The Aryan Invasion Theory was getting jeopardized from early 2000 by researches and studies of Indian and foreign scholars such as Kenneth AR Kennedy, George F Dales, Edmund Leach, BB Lal, SR Rao, A Ghosh, Dilip Chakrabarti, VN Misra, RS Bisht, DP Aggarwal, Vasant Shinde, Nayanjot Lahiri, Yashpal, Baldev Sahai and RK Sood. These eminent paleoanthropologists, archaeologists and palaeohydrologists were highly distinguished scholars in their areas of research. These genuine scholars never felt the need for camouflaging from other faculties to launch projects, publish books and propagate certain religio-political ideologies challenging India’s past, as their interests were solely academic.
For several decades, the Aryan Invasion Theory has been used as a political weapon by political parties to divide and widen faultlines in the society. Its rejection has shocked and infuriated the Left and Evangelical camps. Further, researches on lost Sarasawati river was also gaining momentum by 2000. The Left had no archaeologist of repute to counter it. Instead they camouflaged Rajesh Kochhar, an astrophysicist, as an archaeologist to reinstate the Aryan Invasion/Migration Theory. He came out with his book titled, “The Vedic People—Their History and Geography”, which crumpled and collapsed.
Later, the move to establish the arrival of St Thomas in India by AD 52, his conversion of natives into Christianity and martyrdom in the hands of Hindus as history, received support under the patronage of JNU historians Romila Thapar and KN Panikkar. The Kerala Council of Historical Research infested with Marxist and Church historians such as PJ Cherian, Rajan Gurukkal, Kesavan Veluthat, K Rajan, Roberta Tomber and Istvan Perczel, launched a big budget Muziris Heritage Project. They excavated Pattanam site which raised huge controversies and allegations of forgery.
Few are aware of the fact that Muziris Project and Pattanam excavation was the brainchild of CPI(M) minister Dr TM Thomas Isaac. The Left Front government initially announced the Muziris Heritage Project in Thomas Isaac’s first Budget speech of 2006.
PJ Cherian did his Ph.D in modern Kerala History with focus on Communist movements. Launched by Left-evangelical lobbies, he embarked upon the project to excavate the Pattanam site, projecting himself as an eminent archaeologist.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) identified the unbridled foreign funds received by KCHR and cancelled its license along with Kerala Muslim Educational Association and Kerala United Theological Seminary under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act 2010. (The New Indian Express, Dec. 8, 2016).
Earlier, the Accountant-General detected irregularities in the KCHR audit report of 2010-11 (The New Indian Express, July 22, 2012). Later, in 2016, the KCHR was accused in creation of fake government documents, illegal appointments and financial irregularities worth crores. It is also alleged that the KCHR obtained the licence for the Pattanam excavation after submitting fake documents to the Archaeological Survey of India.
(Read more at: https://english.mathrubhumi.com/news/kerala/rampant-irregularities-detected-at-kchr-kerala-kerala-council-for-historical-research-corruption-1.1478483)
Endorsing the Aryan Migration Theory, Joseph contended that Indo-European language speakers, who called themselves Aryans streamed into India sometime around 2,000 – 1,500 BC. Vindicating Joseph’s article, Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) General Secretary, observed that these recent findings based on scientific investigations on the genetic data prove, “an Aryan migration into India around 3,500 to 4,000 years ago”. Yechury argued that this has shattered the fascist agenda in India.
Following serious charges on Pattanam excavations, and unscientific approaches adopted by the KCHR, a probe was conducted on the basis of complaints to the Union Minister of State for Culture, Mahesh Sharma. Based on the complaints, a meeting of the central advisory panel of the Archaeological Survey of India asked the KCHR to stop the excavation (Business Standard Jan. 5, 2016). The authenticity of Pattanam excavation has been questioned by eminent south Asian archaeologists and historians such as Professors Dilip Chakrabarti, A Sundara, Vasant Shinde, MGS Narayanan, R Nagaswamy and T Satyamurti.
(Read More at: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2018/12/politics-of-past-row-in-tamil-nadu-and.html)
Prof Vasnt Shinde, eminent archaeologist and Vice-Chancellor of Deccan College Research Institute, has discarded dubious claims by KCHR on Pattanam. He made his observations in an interview published as cover story in a Malayalam journal, Madhyamam (Oct., 15, 2018). KCHR has not yet defended its stand nor challenged Prof. Shinde.
In his work, Nation First, published in 2014, veteran south Asian archaeologist, Dilip Chakrabarti cautions that Pattanam is supported by ‘Biblical and Jewish’ interest groups, and urges the Indian government to take serious note of such unholy conglomerations.
Following serious allegations on Pattanam excavations, the Kerala government terminated the service of Cherian from KCHR in 2016 . Cherian launched his own NGO, PAMA in Thiruvananthapuram. Prov. RVG Menon, an engineer and former president of CPI(M) affiliated Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad or People’s Science Movement, is the new chairman of PAMA. No archaeologist is willing to head PAMA, which has been blackened by academic duplicity and financial irregularities.
The Aryan Invasion/Migration Theory has been launched by Left evangelical lobbies with exuberant vigor, after the Modi government came to power in 2014. Prof. TK Oommen, former Prof. of Sociology at JNU, said on May 2014 that, considering voting patterns in India, northern and western region of the country have an Aryan population whose ancestors migrated to India in 1500 AD. Oommen was vice chair, Church and Society, World Council of Churches, Geneva, maintains close links with Communist parties in India and elsewhere.
Now, the Left-Evangelical lobby has launched Tony Joseph, former editor of Business World, to propagate that India’s ancient past took place through Aryan migrations. Joseph is neither a historian, archaeologist nor geneticist like his predecessors, Rajesh Kocchar and PJ Cherian. Joseph was fabricated as a geneticist by Left lobbies and launched as a paleoanthropologist faculty in Indian Archaeological Studies.
Endorsing the Aryan Migration Theory, Joseph contended that Indo-European language speakers, who called themselves Aryans streamed into India sometime around 2,000 – 1,500 BC (The Hindu, June 16, 2017). Vindicating Joseph’s article, Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) General Secretary, observed that these recent findings based on scientific investigations on the genetic data prove, “an Aryan migration into India around 3,500 to 4,000 years ago (Frontline, June 21, 2017). Yechury argued that this has shattered the fascist agenda in India.
In his work titled Early Indians, Joseph has not included observations by veteran palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists such as Kenneth AR Kennedy, Dilip Chakrabarty, John Lukacs, Brian Hemphill, DE Hawkey, Todd R Disotell, Toomas Kivisild, Susanta Roychoudhury and Sanghamitra Sahoo.
Aided by Left-Evangelical lobbies, Joseph’s main mission now is to propagate Aryan Invasion/Migration Theory. Speaking at the fifth annual Dr. TK Ramachandran Memorial Lecture at Kochi in July 2019, Tony Joseph spoke on Aryan migrations into India
Joseph depends on geneticist David Reich to articulate his hypothesis. Dissenting and protesting against David Reich, a group of 67 scientists and researchers from disciplines ranging from natural sciences, anthropology, genetics, medicine, biosciences, sociology and history, wrote a rebuttal on March 30, 2018. It was signed, inter alia, by Alondra Nelson, Joseph L. Graves Jr., Lundy Braun, Nathaniel Comfort, Richard Cone and Robert Dessalle. They argued that Reich’s understanding of race is seriously flawed.
The DNA studies of the skeletal remains found at Rakhigarhi shows no Central Asian traces, indicating the Aryan invasion theory was flawed, and Vedic evolution was through indigenous people. Prof Vasant Shinde, Vice-Chancellor, Deccan College, said this establishes the knowledge ecosystem in the Vedic era was guided by “fully indigenous” people with limited “external contact” (The Economic Times, June 13, 2018). Neeraj Rai who is the head of the ancient DNA laboratory at Lucknow’s Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, did the DNA study.
(Read More at: http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=5090)
Joseph tweeted that “this story makes ZERO sense”, as he is more an authority than Vasant Shinde and Neeraj Rai in DNA studies.
Now, Joseph is sent by Left-Evangelical groups to propagate Aryan theory. In July, 2019, Tony Joseph spoke on Aryan migrations into India at a function in Kerala. He was speaking at the fifth annual Dr. TK Ramachandran Memorial Lecture at Kochi (The Hindu, July 22, 2019).
Shockingly, it is learnt that Joseph along with CPI(M) minister Isaac and few KCHR historians visited Pattanam site in July 2019, where the St Thomas is propagated to have landed in first century AD. Has Joseph found genetic material to support the arrival of Apostle Thomas in India? Anyway the association of journalist Joseph with Aryan Invasion and Pattanam excavations unveils many ongoing stories getting manufactured behind the curtain on India’s past.
(Several eminent archaeologists were consulted for writing this article.)
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