"In reality, the notion of an Aryan Invasion was imported into India from Europe, and its political abuse had dire consequences for India. Of course Hindus then chose to react to it. And just as naturally, they hadn’t made an issue of it in the preceding millennia, when they didn’t know any other version than that the “Aryans” had always lived in India. Noting these facts is not political, but insinuations against this objective attitude are. Someone also quotes Prof. Robert Zydenbos without mentioning that he has a serious axe to grind. In an Indian Express column at the very beginning of the Aryan invasion debate, he likened critics of the Aryan Invasion Theory to the Nazis, no less, forgetting that this simile is generally a give-away of unscholarly intent, and that the Nazis themselves were very much on the side of the European homeland hypothesis, implying an Aryan invasion of India. I pointed out that this theory deserved to be called the “Hitler-Zydenbos theory”, after two of its best-known proponents. Though he had ventured outside his field, misunderstood the whole Aryan debate and should simply have admitted and corrected his mistake , he took it as a grave insult to his authority and has been nurturing a desire for vengeance ever since. On the Religion In South Asia list, he broke the list’s academic decorum by calling all Hindu nationalists, a category intended to include me, as “the scum of the earth”. On the secretive Scholarly List Services list, he has been advocating censorship of me. That is always the reaction of the out-argued. Countless times I have been censored, excluded, disinvited under pressure, as well as decried and covered with abuse. Some debating partners have also disinvited themselves upon hearing that I was going to be on the panel. At any rate, my critics always try something else than the simple scholarly avenue, which would be to prove me wrong."
React to this quote
More by Koenraad Elst
See allResonant Thoughts
"All this was obvious enough at the time even though it was not always put forward exactly in this form and in this language. Schlegel found India "the home of universal religion, the cradle of the nob…"
"I longed for activity, instead of an even flow of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to renounce self for the sake of my love. I was conscious of a superabundance of energy which…"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"If there are men who regret the Good Old Times, without too clear a notion of what they were, they should a…"
— James Russell Lowell"Most scientists today are devoid of ideas, full of fear, intent on producing some paltry result so that the…"
— Paul Karl Feyerabend"Scouting is not an abstruse or difficult science: rather it is a jolly game if you take it in the right lig…"
— Robert Baden-Powell"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
— Victor J. Stenger"I would rather see you unlettered and unnoticed, if virtuous in practice as well as in theory, than see you…"
— Henry Lee III"In fact, an information theory that leaves out the issue of noise turns out to have no content."
— Hans Christian von Baeyer
