Indigenous Aryans theory

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Indigenous Aryans theory is a pseudohistorical, pseudoarchaeological and politicised theory propagated by Hindutva advocates which asserts that the speakers of Indo-Aryan languages are "indigenous" to the Indian subcontinent. The conclusion of the belief is thus that the Indo-Aryan languages evolved out of an earlier stage in situ, somewhere in Northern India.

It is presented as an alternative to the mainstream Indo-Aryan migration theory, which is the scholarly consensus among the non-political and neutral academic community. Mainstream scholars hold that Indo-Aryan languages originated outside of India.

Advocates of the Indigenous Aryans theory attempt to re-date the Vedas and the presence of the Vedic people according to the traditional, Vedic-Puranic datings.

Indigenous Aryans theory plays an important role in Indian politics, especially as part of the political discourse of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the wider Hindu nationalist movement, which typically does not make the distinction of "Indo-Aryan", "Indo-Iranian" and "Proto-Indo-European", using "Aryan" as a diffuse cover term for any or all of these. The notion plays an important part to construct a Hindu identity for India.

Hindutva ideologue M. S. Golwalkar denied any immigration of "Aryans" to the Indian subcontinent. He stressed that all Hindus have always been "children of the soil".[1] Harvard professor and editor of Harvard Oriental Series Michael Witzel compares this notion to the Nazi blood and soil mysticism contemporary to Golwalkar.[2] The notion that Aryans did not immigrate to India lies on pre-enlightenment belief that traditional religious texts such as the Puranas are the ultimate authority.[3]

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[edit] Footnotes

  1. Christophe Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, p.55
  2. Witzel, Michael (2006), "Rama's realm: Indocentric rewritings of early South Asian History", in Fagan, Garrett, Archaeological Fantasies: How pseudoarchaeology misrepresents the past and misleads the public, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-30592-6, p.204-205
  3. Witzel, Michael (2001), "Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts", Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 7-3 (EJVS) 2001(1-115)
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