Aryan Problem

Monday, August 17, 2015

Aryan Problem

Political Motivations and the Aryan Race Theory

Atul Rawat

The so called Aryan race theory was first born in the minds of some European indologists. Various Aryan hypotheses have been part of a very long surviving controversy regarding history. Many questions regarding cultural affinities, identities, and various kinds of ideological and national interests have their roots in them. They have been some of the cornerstones of the present day understanding of history and culture in a very large part of the world today. The geographical region that is involved is large parts of Eurasian continent besides parts of Americas and Australia.

Who were the Aryans and where did they originate? These have been the major questions of this old riddle of history. The questions of cultural and national identities besides political and other interests have been involved. Many generations of historians have perceived this complex problem interwoven with their own contemporary issues. At the same time they have also tried to solve the riddle with the best and most modern tools available to them. But all the historians have not been that impartial to facts either. Like in any other sphere here also the standpoints have decided the viewpoints. Ideologies and preconceived notions besides personal interests have colored visions of many, if not all.

It began with a very interesting finding on part of a Florentine merchant Filippo Sassetti in 1588 AD when on a business trip to India he found that the Hindu classical language Sanskrit had some deep relation with major languages of Europe. The easiest example that can be cited is that these languages have very similar looking words for the closest relationships like mother, father, brother and daughter etc. But the British interest awoke almost after two centuries after Sassetti, when the father of Indology and a linguist par excellence, Sir William Jones, suggested in 1786 that the relation was due to origin from a common source. Sir William Jones and his studies gained a lot of importance because a very interesting and a powerful connection was proved between the Europeans and the Hindus. 

This is all the more significant because when the languages evolve, initially they are spoken by a closely knit group of people of the same ancestry. It is at the later stage that more people are added and the demographic base of a language widens. Eighteenth century was an era when the concept of race was very popular and the concept of evolution (Darwin) was still almost a century in future. The creationism essentially meaning that the man was made by God in 4004 BC, was in vogue in the academic circles. When the Western scholars came face to face with the Hindu knowledge, they could naturally not believe in the astronomical numbers of years that were ascribed to various events or persons. They thus naturally disbelieved the Sanskrit literature as a source of any serious history writing. 

            Rig-Veda is not only the oldest book of Sanskrit but is the oldest book available in any language.  The western scholars picked up a word Aryan from the Rig-Veda and used it as nomenclature for the speakers of this ancient language which they named Indo-European.  These conjunctures were followed by another one ( described above) according to which the Sanskrit speakers i.e. the Aryans were living at some point of time in the past at one place from where they spread to other parts of the world.  This was broadly how the Aryan race theory slowly emerged.  It has many strong influences of the nineteenth century stereotypes.  The European scholars of those days seriously believed the mankind to be divided in various races and it was due to this particular view that Aryans were also broadly termed into a race.  Though, initially the Aryan race theory emerged on the basis of linguistic similarities but it was not considered necessary to go into the origins of the word Aryan itself in the Sanskrit language to which it belonged.  The word ‘Aryan’ comes from the root which is closely related to “knowledge”—both giving and partaking.  This shows the importance of knowledge in the Vedic culture.  The Sanskrit words for knowledge i.e. Vidya and Veda both have similar origin.  Thus Aryans or Sanskrit speaking people were a “knowledge based society” where the nobility was based upon knowledge. It was because of this factor that the connotation of the word Aryan is also taken as superior turning it into a cultural term.  There do not seem to be any racial meanings of Aryan in Sanskrit, the language from which the word was picked up. 

 The Aryan race/invasion/immigration theory from the beginning was used for political purposes as it is still being used. That is why the nineteenth century stereotypes of race were fully applied on the Aryans and they were accordingly presented as fair in color, having long nose, broad forehead and large black eyes etc.  The recent researches are pointing on the other hand towards a direction where it seems that the civilizations described in the Rig-Veda was the part of an ancient layer of civilization [consisting of most of the so-called races] and which was in existence before the emergence of Ancient Egypt Sumeria and the Indus Valley civilizations.  These researches are buttressed by the new researches in the field of pre-historical Archaeology of Europe and that is why the rewriting of not only the Indian history but even the European history is becoming more and more necessary by the day.

            It is to be noted that scholars like N S Rajaram and David Frawley believe that the Aryan invasion theory is much more deeply related to the nineteenth century European politics than the Indian tradition and its records.   They have raised basic questions on the methodology of those western scholars who believe in the Aryan invasion of India.  They believe that the methodology of the “invasionists” was not capable to be applied universally to the ancient history.  Though the linguistics is certainly very important and the first signs of similarities between the Europeans and Asians were traced in their languages and later in myths, but other broader dimensions like the history of science and technology especially mathematics have to be included into the methodology. Those branches of knowledge do not testify or even disprove the basic contentions of the invasionists.  Rajaram and Frawley rightly believe that the Aryan Invasion theory is still being taught in the history text books not due to any academic reasons but due to political ones.

            From the very beginning The Aryan race/Invasion/migration theory had inherent contradictions in it. That is why it could never become a universally accepted fact of history.  It was at the most accepted as a hypothesis.  But from the very beginning and till this date this theory received patronage from various political groupings.  Those groupings included such divergent political entities like the British rulers in India before 1947 and the communist elite of post independence India. Each of these groupings had their own political interests.  Initially the political use of the theory was the brainchild of the English.  It was used to the hilt in their strategy to divide India in North and South, in Aryan and Davidian, in Brahmin and non-Brahmin, in higher and the lower castes and no less in black and white.  Even after the departure of the British from the Indian politics the theory was exploited politically to the maximum by deepening the divides and converting each section into a vote bank.  The Dravid movement used it in the South; the communists used it all over India.  The socialists used it to create vote banks on the basis of caste and the Christian missionaries used it to break Hindu society on the basis of caste to find converts to christianity.  The “White man’s burden” was also a fallout of this theory it was only the basis of the White man’s burden that the British gave rationale to there imperialism and colonialist expansionism.  They sought to justify their expansionism by declaring the Muslims and Aryans also to be invasionists.   They could present India as a country which had no original inhabitants.  This theory presented everyone as an invader.  This would justify the British right to rule meaning that the nationalist upsurge against the British had no justification.  This was a shameless attempt to legitimize the foreign British rule in India.  The British got one more advantage of this theory.  This theory helped them in their project of creating “Brown Englishman” who, even if would not be able to call themselves white per se, but still could feel themselves nearer to the Englishman due to knowing their customs and language.  The descendants of such Brown Englishmen are visible throughout India even today who not only have inferiority complex about being Indians but also hold the white skin in undue respect.  The linguistic similarity which proved the immigration of Aryans into India could equally easily prove the Aryans to be originally Indians and spreading into the other parts of the world from India.  But naturally this could have been of no use to the British.  So all such references which could substantiate the view that Aryans were originally Indians who spread to the other parts of the world were either suppressed or ignored.  If these references were difficult to be ignored, they were laughed away.  The sarcasm hidden in this laughter was more on the present condition of the Indians than on the arguments of history thus presented.  This was obviously a more effective way to silence the critics.  The way the Brown Englishman have been using the similar tactics against the Indian scholars particularly the scholars with Aryan Samaj background is a perfect example of this mentality.

            During almost last one and a half century since the Aryan invasion theory has been in politico-academic use; there have been many important changes in the academic atmosphere though some stereotypes have stubbornly continued also.  The changes are reflected in the use of scientific methodology and also in the new interpretations of the ancient literature in the light of the new methodology.  Today we can understand the relation between the Vedas and Puranas in a much better manner.  The combined result of scientific and mathematical concepts on the ancient literature cleared that it was not sufficient to base the Aryan race/invasion theory on mere linguistics.  This theory had never been able to explain the history ofIndia although it had to explain the history of the whole of ancient civilization.  A whole new generation of historians is now using astronomical, literary, environmental and metallurgical data with satellite images to understand the history in a better manner.  They are now getting convinced that the Rig-Veda had been completed by 3,750 BC which is broadly the period when silver began to be produced in India.  Many scholars believe that if some more technical data comes to light the date may further be revised backwards.

            The Aryan race/invasion theory was always challenged by a Indian scholars and the historians have never been unanimous on this theory.  That is why the advent of the Aryans into India was never accepted as a historical fact and was at best a hypothesis but due to the state patronage this was always a part of the text-books as a fact of history.  When the historians belonging to the left captured the writing of Indian history and they began writing the school text-books under the state patronage, they also continued with the nineteenth century stereotypes. As Dinanath Batra has noted the extraterritorial loyalties of the communists come in the way of Instantiation of history writing.  He notes:           “Since all of them have been foreigners either by descent or by ideology, their basic interest is in humiliating their Indian subjects of yesteryears so as to continue to remain in power. The Marxists have never directly ruled India. But they have been in an even better position. They could navigate the Indira Gandhi government and they are doing the same with the Manmohan Singh government now. The communists have never believed in academic honesty. There are statements by great communist historians which may testify to that. Academic honesty was never a criterion while writing the text books for schools which were published by the NCERT. The political and ideological requirements received better attention. In such a situation where academic dishonesty coupled with an arrogance to humiliate the majority of Indians, history was written in which Guru Teg Bahadur was described as being involved in “plunder and rapine” and Aurangazeb was presented as “Zinda peer” (a living saint); where the Aryans were foreigners,  while Mughals, (particularly Akbar) were presented as very much  Indians.”

Thus, the unity of the India has been the greatest political challenge for them as it has been for the other foreign rulers of this country. 

            Despite a clear cut absence of any archaeological evidences and also in absence of the internal literary evidences of the Vedic literature the anti-India historians in general and the communists in particular refuse stubbornly to see the reason and continue to hold the Aryan race/invasion theory to be correct.  Prof. R.S.Sharma in his controversial text book Ancient India has explicitly accepted this fact.  In the June 1999 reprint of the text book he writes “A little earlier than 1500 BC the Aryans appeared in India.  We do not find clear and definite archaeological traces of their advent.”  (Page -71)  But when the objection was raised on the context he merely changed the language to escape criticism.  On the one hand he is accepting that there are no clear and definite archaeological traces of the Aryan advent in India, on the other hand despite this absence of archaeological evidences he is still teaching the Aryans to be foreigners. It should be remembered here that Prof. Sharma takes pride in calling his brand of history writing as scientific.  He prefers archaeological evidences much more than the literary ones.  In this book also he has emphasized the importance of archaeological sources more than once.  The author rather than accepting this contradiction in the book chose to find a way out of it by thinly veiled sophistry of words.  In the latest reprint of the book i.e. the March 2005 reprint now he is teaching as follows:  “A little earlier than 1500 BC the Aryans appeared in India.  We have fair archaeological traces of their advent.”  (Page-71)  One is at a loss to understand that what were these “fair archaeological traces” which have been found within last six years without making any noises in the newspaper while the subject is so important.  Prof. R.S.Sharma is one of the leading historians of the communist camp who have always claimed his writings to be scientific and archaeological evidences to be the most important ones for reconstructing the past.  Neither in the earlier version of the book he said anything about the evidences per se when he spoke of their absence nor does he tell us now about them when he claims that a fair amount of them is now available.  His language is again deceptive and unclear and that is why when he speaks about merely three items viz, socketed axes, bronze dirks and swords, he is using a big “Possibly” before mentioning them.  Then he goes on describing about the evidence of horse and cremation etc in Tajikistan in Central Asia.  How without any new discovery he has begun to claim that now there is a fair amount of archaeological traces of Aryan advent is beyond understanding.  In reality when the contradiction was pointed out it seems the author decided to wriggle out of the contradiction in the earlier reprints of the book by a slight change in the language but this is no academic honesty.  He seems to be bent upon teaching the students that Aryans came into India from outside, evidence and no evidences, period.  Some how they appeared in India and it is a fact of history!

            Despite all sorts of evidences these scholars stubbornly believe and want everybody to believe that the Aryans cannot be the original and inhabitants ofIndia.  Evidences were in any case the last priority. These claims rested on the strength of the state patronage.  Prof. R.S. Sharma’s attempt is just one such example of recent times. Misinterpretation at the level of language is an old technique in this game.  The Vedas were misinterpreted and new meanings were invented for the Vedic words.  Great Aryan institutions like Sabha, Samiti, Vidhata and Gana were declared to be tribal pastoral and barbaric groups.  The word Aryan itself was thoroughly misinterpreted.  The original meaning of Aryan is knowledgeable, noble and superior.  It was a cultural term.  The Aryan was language was called Sanskrit which means cultured as opposed to Prakrit or natural. Vedas were the origins of all the knowledge which is vidya but see have been degraded when the Aryans were called the Pastoral nomads and their literature was called the songs of the shepherds.  It’s a hundreds of year old conspiracy historiography  in against the Mother India.   The main aim of all those who believed in this historiography was to disintegrate India—At least disunite this great nation.  The British wanted to rule India on the basis of the disunity thus achieved. The Marxists have similar objective. The  vision and philosophy of history has been inherited by the Marxists from the English through their ideological founding father Karl Marx who also believed that India had no history of its own and even if it did have any, it was the history of a conquered nation.  The modern Marxists have never negated Marx seriously. 

             The Aryan race/invasion theory received political and state patronage from the very beginning.  That is why it never had to compete on a level playing field as other theories have to do to survive in the highly competitive academic world.  It was never tested thoroughly on intellectual grounds. The reasons were more political than academic.  It is the similar reason why this theory was presented in many books and textbooks as a fact of history rather than a hypothesis.  This illogical situation was carried to such an extent where the later discoveries were explained on the basis of this theory as if these discoveries were being explained on the basis of some established facts of history.  Usually new discoveries can underline a theory but a theory should not be stretched to include the new discoveries as its evidences.  During last almost one and half century of its existence this theory has begun to be used as evidence in itself.  In this context Dr. S.R. Rao one of the most eminent archaeologists of India has criticized Mortimer Wheeler’s explanation of the excavation at Harappa.  How this theory became the proof of the invasion is clear by the following tautology or a circular argument given by Wheeler.  Rao writes:  “... as time passed, a restudy of the stratigraphy of Wheeler’s excavation of Harappa revealed that there was a time gap between the mature Harappan (cemetery R 37) and later ‘Cemetery H’ cultures.  Wheeler had treated the latter as invaders and the former as the invaded.  But stratigraphy clearly indicated that the so-called “invaded” were not present when the so-called “invaders” arrived.  Fresh excavation in Mohenjo-Daro by G.F. Dales and a study of the artifacts … confirmed that the “massacre” [due to the invasion] was a myth.”  To understand the whole thing in simple language one can say that the attackers and those who were attacked belonged to different times.  The attacked were not there when the attackers came.  Wheeler had over-looked the different stratas due to being overwhelmed by the Aryan invasion theory.

            There are many fundamental contradictions within the Aryan race/invasion theory.  If one had to prove that the Aryans really came from outside then one has to negate a lot of literary and archaeological evidences.  Many of these contradictions will also have to be “adjusted” by resorting to outright intellectual dishonesty.  The claims of the theory are so much opposed to the available literary and archaeological data that an American scholar Vyas Huston has exposed some of the contradictions one by one.   He has noted that the language of Rig-Veda is infinitely more sophisticated than even one modern languages.  The Aryan race theory says that the Aryans were barbaric pastoral nomads from the north.  How could such barbaric people have such a sophisticated language?  He has further noted that Aryans could not have been barbaric tribal people but part of a sophisticated and developed civilization.  The same claim seems to be true for the language and literature in the later times.  Scholars believe that even the modern linguistics have not reached such levels of sophistication which Panini had reached almost 3000 years back.  Modern computer scientists have just now begun to reveal the linguistic treasure that is hidden in the Ashtadhyayi of Panini and Mahabhashya of Patanjali.  Today it is becoming more and more clear that this Aryan race/invasion theory has got entangled in a web of contradictions of history without literature and literature without history.

            The same seems to be true about technology also.  Some modern scholars have very rightly pointed out that Aryans are believed (even by the Aryan invasion theory believers) to have introduced chariots in India.  Actually it is claimed that they came on Chariots to invade India.   Looking at the geography of their both routes of their so called invasion, this seems to be impossible.  Riding and fighting from a chariot is possible in plains of north India but not in hilly terrain of Afghanistan.  Chariot riding Aryans could never be victorious in battles in those areas.  Interestingly just opposite to this common sense understanding the Aryan race theory claims that the use of Chariots was a cause of their victories against original inhabitants of India. 

            Another aspect of the same contradiction is that the Indus valley civilization was spread in a million square kilometer of area. The people from such a large area have left us no literature though they have left seals which prove that they knew writing.  Initially it was claimed that they were Dravidians.  Now it is believed they were not because there is a long gap of 2000 years between their last seals and the earliest Tamil literature.  As we know the Harappans were literate and must have had some literature.  If the Tamils were their inheritors, where has the literature of these people for 2000 years gone without a trace?  On the other hand if the Aryan race theory was to be believed the Vedic Aryans were illiterates and had no civilization of their own.  They believe that the Aryans were pastoral nomads and their Vedas were merely some songs of the shepherds, but interestingly we find the greatest and largest amount of literature of the contemporary world as their heritage.  Another aspect of the same contradiction is that a lot of archaeological evidences are available for the Indus valley civilization while for the Aryan Invasion theory there are no uncontested archaeological evidences.  If the Aryan race/invasion, theory were to be believed historical and archaeological legacy of a great civilization is very much available which leaves indication that it continued for thousands of years but doesn’t leave any literature as heritage and on the other hand we have pastoral nomads called Aryans who have left a highly sophisticated language, a large amount of a great literature but no archaeological evidences.

            Another similar contradiction is regarding the knowledge of sciences particularly the mathematics.  The scholars supporting the Aryan race/invasion theory want us to believe that the knowledge of astronomy and geometry was imparted by the Indians from the Greeks after the invasion of Alexander. But seeing the city planning of the Harappan culture it becomes more than clear that the inhabitants of these cities not only had a very good knowledge of fundamental mathematics and geometry but also they could apply it quite effectively.  From a distant past the planned cities, straight roads and excellent drainage system had been in use in that civilization which could not have been evolved in a day, nor it could have evolved without the basic knowledge of geometry.  Scholars believe that a similar kind of city planning and sanitation system could evolve in Europe only after 2000 years of the Harappan cities when during the Roman Empire such cities are seen in the west for the first time.  Now the important question is if the Ancient Indians learnt geometry from the Greeks at the time of Alexander than, could they plan such wonderful cities thousands of years before Alexander?  Where did the Indians get this knowledge of Mathematics?  It is interesting to find that right from Baluchistan and Gujarat down to Uttar Pradesh all over the region of the Harappan civilization we find the Vedic Altar and Yajnyashalas which make it clear that the inhabitants of the civilization were Vedic people as far as their culture and religion was concerned.  The construction of the Vedic Altars was quite an intricate geometrical affair and the availability of these Altars show that the Vedic Harappans were proficient in geometry and thus could construct the cities that we have found.  The post Vedic shulvasutras give us detailed technical knowledge of geometry.  A western scholar Seidenberg has compared the Shulvasutras with Egyptian and ancient Babylonian records and has found that the mathematics that is described inshaulvasutra must have been in existence much before 2000 BC.  He has also claimed that all the ancient mathematics have evolved from the Vedic mathematics.  Rajaram and Frawley have even claimed that the Egyptian pyramids were also based upon a Vedic Altar which is called Shmashan Chiti.  It can easily be claimed on the basis of all the above mentioned discoveries that the knowledge of geometry was much much older than Pythagoras who is wrongly believed to be the father of geometry.  This begins to open the knots of another interesting contradiction.  The believers of the Aryan race/invasion theory considered the Harappan civilization to be a Dravidian civilization. But the remains of their cities and Altars clearly indicate that the knowledge on the basis of which they were constructed is available in the Sanskrit literature which in turn is believed to be that of the Aryans who have left no archaeological remains for us.  To top it all the Aryans are even claimed to be the destroyers of the Harappan civilization.  The truth on the other hand seems to be that the Vedic Aryans and the authors of the Vedic civilization were one and the same people who had first evolved the Vedic mathematics on the basis of which they constructed the greatest cities of their times.

            The believers in the Aryan race theory have never directly or categorically negated the existence of Saraswati as a very major river as described in the Rig-Veda.  They took recourse to the second best available method and that was to pick up a small river in Afghanistan called Helmond to identify the once mighty Saraswati.  Although, it has been described very clearly that it was a perennial river which began in the Himalayas and finally fell into the sea; was a mighty river which was miles broad at places; and used to flow between Sutlaj towards the west and Yamuna towards the east.  The river later dried up due to tectonic activities and its water was drained by Yamuna in East and Satluj in the west.  That is probably the reason that it is still believed that at Sangam in Allahabad Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati meet.  The tradition and the literature give ample references to drying up of Saraswati which the invasionists had always sought to ignore.  But now with the availability of satellite images and other scientific data the lost course of Sarawati have been identified.  The new scientific data has endorsed the Vedic description of the perennial mighty Saraswati.  It is also now clear that the river Saraswati had dried by the beginning of the second millennium BC i.e. around 2000 BC.  If the Aryans were to appear in India around 500 years later i.e. in 1500 BC, how could they inhabit on the banks of the dried river?  According to the invasionist idea they would have taken another two hundred years to write Rig-Veda. How could Rig-Veda describe the perennial mighty river Saraswati in so accurate details after 700 years or its drying up?  Moreover the river had not gone dry in a day or two.  As the internal evidence within Mahabharata tells us that the process would have taken hundreds of years.  So the perennial mighty river Saraswati which is described in Rig-Veda must have existed hundreds if not thousands years before its final drying up in 2000 BC or so.  The new satellite data has endorsed the existence of Saraswati and has thus taken the winds off the sails of the Aryan race/migration/invasion theory.

            The Aryan race/invasion/migration theory claims that the Vedic texts speak about the spoked wheel which was absent during the Harappan Times.  Prof.  R.S.Sharma has advanced this view and Dr. B.B Lal has countered with terracotta figurines of the spoked wheels from Rakhigarhi, Kalibangun and Banwali, where the painted lines do convert in the central hub and thus leave no doubt whatsoever about their representing the spokes of the wheel.  All these examples are from mature Harappan phase.  This proves that the spoked wheel which is described in the Vedic literature was very much present in the Indus Saraswati Civilization and underlines that in reality both were same civilizations.  Similarly the Aryan race/invasion/migration theory had been much dependent on the history of the Indian horse.  According to the invasionists the horse came into India with the Aryans and the Indians before them did not know horse.  On the other hand the Indians tradition believes that the horse came from the sea which may mean that it came from South East Asia from the sea-route.  This meaning of the myth ofSamundra Manathan was underlined recently by some horse anatomists who have brought forward the interesting fact that the Indian horse is anatomically different from the Central Asian horse and is akin to the South East Asian horse. Whereas the Central Asian horse has eighteen pairs of ribs, the Indian/South East Asian horse has merely the sixteen pairs of ribs.  Rig-Veda describes the horse in great details and fortunately it also describes the anatomy of the horse and it describes it with sixteen pairs of ribs.  It is clear that the Rig-Vedic horse is not the Central Asian horse but an Indian variety which might have in hoary past come from East Asiagiving rise to the myth that it came from the sea.  Moreover, there are many varieties of horse and its extended family like Wild ass etc. which might have been domesticated in India and as EF Brynt has rightly pointed out that if the Indo-Europeans knew the horse before their dispersal and must therefore have inhabited an area wherein the horse is native (and eliminating other areas where the evidence for the horse is a later phenomenon) is barking up the wrong tree.

            He has also pointed out that though the high quality horses have always been imported in India it would be dangerous to make the Indo-Aryans overly synonymous with the horse since the horse could have been imported in the proto-historic period, just a it has been throughout the historic period.

             The Vedas mentioned a word called Dasyu which is opposed to Aryan.  The believers in Aryan invasion Theory turned the Dasyus also into a race just as they had done with the Aryans.  If the Aryans had long nose the Dasyus had flat nose.  If Aryans were tall the Dasyus were short.  If the Aryans were fair in color Dasyus were dark.  Since they wanted to prove the Aryan to be foreign invaders, the Dasyus were imagined to be Indian aboriginals.  Just as they had ignored the internal evidence of Vedas while explaining Aryans, similarly they refused to see what the Vedas were to say about Dasyus.  Yajurveda explains the Dasyu to be Akarma -- the one who doesn’t work or the one who depends on the fruits of labour of others.  That seems to be the reason why the word was later used for Dacoits.  Swami Agnivesh explains the difference between the Aryans and Dasyus as follows “Aryan means someone who works and depends on his own labour, while Dasyu is the one who plunders the fruits of labour of others.  Clearly if the internal evidence of the Yajurveda were to be believed neither the Aryans were a race nor the Dasyus were a race.  The British wanted to base their rule in India on this theory as it could divide Indians.  The leftists are also depending upon the same tactics.  It has been proved many times over that this theory was merely a hoax. The westerners that included opponents like the British, the communists and the Nazi Germany, all used it for their own purposes. Now the communists and other politically motivated groups are doing the same.  Navaratna S. Rajaram has very rightly pointed out that:

In the final analysis, the Aryan invasion theory was the result of a century long striving by the Christian Europe to give itself an identity that was free from the taint of its Judaic heritage.  The resulting historical scenario was also seen as an expedient device that was seized upon by the British colonial authorities to control India by dividing her people.  It has now acquired a life of its own and a following of intellectuals with a strong political stake in the status quo.  Its shelter was politics then and it is politics today.  It never had anything to do with the history of the ancient world, let alone of India.