Inventing the Dravidian Race Part - 2, De-Hinduising Tamil Traditions excerpts from the book 'Breaking India'

Since colonial times to this day there has been attempts to construct an ethnic-religious identity separate from the rest of India, and to find christian roots for this so-called 'Tamil religion'. This entailed manipulating  the interpretations of the literary core of Tamil tradition, which consists of three main elements: 

i) Thirukural, a classical Tamil text containing ethical literature that is very much a part of the Indian Smriti tradition; 

ii) Saiva Siddhantha, a Vedanta branch of Saiva philosophy; and

iii) A huge body of classical Tamil devotional literature.

 


Thirukural

As per recorded statements of Robert Caldwell, the so called saviour of the Tamil people noted on number of occasions that nothing ethical or civilised could come out of the Dravidian mind, either by itself or under the influence of the Vedic religion. But at the same time he did not want to credit Vedic tradition, so he chose another source. He attributed Thirukural to Jainism. Even if for a moment this is believed to be true, Caldwell in his attempt to create fake origins and sources forgot that Jainism is also part of the Vedic religious system which in effect puts the Thirukural within the Hindu tradition. At any rate Caldwell's claims have been demolished. G.U Pope another missionary maintained that Thiruvalluvar was under Christian influence (St. Thomas) that produced this literary work. This claim for decades has been rejected even from within the christian missionary community. However, it is being revived today by evangelical movements in Tamil Nadu.

Saiva Siddhantha

Dravidian scholars labour to position Saiva Siddhantha as something unique to Tamil spirituality and not linked to Hinduism although the traditional works of Saiva Siddhantha refers to Vedas as their authority. G.U Pope and other missionaries positioned it as a monotheistic approximation of Christianity but not exactly pure Christianity. They then attempted to hoodwink people into believing that they were following a polluted form of Christianity and they could help people in upgrading to pure Christianity via conversion.

Tamil Devotional Literature

All hymns written in Tamil speak of Siva as living in the Himalayas and even address him as 'Arya'. Evangelist and pro Dravidian scholars fabricated the origins and distorted the interpretations of their contents to suite their agendas.

Chrisitian historian Stephen Neill rejects Pope and Caldwell's fraudulent claim with a tone of empathy: 'Their brilliant imagination has produced a beautiful romance. The sober verdict of historical judgment must be that any Christian influence on Tamil literature is unlikely...what we see is devout minds working on similar problems and arriving independently at comparable results'.

Source:

Breaking India by Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan  

Excerpts from the book Sarasvati River and the Vedic Civilisation by NS Rajaram Part 3

Indology, a colonial euphemism to subvert Indian history, culture and civilisation

 

Much of what Indian students learn today about ancient India derives from it. Most of us Indians were brought up to believe that the western scholars beginning with Sir William Jones and his discovery of Sanskrit, culminating in the work of the Anglo German F. Max Muller, a forgotten figure in Europe but revered in India as a paragon of virtue promoted by the German govt. via the Max Muller bhavans all over India.

To understand how the current notions about ancient India and its Aryan creators were discovered, we need to go back to the Calcutta Judge Sir William Jones in the eighteenth century. He recorded that Indian languages especially Sanskrit was related to European languages and to account for this F. Max Muller ‘later’ proposed the Aryan invasion theory. Other factors that promoted or readily accepted this version were colonial politics and Christian missionary interests.

Max Muller assigned a date for the invasion as 1500 BC and 1200 BC for the composition of the Rigveda. The reason for this firm belief unsupported by any archaeological evidence was the Biblical chronology that assigned 9:00 am 23^rd October 4004 BC for the creation of the world and 2448 BC for the Noah’s flood. Max Muller’s facility with the Vedas and the Sanskrit language was likened by the great Dayanand Saraswati to a “toddler learning to walk”.   

Indology gave the British a platform to build theories to justify their rule in India as reunited Aryan brothers who were working to uplift them.

Ref: Sarasvati and the Vedic Civilisation by NS Rajaram

Note: Also refer to a scene in the movie Gandhi that aptly portrays this sentiment where Richard Attenborough subtly shows how flawed this theory was via a ‘silent’ rebuttal by Gandhi, which embarrasses British bureaucrats present during the negotiations. The entire scene was created to admit that the Aryan invasion was a British colonial concoction.

Please read more from the same series

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/synopses-from-book-sarasvati-and-vedic.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/synopses-from-book-sarasvati-and-vedic_02.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/excerpts-from-book-sarasvati-river-and_03.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/no-horse-at-harappa-sarasvati-river-and.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/global-drought-ended-harappa-not-any.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/reference-to-sarasvati-in-rigveda.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/11/sarasvati-great-mother-of-us-all.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/12/ancient-chronology-harappa-sutra.html

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/12/ancient-indian-history-retrofitted-into.html 

http://sowingseedsofthought.blogspot.com/2010/10/4-recommended-books-for-all-ancient.html

4 recommended books for all ancient Indian History enthusiasts

These four books that are a definite read for all Indian who are serious about understanding ancient India and the Vedic Saraswati civilisation that we wrongly dub the Indus civilisation. Nomenclature notwithstanding these books are soon destined to become the foundational works of a great new edifice on revised and honest ancient Indian history. The sound scientific approach and evidence provided in these books is monumental and ground breaking compared to the redundant, weak and non scientific 'linguistic' Aryan Invasion theory (AIT) perpetuated by the likes of Michael Witzel, Asko Parpola, Steve Farmer and few other Indian scholarly fossils led by Romilla Thappar and her band of happily ignorant deniers.  

The increasingly defunct Aryan Invasion theory relies primarily upon linguistics making it a 'one show pony circus' and a highly subjective one at that, its a non scientific approach based on individual conjecture and imagination with stray reference to passages in the Vedas retrofitted into a preconceived theory. Where as the approach taken by the authors of these four books is founded on science - Satellite imagery of the Saraswati river basin showing old river flows, Genetics (AIT theorist have no clue on genetics), astronomy, sound knowledge of the 'Vedas' and the 'Puranas', archeological findings from newly discovered sites, path breaking language decipherment techniques and new approach of correlating epoch making events (the last Ice Age, the post Holocene, global draught, tectonic events in NW India) in the natural history of earth and mankind for the possible creation and the subsequent demise of the Vedic Saraswati civilisation. 

All in all the authors  of these books are Scientists, Mathematicians, Vedic gurus who have no past reputation, justification for grants, university chairs to protect or preserve but the same cant be said of the likes of Witzel, Parpola, Farmer or even Romilla Thappar. who stick to their dead theories. The authors of these books have already achieved glory in their field of work and have brought their great intellect, scientific mind set and scientific reasoning to the study of a perplexing chapter of India's hoary past and any day I will choose a scientists or a mathematicians reasoning to the personal opinion or conjecture  of an arts student  teaching history or linguistics.

Sarasvati River and the Vedic Civilisation by NS Rajaram

The Deciphered Indus Script, by Prof Natwar Jha

Observations on the AIT circus bandwagon:

• The only thing that lends credibility to the likes of Michael Witzel is that he writes from behind a desk situated in the Harvard University, apart from that there is no credibility for him, his work or his followers. 
• Witzel is known among academic circles to be highly offensive towards other scholars challenging his works and out-rightly denounces them by mocking them or passing crude remarks on their work, even attacking the person and his qualification and ironically the opposing scholars are more qualified than Witzel. As an example here is a link to a mail sent out by Witzel after he went to have fun with NS Rajaram which itself is evidence of what he thinks of himself (read comments also) Witzel Mocks NS Rajaram and other scholars
• Witzel was pulled up by the US administration during the California school book revision controversy for misusing the Harvard name, stationary and for threatening people using his position at Harvard. He lost the opposition to the revision along with Akso Parpola and our very own Romilla Thappar.   
• I have read Romilla Thappars books on Indian history and she accepts the AIT blindly and herself provides no empirical evidence in her entire works but mouths borrowed conjecture. Her entire work is nothing but a premier example of how to get to high places with good use of English language.  
• Asko Parpola is in the pay of the Karunanidhi govt. to promote the ideas of Aryan-Dravidian divide and AIT. Asko Parpola recently was felicitated by Karunanidhi for his support of the Aryan-Dravidian divide.
• Finally in conclusion the AIT was created not by scholars, historians, archeologist etc but by christian priests (Robert Caldwell), British bureaucrats (Macaulay), Judges, Railways & postal officers, politicians, Army officers, arm chair historians & so called Vedic guru like Max Muller who never came to India and many such half baked people who had one or the other agenda to promote. Now we have the likes of Witzel dragging the good name of Harvard through the mud based on the knowledge and theories gained from such dubious sources.