Aryan invasion and social issues in India today - (no publication)

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1In explaining the history of ancient India, it has
been postulated that a group of people called Aryans came
from somewhere in Central Asia through North-West. Some
people from the same place also went to Europe. As far
as India is concerned, these Aryans came as invaders, and
over a period of time displaced the indigeneous people in
North India, who were driven to the South. This theory
has the background in terms of commonality between San-
skrit and some European languages, what is termed as
Indo-European languages. The research done in this re-
spect was done mainly by European scholars. It started
with the need by the British to explain the Indian past,
and the theory was first postulated in the early 1800s.
It needs to be stated here that none of the ancient Indi-
an records talk about an Aryan invasion.

2The invasion theory leads to two important conclu-
sions as far as the social issues of India are concerned.
The first is the Aryan-Dravidian divide, with the Drava-
dians being considered as the indigeneous people, who
inhabited the northern areas of India, with the Mohenjo-
daro and Harappan cultures being the earliest known exam-
ples. The second is the domination of the brahminical
class, representing the Aryan rulers, who manipulated the
society for their own personal benefit. Thus we have two
parts of the Indian society as being priviledged - the
Aryans and the brahmins; and two parts being disadvan-
taged - the Dravidians and the lower castes. While the
Dravidians as a whole are not economically disadvantaged,
the lower castes can definitely be said to be so. Thus,
for the correction of past wrongs, while the Aryans need
to deal with the issue only at an emotional level, the
brahmins would have to deal with it at a broader level as
well.

3That the Indian society has been a divided one would
be accepted by all concerned. And all those who have the
desire to keep the country culturally united would like
to erase the ill-feelings of the disadvantaged people of
the past. Since the Aryans and the brahmins had the up-
per hand, as per the invasion theory, it is incumbent
upon them to make special efforts in this direction. The
Aryans cannot treat the Dravidians on the basis of con-
queror-conquered relationship. Similarly, the brahmins
will have to give up their position of priviledge, and
ensure that other castes have their proper share in the
political, administrative and economic power. To do
this, they will have to ensure that the backward castes
get proper education, etc.

4In the last forty five years, that is after India's
independence, the country has had more than adequate op-
portunities to put into practice the plan to correct the
past. (It should be recognised that there have been many
'brahmins' from time immemorial who have been in the

forefornt of redressing the soical inequality that has
come due to the rigidity of the caste system.) The ques-
tion that needs to be addressed is, Have we achieved our
objectives? Looking at the broader canvass, one can say
that there has been some progress in the direction. How-
ever, one would have wished that much had been done. The
question then becomes, Why we were not able to achieve
better results?

5To my mind there are three reasons for the same.
First, is the economic factor. Since our development has
been not as per the desired target, the cake that the
people had to share is small. This has left all the peo-
ple, irrespective of caste, that much discontented, with
the poorer people, naturally, feeling more deprived than
the richer. This is not the place to discuss what could
have been done to improve the economic position. The
second is that there has been political plan to keep the
people divided - what is called the politics of vote
bank. This factor works on the basis of dividing the
people on the basis of group. (Shri Arun Shourie has
discussed this in greater details in his various writ-
ings.) Once you treat the people as a group, then a
group 'leader' comes up, with various political parties
trying to put their own person in that position. If a
leader is more 'effective' than others, then the group
would follow him, that is they would vote according to
his 'instructions'.

6A group needs a leader only if it is in a state of
discontentedness. If the members find that their needs
are met, then there is no issue that the leader has to
take up with the concerned authorities. Thus, it becomes
necessary for the political parties who indulge in the
politics of vote bank to keep the groups unhappy. The
use of the caste system for this purpose is a good exam-
ple of the way this can be done. The brahmins are used
as a target for all the problems of the society. The
fallacy of this argument can be seen that, in a democra-
cy, a very small minority cannot hold on to power on an
irrational basis. That is, if the brahmins can prove it
is in the interest of the society that the power should
be vested with them, the people will give it to them.
Otherwise not.

7The third reason was that the attack on the Brahmins
had nothing to do with the betterment of the Shudras.
While the Brahmins have generally been blamed for all the
problems, the fact is that it was they who kept the cul-
ture of the country alive, in spite of the efforts made
by all the invaders and foregin rulers. Amongst all the
ancient cultures, it is only the Hindu culture that has
survived. A dispassionate study of the period when Hin-
duism was supreme would make one admire the truly ad-
vanced nature of the society of that period. At the same
time, it should also be appreciated that it was the Brha-
mins who were in the forefront of all reform movements.
Also, the intellectual class, even those who accepted
communism as their ideology, had a very large percentage
of Brahmins amongst them. In the process of the attack
on the Brahmins, a lot of the history was distorted. The
real problems of the people were not addressed.

8Another issue that one needs to address is, What if
the invasion theory is false? There is a suspicion that
the European historians were looking at India's past
without understanding the perspective of our culture.
There is also a suspicion that the British had an inter-
est of hiding the past glory of India, to be able to jus-
tify their rule on the basis of superiority of their sys-

tem. Many of the nationalist Indians, from 1857 onwards,
denied that there has been an invasion, and some even
went to the extent that the Aryans were originally from
India - that is there was no migration into India. How-
ever, since these nationalists were also Hindus, their
motive was suspect. But the position today is different.

9Smt Romillar Thapar in a letter in Indian Express of
February 20, 1993, said "The question of an Aryan race is
not at issue, for it has been a well-established fact for
many decades now that the term "Aryan" cannot be applied
to a race since it is the name of a language. Recent
research in both archeology and linguistics has led to a
questioning of the theory of an Aryan invasion. But the
theory of the migrations of Aryan speakers into India is
more generally subscribed to and is central to the dis-
cussion among scholars on the nature and consequences of
such migrations in the context of ancient Indian
history." It should be realised that Smt Thapar belongs
to the left spectrum of politics, and hence has no axe to
grind as an 'apologists' for Hindutva. In fact, she is
considered to be a Hindu-baiter.

10Thus, the question that needs further study is
whether there was migration or whether the Aryans are
indigeneous people. However, for discussing the social
issues in India today, this aspect need not concern us.
Because, one need to discuss the issues not on the basis
of confrontation but on a basis of peaceful assimilation.
There is no justification for an Aryan-Dravidian divide,
and the brahminical domination by the invaders should be
discarded. However, one does recognise that the caste
system had become rigid, but the solution now has to be
found on a different plane. To be able to do this we
need to discard the division of the people as groups, and
look at them as individuals and design social, economic
and other policies such that the benefit is for all the
people. In this way, no section can feel discriminated
against. Of course, a society has to use the economic
factor to give benefits to the less well-off in the soci-
ety. But within this, no other criterai will be utilised
to distinguish the citizens.

11A question that needs to be asked is, Why is it nec-
essary to worry whether there was an invasion or not? To
come to a sensible solution to the social problems of
today, a discussion is necessary. For this purpose, the
issue of the invasion theory becomes important. As said
earlier, if there was an invasion, then the Aryan-Dravid-
ian division follows as a logical corollary. However, if
there was no invasion, then the people will realise that
the division was created on an artificial basis, and the
attitude of the people to each other will be different.
(Further, if it is clearly established that the Aryans
are also indigeneous people, then the agalmation of the
society becomes even easier.) A peaceful migration is
qualitatively different from invasion. The Hindu society
is known to accomodate various faiths, so long as they
did not threaten the roots of our past. Early invaders,
like the Huns and the Kushas, have been completely assim-
ilated, and, today, no one claims their ancestorship from
these tribes. Thus the Jews, the Syrian Christians, the
Parsis, who came to India due to religious persecution in
their home lands, are all able to prosper, without feel-
ing threatened. Also, when the Hindu culture spread to
other parts of south-east Asia, one did not see the so-
called brahaminical domination.

12If the Aryan invasion theory has been accepted to be
false, it is necessary for the social thinkers to re-work

their theories of the cause of social tensions in India.
It will then become obvious that the divisions in the
society has been due to factors unconnected with the fac-
tual position on the ground.

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