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White Supremacy in India

'Kamala Auntie' prompts examination of anti-Blackness for South Asians  2/19/2020 NBC: "If South Asians want to claim 'Kamala Auntie,' they must first confront anti-blackness, critics say."

Hindu Fascism: An All-American Threat  1/18/2020 Common Dreams: "We, as Muslim and Hindu women of color, have watched in horror as both the country of our ancestors, India, and the country of our birth, the United States, have devolved into nationalism and fascism. As activists and political candidates, we expected resistance to our political work from outside and within our own communities because we have challenged the status quo that many Indians willingly capitulate to in their eagerness to live up to the white-supremacist model minority stereotype."

Tulsi Gabbard Is a Rising Progressive Star, Despite Her Support for Hindu Nationalists  1/5/2019 The Intercept: "In the United States, Modi’s reputation has been helped by a group of Hindu-American supporters with links to the RSS and other Hindu nationalist organizations, who’ve been working in tandem with a peculiar congressional ally: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, the first Hindu in Congress. Gabbard — a member of the House committees on Foreign Affairs and Armed Services, and co-chair of the India Caucus — is an oddity in American politics. Ever since her 2016 resignation from the Democratic National Committee to endorse Bernie Sanders for president, she has been a rising star in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Last year, she racked up endorsements from groups like Progressive Democrats of America and Our Revolution, and she sailed to re-election. But she has also become a polarizing figure. Her progressive domestic politics are at odds with her support for authoritarians abroad, including Modi, Sisi, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad."

Gandhi le grand mépris des noirs. Textes racistes de Gandhi…  12/16/2018 Montray Kreyol: "Il nommait les bantous cafres, terme ( il connaissait le mépris qu'il contenait) arabe raciste utilisé pour désigner les populations autochtones d'Afrique du Sud. L'oeuvre que nous a légué Gandhi est un plaidoyer pour que les blancs ne laissent pas les indiens au bas fond de l'humanité comme les noirs qu'il considérait comme inférieurs naturellement aux indiens."

Why white supremacists and Hindu nationalists are so alike  12/13/2018 Al Jazeera: "Many members of the so-called "alt-right" - a loosely knit coalition of populists, white supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis - turned to India to find historic and current justifications for their racist, xenophobic and divisive views. Using a specific, "white nationalist" brand of Orientalism, they projected their fantasies about a racially pure society onto the Indian culture and in response received a warm welcome from Hindu fundamentalists in India."

In battling floods, Kerala is also forced to fight the hostility of the Indian government  8/25/2018 Morning Star: [Kerala is a Dravidian state in the very south of India, among the least white supremacist and patriarchal. The Nationist ruling party engages in colorism and patriarchy, it is the instrument of nothern people descended from the Aryas.]

Rising Hindu Nationalism in South Asia: Implications for the United States  8/22/2018 The Diplomat: "Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India’s international image has become more robust, and the United States has designated India as its partner in balancing China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific. However, these recent developments contradict the U.S. vision for India to “strengthen the fabric of stability” in the region. Since Modi’s election in 2014, there has been a significant increase in anti-minority rhetoric and mob violence committed by Hindu nationalist groups against Muslims and other minorities. Although India’s strategic importance has led the U.S. government to largely ignore these domestic issues, the dangerous effects unleashed by Hindu nationalism have had a destabilizing effect in South Asia, compromising India’s ability to play the leading regional role the United States seeks."

Protests Break Out in India as the Hindu Right Lessens Protections Against Caste Violence  4/17/2018 Alternet: "What adds to their anger is the fact that atrocities against Dalits have been on the increase in the last four years of Modi government, especially in the states where the BJP is in power. According to official statistics for 2016, a crime was committed against a Dalit every 13 minutes, 7 Dalit women were raped each day while 15 Dalits were killed every week. Of the 40,801 cases of atrocities against Dalits during the same year, nearly two-thirds were from five states where the BJP was in power on its own or was part of the ruling alliance."

Asifa Bano: India outrage spreads over rape of eight-year-old girl  4/13/2018 BBC: "The body of Asifa Bano, who belonged to a Muslim nomadic tribe, was found in a forest on 17 January near Kathua city of Indian-administered Kashmir. The story made headlines this week when Hindu right-wing groups protested over the arrest of eight Hindu men. The case has become a religious flashpoint in an already polarised Indian region. The men the police have arrested include a retired government official, four police officers and a minor - all of them belong to a local Hindu community that has been involved in a land dispute with the Muslim nomads. Outrage grew after two ministers from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attended a rally in support of the accused men."

‘We Are Indian Too’ Slogans Will Not End Anti-Northeast Racism, Here’s Another Idea  11/28/2017 The Better India: "Instead of proving our Indian-ness, we need to assert what makes us different. That automatically translates into greater engagement with mainland India, but it also requires mainland India to acknowledge and accept this plurality of cultures."

Savitri Devi: The mystical fascist being resurrected by the alt-right  10/29/2017 BBC: "Savitri Devi's work forms part of the history of both India's Hindu nationalists and the European and American extreme right. Her flamboyant, eccentric writings contain - unvarnished and uncensored - all their key ideas: that human beings can be divided into "races" which should be kept separate; that certain groups are superior to and more entitled than others; that these groups are under threat; and that the dark times in which we live will only end when they again take power, returning us to a mythical golden age."

Aryans And Dravidians: An Invention Of Racist Nineteenth Century Scholars  6/30/2017 Swarajya: "Almost no one in India knows that Sanskrit language documents dating back to 1500 BCE (3,500 years ago) were found in Syria. These “documents” were actually tablets etched in a language called ‘Hurrian’. The documents refer to a treaty signed by the kings of the ‘Mitanni’ Kingdom that lasted for just 200 years in Syria around 1500 BCE." [This article has many errors, among which that the Mitanni spoke Hurrian, a non Indo European language, not Sanskrit. They had names of some divinities in Sanskrit.]

Let’s talk about racism | Colour bias in India is colonial, not traditional  5/23/2017 Hindustan Times: Profound ignorance in a classic case for denial: "No matter where we are from, or what stage of economic development we are in, the belief that our culture, custom and language are superior to all others is a trait to be found in literally every corner, nook and rounded cranny of the globe. However, it is also true that traditionally, such cultural differences were never used to justify conquest or domination."

"The land of Gandhi can never be racist": is India in denial about its attitude to skin colour?  4/21/2017 New Statesman: "Last week, former Bharatiya Janata Party MP Tarun Vijay went on an Al Jazeera programme to talk about the recent spate of attacks. “If we were indeed racist, why would all the entire south – you know Kerala, Tamil, Andhra, Karnataka – why do we live with them?,” he said. “We have blacks…black people around us.” In his attempt to defend India from charges of anti-blackness, Vijay inadvertently laid bare the full extent of India’s problem with skin colour-based bigotry - our othering of not just black Africans but also of the darker-skinned citizens from our own country. It’s not hard to guess who the "we" in that statement is - the fairer, upper caste North Indian Hindus that form the BJP’s core constituency, and who have for ages thought of themselves as the template for the "true Indian". "

The roots of Indian racism  4/16/2017 The Hindu: " As a nation, we are yet to face up to the racism and sexism that runs through many caste narratives. Before the British brought us stories of ‘African’ cannibalism, we had our own stories of cannibalism — associated, from classical texts down to some current Chitra comics, with dark-skinned, non-‘Aryan’-looking creatures. Similarly, the way we have often treated aboriginal women in India — partly because their dress codes and social mores differ from mainstream Hindustani (Hindu, as well as Muslim) ones — is simply shocking."

Savitri Devi: The strange story of how a Hindu Hitler worshipper became an alt-right icon  3/3/2017 IBT: "American white nationalist leader Richard Spencer of the National Policy Institute referred to white people as the 'children of the sun' in a speech invoking Savitri Devi."

How Racism And Casteism Feed Into Each Other In India  10/10/2016 Huff Post: "The ultra-racism in India is closely intertwined with the wretched caste system. The internalized violence is reinvigorated and reproduced through the repetition of xenophobic stories, where an easy scapegoat is the darker skinned foreigner. Experiences of race and caste have in common the perpetuation of violence, perpetrated with impunity, against an “inferior being”. While there are active campaigns in India that challenge the cultural disparagement of darker skin, these do not take into account the stubborn casteism at the core of this phenomenon. We need to come to terms with the fact that people are discriminated against not solely on the basis of their complexion, but caste, a marker of which is often colour."

The Glory of Ancient India Stems from her Aryan Blood: French anthropologists ‘construct’ the racial history of India for the world  9/1/2016 Cambridge Core: "In the last century the French presented their race-neutral policies as evidence of their colour blindness. Yet they were among the foremost proponents of race theory and racial hierarchy, which propelled the colonial machine of the nineteenth century. This article examines the role of French academics in creating a position for India in the racial imagination for the first time in history. It examines the motivations behind such a focus on India and the resulting response from Britain, the colonial ruler. The works of Paul Topinard, Louis Rousselet, Arthur Gobineau, and Gustave le Bon are situated in the colonial and political context of the mid-nineteenth century to demonstrate not only that it was the French, and not the Germans, who placed India on an Aryan pedestal, but that this move was propelled by the dream of an unfulfilled French empire in India."

An African-American Explains Why India Is The Most Racist Country in the World  4/8/2016 Boda Hub: "If you are of obvious African ancestry, including African-American, you can find life really, really tough in India if you are going to be in India for a while. Indians can be such unabashed, in your face racists. In the interest of fairness, I should point out that oftentimes, lighter-skinned Indians despise darker-skinned Indians every bit as much as much as they despise us people of African ancestry. Apart from that, there is also considerable antipathy between North Indians and South Indians."

The Indian caste system is based on racism  2/6/2016 Times of India: "Barring the Andaman and Nicobar tribals, the other four population groups mingled and intermarried till about the 6th century AD. Then, sometime during the Gupta period of about 1600 years ago, laws based on scriptural and social proscriptions created exclusivist divisions which prohibited intermarriage between these different genetic, or ethnic, groups. Scientists of the NIBMG – whose conclusions have been corroborated and endorsed by Harvard Medical School’s David Reich – claim that the present-day caste distinctions trace their roots back to 70 generations of social differentiation based on genetic lines. Seen in this light, caste has a genetic – rather than just a social or occupational – basis, and as such is fundamentally racist in origin."

How severe is racism in India?  1/27/2016 Quora: "I have never received any racist name calling / friendly / unfriendly in the south, perhaps only because i am dark . But i dont think south indians are as racist as north indians."

Dalit death in TN: How the Dravidian project has been hijacked  7/5/2013 First Post: "The death under mysterious circumstances of the Dalit youth whose marriage to a girl from the Vanniyar community last year unleashed a venomous anti-Dalit hate campaign in Tamil Nadu provides a tragic twist to the caste politics in the State."

Indian Women Liberation:Wake Up!  11/18/2011 YTEARS: "Woman always have a special part in every man’s life. About 2500 years back in India women were the one who perform prayer in temple even today there many women goddess in Indian culture. After the arrival of pandit’s and Brahmin to India women were driven out of temple as “untouchable of god”."

India's African Diaspora Fight Discrimination  11/11/2008 Black Star News: "Commenting on the upper castes in India Tudu remarked: “We regard these people as foreigners. I myself am a direct descendant of the indigenous people – black people of the Indian subcontinent and I consider those individuals to be foreigners and I see all African people worldwide as my brothers and sisters.” Like Doss, Tudu is adamant that resistance and the solutions for black people lies in education of self: “I think the critical effort should be directed toward the education of [our] people. We need to have our own scholars doing this research [and] we need to resurrect our history. We have to know where we come from – all of us worldwide.” Tudu told Black Britain that the ideology of Pan Africanism has a major role to play: “All of us can take credit for each other’s accomplishments and that we are one people. That is all African people are one united people, not fragmented based on language or tribe, we’re all the same.”"

The African Diaspora in the Indian subcontinent  12/28/2007 Africa Speaks: "It may seem ironic to many that India’s untouchable castes known as Dalits, who are despised and condemned in Hindu scriptures for the colour of their skin and who are oppressed and exploited are distant relations to Africans, who were dehumanised in order to justify their enslavement to enrich the West. But two papers published by African scholar and physicist Cheikh Anta Diop in 1955 and 1967 were translated from French to English and published as : The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality in 1974. In this book, as well as establishing the African origins of Egypt, Diop also revealed that Africans known as Dravidians created the Indus Valley civilization."

IN THE SHADOW OF SHIVA - Crazed Hindu-fascists threaten the world  6/3/2002 Antiwar.com: In India, darker women are not held to be desirable, but for men color is less of a factor.

A child's charred arm tells of the race hatred engulfing India  3/2/2002 Times, UK 

Racism through Advaita Philosophy  3/2/2002 Race and History: by Dr. M. Deivanayagam and Dr. D. Devakala, The Revival Movement of Dravidian Religion  
     

Genetics in India

Harvard Scientist Debunks Hindu Nationalists "Racial Purity" Myth  2/3/2021 Haq's Musings: "Male ancestors of the vast majority of present-day South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis) came from West Eurasia, Central Asia and Iran, according to the latest DNA research led by Harvard geneticist Dr. David Reich. Reich's team came to this conclusion after studying the Y-chromosomes of present-day Indians. Some Hindu Indian scientists have used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) samples, extracted from the bones of recently discovered ancient skeletal remains of a couple in Rakigarhi in Haryana, to claim the local indigenous origins of all Hindus. Y-chromosomes are passed from father to son while mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to children. The Harvard team's findings thoroughly debunk Hindu Nationalists' "racial purity" myth similar to that promoted by White Supremacist racists in the West. Reich writes: "The Hindutva ideology that there was no major contribution to Indian culture from migrants from outside South Asia is undermined by the fact that approximately half of the ancestry of Indians today is derived from multiple waves of mass migration from Iran and the Eurasian steppe within the last five thousand years"."

An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers  10/17/2019 Cell: "We report an ancient genome from the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC). The individual we sequenced fits as a mixture of people related to ancient Iranians (the largest component) and Southeast Asian hunter-gatherers, a unique profile that matches ancient DNA from 11 genetic outliers from sites in Iran and Turkmenistan in cultural communication with the IVC. These individuals had little if any Steppe pastoralist-derived ancestry, showing that it was not ubiquitous in northwest South Asia during the IVC as it is today. The Iranian-related ancestry in the IVC derives from a lineage leading to early Iranian farmers, herders, and hunter-gatherers before their ancestors separated, contradicting the hypothesis that the shared ancestry between early Iranians and South Asians reflects a large-scale spread of western Iranian farmers east. Instead, sampled ancient genomes from the Iranian plateau and IVC descend from different groups of hunter-gatherers who began farming without being connected by substantial movement of people."

DNA analysis of Harappan skeleton from Rakhigarhi: Thin evidence  10/11/2019 Frontline: "There are two things that immediately strike one in this argument: the authors seem to be aware that the IVC reveals a flourishing cosmopolitan urban culture. The assumption that one individual would represent the whole population of that city, and indeed the entire civilisation, seems distinctly at odds with the otherwise painstaking methodology and genetic analysis. At best, it may be extrapolated from the data that a section of the population in Rakhigarhi (estimated IVC population at its peak is about four to six million) had links with a section (only 11 of 44 match the type from Rakhigarhi) in the IPC. Linked to this, the issue of movement out of the IVC is quite surprising and seems to be beyond the brief of the data analysis and analysts."

Two new genetic studies upheld Indo-Aryan migration. So why did Indian media report the opposite?  9/12/2019 Scroll.in: "However, as the question at the press conference on the historical existence of gods demonstrated, this detailed science published on September 5 was also accompanied by the inevitable politics that hangs over any exploration of human origins. The sharp ascendance of Hindu nationalism in India has resulted in a nativist movement that places great emphasis on the claim that most of India’s peoples have indigenous roots – a narrative that sits uncomfortably with the very eclectic origins of the country’s modern populations."

The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia  9/6/2019 Science: "Ancient DNA has allowed us to begin tracing the history of human movements across the globe. Narasimhan et al. identify a complex pattern of human migrations and admixture events in South and Central Asia by performing genetic analysis of more than 500 people who lived over the past 8000 years (see the Perspective by Schaefer and Shapiro). They establish key phases in the population prehistory of Eurasia, including the spread of farming peoples from the Near East, with movements both westward and eastward. The people known as the Yamnaya in the Bronze Age also moved both westward and eastward from a focal area located north of the Black Sea. The overall patterns of genetic clines reflect similar and parallel patterns in South Asia and Europe."

Rakhigarhi DNA study questions Aryan invasion theory, claims author  9/6/2019 Economic Times: "“The paper indicates that there was no Aryan invasion and no Aryan migration and that all the developments right from the hunting-gathering stage to modern times in South Asia were done by indigenous people,” Prof Vasant Shinde, lead author of the paper, told ET."

Rare Ancient DNA Provides Window Into a 5,000-Year-Old South Asian Civilization  9/5/2019 Smithsonian: "Eleven such individuals found at sites in Iran and Turkmenistan were likely involved in interchange with the Harappan civilization. In fact, some of these outlier individuals were buried with artifacts culturally affiliated with South Asia, strengthening the case that they were connected to the IVC. “This made us hypothesize that these samples were migrants, possibly even first-generation migrants from South Asia,” Narasimhan says. The IVC genome from Rakhigarhi shows strong genetic similarities to the 11 genetic outliers in the large study of ancient humans, supporting the idea that these individuals ventured from the Harappan civilization to the Middle East. “Now we believe that these 12 samples, taken together, broadly represent the ancestry that was present in [South Asia] at that time.”"

4500-year-old DNA from Rakhigarhi reveals evidence that will unsettle Hindutva nationalists  8/31/2018 India Today: "Why did it take so long? One answer was on offer exactly a year ago when this writer spoke to Shinde who was then holding out the promise of publishing the findings in September 2017. "It's a very politically sensitive issue," he said."

A new study squelches a treasured theory about Indians’ origins  4/5/2018 Economist: "The wider study not only confirms that “Aryans” (geneticists avoid the term) probably migrated from the steppes around the Volga and Don rivers to both India and Europe at around the same time. It also shows that their genetic markers later spread southwards across India, and are indeed particularly prevalent in “groups of priestly status”."

The problematics of genetics and the Aryan issue  6/29/2017 The Hindu: "Finally, Silva et al.’s study opines that “genetic influx from Central Asia in the Bronze Age was strongly male-driven, consistent with the patriarchal, patrilocal and patrilineal social structure attributed to the inferred pastoralist early Indo-European society” (or, as Mr. Joseph puts it, “those who migrated were predominantly male”). This is a double case of circularity: a patriarchal social structure is “attributed” to an “inferred” pastoralist Indo-European society, and results are interpreted to fit this double assumption. Anthropologically, “pastoral” migrations that leave their womenfolk behind make no sense." [Makes no sense to the author, but there was a common patriarchal pattern in Indo European history, with many early predominantly male migrations right through to the European colonizations starting in the 15th century, especially in the case of France and Spain.]

Response to How genetics is settling the Aryan migration debate  6/20/2017 Kancha IlaIa: "In 1999 Romila Thapar wrote disagreeing with the Aryan migration Theory used by Mahtma Phule and Prof. Kancha Ilaiah. This is what she said then. Now Tony Joseph has proved that even she was wrong with systematic genetic DNA study."

How genetics is settling the Aryan migration debate  6/16/2017 The Hindu: "The thorniest, most fought-over question in Indian history is slowly but surely getting answered: did Indo-European language speakers, who called themselves Aryans, stream into India sometime around 2,000 BC – 1,500 BC when the Indus Valley civilisation came to an end, bringing with them Sanskrit and a distinctive set of cultural practices? Genetic research based on an avalanche of new DNA evidence is making scientists around the world converge on an unambiguous answer: yes, they did."

A genetic chronology for the Indian Subcontinent points to heavily sex-biased dispersals  3/23/2017 BMC Evolutionary Biology: "India is a patchwork of tribal and non-tribal populations that speak many different languages from various language families. Indo-European, spoken across northern and central India, and also in Pakistan and Bangladesh, has been frequently connected to the so-called “Indo-Aryan invasions” from Central Asia ~3.5 ka and the establishment of the caste system, but the extent of immigration at this time remains extremely controversial. South India, on the other hand, is dominated by Dravidian languages. India displays a high level of endogamy due to its strict social boundaries, and high genetic drift as a result of long-term isolation which, together with a very complex history, makes the genetic study of Indian populations challenging."

'Fourth strand' of European ancestry originated with hunter-gatherers isolated by Ice Age  11/16/2015 Phys.org: "While the Caucasus hunter-gatherer ancestry would eventually be carried west by the Yamnaya, the researchers found it also had a significant influence further east. A similar population must have migrated into South Asia at some point, says Eppie Jones, a PhD student from Trinity College who is the first author of the paper. "India is a complete mix of Asian and European genetic components. The Caucasus hunter-gatherer ancestry is the best match we've found for the European genetic component found right across modern Indian populations," Jones said. Researchers say this strand of ancestry may have flowed into the region with the bringers of Indo-Aryan languages."

Can Genetics Help Us Understand Indian Social History?  11/15/2014 NIH: by Romila Thapar - "Attempts have been made recently to determine the identity of the so-called “Aryans” as components of the Indian population by using DNA analysis. This is largely to ascertain whether they were indigenous to India or were foreign arrivals. Similar attempts have been made to trace the origins of caste groups on the basis of varna identities and record their distribution. The results so far have been contradictory and, therefore, not of much help to social historians. There are problems in the defining of categories and the techniques of analysis. Aryan is a linguistic and cultural category and not a biological one." [Is the last statement true?]

New research debunks Aryan invasion theory  12/10/2011 DNA India: "According to Dr Gyaneshwer Chaubey, Estonian Biocentre, Tartu, Estonia, who was another Indian member of the team, the leaders of Dravidian political parties may have to find another answer for their raison d'être. “We have proved that people all over India have common genetic traits and origin. All Indians have the same DNA structure. No foreign genes or DNA has entered the Indian mainstream in the last 60,000 years,” Dr Chaubey said."

Reconstructing Indian population history  9/24/2009 National Library of Medicine: "India has been underrepresented in genome-wide surveys of human variation. We analyze 25 diverse groups to provide strong evidence for two ancient populations, genetically divergent, that are ancestral to most Indians today. One, the “Ancestral North Indians” (ANI), is genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and Europeans, while the other, the “Ancestral South Indians” (ASI), is as distinct from ANI and East Asians as they are from each other. By introducing methods that can estimate ancestry without accurate ancestral populations, we show that ANI ancestry ranges from 39-71% in India, and is higher in traditionally upper caste and Indo-European speakers. Groups with only ASI ancestry may no longer exist in mainland India. However, the Andamanese are an ASI-related group without ANI ancestry, showing that the peopling of the islands must have occurred before ANI-ASI gene flow on the mainland. Allele frequency differences between groups in India are larger than in Europe, reflecting strong founder effects whose signatures have been maintained for thousands of years due to endogamy."
  

Indian Linguistics

AIT and the science of linguistics  6/27/2018 Indic Collective: "No surprise then that in the very beginning already, we come across the claim that ‘the word father is derived from Latin pater’. Any linguist who knows his discipline will immediately remark that both pater and father stem from a common origin in Proto-Indo-European, but the one has not been derived from the other. This is not frivolous nitpicking, we shall see that the exact relation between such similar word is the very heart of this debate."

New linguistic analysis finds that Dravidian language family is approximately 4,500 years old  3/21/2018 Max Planck Institute: "The origin of the Dravidian language family, consisting of about 80 varieties spoken by 220 million people across southern and central India and surrounding countries, can be dated to about 4,500 years ago. This estimate is based on new linguistic analyses by an international team, including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, that used data collected first-hand from native speakers representing all previously reported Dravidian subgroups."

A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family  3/1/2018 Royal Society: "The Dravidian language family consists of about 80 varieties (Hammarström H. 2016 Glottolog 2.7) spoken by 220 million people across southern and central India and surrounding countries (Steever SB. 1998 In The Dravidian languages (ed. SB Steever), pp. 1–39: 1). Neither the geographical origin of the Dravidian language homeland nor its exact dispersal through time are known. The history of these languages is crucial for understanding prehistory in Eurasia, because despite their current restricted range, these languages played a significant role in influencing other language groups including Indo-Aryan (Indo-European) and Munda (Austroasiatic) speakers. Here, we report the results of a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of cognate-coded lexical data, elicited first hand from native speakers, to investigate the subgrouping of the Dravidian language family, and provide dates for the major points of diversification. Our results indicate that the Dravidian language family is approximately 4500 years old, a finding that corresponds well with earlier linguistic and archaeological studies."

Indian historical linguistics - Setting the record straight  5/13/2013 Economist: "Trained linguists describe the world’s languages as they are, not in the service of political, social or religious ends. It’s a shame that the conversation about India’s linguistic history gets twisted in ways that are at odds with what linguists and historians have deduced. Viewing India as a microcosm of the world’s diversity is far more fascinating. Seeing Indian languages as the product of many rich and varied cultural exchanges is far more exciting. These perspectives also have the virtue of being true to the facts."

Smear Campaign vs. Michael Witzel  12/26/2005 Indo-Eurasian_Reserch, Yahoo Group: "It is important for List members to recognize that a highly coordinated smear campaign -- uglier and on a bigger scale than any we've experienced before -- was launched this Christmas in India and the United States against Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and co-founder of this List."

Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts.  12/1/2000 Michael Witzel, Harvard University: "Notwithstanding the internal social and political reasons for the clash between recent Indian historiography (now often termed 'Marxist') and the new wave of revisionist and nationalistic writing that culminates in the "Out of India Theory", it is its very emergence and relative popularity, as late as two generations after Indian independence, that must surprise. The 'revisionist project' certainly is not guided by the principles of critical theory but takes, time and again, recourse to pre-enlightenment beliefs in the authority of traditional religious texts such as the Puråas. In the end, it belongs, as has been pointed out earlier,232 to a different 'discourse' than that of historical and critical scholarship. In other words, it continues the writing of religious literature, under a contemporary, outwardly 'scientific' guise. Though the ones pursuing this project use dialectic methods quite effectively, they frequently also turn traditional Indian discussion methods and scholastic tricks to their advantage.233"
 

Dalits, the Untouchables

Caste superiority severe among Indian diaspora in the US: Ex-CJI NV Ramana  7/12/2023 The New Indian Express: "In an event organized by the Telugu Association of North America (TANA) in Philadelphia on Sunday, the ex-CJI said, “When caste differences have blurred in India, particularly in the southern part of the country, it’s a matter of grave concern that caste system is prevalent among Indians in the US.”"

Google’s Caste-Bias Problem  8/11/2022 New Yorker: "This is where we have to talk about what’s “offensive” versus real harm. The real harm is when people are denied a voice, when they cannot speak about their own working conditions and the harm that they have faced socioeconomically. That is real harm compared with being offended because your own power is threatened and you’re feeling a little bit more fragile but you can’t point to actual harm that’s been done to you. The only people that got really harmed in this were all the people who are caste oppressed, who essentially are now feeling even more worried about being outed and have had their discrimination ignored."

In Punjab, a dalit movement to embrace Dravidian identity  7/6/2018 Times of India: "When E V Ramaswamy started the Self Respect Movement or the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu in 1925, it was as much 'anti-North India' and 'anti-Hindi' as it was about fighting the caste system and superstition and inculcating self-respect among all. Periyar, as Ramaswamy was better known, would perhaps never have imagined that the Dravidian movement would one day manifest in northern India."

Protests Break Out in India as the Hindu Right Lessens Protections Against Caste Violence  4/17/2018 Alternet: "What adds to their anger is the fact that atrocities against Dalits have been on the increase in the last four years of Modi government, especially in the states where the BJP is in power. According to official statistics for 2016, a crime was committed against a Dalit every 13 minutes, 7 Dalit women were raped each day while 15 Dalits were killed every week. Of the 40,801 cases of atrocities against Dalits during the same year, nearly two-thirds were from five states where the BJP was in power on its own or was part of the ruling alliance."

Dalits in India hold protests against 'dilution' of SC/ST Act  4/2/2018 Al Jazeera: "Caste discrimination is outlawed but it remains widespread. A young Dalit farmer was beaten to death for owning a horse in western Gujarat state, police said on Saturday. The body of 21-year-old Pradeep Rathod was found in a pool of blood near Timbi village late on Thursday. Police have arrested three men from the privileged caste as part of the investigation."

History of India's Caste System  1/26/2018 Thought Co: "Early written evidence about the caste system appears in the Vedas, Sanskrit-language texts from as early as 1500 BCE, which form the basis of Hindu scripture. The Rigveda, from c. 1700-1100 BCE, rarely mentions caste distinctions and indicates that social mobility was common. The Bhagavad Gita, however, from c. 200 BCE-200 CE, emphasizes the importance of caste. In addition, the "Laws of Manu" or Manusmriti from the same era defines the rights and duties of the four different castes or varnas. Thus, it seems that the Hindu caste system began to solidify sometime between 1000 and 200 BCE."

The roots of Indian racism  4/16/2017 The Hindu: " As a nation, we are yet to face up to the racism and sexism that runs through many caste narratives. Before the British brought us stories of ‘African’ cannibalism, we had our own stories of cannibalism — associated, from classical texts down to some current Chitra comics, with dark-skinned, non-‘Aryan’-looking creatures. Similarly, the way we have often treated aboriginal women in India — partly because their dress codes and social mores differ from mainstream Hindustani (Hindu, as well as Muslim) ones — is simply shocking."

How Racism And Casteism Feed Into Each Other In India  10/10/2016 Huff Post: "The ultra-racism in India is closely intertwined with the wretched caste system. The internalized violence is reinvigorated and reproduced through the repetition of xenophobic stories, where an easy scapegoat is the darker skinned foreigner. Experiences of race and caste have in common the perpetuation of violence, perpetrated with impunity, against an “inferior being”. While there are active campaigns in India that challenge the cultural disparagement of darker skin, these do not take into account the stubborn casteism at the core of this phenomenon. We need to come to terms with the fact that people are discriminated against not solely on the basis of their complexion, but caste, a marker of which is often colour."

The Indian caste system is based on racism  2/6/2016 Times of India: "Barring the Andaman and Nicobar tribals, the other four population groups mingled and intermarried till about the 6th century AD. Then, sometime during the Gupta period of about 1600 years ago, laws based on scriptural and social proscriptions created exclusivist divisions which prohibited intermarriage between these different genetic, or ethnic, groups. Scientists of the NIBMG – whose conclusions have been corroborated and endorsed by Harvard Medical School’s David Reich – claim that the present-day caste distinctions trace their roots back to 70 generations of social differentiation based on genetic lines. Seen in this light, caste has a genetic – rather than just a social or occupational – basis, and as such is fundamentally racist in origin."

Not Caste in Color: Dispelling Myths in Our Classrooms  11/11/2013 Huff Post: "Unfortunately, there is a perception among many in the West that colorism (and even racism) is somehow a product of caste, and that the contemporary view of social stratification within India is somehow linked to skin color. More alarmingly, some scholars have even made ludicrous claims that social stratification by skin color is somehow inherent within Hinduism. This argument has been embraced by Christian missionary organizations such as the Dalit Freedom Network, which claim that caste discrimination is uniquely Hindu and tantamount to racial oppression."

Dalit death in TN: How the Dravidian project has been hijacked  7/5/2013 First Post: "The death under mysterious circumstances of the Dalit youth whose marriage to a girl from the Vanniyar community last year unleashed a venomous anti-Dalit hate campaign in Tamil Nadu provides a tragic twist to the caste politics in the State."

An Untouchable Subject? Indian Government Wants Caste System off U.N. Agenda  8/29/2001 NPR: "But is discrimination by caste the same as racism? The Indian government says no, and has objected to it's being brought up at the UN Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa."

THE ANNIHILATION OF CASTE  12/12/1935 Colombia University: by B. R. Ambedkar. The author, in an early and noteworthy attempt to destroy the caste system, has apparently not heard of colorism, but then this is 1935 - "Some have dug a biological trench in defence of the Caste System. It is said that the object of Caste was to preserve purity of race and purity of blood. Now ethnologists are of the opinion that men of pure race exist nowhere and that there has been a mixture of all races in all parts of the world. Especially is this the case with the people of India. Mr. D. R. Bhandarkar in his paper on "Foreign Elements in the Hindu Population" has stated that "There is hardly a class or Caste in India which has not a foreign strain in it. There is an admixture of alien blood not only among the warrior classes —the Rajputs and the Marathas—but also among the Brahmins who are under the happy delusion that they are free from all foreign elements." The Caste system cannot be said to have grown as a means of preventing the admixture of races, or as a means of maintaining purity of blood."
 

Dravidians

The Oldest Settlements in South India: The Keeladi Excavations  3/6/2023 Storytrails: "For a long time, it was believed that south India had no ancient urban civilisations like in the north. While the Sangam Period (dated 300 BCE – 300 CE) literature talks of a sophisticated Tamil civilisation, there was no concrete archaeological proof to back it up…until the path-breaking Keeladi excavations that started in 2015. A series of digs carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India in a little village near Madurai unearthed artefacts dating back at least to the 6th century BCE. This included pottery fragments with graffiti marks very similar to the Indus Valley script."

Harappans, Aryans, and the BMAC: Indian Origins  5/1/2022 Mythic Concepts: "What is the cultural legacy of the Indus Valley / Harappan Civilization? How much continuity was there between the IVC and Vedic India? What is the truth of the much-discussed and controversial "Aryan Migration?" And what about those folks in the mountains on the way to India, known as the Oxus Civilization or BMAC (Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex)? All this and more, all extensively researched (see the list of links below). This video will actually kicks of a series on ancient Indian mythology which will cover the Harappan seals and the Vedic cosmic world tree, known as Ashvattha, Pipal, or Bhodi tree."

Religion, Alchemy, and Medicine in South India  3/14/2022 Brill: "The term siddha has been applied to several groups or unorthodox sects practicing tantra, yoga, and alchemy with the objective of attaining perfection and immortality, existing during various periods but culminating after the twelfth century CE.2 Among these, the Tamil siddha school had its early origins around the eighth century CE, when Tirumular composed the Tirumantiram, a composition that laid out a variant of the Tamil siddha tradition. The Tirumantiram’s 3,000 verses describe the esoteric principles of awakening the “serpent power” (ku??alini), ways of uniting with the god Siva and attaining immortality through yogic discipline."

FACEBOOK’S TAMIL CENSORSHIP HIGHLIGHTS RISKS TO EVERYONE  1/19/2022 Intercept: "Thusiyan Nandakumar, the Tamil Guardian’s editor, told The Intercept that over the past several years, Facebook has twice suspended the publication’s Instagram account and removed dozens of its posts without warning — each time claiming a violation of the DIO policy. The censorship comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of this policy from free speech advocates, civil society groups, and even the company’s official Oversight Board. A string of meetings with Facebook have yielded nothing more than vague assurances, dissembling, and continued deletions, according to Nandakumar. Despite claims from the company that it would investigate the matter, Nandakumar says the situation has only gotten worse. Faced with ongoing censorship, the Guardian’s staff have decided to self-censor, sparingly using the outlet’s Instagram account for fear of losing it permanently."

In battling floods, Kerala is also forced to fight the hostility of the Indian government  8/25/2018 Morning Star: [Kerala is a Dravidian state in the very south of India, among the least white suprmacist and patriarchal. The Nationist ruling party engages in colorism and patriarchy, it is the instrument of nothern people descended from the Aryas.]

Aryan/Dravidian Conflicts: Impact On Tamil Culture!!!  2/27/2012 YTEARS: "I am not Racist to write about this conflicts.Too show case only the bad Impact of one Race on other Race.Tamil People We are born in the culture of Caste less society but today we have thousand's of caste,Religion etc.We are the first one to teach the world to rule and civilization but today we are destroying our tradition.Aryan racist Aggression openly can be seen In Sri Lanka were Sinhalese,Tamil Brahmin,North India's support the Genocide over the Tamil.Only Non- Brahmin Tamil support the cause of Tamil Elam.Aryan always have Aggression to Destroy a Ethnic group best example of it is Hitler.Learn From it save our tradition,culture and heritage of our Dravidian's.The worst of it is except Tamil no one speak of Dravidian Rites.Even Telugu,Kannada's and Malaya's never soon interest in the Dravidian's rites.If you didn't even spread this ideology are not but at least follow this thought in your life.Remove caste from your life."

Yoga: Is it Vedic, Tantric, or Both?  5/12/2010 Elephant Journal: "Yoga did not originate in the Vedas, as Chopra claims. Yoga was not really developed by Vedic priests. Rather, yoga was developed by Tantric yogis, some of whom, over time, also happened to be part-time Vedic priests. Indeed, it is commonly understood in Tantric circles and documented in many books how Vedic priests would practice Tantric yoga in secret at night… So, over time, there was a cultural blending between the Vedic and Tantric streams of wisdom in India. This blending gave us the great texts of the Gita, the Upanishads as well as Kashmir Tantra, Vedanta, the Yoga Sutras, Samkhya, the great nondual Tantric Renaissance of the Middle Ages, from which much of modern yoga practice originates, etc."
 

Feminism in India

Dalit Feminist Theory  11/8/2022 Decolonial Feminist Readings: "Dalit Feminist Theory is a collection of essays which explores the caste question in relation to emancipatory feminist politics. The essays complement and critique each other on a number of theoretical debates which have previously and systematically omitted caste."

Why Lesser Rapes Are Happening In South As Compared To North India  10/7/2020 India Times: "In India, rape accounts for about 12% of all crimes against women. The distribution of reported cases is quite uneven across the nation. India’s average rate of reported rape cases is about 6.3 per 1,00,000 of the population. However, this masks vast geographical differences with places like Sikkim and Delhi having rates of 30.3 and 22.5, respectively, while Tamil Nadu has a rate of less than one."

Protests Erupt In India After Women Defy Menstruation Ban At Hindu Temple  1/2/2019 Huff Post: "Two women defied a centuries-old ban on entering a Hindu temple in the Indian state of Kerala on Wednesday, sparking protests and calls for a strike by conservative Hindu groups outraged by their visit." [Kerala is in the far south, where women's rights are greater.]

Sabarimala: Women defy historic temple ban  1/2/2019 BBC: "A centuries old ban was broken when two women walked into a South Indian shrine. The women, devotees of the temple deity, Lord Ayyappa, entered around dawn. The Sabarimala temple was historically closed to women of "menstruating age" - defined as between 10 and 50. A Supreme Court decision in September 2018 overturned the ban but protesters had stopped women from entering."

What Karunanidhi Meant To Me As A Young Tamil Feminist  8/10/2018 Feminism in India: "I remember being a young girl travelling in a train when I noticed a transgender woman asking for money from many of the passengers. I realised she was different from the others and the others were treating her very differently indeed. When I asked my mother who she was, she answered “a thirunangai”. The word seemed strange to me. Strange, because I’ve been speaking Tamil, my mother tongue, for so many years yet I had never heard this word used before. When we got back home, I started asking my dad about it and he told me that thirunangai is used to refer to a transgender woman."

Feminist History Is Important. Here’s Why You Need To Pay Attention.  7/4/2018 Feminism in India: "Having a strong sense of history and identity is especially important for women. The past is not an obscure, distant reality for most us. We live with the present sense and effects of history."

Annai Meenambal Sivaraj: The Tamil Dalit Woman Leader  5/18/2017 Feminism in India: "Annai Meenambal Sivaraj, India’s first Dalit woman leader is one of the most important figures in the Indian Dalit History and the fight towards inclusion of Dalit women at the national forefront. However very less is known about her contribution in the mainstream media."

Feminism Through the Ages in India: An Empowering Journey  9/30/2016 Better India: "In the 17th century, Bibi Dalair Kaur, a Sikh woman, formed an all-woman army to fight Mughal forces."

What India’s ‘Third Gender’ Ruling Means  5/6/2014 WBUR: "British colonial regime launched a very massive critique of Hindu culture on many levels. Part of this critique was a gendered critique, where British culture was seen as masculine and assertive and scientific and rational, and Indian culture and especially Hindu culture, was viewed as effeminate and weak and corrupt and primitive. Men in India were viewed as effeminized in many ways, and of course this created a tremendous response from Indian elites and from educated Indians, people who absorbed colonial instruction in colleges and English schools, and they became very, very defensive about this and very assertive of masculinity, and so it became - a lot of these older traditions where gender was a more fluid category became an embarrassment, you can say, in the 19th century, especially to middle-class, educated Indians."

Indian Women Liberation:Wake Up!  11/18/2011 YTEARS: "Woman always have a special part in every man’s life. About 2500 years back in India women were the one who perform prayer in temple even today there many women goddess in Indian culture. After the arrival of pandit’s and Brahmin to India women were driven out of temple as “untouchable of god”."

Aryan Patriarchy and Dravidian Matriarchy  2/1/2007 Integral World: "...there is a considerable body of evidence to show that prior to Aryan influence Dravidian Indians worshipped the goddess."
 

LGBTQ in Ancient and Modern India

Indo Europeans appear to have adhered to a strict interpretation of gender roles throughout their history. As they spread across the planet in the second half of the second millenium, they tended to erase the previous patchwork of gender ideas.  India was no exception and the British brought their peculiar brand of closeted/homophobia with them as they dominated the subcontinent.  What happened earlier when the Indo Aryans moved in four thousand years ago is still being deciphered.  However, pre-British India was notably more tolerant of other gender roles.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism_and_LGBT_topics

www.jiva.org/the-vedic-view-on-homosexuality/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_India

Articles on LGBTQ in India

Indian Culture Does Recognise Homosexuality, Let Us Count the Ways  9/11/2018 The Quint: "It’s impossible to talk about homosexuality in ancient India without referring to one of its most affirmative and visual ‘proofs’, so to speak. The sculptures in the Khajuraho temple of Madhya Pradesh are known for their overt homosexual imagery. The temple is popularly believed to have been built sometime around the 12th century."

India – Homosexuality through ages ,The door was always open  12/11/2013 Kraktivist: "Hinduism was probably the most accepting of all the religions in the world of homosexuality but that isn’t what one would learn if one had to take a look at modern India. According to the Indian judiciary, homosexuality is punishable to the extent of ‘life imprisonment’, the same sentence as some murders and rape. This cannot be imposed on the fact that it stems from the cultural influence that the other religions in India have had on society because Buddhism and even Islam in India acknowledge homosexuality to varying degrees."

Hindu Supremacy in the Caribbean

Transnational Anti-Black Racism and State Violence in Trinidad  6/29/2015 Cultural Anthropology: "In an ethnically diverse nation like Trinidad and Tobago—the three main demographic groups are Indo-Trinidadian (37.6%), Afro-Trinidadian (36.3%) and Mixed-Trinidadian (24.2%)—ethnic political parties have rotated in and out of the government in each election since the mid-1990s. Yet each government has blamed the same group for the nation’s murderous violence, continuing a tradition begun under colonialism. The current People’s Partnership Government is no exception, with Prime Minister Kamla Bissessar singling out “marauding groups of thugs bent on creating havoc in our society” (Hutchinson-Jafar 2011). In the transnational language of anti-black racism, these “groups of thugs” are a euphemism for young, Afro-Trinidadian, working-class males from historically impoverished areas of Port of Spain."

The Dualism of Good and Evil and East Indian Insecurity in Guyana  1/1/2006 Journal of Black Studies: "But for East Indians in Guyana, fear is motivated and justified by the belief that “Black” people are evil by nature. This belief is legitimized in the Hindu scriptures in the caste system that is based on the dualism of good and evil. This article looks at the caste system, its reconstitution in Guyana, and the violent consequences due to East Indian need to justify their perception of themselves as the morally superior “good” group who are therefore entitled to rule."
 

Denial

DNA analysis of Harappan skeleton from Rakhigarhi: Thin evidence  10/11/2019 Frontline: "There are two things that immediately strike one in this argument: the authors seem to be aware that the IVC reveals a flourishing cosmopolitan urban culture. The assumption that one individual would represent the whole population of that city, and indeed the entire civilisation, seems distinctly at odds with the otherwise painstaking methodology and genetic analysis. At best, it may be extrapolated from the data that a section of the population in Rakhigarhi (estimated IVC population at its peak is about four to six million) had links with a section (only 11 of 44 match the type from Rakhigarhi) in the IPC. Linked to this, the issue of movement out of the IVC is quite surprising and seems to be beyond the brief of the data analysis and analysts."

AIT and the science of linguistics  6/27/2018 Indic Collective: "No surprise then that in the very beginning already, we come across the claim that ‘the word father is derived from Latin pater’. Any linguist who knows his discipline will immediately remark that both pater and father stem from a common origin in Proto-Indo-European, but the one has not been derived from the other. This is not frivolous nitpicking, we shall see that the exact relation between such similar word is the very heart of this debate."

A new study squelches a treasured theory about Indians’ origins  4/5/2018 Economist: "The wider study not only confirms that “Aryans” (geneticists avoid the term) probably migrated from the steppes around the Volga and Don rivers to both India and Europe at around the same time. It also shows that their genetic markers later spread southwards across India, and are indeed particularly prevalent in “groups of priestly status”."

Aryans And Dravidians: An Invention Of Racist Nineteenth Century Scholars  6/30/2017 Swarajya: "Almost no one in India knows that Sanskrit language documents dating back to 1500 BCE (3,500 years ago) were found in Syria. These “documents” were actually tablets etched in a language called ‘Hurrian’. The documents refer to a treaty signed by the kings of the ‘Mitanni’ Kingdom that lasted for just 200 years in Syria around 1500 BCE." [This article has many errors, among which that the Mitanni spoke Hurrian, a non Indo European language, not Sanskrit. They had names of some divinities in Sanskrit.]

Let’s talk about racism | Colour bias in India is colonial, not traditional  5/23/2017 Hindustan Times: Profound ignorance in a classic case for denial: "No matter where we are from, or what stage of economic development we are in, the belief that our culture, custom and language are superior to all others is a trait to be found in literally every corner, nook and rounded cranny of the globe. However, it is also true that traditionally, such cultural differences were never used to justify conquest or domination."

"The land of Gandhi can never be racist": is India in denial about its attitude to skin colour?  4/21/2017 New Statesman: "Last week, former Bharatiya Janata Party MP Tarun Vijay went on an Al Jazeera programme to talk about the recent spate of attacks. “If we were indeed racist, why would all the entire south – you know Kerala, Tamil, Andhra, Karnataka – why do we live with them?,” he said. “We have blacks…black people around us.” In his attempt to defend India from charges of anti-blackness, Vijay inadvertently laid bare the full extent of India’s problem with skin colour-based bigotry - our othering of not just black Africans but also of the darker-skinned citizens from our own country. It’s not hard to guess who the "we" in that statement is - the fairer, upper caste North Indian Hindus that form the BJP’s core constituency, and who have for ages thought of themselves as the template for the "true Indian". "

Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence  4/1/2016 Researchgate: "The Indo-Aryan invasion was imagined to have involved hordes of Sanskritic-language speakers entering the subcontinent in horse-drawn carts, through the mountain passes of Afghanistan around 1500 BCE. The discovery of the Indus civilization in the early 1920s turned the dominant invasionist framework on its head. The accepted dates for the Harappan civilization's urban or Mature phase are 2600-1900 BCE, while the conventional date for the arrival of the Aryans is around 1500 BCE. From the 1990s onward, population genetics has been applied to South Asian populations, the history of their migrations, and the Aryan invasion hypothesis. Geneticists have traced markers of mutations in Y-DNA; mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA; and autosomal DNA."

Indian historical linguistics - Setting the record straight  5/13/2013 Economist: "Trained linguists describe the world’s languages as they are, not in the service of political, social or religious ends. It’s a shame that the conversation about India’s linguistic history gets twisted in ways that are at odds with what linguists and historians have deduced. Viewing India as a microcosm of the world’s diversity is far more fascinating. Seeing Indian languages as the product of many rich and varied cultural exchanges is far more exciting. These perspectives also have the virtue of being true to the facts."

New research debunks Aryan invasion theory  12/10/2011 DNA India: "According to Dr Gyaneshwer Chaubey, Estonian Biocentre, Tartu, Estonia, who was another Indian member of the team, the leaders of Dravidian political parties may have to find another answer for their raison d'être. “We have proved that people all over India have common genetic traits and origin. All Indians have the same DNA structure. No foreign genes or DNA has entered the Indian mainstream in the last 60,000 years,” Dr Chaubey said."

The Reach of Reason  9/1/2009 Shunya: "Soon enough though, Sen reveals his impatience with certain "other ways of proceeding". The India Sen presents to us has a long tradition of heterodoxy, openness, and reasoned discourse, a capacious India that is inclusive, tolerant, and multicultural. This contrasts with at least two major perceptions of India in modern times: (a) a Western and (derivatively) an Indian elite's stern view of India as "the land of religions, the country of uncritical faiths and unquestioned practices", and (b) the Hindutva, or the Hindu chauvinist's idea of India."

Indigenous Aryans?  7/9/2008 Shunya 

Smear Campaign vs. Michael Witzel  12/26/2005 Indo-Eurasian_Reserch, Yahoo Group: "It is important for List members to recognize that a highly coordinated smear campaign -- uglier and on a bigger scale than any we've experienced before -- was launched this Christmas in India and the United States against Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and co-founder of this List."

Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts.  12/1/2000 Michael Witzel, Harvard University: "Notwithstanding the internal social and political reasons for the clash between recent Indian historiography (now often termed 'Marxist') and the new wave of revisionist and nationalistic writing that culminates in the "Out of India Theory", it is its very emergence and relative popularity, as late as two generations after Indian independence, that must surprise. The 'revisionist project' certainly is not guided by the principles of critical theory but takes, time and again, recourse to pre-enlightenment beliefs in the authority of traditional religious texts such as the Puråas. In the end, it belongs, as has been pointed out earlier,232 to a different 'discourse' than that of historical and critical scholarship. In other words, it continues the writing of religious literature, under a contemporary, outwardly 'scientific' guise. Though the ones pursuing this project use dialectic methods quite effectively, they frequently also turn traditional Indian discussion methods and scholastic tricks to their advantage.233"
     

Links/Enlaces

The Untouchable or Dalits and the Caste System

twitter.com/DalitChef

The Beginning of the caste system, Daniel
"The skin color was an important factor in the caste system. The meaning of the word "Varna" is not class or status but skin color."

WHO ARE THE INDIAN DALITS?
www.geocities.ws/dravidian_religion/indian_dalits.html
Though the term 'Dalit' refers to the suppressed and oppressed Indians, history of India reveals that the celebrated seers, religious leaders, exponents of the Indian philosophies and indigenous political heads of India were subjugated and branded as untouchables.Their descendants are now known as Indian Dalits.

Dr. M. Deivanayagam Ph.D.
Dr. D. Devakala Ph.D.
International Institute of Dravidian Vedic - Agamic - Research & Training

Tyehimba: The African Diaspora in the Indian subcontinent
www.africaspeaks.com/reasoning/index.php?topic=4964.0;wap2

Commenting on the upper castes in India Tudu remarked: “We regard these people as foreigners. I myself am a direct descendant of the indigenous people – black people of the Indian subcontinent and I consider those individuals to be foreigners and I see all African people worldwide as my brothers and sisters.”

Like Doss, Tudu is adamant that resistance and the solutions for black people lies in education of self: “I think the critical effort should be directed toward the education of [our] people. We need to have our own scholars doing this research [and] we need to resurrect our history. We have to know where we come from – all of us worldwide.”

Tudu told Black Britain that the ideology of Pan Africanism has a major role to play: “All of us can take credit for each other’s accomplishments and that we are one people. That is all African people are one united people, not fragmented based on language or tribe, we’re all the same.”

Tyehimba: The African Diaspora in the Indian subcontinent
www.africaspeaks.com/reasoning/index.php?topic=4964.0;wap2
"Tudu went on to relay a familiar picture in the UK which has caused underlying racial tensions in Birmingham, London and other areas where Asians live in close proximity to Africans and African Caribbeans: “A lot of Indian shopkeepers and other Pakistani groups have come into the US, gone specifically into depressed urban areas and have made money off the local people and treated them very badly. You have to also understand that most upper caste Hindus view Africans, African Americans or African Caribbeans in the UK as untouchables. That’s a distinction that must be made.” "
 

Denial of White Supremacy

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Aryans
"The Indigenous Aryans theory, also known as the Out of India Theory, proposes that the Indo-European languages, or at least the Indo-Aryan languages, originated within the Indian subcontinent, as an alternative to the established migration model which proposes the Pontic steppe as the area of origin of the Indo-European languages. The indigenist view sees the Indo-Aryan languages as having a deep history in the Indian subcontinent, and being the carriers of the Indus Valley Civilization. This view proposes an older date than is generally accepted for the Vedic period, which is generally considered to follow the decline of Harappan culture."
 

White Supremacy in India

scroll.in/topic/11884/racism-in-india

Race And Racism In India, JRank
"Hints of the caste system can be seen in the Rig Veda written in the late second millennium B.C.E. It was clearly in place by the time of the later Vedic texts (c. 1000–500 B.C.E.). These Sanskrit texts are generally seen as products of an Aryan migration or invasion, and they teach a sacrificial religious system known as Brahmanism or Vedism, which would in later centuries develop into Hinduism. Deeply concerned with issues of purity and pollution, the Vedic texts divided people into different groupings called varnas ("colors") at the top of which was a priestly caste called to set themselves apart from the others." 

The Adivasis of India - A History of Discrimination, Conflict, and Resistance, PUCL, 2003

Baahubali War, 2015 film celebrating the indo-aryans' slaughter of native populations
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnNka1tWG8
 

Genetics

Recent findings in Archeogenetics and the Aryan Migration Theory, Friends of South Asia
www.friendsofsouthasia.org/textbook/Recent_Findings_Archaeogenetics.html

Feminism in India

feminisminindia.com
 
Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India
over 30 pages available as a sample

Siddis, the Africans in India

Though numerically very small (50,000), the history of the Siddis, or Indian Africans, is of interest. They were far fewer than the Dravidians (214 million Dravidian language speakers today) so perhaps the Hindi speakers could afford to treat them better and some rose to high positions as generals and governors:

The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World, NY Public Library
exhibitions.nypl.org/africansindianocean/essay-south-asia.php

Linguistics

www.ancient.eu/Indo-European_Languages

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit
In order to explain the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages, the Indo-Aryan migration theory states that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in the Indian subcontinent from the north-west sometime during the early second millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes the close relationship between the Indo-Iranian tongues and the Baltic and Slavic languages, vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages, and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna.^[53] The pre-history of Indo-Aryan languages which preceded Vedic Sanskrit is unclear and various hypotheses place it over a fairly wide limit. According to Thomas Burrow, based on the relationship between various Indo-European languages, the origin of all these languages may possibly be in what is now Central or Eastern Europe, while the Indo-Iranian group possibly arose in Central Russia.^[54] The Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches separated quite early. It is the Indo-Aryan branch that moved into eastern Iran and the south into the Indian subcontinent in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Once in ancient India, the Indo-Aryan language underwent rapid linguistic change and morphed into the Vedic Sanskrit language.^[55]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migration
The linguistic part traces the connections between the various Indo-European languages, and reconstructs the proto-Indo-European language. This is possible because the processes that change languages are not random, but follow strict patterns. Sound shifts, the changing of vowels and consonants, are especially important, although grammar (especially morphology) and the lexicon (vocabulary) may also be significant. Historical-comparative linguistics thus makes it possible to see great similarities between languages which at first sight might seem very different.^[10] Various characteristics of the Indo-European languages argue against an Indian origin of these languages, and point to a steppe origin of these languages.
 

The Dravidians

Is Indus Valley Civilization Dravidian's or Aryan's?

www.harappa.com

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidian_folk_religion

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Renaissance

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidian_movement
 

Indian History

www.amazon.com/dp/0802145582/
India: A History. Revised and Updated

Indo European Studies

jies.org Journal of Indo European Studies, founded by legendary white supremacist Roger Pearson, it today features major scholars
   

Fighting Hindu Supremacy (aka Hindutva)

dismantlinghindutva.com

www.southasiacollective.org - South Asia Scholar Activist Collective

hindutvawatch.org/, twitter.com/Hindutva__watch

www.sadhana.org/

sarifm.org/

https://cohna.org/

www.hindutvaharassmentfieldmanual.org/

Students Against Hindutva Ideology (SAHI) - twitter.com/students_a_h

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