SI 6 - The Aryan Invasion Debate - Rajiv Malhotra

Sri Rajiv Malhotra, in this address, speaks of the role played by Infinity Foundation in recognising the importance of the Aryan Invasion Theory debate and the outcomes he hopes the seminar will achieve. He highlights the need to engage with opposing forces in the academia and kurukshetra to ensure debate takes place on empirical evidence and narratives are written based on facts. He addresses the gathering on important points on what constituted civilization in the ancient times, when borders were not rigidly defined as today but porous. He highlights that civilizations in ancient period were dynamic with in flow and outflow of ideas and people, and achieved equilibrium when the ideas become the dominant ones, thus giving a geographic centre to the equilibrium and generating a civilization. Given the recent importance accorded to genetic studies in the AIT debate, Sri Rajiv Malhotra underscores the important point that genetic transfer does not equate with knowledge transfer and are two separate concepts. Another important point he flags is that there could be many causes which disrupt the course of a civilization and invasion is not the only but one among them. Rajiv Malhotra then considers the vedic civilization equilibrium and fluxes associated with it. He highlights that it is fallacious to assume that the vedas were imported into India based on the idea that the vedic civilization had an influx and outflux of people across it. The flow assumed for genetic migration may show some directions while vedic knowledge and archaeological trajectories show different vectors. He cautions that we should not impose present day boundaries on periods more than 6000 years ago, for the entire area constituted ancient Bharata. The loss of territory with socio-political changes should not constitute loss to claim its history as well. Sri Rajiv Malhotra also cautions against the imposition of the time periods the west uses, for the whole idea that materialism constitutes the arbiter of civilizational progress is inherently western. He highlights the consequent importance of studies in chronology and the larger need for creating social sciences independent of western centrist methods. He flags the Dravidian movement as the major obstacle to counter in the AIT debate, for it plays into divisive forces which seek to propagate a false narrative of alienation amidst Indians.