Topic - 1 Aryan Migration Controversy

The ruling question that has been a big controversy since decades, from the times of Ambedkar(a great social reformer) who denies the theory of aryan migration to times where the Hindutva right denies the theory too but in completely different perspective and intentions should be at least in some sense tackled and analyzed why it has been a controversy and why Ambedkar at that time and Hindutva now both deny even him being the strong opponent of right wing.

The Aryan migration theory says that a group of people called Aryans came from the steppe region basically the European region to India and brought culture, language etc which we follow and use in the present time. Many nationalists at the time of Ambedkar believed this theory of Aryan migration, but had different opinions on where they came from.Bal Gangadhar Tilak who was the first leader of Indian Independence movement located Aryan homeland in the Arctic circle and Nehru also accepted the trans-Indian origin.Some nationalists argued that the people who were already in India did not have proper culture, language and they were impure at that time, racially different from Aryans. The Aryans arrived in India, imposed the culture, language by conquering them and made them slaves. The Dasas and Dasayus, the names by which they were addressed were called shudras later after conquering. They also separated the white race and the black race. Ambedkar completely denies this theory by making an argument of Aryan not being a race but is the group of people speaking a particular language (Indo-European).

Ambedkar quotes Max Muller demurs, who states “There is no Aryan race in blood; Aryan, in scientific language, is utterly inapplicable to race. It means language and nothing but language; and if we speak of the Aryan race at all, we should know that it means no more than... Aryan speech”.

Also, there was no genetic proof that some people migrated to India and settled here. The people who were supporting the Aryan migration theory, especially the brahmins who believed that they are Aryans and all the non-brahmins are descendants of non-aryan race, this theory helped them to claim themselves of being superior and establish kinship with the Europeans. This led to a huge societal issue, that is the caste system. Ambedkar being the criticizer of casteist society completely disagreed with the Aryan migration theory.

The table has been turned now by the present Hindutva rightwing as the historians,archeologists,geneticists claimed that the language Sanskrit which they believe sacred to Hindu religion doesn’t have an Indian origin.

Tony Joseph, in his book early Indians talks about four groups of people who came to India, one of them being the Aryans. He argues that these four groups of early Africans, Harappans, Aryans and other groups arrived, mixed with each other until they formed their own groups and started marrying internally. This led to the emergence of the caste system.

However, if you look at the origins, no caste is pure as they got mixed earlier. This is the reason why the rightwing oppose the Aryan migration theory in the present because if they believe, the idea of one nation, one religion and following the caste system makes no sense at all and seems stupid. Also the belief of hindus being the indigenous children of the soil and all the culture and language were born here appear meaningless too. This led to a huge controversy between the believers and non-believers of Aryan migration theory. When the Rakhigari DNA report was published after the study of the DNA samples collected from the skeleton found in Rakhigari, many, who were part of the Hindutva threatened the genetic team not to publish it and created chaos by claiming the indegenous origin and making similar statements.

The attempt to make India a Hindu nation enforced by the RSS (rashtriya swayam sevak sangh), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) through making claims of having mosques built after demolishing ancient temples has been relentless. The Ram temple that is being built on the place of Babri masjid that was demolished by the rightwing mob in Ayodhya is a big example.These violences and controversies are constantly affecting the society which, people are unfortunately unaware of.

Sources:

How genetics is settling the Aryan migration debate - The Hindu

Sharma, A. (2005). Dr. B. R. Ambedkar on the Aryan Invasion and the Emergence of the Caste System in India. Journal of the American

Academy of Religion, 73(3), 843–870. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar on the Aryan Invasion and the Emergence of the Caste System in India on JSTOR

Sensitivity Over Aryan Migration Due To 2 Misconceptions, Says 'Early Indians' Author | The Quint - YouTube - Tony Joseph interview by The Quint.

Aryan Invasion Theory: A Myth or Reality? | Dabur Red Paste Arth 2019 - YouTube - Panel discussion consisting of an author,teacher Dr.David Frawley, geneticist Anil Suri,Koenrad Elst and Niraj Rai. (this video was only watched to get my views more clear on Aryan migration. No information has been taken and used in the writing)

Humes, C. A. (2012). Hindutva, Mythistory, and Pseudoarchaeology.

Numen, 59(2/3), 178–201. Hindutva, Mythistory, and Pseudoarchaeology on JSTOR

Topic 2 - Indo – Aryan Language Theory

 

Language is one of the key factors that bring about diversity both culturally and socially. As of 2021, there are over 7139 languages being spoken (How many languages are there in the world? | Ethnologue). How did this diversity originate in the first place? – This is a complex yet fascinating question that several researchers are trying to answer using scientific evidence. However, this hasn’t stopped people from speculating. In fact, the earliest known explanations as to how this diversity originated are from some religious books. 

For instance, the “Tower of Babel” incident in the Book of Genesis explains how multiple languages originated – “The story of its construction, given in Genesis 11:1–9, appears to be an attempt to explain the existence of diverse human languages. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and a tower “with its top in the heavens.” God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The city was never completed, and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth.” (Tower of Babel | Story, Summary, Meaning, & Facts | Britannica). Dante’s Divinia Comedia which talks about Hebrew being the first language given by god to man – “Dante's “De vulgari eloquentia” began with an elaborate discussion of God's giving Adam the sacred language of Hebrew in the Garden of Eden… Dante's explanation used time as a sufficient cause of language change, which explained the later divergence of Latin into Spanish, French, and Italian, as one of three groups of related languages in Europe. Italian, praised as the most illustrious of all…” (Sir William Jones, language families, and Indo-European (tandfonline.com)). 

It all changed when there was a major breakthrough in this theory by Sir William Jones in the 1786 who reject the “divine hypothesis”. William Jones proposed the “Indo-European” language hypothesis which suggests that several languages that we know today would have originated from a single language. Thus, he popularized the term “Aryan” which he used to refer to his “Proto-Indo-European” languages (Aryan - World History Encyclopedia). Jones was a multilinguist who studied several languages such as French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Latin etc. He was able to identify the similarities between these languages. He discovered further similarities between the languages mentioned above and Persian.  This led to him wondering how these similarities originated because the country that spoke Persian wasn’t even close to the European continent. In Sir William Jones, language families, and Indo-European (tandfonline.com), the author says that Jones was puzzled about this – “He said that he could not explain with certainty "how so many European words crept into the Persian language,".

Jones then travelled to India and studied Sanskrit. He observed several similarities between Sanskrit and the other European languages which led to him coming up with the theory that these languages had a common ancestor and published a paper on it. This led to people moving away from mythological explanation to more scientific and linguistic explanations. “The impact of the work was enormous, as it brought about the separation of religion from language and eschewed mythology for a more scientific approach to linguistics. This paper The Early History of Indo-European Languages delves into the similarities in sounds between these languages.

 

Source: The Early History of Indo-European Languages (journal article) (archive.org)

Jones work influenced many people. One of them was a French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau who saw Jones’ work as a proof for his belief that “White People” were superior to the others and claimed that all white people were of “Aryan blood”. He was the first one to say that the common “Aryan” language was the language of the “Aryan race”. Thus linking language with race. These were the foundational ideas over which the “Nazi” party was created (Aryan - World History Encyclopedia).

Another person who was influenced by Jones was the German Indologist Friedrich Max Muller. Muller came up with the Aryan migration theory. He believed that the Aryans that migrated to the west wherein ‘”racial purity” was maintained and that another set of Aryans migrated eastwards first to Iran and then to the Indian subcontinent. Then, the Western Aryans conquered the Eastern Aryans as they were “physically superior” and kept Sanskrit as the official language in the Indian subcontinent. (Aryan - World History Encyclopedia). 

Sources:

How many languages are there in the world? | Ethnologue

Tower of Babel | Story, Summary, Meaning, & Facts | Britannica

Sir William Jones, language families, and Indo-European (tandfonline.com)

Aryan - World History Encyclopedia

The Early History of Indo-European Languages (journal article) (archive.org)

Topic -3 Genetic proof

Population geneticists can track lineages through two paths: Y chromosome that is inherited from the paternal gene set and the mitochondrial DNA that is inherited from the maternal side. This controversial question has had a large number of people looking into it and genetic research has been finding new results until as recent as 2018, such as the one titled ‘The Genomic Formation of South and Central Asia’. 

Source: https://openthemagazine.com/cover-story/the-origins/

 Lhendup G Bhutia The origins, cover story

Human genome sequencing has shown that the Y chromosome haplogroup R1a is found across most of the Indo-European language speaking areas of the globe. This subclade or subgroup branches into two groups - R1a-Z282 only found in Europe and R1a-Z93 in south and central regions of asia. This second branch is in most of the lines of indian descent. However, the earliest traces of it are found in Ukraine around the 5000 BCE to 3500 BCE time period, which suggests that both these branches of the y chromosome haplogroup originated in that area and that the corresponding descendants having these two subgroups had ancestors from this area.

The connection between this haplogroup and indo european language speaking communities is supported by the fact that it is found in higher concentrations in upper castes associated with passing on sanskrit language- (one of the earliest documented indo european languages.

The present population of India is known to be a mixture of ANI(Ancestral North Indians) and ASI(ANcestral South Indians)

Steppe pastoralists from kazakh region moved southwards and interacted with existing Harappans and first Indians to form ANI and ASI respectively. ANI are the result of intermingling between the Harappans and these steppe pastoralists while ASI are the result of intermingling between the Harappans and the First Indians.These steppe pastoralists that are known to have spoken Proto-Indo European language, are called the yamnaya. 

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6822619/

The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia. Narasimhan et. al 2019

The Yamnaya had been influenced by contemporary communities such as the Maikop that had a role in developing use of the wheel, wagon and the horse. The domestication of the horse mobilized the yamnaya to such an extent that the only hard evidence of their existence is their ‘kurgans’(burial mounds), where their horses have been found buried with them. These were seen for the first time in the Caucasus, suggesting that the people of this region could have spoken the Proto-Indo-IndoEuropean language before the yamnaya.

Sources:

The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia (science.org)

An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers (cell.com)

Footnotes

 Authors

Anjali: Anjali looks at the scientific research done on the Aryan migration. Mapping the Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA can trace back movement of these large communities and their interactions with each other. The link between the genetic evidence of interactions and the spread of proto-indo-european language is justified through the higher prevalence of the concerned y chromosome haplogroup in higher castes associated with the preserving of sanskrit, one of the oldest indo european languages documented.

Ashvanth: Ashvanth looks at how similarities were observed between Indo-European languages which led to theories being formed so as to explain the reasons for these similarities and how this could be a potential evidence for the “Aryan Migration”.

Niharika: