"“The new picture of Rgvedic history painted by Talageri may in one sense be ‘logical’ as his supporters claim, but only if we accept the unreliable traditional sources, described below, that Talageri depends on in this book and its 1993 predecessor”."

"A formidable amount of data is presented by Talageri and an analysis that is almost impossible to refute... Except for questions of chronology, the rest of Talageri's monumental work is held in very high regard... thanks to the efforts of scholars like Talageri, there is a paradigm shift in Indological studies."

"When Morarji Desai was asked by a journalist about being a rightist, he quipped: 'I am a rightist in the sense that I believe in supporting what is right and opposing what is wrong', or words to that effect. Regardless of how true he was to his words, let us strive to support what is right against what is wrong, in every case, rather than thinking and fighting as representatives of the 'right', 'centre' or 'left'""

"As we can see, Witzel is not writing a review article of my book: he is writing a “review article” of an imaginary book – a book he imagines would be written by an OIT proponent on the basis of principles which Witzel imagines Hindutva represents – and “exposing” the “underlying political agenda” behind this book by letting the imaginary ‘“facts speak for themselves”! ... What stands exposed, by Witzel’s slanderous statements about the political agenda “underlying” my book, is Witzel’s own political agenda and the blatantly dishonest nature of his “review article”."

"The latest paper on the genetic/genomic evidence which has enthused AIT supporters and activists seems to echo and substantiate with military precision the exact points enunciated by the AIT scholars and activists since two centuries, especially on the chronological angle. ... What is worse is that, even as they ignore the latest linguistic, archaeological and textual/inscriptional data and evidence, their whole proof is based on the claim that the "genomic" dates derived by them actually "fit in" with the dates derived by linguists (but, note, strongly rejected by archaeologists) for the alleged "Aryan" migrations from the Steppes (and consequently with the date assigned by the linguists to the Rigveda)! This is like a group of committed Church "scientists" in the 1600s periodically announcing new "scientific" discoveries which fitted in with the Church-held geocentric view of the world, while refusing to consider or debate the contemporary works of Galileo Galilei which proved the heliocentric case. [Galileo was tried by the Roman Inquisition in 1633 for "heresy" and kept under house arrest till his death in 1642. One can imagine the power of the Church "scholars" in Europe in those days, and the clout of the works of their committed "scientists". But what would be the status of their "scientific" works today?]."

"The more usual “guilt by association” here is with the politics involved, viz. Hindu nationalism. That too has been thrown at Talageri, even by one of the top IE scholars, Hans Heinrich Hock. ...It therefore disappointed me that even Hock would fall back on this guilt by association with an Indian political current, viz. Hindu chauvinism. That he did injustice to Talageri by identifying him as a narrow-minded Hindu chauvinist, is not even the point. More unworthy of a real scholar is that this gives all the weight to an aspect of the matter that, even if it had been true, is irrelevant from a scholarly angle: someone can speak the truth all while having motives you disapprove of, just as someone with approved political convictions can propose a wrong theory. Scholarship is not about political likes and dislikes, but about truth claims, and in that respect, as we are about to see, Talageri has been defeating all his opponents. All the same, I thought this altercation between Hock and Talageri was a pity, as well as other acrimonious confrontations with Michael Witzel, Arnaud Fournet and Vaclav Blažek. I know the world where they come from, have met them in Indo-Europeanist or Vedicist settings, and very much sympathize with their scholarly outlook on IE. Yet, I cannot find fault with Talageri either where he points out their intellectual and (in their unfair attacks on him) human failings."

"The essence of Tony Joseph's book is the new "genetic evidence"."

"Supporting Christian missionaries is an article of faith for secularism in India. When the secularist-leftist magazine Tehelka, in one of its early issues, carried detailed reports about the heavily funded and militarily organized subversive activities of foreign missionaries in India, there was a sharp reaction from prominent leftist and secularist personalities who wrote floods of letters to the magazine expressing shock at the publication of such reports in a secularist-leftist magazine, and accusing it of having betrayed secularism. Ever since, Tehelka is in the forefront of “reports” indicting “communal” Hindu organisations for harassing Christian missionaries and neo-Christian converts. ... Furthermore, it is also a fact that Christian converts from the tribals manage to corner most of the seats reserved for the tribals to the disadvantage of non-Christian tribals: there is a detailed report on this, with facts and figures, by S K Kaul, former Deputy Commissioner, Commission for the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, entitled “Christian converts corner the lion’s share of Reservation quota in services for Vanavasis”, in the Organiser, Republic Day Special, 1989."

"In short, if powerful and super rich foreign missionaries enter into the interior heartland of India, and mass-convert large sections of tribals to their foreign religion by telling them that the religions, gods, beliefs and practices of their ancestors are “satanic” and will take them to hell, and that the only way to escape hell and attain heaven is to accept Christ and convert to their alien religion, this does not amount to “baiting” or provoking anyone, such as the tribals in particular or Hindus in general, or violating their civil rights. In fact, it amounts to turning the tribals “into proud men and women”! But if Hindu organisations (automatically “diehard communal”, since Hindu, in opposition to the presumably “tolerant and secular”, since Christian, missionaries!) enter these areas within their own country, and appeal to the local people in the name of their ancestral religions, and actually have the gall to “organize Hindu festivals”, it naturally amounts to gross “baiting” and provocation of the foreign missionaries and violation of their civil rights. And if there is any “retaliation” by the missionaries to this “baiting”, it is of course excusable as a perfectly natural and justifiable “reaction” to these gross provocations by the communalists. And of course civil rights organisations have to rush to the protection and defence of these poor, helpless and oppressed missionaries, and the hapless plight to which they have been reduced by “minority baiters” from the RSS has to be propagated in our secular press! ... Another example from a second leading national newspaper: (...) Doesn’t this sound like a description of Christian missionaries, who claim to have a “monopoly over spiritual knowledge” since their religion and God are the only true ones (all others being false religions and Gods who can only lead to hell), who “move into” different areas of the world to spread this message, who compel people to leave their “age-old ways” of worship and religion because these are “‘corrupt’, ‘evil’, or simply ‘wrong’”, and seek to obliterate everywhere “the uniqueness of the local culture” by trying to paint the whole world in one international imperialistic “fundamentalist” colour? Wrong! This is a description (in an Indian Express article, 11/10/98, “Converting History”, by Rajesh Sinha, describing the situation in certain parts of Rajasthan) condemning the VHP and other Hindu organisations for having “started competing with Christian missionaries in establishing schools [etc.]”, thereby leading to “most Christian converts now returning to the Hindu fold”. The writer, with a straight face, tells us: “In the process, the saffron hawks are changing the face of Rajasthan, where once communal identity was a matter of little importance”. Is this some kind of incurably perverted mental sickness, or is it the power of the dollar?"

"A detailed and path-breaking analysis (HOPKINS 1896a) shows large categories of words found in the Late books (1,8,9,10, and often 5), but missing in the Early (6,3,7) and Middle books (4,2) except in a few stray hymns classified by the western academic scholars as Late or interpolated hymns within these books. These include such categories as words pertaining to ploughing or to other paraphernalia of agriculture, words associated with certain occupations and technologies (and even with what could be interpreted as the earliest references to the castes), words where the r is replaced by l (playoga and pulu for prayoga and puru), a very large number of personal names (not having to do with the name types, common to the Rigveda, Avesta and Mitanni records, analyzed by me), various suffixes and prefixes used in the formation of compound words, certain mythical or socio-religious concepts (Sūrya as an Āditya, Indra identified with the Sun, the discus as a weapon of Indra and the three-edged or three-pointed form of this weapon, etc), various grammatical forms (cases of the resolution of the vowel in the genitive plural of ā stems, some transition forms common in later literature, the Epic weakening of the perfect stem, the adverb adas, etc.), particular categories of words (Soma epithets like madacyuta, madintara/madintama, the names of the most prominent meters used in the Rigveda, etc.), certain stylistic peculiarities (the use of reduplicated compounds like mahāmaha, calācala, the use of alliteration, the excessive use of comparatives and superlatives, etc.), and many, many more."

"There are four Great Classical Civilizations in the Old World: from the east, China, India, Mesopotamia and Egypt. Of these, it is generally known and acknowledged that the Great Civilizations of China, Mesopotamia and Egypt go back beyond 3000 BCE, since detailed records are avaiḷable about their kings and dynasties, the major political events in their ancient history, the wars fought by them, their scientific and cultural achievements and their contributions to the world ̶ and the chronology of all these historical details is, more or less, known with reasonable accuracy. All these details are known and acknowledged about Classical Indian Civilization also in all these matters, but all of it pertains only to the period after 600 BCE or so. Of the four Great Civilizations of the Old World, the civilization of India alone stands apart in the fact that its history before 600 BCE is supposed to be a big blank in all these matters! The Great Indian civilization, whose remains were discovered by archaeologists in the early twentieth century on the banks of the Indus and the now dried-up Sarasvati, and whose beginnings (like those of the other Great Civilizations) go back well beyond 3000 BCE, is alleged to be a totally different civilization from the later Classical one, of a totally different people speaking a totally different language and having a totally different religion and culture!"

"“I have shown in my books that the ten books of the Rigveda were composed in the following order: 6,3,7,4,2,5,8,9,10 (with parts of book 1 spanning the periods of composition of books 4,2,5,8,9,10); and that they were composed as follows: books 6,3,7 in the Early Rigvedic period, books 4,2 in the Middle Rigvedic period, and books 5,1,8,9,10 in the Late Rigvedic period (the hymns of book 1 having been given their final form in the Late Rigvedic period, this book must be included in that period). To begin with, the western academic scholars themselves (see TALAGERI 2008:132-135 for details) have classified the books of the Rigveda into two groups: the family books (2-7) and the non-family books (1, 8-10), and testified, on the basis of their own analyses, that the family books were composed and compiled before the non-family books. Further, they have detached book 5 from the other family books and concluded that it agrees with the non-family books rather than with the other family books. By their analysis, the books of the Rigveda can be classified into three categories: the earlier family books (2-4, 6-7), the later family book (5), and the later non-family books (1, 8-10). This fully agrees with my own classification into Early books (6,3,7), Middle (4,2) and Late books (5,1,8,9,10); except that the Early and Middle books are clubbed together in one category in the western classification, and the internal order within the groups is not analyzed. [In sum, we get four categories: Early family books 6,3,7; Middle family books 4,2; Late family book 5; and Late non-family books 1,8,9,10]"

"Finally, in the same above summary, he advises all scholars studying the Indo-European question (or perhaps any historical question involving India) to suppress facts and self-censor their own studies and conclusions so as not to provide any quotable material favorable to any “Indian nationalist” agenda: “Indo-Europeanists must exercise caution, lest they unwittingly support ideologically motivated agendas”"

"The rise has been most phenomenal in Arunachal Pradesh, where the Christian percentage has grown from 0.79% in 1971 to 18.72% in 2001: this does not include the figures for crypto-Christians who are many in number in this state due to strong opposition from local tribals opposed to this massive proselytization... It can be seen that there is a complete sweep of conversion to Christianity among the tribal populations of Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram: 96.8%, 98.5% and 90.5% respectively (the Chakma tribe of Mizoram alone representing a Buddhist survival of 8.3% in that state)... In Arunachal Pradesh, there is an even bigger survival of the original tribal religion: Here we have the traditional Donyi Polo religion followed by almost 47.2% of the tribal population of the state, or 30.3% of the total population of the state. In Manipur, as we saw, there is a clean sweep of conversion to Christianity as in the case of Nagaland and Mizoram, with 96.8% of the tribals converted to Christianity... There are other miniscule populations among the tribes of these five states of the North East still practicing their ancestral religious or belief systems, but they have been reduced to a micro-minority by the time of the 2001 census itself, and may by now be almost completely decimated... The facts are crystal clear: except for followers of these five religions, all the tribal population of India (except converts to Christianity) consists overwhelmingly of Hindu Category One tribals. As the religious population figures of the 2011 Indian Census are still undisclosed, we do not know what the situation is today (2013) and what it will be at some point of time in the future. We do not know how far the efforts to break off the tribals from Hindu society, by converting them to Christianity or trying to convince them even otherwise that they are not Hindus, will be successful. But the fact is that as of the data now available, they are full-fledged Hindus, self-declared, and any change in the situation can only be a change brought about by Goebbelsian and diabolical machinations, and can not represent the original situation... Yet the billion-dollar funded political and academic campaign to cut off the tribal population of India from the non-tribal population by branding the tribals as non-Hindu, often branding them with innocuous names like “animists”, is in full flow... And these figures are faithfully reported in the data provided by the Joshua Project, whose aim is to give the genuine religious population figures for all the ethnic peoples of the world, so as to enable missionaries to formulate their strategies accordingly. The Wikipedia article, like articles in the Indian media or in books meant for consumption in India, obviously have different aims: the primary one being the old policy of “Divide and Conquer”."

"There is no direct ethnic connection between the identities of different peoples of the Rigvedic period and the identities of actual different peoples living in present-day India, or indeed in the world today. (TALAGERI 2008:363)"

"”Nor is there any group, caste or community in India which can be directly identified ethnically with the Purus: neither the inhabitants (or particular castes from among them) of present-day Haryana, U.P. or Punjab, nor the different Brahmin groups, found in every part of India, which claim direct descent from the different families of rsis of the Rigveda….In short, the history of Vedic times is just that: the history of Vedic times. It has to do with the history of civilizations and language families, and must be recognized as such; but it does not have anything whatsoever to do with relations between different ethnic, caste or communal groups of the present day. The biases and conflicts of ancient times are the biases and conflicts of ancient peoples with whom present day peoples have no direct connections” (TALAGERI 2008:365-6)."

"The "equine argument" is one of the most hypocritical arguments in the AIT armory, since the crux of the argument seems to be as follows: "the equine archaeological data does not provide material evidence for an OIT, therefore the OIT stands automatically disqualified. The equine archaeological data does not provide any material evidence whatsoever for an AIT either; but this does not disqualify the AIT, as the AIT does not require this evidence since the AIT is beyond doubt or question"."

"But it is time this state of affairs came to an end and accountability is brought into the AIT-vs.-OIT debate. AIT scholars can not be allowed to get away with this kind of compartmentalized discussions any more, where they can postulate any theory or situation to answer the objection, or the uncomfortable fact which cannot be swept under the carpet, that is before them at the moment, even when this theory or postulated situation sharply contradicts, or is totally incompatible with, what they postulate in other contexts."

"The Harappan civilization is situated deep within Indo-European ("Indo-Aryan") territory. The closest non-Indo-European families are at some distance:... There is no linguistic, archaeological or anthropological evidence indicating that the Harappan civilization was supplanted by a linguistically different race of people: on the contrary, archaeologists and anthropologists insist on continuity in the anthropological situation from Harappan times well into post- Vedic times. In these circumstances, the Harappan civilization should have been assumed to be Indo-European until proved otherwise. However, in gross violation of normal scholarly practice, it has been assumed to be non-Indo-European."

"So we have scholars accepting two different paradigms, both of which complement each other and should therefore have been treated as two parts of a whole: on the one hand, a widespread network of archaeological sites of a vast, highly-developed civilization (the Harappan civilization) lasting over thousands of years, which has allegedly left no literary records at all although it had a writing system; and, on the other, a full-fledged developed culture and civilization (the Vedic civilization) which has left a vast and detailed body of organized literature (unparalleled by any other known civilization of the same period) although it had no system of writing at all, but which has left absolutely no archaeological traces behind, both located in more or less the very same area! [This contradiction was first pointed out by David Frawley]."

"“The evidence of the Avestan meters confirms to the hilt the conclusions compelled by the evidence of the Avestan names: namely, (...) that the Early and Middle Books of the Rigveda precede the period of composition of the Avesta”. (Talageri 2009:80)"

"Most of these 'leftist' human rights organizations, with their predilection for stout defence of the 'human rights' of predator entities, are, more often than not, financed mainly by American sources linked with rightist 'international' American foundations and organizations promoting rightist American agendas. So it cannot basically be a 'left' versus 'right' issue"

"Witzel frequently refers to the references to armaka, "ruins", in the RV, as evidence that the RV is later to the desolation of the Indus cities... In any case, the word armaka, so frequently referred to in the post-RV literature, is found in the RV only in one late hymn in a Late Book: in I.133.3. The Early and Middle Books, and even much of the Late Books, are totally ignorant about these ruins."

"As we saw, there is a large class of personal names and name-elements common to the Late Books and hymns of the Rigveda (386 hymns in the Late Books of the Rigveda and 8 Late hymns in the earlier Books), and to the Avesta (the bulk of the names, right from the name of the first composer of the Avesta, and the names of his closest associates), the Mitanni (including every common name element known), and the Kassites (the only known name). These names and name-elements are fundamental to all four groups, but completely absent in the Early and Middle Books of the Rigveda (apart from the 8 Late hymns mentioned earlier). And all these names and name-elements are very common in post-Rigvedic texts."

"The first and foremost point is that the people of the Harappan areas, who were allegedly speaking a totally unrelated (to Indo-European) language, or languages, Munda, Dravidian, proto- Burushaski or Language X, completely abandoned that language, or those languages, and switched over to speaking Indo-European (specifically "Indo-Aryan") languages. And this switchover was so total that not a trace remains of the original language (except stray words in Vedic or later Indo-Aryan, which are alleged by certain linguists to be substrate words from those languages, but which, by their nature, would appear, if anything, more to be non-basic adstrate words adopted from neighbour or visitor languages: for example, a word which appears to be undoubtedly of Dravidian origin, the Vedic word kā ṇ a, "one- eyed", from Dravidian ka ṇ , "eye"). This situation is unique, extraordinary and unparalleled in more ways than one: the linguistic transformation was allegedly so complete that even the names of places and rivers in the area were so completely Indo-Europeanized or "Aryanized" that not a trace remains, even in the oldest hymns, of any alleged earlier "non-Aryan" names. ...Therefore, the transformation that is alleged to have taken place in the Harappan areas was absolutely total. It is alleged to have left almost no traces whatsoever of the original "belief, mythology and language", or of the original "complex of material and spiritual culture", other than "complex" clues that scholars like Witzel, and his predecessors and colleagues in the AIT cottage industry, have occasionally managed to dig out for our benefit."

"What is important, at this point, is to make it very, very clear, at the outset itself, that this level of chronological information, simply classifying the Books into "earlier" (2-4, 6-7), and "later" (5, 1, 8-10), officially accepted by the western scholars themselves, is sufficient (without going into further chronological details) to irrefutably establish the two conclusions that we arrived at in our chapters on the Relative Chronology and Geography of the Rigveda..."

"But this, besides being seemingly "possible" (by straining the credulity of even the most credulous and partisan reader to the utmost limit) only in respect of a very few names, would not help in explaining the almost complete absence of Western geographical data in the Early Books. Therefore, Witzel also tries to transfer eastern geographical data to the west,.... or by creating dual entities (eg. an Eastern Haryana-Sarasvatī, as well as a Western Afghan-Sarasvatī, both referred to in the Rigveda, with Witzel being the only person possessing the key to distinguish which Sarasvatī is being referred to in which verse."

"The totality of the alleged transformation itself is clearly unparalleled and unprecedented, and in every way contrary to the normal: Witzel himself, see above, repeatedly describes different aspects of it as "surprising", "relatively rare" and against what "one would have expected" in such cases. The case becomes impossible when we consider all the aspects together: (a) the transformation was total, (b) the people who brought about this transformation were illiterate, pastoral nomadic tribes "on the move" who "trickled" into the area in miniscule numbers, (c) the people who were transformed were the inhabitants of the most densely populated urban civilization of the time, covering a larger area, and having a relatively longer continuity without much change, than any other contemporary civilization, (d) the change took place within a few hundred years, and (e) it left absolutely no traces in the archaeological record, either of the conflicts and struggles involved or the necessarily resultant changes in ethnic and material composition of the areas after the transformation. It requires extraordinary "special pleading" to advocate such a case."

"But Jahnāvī is typically a Rigvedic form of the post-Vedic Jāhnavī, and it does not require any "Epic/Purāṇic concepts" to recognize it as the name of a river: a river is a geographical feature, not a mythological entity whose identity is based on traditional historical or mythological texts. On the other hand, Witzel‘s claim that ―Jahnāvī was the wife or a female relation of Jahnu or otherwise connected to him or his clan is definitely based on Epic/Purāṇic concepts: no person named Jahnu is mentioned anywhere in the Rigveda,...Jahnu himself is an Epic/Purāṇic figure...Not only does Witzel accept this Epic/Purāṇic person as the source of the Rigvedic word Jahnāvī, he even visualizes, in the manner of the Amar Chitrakatha comic books, a mysterious lady named Jahnāvī, "the wife or a female relation of Jahnu or otherwise connected to him or his clan", whose very existence is completely unknown to the whole of Vedic and Epic/Purāṇic literature and Indian tradition, but who is apparently so very important in the Rigveda that she is mentioned twice (how many other ladies are mentioned twice in the Rigveda outside of references to people aided by the Aśvins?) in special references, which are worded so peculiarly (what, after all, unless she was a symbol of the motherland, like the present-day Bhāratmātā, has this lady to do with an ―ancient home), that they can be more conveniently and logically translated as references to a river!"

"Witzel‘s location of the Sarasvatī in Book 2 in Afghanistan is not an honest one: he does it only because he wants a Rigvedic Book which refers only to western rivers, in order to show the Vedic Aryans ―fighting their way through the NW mountain passes in their alleged movement from west to east, and Book 2 is his only option, since the name of only this one river is mentioned in the whole of this Book, and it is a name which can be manipulated from east to west by creating a dual entity (thanks to the existence of a Sarasvatī, the Avestan Harahvaiti, in Afghanistan)."

"Note what Witzel is writing shortly before reading TALAGERI 2000:....But immediately after reading the analysis of the Rigveda in TALAGERI 2000, there is a magical transformation in Witzel‘s attitude:...The fact is that writing in historical subjects has become a front for pursuing political agendas or personal ego-trips. Before the year 2000, also, Witzel was an AIT writer; but this was not his main battlefront. It had genuinely never occurred to him, any more than it could have occurred to any other AIT writer, that there could be a serious and fundamental threat to the AIT model on which the analysis of the ancient history of South Asia, and of the Vedic texts, had so far been based. Therefore, they could indulge in academic quibbling on other minor points within the AIT framework....But, after the publication of TALAGERI 2000, priorities changed rapidly: it became necessary to close AIT ranks in a holy crusade against the new case and the new evidence for the OIT. The identity of the Harappan language could wait ― or could be pursued separately in different articles; after all, Witzel has a limitless capacity for writing mutually contradictory things, sometimes on the very same page, without causing the slightest dent in the faith and loyalty of his admirers ― what was important now was to rapidly drag the Vedic Aryans of the early period all the way back from the area of the Gangā to the safety of Afghanistan. Hence, all the post-2000 assertions and conclusions about the Gangā! Clearly, such writing can not be called scholarly writing under any circumstance, and one must be very, very careful indeed before placing the slightest credence in the views, interpretations and conclusions of such writers, howsoever high a position they may hold in the academic world."

"In my earlier book on the Rigveda, I examined the Rigvedic data in detail, and showed that the chronological order of the ten Books of the RV is: 6,3,7,4,2,5,8,9,10, with different parts of Book 1 covering the periods of all but the three earliest Books. I also showed in systematic detail that Family Books 6, 3 and 7 belong to the Early period, Family Books 4 and 2 to the Middle period, and the rest (Book 5 among the Family Books, and all the other, ie. non-family, Books, 8, 9 and 10, and most of Book 1) belong to the Late period"

"An analytical examination of just the three following assertions by Michael Witzel provides us with a great many examples of this exercise in deception:...Thus there is a regular AIT methodology by which every geographical name or word found in, or missing in, the Rigveda is to be interpreted: every eastern word found in the text is to be treated as indicative of a new area with which the Rigvedic Aryans are newly becoming familiar, and every eastern word not found as indicative of an eastern area not yet known to the immigrating Aryans; every western word found is to be treated as indicative of an area associated with the early days of the Aryan immigrations, and every western word not found as indicative of an area already old and forgotten by the immigrating Aryans"

"What is particularly notable in this special pleading is that it asks us to believe in a combination of abnormal phenomena and lack of evidence. Thus, for example, we could have accepted, in principle, that the river names of the Harappan areas (in an AIT scenario) may have been "Indo-Aryanised", if transformation of river names were the norm in such cases, even in the absence of evidence in this case of any earlier names. But it is not the norm: as Witzel points out, the names of most European rivers, to this day, ―reflect the languages spoken before the influx of Indo-European speaking populations [and] are thus older than c. 4500-2500 B.C. Again, we would have had to accept that such a transformation took place here, even if it went contrary to the norm, if earlier "non-Indo-Aryan" names of these rivers were on record at least in the texts. But there is not the faintest clue, even in the oldest hymns, that any such names ever existed. This pleading therefore goes both against the norm as well as against the available evidence."

"My book was published in early 2000, and I sent a copy of it to Witzel (not in a nasty spirit, and certainly not in anticipation of bouquets, but only to facilitate a healthy dialogue, or, at the very least, as a matter of courtesy). Earlier, I had also sent a copy to another scholar at Harvard (with whom I had earlier established indirect and temporary contact). Within a month I received an e-mail letter from that scholar ...relating that there had been a discussion between Witzel and himself “about the possibility of Talageri coming to study with him (Witzel) in Harvard to do advanced study or a Ph.D.” Witzel, the scholar wrote, “is the Vedic scholar par excellence, and Shrikant could get proper training and academic credentials if he were to be accepted”. I was asked to “contact Michael Witzel directly”. There was a proviso – as discreetly phrased as the rest of the letter – “provided he is open-minded and flexible in his views, and does not show himself to be intransigent or predisposed to certain ideas”."

"Witzel claims to arrive at his conclusions on the basis of a combination of a geographical grid and a chronological grid, but, as we have seen, he does not prepare a chronological grid at all: else, he would never place MaNDala II before MaNDala VI (when the very eponymous RSi of MaNDala II is a descendant of a composer, Sunahotra BhAradvAja, in MaNDala VI) or MaNDala VIII before MaNDala III (when the very eponymous RSi of MaNDala VIII is a descendant of a composer, Ghora ANgiras, in MaNDala III)."

"(Witzel's) review should logically have consisted of two parts: 1. A rebuttal of chapter 9 of my book (my critique of WITZEL 1995a, 1995b)... This chapter of my book shows Professor Witzel inventing evidence, suppressing inconvenient data, following an inconsistent methodology, retrofitting data into pre-conceived notions, contradicting himself again and again, and using misleading language. 2. A review of my own theory and conclusions."

"An academic debate on any subject should concentrate on the pros and cons of the arguments presented by the two (or more) opposing sides in the debate; it should be conducted in an open and sincere atmosphere; and the natural desire (not academically wrong in itself) to win the debate should not be allowed to overpower the academic desire to arrive at the truth... And an academic debate cannot be won by the simple expedient of name-calling and label-sticking, and consequent disqualification of the opposing side from even taking part in the debate."

"In these circumstances, writers, particularly Indian ones, who stake claims for India only arouse his contempt. By and large, he would prefer to ignore this riff-raff; but when a few Western academicians also start saying the same things, it is time, in Witzel’s opinion, to put a stop to this nonsense.... In putting a stop to it, if Witzel finds that he has to stretch or bend the facts a little, or to ignore, suppress or distort them, it is all in the cause of “TRUTH”. A few in-convenient facts cannot be allowed to prevent the “TRUTH” from prevailing.... Clearly, this kind of attitude is not conducive to any “scientific evaluation” of anything. Nor is it conducive to any academic debate."

"what is generally understood by the term Hindutva: an ideology for the defence of Hindu society and civilisation. As the word defence indicates, the first premise is that Hindu society and civilisation are under attack […] Hindu civilisation is the one civilisation whose inner greatness and resilience enabled it to withstand centuries of Christian and Islamic imperialist attack. It is in fact the last major bastion of the pre-Christian civilisations of the world. For that very reason, Hindu society is today the single major target of all these Imperialisms, which are backed by powerful international forces".... Hindus must be educated, on the one hand, about Hindu civilisation and its rich heritage .... and, on the other, about the forces out to destroy this civilisation, about the textual sources, ideologies, histories, strategies and present activities of these forces, and about the Hindu struggles against these forces and the Hindu heroes involved in these struggles. It is also necessary to alert Hindus to the inner weaknesses which make Hindu society susceptible to these forces, the dangers of Secularism, the self-alienation among the Hindu elites and ruling classes and their indifference to, and contempt for, their own culture and civilisation, the breakdown of the defence mechanism of Hindu society, the perversion of certain Hindu values like tolerance, universalism and humanism, and the abandonment of certain other Hindu values like self-respect, rationalism and capacity for objective analysis"....n the past, much evil, injustice and damage has been done in the name of religion; but even more evil, injustice and damage has been done, and is being done even now on an ever-increasing scale, in the name of progress and development. As a result of many of the half-baked, ill-thought of, or plainly mercenary, things which take place in the name of progress and development, the world not only becomes vastly poorer of large parts of its rich heritage, which is lost forever, but it often has to pay a heavy price for it (the lethal effects of deforestation, industrial pollution, and mega-urbanisation, for example, are already apparent; and will become so clear in the days to come, that even the most determined opponent of social and environmental concerns will be compelled to note them; by when, of course, it will be too late, since some things become irreversible after a point of time), and the results, even otherwise, are often pathetic, tragic and depressing"....the ultimate basis of any ideology must be Truth, and the ultimate aim Justice. And, all issues of Justice can be broadly classified under two heads: Cultural Justice and Socio-Economic Justice. But, the fact is that vested interests, throughout history, have always conspired to place these two categories in mutually antagonistic slots.... It is time for Hindutva to break out of this vicious circle, and to start representing Right against Wrong, rather than Right against Left."

"What adds to the force of the archaeological evidence (of continuity in material and ethnic culture) is the fact that there is considerable acceptable archaeological, as also hydronomic, evidence, for the Indo-European intrusions, in the case of the earliest habitats of most of the other Indo-European branches,...So here, more than in any of the other cases, we should have found massive and unambiguous evidence of the "Indo-Aryan" intrusions, if they ever took place. The total absence of any indications in the material remains of the area, of such a cataclysmic transformation, constitutes massive evidence for the rejection of the very idea that such a transformation took place at all."

"And, on this principle, Witzel’s papers themselves are “devoid of scholarly value”, since he is also “motivated” by the desire to counter the Indian homeland theory. Erdosy testifies that “the principal concern” of scholars (like Witzel) studying South Asian linguistics is to find “evidence for the external origins - and likely arrival in the 2nd millennium BC - of Indo-Aryan languages”; and Witzel himself admits that his historical analysis of the Rigveda is motivated by the desire to counter “recent attempts (Biswas 1990, Shaffer 1984) to deny that any movement of Indo-European into South Asia has occured.”"

"But, at the same time, in spite of all the inegalitarianism and injustice which permeates the laws and the stories which illustrate the application of these laws, there is a thread of basic humanitarianism which runs through the gamut of Indian civilisation, which makes India appropriately qualified to show the path to the rest of the world at this crucial juncture in human history - not on the basis of Hindu precedents, but on the basis of this basic humanitarianism developed to its full potential."

"Witzel takes up two verses which clearly refer to eastern rivers, misinterprets them as references to the Indus, further misinterprets them as references to crossings of the Indus river from west to east, and then reconstructs an entire saga of the immigration of the Rigvedic Aryans into India on the basis of these misinterpretations. He even pinpoints the exact area “eastern Iran” from which specific immigrants, “the Bharatas and VasiSTha”110, led this historical exodus across the Indus.... Is “gross misrepresentation” an adequate word to describe this whole exercise?... His sole criterion in preparing a chronological arrangement is his own geographical grid prepared on the basis of deliberate misinterpretations of Rigvedic geography."

"The importance of the Sarasvatī in Indian historical studies has multiplied manifold since archaeological analyses of the Ghaggar-Hakra river bed, combined with detailed satellite imagery of the course of the ancient (now dried up) river, conclusively showed that it had almost dried up by the mid-second millennium BCE itself, and that, long before that, it was a mighty river, mightier than the Indus, and that an overwhelming majority of the archaeological sites of the Harappan cities are located on the banks of the Sarasvatī rather than of the Indus. This has lethal implications for the AIT, which requires an Aryan invasion around 1500 BCE after the decline of the Harappan civilization, since it shows that the Vedic Aryans, who lived ―on both banks (Rigveda VII.96.2) of a mighty Sarasvatī in full powerful flow, must have been inhabitants of the region long before 1500 BCE and in fact may be identical with the indigenous Harappans. Therefore, there is now a desperate salvage operation on, in powerful leftist and "secularist" political circles in India, to put a complete full stop to any further official research on the Sarasvatī (including archaeological and geological investigations), and to launch an all-out Goebbelsian campaign through a captive media to deny that there ever was a Vedic Sarasvatī river in existence in India: the river named in the Rigveda was either completely mythical, or it was the river in Afghanistan, but it definitely was not identical with the Ghaggar-Hakra!"

"A true scholarship would examine, and then either accept or reject, with good reason, any new theory which challenges a generally accepted theory admitted to be full of sharp anomalies. However, this has not been the attitude of world scholarship towards our earlier book. The general attitude has been as follows: there is a school of crank scholarship in India which is out to prove, by hook or by crook, that India was the original homeland of the Indo-European family of languages; and the writers of this school deserve to be firmly put in their place. And the best method of doing this is by tarring all scholars who support, or even appear to support, an Indian homeland theory, with one brush; and then pointing out particularly untenable propositions made by one or the other of the scholars so branded together, to prove that all the scholars so named belong to one single school of irrational scholarship."

"Sergent’s last thrust represents the unkindest cut in this whole smear campaign. It is not we who have avoided debate. It is these Western scholars who have chosen to conduct a spit-and-run campaign from a safe distance, while restricting their criticism of our theory (elaborated by us in our earlier book) to name-calling and label-sticking rather than to demolition of our arguments."

"How does Witzel get a chronological order so completely different from our own (which is VI, III, VII, IV, II, V, VIII)?.. The answer is very simple: although Witzel postulates the establishment of a chronological grid “on the strength of a few pedigrees of chiefs and poets available from the hymns,” he does not establish any such grid."

"Other scholars, when they deign to notice the evidence in the PurANas in respect of the indigenous origin of the Aryans and their expansion outside India, tend to dismiss this evidence as irrelevant on the ground that it is allegedly contradictory to the evidence of the Rigveda."

"But the same argument cannot hold for a post-Rigvedic movement from the northwest into the rest of India: it is clear that a full-fledged literary tradition had certainly started with the Rigveda at least; and any post-Rigvedic movements should be reflected in the later texts."