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India is the sum total of many peoples genetically, historically and liguistically. We are not one ‘pure race’ and have assimilated progressive ideas from all over the world. That is the main finding of a forthcoming report on the idea of India itself.
Eighty-eight scholars from a number of disciplines are compiling the report to present a ‘different view’ of India. They belong to disciplines like genetics, archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy and history.
Scholar and linguist Ganesh Narayan Devy was in the national capital to announce the release of the 600-page report on the past 12,000 years of Indian ‘civilisation and histories’. The announcement was made October 9, 2022 at the India International Centre.
Eminent personalities like Ashok Vajpeyi, Zoya Hasan, Sitaram Yechuri, Narayani Gupta and Ashis Nandy addressed the event.
Tony Joseph, the author of the book Early Indians: The story of Our Ancestors and where we Came From, has contributed to the report. “His findings are that there is no pure race in India. All of us are mixtures of many migrations from the father’s side,” Devy told Down To Earth October 8.
The report also concludes that Indian history’s Islamic and British Periods are not the ‘darkness’ they are made out to be. The period described as ‘Muslim rule’ was not entirely Muslim. The idea that Muslim rulers caused only damage is wrong, it notes.
Another finding of the report was that to say that colonialism made Indians intellectually bankrupt was only a partial and not a full view of colonialism.
“Without glorifying Empire, we need to say that we assimilated progressive ideas from all over the world,” Devy said. He cited the examples of Babasaheb Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, who were all educated in Britain and the United States.
Devy also pointed out that it was at the end of colonial rule that India emerged as a parliamentary democracy from the hotch-potch of feudal princely states that it was once.
Yet another finding dealt with Sanskrit.
“Sanskrit, which had taken shape in the southern steppes, started arriving in India in 1600 Before Common Era. Then it flourished into Vedic poetry from 1400 BCE and continued to grow for the next 700 years in its oldest form called Indic,” Devy said.
The 7th Century BCE saw the emergence of Buddhism and Jainism and their teachings and liturgy were in languages other than Sanskrit — Pali and Prakrit.
“On the basis of this chronology, one can definitely say that some other tongues existed in India before Sanskrit. When Sanskrit developed, it did not spread all over India but only the Gangetic Plain,” Devy said.
He said events that were historically important for the Indian people did not take place only around the Gangetic Plain. They were also taking place in the south, the North East, the Aravallis, the Vindhyas, etc.
The report will be an analysis of findings in existing scholarship through a different lens.
“It will cover a very large temporal span, beginning with the arrival of Homo sapiens in South Asia and ending with the onset of the third millennium,” according to a note prepared by the organisers of the event.
The report will discuss continuities as well as discontinuities in India’s past and present overviews of population migrations, emergence of social organisations, evolution of the state, development of philosophies and metaphysics.
It will also focus on the diversity of languages, major social movements, impact of colonialism on Indian ideas and culture, the freedom struggle and the making of India since Independence.
“The report, a work in progress, will bring alive India’s past over 12,000 years as a union of traditions, transformations and the people,” the note added.
India since the Holocene: The past Twelve Thousand Years of Environment, People, Life, Thought, Expression, Formations, Movements, Traditions and Transformations will be published in English, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi and Bangla once it is finished.