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Selected Articles by Dr. Ramesh Gampat
Please scroll down page for full articles!
(1) Indian
Arrival Day: 164th Anniversary - Dr. Ramesh Gampat
(2) Aryan
Invasion Theory - Dr. Ramesh Gampat
(3) We are all Hindus - Dr. Ramesh Gampat
(5) Genetics Has Sounded The Death Knell of the Aryan Invasion Theory
- Dr. Ramesh Gampat
■ Indian
Arrival Day - 164th Anniversary
“Those
Indian Hands Fed Us All”
Source: Caribbean New Yorker, Friday, May 3, 2002
Author: Dr. Ramesh Gampat
May 5, 1838.
To Guyanese, especially those of Indian ancestry, this is a sacred day and date.
It was on this fateful day, perhaps around 2 –3 PM, that the Whitby,
after a sea voyage of 112 days, docked into the colony of Berbice with its
precious cargo of 249 immigrants, bound for the sugar plantations of British
Guiana. Having landed 164 Indians at the estates of Davidson, Barclay and
Company in Highbury and Waterloo, the Whitby proceeded to Georgetown.
Another ship, the Hesperus, which left 16 days after the Whitby, arrived
in Guyana around the same time (either the night of May 5 or early next
morning). Let me reemphasize this: Indians first landed in the county of Berbice,
not Demerara as is popularly believed. If a monument is to be built to honor the
“geographic landing” of Indians, as Parliamentarian Ravi Dev so eloquently
puts it, Berbice is the natural location for that is where Indian feet first
touched land since they left their native Bharat.
As expected, the
gender balance of the original 396 immigrants was heavily biased towards males
– 368, or 93%, were males; 11, or 3%, were females; 17, or 4%, were children
(most likely under 10 years of age). This distorted gender balance, dictated by
the interest of planters in profits, characterized the entire indenture
enterprise, although it was not as pronounced from the 1870s. When Indian
immigration ended in 1917, about 238,960 Indians had crossed the kala-pani to
slave on the Guianese sugar plantations and perchance to uplift their life
chances and that of their progeny. All of them did not stay, though, for Bharat
Mata pulled a good many of them back, especially so given the atrocious
living and working conditions of the colony. Those who exercised this
option numbered about 66,130 by the time Indian Immigration came to an end.
This meant that 172,836 of those who came to the colony stayed on, assuming that
those who died before their indenture was up had decided to stay (and had no
option).
By the second
decade of the 20th century, Indians comprised about 44% of the colony’s
population. When this fateful century ended, 162 years after immigration began,
the Indian population moved along the entire trajectory of the demographic curve
– from a sprinkling to numerical dominance to decline. At the end of the
century, there were 380,000 Indians, comprising 48% of the total population,
below its peak of 52% in the early 1970s.
Accomplishments
Indians were
brought to the colony of British Guiana for one simple reason: experimentation
demonstrated that they were the only people who could have withstood the rigors
of plantation work and who could have provided an adequate, reliable and pliable
labor supply. Was the venture a successful one?
By the time of
Emancipation in August 1838, the sugar industry stood on the verge of collapse.
It was troubled by falling prices, a credit crunch, rising costs of production,
a in series of commercial crisis in Britain during 1847-48, which constrained
the supply of working capital, and the repeal of the Navigation Acts in 1849,
which provided British colonies with a protected market for their produce,
including sugar. None of these by themselves threatened the viability, and thus
survivalability, of the sugar industry. That threat came from the dire (but
contrived) shortage of labor. The conundrum was solved by Indian
immigration. With such a durable solution in place, sugar barons began a process
of consolidation and modernization of factories to improve efficiency and push
down costs.
Prosperity
retuned to the sugar industry in 1854 and lasted until 1884, brought to an end
by stiff competition from (i) rival, non-British colonies/countries, such as
Cuba, which, in addition to using slave labor, were geographically larger, more
fertile and employed “infinitely more advanced technology” (Williams,
1993:151), and (ii) countries, such as Germany, which produced beet by employing
more advanced science and technology in both field and factory. The
competition of Cuban cane and German beet, in combination with the incredibly
selfish policy of the British Government, pushed the West Indies to the brink of
collapse in 1897.
British Guiana
economy was essentially a sugar enclave. Destruction of the industry would have
been equivalent to destruction of the economy, which would have brought untold
misery to Africans. Fortunately, this did not happen and sugar
continues to exact a stranglehold on the economy to this day. Ironically,
Indians gave a new lease on life to an industry in the 19th century that was
used to suppress and exploit them in the 20th. Someone said that Indians were
too successful for their own good.
The attempt to
diversify the economy was not an official one; Indians themselves undertook it.
For example, the rice industry – one of the three pillars of the Guyanese
economy - owes its existence and viability to the efforts of Indians. Indians
are also responsible for the coconut industry, the cattle industry and the
private sector, especially manufacturing sub-sector. It was the
achievements of Indians, especially in the economic field, that prompted
Barbadian novelist George Lamming to observe: ““Those Indian
hands—whether in British Guiana or Trinidad—have fed all of us. They
are, perhaps, our only jewels of a true native thrift and industry. They have
taught us by example the value of money; for they respect money as only with a
high sense of communal responsibility can.” If all Indians in Guyana were
to disappear suddenly, starvation, chaos and untold poverty would descend upon
the land.
Aside from their
economic contribution, Indians were among the first Guyanese scholars; they have
contributed as medical doctors, lawyers, accountants, politicians, engineers,
innovators and entrepreneurs. Some of Guyana’s most famous cricketers were
(and still are) Indians. In the field of culture, the presence of Indians is
ubiquitous – music, architecture, cuisine, clothing, language and landscape.
Modern Guyana, its economy and society, owe much to “those Indian hands” and
minds.
A Troubled
History
At the risk of
oversimplification, three periods of “Indian hating” can be identified. The
first period stretched right up to the early 1950s. This period was
noteworthy for stereotyping and harassment of Indians. It witnessed a
protracted effort by African to establish that Indians were undercutting their
(Africa’s) livelihood (referred to as “dispossession” in the literature).
From the beginning of the 20th century, when most Indians gave up the idea of
returning to Bharat, they were at the forefront of the struggle against the
saccharine monopoly. They also began an uphill struggle for recognition
and economic viability. The second period commenced around the mid-1950s
and ended with the defeat of the PNC in 1992. In contrast to the first
period when Indian hating was not sanctioned officially, the Government itself
targeted Indians during the second period. Especially after Independence
in 1966, the PNC regime endeavored to destroy systematically sources of Indian
livelihood (official policies sought to destroy and marginalize the rice
industry, the private sector and cane farmers). The education system was
nationalized and purged of Indianness: teaching of cultural issues was
terminated and Indian-owned/run schools were taken over and renamed even as
other schools retained their Christian names.
The education
system discriminated against Indians in at least three ways. First, most of the
teachers, especially the senior ones, were African; Indians could teach only if
they joined the PNC and demonstrated loyalty. Even so, they were not given
decision-making positions. Second, admission requirements at the University of
Guyana were lowered to accommodate Africans who were, in addition, given
preferential entry and sponsorship. By the mid-1980s, Africans dominated
the University – the student population, the teaching staff, the
administrative and other lower-level staff and the Student Association, which
was but a microcosm of the PNC. A compulsory one-year stint with the Guyana
National Service, introduced in 1976, was the single most effective barrier to
higher education of Indian women. Most of this one-year period was spent
in the interior (Kimbia and elsewhere). Indian women justifiably refused
to endure the disgrace and preferred to quit. I vividly recall the predicament
of three Indian women who were in my batch at UG. One quitted after studying
economics for two years. With no alternative, she took up farming.
She now lives in grinding poverty and looks 15 years older than her
chronological age. The other two went to Kimbia and came back with many
bitter memories; both are no longer in Guyana and both are still unmarried.
Many stories have been told about Kimbia, including rape of, and forced sex
with, Indian women. Third, international scholarships were closed to Indians
even through they had fair access to them prior to independence. For
Indians, educational merit no longer brought opportunities for higher studies
abroad. Most of the successful Indian academics and professionals today
made it on their own, without any assistance from the state.
Aside from barriers to education, there was intense discrimination as regards
employment (this author felt the pangs of this discrimination) as Indians were
bypassed in preference to Africans. What, then, was the purpose of an education
if one could not find a job – especially when less qualified persons from
another ethnic group did not have difficulties finding a job? To young
Indian minds, this was a silly question. The fact that literacy rates of Indians
lagged those of Africans bears testimony to this aspect of discrimination.
Besides the
destruction of livelihoods and educational opportunities, Indians were also
victims of the first attempt at ethnic cleansing (the Wismar Massacre),
political witch-hunting, victimization, cultural degradation and a crime wave.
From its birth in the 1950s (when it was used by the PNC to bring down the PPP),
crime blossomed into choke-an-rob, which soon gave way to kick-down door crimes
by gun-wielding African criminals, targeting Indians. To crown it all, it was
the official policy to create “one people” (which led to efforts to
douglarize the population) and thus destruction of culture and identity. A
virulent ethnic crime wave, economic hardships, denial of opportunities and
access to resources, inability to influence national decisions and the status of
second-class citizens – these gave rise to the second great Indian Diaspora.
The third period
began with the second coming of the PPP and is still ongoing. This period drove
home a crucial lesson: the new intolerance of dictatorship brought on by the end
of the Cold War, the ethnic composition of the population and the practice of
ethnic politics would thwart the political ambition of Africans. Led by the PNC,
resort was made to other means: large-scale violence directed at Indians and
political instability. Violence, now completely homegrown and politically
motivated, is the prime instrument used to catapult the PNC back to office (not
power, which it already has). In response, foreign capital inflows dried up. The
economy, now starved of investment, management and technology, slid into reverse
gear, ending a remarkable period of growth.
The PPP is
determined to create itself in the likeness of the PNC – that is, to stay in
office at all cost. The Stabroek News has even carried letters about the
Jagdeo dictatorship (which the PPP deems the dictatorship of the proletariat).
The strategy of the PPP is characterized by the following elements: (i) massive
rhetoric in the finest tradition of communists; (ii) widespread corruption and
incompetence; (iii) victimization, including murder, of Indians who dare to
challenge the PPP; (iv) focus on youth – only that the youths are mainly
African youths (some letter writers in Stabroek News have even suggested
this was just hot air); (vi) inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to defend
Indians as a new and more virulent African crime wave threatens to decimate
them; and (vii) appeasement of Africans in an attempt to buy their peace and
votes. The result is that the PPP has scored good marks in accelerating
the exodus of Indians to foreign climes.
So Indians have
been living in Guyana for more than 160 years. Have they arrived? By
arrival, we understand, at the minimum, equality and justice, both of which have
been denied:
■ The
Aryan Invasion Theory
Source: Caribbean New Yorker, April 26, 2002
Author: Dr. Ramesh Gampat
Thundering
that Gampat does “not know the history of Sanskrit,” Mr. Chickrie proceeds
to enlighten us (“Disgusted,” Caribbean New Yorker, April 19, 2002).
Sheepishly, he writes “According
to historians [which historians?], Sanskrit came to India from the Caucus and
southern Russia. Sanskrit is one of
the Indo-Aryan languages. These
Aryans and their language mixed with the peoples who spoke Dravidian
languages.”
The
basis of this statement is, of course, the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT).
The AIT postulates that northern India was invaded and conquered by a
nomadic, Sanskrit-speaking, light-skinned race of people called
“Aryans.” These
conquerors, so the story goes, descended from Central Asia around 1500 BC and
destroyed an earlier and more advanced civilization that inhabited the Indus
Valley and imposed upon them their own culture and language. The Indus Valley
people were supposed to be either Dravidians or Austrics or, as they are now
known, Shudras.
This article employs three sets of arguments to demonstrate that Sanskrit is indigenous to Bharat and that its origin is probably unknown, perhaps older than the Vedic civilization itself. These arguments are (i) the origin of language; (ii) astronomical references in the Rig Veda; and (ii) archaeological evidence. We shall skip over recent molecular evidence, which shows that the gene pool of Indians is significantly different from that of Europeans.
A
brief note on dating: At least up to the late 19th century,
Christians believed that the entire universe was created in 4004 BC.
Nothing existed before this date. When
Maxmuller began to study Vedic Literature (at the invitation of Lord Macaulay),
he was puzzled by the antiquity of the Indian civilization. But as a devoted
Christian Missionary, he could not have given an earlier date to any aspects of
the Indian civilization. It is on the basis of this dating scheme that even the
Vedas was believed to have existed not before 3500 BC. Despite
overwhelming evidence to the contrary, this date remains unchanged. The AIT is
also premised on this “Christian” system of dating.
Origin of Language
The AIT was first
theorized in London at the office of the Royal Asiatic Society on April 9, 1886,
in a meeting presided over by Viscount Stronghold (a name that still exercises
its effect today). Most of the
original proponents of the AIT were not historians or archaeologists but
missionaries and politicians. One
of the first planks was the Indo-European hypothesis, which postulates
linguistic similarities between Indian and European languages. By late 18th
century, it was known that Sanskrit, Iranian, and most European languages share
many common words and grammatical structures.
This led early linguists to classify Vedic Sanskrit and the majority of
European tongues in the same “family of Indo-European languages.” The
19th century German linguist, Friedrich Schlegel, dissented from this
view and, instead, suggested that the main body of European languages was
derived from Sanskrit. Schlegel’s suggestion was rejected, mainly because
European scholars did not like to think that their language and culture were
derived from darker-skinned humans peopling Bharat. So European thinkers began
to speculate about a pre-historic “proto-Indo-European” race
who had migrated from somewhere in Western Asia, perhaps around the Black Sea,
Eastern Europe, or Russia, to settle in India and in Europe.
This, as the evidence now shows, was a purely racial and cultural bias,
with no basis in archaeological fact. Exactly
how did other languages mutate from the proto-Indo-European language?
The issue of the origins of language is a controversial one, mainly because all evidence point to Sanskrit as the “mother” language. This is painful for the West to accept. Which led them to develop a new field of study known as historical linguistics, with the main objective of detecting patterns of language change over time. From patterns of language changes, patterns of migration of early peoples are deduced. From the latter, so it is said, clues to the origin of Vedic civilization emerge.
Early
historical linguistics hypothesized, firstly, that Vedic Sanskrit conserved the
original sound system of the “proto-Indo-European” language (i.e., an
original language that is the parent of Indian and European languages) most
closely. Next, Iranian and European
languages underwent a systematic sound shift, creating breakaway or daughter
languages spoken by people who populated India and Europe.
Third, Vedic Sanskrit was placed near the trunk of the
proto-Indo-European language tree, if not the trunk itself.
Computer linguists have challenged this theory of recent. They postulated, by the 1990s, that Sanskrit was not near the root of the Indo-European language tree; it was, in fact, a subsequent branch. The first language to break off from the proto-Indo-European root, according to this new breed of experts, was Anatolian (the language of what is now central Turkey). Celtic (a language found in nearby Thrace in northeastern Greece, and also Iceland suggesting that there was a commerce or colonization between Iceland and early Thrace), Greek, and Armenian followed in that order. Indian and Iranian language groups were later branches from the proto-Indo-European “root.”
This
linguistic theorizing, once programmed into the computer, spat out the expected
results: migrations of people from the Black Sea area into India.
The only problem is that there is no anthropological evidence to support
either a migration into northern India or an invasion. Evidence from skeletal
remains, as well as pottery and other artifacts, show no cultural replacement
at any time in north Indian history. It
is thus presumptuous to conclude that a people speaking a proto-Indo-European
root language migrated to India from outside, resulting in a language shift to
the daughter language of Sanskrit.
Many
computer linguists caution against drawing conclusions from computer-simulated
language programs – which may reflect the assumptions of programmers more than
the branches of the linguistic tree. They
caution that computer linguists tend to program in assumptions that reflect
their own biases and expectations. Therefore,
the outcomes cannot be any more accurate than the assumptions; recall here the
famous GIGO hypothesis: garbage in, garbage out.
The point is that anything can be derived from appropriate assumptions
(economist Milton Friedman argued many decades ago that assumptions do not
matter; what mattered was the results of the modeling exercise).
Thomas
V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov took another approach to the origin of
languages. In an article published in Scientific Americana they stated:
“The landscape described by the reconstructed Indo-European proto-language is
mountainous – as evidenced by the many words for high mountains, mountain
lakes and rapid rivers flowing from mountain sources” (“Family Tree of the
Indo-European Languages,” March 1990). Elaborating,
they continued: “the [proto-Indo-European language] has words for animals that
are alien to Europe, such as ‘leopard,” “snow leopard,” “lion,”
“monkey” and “elephant.” Now
their conclusion: the homeland of the proto-Indo-Europeans was somewhere in the
Caucasian mountain of western Asia near the Black Sea in around 4000 BC, a date
that is much earlier than that proposed for the AIT.
Given their premise, why must the location be western Asia? Mountainous terrain, elephant, monkey, and snow leopard are more commonly found in the region of northern India and the Himalayas than in western Asia. Moreover, since the words for elephant, monkey, snow leopard, and mountains are more abundant in the Indo-European proto-language, the Himalayan region of northern India and Tibet is its most likely home rather than an area of central Turkey, where there are few monkeys and elephants.
A
third approach employed by historical linguistics is that of a set of rules for
sound and grammatical transformation governing language change.
According to this rule, one language evolves into another because of
cultural or geographical separation of people resulting from migration or other
cultural displacements, such as conquest. The
application of this rule should enable historical linguistics, so it is said, to
discern patterns of change and to determine which language has shifted into
another.
One
specific such rule states that consonants soften over time, a rule that is
assumed constant temporally and equally applicable to early transformations as
well as later ones. For example,
the “v” in the Sanskrit word “Veda,” meaning knowledge, is transformed
into the softer English “w” in “wit,” “written, “wisdom” and the
German “wissen,” which also means knowledge.
The Sanskrit “deva” is transformed into the softer Latin “deus,”
Greek “theos,” Lithuanian “dewas,” Irish “dia,” and Old Prussian “diews.”
The task confronting linguists is to reconstruct which languages are
earlier and which broke off later in the transmutation of language.
The result lends support to the AIT, as expected.
Now
suppose that the assumptions were different; that there were changes in the reverse
direction, that there could have been sound shifts in the opposite directions at
much earlier times in history. Or
perhaps different laws applied at the time when Vedic Sanskrit changed from and
to other languages. Suppose,
further, that the ‘g’ in the Sanskrit ‘go” (meaning cow) is transformed
into the harder consonant “k” to make the German word “kuh” for cow.
The English word “cow,” pronounced with a hard “k” is a harder,
guttural form than the “g” in the Sanskrit “go.”
Add to this the well-known fact that the Vedic tradition was highly
conscious of language and sound and the rules of sound transformation –
mantras, for example, derive their power not from the string of words themselves
but from the sound conveyed by the words. Ancient Sanskrit grammar has its own rules for the
transformation of consonants, internal rules for change, codified in ancient
texts on phonology and grammar, both of which express elaborate theories of
sound. Two possibilities are opened
up: these assumptions/facts could have influenced the direction of language
shift at an early date or the rules of later linguistic theories do not apply to
Sanskrit. One could then postulate, equally, that Vedic Sanskrit is not
the proto-Indo-European root language but a language unto itself, which is in
keeping with Vedic literature. With
this in mind, it is conceivable that Sanskrit arose in northern India and that
some northern people migrated west to the Black Sea (as a result of the
catastrophic Mahabharata War, for example), where their language mutated
into Anatolian, Armenian, Celtic and Greek.
The language changes within Vedic Sanskrit, due to self-reflexive
grammatical theories, mutated this from Sanskrit in a direction contrary to the
typical rules of linguistic transformation.
Summing up, at the heart of linguistic theories is an untenable assumption – the pattern of migration. Moreover, the entire approach is tautological in that the conclusions are derived from a premise that can only lead to the desired conclusions. Thus, programming a given pattern of migration (from the Black Sea into India) into computer models and other devices will spit out amenable linguistic transformations. Unfortunately, the anthropological evidence does not support this migration-hence-language hypothesis. The most plausible hypothesis that is consistent with the data appears to be that Vedic Sanskrit is the mother tongue of the proto-Indo-European peoples. There is no more reason to suppose that we, as speakers of an Indo-European language, are descended biologically from the speakers of proto-Indo-European language than that the English speaking population of Nigeria is Anglo-Saxon. Incidentally, Pujya Swami Dayanad Saraswati has contradicted the AIT long ago (he also postulated that man originated in North India/Tibet rather than Africa).
The antiquity of the Vedas, and thus of Sanskrit, can
also be confirmed from evidence provided by astronomy.
Certain Vedic texts, for example, refer to astronomical events that took
place in ancient astronomical time. By
calculating the astronomical dates of these events, we obtain another source of
evidence that can be used to place the Rig Veda in an appropriate time frame.
Professor Dinesh Agrawal of Penn State University has reviewed the
evidence from a variety of sources and estimated the dates as follows:
Thus, unless Chickrie’s position is God’s
position, his idea about the Russian origin of Sanskrit cannot be sustained.
Some Recent Discoveries
Proponents of the AIT dismiss the Mahabharat epic as
a fictional work written by a highly talented poet around 1000 BC. But bits and
pieces of that epic war are being confirmed gradually.
For example, it was written in the Musal Parva of the Mahabharata that
the ocean swallowed up Dwarka gradually. Sri
Krishna even forewarned residents of Dwarka to vacate the city before it became
submerged. Recent undersea exploration has discovered the loss city of
Dwarka along the coast of Gujarat. Scientists
have given it a date of 3000 BC to 1500 BC, consistent the dating of the epic
war.
It is a well-known fact that the Rig Veda bestows the
greatest and holiest of honor not upon Ganga, but upon Saraswati.
The Saraswati River, now dead, was once a mighty flowing river all the
way from the Himalayas to the ocean across the Rajasthan desert.
The Ganga – corrupted to “Ganges” today - is mentioned only once,
while the Saraswati is mentioned at least 60 times in terms of the loftiest of
praise. Here’s one verse: ambitame naditame devitame sarasvati
(II.41.16) -- “The best mother, the best river, the best Goddess, Saraswati.”
Extensive research has shown that the Saraswati changed course several
times, going completely dry around 1900 BC.
In fact, the latest satellite data combined with field archaeological
studies have shown that the Rig Vedic Sarawati had stopped been a perennial
river long before 3000 BC, which meant that that the Rig Veda described the
geography of North India long before 3000 BC.
Thus, the Rig Veda must have been in existence no later than 3500 BC,
much earlier than the story given by the AIT. Numerous other archaeological
sites have been located along the course of this prehistoric river, thereby
confirming the Vedic account.
One final piece of evidence against the AIT: Indian and British divers from the Indian National Institute of Oceanography and the Scientific Exploration Society made a dramatic discovery. On April 1 of this year, they have discovered a vast city – five miles long and two miles wide – buried underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India. Radiocarbon testing from the underwater city (known to Indians via the old Indian legend of the Seven Pagodas) is about 9,500 years old. This makes it about 4,000 years older than earlier cites now recognized – older than the ancient Harappan civilization. According to Mr. Hancock of BBC news Online, “There’s a huge chronological problem in this discovery. It means that the whole model of the origins of civilization with which archaeologists have been working will have to be remade from scratch.”
All evidence suggests that the Vedic people did not migrate into India from outside. Therefore, the Vedic language is an indigenous language; it did not come from outside of India. Even so, we shall never know the precise temporal origin of Vedic Sanskrit. We Hindus believe that, since the Vedas has no beginning, so must its language. Further, since the Vedas is the word of God, then Vedic Sanskrit is the language God used to communicate with our ancient rishis who realized God.
A
debunked AIT is not in the interest of non-Hindus. Only if the AIT is correct
can Muslims, for example, argue: “… the Aryans don’t belong this country,
hence they don’t love it. They are foreigners, the enemies within.
As Aryans, they are also India’s first foreigners. If
the Muslim and the British are foreigners and must get out of India, as emphasis
added; Muslim India, 27th March 1985).
Now that the AIT is invalided, what would Muslim do?
Two options are available: Muslims must leave Bharat for they were
the first foreigners (plunderers) or recognize what they have refused to recognize – the Vedas
and Sanskrit as their own heritage.
■
We Are All Hindus
Author: Dr. Ramesh Gampat+
Source: Hindu Jaagaranam (A magazine commemorating the visit of
Pujya KS Sudarshanji, Chief of the RSS to the Caribbean Hindu Community in New
York, July 28, 2001)
Unity in Geographical Diversity
Culture as the Spur to Early Immigration
Indian immigration is as old as Indian maritime enterprise,
which goes back to antiquity. There is historical evidence of Indian-influenced
colonies and kingdoms in South East-Asia, the most notable of them being the 15th
century A.D. Sri Vijya Empire in Indonesia (in Sumatra, Java and Bali). Besides
South East Asia, Indian cultural influence is also known to have existed in
Afghanistan, Tibet and parts of China. This outward trek ensured that Indian
scholars and entrepreneurs were in contact with their counterparts in Central
Asia and the Hellenic world. Nevertheless, early Indian immigration did
not result in any significant permanent settlement overseas, but was aimed
primarily at cultural exchange and enrichment.
On a broader scale, Professor P.N. Oak, in his mammoth work, attempts
something more ambitious. He sought to show that, while it could not be
said that Indians from Bhārat immigrated to
all corners of the globe, Vedic culture and Samskrit pervaded the whole world
from time immemorial unto the Mahabharat War. His book is
filled with archeological and other scientific evidence to support his
arguments.
Subsequently, owing to successive political upheavals and the resultant chaotic
conditions in the Bhārat, the
stream of immigrants dried up. Social changes, such as the growing rigidity of
the caste system, the growth of prejudice against crossing the kala
pani and the Purdah system, discouraged immigration.
There were no causes, such as over-population and religious persecution as in
the West, to offset the inertia stemming from these social changes.
It needs to be reiterated that early Indian immigration was largely cultural and commercial. The immigrants were traders in rare commodities and ambassadors of a great civilization and religion. On the other hand, immigration during the 19th century presents a pathetic but nonetheless striking contrast. The 19th century immigrants were unlettered laborers setting out – willingly, cajoled, captured or deceived - to sweat, toil and live in an alien world. This round of Indian immigration was wholly a British creation.
Bound Coolies as an Expression of Imperialism
In India, as Kingsley Davis (1968, p. 99) has pointed out, "pressure to emigrate [at least in the 19th century] has always been great enough to provide a stream of emigrants much larger than the actual stream given opportunities. Large scale Indian immigration, however, did not take place until the establishment of British Imperialism in India, as well as in many other parts of the world. Burma, for example, is a case in point where Indian immigration was numerically insignificant, and only seasonal in nature, until the annexation of the Irrawaddy Delta and northern territory by the British East India Company in 1852. Similarly, Indian labor immigration to Malaysia, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Mauritius and the West Indies and petty bourgeoisie immigration to East Africa had to wait for British colonial settlement in these places. Thus, Indian overseas immigration is obviously the result of the workings of British colonialism, both in India and abroad. As evidence, the vast majority of Indians immigrated only to British colonies - to Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname (then a Dutch colony), South Africa, Fiji and Mauritius as indentured servants and to Burma, Ceylon and Malaysia as kangani or maistry laborers.
It is estimated that that between 1834 and 1937 some 30 million Indians immigrated to different parts of the world. During the same period, about 24 million of them returned to Bhārat Mata, resulting in a net migration of approximately 6 million. As a rough estimate, 531,125 Indian laborers immigrated from India bound for the West Indies between 1834 and 1917, when indenture was terminated. About 45 per cent of the Indian immigrants to the West Indies went to British Guiana (now Guyana); no other colony in this region received as large a number of immigrants. Today, approximately half of Guyana’s population traces its origins to Bhārat. Of those immigrants who left India for the West Indies, no less than 84 per cent were Hindus; about 15 per cent were Muslims; and the rest, about 1 per cent, were Christians. It is now estimated that the West Indies is the home to some 1.2 million people of Indian heritage. Even so, people of Indian origin account for only about 15 per cent of the population of the English-speaking Caribbean countries, a numerical fact that lends support to the claim that the Caribbean is African country. But a numerical fact that discards history and the tremendous contribution – economic in particular – of Indians to the Caribbean. For example, without Indians the sugar industry in Guyana, and perhaps Trinidad as well, would have collapsed. Ever since the latter half of the 19th century, the productive base of the Guyanese economy has a distinctive Indians face.
Since the 1950s, for reasons having to do with politics, ideology, economics and ethnic hate, the English-speaking Caribbean, Guyana and Trinidad in particular, has started its own Indian Diaspora. Today some 300,000 – 400,000 Indians from Guyana live abroad – mostly in the USA, but they can also be found in Canada, the UK, Venezuela, Surinam, Australia, Africa and other European countries besides the UK. As incredible as it may sound, the number of Indian Guyanese overseas is almost as large as those living in Guyana. What accounts for the massive outpouring of Indian Guyanese?
While it may not epitomize the problem confronted by Indians in the region as a whole, Indian Guyanese are under threat from two sources. First, there is the threat posed by ethnic hate: Africans have claimed that Indians are living in their (African’s) house, that Indians are second-class citizens and therefore have no right to political power. Even after 163 years, some still believe that Indians are aliens. Second, as a consequence of the first point, politics in Guyana is about ethnicity, but only at the "election" level, at least as far as the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), which draws its support from Indians, is concerned. More to the point, the PPP is obsessed with staying in office without power, which renders it worst than useless as far as Indians are concerned.
In 1936, Dr. Cheddi Bharat Jagan, an Indian Guyanese who dumped Hinduism for communism, left for the United States of America to study dentistry. Alone he went, but alone he did not come back in 1943. He brought with him a blue-eyed "bowjie," who converted her husband to a communist. Dr. Jagan, who became the first Premiere of Guyana in 1953, was determined, so it was said, to turn Guyana into a communist state at the height of the Cold War. The United States was unwilling to allow another communist state – in addition to Cuba – in her backyard. Together with the British, the local labor movement and the local opposition party, the People’s National Congress (PNC) headed by Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham, the PPP was booted out of office. In retrospect, communism was Dr. Jagan’s biggest mistake and the cause of Indian suffering in Guyana. Dr. Jagan might have been a very likable and humanitarian man, but he was not a politician; he was a dogmatic Marxist who could not have seen the disjuncture between his own society and the one to which the core of Marx’s theory was meant to apply. He could not have seen the impotence of Marxism in a plural, ethnically split, society; a society as ethnically inhomogeneous as Europe was ethnically homogeneous in Marx’s time.
Once Burnham gained office and power, he had no intention to dethrone readily. His priority was to create the conditions that would ensure his longevity at the helm. One of his first acts was to nationalize the "commanding heights" of the economy for which Dr. Jagan and the PPP gave "critical support." By the close of the decade of the 1970s, the PNC exercised control over 80 per cent of the economy. And so, slightly decade after Independence, Africans monopolized the sources of livelihood and Indians were at their mercy. Burnham also Africanized the security forces (about 95 per cent Africans); brought the judiciary under his control; silenced the press; brutally hounded opposition forces; destroyed the rice industry, the preserve of Indians; annually siphoned off a huge chunk of the surplus of the sugar industry, which is dominated by Indians at the field (manual) level; blatantly rigged all elections; and established himself as the maximum leader. This was a dark period for Indians. When democracy returned to the land in 1992 and the PPP regained office, Indians were, not unexpectedly, jubilant. But jubilation gave way to frustration even before Indians had time to realize the illusion foisted upon them. Even today, after more than eight years in office, all the intuitions of power remain untouched, still rigged against Indians and still controlled by Africans. The paradox is that the PPP boasts of democracy, but the country’s power base is totalitarian in orientation and intent. The PPP, while it seeks Indian support in elections, is afraid to change the power base of the country; afraid of the wrath of Africans. In consequence, it appeases Africans and subjugates Indians, the majority of whom it has conspired to keep in ignorance, destitution and disease.
Why, you may ask, do Indians tolerate the PPP, which owes its existence to their votes but is unconcerned about their security and well-being? Because the PPP has developed an elaborate machinery of control, including religion, to enslave the minds and bodies of Indians; because Indians are afraid of another African Government, a sentiment drilled into their psyche by the PPP; because the PPP ruthlessly strikes down any Indian opposition, is hostile to new ideas and innovations. Because it ruthlessly and relentlessly victimize any Indian who dissents; because the PPP behaves as though it owns Indians.
Time is not on our side; time is running out; there is no time for dalliances. My message to my fellow Hindus is that petty differences relating to nationality, geography and materialistic hankering must be put aside in the pursuit of the larger goal: Hindu unity on a global scale.
Jai Hind!
■ Genetics
has sounded the death knell of the Aryan Invasion Theory
Source: Stabroek News, 7/2/03
Author: Dr. Ramesh Gampat
Dear
Editor,
In a letter titled
“India is a colorful spectrum of phenotypes based on two races,” (Stabroek
News, June 28, 2003), a nameless author declared that I misquoted him/her.
Baffled, I rechecked only to discover that the “error” was not a misquote;
it was an incomplete quote. It is my contention that the omitted part of the
sentence (“the Aryan people (or people of mostly Aryan descent”) is
immaterial to the larger point of my letter: that the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT)
is a fiction, which the nameless letter writer holds sacred on the basis of
similar “physical appearance” between “Aryan people” and “Iranians,
Greeks and Italians.” The writer obviously has a profound disdain for
scientific evidence (in this case, linguistic, archeological, astronomical and
molecular).
The penultimate sentence of my previous letter indicated that the molecular
evidence does not support the AIT. My claim was based on peer-reviewed research
publications in prestigious scientific journals. For example, a recent study by
European scientists (Kivisild et al. Current Biology, Vol. 9, Issue 22, 1999)
addressed the question whether the links between Europeans and Indians are due
to recent admixture (due to the Indo-Aryan invasion of India some 4,000 years
ago) or are more ancient.
Using the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA for short) from a large
sample of both north and south Indians, the study rejected the speculative
hypothesis on an Aryan Invasion of India. The scientists conclude: “We found
an extensive deep late Pleistocene [about 130,000 years ago] genetic link
between contemporary Europeans and Indians, provided by the mtDNA haplogroup U,
which encompasses roughly a fifth of mtDNA lineages of both populations.” This
divergence in mtDNA lineages, the scientists estimated, is “close to the
suggested time for the peopling of Asia and the first expansion of anatomically
modern humans in Eurasia and likely pre-dates their spread to Europe.” The
implication is clear, as Kivisild et al pointed out: “Only a small fraction of
the ‘Caucasoid-specific’ mtDNA lineages found in Indian populations can be
ascertained to a relatively recent admixture.”
Here are some other facts:
1. Of the remaining four-fifths of the Indian mtDNA lineages, 60% belong to
Asia-specific haplogroups (a specific cluster of mtDNA types). The other fifth
does not belong to any of the previously established mtDNA haplogroups.
2. While haplogroup U is the second most frequent haplogroup in both India and
Europe, there are some important differences. The dominant sub-cluster U2 in
India is rarely found in Europe. Kivisild et al calculated that this sub-cluster
originated about 53,000 years ago. The U7 sub-cluster, found in much higher
frequency in India, is even more rare in Europe. Its origin is placed to about
32,000 years ago.
3. Typical western-Eurasia mtDNA lineages found in India belong to haplogroups:
H, I, J, T, X, K and sub-clusters U1, U4 and U5. Of importance is the fact that
these western Eurasian lineages are found at the lowest frequency in India: 5%
in Indian versus 70% in Western Eurasia.
4. Western-Eurasian haplogroups in Indian “reveal neither a strong
north-south, nor language-based gradient: they are found both among Hindi
speakers from Uttar Pradesh (6%) and Dravidian of Andhra Pradesh (4%).”
The scientists conclude that the low frequency with which
western-Eurasia-specific mtDNA lineages are found in India, together with the
estimated time scale, does not support a recent massive Indo-Aryan invasion.
There are other scientific papers in molecular genetics studies showing that the
AIT is speculation, not science.
Here’s a sampling of a few recent peer-reviewed scientific papers: Kivisild et
al. American Journal of Human Genetics, Vol. 73:313-332, 2003; Roychoudhury et
al. Human Genetics, Vol. 109:339-350; Bamshad et al. Genome Research, Vol.
11:994-1004; Mountain et al. American Journal of Human Genetics, Vol.
56:979-992. Mr. Editor, permit me to thank Dr. Somdat Mahabir, an epidemiologist
and scientist specializing in cancer prevention, for pointing out these
additional references and for general guidance with this letter.
The discussion above, which is but a snapshot of a larger body of research,
provides answers to two critical issues raised by the nameless letter writer.
These are: (i) “what portion of the Indian population he is referring to,
making it seem as if it is unrelated to all of India,” and (ii) “...he
cannot prove that Kashmiri or the Aryan Punjabi populations are unrelated to the
other Indo-Europeans.” If I am permitted to offer some advice, it is this: our
nameless letter writer should desist from making emotional claims on matters of
science. Indeed, we live in an age when advances in science are rapidly
stripping away hoax from truth.
In the case of the AIT, while it has been rejected by evidence from other
disciplines, genetics has sounded its death knell. I am somewhat surprised that
this long-standing historical hoax is being invoked in Guyana as gospel on the
basis of “physical appearance.”
Yours faithfully,
Dr. Ramesh Gampat