Chennai, without any doubt, is one of the better cities in the country. I agree with many of the issues raised by XTM here. Along with Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, and Bangalore, Chennai continues to fare better in many aspects of life compared to Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and even Pune.

My Experience

While I appreciated the cleanliness and infrastructure of Chennai, I cannot say I came away with the same impression as XTM. Of all the Indian cities I have visited, I found Chennai less hospitable than Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, or Delhi. Even as a fluent English speaker, I struggled to hail autos or get directions. Surprisingly, I did not face this issue in the rest of Tamil Nadu. For older Hindi speakers with limited English, the experience is even worse. The issue is not simply language, but linguistic chauvinism (also present in Karnataka and Maharashtra, though to a lesser extent). A non-Tamil speaker often looks for Muslim individuals to ask for help in Chennai.

I had a wonderful time in Mamallapuram, enjoying the Pallava ruins and the beach, thanks to a very helpful Muslim auto driver. But enough of auto-wala stories.

Culture and Politics

Without comparing cities directly, it is important to recognize that culture may play a role in Chennai’s successes. However, correlation should not be confused with causation, and credit should not be misplaced. Any link between Chennai’s well-being and Dravidianism is tenuous or purely incidental at best. While successive Tamil Nadu governments aligned with Dravidianism have been relatively successful (especially compared to the North) in providing welfare nets, what direct connection do these well-run policies have with Dravidianism?

Let us compare Tamil Nadu with the rest of India on the metric that Dravidian progressivism claims to address: CASTE

Link:

Scroll piece : Caste endogamy is also unaffected by how developed or industrialised a particular state is, even though Indian states differ widely in this aspect. Tamil Nadu, while relatively industrialised, has a caste endogamy rate of 97% while underdeveloped Odisha’s is 88%, as per a study by researchers Kumudini Das, Kailash Chandra Das, Tarun Kumar Roy and Pradeep Kumar Tripathy. 

Put differently: caste endogamy seems unaffected by how anti-Brahminical or “progressive” a state claims to be. Tamil Nadu, the heart of the Dravidian movement, remains at below 3%, while Gujarat—often seen as Brahmanical and vegetarian—stands around 10% (15% in a 2010 study, though possibly overstated). However one frames it, Gujarat has more inter-caste marriages than Tamil Nadu.

Surprisingly, even Haryana and Punjab—traditionally associated with Khap Panchayats and honor culture—show significant inter-caste marriages, along with Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Kerala.

While data on Haryana, Punjab, and Goa is contested, Tamil Nadu consistently lags, whereas its neighbor Kerala consistently leads, along with Maharashtra.

Crossing from Kerala into Tamil Nadu, the difference is stark: one in five marriages in Kerala are inter-caste, compared to fewer than one in thirty in Tamil Nadu. Would it be fair to blame Dravidian politics for this? That claim has more merit than attributing Tamil Nadu’s successes to Dravidianism. Tamil Nadu ranks alongside Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Kashmir, while Karnataka, Kerala, and even Andhra/Telangana are far ahead.

Even Kashmir, with a 65% Muslim population, has an inter-caste marriage rate just below 2%, lower than Dravidian-ruled Tamil Nadu. So, after 500 years under a “casteless” religion and 100 years of “progressive” Dravidianism, both Kashmir and Tamil Nadu lag behind Gujarat, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh.

Link:

Additional Observations

This data does not fit neat narratives. I was surprised to see higher percentages of rural inter-caste marriages. Rates are negatively correlated with wealth and income (more strongly with assets such as land). Landed communities show stronger caste endogamy, for historically and pragmatically clear reasons. That Brahmins, as a group, have the highest inter-caste marriage rates is unsurprising, given how progressive (some might say deracinated) Brahmins have become in India.

One social metric where Tamil Nadu performs well is female foeticide. Tamil Nadu and Kerala are among the leading states less affected by sex-selective abortions compared to the rest of India.

Tamil Brahmins have generally been more socially aloof compared to Brahmins elsewhere in India (both anecdotally and objectively) and disproportionately occupied government posts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Justice Party movement, which arose in response, was initially a elite-feudal project, though Periyar’s early movement (also virulently anti-Brahmin) was more inclusive of Dalits and non-dominant castes. Over time, while retaining its anti-Brahmin rhetoric, the movement became a proxy for domination by landed and wealthy communities. Dravidianism today (or perhaps always) resembles what it claimed to oppose—Brahmanism. The dominant elites have simply shifted from Brahmins and the British to others who hold power today. Hatred alone does not create positive change.

It seems Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh understood the incentives for reform, while Tamil Nadu did not.

Anecdotes or caste violence are often dismissed when praising the Dravidian model of social progressivism. Comparative caste violence data is brushed aside under claims of underreporting or lack of Dalit assertion in other regions. But caste endogamy cannot be ignored. If anything that truly encapsulates Caste is endogamy.

Post Script:

Tamil politicians, both DMK and AIADMK, have run better governments in terms of welfare, industrialization, and infrastructure, and they deserve credit for that. However, linking these achievements to culture may not be wise. Geography is a more convincing explanation.

This is not nostalgia. It is observation.

A Different Social Reflex

In much of the world shaped by late-stage capitalism, interaction is transactional by default. Help is conditional. Suspicion precedes generosity. Risk is individualised. In Chennai, the reflex is still different. People intervene without being asked. Strangers stop when something is wrong. Assistance is offered before motives are assessed. Money is often refused. This is not charity. It is social instinct. That instinct survives even in moments that theory says it should not: late nights, urban settings, infrastructural failure, ambiguity. The absence of alcohol matters. The presence of peer groups matters.

But more than anything, the cultural baseline matters.

Why Tamil Nadu Resists Homogenisation

Tamil Nadu’s resistance is not accidental, and it is not recent.

1. Language as a wall

   Tamil is not ornamental. It is enforced socially. This slows cultural flattening. It resists pan-Indian and global monocultures. It keeps local meaning dense.

2. Dravidian political memory

   Tamil society internalised an early suspicion of centralisation; religious, linguistic, or political. That suspicion created buffers long before the current political moment.

3. Pluralism without performance

   Religious difference is normalised rather than staged. Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism exist as lived traditions, not symbols in a culture war. This reduces siege psychology.

4. Weak penetration of chains

   Unlike Mumbai or Bengaluru, Chennai never fully surrendered its retail and social space to global chains. Local commerce still dominates daily life. That preserves face-to-face norms.

5. Family and neighbourhood density

   Gated isolation exists, but it is not total. Multi-generational presence and informal accountability remain strong.

Together, these factors produce something rare: modernity without total alienation.

The Dravidian Exception

Across South Asia, regions most exposed to imperial circuits, tourism corridors, financial hubs, Anglophone enclaves, develop a subtle sorting mechanism. Attention becomes differential. Westoxication, proximity to capital, or symbolic globality acquire value. Tamil Nadu largely escapes this logic. The reason is not moral superiority. It is insulation. Empire does not fully enter Chennai’s interior life. Compare this with places overwhelmed by external valuation; where service becomes calibrated, where the gaze changes, where people learn to distinguish between bodies. Tamil Nadu has been spared that training.

For now.

Capitalism Without Total Capture

Tamil Nadu is not anti-capitalist. It is industrial. It exports. It builds. But it has not fully internalised the idea that value must be proven through dominance, speed, or self-assertion. Accommodation still carries status. Adjusting to others is not read as weakness.

This is the opposite of the imperial ethic, where friction is resolved through power.

A Warning, Not a Celebration

None of this is permanent. The post-1990s generation shows strain. Gated living grows. English replaces intimacy. Phones replace neighbourhoods. Hyper-individualism seeps in. Capital does not destroy cultures all at once. It corrodes reflexes. Tamil Nadu’s strength lies in the fact that many people still remember another way of being, and can model it unconsciously. Once that memory fades, no policy can restore it.

Why This Matters Beyond India

What survives in Chennai is not “Indian culture” in the abstract. It is a pre-imperial social grammar: presence, mutual recognition, non-transactional help, emotional attunement. These traits exist wherever Empire has not fully won; whether in parts of the Global South, or in marginal spaces within the West itself. They are not backward. They are not inefficient. They are not sentimental. They are human.

And once lost, they are almost impossible to rebuild.

Dr Omar Ali joins me and we talk to K Jayaraman (KJ) on political movements and politics in Tamil Nadu.

KJ talks about the origin of the Dravidian movement, the evolution of the movement to a political force, the decline of Congress and BJP’s chances in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

What makes an Indian? Is it the passport? The genetics? The culture? The religion? The food? The fashion? All of the above? It’s a question that’s been hotly debated amongst the citizens of the Indian Republic since the bloody partition and independence of 1947. Praise of India’s diversity finds purchasing power both inside and outside its borders, but this diversity does come at a cost. Between religion, caste, ethnicity, language, and so many other identities, India at times seems to tear from its seams. Harbingers of hatred need no excuse to dig into the annals of history finding division and discord that can be applied today. One proposed division takes us to the time of India’s infancy. From the southern tip of the grand Indian peninsula came an ideology that posited that Dravidians, a speculative group of people who speak Dravidian languages, as the original inhabitants of the subcontinent. The patriarch of this ideology, EV Ramaswamy, known as Periyar amongst his faithful, spewed venom and violence against the “invader” north Indians and their Brahmin patriarchs and progeny.

But how accurate is this notion? Was there an idyllic, secular, and rational society prior to when the first horse hooves of the steppe stampeded into India? Did these “Aryans” bring a foreign religion called Hinduism into India as well and impose it on the Dravidians who followed a now lost faith? Half truths at least; full falsehoods at most.

Societies are stories. They are the fallout of generations of narrations about our past and who we are. Jawaharlal Nehru, freedom fighter and India’s first Prime Minister, sought to weave an “Idea of India” that was a composite tapestry of Hindu and Muslim fabrics. That tapestry has been torn to shreds for several decades now. Instead, it has been Hindutva that has supplanted the Nehruvian sacrament as the sacred fire of the yajna of yore engulfs Indians politics and a common Indian identity built on Dharma gains popularity.

But not all bow to the ritual of these ancients.

Politics Is War

There are few places where historical invasions animate the populace more than India. While much of this headspace is focused on more recent Islamic invasions of the medieval era as well as British imperialism of the colonial era, in some pockets of India, headaches originate from invasions in a time where history wasn’t even recorded in India. A missing memory of the subcontinent.

These battles are highlighted in the deep south of India, Tamil Nadu and lately have entered elite academic debates on caste. The conflict in Tamil Nadu is over the ancient peopling of India with an onus on the enigmatic Aryans. But this piece is not going to exclusively focus on the migration of the Aryans into India; there are many that do. What we will examine are the many migrations into and within India as well as the present political consequences. But first, let’s establish some quick background.

There are many stellar pieces on the peopling of India. A few I recommend are Razib Khan’s comprehensive piece, Stark Truth About Aryans: A Story of India and Aryāṃśa’s Sons of the Indus: The Indians; I will give a bare and brief synopsis below:

• The aboriginal Indian, whose genes run through the blood of nearly everyone from the Indian subcontinent, descended into the subcontinent around 50,000-70,000 years ago. This population would become known as AASI – Ancient Ancestral South Indian.
• The Iranian hunter-gatherer would enter India around 10,000 years ago and mix with aboriginals to form the Indians who gave rise to the Indus Saraswati Civilization.
• The steppe component entered India most probably in waves after 2000 BCE to 1000 BCE. They are usually the big hubbub as they are posited to be the legendary Aryans, but more on this later.
• The Austronesian component would enter from southeast Asia at a similar time of 2000 BCE to 1000 BCE.

There are other migrations into and outflows from the subcontinent as well, but for now let’s call the aforementioned out as the prominent ones we know of today. Feel free to dive into the 2 pieces I mentioned prior. I highly recommend them as they are treasure troves of information.

Indigeneity

One of the most potent lines of rhetoric that stems from Hindutva discourse is that it is fundamentally an indigenous rights movement. “Indigenous rights” – that phrase is a sacred cow today. Conjuring the bloody European campaign of terror that walked in lock step with colonialism, those who were crushed under the European heel are today demanding their reparations and retribution. In Western discourse, you cannot dare to cross these lines of persuasion. Indigeneity evokes powerful emotions and a primordial attachment to the land, where the spirits of ancestors connect to the soil itself.

But where Hindutva’s call of indigeneity faces hurtles is the proposed ancient migrations into India. Keep in mind that migrations have occurred across the world, yet this notion of indigeneity is only challenged in India. The nomadic Mexica people would clear out the valley of Mexico before they established Tenochtitlan and became the Aztecs. A substantial genetic portion and culture of the ancestors of the emblematic Greeks, Romans, hell, so many Europeans come from the steppe in the model we are discussing. The ancient Egyptians did not speak Arabic nor had a 1 to 1 genetic makeup to modern Egyptians. The massive Bantu expansion across Sub-Saharan Africa was not a Mandelan march of peace. Yet it is only in India that this standard of indigeneity is upheld. Indra, who rides an Indian elephant and blesses the agricultural Indian with rain for their crops, is a steppe central Asian god; but Zeus and Thor are decidedly Greek and Nordic. I think you see the double standard here.

Urheimat

While much attention and ire surrounds the entry of the Aryans into India, little is sounded around the Dravidians. And therein lies the hypocrisy. Politics flows from emotion first, then logic.

As we established prior, the Indian population is a mixture of 3 large waves or migrations. This 2nd migration consists of a group that was related to, but distinct from, Iranian agriculturalists in the Zagros mountains. In the shadow of the Zagros is where the people of Elam flourished. From around 3200-540 BCE, the Elamites formed the eastern frontier of the Fertile Crescent. The Elamites worshipped a menagerie of gods, many of whom they shared with Akkadian Mesopotamians, and spoke a purported language isolate; but some believe it had a cognate. The proposed cousin is to the east, in the Indus Saraswati Civilization; a civilization that the Elamites traded with frequently. The proposition is that the ancestors of the Zagros farmers of Elam kept moving east and mingled with the AASI Indians eventually forming the base population for the Indus Saraswati peoples (and much of the genetic makeup of modern Indians themselves). Ironically, this means there was an earlier set of Indo-Iranians prior to the Indo-European speaking Indo-Iranians. History indeed loves to rhyme and repeat!

Whether the Elamites were Dravidian cousins or not, we know that there was a split between those Neolithic farmers that ended up in the Zagros and those that ended up in Himalayas. This is evidenced from recent genetic studies confirming that a woman from the ancient Indus Saraswati site of Rakhigarhi was void of any Iranian Zagros farmer ancestry. The logic of these subsequent discoveries hints that farming may have even been reared independently in India in the cradles of its holy rivers.

But how do we know that the Indus Saraswati people were Dravidian? Well now we start getting to “homeland” for these Dravidians, in the southern realms of this ancient Indian civilization. The southern stretches were primarily spread across Sindh, Gujarat, as well as parts of Baluchistan and Maharashtra. We find geographic toponyms across this region with Dravidian-esque influence. Additionally, we have some scant linguistic evidence dealing with elephants. The hypothesized Proto-Dravidian word, “pīlu,” which meant splitting and supposedly references a tooth or tusk, is found in Mesopotamia circa 1400 BCE via the Akkadian pīri or pīru meaning elephant. This would make sense as trade did exist between both these lands. Regarding the northern realms, things are a bit more murky. Some hypothesize that they spoke a language that was completely wiped out or an ancestor of a language isolate found in Gilgit-Baltistan called Burushaski. However, if we go by the prior rhetoric of evidence, things get even more muddy. Of course the northern subcontinent is dominated by Indo-Aryan toponyms, yet more curiously are recent findings showing Sanskrit words related to music and trade that bear eerie resemblance to Sumerian words, indicating some form of contact. But for now, we’ll stick to more mainstream theories.

Returning to the model of steppe migration, it seems that this was concurrent with both a Dravidian migration into peninsular India as well as a thrust of AASI enriched Indians towards the northwest. This great Indian churn reminiscent of the Samudra Manthan motif or “churning of the cosmic ocean” in the Hindu Puranas is what produced the precursors of Indian culture and society today. The modern Indian was being assembled in this churn. Even more ingredients were added to the mixture through the east through Munda migrations from Southeast Asia. These migrants would particularly populate the DNA of India’s tribals or “adivasis;” a misnomer meaning “first inhabitants” that has been hijacked by political interests to misclassify these tribals as the original people of the Indian subcontinent. As we’ve seen, this is simply not the case.

As these Dravidians reached Tamil Nadu, they too brought with them Vedic culture. This is something that will cause heartburn to the fanciful separatists of Tamil Nationalist bent, but the earliest Tamil literature of the Sangam Era extols the Vedas and Vedic gods such as Vishnu, Shiva, Durga, and Indra. Even the much vilified Tamil Brahmins find praise in the earliest of Tamil texts. There was no separate secular notion in the Tamil nation. This was an Aryan land.

The True Aryan

Politicized almost beyond repair, the term “Aryan” is hotly debated amongst historians, geneticists, archeologists, and edgy internet posters across the globe. But why not ask the Aryans themselves?

The term “Arya” originally occurs in the Vedas referring those who adhere to Vedic norms or spoke the Vedic tongue, Sanskrit. Perhaps in an even narrower context in the earlier verses, it refers to those belonging to the Pūru tribe or its eponymous sub-tribe, the Bharatas. In later verses, we see this “Arya” term expanded to other Vedic tribes as well as being using in an abstract sense denoting “pure” or “noble.” Later Indian literature steadies on the dual definitions of “noble” or someone who adheres to Dharmic norms as an “Aryan.”

The common characterization of these Vedic peoples is that they came into India and wiped out the natives, completely destroying their culture and bringing their traditions as the new centerpiece of Indian civilization. But this is not true either. With climate and geological changes, the Indus Saraswati civilization waned eventually collapsing prior to the entry of the steppe people. These steppe people would come into India and indeed would conquer, but they would then be integrated completely. They came, they saw, they conquered, and then they were swallowed.

The people who wrote the Vedas were in love and reverent to the land of India. The rivers, mountains, plains, forests, even the literal dirt itself was holy to them. Their gods were flanked with Indian flora and fauna. They delved into philosophies and rituals alien to the wider world. They were a profoundly unique people who would not be who they were if they did not live and die in India.

Over time, many of the gods who found the most praise in the Vedas, the lords of the elements such as Indra, Varuna, Agni, etc…, would give way to other divinities who would eclipse them in prominence. Vishnu’s greatness could be gleaned throughout the early Vedic verses as he was frequently paired with Indra, Surya, Agni, and light itself. He was referenced as the guardian of the highest home, where a soul that has broken the cycle of reincarnation resides. The dawn of Vishnu and Shiva would arrive with the transition to the Puranas and Itihasa epics. In the Yajurveda, Narayana, a popular epithet for Vishnu, is mentioned as the supreme being. The icon of the Pashupati seal of the Indus, Shiva, known as Rudra in the Vedas also makes frequent appearances as a lord of storms and destruction. Adorned with a cobra for a necklace, his home in the Himalayas, the sacred Ganga river springing from his matted locks, and donning leopard skin, Shiva’s iconic Indian brand radiates his local roots.

But it is in the tales of the Dark Lord that we see a glimpse of which gods would rule the Indian mind. While popular narratives would tell you that a skin color apartheid was enforced by the steppe folk, what’s curious is that dark skin gods would become their supreme deities. They would even beg the gods for dark skin children. The Brihadarayanka Upanishad devotes verses (6.4.16) denoting the high merits and methods needed to conceive dark skinned children; merits and methods that were greater than those needed for lighter shades. Vishnu, whose avatars and epithets possess names frequently alluding to his dark skin color, would rise as a zenith of the Hindu pantheon over the ages. A possible peek into the rise of Vishnu’s prominence lies in the tale of Govardhan.

Krishna, Vishnu’s incarnation, watched as his adoptive father, Nand, prepared to pray to Indra to bless them with rain. The young Krishna would chide his father for fearfully worshipping a god who had grown jealous and arrogant with power. He instead told his father and the villagers to pray to the mountain Govardhan and revere their cattle for those were the true guaranteers of their agricultural success. An incensed Indra would send a terrible torrent on Krishna’s home, Braj, flooding the land. The legend climaxes with Krishna lifting Govardhan with his finger, protecting Braj from the storm, and humbling Indra into obeisance. Perhaps this represents the transition of which god(s) curried the most favor with the ancient Indians. Perhaps not, but it is a convenient tale.

As we continue along the lines of “whataboutery” regarding these Aryans, one eventually reaches a meditating monk under a tree. The Buddhist and Jain traditions, known as Śramanism, are postulated as rebellions or descendants of pre-Aryan Dravidian Indian religion. Yet as we’ve already established the deep roots of Hinduism in pre-steppe India, we must also establish the Aryan roots of Buddhism and Jainism. Both religions recognize caste as a feature of Indian society and even endorse it in some scriptures. Buddha self-designates his way as the Arya Dharma, a reviving of the true way of the Vedas not the corrupted version of his time. He colors his commentary with decidedly Hindu motifs that link his message and incarnation with the great tales and people of India’s Vedic past. Śramanism was a descendent of Vedic thought that would run parallel to orthodox ancient Hinduism (or Brahminism as it is maliciously termed by academia and activists), and both became intertwining strands of a common multifarious Indian Dharma, borrowing from each other with ease and synchronizing concepts with harmony.

Political Picassos

“War is deceit,” so said the Prophet Muhammad ages ago amongst the sands of Arabia. Many movements that outwardly appear to be extremely ideological in fact are power struggles for resources on ground. Periyar and his cohort of powerful landed castes in Tamil Nadu, used the garb of Dravidianism and mythical millennia old battles to oust the franchised Brahmins from their powerful positions in Tamil society. Endowed with British cooperation and historical success, the Brahmins of the Tamil country occupied both landlord and administrative roles in the colonial era as well as possessed a culture that strongly emphasized education. Periyar’s poison would flow across the veins of Tamil society with an intense animus of hatred directed towards the Tamil Brahmins. The offensive attire of fanciful rhetoric and minimalistic reductions of ancient migrations resulted in the gradual emigration of many Tamil Brahmins from Tamil Nadu. Additionally, we see almost anti-semitic-like conspiracy theories surrounding the minuscule yet prosperous Brahmin minority, where many blame every evil and sin of society on the conniving control and domination of Brahmins.

The power vacuum left by the Brahmins would be taken up by castes allied with Periyar. To buttress diatribes against the Brahmins, Periyar made it a point to paint Brahmins as Aryan invaders who imposed their religion on the Dravidian society, which he deemed as “secular” and “rational” as opposed to the “superstitious” and oppressive Aryan faith of Hinduism. Periyar would go so far in his malice towards Brahmins so as to encourage the literal hunting and killing of Brahmins in Tamil Nadu. While Dravidianism was supposed to be a panacea to casteism, still we see it unfortunately practiced in Tamil Nadu today. Meanwhile, increasingly violent and xenophobic oratory attempts to cleave the great Tamil culture from the Indian civilization.

So ironic this is, as much of India owes itself to Tamil Nadu. From the wise Vedanta philosopher, Ramanuja, whose ideas catapulted the Bhakti movement across all of India to the great Chola emperors (who funny enough referred to themselves as Aryans) who carried the Tamil crown across the subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Tamil Nadu functioned as the incubator and refuge of a Hinduism ravaged in the north during medieval invasions. Scores of Tamil scientists, especially the former Indian President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, would push Indian technology and capability forward making the lives of all Indians better. Yet today, it is Periyar’s ideology that dominates the Tamil political sphere.

One of the more disturbing parts about the effect of such simplistic takes on ancient Indian migrations is a niche form of genetic supremacy that is developing. While some embellish the stature of their steppe DNA, others claim themselves as the true aboriginal of the land due to their large proportion of AASI lineage. They go so far as even asking for reparations based on this poppycock of logic. While there is some correlation between mixes of steppe, IVC, and AASI lineages around caste, it is an imperfect and a diverse amount that is in the end, a mixture. All Indians are an amalgamation of these people to various degrees. There is almost no pure steppe, IVC, or AASI person in the subcontinent (the Andaman Nicobar people may be sole exception on the AASI front). The movement towards heightened caste consciousness combined with the advocation of an almost racial element to caste could be potentially disastrous for India.

India’s history is one of syncretism and synchronization. Multiple identities, ideas, and itihasas were welded together by the Vedic verses millennia ago. Both the Brahmins and Śramanas or priests and ascetics traversed the Indian expanse and spread the message of Dharma. Still, they all agreed on the inherent divinity and sacredness of the subcontinent, of Bhārata. That is what distinguishes these people, these ideas, and these philosophies from the rest of the world. Indeed, as one delves into the story of India, a story that encapsulates much of human history and audacity of both thought and action, one attains the truth in the Mahabharata’s triumphant epilogue:

A year after my blog post on the topic of the Aryan invasion, I am revisiting the topic on Brownpundits, not as a query into the historical question but as a question of identity and politics.

The Aryan debate touches a variety of political faultlines in India and hence is not going to be settled anytime soon I presume, yet intellectually I think it is a non-sequitur for most of the alleged issues around which the issue is discussed. Those issues being (not necessarily in order of importance)

• Western colonialism and racism and its converse in India. (Identity)
• The Jati-Varna system and its legacy in India
• Dravidian nationalism
• Islam and Christianity in Modern India.
• Love for native antiquity and religious dogma.

My primary issue with the politics around this issue is that it clearly prevents intelligent and passionate people interested in the topic from pursuing it clear-headedly (Not that researchers don’t get illogically attached to their theories in face of overwhelming evidence). Perhaps the example of Colin Renfrew (Anatolian farmer hypothesis) accepting the Kurgan hypothesis (Marija Gimbutas) after the ancient DNA work came out is an outlier but it is still good to know such examples.

As far as the politics go, it’s fair to state that it’s the Hindutvadis who are at the vanguard of pushback against AIT/AMT (however it’s important to note that there are notable exceptions, and not all Hindutvavadis are invested in this debate). Also some non-Hindutvavadi (especially traditional Hindus and Indians with nativist anti-colonial mindset) are also invested in this debate.

Identity: Western colonialism and racism and its converse in India.

The genesis of the Aryan invasion theory was in the racist notions of white and European superiority – “White horse warriors who spoke a form a proto Sanskrit arrived in the subcontinent and subjugated the dark, stubby-nosed natives of India” (in process civilizing them). The extrapolation of this being – what the British colonizers were doing was just the latest upgrade of civilization being uploaded in the lands of relapsed natives. But then the stunning finds of the IVC began poking holes in this simplistic racist take. Though initially Indra was accused of the destruction of the IVC, later developments in the field acquitted him. However, it is important to note that as migrations became unpopular in global academia for the spread of cultures (post the Nazi Aryan theories), the Aryan migration theory remained mainstream in Indian academia (though the initial racist and simplistic narratives were rejected even by eminent Secular/Marxist historians).

Rejection of the AMT based on the circumstances of its genesis still remains a major reason for the rejection of AMT by Indians. The sentiment behind it being “No white men from outside civilized us”. However, it needs no pointing that in the academic chronology of Indian history, the Pre-Aryan IVC is the major Copper-Bronze age civilization known to us. As we discover more about pre Iron age peninsular India, we find the Stone-Chalcolithic age in the geographic region of India went far beyond the IVC and north Copper hoard sites. At this point, it is fair to assert that Rice cultivation developed somewhat independently in the region East of Punjab. Even basic ancient Indian books like Ancient India by Upinder Singh and India’s Ancient Past by RS Sharma have good length devoted to non-IVC pre-Iron age India.

No white men from outside civilized us” seems settled but its converse is commonplace in nativist Indian circles these days. The term Indus valley “civilization” is only used for the 2600bce to 1900bce Urban period, yet the web is replete with articles that push back the dates of “civilization” in IVC sites (as back as 8000 BCE), particularly Rakhigarhi which incidentally falls in modern India. This need for everything good happened in Ancient India first manifests itself in badly researched and tenous articles like this one – My response to it – here.

I see this need to find Ancient Indian examples for political or scientific advances without robust data to be the mirror to the Racist colonial theories.

Varna divisions and Dravidian faultlines:

Some critiques of the AIT/AMT take umbrage to the instrumental use of AIT/AMT by Brahmins/Kshatriyas to justify the Varna system and also by Dalit/Bahujan activists to “Smash” Brahmanism and thus by proxy Hinduism. The annual Durga-Mahishasur controversy and the Vaman-Bali Onam flamewars keep the controversy in the news.

The Eurasian-like ancestry (ANI ancestry) in India (Both Steppe pastoralist and IVC-like) is mostly correlated with the Varna status. The somewhat ethnic nature of the Varna hierarchy is unpalatable for modern Hindus to digest. However, it is important to note that such ethnic divisions in classes are commonplace around the world. While it is fair to assume in pre-modern times the interactions which led to the great mixing of the Indian subcontinent (2000BCE to 0AD) had violence and exploitation cooked into them, the reasons also could be explained without the worst subjugation imaginable.

Anyways it’s a fool’s errand to indulge in finding conclusive evidence in pre-literate history, I would argue that the question of Aryan Migration is irrelevant to this oppressor-oppressed narratives. From outsiders’ accounts, native sources as well as genetics, I think it is fair to conclude that after initial intermixing, a group of people who happened to have a higher proportion of certain ancestry (genetic/ cultural) dominated another set of people – either organically or systemically. Razib Khan makes this point very succinctly in his substack.

However, to this uncomfortable conclusion, it does not matter whether the ancient Arya expanded from the Kazakh steppes or the Punjab region or even Anatolia for that matter. The boundaries of Aryavarta in the subcontinent were themselves always expanding into their margins, and only after the complete expansion does the notion of Sacred geography become important; not before. Politically this point will be made either honestly or dishonestly by westerners and political opponents of Hinduism (not just Hindutva) – but there is space for a nuanced counter without indulging in ad-hoc denial which logically may be irrelevant. Even the most dogmatic adherents of sacred geography have to reflect that there was a time the geography wasn’t sacred.

Dravidian nationalism:

While most of the points made in the above passage are relevant to the question of Dravidian nationalism, its (Dravidian nationalism) basis is shakier than the Varna ethnic division. This point is made wonderfully by Razib khan here. Most probably IVC exodus had begun before the arrival of Steppe pastoralists (Arya in my opinion), so at best the pre-history can fit a model of subjugation of peninsular natives (AASI adjacent) by the farmers and pastoralists who left the collapsing IVC southwards. As mentioned before, it is a mug’s game to impose oppression Olympics on pre-history, but if it has to be done then the one mentioned in the previous line makes more sense than the Aryan-Dravidian dichotomy. The model that two elite cultures were interacting, integrating, subjugating, and co-opting natives – one in the north and one in the south while interacting with each other along the periphery seems to be the parsimonious explanation. In the mood of speculation, I would add that there was another elite culture in the mix – which Michael Witzel now calls – Kubhā-Vipāś substrate (which he earlier called Para-Munda) – corresponding to the remnants of the IVC in the North. 

Islam and Christianity:

Arguably this remains the biggest reason Hindutva remains politically opposed to AMT. The initial framing of Hindutva by Savarkar and Golwalkar made use of the insider-outsider analogy. While Savarkar saw no dissonance between his framing of Hindutva and Aryan migration, it was the religiously dogmatic and un-intellectual-ish Golwalkar whose framing of Hindutva rested on Hindus being native to the subcontinent since the beginning of time. Armed with the AIT/AMT the opponents of Hindutva have attacked this particular point scornfully in Golwalkar’s framing as a slam-dunk. Examples of this being this particularly transparent framing by Shoaib Daniyal. (given that he knows linguistics and must know that Rigvedic Sanskrit was most probably spoken in India around the same time).

However, this point shouldn’t matter for the intellectual foundation of native Indian thought (Hindutva ++) because.

• One of the most common points made by AMT skeptics is that the Rigveda doesn’t clearly remember some older homeland. This point alone is enough to deny the Hinduism is foreign to the subcontinent argument. Firstly what we understand as Hinduism today is far different from the religion of the Rigvedic Aryans. Hinduism cannot at the same time be a British invention as well as imposed 3 thousand years ago by invading Aryans.
• On the contrary viz. Turkic invaders who became rulers of the North and Central subcontinent were evidently aware of their foreign stock. Before most of the north Indian dynasties could go native, they were replaced by newer invaders for centuries. The Portuguese who violently brought Christianity to the coasts of India were equally sure of who they were and who they were not. As with the Parsis, Cochim Jews and British.
• As I have argued before, current Hindu-Muslim faultlines have less to do with what the medieval invaders did and more what the Pakistan movement achieved and how Muslim intransigence and Hindutva consolidation have progressed since independence. This is a contested opinion and I plan to handle it sometime later in a separate post.
• While Aryas and Medieval invasions remain contested and debated hotly, the dozen or so invaders who invaded post the Vedic period (barring Alexander) are not even footnotes in the discourse of the day. This brings me to the more important differentiation – data becomes sparse we go back and wrt to the Aryan migration we are truly holding at straws for building our narratives.                    Ex – the alleged anti-idolatry sentiment in the Rigvedic Aryans (wrt to some smashed Proto-linga from old Indus sites) is so flimsy and incomparable to the medieval invaders (more importantly the iconoclasm of the later kind remains as relevant today as it did in the medieval time)

Ideally in a modern democracy, all citizens have equal rights no matter whose ancestors came into the geographical entity when, but some framings of Hindu Rashtra (not all) make Muslims and Christians lesser citizens. While this yardstick continues to be used, arguments and rebuttals on this dubious point will continue (but it need not be).

Issues with academic chronology:

Unlike most states who have founding myths in historic times (barring China, Egypt, and Iran I guess), the foundations of the Indian civilizational state go back well into the Bronze-Iron age. The historic timeline of Agriculture (till IVC) 3500BCE -> IVC (2000BCE) -> Vedic period (1500-700 BCE) -> MahaJanapada period (700-300 BCE) are at odds with most chronologies popular among Hindus (even Jains for that matter). While the absolutely ludicrous timelines presented by Nilesh Oak have widespread support, it is far beyond my ability to address them. However, the academic dating of Indian history makes the Rigveda a 3500-year-old text at most, the events of Mahabharata (if they really occurred) as a 3000-3500 -year-old event. I guess Hindu traditionists (not necessarily Hindutvavadis) cannot digest the inconsistencies of traditions with academic history. While this appears to be an insoluble issue, I think like scientific oriented Christians and Jews who no longer hold the Book of Genesis as a historical text, Hindus can also look at their traditions from a rational lens (though currently where the truly scientific lens differentiates from the colonial lens is contested). However, this is easier said than done as the parallels between Creationism and Indian traditions (especially Itihasa) are unfair (as especially young-earth Creationism is way easier to dismiss).

In most of the above points, the Aryan debate remains irrelevant to the political narratives if one faces them with intellectual honesty, maybe except in the case of timelines. Ex: Brits whose self-conception goes back to the Magna Carta at most, don’t care whether Romans invaded and occupied Celtic Britain. Neither do they care about the Viking invasions or Norman conquests (as much). Unfortunately, Indian self-conception as a civilizational state goes back further than the Muslim invasions. Hence to counter the inconvenient history, the pre-historic events attested in one of the earliest texts of human history remain contested. Also the “we are a 5000-year-old civilization” drum cannot be beaten endlessly if Rigveda is dated to 3500 years ago – the date is irrelevant – the idea of the antiquity of ancient texts is not. It is the notion of eternal or Sanathan Dharma that trumps considerations, whose genesis is lost in the mist of time.

Postscript:

This essay is not an attempt to convince the ideologically dogmatic about the intellectual irrelevance of the debate but to convince those who try to be intellectually honest on both sides to rethink the linkages of politics to this debate.

Also, the AIT/AMT debate is not politically used against Jainism and Buddhism – whose texts also had the Arya-Mleccha distinction. Indra continues to be a Buddhist/Jain deity even outside the subcontinent.

There is no God, There is no God, There is no God at all,The inventor of ‘God’ is a fool,The propagator of God is a scoundrel,the worshiper of God is a Barbarian.

we can also say,

There is no morality, There is no Morality, There is no Morality at all, The inventor of ‘Morality’ was a manipulator, The propagator of Morality was liar, The believers of Morality are selfish cowards.

If one is to discard religion for lack of evidence, then one might discard belief in morality as false too. I find the logic of atheists false . one cannot demolish the idea of belief in religion through scientific scrutiny and deny applying the same scrutiny as well to idea of ‘morality’. We are apes, designed by Darwinian evolution whose purpose isnt morality. It is mere survival. Designed by natural laws totally blind to all abstract things that humans cherish.

The recognition of this would mean the joke is infact on atheism & atheists who believe they can wash off their hands of crimes of all religions , infact, by declaring their criticism of religion on empirical facts, Atheists would at once be forced to acknowledge that their criticism of religion is in error for that same scientific scrutiny should make them accept man to be a beast. All the violence of man everywhere would have to be embraced as theirs as well including religious violence because it is part of our collective human endowment. The natural conclusion of such materialistic worldview based on such trivial empirical data of there “being no god” for lack of evidence would mean that all violence is justified for there are no abstract entities like ‘justice’. Abstract Truths have no independent existence in this world.

A lot of problems in today’s world would be cleared up if one made this clear that ‘morality’ is not true , the excessive left rhetoric can be demolished pointing to basic facts that we are not equal in our physical attributes or mental capacities. But this is only possible by demolishing idea of ‘morality’ itself. All there is, is naked ambition for power, egotism, Machiavellian worldview, lies,deceit, the ultimate summit of man then in this world is absolute power and sensual pleasures.

This will leave us with the only real options we have, which is the physical world and the abstract rules by which we wish to live by, any attempts of designing any kind of moral rules must accept that they are ultimately abstract , just as religions are.

How we live therefore depends on assumptions we buy into.There are many abstract set of rules by which human beings can live by.The difference between truth and belief is that, truth emerges irrespective of belief, but a particular set of abstract rules which one might decide to live by on the other hand requires active belief of many individuals . so, both the discovery of such abstract rules and participation firstly requires one to first value knowledge and the assumptions on which such knowledge is constructed, but it is not obvious that everyone values knowledge and even if they do, not necessary that they would give up on their cherished codes of living. Or that in future some of them might very well return to some form of it or something different.

This will at once clarify to us about nature of regimes like china and religion of Islam. They dont buy into same assumptions as those of other societies. With this basis it would be straight forwardly prudent that groups of different worldview should try to pacify others by reciprocal actions. That this becomes the primary way to consider issues rather than to live in whiggish worldview, where one sits quietly living day to day life while other groups with clear motive to harm you keep arming themselves, or keep attacking you repeatedly through acts of terrorism.

This would mean that we can either sit quietly assuming all things will turn out right by themselves and be willing to risk one’s downfall or be proactive in bringing series of reciprocal tactics of various kinds to pacify aggressive group ideologies and individuals of those groups. This is a better way than to simply believe that somehow all religions are destined to “reform”. There is no guarantee for this. Others shouldn’t have to bear the risks for this blind belief.

….
By now we are familiar with the concept of Brahmin leadership of the extreme left. Even the Maoist Central Politburo – the high command charting the revolutionary waves-  is populated by super-castes (only one tribal member).

It is the usually the sons of the privileged who are (as Omar would say) at the vanguard of the revolution (Bong version: Jomidar-er chele Naxal – the son of the Zamindar is a Naxalite). You need to be a top dog to recognize that your own skin has just the right texture for making shoes for the poor. …… 

Remember, Osama Bin Laden, the other revolutionary hero? He was from an affluent background as well (middle son of a middle wife…hence deprived of father’s love…and it shows).

We were most surprised to find out
that the man who pioneered the Tamizh as a classical language movement
(higher, better, wider than Sanskrit) was actually a Brahmin. Dravida Sastri (as he was known) was such a
fanatic (used in a positive sense) that he changed his Sanskrit-derived
name  to a pure Tamizh one. In present day terminology he would be called a self-hating Brahmin…just like Dr Norman Gary Finkelstein is considered a self-hating Jew.

Since then many a famous Dravida leader have followed in the foot-steps of Dravid Sastri. Thus Dakhsina Murthy became Karuna-Nidhi. And now the Dravida movement is being ably led by the one and only ‘Puratchi Thalaivi’ (‘Revolutionary Leader’) ….an Iyengar (highest possible caste) named Jaya-Lalithaa (extra “A” at the end due to “sanskrit-hindu” astrological reasons, similar to why all Ekta Kapoor productions are initialled “K”). 

Sastri also pioneered/popularized the concept of Kumari Nadu, the cradle of (Tamizh) civilization – referred to by others as Lemuria (see below) – which is now sunk into the great depths of the Indian Ocean and has left no trace behind (just like that Malaysian plane).
  
……
We have an age-old (unsolved) puzzle for you, which will help you to discover your inner Dravida-man (or for the Tam-Brahms- your self-hating persona). 
Is Ginger Sanskrit-origin or …..is it Dravidian?

From the Online Etymology Dictionary: