[Y-Indology] Sandhya Jain responds to Steve Farmer

[Guest guest]

On Vishal Agarwal's recent post (quoted in full at the bottom). He has

also gone on about this on the indo_iranian List, and the moderator

quickly closed the thread.

 

A little background, before commenting on Sandhya Jain's note,

forwarded in Agarwal's note: Sandhya Jain wrote the original article

on the Long Beach Conference for the right-wing newspaper, _The

Pioneer_ . You can see her original article (the title tells it all:

"India shining: Aryans are Hindu") at:

 

http://www.dailypioneer.com/

 

Click on "columnists" then on "Sandhya Jain." (I'd paste in the whole

URL to take you directly to the article, but the URL is too long for

the way handles HTML code.)

 

A little snippet, if the title didn't tell it all, to put Jain's

reporting in context:

 

> Hopefully, our Leftist (read anti-Hindu) historians will accept the

> truth and help in re-writing true history for new generations, so they

> may enjoy legitimate pride in their heritage. The Aryan invasion

> theory (modified to Aryan migration theory) did grave damage to the

> Hindu psyche and to national unity.

 

After misreporting who said what (e.g., turning me into an

anthropologist who "has worked on archaeological evidence through

skeletal remains") -- no fact checkers at _The Pioneer_, apparently :^)

-- she sums up what supposedly happened at the conference. Pure fiction:

 

> The conference proved to be epochal as academics arrived at a

> consensus on the "End of the Aryan invasion theory". Its moderator, Dr

> Sar Desai, declared that future writings on Indian history would

> assert that there was no Aryan invasion of India. The organiser, Prof

> Kaminsky, was authorised to get in touch with authors of Indian

> history textbooks and introduce this consensus at the secondary and

> high school level, where falsehoods are still being perpetuated.

 

Well, take a look at the titles of the talks, and at who talked, on the

conference webpage (which she doesn't give her readers, and certainly

never bothered to read closely hereself, at

http://www.csulb.edu/depts/as/indus/ ). Then look to see how many times

(none) the words "Aryan Invasion Theory" show up in the talks. Hmm, I

can just see Greg Possehl, and Shereen Ratnagar, and the other folks

there, including yours truly, rising in a body to declare that the

"Aryan Invasion Theory is dead!" (Actually, it died about 40 years ago,

and is an historical non-issue.)

 

What actually happened is that not one of the regularly scheduled talks

even mentioned Aryans: the conference dealt with matters of a totally

different sort. There was one exception in the talk of B.B. Lal, which

was unlike any other given that day. Everyone had a lot of trouble

following what Lal said, which went from the scheduled 20 minutes to an

hour. As I recall, Lal showed a favorite picture of his -- an Indus

spindle whorl (not so acknowledged!) painted with radial lines that Lal

misrepresented as a model Indus "chariot wheel" -- which was one point

where a lot of eyes rolled. (I have Lal's picture, of which he gave me

a copy, and would be happy to discuss this pseudo-Vedic artifact, if

anyone wants to discuss it.) Lal was the only one of the 15 or so

speakers who even _mentioned_ the so-called Aryan Invasion theory.

 

SarDesai, who didn't speak at the conference, took the microphone for a

minute maybe (?) after a final panel discussion that included about

five of us (as I recall, Shereen Ratnagar, Richard Meadow, Lal,

Mahadevan, and I were on the stage). No one knew who he was, but we

woke up when he said out of the blue that "One thing was settled today:

the name of Indus civilization from now on will be the Saraswati-Sindhu

civilization," or something to that effect -- and maybe something about

the Aryan invasion being dead.

 

Follow the rolling of the eyes, since SarDesai's comments were

non-sequiturs, apparently spoken exclusively for the benefit of the

NRIs who financed the conference and had insisted on sticking

"Saraswati" someplace in the title. (One famous S. Asian archaeologist

even refused to attend because that word was stuck in.) In any event,

the title had nothing to do with any of the talks. Look at the titles

of the lectures: Every single one of them speaks of "Indus

Civilization" or "Harappa," etc. Not even Lal used the ridiculous

"Saraswati-Sindhu" label, which carries with it false Vedic

connotations.

 

Jain claims in her letter below that her information is "based on the

letter written to Dr Rajput of NCERT kand also my correspondence with

Prof Shiva G Bajpai." Can I point out that neither of these were

speakers either? Bajpai introduced Lal as a speaker - and that may

speak legions - but he certainly made no presentation.

 

If anyone wants to see and discuss Lal's Harappan "chariot wheel," we

could have a little online fun. Just ask...

 

Steve Farmer

http://www.safarmer.com/downloads

 

On Friday, April 9, 2004, at 08:18 AM, vishalsagarwal wrote:

 

> The following is a response from Sandhya Jain.

>

>

> Vishal

> *****

>

> Vishal and friends,

>

> I am personally NOT surprised to find some renegement by some esteemed

> scholars. I expected it.

> BUT my information is based on the letter written to Dr Rajput of

> NCERT and also correspondence with Prof Shiva G Bajpai, whom I have

> also written about.

>

> I was given to understand by experts at this end that Dr Steve Farmer

> and Dr Brian Hemphill worked on skeletal remains, and this may well

> need a correction, but I dont think that it would be correct of Farmer

> to claim what he says about rolling eyes, when Kaminsky and others are

> contacting educationists all over the world. And why did the western

> researchers groan and roll their eyes when Sar Desai said at the end

> of the conference that the name of the Indus Valley civilization from

> here on was to be "Saraswati-Sindhu Civilization" or whatever. What is

> "whatever" by the way? Farmer should have protested and said no - why

> let it pass. Prof B B Lal did not think that no consensus has been

> arrrived at - and he was there.

>

> Sandhya Jain

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[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, Steve Farmer <saf@s...> wrote:

> Then look to see how many times

> (none) the words "Aryan Invasion Theory" show up in the talks. Hmm,

I

> can just see Greg Possehl, and Shereen Ratnagar, and the other

folks

> there, including yours truly, rising in a body to declare that the

> "Aryan Invasion Theory is dead!" (Actually, it died about 40 years

ago,

> and is an historical non-issue.)

 

 

As usual, this is just an aspect of the truth. The Aryan Invasion

Theory is alive and well in the school textbooks in the United

States. Contrary to Farmer's airy dismissal, 'western scholars' do

not seem to have done anything to eliminate such nonsense from being

taught to their children. Why are they concerned about what is in the

textbooks in India when they don't care two hoots about what's in the

school texts in their own backyard?

 

Lakshmi Srinivas

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, Steve Farmer <saf@s...> wrote:

 

> (Actually, it [Aryan Invasion Theory] died about 40 years ago,

> and is an historical non-issue.)

 

I don't want to get into the debate about the Sandhya Jain article.

But Aryan >Invasion< Theory is still very much a political issue in

Soth India. Indologists may not have any problems with a scenario

where IA speakers (themselves a mixed lot of PIIr speakers and

assimilated people of Indo-Iranian borderlands) spread down the rivers

in time to get in on the ground floor of the `Second Urbanization',

but this is not palatable to Kazhagam types (see the recent post by

Naga Ganesan suggesting imposition of IA langauges, rather than

lasocietyculture revolving around the newly emerging cities) and

assorted others.

 

Nath Rao