The Hindu : `India, the only former colony not to rewrite history'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 02, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

`India, the only former colony not to rewrite history'

By Our Special Correspondent

Bangalore Dec. 1. The noted American scholar in the Vedas, David Frawley, has observed that India is the only former colonised country in the world which has failed to rewrite the history dictated by its former colonial masters.

Speaking to presspersons today, Dr. Frawley came out, though not in so many words, in support of the BJP-led NDA Government's efforts to rewrite textbooks on history. The scholar, who is also known as Pandit Vamadeva Shastri, is the Director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies at Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S., and is the author of a good number of books on the Vedic Aryans, Hinduism, and the theory of Aryan Invasion, in which he has questioned many a commonly held idea propagated in textbooks.

Dr. Frawley is in Bangalore to attend a conference and video demonstration on "Vedic synthesis: Archaeology, ecology, and literature'', which will be held here on Monday at the Mythic Society. He will address the conference along with Navarathna S. Rajaram, engineer and historian, who has deciphered the Harappan seals. Dr. Frawley will speak on "The maritime basis of Vedic civilization'', and "Gulf of Cambay and other underwater archaeological discoveries''.

Efforts in U.S.

He said that even the U.S. was rewriting its history and presenting its indigenous peoples in a new and better light. Hitherto, those people had been depicted as uncivilized, and the Europeans, who colonised the unexplored lands of the U.S., as simple people who were seeking land for agriculture. A similar movement was afoot in the African countries (other than Egypt and countries in the North), and the scholars there were showing that they had a history of their own before the colonialists invaded the continent. Russia had already changed its history, and Communist China was following suit. The Chinese were evincing great interest in their history, culture, and civilization, which the Marxists had sought to destroy or suppress, he added.

Dr. Frawley noted that in India, Marxist historians were the ones who were clinging to the theories put out by the Western scholars prior to the outbreak of World War I (1914). The Marxists were particular about the Aryan Invasion theory and the emphasis on the play of caste. The Leftist scholars were going by the viewpoint of Karl Marx propounded in the 19th Century. The Indian Marxist historians were also anti-tradition.

Aryan Invasion

Referring to the Aryan Invasion and other theories, Dr. Frawley said that they were propounded before archaeological excavations were carried out in undivided India. Modern scientific tools had shown that the mighty river Saraswati existed and was not a mythical one as had been claimed. So also the river Rishadvati. Similar was the fallacy that the people of the Harappan civilization were unaware of maritime life. In fact, there were 150 references to the ocean in the Rigveda alone, and these could not be dismissed as poetic imagery or symbolism. Dr. Frawley said archaeological excavations were throwing up new information, and one should not swear by what was in the textbooks written 30 or 40 years ago.

Dr. Rajaram said the Aryan Invasion theory was imposed by Western scholars to show that India was always ruled by invaders. The fact was to the contrary. There was movement of people from India to outside, and even today, there was archaeological and linguistic evidence to show Indian influence in countries such as Iran and Central Asia, he added.

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