Aryans

 

Book Review

Title: Aryans: The Search for a People, a Place and a Myth

Author: Charles Allen

Publisher: Hatchette India, 2023

Pages: 387

This is a book that has the potential to enrage the Right wing of India. It subverts the entire attempt of Modi Inc to arrogate the roots of Aryan racehood to India. The Aryans did not originate in India, this book asserts with sufficient scientific proofs. They came to India across the Himalayas in a very natural process of migration. All migrations were not invasions necessarily. But all successful mass migrations do affect the native population adversely one way or the other. The Harappan and Mohenjo-Daro civilisations had nothing to do with Aryans unless we consider the possibility of their being driven to extinction by the Aryans.

This the 26^th and the last book of Charles Allen, a traveller, historian and scholar on India. Allen – who says that his very name comes from the word ‘Aryan’ – died in 2020 without completing this book. His friend David Loyn did the job of editing and giving the conclusion to this scholarly work.

In his introduction to the book, Loyn says that Charles was motivated by three reasons to write this book. “The first was sorrow at the way professional historical research has been hijacked in modern India by some in the politico-religious Hindutva movement who are politically ascendant and have been looking for a founding narrative for a newly emerging power on the world stage.” Allen wanted to counter the falsehood of the history being fabricated by the mendacious Right wing in India.

“The second motivation for this book was to unpack how the word ‘Aryan’ became so twisted in the West.” Hitler thought that the Germans were the pure Aryans and his thinking created a lot of misery on the earth.

“Thirdly, Charles was driven to write Aryans by his love of archaeology.” There is a lot of proof coming in from archaeology in this book for the arguments and conclusions it makes.

The book is divided into four parts. The first part comprising two chapters tells us how the idea of an Aryan people was mythologised by the Nazis. India under the present leadership took over Hitler’s superiority complex and Messiah complex. In the attempt to show that India is the original land of Aryans, the present dispensation in the country discredits a lot of genuine research that was done earlier by such Europeans as Max Mueller.

Archaeology becomes the focus of the second part consisting of chapters 3 to 6. “Something dramatic happened in the steppe region around 3000 BCE,” argues this book. And that event, whatever it was, triggered massive migration from Europe and Eurasia. The Aryans spread to a lot of places including India. Since they were experts with horses, they managed to subdue the native people wherever they went. They also had better weapons. They were quite ruthless too.

‘India and the Aryans’ is the title of Part 3 – chapters 7 to 10. Here we are given a lot of evidence on the Aryan migration to India. The similarities between the Zoroastrian Avesta and the Hindu Rig Veda are unmistakable, though the Rig Veda is the oldest extant Indo-European text and it pre-dates Avesta by hundreds of years.

In this section, Allen gives us evidence “of a new culture arriving, almost certainly in the second millennium BCE that was utterly different from that which had previously shaped the Indus and Punjab region.” For example, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age began in India with the arrival of the Aryans, who brought with them not only their horses and chariots but also their metal workers and armours. Historical proofs for all the claims are aplenty in this book. The Rig Veda declared the Aryans as upper caste people and the others became Shudras and untouchables.

Chapter 10, the last of this section, examines the Hindu nationalism that has gripped India like a plague now. From Rammohun Roy to V D Savarkar, the major Hindutva proponents get brief introductions in this chapter titled ‘Holy Cows and Gurus.’

The last part has just one chapter in which we get a lot of the recent research and findings on the issue. DNA studies aplenty have been carried out on both ancient skeletons and present Indians groups. Lalji Singh and Kumarasamy Thangaraj collected samples from no less than 18,000 Indians belonging to 25 different groups for a DNA study which gave conclusive evidence “for the existence of two ancient populations ancestral to most Indians today but also genetically highly divergent from each other.” The North Indians and the South Indians have different DNA, in short. The North Indians share 70% of their genes with Europe while the South Indian share of the European DNA is only 30%.

The North Indian genes are closely related to Central Asian, Middle Easterners, Caucasians and Europeans while their southern counterparts “have greater ties to the subcontinent and with few links outside it.” This last chapter hurls at us some stunning scientific data. The present dispensation in Delhi won’t like it at all. Its own historians are busy rewriting history with the help of epics and myths while science is discredited again and again from public platforms by none other than the Prime Minister himself. Soon we will see this Prime Minister donning the robes of a priest and consecrating a temple dedicated to a prehistoric divine avatar.

Charles Allen’s book is extremely relevant and pertinent in today’s India. Those who are not interested in history and its inevitable jargon may find it a bit tedious. But it is not too academic in style. It is eminently readable. Those who prefer the consolations of myths should stay away from this book, of course.