N.S. Rajaram

Origins Of The Aryan Dravidian Divide

 

"Aryan-Dravidian divide is a modern political creation with no

scientific or historical support."

 

Science on Aryan and Dravidians

Even fifty years after independence, it is unfortunate but true that

Indians continue to view themselves and their history through

colonial glasses. The education system for the most part continues to

be based on the Macaulayite model. This is especially so in subjects

like history, which include long discredited theories like the Aryan

invasion and the Aryan-Dravidian conflicts. What is the truth? Here

is what science has to say.

 

A recently published study comparing the genetic composition of

Western Eurasian and Indian populations shows that the supposed Aryan

invasion of India 3000 to 4000 years ago postulated by historians in

the nineteenth century, and still found in many textbooks is

contradicted by genetics. In articles that appeared in the British

journal Current Biology, T.R. Disotell, T. Kivisild and their

coworkers observe that the "supposed Aryan invasion of India 3000 -

4000 years ago was much less significant than is generally believed."

A key mitochondrial DNA of the Western Eurasian strain accounts for

at most 5.2 percent in Indian populations as compared to 70 percent

in Europe. This rules out a recent common origin as postulated by

the 'Aryan invasion'. Any split that occurred from a common

population must have taken place more than 50,000 years ago,

according to the study. This is in agreement with other genetic data,

showing that there were major migrations out of Africa into Southeast

Asia at approximately the same time. It is worth noting that

according to a widely accepted theory, humans evolved in Africa and

spread into other parts of the world beginning about 100,000 years

ago. This was during the last Ice Age, when much of the Northern

Hemisphere was uninhabitable due to extreme cold. The Puranas also

record that during an extended cold period, people from all parts of

the world sought shelter in India in caves and rock shelters. This

goes to explain the presence of ancient cave- and rock art at places

like Bhimbetka in Central India.

 

Here is something really interesting. The authors of the genetic

study note that this West Eurasian strain is not only insignificant,

but also present in roughly the same proportions in North and South

India. This means that there is no correlation between the languages

of the population and their supposed Eurasian origin. The 'Aryan

invasion' theory holds that ancestors of speakers of 'Aryan'

languages like Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and others were Eurasian

invaders, whereas speakers of 'Dravidian' languages of South India

were the original inhabitants of India. The genetic study contradicts

this by showing both to have the same insignificant proportion of the

West Eurasian DNA strain. So, according to science, there is no Aryan-

Dravidian divide.

 

The recent decipherment of the Indus script shows that these findings

are in agreement with findings from archaeology. Jha and I have read

more than 2000 Harappan seals and they show that the Vedic literature

already existed by 3000 BC. The literary evidence of the Rigveda also

contradicts any invasion from Eurasia. Some recent attempts to place

the Rigvedic land in Afghanistan are seriously misguided. The Rigveda

describes an established maritime society in which references to the

ocean, ships and navigation are very common. It is not easy to see

how such a society could flourish in land-locked Afghanistan. All in

all both science and literature shatter the notion of any Aryan

invasion. It is one of the aberrations of scholarship that belongs to

what Millikan called 'pathological science'. Let us next look at its

history and politics.

 

Aryans according themselves

The first point to note is that the idea of Aryans and Dravidians as

separate, even mutually hostile people is of very recent origin. It

is a creation of European scholars of the colonial era, having no

basis in Indian history or literature. The Amarakosha, the

authoritative lexicon of the Sanskrit language (5th century AD)

defines Arya as mahakula kulinarya sabhya sajjana sadhavah. This

means that an Arya is one who hails from a distinguished family, and

conducts himself with decency and gentleness. According to the

Rigveda the "children of Arya follow the light", meaning they seek

enlightenment. It has nothing to do with race, language or

nationality. (Sanskrit has no word for race.)

 

This fact - that the Aryan-Dravidian theory was of recent origin -

was noted by Dr. Ambedkar also. As he wrote: "All the princes,

whether they belonged to the so-called Aryan race or the so-called

Dravidian race, were Aryas. Whether a tribe or a family was racially

Aryan or Dravidian was a question that never troubled the people of

India, until foreign scholars came in and began to draw the line."

 

This is supported also by the Manusmriti, another ancient authority.

It tells us that Dravidians (in the geographic sense) are also Aryans

who at one time had fallen from the Aryan fold when they stopped

following certain Vedic practices and rituals. (Was this the reason

that Sage Agastya went south of the Vindhyas, taking Vedic knowledge

with him?) The Manusmriti has been revised many times to reflect

changes in society and practices. In one particular place it

describes Arya Desha as: "The land bounded by the mountain of Reva

(Narmada), the Eastern Sea (Bay of Bengal) and the Western Sea

(Arabian Sea) is Arya Desha. This is the land where black-skinned

deer roam freely." That is to say, the Manusmriti identifies Arya

Desha as none other than Peninsular India, which includes Dravidians.

It also tells us that the inhabitants of this country are exemplary

Aryans, worthy of emulation by all.

 

What this means is that the terms 'Arya' and 'Aryadesha' were

assigned to people and their habitat depending on their conduct and

culture - and not race or language. This also means that the

assignment could change depending on whether the people had lapsed

from their expected standards of behavior. So at the time when this

passage in the Manusmriti was composed, the people of Peninsular

India were considered exemplary Aryans. And this was because of their

conduct - not language or race.

 

'Race science': Colonial-missionary politics

The notion of Aryan and Dravidian as separate races, though a

colonial European imposition continues to influence intellectual

discourse in India. This is unfortunate because it rests on

scientifically discredited beliefs. Writing as far back as 1939, Sir

Julian Huxley, one of the great natural scientists of the century,

observed: "In England and America the phrase 'Aryan race' has quite

ceased to be used by writers with scientific knowledge, though it

appears occasionally in political and propagandist literature. In

Germany, the idea of the 'Aryan' race received no more scientific

support than in England. Nevertheless, it found able and very

persistent literary advocates who made it appear very flattering to

local vanity. It therefore steadily spread, fostered by special

conditions."

 

Huxley was referring of course to the rise of Nazism around the

notion of the Aryan race. It should make one suspicious of the

motives of the English, who, while denouncing racial theories in

Europe, continued to classify their Indian subjects along racial

lines. It was simply a politically convenient tool in their 'divide

and rule' strategy. They appealed to the vanity of one group to make

them feel superior to others (but still inferior to the English).

They knew well that it had no scientific basis, but found it a

convenient tool for use in India!

 

British were by no means the only colonists to indulge in such

propaganda in the name of 'science'. This idea of dividing a

conquered people in the name of 'race science' was a standard ploy of

colonial officials and Christian missionaries. Much of the

bloodletting in ethnic conflicts in Africa today is due to such

mischief. Speaking of the recent Hutu-Tutsi conflicts, the French

anthropologist Jean-Pierre Langellier wrote: "The idea that the Hutus

and the Tutsis were physically different was first aired in the 1860s

by the British explorer John Speke… The history of Rwanda [like that

of much of Africa] has been distorted by Pere Blancs [White Fathers]

missionaries, academics and colonial administrators. They made the

Tutsis out to be a superior race, which had conquered the region and

enslaved the Hutus. …Missionaries taught the Hutus that historical

fallacy, which was the result of racist European concepts being

applied to an African reality. At the end of the fifties, the Hutus

used that discourse to react against the Tutsis."

 

Sound familiar? The Aryan-Dravidian conflicts are a carbon copy of

the same racist divide, convert and conquer policy. Fortunately that

there is enough indigenous scholarship in India to fight and refute

such political charlatanism, though it did succeed in dividing the

people into mutually hostile camps. This was mainly due to the

patronage extended to them by the ruling authorities - first the

British and then the Marxist dominated Congress. Better sense is now

beginning to prevail. But to their eternal disgrace, the 'Secularist'

and Marxist historians of India continue to peddle this racist

nonsense. They shall live in infamy.

 

The basic problem with these race theories is that they are based not

on any laws of nature, but man-made classifications that use

externally observable features. As one scholar put it: "The race

concept has no scientific basis. Given any two individuals one can

regard them as belonging to the same race by taking their common

genetic characteristics, or, on the contrary, as belonging to

different races by emphasizing the genetic characteristic in which

they differ." As an illustration, instead of choosing skin- and eye

color as defining parameters, if one were to choose height and

weight, one would end up with African Zulus and Scandinavians as

belonging to the same race. Noting such anomalies, Luigi Cavalli-

Sforza, widely regarded as the world's foremost human geneticist,

observed that such external features simply indicate changes due to

adaptation to the environment. He points out that the rest of the

genetic makeup of the human family hardly differs at all.

 

There are similar misconceptions about Aryan and Dravidan languages.

The idea that different languages of a 'family' branched off from a

single root language - sometimes called a proto-language - can be

traced to the story of the Tower of Babel found in the Bible.

Biblical beliefs like the creation of the world on October 23, 4004

BC have had great influence on the interpretation of Indian history

and culture by nineteenth century Europeans. The great Max Muller

himself admitted this Biblical belief was the reason why he used 1500

BC as the date of the Aryan invasion. W.W. Hunter, another well-known

Indologist from the same period was even more candid when he

wrote: "... scholarship is warmed with the holy flame of Christian

zeal."

 

To take an example, Murray Emeneau, a prominent Dravidianist, wrote

as recently as 1954: "At some time in the second millennium BC,

probably comparatively early in the millennium, a band or bands of

speakers of an Indo-European language, later to be called Sanskrit,

entered India over the northwest passes. This is our linguistic

doctrine, which has been held now for more than a century and a half.

There seems to be no reason to distrust the arguments for it, in

spite of the traditional Hindu ignorance of any such invasion." This

is a statement based on faith that has no place in science.

 

Cultural differences

Culturally the differences that we find between North and South

Indian temples can be attributed to the historical experience of the

last few centuries. The Islamic onslaught destroyed centers of

learning in North India. Alberuni who accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni on

his campaigns in India wrote: "Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity

of the country, and performed there, wonderful exploits, by which the

Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions. ...

Their scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate

aversion of all the Muslims. This is the reason, too, why Hindu

sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country

conquered by us, and have fled to places, which our hand cannot yet

reach."

 

A historical fact worth noting that the last great school of Indian

mathematics flourished in far away Kerala in the 14-15th century,

where Madhava and his students worked on problems of Calculus and

Infinite Series more than two centuries before Newton and Gregory.

India before the coming of Islam had many great centers of learning.

Taxila, Nalanda, Vikramashila, Sarnath and many more used to attract

students from all over the world. Following the establishment of the

Delhi Sultanate, for the next six hundred years, not a center of

learning worth the name was established. (I leave out Islamic

theological centers.) It was only in the nineteenth century that

universities began to reappear.

 

As a result, the influence of Islam has been much greater in the

North than the South. This resulted in a loss of tradition and

skills, which had to be more or less re-acquired beginning in the

18th century. The main influence in the north has been of the Moghul

Empire, while in the south it has been that of the Vijayanagar Empire

and its successors like the kingdoms of Mysore, Travancore and

Tanjavur. It would be a serious error to project this back into early

history - something like projecting back the Portuguese influence on

Goa into the remote past.

 

At the same time, the differences should not be exaggerated. For

instance, in Kashmir, priests are recruited from Karnataka, while

temples in Nepal have priests from Kerala. The very fact that

Shakaracharya established centers in all corners of India shows that

he was not considered an outsider by North Indians even in those days.

 

All this brings us back to politics as the main contributor to the

Aryan-Dravidian divide including linguistics. The originator of the

Dravidian language theory was Bishop Caldwell, the author of the

highly influential Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages (1856,

1875). He placed Dravidian languages in what he called the Scythian

Language Family. When another linguist (Gover) criticized Caldwell

for his unsound theories about the Scythian family and Dravidian

languages, it drew the following response: "It would have been well,

if Mr. Gover had made himself sure of perfectly apprehending Dr.

Caldwell's Scythic theory before regarding its refutation ... as not

only of considerable moment from a philological point of view but of

vast moral and political importance."

 

By 'moral and political' he obviously meant Christian missionary and

British colonial interests. To the disgrace of Indian education

authorities and secularist scholars, this is still the version of

history taught in Indian schools.

 

References

The Politics of History by N.S. Rajaram (1995), New Delhi: Voice of

India. 'The Vedic Dravidians' in A Hindu View of the World by N.S.

Rajaram (1998), New Delhi: Voice of India.