Reeks lezingen door dr. Koenraad Elst, oriëntalist

"De Lezing"

Reeks lezingen door dr. Koenraad Elst, oriëntalist

 

 

Dr. Koenraad Elst, oriëntalist, geeft een reeks van drie lezingen over thema's die niet alleen hem maar ook u meer dan gewoon (kunnen) interesseren: Islam, boeddhisme en Ghandi.

 

Dr. Koenraad Elst schreef fel besproken boeken en zeer veel artikels over de drie onderwerpen in voornamelijk het Nederlands en het Engels. Hem aan het woord horen is leerrijk en verhelderend. Hem lezen is dat minstens evenveel.

 

Na de lezingen biedt dr. Elst zijn boeken aan en signeert.

 Er is kans tot vragen en nabespreking.

 

Voor zeer redelijke prijzen is het mogelijk drank te bekomen.

 

De eerste lezing is op dinsdag 9 oktober, 20 uur.

 

De tweede lezing is op dinsdag 13 november, 20 uur.

 

De derde lezing is op dinsdag 11 december, 20 uur.

 

Prijs: GRATIS (met dank aan het nieuwe adres).

Drank aan betaalbare prijzen.

Opgelet: aantal plaatsen beperkt tot 25 !

Inschrijven :

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Plaats : Torrestraat 76, Dendermonde.

 Belangrijke mededeling :

 Dit is GEEN organisatie van Euro-Rus.

De lezingen worden georganiseerd door derden. Zij maken enkel gebruik van de aangeboden faciliteiten.

Revolutionary Sikh: The Last Words of Udham Singh

ex: http://openrevolt.info/

Who Was Udham Singh?

Udham Singh, a revolutionary nationalist, was born Sher Singh on 26 December 1899, at Sunam, in the then princely state of Patiala. His father, Tahal Singh, was at that time working as a watchman on a railway crossing in the neighbouring village of Upall. Sher Singh lost his parents before he was seven years and was admitted along with his brother Mukta Singh to the Central Khalsa Orphanage at Amritsar on 24 October 1907. As both brothers were administered the Sikh initiatory rites at the Orphanage, they received new names, Sher Singh becoming Udham Singh and Mukta Singh Sadhu Singh. In 1917, Udham Singh’s brother also died, leaving him alone in the world.

Udham Singh left the Orphanage after passing the matriculation examination in 1918. He was present in the Jallianvala Bag on the fateful Baisakhi day, 13 April 1919, when a peaceful assembly of people was fired upon by General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer, killing over one thousand people. The event which Udham Singh used to recall with anger and sorrow, turned him to the path of revolution. Soon after, he left India and went to the United States of America. He felt thrilled to learn about the militant activities of the Babar Akalis in the early 1920′s, and returned home. He had secretly brought with him some revolvers and was arrested by the police in Amritsar, and sentenced to four years imprisonment under the Arms Act. On release in 1931, he returned to his native Sunam, but harassed by the local police, he once again returned to Amritsar and opened a shop as a signboard painter, assuming the name of Ram Muhammad Singh Azad. This name, which he was to use later in England, was adopted to emphasize the unity of all the religious communities in India in their struggle for political freedom.

Udham Singh was deeply influenced by the activities of Bhagat Singh and his revolutionary group. In 1935, when he was on a visit to Kashmlr, he was found carrying Bhagat Singh’s portrait. He invariably referred to him as his guru. He loved to sing political songs, and was very fond of Ram Prasad Bismal, who was the leading poet of the revolutionaries. After staying for some months in Kashmlr, Udham Singh left India. He wandered about the continent for some time, and reached England by the mid-thirties. He was on the lookout for an opportunity to avenge the Jalliavala Bagh tragedy. The long-waited moment at last came on 13 March 1940. On that day, at 4.30 p.m. in the Caxton Hall, London, where a meeting of the East India Association was being held in conjunction with the Royal Central Asian Society, Udham Singh fired five to six shots from his pistol at Sir Michael O’Dwyer, who was governor of the Punjab when the Amritsar massacre had taken place. O’Dwyer was hit twice and fell to the ground dead and Lord Zetland, the Secretary of State for India, who was presiding over the meeting was injured. Udham Singh was overpowered with a smoking revolver. He in fact made no attempt to escape and continued saying that he had done his duty by his country.

On 1 April 1940, Udham Singh was formally charged with the murder of Sir Michael O’Dwyer. On 4 June 1940, he was committed to trial, at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, before Justice Atkinson, who sentenced him to death. An appeal was filed on his behalf which was dismissed on 15 July 1940. On 31 July 1940, Udham Singh was hanged in Pentonville Prison in London.

Udham Singh was essentially a man of action and save his statement before the judge at his trial, there was no writing from his pen available to historians. Recently, letters written by him to Shiv Singh Jauhal during his days in prison after the shooting of Sir Michael O’Dwyer have been discovered and published. These letters show him as a man of great courage, with a sense of humor. He called himself a guest of His Majesty King George, and he looked upon death as a bride he was going to wed. By remaining cheerful to the last and going joyfully to the gallows, he followed the example of Bhagat Singh who had been his beau ideal. During the trial, Udham Singh had made a request that his ashes be sent back to his country, but this was not allowed. In 1975, however, the Government of India, at the instance of the Punjab Government, finally succeeded in bringing his ashes home. Lakhs of people gathered on the occasion to pay homage to his memory.

The Last Words of Udham Singh

On the 31st July, 1940, Udham Singh was hanged at Pentonville jail, London. On the 4th of June in the same year he had been arraigned before Mr. Justice Atkinson at the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey. Udham Singh was charged with the murder of Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the former Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab who had approved of the action of Brigadier-General R.E.H. Dyer at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar on April 13, 1919, which had resulted in the massacre of hundreds of men, women and children and left over 1,000 wounded during the course of a peaceful political meeting. The assassination of O’Dwyer took place at the Caxton Hall, Westminster. The trial of Udham Singh lasted for two days, he was found guilty and was given the death sentence. On the 15th July, 1940, the Court of Criminal Appeal heard and dismissed the appeal of Udham Singh against the death sentence.

Prior to passing the sentence Mr. Justice Atkinson asked Udham Singh whether he had anything to say. Replying in the affirmative he began to read from prepared notes. The judge repeatedly interrupted Udham Singh and ordered the press not to report the statement. Both in Britain and India the government made strenuous efforts to ensure that the minimum publicity was given to the trial. Reuters were approached for this purpose.

The father of Udham Singh, Tehl Singh, was born into a poor peasant family and worked as a Railway Gate Keeper at the railway level crossing at Village Uppali. Udham Singh was born on 28th December, 1899 at Sanam, Sangrur District, Punjab. After the death of his father Udham Singh was brought up in a Sikh orphanage in Amritsar. The massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919 was deeply engraved in the mind of the future martyr. At the age of 16 years Udham Singh defied the curfew and was wounded in the course of retrieving the body of the husband of one Rattan Devi in the aftermath of the slaughter. Subsequently Udham Singh travelled abroad in Africa, the United States and Europe. Over the years he met Lala Lajpat Rai, Kishen Singh and Bhagat Singh, whom he considered his guru and ‘his best friend’. In 1927 Udham Singh was arrested in Amritsar under the Arms Act. The impact of the Russian revolution on him is indicated by the fact that amongst the revolutionary tracts found by the raiding party was Rusi Ghaddar Gian Samachar. After serving his sentence and visiting his home town, Udham Singh resumed, his travels abroad. If it was the Jallianwala Bagh massacre which provided the turning point of his life which led him to avenge the dead, it was Bhagat Singh who provided him with the inspiration to pursue the path of revolutionary struggle.

Echoes of Kartar Singh Sarabha and Bhagat Singh may be found in the words of Udham Singh in the wake of the assassination of O’Dwyer.

‘I don’t care, I don’t mind dying. What Is the use of waiting till you get old? This Is no good. You want to die when you are young. That is good, that Is what I am doing’.

After a pause he added:

‘I am dying for my country’.

In a statement given on March 13th, 1940 be said:

‘I just shot to make protest. I have seen people starving In India under British Imperialism. I done it, the pistol went off three or four times. I am not sorry for protesting. It was my duty to do so. Put some more. Just for the sake of my country to protest. I do not mind my sentence. Ten, twenty, or fifty years or to be hanged. I done my duty.’

In a letter from Brixton Prison of 30th March, 1940, Udham Singh refers to Bhagat Singh in the following terms:

‘I never afraid of dying so soon I will be getting married with execution. I am not sorry as I am a soldier of my country it is since 10 years when my friend has left me behind and I am sure after my death I will see him as he is waiting for me it was 23rd and I hope they will hang me on the same date as he was.’

The British courts were able to silence for long the last words of Udham Singh. At last the speech has been released from the British Public Records Office.

Shorthand notes of the Statement made by Udham Singh after the Judge had asked him if he had anything to say as to why sentence should not be passed upon him according to Law.

Facing the Judge, he exclaimed, ‘I say down with British Imperialism. You say India do not have peace. We have only slavery. Generations of so called civilization has brought for us everything filthy and degenerating known to the human race. All you have to do is read your own history. If you have any human decency about you, you should die with shame. The brutality and bloodthirsty way in which the so called intellectuals who call themselves rulers of civilization in the world are of bastard blood…’

MR. JUSTICE ATKINSON: I am not going to listen to a political speech. If you have anything relevant to say about this case say it.

UDHAM SINGH: I have to say this. I wanted to protest.

The accused brandished the sheaf of papers from which he had been reading.

THE JUDGE: Is it in English?

UDHAM SINGH: You can understand what I am reading now.

THE JUDGE: I will understand much more if you give it to me to read.

UDHAM SINGH: I want the jury, I want the whole lot to hear it.

Mr. G.B. McClure (Prosecuting) reminded the Judge that under Section 6 of the Emergency Powers Act he could direct that Udham Singh’s speech be not reported or that it could be heard in camera.

THE JUDGE (to the accused): You may take it that nothing will be published of what you say. You must speak to the point. Now go on.

UDHAM SINGH: I am protesting. This is what I mean. I am quite innocent about that address. The jury were misled about that address. I am going to read this now.

THE JUDGE: Well, go on.

While the accused was perusing the papers, the Judge reminded him ‘You are only to say why sentence should not be passed according to law.’

UDHAM SINGH (shouting): ‘I do not care about sentence of death. It means nothing at all. I do not care about dying or anything. I do not worry about it at all. I am dying for a purpose.’ Thumping the rail of the dock, he exclaimed, ‘We are suffering from the British Empire.’ Udham Singh continued more quietly. ‘I am not afraid to die. I am proud to die, to have to free my native land and I hope that when I am gone, I hope that in my place will come thousands of my countrymen to drive you dirty dogs out; to free my country.’

‘I am standing before an English jury. I am in an English court. You people go to India and when you come back you are given a prize and put in the House of Commons. We come to England and we are sentenced to death.’

‘I never meant anything; but I will take it. I do not care anything about it, but when you dirty dogs come to India there comes a time when you will be cleaned out of India. All your British Imperialism will be smashed.’

‘Machine guns on the streets of India mow down thousands of poor women and children wherever your so-called flag of democracy and Christianity flies.’

‘Your conduct, your conduct – I am talking about the British government. I have nothing against the English people at all. I have more English friends living in England than I have in India. I have great sympathy with the workers of England. I am against the Imperialist Government.’

‘You people are suffering – workers. Everyone are suffering through these dirty dogs; these mad beasts. India is only slavery. Killing, mutilating and destroying – British Imperialism. People do not read about it in the papers. We know what is going on in India.’

MR. JUSTICE ATKINSON: I am not going to hear any more.

UDHAM SINGH: You do not want to listen to any more because you are tired of my speech, eh? I have a lot to say yet.

THE JUDGE: I am not going to hear any more of that statement.

UDHAM SINGH: You ask me what I have to say. I am saying it. Because you people are dirty. You do not want to hear from us what you are doing in India.

Thrusting his glasses back into his pocket, Udham Singh exclaimed three words in Hindustani and then shouted, Down with British Imperialism! Down with British dirty dogs!’

As he turned to leave the dock, the accused spat across the solicitor’s table.

After Singh had left the dock, the Judge turned to the Press and said:

‘I give a direction to the Press not to report any of the statement made by the accused in the dock. You understand, members of the press?’

Problématique et prospective géopolitiques de la question pakistanaise

 

Andrea Jacopo SALA:

Problématique et prospective géopolitiques de la question pakistanaise

 

Ce sont les événements qui ont immédiatement suivi la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale qui constituent le point de départ à analyser pour comprendre les tensions qui ont affecté la zone la plus méridionale du continent asiatique. La fin des empires coloniaux et la volonté d’émancipation des nations émergentes ont entraîné un partage nouveau des territoires, tenant compte des réalités culturelles qui, auparavant, avaient cohabité sous une hégémonie étrangère unique, britannique en l’occurrence. On ne peut nullement se référer au découpage arbitraire que les puissances dominantes et coloniales ont imposé car elles sont une des causes premières des tensions qui ont ensanglanté ces pays, lesquels, aujourd’hui encore, présentent des cicatrices difficilement guérissables. Ces cicatrices, béantes, sont autant de bonnes opportunités pour tous ceux qui veulent s’immiscer dans les querelles intérieures et dans les contentieux diplomatiques qui affectent ces pays du Sud et du Sud-est de l’Asie, comme si les castes dirigeantes de l’Occident avaient la nostalgie du statut colonial d’antan, que ces jeunes nations ont rejeté; ces castes préfèrent encore et toujours contrôler ces pays indirectement, au bénéfice de leurs prorpes intérêts, plutôt que de prendre acte, sereinement, des maturations et des changements qui se sont effectués au fil du temps.

 

Il faut donc esquisser un bref panorama historique des événements les plus marquants qui ont accompagné la désagrégation de l’ancien “Raj” britannique, ainsi que de leurs conséquences directes, puis il faut passer au tamis toutes les problématiques liées au terrorisme, car ce terrorisme est un des moyens les plus utilisés pour intervenir dans et contre les choix politiques posés par les anciennes colonies britanniques, aussi pour s’immiscer dans les potentialités émergentes germant dans ces pays mêmes et pour freiner ou ralentir les nouvelles perspectives géopolitiques qui se révèlent réalisables depuis quelques temps.

 

Après le “Raj” britannique

 

Le “Raj” britannique des Indes (au pluriel!), on le sait, a été subdivisé en deux pays, le Pakistan et l’Inde, en 1947. C’était l’aboutissement de cette longue lutte indienne pour l’indépendance qui s’était radicalisée dans les années 20 et 30 du 20ième siècle, lutte dont les vicissitudes sont bien connues du public occidental grâce à la fascination qu’avait exercée sur bien des esprits la forte personnalité politique et spirituelle que fut Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Parallèlement au Parti du Congrès National Indien (PCNI), dont le “Mahatma” (Gandhi) était le membre le plus influent, existait aussi le Parti de la Ligue Musulmane (PLM), dirigé par Mohammed Ali Jinnah, tout aussi âpre dans sa lutte contre le colonialisme britannique. Dans une première phase de la lutte pour l’indépendance indienne, le PLM était allié au PCNI puisqu’ils avaient des objectifs communs. Mais, dès que les Britanniques promirent de résoudre la question indienne en renonçant à toutes prérogatives coloniales dans la région, les rapports entre le leader musulman et Gandhi se sont détériorés: tandis que le “Mahatma”, inspiré par les thèses théosophiques, rêvait d’une seule et unique nation indienne où coexisteraient pacifiquement plusieurs religions, Mohammed Ali Jinnah revendiquait l’instauration d’un Etat exclusivement islamique. La résolution du problème fut confiée à Lord Mountbatten qui a accepté la requête des Musulmans et a, par voie de conséquence, partagé le territoire du “Raj” britannique entre les dominions du Pakistan et de l’Inde.

 

Le plan Mountbatten contenait toutefois beaucoup d’approximations et de concessions arbitraires (et parfois inutiles), si bien qu’on ne pouvait guère le faire appliquer tout en voulant maintenir la paix: la zone d’influence du Pakistan était divisée fort maladroitement en un Pakistan occidental et un Pakistan oriental, séparé l’un de l’autre par un immense territoire sous juridiction indienne; de nombreux territoires, comme le Cachemire, n’avaient été attribués officiellement à aucun des deux nouveaux Etats souverains; malgré la volonté affichée d’attribuer aux uns et aux autres des territoires sur base de critères religieux et culturels, la partition laissait des zones à majorité hindoue au Pakistan et des zones à majorité musulmane au nouveau “dominion” de l’Inde.

 

 

 

 

A cette situation délicate s’ajoutaient les prétentions chinoises sur quelques territoires de l’ancien “Raj” britannique. Le tout a enflammé la région pendant la seconde partie du 20ème siècle, aux dépens des populations. Pas moins de quatre guerres ont sévi et, suite à l’une d’elles, la zone baptisée par Lord Mountbatten “Pakistan oriental” est devenue indépendante, avec l’aide des Indiens, pour devenir l’actuel Bengladesh; la région du Cachemire a été divisée selon les lignes des fronts où s’étaient successivement affrontés Pakistanais, Indiens et Chinois. Il ne faut pas oublier non plus les nombreuses migrations qui ont suivi la partition, où les Hindous quittaient en masse les territoires sous juridiction pakistanaise-musulmane et où les Musulmans quittaient les zone attribuées à la nouvelle Inde indépendante, majoritairement hindoue. Ces transferts de population ont eu des effets fortement déstabilisants pour les équilibres internes des deux nouveaux Etats. Entretemps, alors que l’Inde optait pour la voie de la modernisation sous l’impulsion du gouvernement de Nehru, le Pakistan fut secoué par une série de coups d’Etat militaires, renversant à intervalles réguliers les régimes démocratiques.

 

Terrorisme et guerre au terrorisme

 

Après avoir déployé une politique fièrement hostile aux Etats-Unis sous la houlette de Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, qui a ouvert le Pakistan aux technologies nucléaires, le pays tombe ensuite sous une nouvelle dictature militaire, dirigée par le Général Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq et fortement inspirée par le fondamentalisme musulman. La période de la dictature de Zia-ul-Haq fut celle d’une collaboration étroite avec les bandes anti-soviétiques actives dans le conflit afghan; ensuite, l’amitié entre Zia-ul-Haq et le chef d’une faction insurrectionnelle afghane, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar —appuyée par un financement d’au moins 600 millions de dollars en provenance des circuits de la CIA et transitant par le Pakistan— favorisait un soutien direct à la puissante guérilla intégriste qui luttait contre les Soviétiques (1).

 

L’existence même d’Al-Qaeda est issue de ce contexte conflictuel entre, d’une part, le gouvernement légal afghan, soutenu par l’Union Soviétique, et, d’autre part, l’insurrection des “moudjahiddins”. D’après l’ancien ministre britannique des affaires étrangères, Robert Cook, Al-Qaeda serait la traduction en arabe de “data-base”. Et ce même Cook affirmait dans un entretien accordé à “The Guardian”: “Pour autant que je le sache, Al-Qaeda était, à l’origine, le nom d’une ‘data-base’ (base de données) du gouvernement américain, contenant les noms des milliers de moudjahiddins enrôlés par la CIA pour combattre les Soviétiques en Afghanistan” (2). Ce que confirme par ailleurs Saad al-Fagih, chef du “Movement for Islamic Reform” en Arabie Saoudite: Ben Laden s’est bel et bien engagé, au départ, pour s’opposer à la présence soviétique en Afghanistan (3). Si cet appui initial des Américains à de telles organisations (qui seraient ensuite partiellement passées dans les rangs du terrorisme anti-occidental) explique les raisons stratégiques qui ont forcé les Etats-Unis à se rapprocher des organisations fondamentalistes islamiques, celles-ci, dès qu’elles ne fournissent plus aucun avantage stratégique et ne servent plus les intérêts géopolitiques immédiats de Washington, deviennent automatiquement “ennemies” et sont donc combattues en tant que telles.

 

Dans cette logique, on peut s’expliquer la ruine actuelle du Pakistan, sombrant dans le chaos sous le regard des Américains. Après la chute du régime de Zia-ul-Haq et pendant toute la durée du régime de Pervez Mucharraf, le gouvernement du Pakistan a été continuellement accusé de soutenir les talibans (4), surtout depuis l’opération, parachevée avec succès, visant l’arrestation du troisième personnage dans la hiérarchie d’Al-Qaeda, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad. Dans un tel contexte (et un tel imbroglio!), le ministre indien des affaires étrangères n’a pas hésité à déclarer “que le Pakistan a échoué dans ses projets d’éradiquer le terrorisme qui puise ses racines sur son prorpe territoire”: c’était immédiatmeent après les attentats de Mumbai (Bombay) (5). Ce bref rapprochement entre l’Inde et les Etats-Unis, prévisible et dirigé contre le Pakistan, ne devrait pourtant pas mener à une éventuelle intervention occidentale dans la zone du Cachemire, vu que tous les Etats impliqués dans cette zone se sont toujours montrés très rétifs à des interventions extérieures, même si de telles interventions pouvaient faire pencher la balance dans le sens de leurs propres intérêts géopolitiques. Il me paraît inutile, ici, d’évoquer la prétendue exécution du terroriste Osama Ben Laden, justement sur le territoire du Pakistan lui-même.

 

Mais pourquoi les relations américano-pakistanaises se sont-elles détériorées à ce point, et de manière assez inattendue?

 

Le tracé des gazoducs

 

La Pakistan est devenu membre observateur de l’OCS (Organisation de Coopération de Shanghai) en 2005, ce qui constitue déjà un motif d’inquiétude pour les pays inféodés à l’OTAN. Cependant, ce qui constitue probablement la cause principale de la mobilisation des énergies et des médias pour discréditer la République Islamique du Pakistan est la proposition des Iraniens, séduisante pour les Pakistanais, de construire un gazoduc qui reliera les deux pays et dont Islamabad a prévu la parachèvement pour 2014. Le projet initial aurait dû également impliquer l’Inde, dans la mesure où un terminal du gazoduc y aurait abouti, mais les pressions américaines ont empêché l’adhésion de l’Inde au projet suggéré par l’Iran.

 

 

 

 

Le projet déplait à l’évidence aux Etats-Unis non seulement parce qu’il renforce les relations entre deux pays islamiques mais aussi et surtout parce que le nouveau choix du Pakistan est diamètralement contraire aux plans prévus pour un autre gazoduc, le gazoduc dit “TAPI”, qui devrait partir du Turkménistan et passer par l’Afghanistan et le Pakistan pour aboutir en Inde, tout en étant étroitement contrôlé par des investisseurs américains.

 

Dans ce jeu, la région du Beloutchistan joue un rôle de premier plan, région habitée majoritairement par une ethnie très apparentée aux Pachtouns. Les Pachtouns sont un peuple originaire de régions aujourd’hui afghanes et se sont rendus tristement célèbres pour leurs violences et pour leurs velléités indépendantistes (tant en Iran qu’au Pakistan), sans oublier leurs trafics d’opium et d’héroïne qui posent quantité de problèmes au gouvernement pakistanais.

 

Les jeux stratégiques demeurent toutefois peu clairs et peu définis jusqu’à présent, si bien qu’il me paraît difficile de se prononcer d’une manière définitive sur les problèmes de la région. Le Pakistan reçoit encore et toujours un soutien financier de la part des Etats-Unis, en provenance directe du Pentagone; officiellement, cet argent sert à lutter contre le terrorisme mais, forcément, on peut très bien imaginer qu’il s’agit surtout de convaincre Islamabad de refuser l’offre iranienne.

 

Andrea Jacopo SALA,

Article paru sur le site italien http://www.eurasia-rivista.org/ en date du 6 août 2012.

 

Notes:

 

(1)   http://it.wikipedia.org/ Entrée sur Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

(2)   http://www.guardian.co.uk/ , 8 juillet 2005

(3)   http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/interviews/al-fagih.html/

(4)   http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/3231/

(5)   http://www.repubblica.it/2008/11/sezioni/esteri/india-attentato-3/dimissioni-capo-provincia/dimissioni-capo-provincia.html/

 

Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Populations

Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Populations

 

http://genome.cshlp.org/content/11/6/994.full.pdf+html

This 2001 study found that the genetic affinity of Indians to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans whereas lower castes are more like Asians. The researchers believe that the Indo-European speakers entered India from the Northwest, mixing with or displacing proto-Dravidian speakers, and may have established a caste system with themselves primarily in higher castes.

 

Foto: de Bollywood-actrice Aishwarya Rai (bron: www.voxtropolis.com)

Agni V placera l'Inde au même rang que les USA et la Russie

L'Inde veut entrer dans la cour des grands, aux côtés des USA et de la Russie, avec l'Agni V (missile balistique intercontinental) dont l'essai sera réalisé demain mercredi.

Agni V placera l'Inde au même rang que les USA et la Russie
    
Ex: http://mbm.hautetfort.com/

Les préparatifs du lancement du nouveau missile balistique intercontinental indien Agni V depuis le polygone de l'île de Wheeler dans le golfe de Bengale sont presque achevés. Son essai est prévu pour le mercredi 18 avril.

Les militaires indiens ont déclaré qu'en cas de succès, l'Inde se placera au même rang que les Etats-Unis, la Russie et la Chine qui disposent déjà de tels missiles.

Agniv pèse 50 t, sa longueur est de 17,5 m et son diamètre est de 2 m. La portée maximale est de 5 000 kms. Le missile peut porter une ogive d'un poids total d'une tonne.

L'arrogance des Etats-Unis met à l'index l'Inde pour ses achats pétroliers à l'Iran. Ils envisagent des sanctions contre l'Inde à partir de l'été. Il serait temps qu'une politique commune de rétorsion économique se prenne au BRICS contre les USA.

L'Inde menacée de sanctions pour le refus de réduire les achats de pétrole à l'Iran

Ex: http://mbm.hautetfort.com/

Photo: EPA

 

Les États-Unis pourraient imposer des sanctions contre l'Inde, si elle ne restreint pas les importations du pétrole iranien, rapporte Bloomberg.

La loi, qui est entrée en vigueur aux États-Unis, pénalise tout pays pour le règlement du pétrole iranien par le biais de la Banque centrale d'Iran, si ce pays ne réduit pas significativement le volume des achats de pétrole à Téhéran dans la première moitié de cette année. Et si l'Inde ne le fait pas, le président des États-Unis sera obligé d'introduire des sanctions contre ce pays à partir du 28 juin, a indiqué l'agence en citant des responsables américains.

L'Inde achète à l'Iran, en moyenne 328.000 barils de pétrole par jour. Le pays est le troisième plus grand importateur de pétrole iranien, après la Chine et le Japon.

Notes sur le BRICS, l’OCS et Poutine

L'Occident avait rêvé détruire la Russie par déstabilisation intérieure. Le résultat des élections, ayant tournure de plébiscite pour Poutine, a eu la conséquence inverse. Loin d'être isolé, Poutine devient le Commandeur de la fronde anti-Occident.

Notes sur le BRICS, l’OCS et Poutine

Ex: http://mbm.hautetfort.com/

La nébuleuse de crise du Moyen-Orient (Syrie, Iran, notamment) bouleverse toutes les données générales des relations internationales et, en tant que ce que nous avons désigné comme archétype de la “crise haute”, ne cesse d’effectuer une poussée vers un élargissement constant. Nous abordons d’abord le problème de l’Inde au travers d’un plus vaste ensemble, qui est le fameux BRICS (rassemblement informel du Brésil, de la Chine, de la Russie, de l’Inde et de l’Afrique du Sud), – dont un sommet est justement prévu les 28 et 29 mars à Delhi. Puis nous élargissons notre propos à l'OCS (Organisation de Coopération de Shanghai), avec la proximité entre la Chine et la Russie... Tout cela doit être vu à la lumière de l’élection de Poutine, qui constitue un évènement nouveau et important.

C’est l’excellent commentateur, l’ancien diplomate indien M K Bhadrakumar, sur son blog baptisé Indian Punchline, qui lance l’idée d’une offensive du BRICS qui pourrait s’élaborer à cette occasion.

La colère de M K Bhadrakumar

Mais voyons la chronologie… D’abord, M K Bhadrakumar avait exprimé, le 2 mars 2012, une saine et juste colère à l’encontre de son pays, qu’il accusait de céder, pris de panique, aux pressions US dans divers domaines. Deux choses avaient fait bouillir M K Bhadrakumar, d’habitude attentif à conserver un ton diplomatiquement contenu… Deux dépositions au Congrès US, celui de Clinton et celui de l’amiral Robert Willard, commandant en chef US pour la zone Pacifique.

«What stunned me is that in the same breath Clinton also commended the Manmohan Singh government for “making steps that are heading in the right direction.” Clinton told the US Congressmen not to take seriously the public utterances of Indian officials regarding friendly relations with Iran or Delhi’s grit to keep up the oil imports from Tehran. She revealed, in essence, that Uncle Sam did some tough talking and Manmohan Singh government panicked.

»Clinton’s statement means only this: Manmohan Singh government has taken ordinary Indians — you and me — for a ride by secretly complying with the US sanctions against Iran while professing publicly that India will only heed the UN sanctions. I have no reason to doubt Clinton, because the US Administration takes the Congressional hearings bloody seriously.

»Therefore, equally, I am inclined to believe the latest revelation by the Pentagon about the government’s security policies. The Pentagon has revealed that the US Special Forces are stationed on Indian soil with regard to improving India’s “counter-terrorism capabilities and in particular on the maritime domain” and assisting India’s security agencies in terms of “internal counter-terror and counter-insurgency challenges.” Again, the statement was made during a US Congressional hearing and there is no reason to doubt its veracity. A Congress-led government on Raisina Hill accepted US military personnel’s presence on Indian soil to safeguard the country’s security!»

L’Inde sermonne la Ligue Arabe

Deux jours plus tard, le 4 mars 2012, le même M K Bhadrakumar exprimait, selon un sentiment tout à fait inverse, toute sa satisfaction devant la prise de position de l’Inde lors d’un entretien du ministre des affaires étrangères indien avec le président de la Ligue Arabe. Les deux interlocuteurs discutèrent longuement du sujet de la Syrie et conclurent qu’ils se trouvaient devant une divergence majeure. La position de la Ligue Arabe, qui est celle imposée par l’Arabie et les Emirats du Golfe, est connue ; celle de l’Inde est, au contraire, du refus de toute ingérence, et de laisser les affaires syriennes aux seuls Syriens.

TheHindu.com expliquait, le 4 mars 2012 : «India and the Arab League on Saturday held extensive discussions on Syria, but have been unable to chart out a common route that would end the crisis in the strife-torn nation. After a lengthy dialogue between visiting External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and Arab League head, Nabil ElAraby, the two sides failed to find convergence on one core issue — the fate of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

»The Arab League, citing the Syrian Constitution itself as the basis, says it has called upon Mr. Assad to step down and hand over power to his Vice President and a national unity government. In contrast, India's view is non-prescriptive: It is up to the Syrians themselves to internally decide how they need to resolve their crisis. Foreign intervention of any kind was both unhelpful and unnecessary.»

Les incertitudes assurées d’Hillary

Cette nouvelle sur la position indienne vis-à-vis de la Syrie, c’est-à-dire vis-à-vis de la position du bloc BAO, est confirmée par ailleurs par les nouvelles venues régulièrement des relations entre l’Inde et l’Iran. (Il s’agit pour nous de la même “crise haute”, qui évolue autour, pour ou contre, de la politique du bloc BAO, c’est-à-dire la “politique-Système de l’idéologie et de l’instinct”.)

Il s’agit, par exemple, du développement des relations commerciales entre l’Inde et l’Iran, qui implique évidemment une prise de position contraire aux pressions du bloc BAO. (Voir le 6 mars 2012, sur PressTV.com : «Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Mines will host the Indian delegation, comprising 70 businessmen and exporters from the South Asian country. The businessmen, headed by Joint Secretary of India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry Arvind Mehta, are due to meet with their Iranian counterparts on Saturday March 10, 2012. Discussing trade opportunities in various fields including oil, gas, chemicals, minerals, electronics, agriculture, sugar production, textile machinery, tire-making, car-manufacturing and medicine will be on the agenda of the meeting. India seeks to upgrade its trade balance with Iran that is currently tilted in Tehran's favor.»)

Cet exemple est donné comme tel, simplement comme un pas de plus dans un enchaînement d’accords commerciaux entre l’Inde et l’Iran qui prend son rythme structurel. Cela se place évidemment en complète contradiction avec le contenu de la déclaration d’Hillary Clinton au Congrès…

Hillary ment-elle au Congrès ? Sans doute pas. Elle ne fait qu’émettre les avis impératifs de ses services après sa rencontre avec la direction indienne. L’interprétation est qu’elle-même a émis des conseils et des vœux appuyés qui, dans son esprit, étaient des ordres (à cette direction indienne). Les dirigeants indiens n’ont pas dit non car ils ne se distinguent pas par un courage exceptionnel, mais répondirent vaguement. Cela fut pris pour un engagement ferme d’“obéir aux ordres”, et ainsi régurgité au Congrès sous une forme de bouillie bureaucratique satisfaite d’elle-même. (De même, Washington et Hillary vécurent-ils en général, et peut-être continuent à vivre, avec la certitude d’avoir permis aux Indiens enthousiastes d’acheter le JSF, jusqu'à faire de l'Inde un client assuré et soumis.)

Des troupes US en Inde

L’affaire des “troupes US” stationnée en Inde, que soulève également M K Bhadrakumar, est encore plus révélatrice de la difficulté d’apprécier précisément la réalité de la situation et de la nécessité de se garder de l’extraordinaire montage virtualiste accentué d’un aussi peu ordinaire imbroglio bureaucratique que constitue, constamment et irrésistiblement, sans même la conscience de ceux qui effectuent le montage, la “politique” étrangère et de sécurité nationale des USA (du bloc BAO)… La déposition au Congrès de l’amiral Willard à laquelle M K Bhadrakumar fait allusion a aussitôt été contredite par plusieurs sources : l’ambassade US en Inde, les ministères indiens de la défense et des affaires étrangères.

Antiwar.com exprimait brièvement l’affaire et ses contradictions, le 2 mars 2012 : US Pacific Command head Admiral Robert Willard announced today that US special forces have been deployed to India, along with Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives, as an effort to fight the Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT), a militant faction mostly active in Kashmir.

»Though Willard was very clear about there being teams deployed to India, the US Embassy and the Indian Defense Ministry later denied the claims, saying that there are no US troops of any type inside India. The revelation is already causing political waves in India, with the opposition Communist Party demanding to know why parliament wasn’t consulted. The External Affairs Ministry’s statement that the US never sought nor had India approved any deployment seems difficult to believe.»

Qui croire ? Malgré le scepticisme de Antiwar.com, nous répondrons : tout le monde… L’explication la plus évidente est que ce déploiement est d’abord une manœuvre conjointe, incluant 200 soldats US sous le commandement d’un colonel, et qui n’avait pas été signalée aux autorités civiles des deux pays (département d’État aux USA, les deux ministères indien) dans son détail. C’est une habitude propre au Pentagone, entraînant aisément des “partenaires” étrangers dans la même discrétion, de mener des opérations, surtout d’entraînement, sans en dévoiler les caractéristiques auprès des pouvoirs ou ministères civils concernés.

Le résultat est douteux et se constate dans le désordre le plus complet. Après tout, la présence de militaires US, plus innocente sur l’instant qu’elle n’y paraît, a soulevé des remous sérieux en Inde, et compromis si on en avait l’idée toute perspective d’installation structurelle de militaires US en Inde. Au contraire, elle pousse un peu plus l’Inde hésitante à s’engager plutôt sur une voie plutôt “anti-BAO”, ne serait-ce que pour ne pas se trouver captive d’un entraînement servile et captif, pro-BAO.

De l’Inde au Brésil

L’ensemble de constats et de nouvelles permet de cerner une image de l’Inde dans ces diverses composants de la crise centrale (crise haute) qui est à la fois incertaine et orientée de facto vers un engagement de moins en moins sympathique aux vœux des USA et du bloc BAO qui suit. (On a déjà vu d’autres signes de cette évolution de l’Inde, notamment par rapport à l’Iran.) Cette tendance générale affecte également le Brésil, puissance émergente au statut assez semblable à celui de l’Inde, notamment par le biais du groupe BRICS.

• On peut noter l’intervention sévère pour les pratiques américanistes-occidentalistes, le 2 mars 2012 (PressTV.com), de la présidente Dilma Rousseff, au cours d’un séminaire au Brésil… «Instead of using fiscal policies to invest in their own economies in order to avert the crisis, the rich nations have spilled USD 4.7 trillion in the world to make problems worse, thus putting emerging markets in jeopardy” […] Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has slammed the rich countries fiscal policies, accusing them of unleashing a ‘monetary tsunami’ that is cannibalizing the emerging economies.»

• On peut noter également l’intervention du ministre des affaires étrangères Antonio Patriota auprès du secrétaire général de l’ONU (NewsBeaconIreland.com, le 3 mars 2012) : «Last week, Brazil’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Antonio Patriota, reminded Ban Ki-moon regarding his role as UN Secretary General. It referred to the issue of criminal actions in derogation of international law. “One sometimes hears the expression, ‘all options are on the table.’ But some actions are contrary to international law” Patriota told UN Secretar General Ban Ki-moon.»

BRICS à Delhi, avec Annan ?

On conclut de tout cela que des membres en général moins engagés dans l’affrontement avec le bloc BAO sont conduits à prendre des positions qui se radicalisent par la seule force de la dynamique en cours. Il n’en faut pas plus, dans tous les cas pour l’Inde qui est son pays, pour lire, le 4 mars 2012, du même M K Bhadrakumar, une plaidoirie pour un BRICS beaucoup plus engagé dans le sens qu’on devine… Justement, l’occasion ne ferait-elle pas le larron ? En d’autres termes, pourquoi le BRICS, qui se réunit à Delhi, les 28-29 mars, sous présidence indienne, n’inviterait-il pas, à propos de la Syrie, Kofi Annan, dont M K Bhadrakumar, qui connaît la qualité de l’homme et sa carrière intelligente pour freiner les folies américaniste, sait parfaitement qu’il saura défendre une position conforme aux intérêts et à la dynamique du BRICS ?

«In sum, a BRICS voice needs to raised and India is going to chair the forum through the coming one-year period. India is too big a country to take a limited, opportunistic perspective of the situation as a mere new game on the West Asian chessboard. It is a fallacy to imagine that being ‘non-aligned’ via-a-vis West Asian situation means simply not taking sides between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

»Being ‘non-aligned’ actually means to be able to occupy the heights from where it becomes possible for India introduce into the West Asian situation the impetus toward creating an authentic Arab narrative that is free of manipulation by Nicolas Sarkozy or David Cameron. That is what Nehru would have done.

»Alas, South Block didn’t consider it necessary to issue even a one-line statement commending the arrival of Kofi Annan on the scene. Annan is a great friend of India. We respect him profoundly as a man of peace. We trust his integrity and his wisdom. We rely on his vast experience in conflict management. Why don’t we invite Annan to New Delhi to meet the BRICS leaders as they gather for the annual summit on March 28-29? The BRICS, after all, stands for the primacy of the United Nations in resolving international disputes and regional conflicts.

»South Block needs to think big — real big. Don’t let this period be written off as a chronicle of wasted time, of small men grappling with a big world.»

…En attendant l’OCS

Du groupe BRICS à l’OCS (Organisation de Coopération de Shanghai), il n’y a qu’un pas. Nous passons de Delhi à Pékin, les deux vieux ennemis qui sont bien obligés par les obligations du caractère eschatologique de la “crise haute” de se regrouper dans des ensemble à dimensions mondiales, – celles du groupe émergent, BRICS-OCS.

Un texte de China Daily, ce 6 mars 2012, détaille d’une façon générale les ambitions de la Chine pour le sommet de l’OCS, le 15 juin dans la capitale chinoise. Le texte s’articule notamment sur la mention de l’important évènement qu’est l’élection de Poutine à la présidence de la Russie, dimanche dernier. Il importe d’observer un rapport de complémentarité, sinon d’auto accélération, dans la convergence affichée des deux évènements : cette proximité symbolique dans un texte chinois indique sans aucun doute ce que les Chinois attendent à la fois de l’élection de Vladimir Poutine et du sommet de l’OCS.

«Following incumbent Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's victory in the country's presidential election on Sunday, Chinese President Hu Jintao has sent a congratulatory message to Putin, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said Monday. […]

»“We are confident that with the joint efforts of the two countries, the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination will achieve even greater results,” the foreign minister said.

»China will play host to this year's summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which marked its 10th anniversary of establishment in 2011. One of the main agendas of this year's summit, Yang said, is to plan the practical cooperation of the SCO, particularly the establishment of institutional safeguards for the financing of multilateral cooperation.

»The summit will also discuss regional and international situations, with a focus on improving SCO measures in coping with situations that pose a threat to regional peace, stability and security, Yang said. Founded on June 15, 2001, the SCO groups China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Observer countries include Mongolia, Pakistan, Iran and India while Belarus and Sri Lanka are dialogue partners.»

Dynamique de formation d’un “bloc anti-BAO”

Ainsi une diagonale est-elle tracée, de l’Inde au Brésil et au BRICS, à l’élection de Poutine, aux relations sino-russe, et au sommet de l’OCS. Cette diagonale encore tourmentée et manquant de solidité, est néanmoins l’indication la plus ferme et la plus évidente de la formation en cours d’un “bloc anti-BAO”, à organiser en fonction de toutes les tensions et crises en développement. La surprise incontestable de cette opportunité, c’est le rôle soudain qu’y tient la Russie, non en tant que telle, mais bien à la lumière de l’élection de Poutine.

…Car cette élection, en trois jours, grâce à l’activisme absolument forcené et affolant du bloc BAO pour la discréditer, et aboutissant à un fiasco de ce point de vue, a enfanté l’effet exactement inverse ; alors qu’elle n’était au départ qu’une formalité assez banale et avec effectivement un certain volume d’apprêt et de mise en scène qui en amoindrissait l’effet, l’élection de Poutine brusquement dramatisée par le bloc BAO, et d’une dramatisation aboutissant à un fiasco du point de vue du bloc, s’impose en sens inverse, comme un triomphe de Poutine et de sa conception de la Russie. C’est ce que nous interprétions (le 6 mars 2012) comme une légitimation de Poutine dans une position de dirigeant nécessairement ambitieux et affirmé de la Russie dans un rôle global renouvelé, réaffirmé... «D’une certaine façon extrêmement paradoxale et en agissant par simple effet de réaction antagoniste, l’évènement a accentué la légitimité de Poutine, et la légitimité de la nouvelle politique qu’il sera conduit à appliquer.»

Légitimation d’un rôle extérieur de Poutine

La mise en cause d’un caractère obsessionnel par le bloc BAO de cette élection et des fraudes qui l’auraient marquée, concernant la démocratie, le fonctionnement de l’élection, etc., constitue indirectement un témoignage puissant sur les angoisses propres des dirigeants politiques dépendant du Système, et concernant leur propre légitimité ; en quelque sorte, leur illégitimité tentant de se projeter sur l’élection de Poutine pour les exonérer de leur propre handicap s’étant heurtée au succès de l’élection, a légitimé paradoxalement et par effet inverse Poutine, et accentué leur propre illégitimité. Là-dessus, passant nécessairement d’un plan intérieur au plan extérieur parce que les évènements y pressent, cette paradoxale légitimation de Poutine se projette sur son rôle extérieur.

En effet, c’est ce rôle extérieur que nous considérons, hors des éventuels problèmes intérieurs russes qui obsèdent le système de la communication du bloc BAO. L’élection propulse Poutine, de cette façon symbolique qui est au moins aussi importante que le domaine politique, comme meneur naturel d’un regroupement anti-BAO, qui passe évidemment par l’alliance chinoise dans le cadre de l’OCS, puis par l’extension vers les grands pays du BRICS, c’est-à-dire l’Inde, le Brésil et l’Afrique du Sud.

Champ de bataille en formation subreptice

Au contraire de l’organisation structurelle du bloc BAO, qui passe nécessairement par les postures de servilité imposée par le Système, le rôle de Poutine devrait être effectivement celui d’un meneur coordinateur, éventuellement d’un inspirateur, valant essentiellement par l’exemple de l’entraînement bien plus que par une autorité qui n'est pas dans les habitudes de ces regroupements. C’est pour cette raison que l’organisation de cette sorte de “bloc anti-BAO” doit se faire plutôt subrepticement, par des dynamiques naturelles dont on a vu l’exemple plus haut pour l’Inde et pour le Brésil, cela largement favorisé par les extraordinaires maladresses, les contretemps systématiques des actions et des réactions du bloc BAO. Ainsi devrait-on voir surgir ce rassemblement sans avertissement, plutôt de façon impromptue et inattendue, à la suite de mouvements souterrains qui se seraient déroulés sans signes annonciateurs.

Cela devrait réserver des surprises, à mesure que la crise haute s’étend et se développe. D’autre part, il s’agit du signe de la confirmation que nous nous trouvons en présence de forces puissantes et autonomes, celles qui animent la dynamique de la crise haute, qui agissent par pressions indirectes et contribuent à rendre extrêmement difficiles des actions de retardement, de freinage ou de blocage. Le champ de la bataille et les acteurs qui s’y trouveront se mettent en place d’eux-mêmes, sans que nous ne voyons rien venir.

De foyer d’incendie en foyer d’incendie

On observera combien la stratégie générale de ces grands mouvements métahistoriques qui organisent la bataille générale passe avec régularité d’un “front à l’autre”, rendant encore plus difficile de bloquer ou de contrôler leur action. Ainsi depuis un an et demi sommes-nous passés du “front du printemps arabe“ au “front intérieur” des USA (Occupy, prémisses de la campagne présidentielle), au “front européen” parallèlement, à nouveau au front “extérieur” issu du “printemps arabe” (Syrie, Iran), qui pourrait s’étendre désormais à un front “anti-BAO” après avoir concerné le front intérieur russe, et ainsi de suite.

A chaque fois, un foyer de désordre nouveau (contre le Système) s’allume et continue ensuite à brûler, sans pouvoir être éteint ni même vraiment réduit. C’est bien d’une stratégie globale antiSystème qu’il s’agit. Inutile de chercher à identifier les auteurs-comploteurs. Ils sont hors de notre portée.

Il était temps que le premier ministre indien dénonce publiquement, et dans un média US de surcroît, la déstabilisation américaine en Inde. Ils finiront par pousser l'Inde à intégrer l'OCS comme avec l'Ukraine à intégrer l'Union eurasienne.

Les ONG américaines se mêlent des projets nucléaires indiens

Guéorgui Vanetsov - Ex: http://mbm.hautetfort.com/

 

© Collage: «Voix de la Russie»

 

Les organisations non-gouvernementales américaines sont derrière les mouvements de protestation contre le projet de la centrale nucléaire de Kudankulam, qui est actuellement en construction dans le sud de l'Inde avec l'aide de la Russie, a déclaré le premier ministre Manmohan Singh dans une interview accordée au magazine américain Science.

«Les ONG, dont la plupart se base aux Etats-Unis, ne voient aucune nécessité pour notre pays d’accroître la production de l’électricité», a déclaré Manmohan Singh. A cause des protestations, que nous estimons comme initiées par des ONG étrangères, le premier bloc de la centrale de Kudankulam, dont la construction est terminée, ne pourra pas être lancé dans les délais prévus. Une date ultérieure a été également fixée pour le lancement du second bloc de la centrale, actuellement en construction. Quant à la construction du troisième et quatrième bloc de la deuxième série, la signature des contrats pour l’élaboration de ces projets a également été reportée à plus tard. A l’origine, ces contrats devaient être signés lors de la visite du premier ministre indien en Russie en décembre de l’année dernière. Le développement du secteur de l’énergie nucléaire en Inde se retrouve ainsi bloqué, ce qui porte préjudice à l’économie du pays.

«Manmohan Singh a déclaré dans une interview au magazine américain ce dont toute la presse indienne parlait depuis longtemps», explique le célèbre journaliste indien Vinay Shukla. Par exemple, le journal Times of India a rapporté que les organisations chrétiennes occidentales ont transféré à l'Inde 630 millions de roupies pour le financement de la campagne de protestation contre le développement de l'énergie nucléaire pacifique dans le pays. Par conséquent, la déclaration du premier ministre indien est vue très positivement. Les gens disent que le chef du gouvernement a enfin appelé les choses par leur nom, en exprimant fermement ce qu'il devait dire depuis très longtemps. En Occident, il y a effectivement certains cercles, en particulier en Scandinavie, qui ne veulent pas le développement économique de l'Inde, ayant à cet effet leurs propres projets».

En Inde, on se souvient bien que ces organisations, financées par les pays occidentaux, étaient à l’origine des protestations de masse contre la construction des usines de sidérurgie, des entreprises d'ingénierie, et des raffineries de pétrole. Dans l’interview au magazine Science, le premier ministre de l'Inde a également accusé les ONG étrangères de s'opposer au développement des biotechnologies de pointe dans le pays. «Les biotechnologies ont un potentiel énorme», explique-t-il. «Et nous avons besoin d’utiliser ces biotechnologies pour accroître la production alimentaire en Inde», a déclaré Manmohan Singh.

En ce qui concerne l'énergie nucléaire, les Etats-Unis ont signé au début de 2006 avec l'Inde un accord de coopération, en s'engageant à construire dans le pays des centrales nucléaires et fournir les technologies et l'équipement nécessaire à leur fonctionnement. Toutefois, jusqu'à présent, le travail en vertu de cet accord n'a toujours pas commencé. Mais l'activité des ONG basées aux Etats-Unis visant à entraver la coopération de l’Inde avec les autres pays dans le domaine de l'énergie nucléaire pacifique s’est intensifiée. Une tentative visant à perturber le lancement de la centrale nucléaire de Kudankulam, construite avec l'aide des technologies russes – ce n'est pas seulement une attaque contre un projet spécifique. Il s'agit d'une tentative de remettre en question l'ensemble du programme de la coopération russo-indienne dans la construction des centrales nucléaires, alors que la Russie et l’Inde comptent construire ensemble dans les années à venir en tout 16 blocs pour les centrales nucléaire indiennes.

Iran/Inde: coopération dans les secteurs hydrique et alimentaire

 

Federico DAL CORTIVO:

 Iran/Inde: coopération dans les secteurs hydrique et alimentaire

L’eau est un bien précieux et, dans un futur proche, elle pourra constituer un “casus belli” quand il s’agira, une fois de plus, d’exporter la “démocratie” dans l’une ou l’autre région du monde

Le ministre indien des ressources hydriques, Pawan Kumar Bansal (photo), s’est rendu récemment à Téhéran pour y représenter l’Inde au XXIème Congrès sur la sécurité alimentaire et hydrique: ce sont là des sujets du plus haut intérêt pour ces deux grands pays de la masse continentale eurasienne. Bansal a surtout mis l’accent sur “l’importance de détenir une sécurité alimentaire sur la scène mondiale actuelle”, ce qui a pour corollaire la disponibilité en eau pour la population et les cultures; l’eau, véritable or bleu, est essentielle pour toute autosuffisance en ces secteurs d’activité humaine.

Le ministre indien, après avoir souligné les affinités qui existent entre l’Inde et l’Iran, a également rappelé qu’il manquait une stratégie commune en ce domaine hydrique/alimentaire. “L’Inde investit beaucoup en ce moment dans le secteur hydrique, avec sa population de plus de 1,7 milliard d’habitants; les recherches pour trouver de nouvelles sources d’eau s’effectuent de concert avec la construction d’implantations spécifiques, destinées à la distribution et l’épuration”. Bansal a ensuite ajouté: “Le gouvernement de la Nouvelle Delhi carresse le projet d’augmenter de 20% l’efficacité des systèmes d’irrigation en l’espace de cinq années, projet qui va de paire avec un renforcement des capacités technologiques de la productivité agricole”. “Toutes les activités concernant l’eau et son utilisation”, a poursuivi le ministre indien, “devront être abordées avec l’implication totale et complète de la population et des diverses entités collectives locales, de manière à responsabiliser également les utilisateurs quant à l’usage correct de cette précieuse ressource”.

L’eau représente de fait un bien de plus en plus important sur le plan stratégique, au vu de ce qui se passe dans le monde actuel où la consommation par tête d’habitant a doublé depuis le début du 20ème siècle, avec un maximum de quelque 1700 m3 par habitant aux Etats-Unis.

Dans le monde, il y a environ 1400 millions de km3 d’eau, dont 96% se trouvent dans les océans; seule une petite partie est constituée d’eau douce, dont 1,74% est immobilisée dans les glaces et 1,7% dans les nappes phréatiques souterraines; par conséquent, moins d’1% de l’eau douce se trouve dans les fleuves et les lacs de surface. En 2000, l’ONU avait fixé huit objectifs de développement mondial; parmi ceux-ci, il y avait la volonté de réduire, dans la mesure du possible, la part de la population mondiale sans accès à l’eau potable.

Derrière ces aspects purement humains de l’utilisation de l’or bleu, il y a les intérêts de ceux qui veulent contrôler cette richesse et s’en accaparer comme c’est déjà le cas pour le pétrole.

Carlos Pareyra Mele, analyste argentin et expert ès géopolitique de l’Amérique latine, soutient la thèse que depuis le milieu des années 80 du 20ème siècle, l’eau est devenue un objectif considéré comme stratégique par les gouvernements américains qui la camouflent généralement derrière un discours sur la “biodiversité”. En 2004, toujours selon cet expert argentin, le journal “The Guardian” a rendu public un rapport secret d’un conseiller du Pentagone, A. Marshall, dans lequel ce dernier avertissait les autorités américaines que, vu le réchauffement climatique, l’eau deviendra bien vite une matière première précieuse, dont il faudra nécessairement s’assurer le contrôle, du moins de ses sources les plus importantes.

Or c’est justement le continent sud-américain qui recèle les plus grands bassins d’eau douce du monde, avec 25% du total de la planète entière. Cette masse hydrique pourrait fort bien attirer l’attention de la superpuissance américaine qui chercherait alors à contrôler, pour son compte propre, cette énorme masse d’eau douce disponible, soit par le biais de ses seules multinationales soit en organisant la déstabilisation politique des Etats latino-américains. Ce qui ne serait pas nouveau même si aujourd’hui de telles manigances semblent moins probables qu’aux temps jadis. L’Amérique du Sud cherche depuis deux bonnes décennies à sortir le plus rapidement possible de son statut d’“arrière-cours” des Etats-Unis; ceux-ci s’étaient substitués à l’Angleterre et avaient pillé à grande échelle les immenses richesses naturelles de ce continent. Cependant, les Sud-Américains ne doivent pas baisser la garde, comme d’ailleurs personne sur cette planète ne doit la baisser, parce que ce qui est en jeu, ce sont les matières premières et les richesses naturelles. Soyons-en sûrs, elles attireront l’attention de Washington et de ses alliés. Face à leurs manoeuvres, il s’agira de ne pas être désarmé.

Federico DAL CORTIVO.

(article paru dans “Rinascita”, Rome, 28 octobre 2011 – http://rinascita.eu ).

 

India's only communalist A short biography of Sita Ram Goel

India's only communalist
A short biography of Sita Ram Goel

Ex; http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/

Koenraad Elst

1. Is there a communalist in the hall ?

A lot of people in India and abroad talk about communalism, often in grave tones, describing it as a threat to secularism, to regional and world peace. But can anyone show us a communalist? If we look more closely into the case of any so-called communalist, we find that he turns out to be something else.

Could Syed Shahabuddin be a communalist? After all, he played a key role in the three main "Muslim communalist" issues of recent years: the Babri Masjid campaign, the Shah Bano case and the Salman Rushdie affair (it is he who got The Satanic Verses banned in September 1988). Surely, he must be India's communalist par excellence? Wrong: if you read any page of any issue of Shahabuddin's monthly Muslim India, you will find that he brandishes the notion of "secularism" as the alpha and omega of his politics, and that he directs all his attacks against Hindu "communalism". The same propensity is evident in the whole Muslim "communalist" press, e.g. the Jamaat-i Islami weekly Radiance. Moreover, on Muslim India's editorial board, you find articulate secularists like Inder Kumar Gujral, Khushwant Singh and the late P.N. Haksar.

For the same reason, any attempt to label the All-India Muslim League as communalist would be wrong. True, it is the continuation of the party which achieved the Partition of India along communal lines. Yet, emphatically secularist parties like the Congress Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) have never hesitated to include the Muslim League in coalitions governing the state of Kerala. No true communalist would get such a chance.

On the Hindu side then, at least the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, "National Volunteer Corps") could qualify as "communalist"? Certainly, it is called just that by all its numerous enemies. But then, when you look through any issue of its weekly Organiser, you will find it brandishing the notion of "positive" or "genuine secularism", and denouncing "pseudo-secularism", i.e. minority communalism. Moreover, in order to prove its non-communal character, it even calls itself and its affiliated organizations (trade-union, student organization, political party etc.) "National" or "Indian" rather than "Hindu". The allied political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, "Indian People's Party"), shows off the large number of Muslims among its cadres to prove how secular and non-communal it is. Even the Shiv Sena shows off its token Muslims. No, for full-blooded communalists, we have to look elsewhere.

There is only one man in India whom I have ever known to say: "I am a (Hindu) communalist." To an extent, this is in jest, as a rhetorical device to avoid the tangle in which RSS people always get trapped: being called "communalist!" and then spending the rest of your time trying to prove to your hecklers what a good secularist you are. But to an extent, it is because he accepts at least one definition of "communalism" as applying to himself, esp. to his view of India's history since the 7th century. Many historians try to prove their "secularism" by minimizing religious adherence as a factor of conflict in Indian history, and explaining so-called religious conflicts as merely a camouflage for socio-economic conflicts. By contrast, the historian under consideration accepts, and claims to have thoroughly documented, the allegedly "communalist" view that the major developments in medieval and modern Indian history can only be understood as resulting from an intrinsic hostility between religions.

Unlike the Hindutva politicians, he does not seek the cover of "genuine secularism". While accepting the notion that Hindu India has always been "secular" in the adapted Indian sense of "religiously pluralistic", he does not care for slogans like the Vishva Hindu Parishad's advertisement "Hindu India, secular India". After all, in Nehruvian India the term "secular" has by now acquired a specific meaning far removed from the original European usage, and even from the above-mentioned Indian adaptation. If Voltaire, the secularist par excellence, were to live in India today and repeat his attacks on the Church, echoing the Hindutva activists in denouncing the Churches' grip on public life in christianized pockets like Mizoram and Nagaland, he would most certainly be denounced as "anti-minority" and hence "anti-secular".

In India, the term has shed its anti-Christian bias and acquired an anti-Hindu bias instead, a phenomenon described by the author under consideration as an example of the current "perversion of India's political parlance". Therefore, he attacks the whole Nehruvian notion of "secularism" head-on, e.g. in the self-explanatory title of his Hindi booklet Saikyularizm: râshtradroha kâ dûsra nâm ("Secularism: the Alternative Name for Treason"). The name of India's only self-avowed communalist is Sita Ram Goel.

2. Sita Ram Goel as an anti-Communist

Sita Ram Goel was born in 1921 in a poor family (though belonging to the merchant Agrawal caste) in Haryana. As a schoolboy, he got acquainted with the traditional Vaishnavism practised by his family, with the Mahabharata and the lore of the Bhakti saints (esp. Garibdas), and with the major trends in contemporary Hinduism, esp. the Arya Samaj and Gandhism. He took an M.A. in History in Delhi University, winning prizes and scholarships along the way. In his school and early university days he was a Gandhian activist, helping a Harijan Ashram in his village and organizing a study circle in Delhi.

In the 1930s and 40s, the Gandhians themselves came in the shadow of the new ideological vogue: socialism. When they started drifting to the Left and adopting socialist rhetoric, S.R. Goel decided to opt for the original rather than the imitation. In 1941 he accepted Marxism as his framework for political analysis. At first, he did not join the Communist Party of India, and had differences with it over such issues as the creation of the religion-based state of Pakistan, which was actively supported by the CPI but could hardly earn the enthusiasm of a progressive and atheist intellectual. He and his wife and first son narrowly escaped with their lives in the Great Calcutta Killing of 16 August 1946, organized by the Muslim League to give more force to the Pakistan demand.

In 1948, just when he had made up his mind to formally join the Communist Party of India, in fact on the very day when he had an appointment at the party office in Calcutta to be registered as a candidate-member, the Government of West Bengal banned the CPI because of its hand in an ongoing armed rebellion. A few months later, Ram Swarup came to stay with him in Calcutta and converted him as well as his employer, Hari Prasad Lohia, out of Communism. Goel's career as a combative and prolific writer on controversial matters of historical fact can only be understood in conjunction with Ram Swarup's sparser, more reflective writings on fundamental doctrinal issues.

Much later, in a speech before the Yogakshema society, Calcutta 1983, he explained his relation with Ram Swarup as follows: "In fact, it would have been in the fitness of things if the speaker today had been Ram Swarup, because whatever I have written and whatever I have to say today really comes from him. He gives me the seed-ideas which sprout into my articles (...) He gives me the framework of my thought. Only the language is mine. The language also would have been much better if it was his own. My language becomes sharp at times; it annoys people. He has a way of saying things in a firm but polite manner, which discipline I have never been able to acquire." (The Emerging National Vision, p.1.)

S.R. Goel's first important publications were written as part of the work of the Society for the Defence of Freedom in Asia:

·        World Conquest in Instalments (1952);

·        The China Debate: Whom Shall We Believe? (1953);

·        Mind Murder in Mao-land (1953);

·        China is Red with Peasants' Blood (1953);

·        Red Brother or Yellow Slave? (1953);

·        Communist Party of China: a Study in Treason (1953);

·        Conquest of China by Mao Tse-tung (1954);

·        Netaji and the CPI (1955);

·        CPI Conspire for Civil War (1955).

Goel also published the book Blowing up India: Reminiscences of a Comintern Agent by Philip Spratt (1955), who, as an English Comintern agent, had founded the Communist Party of India in 1926. After spending some time in prison as a convict in the Meerut Conspiracy case (1929), Spratt had come under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi, and ended as one of the best-informed critics of Communism.

Then, and all through his career as a polemical writer, the most remarkable feature of Sita Ram Goel's position in the Indian intellectual arena was that nobody even tried to give a serious rebuttal to his theses: the only counter-strategy has always been, and still is, "strangling by silence", simply refusing to ever mention his name, publications and arguments.

An aspect of history yet to be studied is how such anti-Communist movements in the Third World were not at all helped (in fact, often opposed) by Western interest groups whose understanding of Communist ideology and strategy was just too superficial. Most US representatives starkly ignored the SDFA's work, and preferred to enjoy the company of more prestigious (implying: fashionably anti-anti-Communist) opinion makers. Goel himself noted in 1961 about his Western anti-Communist contacts like Freda Utley, Suzanne Labin and Raymond Aron, who were routinely dismissed as bores, querulants or CIA agents: Communism was "opposed only by individuals and groups who have done so mostly at the cost of their reputation (...) A history of these heroes and their endless endeavour has still to be written." (Genesis and Growth of Nehruism, p.212)

3. Sita Ram Goel and the RSS

In the 1950s, Goel was not active on the "communal" battlefield: not Islam or Christianity but Communism was his priority target. Yet, under Ram Swarup's influence, his struggle against communism became increasingly rooted in Hindu spirituality, the way Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's anti-Communism became rooted in Orthodox Christianity. He also co-operated with (but was never a member of) the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and he occasionally contributed articles on Communism to the RSS weekly Organiser. In 1957 he contested the Lok Sabha election for the Khajuraho constituency as an independent candidate on a BJS ticket, but lost. He was one of the thirty independents fielded as candidates by Minoo Masani in preparation of the creation of his own (secular, rightist-liberal) Swatantra Party.

In that period, apart from the said topical books in English, Goel wrote and published 18 titles in Hindi: 8 titles of fiction and 1 of poetry written by himself; 3 compilations from the Mahabharata and the Tripitaka; and Hindi translations of these 6 books, mostly of obvious ideological relevance:

·        The God that Failed, a testimony on Communism by Arthur Koestler, André Gide and other prominent ex-Communists;

·        Ram Swarup's Communism and Peasantry;

·        Viktor Kravchenko's I Chose Freedom, another testimony by an ex-Communist;

·        George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

·        Satyakam Sokratez ("Truth-lover Socrates"), the three Dialogues of Plato centred round Socrates' last days (Apology, Crito and Phaedo);

·        Shaktiputra Shivaji, a history of the 17th-century Hindu freedom fighter, originally The Great Rebel by Denis Kincaid.

There is an RSS aspect to this publishing activity. RSS secretary-general Eknath Ranade had asked Goel to educate RSS workers about literature, and to produce some literature in Hindi to this end. The understanding was that the RSS would propagate this literature and organize discussions about it. Once Goel had set up a small publishing outfit and published a few books, he had another meeting with Ranade, who gave him an unpleasant surprise: "Was the RSS created to sell your books?" Fortunately for Goel, his friend Guru Datt Vaidya and son Yogendra Datt included Goel's books in the fund of their own publishing-house, Bharati Sahitya Sadan. This is Goel's own version, and Ranade is not there to defend himself; but Goel's long experience in dealing with the RSS leadership translates into a long list of anecdotes of RSS petty-mindedness, unreliability and lack of proper manners in dealing with fellow-men.

In May 1957, Goel moved to Delhi and got a job with a state-affiliated company, the Indian Cooperative Union, for which he did research and prospection concerning cottage industries. The company also loaned him for a while to the leading Gandhian activist Jayaprakash Narayan, who shared Goel's anti-Communism at least at the superficial level (what used to be called "anti-Stalinism": rejecting the means but not the ends of Communism).

During the Chinese invasion in 1962, some government officials including P.N. Haksar, Nurul Hasan and the later Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, demanded Goel's arrest. But at the same time, the Home Ministry invited him to take a leadership role in the plans for a guerrilla war against the then widely-expected Chinese occupation of eastern India. He made his co-operation conditional on Nehru's abdication as Prime Minister, and nothing ever came of it.

In 1963, Goel had a book published under his own name which he had published in 1961-62 as a series in Organiser under the pen name Ekaki ("solitary"): a critique of Nehru's consistent pro-Communist policies, titled In Defence of Comrade Krishna Menon. An update of this book was published in 1993: Genesis and Growth of Nehruism. The serial in Organiser had been discontinued after 16 installments because Eknath Ranade and A.B. Vajpayee feared that if any harm came to Nehru, the RSS would be accused of having "created the climate", as in the Gandhi murder case.

In it, Goel questioned the current fashion of attributing India's Communist-leaning foreign policy to Defence Minister Krishna Menon, and demonstrated that Nehru himself had been a consistent Communist sympathizer ever since his visit to the Soviet Union in 1927. Nehru had stuck to his Communist sympathies even when the Communists insulted him as Prime Minister with their unbridled scatologism. Nehru was too British and too middle-class to opt for a fully authoritarian socialism, but like many European Leftists he supported just such regimes when it came to foreign policy. Thus, Nehru's absolute refusal to support the Tibetans even at the diplomatic level when they were overrun by the Chinese army ("a Far-Eastern Munich", according to Minoo Masani: Against the Tide, Vikas Publ., Delhi 1981, p.45.), cannot just be attributed to circumstances or the influence of his collaborators: his hand-over of Tibet to Communist China was quite consistent with his own political convictions.

While refuting the common explanation that the pro-Communist bias in Nehru's foreign policy was merely the handiwork of Minister Krishna Menon, Goel also drew attention to the harmfulness of this policy to India's national interests. This critique of Nehru's pro-China policies was eloquently vindicated by the Chinese invasion in October 1962, but it cost Goel his job. He withdrew from the political debate, went into business himself and set up Impex India, a company of book import and export with a modest publishing capacity.

In 1964, RSS general secretary Eknath Ranade invited Goel to lead the prospective Vishva Hindu Parishad, which was founded later that year, but Goel set as his condition that he would be free to speak his own mind rather than act as a mouthpiece of the RSS leadership; the RSS could not accept this, and the matter ended there. Goel's only subsequent involvement in politics was in 1973 when he was asked by the BJS leadership to mediate with the dissenting party leader Balraj Madhok in a last attempt at conciliation (which failed); and when he worked as a member of the think-tank of the Janata alliance before it defeated Indira's Emergency regime in the 1977 elections. As a commercial publisher, he did not seek out the typical "communal" topics, but nonetheless kept an eye on Hindu interests. That is why he published books like Dharampal's The Beautiful Tree (on indigenous education as admiring British surveyors found it in the 19th century, before it was destroyed and replaced with the British or missionary system), Ram Swarup's apology of polytheism The Word as Revelation (1980), K.R. Malkani's The RSS Story (1980) and K.D. Sethna's Karpasa in Prehistoric India (1981; on the chronology of Vedic civilization, implying decisive objections against the Aryan Invasion Theory).

4. Sita Ram Goel as a Hindu Revivalist

In 1981 Sita Ram Goel retired from his business, which he handed over to his son and nephew. He started the non-profit publishing house Voice of India with donations from sympathetic businessmen, and accepted Organiser editor K.R. Malkani's offer to contribute some articles again, articles which were later collected into the first Voice of India booklets.

Goel's declared aim is to defend Hinduism by placing before the public correct information about the situation of Hindu culture and society, and about the nature, motives and strategies of its enemies. For, as the title of his book Hindu Society under Siege indicates, Goel claims that Hindu society has been suffering a sustained attack from Islam since the 7th century, from Christianity since the 15th century, this century also from Marxism, and all three have carved out a place for themselves in Indian society from which they besiege Hinduism. The avowed objective of each of these three world-conquering movements, with their massive resources, is diagnosed as the replacement of Hinduism by their own ideology, or in effect: the destruction of Hinduism.

Apart from numerous articles, letters, contributions to other books (e.g. Devendra Swarup, ed.: Politics of Conversion, DRI, Delhi 1986) and translations (e.g. the Hindi version of Taslima Nasrin's Bengali book Lajja, published in instalments in Panchjanya, summer 1994), Goel has contributed the following books to the inter-religious debate:

·        Hindu Society under Siege (1981, revised 1992);

·        Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1982);

·        How I Became a Hindu (1982, enlarged 1993);

·        Defence of Hindu Society (1983, revised 1987);

·        The Emerging National Vision (1983);

·        History of Heroic Hindu Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders (1984);

·        Perversion of India's Political Parlance (1984);

·        Saikyularizm, Râshtradroha kâ Dûsrâ Nâm (Hindi: "Secularism, another name for treason", 1985);

·        Papacy, Its Doctrine and History (1986);

·        Preface to The Calcutta Quran Petition by Chandmal Chopra (a collection of texts alleging a causal connection between communal violence and the contents of the Quran; 1986, enlarged 1987 and again 1999);

·        Muslim Separatism, Causes and Consequences (1987);

·        Foreword to Catholic Ashrams, Adapting and Adopting Hindu Dharma (a collection of polemical writings on Christian inculturation; 1988, enlarged 1994 with new subtitle: Sannyasins or Swindlers?);

·        History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1989, enlarged 1996);

·        Hindu Temples, What Happened to Them (1990 vol.1; 1991 vol.2, enlarged 1993);

·        Genesis and Growth of Nehruism (1993);

·        Jesus Christ: An Artifice for Agrression (1994);

·        Time for Stock-Taking (1997), a collection of articles critical of the RSS and BJP;

·        Preface to the reprint of Mathilda Joslyn Gage: Woman, Church and State (1997, ca. 1880), an early feminist critique of Christianity;

·        Preface to Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report (1998), a reprint of the official report on the missionaries' methods of subversion and conversion (1955).         

Goel's writings are practically boycotted in the media, both by reviewers and by journalists and scholars collecting background information on the communal problem. Though most Hindutva stalwarts have some Voice of India publications on their not-so-full bookshelves, the RSS Parivar refuses to offer its organizational omnipresence as a channel of publicity and distribution. Since most India-watchers have been brought up on the belief that Hindu activism can be identified with the RSS Parivar, they are bound to label Sita Ram Goel (the day they condescend to mentioning him at all, that is) as "an RSS man". It may, therefore, surprise them that the established Hindu organizations have so far shown little interest in his work.

It is not that they would spurn his services: in its Ayodhya campaign, the Vishva Hindu Parishad has routinely referred to a "list of 3000 temples converted into or replaced by mosques", meaning the list of nearly 2000 such cases in Goel, ed.: Hindu Temples, vol.1. Goel also published the VHP argumentation in the government-sponsored scholars' debate of 1990-91 (titled History vs. Casuistry), and he straightened and corrected the BJP's clumsily drafted White Paper on Ayodhya. But organizationally, the Parivar is not using its networks to spread Ram Swarup's and Sita Ram Goel's books and ideas. Twice (1962 and 1982) the RSS intervened with the editor of Organiser to have ongoing serials of articles (on Nehru c.q. on Islam) by Goel halted; the second time, the editor himself, the long-serving arch-moderate K.R. Malkani, was sacked along with Goel. And ideologically, it has always turned a deaf ear to their analysis of the problems facing Hindu society.

Most Hindu leaders expressly refuse to search Islamic doctrine for a reason for the observed fact of Muslim hostility. RSS leader Guru Golwalkar once said: "Islam is a great religion. Mohammed was a great prophet. But the Muslims are big fools." (Delhi ca. 1958) This is not logical, for the one thing that unites the (otherwise diverse) community of Muslims, is their common belief in Mohammed and the Quran: if any wrong is attributed to "the Muslims" as such, it must be situated in their common belief system. Therefore, Goel's position is just the opposite: not the Muslims are the problem, but Islam and Mohammed.

In the Ayodhya dispute, time and again the BJP leaders have appealed to the Muslims to relinquish all claims to the supposed birthplace of the Hindu god Rama, arguing that destroying temples is against the tenets of Islam, and that the Quran prohibits the use of a mosque built on disputed land. In fact, whatever Islam decrees against building mosques on disputed property, can only concern disputes within the Muslim community (or its temporary allies under a treaty). Goel has demonstrated in detail that it is perfectly in conformity with Islamic law, and established as legitimate by the Prophet through his own example, to destroy Pagan establishments and replace them with (or turn them into) mosques. For an excellent example, the Kaaba itself was turned into a mosque by Mohammed when he smashed the 360 Pagan idols that used to be worshipped in it.

Therefore, S.R. Goel is rather critical of the Ayodhya movement. In the foreword to Hindu Temples, vol.2, he writes: "The movement for the restoration of Hindu temples has got bogged down around the Rama Janmabhoomi at Ayodhya. The more important question, viz. why Hindu temples met the fate they did at the hands of Islamic invaders, has not been even whispered. Hindu leaders have endorsed the Muslim propagandists in proclaiming that Islam does not permit the construction of mosques at sites occupied earlier by other people's places of worship (...) The Islam of which Hindu leaders are talking exists neither in the Quran nor in the Sunnah of the Prophet. It is hoped that this volume will help in clearing the confusion. No movement which shuns or shies away from truth is likely to succeed. Strategies based on self-deception stand defeated at the very start."

Goel's alternative to the RSS variety of "Muslim appeasement" is to wage an ideological struggle against Islam and Christianity, on the lines of the rational criticism and secularist politics which have pushed back Christian self-righteousness in Europe. The Muslim community, of course, is not to be a scapegoat (as it is for those who refuse to criticize Islam and end up attacking Muslims instead), but has to be seen in the proper historical perspective: as a part of Hindu society estranged from its ancestral culture by Islamic indoctrination over generations. Their hearts and minds have to be won back by an effort of consciousness-raising, which includes education about the aims, methods and historical record of religions.

5. Conclusion

One of the grossest misconceptions about the Hindu movement, is that it is a creation of political parties like the BJP and the Shiv Sena. In reality, there is a substratum of Hindu activist tendencies in many corners of Hindu society, often in unorganized form and almost invariably lacking in intellectual articulation. To this widespread Hindu unrest about the uncertain future of Hindu culture, Voice of India provides an intellectual focus.

The importance of Ram Swarup's and Sita Ram Goel's work can hardly be over-estimated. I for one have no doubt that future textbooks on comparative religion as well as those on Indian political and intellectual history will devote crucial chapters to their analysis. They are the first to give a first-hand "Pagan" reply to the versions of history and "comparative religion" imposed by the monotheist world-conquerors, both at the level of historical fact and of fundamental doctrine, both in terms of the specific Hindu experience and of a more generalized theory of religion free from prophetic-monotheistic bias.

Their long-term intellectual importance is that they have contributed immensely to breaking the spell of all kinds of Christian, Muslim and Marxist prejudices and misrepresentations of Hinduism and the Hindu Revivalist movement.

The genesis of India according to Bernard Sergent

 

The Genesis of India Acording to Bernard Sergent

A review

Dr. Koenraad ELST

Ex: http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/reviews/sergent.html/

1. A remarkable book

The debate concerning the theory of an Aryan invasion in India has taken off at last. In spite of the mutual deafness of the pro- and anti-invasionist schools, the increasing awareness of a challenge has led prominent scholars groomed in the invasionist view to collect, for the first time in their careers, actual arguments in favour of the Aryan Invasion Theory. As yet this is never in the form of a pointwise rebuttal of an existing anti-invasionist argumentation, a head-on approach so far exclusively adopted by one or two non-invasionists.

Nonetheless, some recent contributions to the archaeological and physical-anthropological aspects of the controversy pose a fresh challenge to the (by now often over-confident) noninvasionist school.

An extremely important new synthesis of various types of data is provided by Dr. Bernard Sergent in his book Genèse de l'Inde (Genesis of India), as yet only available in French (Payot, Paris 1997). The book comes as a sequel to his equally important book Les Indo-Européens (Payot 1995). Sergent is a Ph.D. in Archaeology with additional degrees in Physical Anthropology and in History, a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and chairman of the French Society for Mythology.

One of Sergent's objectives is to counter the rising tide of skepticism against the AIT with archaeological and other proof. In particular, he proposes a precise identification of a particular Harappan-age but non-Harappan culture with the Indo-Aryans poised to invade India: the Bactrian Bronze Age culture of ca. 2500-2000 BC. At the same time, he is quite scornful of AIT critics and neglects to take their arguments apart, which means that he effectively leaves them standing. He dismisses the non-invasion theory in one sentence plus footnote as simply unbelievable and as the effect of nationalistic blindness for the shattering evidence provided by linguistics (Genèse de l'Inde, p.370 and p.477 n.485).

Nonetheless, it is important to note that, unlike Indian Marxists, he does not show any contempt for Hinduism or for the idea of India. Most people who analyze Indian culture into different contributions by peoples with divergent origins do so with the implicit or explicit message that "there is no such thing as Indian or Hindu culture, there is only a composite of divergent cultures, each of which should break free and destroy the dominant Brahminical system which propagates the false notion of a single all-Indian culture". Sergent, by contrast, admits that the ethnically different contributions have merged into an admirable synthesis, e.g.: "One of the paradoxes of India is its astonishing linguistic diversity compared with its cultural unity." (p.9) Rather than denying the idea of India, he strongly sympathizes with it: though a construct of history, India is a cultural reality.

2. Evidence provided by physical anthropology

Bernard Sergent treads sensitive ground in discussing the evidence furnished by physical anthropology. Though not identifying language with race, he maintains that in many cases, a certain correlation between language and genes may nonetheless be discernible, as explained earlier by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza and other leading population geneticists. The underlying logic is simple: people who speak a common language do so by living together as a community, and as such, they will also intermarry and pass on their genes along with their language and culture to their children. Yet, to say that there was an original Proto-Indo-European (PIE) community whose language got diversified into the existing IE languages, and whose "heirs" we IE-speakers are, is already enough to attract suspicions of Nazi fantasies, even in the case of so authoritative and objective a scholar as Bernard Sergent.

Indeed, oblique aspersions have been cast on Sergent by Jean-Paul Demoule ("Les Indo-Européens, un mythe sur mesure", La Recherche, April 1998, p.41), who uses the familiar and simple technique of juxtaposition, i.c. with the term "mother race", used off-hand by Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie in a review of Sergent's book Les Indo-Européens. Demoule's explicit thesis is that "not one scientific fact allows support for the hypothesis of an original [PIE-speaking] people". In fact, there are no known languages which are not spoken by a living community or a "people", either in the past (e.g. Latin) or in the present. Plain common sense requires that the PIE dialects were also spoken by some such "people". If postmodernists like Demoule want to deny to the hypothetical PIE language the necessary hypothesis that it was used by a community of speakers, it is up to them to provide an alternative hypothesis plus the "scientific facts" supporting it.

A related political inhibition obstructing the progress of research in IE studies is the post1945 mistrust of migratory models as explanations of the spread of technologies, cultures or indeed languages. Sergent goes against the dominant tendency by insisting that the IE language family has spread by means of migrations (p.153-156, criticizing non-migrationist hypotheses by Jean-François Jarrige and Jim Shaffer). Prior to the telegraph and the modern electronic media, a language could indeed only be spread by being physically taken from one place to the next. In the case of India, while we need not concede Sergent's specific assumption of an Aryan immigration, it is obvious that migrations have been a key factor in the present distribution of languages. One scholar who still agrees with Dr. Sergent's commonsense position is Dr. Robert Zydenbos ("An obscurantist argument", Indian Express, 12-12-1993): "And it should be clear that languages do not migrate by themselves: people migrate, and bring languages with them."

As Sergent points out, the historical period in India has witnessed well-recorded invasions by the Greeks, Huns, Scythians, Kushanas, Arabs, Turks, Afghans and Europeans.

So, there is no need to be shy about surmising the existence and the linguistic impact of migrations, including violent ones, in the proto-historical period. It so happens that migrations may leave traces in the physical-anthropological "record" of a population, thus adding modern genetics to the sciences which can be employed in reconstructing ancient history.

Sergent claims that the oldest Homo Sapiens Sapiens racial type of India, now largely submerged by interbreeding with immigrant Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and IE populations, is the one preserved in the Vedda and Rodiya tribes of Sri Lanka. While the purely black skin is associated (by Sergent) with the population which "brought" the Dravidian languages, the Veddoid traits are found to an extent among tribal populations in south India and as far north as the Bhils and the Gonds. Perhaps Nahali is the last remnant of the lost language of this ancient layer of the Indian population, for all the said tribes including the Veddas now speak the languages of their non-tribal neighbours. (p.38)

Sergent questions the neat division of the South-Asian population into "Mediterranean", "Melano-Indian" (black-skinned, associated with the Dravidian languages) and "Veddoid" or "Australoid", introduced by British colonial anthropologists: "the Vedda, the Melano-Indians and the Indus people and the actual inhabitants of the northern half of India, which classical anthropology used to class as Mediterraneans, all belong to one same human 'current' of which they manifest the successive 'waves'. Everything indicates, physical traits as well as geographical distribution, that the Vedda have arrived first, followed by the Melano-Indians, and then the Indus people." (p.43) Note that he does not mention "Aryans" as a distinct type separate from and arriving after the "Indus people". Indeed, he joins the list of anthropologists who acknowledge the absence of a genetic discontinuity at the end of the Harappan age marking the Aryan invasion.

Sergent rejects the classical view that populations having traits halfway between the typical Veddoid and Mediterranean traits must be considered "mixed". Instead, rather than assuming discrete racial types subsequently subject to miscegenation, he posits a racial continuum, corresponding with the continuum of migrations from northeastern Africa via West Asia to South Asia. The Dravidian-speakers largely coincide with a racial type called "Melano-Indian", which is very dark-skinned but in all other respects similar not to the Melano-Africans but to the Mediterranean variety of the white race, e.g. wavy hair, a near-vertical forehead, a thinner nose. Sergent thinks they arrived in Mehrgarh well before the beginning of the Neolithic, in ca. 8,000 BC, and that they were subsequently replaced or absorbed by the real Harappans, who belonged to the "Indo-Afghan" type. (p.50)

At this point, it is customary to point to the Dravidian Brahui speakers of Baluchistan (living in the vicinity of Mehrgarh) as a remnant of the Dravidian Harappans. However, Sergent proposes that the Brahui speakers, far from being a native remnant of a pre-Harappan population of Baluchistan, only immigrated into Baluchistan from inner India in the early Muslim period. Given that Baluchi, a West-Iranian language, only established itself in Baluchistan in the 13th century ("for 2000 years, India has been retreating before Iran", p.29; indeed, both Baluchistan, including the Brahminical place of pilgrimage Hinglaj, and the Northwest Frontier Province, homeland of Panini, were partly Indo-Aryan-speaking before Baluchi and Pashtu moved in), and that the only Indo-Iranian loans in Brahui are from Baluchi and not from Pehlevi or Sindhi, Sergent deduces that Brahui was imported into its present habitat only that late. (p.130) We'll have to leave that as just a proposal for now: a Central-Indian Dravidian population migrated to Baluchistan in perhaps the 14th century.

The Harappan civilization "prolongs the ancient Neolithic of Baluchistan [viz. Mehrgarh], whose physical type is West-Asian, notably the type called (because of its contemporary location) Indo-Afghan". (p.50) This suggests that the "Indo-Afghan" type was located elsewhere before the beginning of the Neolithic in Mehrgarh, viz. in West Asia. If so, this means that the last great wave of immigrants (as opposed to smaller waves like the Scythian or the Turco-Afghan or the English which did not deeply alter the average genetic type of the Indian population) took place thousands of years before the supposed Aryan invasion. And the latter, bringing Aryans of the Indo-Afghan type into an India already populated with Harappans of the Indo-Afghan type, happens to be untraceable in the physical-anthropo-logical data.

No new blood type or skull type or skin colour marks the period when the Aryans are supposed to have invaded India. So, one potentially decisive proof of the Aryan invasion is conspicuously missing. Indeed, the physical-anthropological record is now confidently used by opponents of the AIT as proof of the continuity between the Harappan and the post-Harappan societies in northwestern India.

3. The archaeological evidence

3.1. Tracing the Aryan migrants

Though the question of Aryan origins was much disputed in the 19th century, the Aryan invasion theory has been so solidly dominant in the 20th century that attempts to prove it have been extremely rare in recent decades (why prove the obvious?), until the debate flared up again in India after 1990. In his attempt to prove the Aryan invasion, Bernard Sergent uses the archaeological record, which, paradoxically, is invoked with equal confidence by the noninvasionist school (e.g. B.B. Lal: New Light on the Indus Civilization, Aryan Books, Delhi 1997).

The crux of the matter is: can archaeologists trace a population migrating through Central Asia and settling down in India? There seems to be new hope to pin down this elusive band of migrants: "Today, thanks to the extremely rich findings in Central Asia in the past twenty years, the discovery of the 'pre-Indian Indians' has become possible." (p.33) Sergent has tried to identify a crucial stage in this itinerary: the 3rd-millennium Bactrian culture as the base from which the Indo-Aryans invaded India.

Bactria, the basin of the Amu Darya or Oxus river, now northern Afghanistan plus southeastern Uzbekistan, is historically the heartland of Iranian culture. In an Indian Urheimat scenario, the Iranians left India before the heyday of the Harappan cities. The next waystation, where they developed their own distinct culture, was Bactria, where Zarathushtra lived (in the city of Balkh). In that framework, it is entirely logical that a separate culture has been discovered in Bactria and dated to the late 3rd millennium BC. However, Bernard Sergent identifies this Bronze Age culture of Bactria, "one of the most briliant civilizations of Asia" (p.157), as that of the Indo-Aryans poised to invade India.

Though not figuring much in the development of his own theory, evidence for similarities in material culture between Harappa and Bactria is acknowledged by Bernard Sergent, e.g. ceramics resembling those found in Chanhu-Daro. This Harappan influence on the Bactrian culture proper is distinct from the existence of six fully Harappan colonies in Afghanistan, most importantly Shortugai in Bactria, "a settlement completely Harappan in character on a tributary of the Amu Darya (...) on the foot of the ore-rich Badakshan range (...) with lapis lazuli, gold, silver, copper and lead ores. Not one of the standard characteristics of the Harappan cultural complex is missing from it." (Maurizio Tosi: "De Indusbeschaving voorbij de grenzen van het Indisch subcontinent", in UNESCO exhibition book Oude Culturen in Pakistan, Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis, Brussels 1989, p.133)

Logically, the close coexistence of Harappan colonies and Bactrian settlements was a conduit for mutual influence but also a source of friction and conflict. Indian-Iranian conflict has been a constant from the Bronze Age (replacement of Harappan with Bactrian culture in Shortugai ca. 1800 BC, Genèse de l'Inde, p.180) through Pehlevi, Shaka and Afghan invasions in India until Nadir Shah's sack of Delhi in the 18th century. Any Bactrian-Harappan antagonism would fit this pattern of hostility between Indo-Aryans and Iranians. Sergent's first job is to disprove the Iranian and prove the Indo-Aryan character of the Bactrian culture; the second is to show a Bactrian immigration in late- or post-Harappan India and a subsequent overwhelming Bactrian cultural impact on Indian society.

Sergent cites Akhmadali A. Askarov's conclusion that the Harappan-Bactrian similarities are due to "influence of northwestern India on Bactria by means of a migration of Indus people to Central Asia after the end of their civilization". (p.224, with reference to A.A. Askarov: "Traditions et innovations dans la culture du nord de la Bactriane à l'âge du bronze",Colloque Archéologie, CNRS, Paris 1985, p.119-124) The acknowledgment of a Harappa-to-Bactria movement is well taken, but this poses a chronological problem, for the Bactrian culture was not subsequent to but contemporaneous with Harappan culture. Sergent solves the problem by pointing out that Askarov and other Soviet scholars who first dug up the sites in Margiana (eastern Turkmenistan) and Bactria, used an obsolete form of C-14 Carbon dating, and that newer methods have pushed the chronology of these sites back by centuries, making Bactrian culture contemporaneous with Harappa. (p.160)

For Sergent, this chronological correction is essential: if the Bactrian culture was that of the Indo-Aryans who brought down the Indus civilization, it is necessary that they lived there before the end of the latter. But this synchronism is equally compatible with a dim pre-Harappan kinship between the Bactrian and Harappan cultures, which were different yet partly similar, a similarity which Askarov and Sergent attribute to Harappa-to-Bactria influence (which must inevitably have existed), but which may also owe something to a common origin.

Sergent then mentions a number of similarities in material culture between the Bactrian culture and some cultures in Central Asia and in Iran proper, e.g. ceramics like those of Namazga-V (southern Turkmenistan). Some of these were loans from Elam which were being transmitted from one Iranian (in his reconstruction, Indo-Iranian) settlement to the next, e.g. the so-called "Luristan bronzes", Luristan being a Southwest-Iranian region where Elamite culture was located. Some were loans from the "neighbouring and older" (p.158) culture of Margiana: does this not indicate an east-to-west gradient for the Indo-Iranians?

Well, one effect of Sergent's chronological correction is that what seem to be influences from elsewhere on Bactrian culture, may have to be reversed: "From that point onwards, the direction of exchanges and influences gets partly reversed: a number of similarities can just as well be explained by an influence of Bactria on another region as one of another on Bactria." (p.160) Note that this fits the Iranian east-to-west expansion implicit in the Avestic data and in the first chapter of the Zoroastrian Vendidad, which puts Afghanistan in the centre of the Iranian world, with the Caspian region hardly on the horizon yet. So, even for the relation between the Bactrian culture and its neighbours, the proper northwest-to-southeast direction required by the AIT has not been demonstrated, let alone a movement all the way from the northern Caspian region to India. And if there was transmission from other cultures to Bactria (as of course there was), this does not prove that the Bactrians were colonists originating in these other cultures; they may simply have practised commerce. Conversely, if they were colonists from elsewhere, they may have been colonists originating in pre-Harappan India.

At any rate, all the sites related in material culture to the prototypical Bactrian settlement of Dashli are in present-day Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan or Iran proper, without exception regions which were Iranian at the time they made their appearance in written history, mostly in the last millennium BC. While migrations are obviously possible, this Iranian bias says something about the burden of proof. It is entirely reasonable to accept as a starting hypothesis that the Dashli settlement, like its sister settlements, was Iranian. Those who insist it was something else, should accept the burden of proving that Dashli was Indo-Aryan, that migrations took place in which the Indo-Aryans there made way for Iranians.

3.3. Bactria vs. Harappa

A new insight based on archaeology and detrimental to the stereotypical Harap-pan/Aryan opposition, is that the Harappans were not matriarchal pacifists after all, that they did have weapons and fortifications, "just like" the Aryans (see e.g. Shereen Ratnagar: Enquiries into the Political Organization of Harappan Society, Ravish Publ., Pune 1991; note that Prof. Ratnagar is a virulent critic of all Indocentric revisions of the Aryan question, as in her article "Revisionist at work: a chauvinistic inversion of the Aryan invasion theory", Frontline, 9-2-1996, an attack on Prof. N.S. Rajaram). Yet, Sergent insists that the old picture still holds good: relatively unarmed mercantile Harappans versus heavily armed Aryans preparing their invasion in Bactria. The Bactrian settlements abound in metal weaponry, and this does present a contrast with the relative paucity of weapons in Harappa. The latter was a well-ordered mercantile society, Bactria a frontier society.

This contrast actually reminds us of a contrast between Iranian and Indian in the historical period. In pre-Alexandrine Iranian royal inscriptions, we come across truly shameless expressions of pride in bloody victories, even defiantly detailing the cruel treatment meted out to the defeated kings. By contrast, in Ashoka's inscriptions, we find apologies for the bloody Kalinga war and a call for establishing peace and order. Far from being a purely Buddhist reaction against prevalent Hindu martial customs, Ashoka's relative pacifism presents a personal variation within a broader and more ancient tradition of Ahimsa, nonviolence, best expressed in some sections of the Mahabharata. Though this epic (and most explicitly its section known as the Bhagavad Gita) rejects the extremist non-violence propagated by Mahatma Gandhi and also by the wavering Arjuna before the decisive battle, Krishna's exhortation to fight comes only after every peaceful means of appeasing or reconciling the enemy has been tried, whence the Hindu dictum Ahimsa paramo dharma, "non-violence is the highest religious duty".

True, the Vedas seem to be inspired by the same martial spirit of the Iranian inscriptions, but in the Indocentric chronology, they predate the high tide of Harappan civilization, belonging to a pre-Harappan period of conquest, viz. the conquest of the northwest by the Yamuna/Saraswati-based Puru tribe. Their westward conquest was connected with a larger westward movement which included the Iranian conquest of Central Asia (later continued into the Caspian area and West Asia). By way of hypothesis, I propose that Ahimsa was a largely post-Vedic development, and that the Iranians (who had a taste of it through Zarathushtra's strictures against animal sacrifice and the like) missed its more radical phase, sticking instead to the more uncivilized glorification of victory by means of force. This would concur with the finding of a more military orientation of Bactrian culture as compared with the post-Vedic Harappan culture.

3.4. The Bactrian tripura

In the principal Bactrian site of Dashli, a circular building with three concentric walls has been found. The building was divided into a number of rooms and inside, three fireplaces on platforms were discovered along with the charred remains of sacrificed animals. In this building, its Soviet excavator Viktor Sarianidi recognized an Iranian temple, but Sergent explains why he disagrees with him. (p.161) He argues that the Vedic Aryans were as much fire-worshippers as the Iranians, and that they sacrificed animals just like the early Iranians did (prior to the establishment of Zarathushtra's reforms, and even later, cfr. the bull sacrifice in the Roman-age Mithras cult), so that the excavated fire altars could be either Indo-Aryan or Iranian.

Of course, India and Iran have a large common heritage, and many religious practices, mythical motifs and other cultural items in both were the same or closely similar. But that truism will not do to satisfy Sergent's purpose, which is to show that the Bactrian culture was not generally Indo-Iranian, and definitely not Iranian, but specifically Indo-Aryan. There is nothing decisively un-Iranian about the Dashli fire altars, and I think Sarianidi's identification of Dashli as Iranian remains undisproven.

In fact, there may well be something un-Indic and specifically Iranian about it. First of all, roundness in buildings is highly unusual in Hindu culture, which has a strong preference for square plans (even vertically, as in windows, where rectangular shapes are preferred over arches), in evidence already in the Harappan cities. Moreover, Sergent notes the similarity with a fire temple found in Togolok, Margiana. The Togolok fire altar has gained fame by yielding traces of a plant used in the Soma (Iranian: Haoma) sacrifice: laboratory analysis in Moscow showed this to be Ephedra, a stimulant still used in ephedrine and derivative products.

Asko Parpola has tried to identify the Togolok temple as Indo-Iranian and possibly proto-Vedic, citing the Soma sacrifice there as evidence: the Rg-Vedic people reproached their Dasa (Iranian) enemies for not performing rituals including the Soma ritual, so Parpola ("The coming of the Aryans to Iran and India and the cultural and ethnic identity of the Dasas", in Studia Orientalia, vol.64, Helsinki 1988, p.195-265) identifies the former with the "Haumavarga Shakas" or Soma-using Scythians mentioned in Zoroastrian texts. However, every testimony we have of the Scythians, including the Haumavarga ones in whose sites traces of the Soma ceremony have been found, is as an Iranian-speaking people. It is possible that the sedentary Iranians included all nomads in their term Shaka, even the hypothetical Vedic-Aryan nomads on their way to India, but it is not more than just possible. The use of Soma was a bone of contention within Mazdeism, with Zarathushtra apparently opposing it against its adepts who were equally Iranian. There is nothing against characterizing the Togolok fire temple as Iranian.

And even if Thomas Burrow ("The Proto-Indoaryans", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1973, cited with approval by Sergent: Genèse de l'Inde, p.232) were right with his thesis that the Mazdean religion originated in a sustained reaction against the Indo-Aryans present in Bactria and throughout the Iranian speech area, making the non-Zoroastrian faction in Greater Iran an Indo-Aryan foreign resident group, it remains to be proven that these dissident Indo-Aryans made way for Zoroastrian hegemony in Iran by moving out, and more specifically by moving to India, somewhat like Moses taking the Israelites out of Egypt. There is neither scriptural nor archaeological evidence for such a scenario: the normal course of events would be assimilation by the dominant group, and the only emigration from Iranian territory (if it had already been iranianized) by Indo-Aryans that we know of, is the movement of the Mitannic Indo-Aryans from the southern Caspian area into Mesopotamia and even as far as Palestine.

In the Dashli building, Asko Parpola recognized a tripura such as have been described in the Vedic literature as the strongholds with three circular concentric walls of the Dasas or Asuras (Asura/Ahura worshippers), whom Parpola himself has identified elsewhere as Iranians ("The coming of the Aryans", Studia Orientalia, vol.64, p.212-215, with reference to Shatapatha Brahmana 6:3:3:24-25; and: "The problem of the Aryans and the Soma", in G. Erdosy ed.: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.368 ff.). So, chances are once more that the Soma-holding fire-altars, like the tripura structures around them, in both Togolok and Dashli, were Iranian. Parpola (in Erdosy, ibid.) makes this conclusion even more compelling when he informs us that a similar building in Kutlug-Tepe "demonstrates that the tradition of building forts with three concentric walls survived in Bactria until Achaemenid times" -- when the region was undoubtedly Iranian.

Moreover, Parpola points out details in the Vedic descriptions of the tripura-holding Dasas and Asuras which neatly fit the Bactrian culture: the Rg-Veda "places the Dasa strongholds (..) in the mountainous area", which is what Afghanistan looks like to people from the Ganga-Saraswati-Indus plains; it speaks of "a hundred forts" of the Dasa, while the Vedic Aryans themselves "are never said to have anything but fire or rivers as their 'forts'. The later Vedic texts confirm this by stating that when the Asuras and Devas were fighting, the Asuras always won in the beginning, because they alone had forts. (...) The Rg-Vedic Aryans described their enemy as rich and powerful, defending their cattle, gold and wonderful treasures with sharp weapons, horses and chariots. This description fits the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex in Bactria, with its finely decorated golden cups, weapons with ornamental animal figurines including the horse, and trumpets indicative of chariot warfare." (in Erdosy, ibid.)

This may pose a chronological problem to those who consider the Rg-Veda as pre-Bronze Age, or perhaps not, e.g. Parpola notes that the term tripura was "unknown to the Rg-Veda" and only appears later, "in the Brahmana texts" (in Erdosy, p.369) which noninvasionists date to the high Harappan period, contemporaneous with the Bactrian Bronze Age culture. At any rate, it affirms in so many words that the Bactrian Bronze Age culture was Dasa or Asura, terms which Parpola ("The coming of the Aryans", Studia Orientalia, vol.64, p.224) had identified with "the carriers of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran". It also constitutes a challenge to those who make India the Urheimat of IE or at least of Indo-Iranian: if the presumed tripuras are a distinctly Dasa/Iranian element, identified as such in Vedic literature, and if the Vedic Aryans fought the Dasas in India, as the Rg-Vedic data indicate, should we not be able to find some tripuras in India too? Or did the Iranians only develop them after leaving India but while still waging occasional wars on the Indian border?

3.5. Were the Bactrians Indo-Aryans?

Other artefacts in Dashli have the same Iranian/Indo-Aryan ambiguity with a preference for the Iranian alternative. A vase in Dashli shows a scene with men wearing a kind of shirt leaving one shoulder uncovered. In this, Sergent recognizes the upanayana ceremony, in which a youngster is invested with the sacred shirt or thread. (p.163) But this is both a Vedic and a Zoroastrian ritual, with the latter resembling the depicted scene more closely: in India, only a thread is given, but among Zoroastrians, it is an actual shirt.

Some vases display horned snakes or dragons carrying one or more suns inside of them: according to Sergent, this refers to an Indo-Iranian dragon myth, attested in slightly greater detail in the Rg-Veda than in the Avesta (but what else would you expect, with Vedic literature being much larger, older and better preserved than the Avestan corpus?), about Indra liberating the sun by slaying the dragon Vrtra, or in the Avesta, Keresaspa killing the snake Azhi Srvara, "the horned one". (p.163-164, ref. to Rg-Veda 1:51:4, 1:54:6) The sources which drew his attention to this picture, both Soviet and French (Russian articles from the 1970s by Viktor Sarianidi and by I.S. Masimof, and Marie-Hélène Pottier: Matériel Funéraire de la Bactriane Méridionale à l'Age du Bronze, Paris 1984, p.82 ff.), are agreed that it is specifically Iranian, and we have no reason to disbelieve them. What Sergent adds is only that, like with the fire cult, it could just as well be Indo-Aryan; but that does not amount to proof of its Indo-Aryan rather than Iranian identity.

Several depictions (statuettes, seals) of a fertility goddess associated with watery themes have been found. Sergent points out that they are unrelated to Mesopotamian mythology but closely related to the "Indo-Iranian" goddess known in India as Saraswati, in Iran as Anahita. Which shall it be in this particular case, Iranian or Indian, Avestan or Vedic? Sergent himself adds that the closest written description corresponding to the visual iconography in question is found in Yasht 5 of the Avesta. (p.163)

Of course we must remain open to new interpretations and new findings. In this field, confident assertions can be overruled the same day by new discoveries. But if Sergent himself, all while advocating an Indo-Aryan interpretation of the known Bactrian findings, is giving us so many hints that their identity is uncertain at best, and otherwise more likely Iranian than Indo-Aryan, we have reason to believe in the Iranian identification established by other researchers. On the strength of the data he offers, the safest bet is that the Bactrian Bronze Age culture was the centre of Iranian culture.

This happens to agree with the evidence of Zoroastrian scripture, which has dialectal features pointing to the northeast of the historical Iranian linguistic space, meaning Bactria, and which specifically locates Zarathushtra in Bahlika/Balkh, a town in northern Afghanistan. It tallies with the list of regions in the opening chapter of the Vendidad, corresponding to Bactria, Sogdia, Pamir, Margiana, southern Afghanistan and northwestern India (Hapta Hendu, the Vedic Sapta Sindhavah), which happens to put Balkh near the geographical centre. Iran proper was iranianized only well after Zarathushtra's preaching. As Sergent notes, in ca. 1900 BC, the Namazga culture in Turkmenistan changes considerably taking in the influence of the then fast-expanding Bactria-Margiana culture (p.179): I read that as the Iranian expansion from their historical heartland westward into the south-Caspian area. From there, but again only after a few more centuries, they were to colonize Kurdistan/Media and Fars/Persia, where their kingdoms were to flourish into far-flung empires in the 1st millennium BC.

It is only logical that the dominant religious tradition in a civilization is the one developed in its demographic and cultural metropolis: the Veda in the Saraswati basin, the Avesta in the Oxus basin, i.e. Bactria. That Bactria did have the status of a metropolis is suggested by Sergent's own description of its Bronze Age culture as "one of the most brilliant in Asia". Though provincial compared with Harappa, it was a worthy metropolis to the somewhat less polished Iranian civilization.

3.6. Clarions of the Aryan invaders

Another distinctively Aryan innovation attested in Dashli was the trumpet: "Bactria has yielded a number of trumpets; some others had been found earlier in Tepe Hissar and Astrabad (northeastern Iran); Roman Ghirshman proposed to connect these instruments with the use of the horse, with the Iranian cavalry manoeuvring to the sound of the clarion. (...) In ancient India, the trumpet is not mentioned in the written sources". (p.162) Would it not be logical if the same type of cavalry manoeuvres had yielded the Aryans both Iran and India? In that case, we should have encountered some references to clarions in the Vedas. But no, as per Sergent's own reading, the Rg-Veda, supposedly the record of Aryan settlement in India, knows nothing of trumpets; though post-Harappan depictions of riders with trumpets are known.

All this falls into place if we follow the chronology given by K.D. Sethna and other Indian dissidents: the Rg-Veda was not younger but older than the Bronze Age and the heyday of Harappa. So, the trumpet was invented in the intervening period, say 2,500 BC, and then used in the subsequent Iranian conquest of Bactria, Margiana and Iran.

The comparatively recent migration into Iran of the Iranians, who supposedly covered the short distance from the Volga mouth to Iran in the 3rd or 2nd millennium BC (losing the wayward Indo-Aryans along the way), has not been mapped archaeologically, in contrast with the successive Kurgan expansion waves into Europe. Jean Haudry reports optimistically: "Since the late 3rd millennium BC, an undecorated black pottery appears in Tepe Hissar (Turkmenistan), together with violin-shaped female idols and esp. with bronze weapons, the horse and the war chariots, and -- a detail of which R. Ghirshman has demonstrated the importance -- the clarion, indispensible instrument for collective chariot maneuvers. We can follow them from a distance on their way to the south." (J. Haudry: Les Indo-Européens, p.118, with reference to R. Ghirshman: L'Iran et les Migrations des Indo-Aryans et des Iraniens, 1977) But this is not necessarily the entry of "the" Iranians into Iran, and if it is, it need not have the Kurgan area as its starting-point.

In the account of Roman Ghirshman and Jean Haudry, the proto-Iranians with their clarions travelled "to the south". Rather than Indo-Iranians on their way from South Russia to Iran and partly to India, these may just as well be the Iranians on their way from Bactria (and ultimately from India), via the Aral Lake area, to Iran and Mesopotamia. Indeed, viewed from Iran, entrants from Russia and from India would arrive through the same route, viz. from the Aral Lake southward. A look at the map suffices to show this: rather than go in a straight line across the mountains, substantial groups of migrants would follow the far more hospitable route through the fertile Oxus valley to the Aral Lake area, and then proceed south from there.

Even in Bernard Sergent's erudite book, I have not found any data which compel us to accept that a particular culture can be identified with the very first Indo-Iranian wave of migrants; Central Asia was criss-crossed for millennia by variegated Iranian-speaking tribes. Nonetheless, Haudry's clarion-wielders of "the late 3rd millennium BC" and Sergent's occupiers of Namazga "in ca. 1900 BC" may of course be the first Iranian intruders into Turkmenistan and Persia, but that would serve the Indocentric theory even better, for Sergent's data show that these intruders came from Bactria, not from Russia.

3.7. Bactrian invasion in India

Thus far, the archaeological argument advanced by some scholars in favour of an Aryan invasion into India has not been very convincing. Consider e.g. this circular reasoning by Prof. Romila Thapar ("The Perennial Aryans", Seminar, December 1992): "In Haryana and the western Ganga plain, there was an earlier Ochre Colour Pottery going back to about 1500 BC or some elements of the Chalcolithic cultures using Black-and-Red Ware. Later in about 800 BC there evolved the Painted Grey Ware culture. The geographical focus of this culture seems to be the Doab, although the pottery is widely distributed across northern Rajasthan, Panjab, Haryana and western U.P. None of these post-Harappan cultures, identifiable by their pottery, are found beyond the Indus. Yet this would be expected if 'the Aryans' were a people indigenous to India with some diffusion to Iran, and if the attempt was to find archaeological correlates for the affinities between Old Indo-Aryan and Old Avestan."

Firstly, if no common pottery type is found in Iran and India in 1500-800 BC, and if this counts as proof that no migration from India to Iran took place, then it also proves that no migration from Iran to India took place. In particular, the PGW, long identified with the Indo-Aryans, cannot be traced to Central Asia; if it belonged to Aryans, then not to Aryan invaders. So, if substantiated, Prof. Thapar's statement is actually an argument against an Aryan invasion in ca. 1500 BC. Secondly, if the absence of migration in either direction in the period from 1500 BC onwards is really proven, this evidence remains compatible with an Indo-European emigration from India in another time bracket, say between 6000 and 2000 BC.

In spite of the impression created in popular literature, archaeology has by no means demonstrated that there was an Aryan immigration into India. Even the new levels in accuracy do not affect the following status quaestionis of the Aryan Invasion theory: "The question of Indo-European migrations into the subcontinent of India can, at best, be described as enigmatic." (David G. Zanotti: "Another Aspect of the Indo-European Question", Journal of Indo-European Studies, 1975/3, p.260) Thus, among those who assume the Aryan Invasion, there is no consensus on when it took place, and some AIT archaeologists alter the chronology so much that the theory comes to mean the opposite of what it is usually believed to mean, viz. an affirmation of Aryan dominance in Harappa rather than an Aryan destruction of Harappa: "[This] episode of elite dominance which brought the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family to India (...) may have been as early as the floruit of the Indus civilization (...)" (C. Renfrew: "Before Babel", Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 1, p.14)

Enter Bernard Sergent. He builds on a corpus of findings (some of them already used by Asko Parpola) pertaining to the apparent entry of elements from the Bactrian Bronze Age culture into late- and post-Harappan northwestern India. He also offers a theory of how these Bactrians may have caused the downfall of the Harappan civilization, parallel with the contemporaneous crisis in civilizations in Central and West Asia.

Civilization and urbanization are closely related to commerce, exchange, colonization of mining areas, and other socio-economic processes which presuppose communications and transport. When communication and transport cease, we see cultures suffer decline, e.g. the Tasmanian aboriginals, living in splendid isolation for thousands of years, had lost many of the skills which mankind had developed in the Stone Age, including the art of making fire. One of the reasons why the Eurasian continent won out against Africa and the Americas in the march of progress, was the fairly easy and well-developed contact routes between the different civilizations of Europe, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. So, one can force decline on a culture by cutting off its trade routes, a tactic routinely used for short periods (hence only with limited long-term effect) in wartime, but which seems to have troubled the ancient civilizations in ca. 2000 BC with devastating effect for several centuries. It was in reaction to this destabilization of international trade links that the civilizational centres started building empires by the mid-2nd millennium, e.g. the Kassite empire in Mesopotamia where there had only been city-states (Ur, Uruk, Isin, Larsa, etc.) prior to the great crisis.

Or so Sergent says. Dismissing the thesis of a climatological crisis (though such a crisis would by itself already trigger an economic crisis even in the areas not directly affected climatologically), he argues that only an economic crisis can explain the simultaneous decline of cities in widely different locations, some near rivers and some on hills, some in densely populated agglomerations and some overlooking thinly populated steppes or mountain areas, some in hot and some in colder areas. The ones to blame are -- who else? -- the Aryans. They, and "specifically Indo-Aryans" (p.198-99), played a role in the Hurrian and Kassite invasions disrupting Mesopotamia (while the IE or non-IE identity of the Guti and Lullubi invaders remains unknown, though attempts are made to link the Guti with the Tocharians); and from Bactria, they by themselves disrupted the economy of the Indus-Saraswati civilization.

They didn't physically destroy the Harappan cities, as Mortimer Wheeler and others of his generation thought: "No trace of destruction has been observed in these cities." (p.201) But by creating insecurity for the travelling traders, they bled and suffocated the economy which made city life possible, and thus forced the Harappans to abandon their cities and return to a pre-urban lifestyle. The declining and fragmented Harappan country and society then fell an easy prey to the Indo-Aryan invaders from Bactria.

This scenario has been attested in writing in the case of Mesopotamia. Sergent quotes other experts to the effect that "from ca. 2230 BC, (...) the Guti had cut off the roads, ruined the countryside, set the cities on fire" (p.199, quoting Paul Garelli: Le Proche-Orient Asiatique, PUF, Paris 1969, p.89-93), that the Assyrian trade system was disrupted by the Mitannic people, etc. But is there similar evidence for the Indus-Saraswati civilization?

Sergent cites findings that in the final stage of Mohenjo Daro, we see the large mansions of the rich subdivided into small apartments for the poor, the water supply system neglected, the roads and houses no longer following the plan. (p.200) This certainly marks a decline, the rich losing their power and the powerful losing their control and resources. Same story in Harappa, Chanhu Daro, Kalibangan, Lothal: a great loss of quality in architecture and organization in the last phase. Moreover, all traces of long-distance trade disappear (just as in Mesopotamia, all signs of commerce with "Meluhha"/Sindh disappear by 2000 BC), and trade is the basis of city life. So, "these cities didn't need to be destroyed: they had lost their reason for existing, and were vacated". (p.201) But that doesn't bring any Indo-Aryan invasion into the picture. Indeed, it is perfectly compatible with a hypothesis of Iranian Bactrians disrupting a Harappan economy manned by Indo-Aryans.

3.8. Aryan invader settlements in India

To Bernard Sergent, the "strategic" key to the Aryan invasion puzzle has been provided by the discovery, by a French team in 1968, of the post-Harappan town of Pirak, near the Bolan pass and near Mehrgarh in Baluchistan. Pirak was a new settlement dating back only to the 18th century BC. Culturally it was closely related to the societies to its north and west, especially Bactria. Sergent sums up a long list of precise material items which Pirak had in common with those non-Indian regions. (p.219 ff.) So, this was a settlement of foreign newcomers bringing some foreign culture with them.

Sergent will certainly convince many readers by asserting that in Pirak, "the horse makes its appearance in India, both through bones and in figurines", and this "connotes without any possible doubt the arrival in India of the first Indo-European-speaking populations". (p.221) That depends entirely on how much we make of the limited but real evidence of horses in the Harappan civilization. Note moreover that while the horse was important to the Indo-Aryans, the Bactrian two-humped camel was not; but in Pirak, both camel and horse are conspicuous, both in skeletal remains and in depictions.

If the Bactrian culture and those to its west were Iranian-speaking, which is likely, then Pirak is simply an Iranian settlement in an Indian border region, a southward extension of the Bactrian culture. Indo-Iranian borders have been fluctuating for millennia, while different groups of Iranians down to Nadir Shah have again and again tried to invade India, so the Iranian intrusion in Pirak (which may have ended up assimilated into its Indo-Aryan environment) need not be the momentous historical breakthrough which it is to Sergent. It would only be that if it can be shown that the Pirak innovations are repeated in many North-Indian sites in the subsequent centuries, where we know that the dominant culture was Indo-Aryan.

A related culture is the Cemetery H culture on the outskirts of Harappa itself. Sergent offers a detail which is distinctly non-Vedic and Mazdean (Zoroastrian): "The dead, represented by unconnected skulls and bones, were placed, after exposure, in big jars". (p.224; emphasis added) Exposure to birds and insects is still the first stage in the Zoroastrian disposal of the dead. Sergent also reports that the influence of the native Harappan civilization is much greater here than in Pirak. So, as the Iranian invaders moved deeper inland, across the Indus, they soon lost their distinctiveness. Considering that Afghan dynasties have ruled parts of India as far east as Bengal, using Persian and building in a West-Asian style, this post-Harappan Iranian intrusion as far as the Indus riverside is not that impressive.

Indeed, from the Indus eastwards, we lose track of this Bactrian invasion. Sergent himself admits as much: "For the sequel, archaeology offers little help. The diggings in India for the 2nd millennium BC reveal a large number of regional cultures, generally rather poor, and to decree what within them represents the Indo-Aryan or the indigenous contribution would be arbitrary. If Pirak (...) represents the start of Indian culture, there is in the present state of Indian archaeology no 'post-Pirak' except at Pirak itself, which lasted till the 7th century BC: the site remained, along with a few very nearby ones, isolated." (p.246-247) So, the Bactrian invaders who arrived through the Bolan pass and established themselves in and around the border town of Pirak, never crossed the Indus, and never made their mark on India the way the Indo-Aryans did.

This confirms the statement by the American archaeologist Jim Shaffer that "no material culture is found to move from west to east across the Indus" (personal communication, 1996), or more academically, that the demographic eastward shift of the Harappan population during the decline of their cities, i.e. an intra-Indian movement from Indus and Saraswati to Ganga, "is the only archaeologically documented west-to-east movement of human populations in South Asia before the first half of the first millennium BC", while the archaeological record shows "no significant discontinuities" for the period when the Aryan invasion should have made its mark. (Jim Shaffer and Diane Lichtenstein: "The concepts of 'cultural tradition' and 'palaeoethnicity' in South-Asian archaeology", in G. Erdosy, ed.: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.139-140)

The Pirak people were not the Vedic Aryans conquering India. The Aryan invasion of India has somehow gone missing from the archaeological record, and this is admitted by Sergent himself in the very section containing his decisive piece of evidence for the Aryan Invasion Theory.

3.9. Scriptural evidence

To fortify his reconstruction of the Aryan invasion, Bernard Sergent repeats some well-known scriptural references. Indian authors are right in pointing out that this is systematically the weakest part in AIT argumentations, as the knowledge of Vedic literature among Western scholars is either too limited or too distorted by AIT presuppositions. Sergent's arguments at this point repeat well-known claims about the contents of the Vedas. Thus, the Rg-Veda was written by foreigners because it doesn't know the tiger nor rice nor "the domesticated elephant which existed in the Harappan Indus culture". (p.241)

As for the tiger, it is often said that India was divided in a lion zone in the west and a tiger zone in the rest. This image persists in the symbolism of the civil war in Sri Lanka: the Sinhalese, originating in Gujarat (where lions exist even today), have the lion as their symbol, while the separatists among the Tamils, originating in southeastern India, call themselves the Tigers. However, to judge from the Harappan seal imagery, tigers did originally exist in the Saraswati and Indus basins as well, overlapping with the lion zone. As Sir Monier Monier-Williams (Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p.1036, entry vyâghra) notes, in the Atharva-Veda, "vyâghra/tiger is often mentioned together with the lion". It is simply impossible that the Rg-Vedic seers, even if they were unfamiliar with the Ganga basin (quod non), had never heard of tigers.

As for the domesticated elephant, if it was known in Harappa, does anyone seriously suggest that it was not known in the same area in subsequent centuries by the Vedic Aryans?

While regression in knowledge and technology does sometimes happen, there is no reason whatsoever why people who could domesticate elephants would have lost this useful skill, which is not dependent on foreign trade or urbanization, when the Harappan cities declined. Isn't the mention of how "the people deck him like a docile king of elephants" (Rg-Veda 9:57:3, thus translated by Ralph Griffith: Hymns of the Rg-Veda, p.488) a reference to the Hindu custom of taking adorned domesticated elephants in pageants?

Rice, according to Sergent himself, made its appearance in the Indus basin in the late Harappan period, and was known to the Bactrian invaders in Pirak. (p.230) He identifies those Bactrian invaders as the Vedic Aryans, so why haven't they mentioned rice in their Rg-Veda? One simple answer would be that the Rg-Veda is pre-Harappan, composed at a time when rice was not yet cultivated in northwestern India. This chronological correction solves a lot of similar arguments from silence. Thus, there was cotton in Harappa and after, but no cotton in the Rg-Veda. Bronze swords were used aplenty in the Bactrian culture and in Pirak, but are not mentioned in the Rg-Veda; a short knife can be made from soft metals like gold or copper, but a sword requires advanced bronze or iron metallurgy. (Ralph Griffith uses "sword" twice in his translation The Hymns of the Rg-Veda, p.25, verse 1:37:2, and p.544, verse 10:20:6, both already in the younger part of the Rg-Veda, but in the index on p.702 he corrects himself, specifying that "knife" or "dagger" would be more appropriate.) Likewise, the core stories of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the ones most likely to stay close to the original versions even in their material details (unlike the many sideshows woven into these epics, often narrating much more recent events), feature only primitive pre-Bronze Age weapons: Rama's bow and arrow, Hanuman's club.

Camels were part of the Bactrian culture and its Pirak offshoot, but are not mentioned in the Rg-Veda except for its rather late 8th book, which mentions Bactrian fauna, possibly in the period when the early Harappans were setting up mining colonies like Shortugai. It all falls into place when the Rg-Veda is considered as pre-Harappan. Incidentally, the late appearance of Afghan fauna in the Rg-Veda contradicts an Afghanistan-to-India itinerary, and argues in favour of an India-to-Afghanistan movement during the Rg-Vedic period.

For a very different type of scriptural evidence, Sergent sees a synchronism between the archaeologically attested settlement of Pirak and the beginning of the Puranic chronology, which in his view goes back to the 17th century BC, in "remarkable coincidence" with the florescence of Pirak. (p.223) Reference is in fact to Kalhana's Rajatarangini, which starts a dynastic lists of kings of Kashmir in 1882, i.e. the early 19th century BC. But if Kalhana can be a valid reference, what about Kalhana's dating the Mahabharata war to the 25th century BC? If Puranic history is any criterion, Sergent should realize that its lists of Aryan kings for other parts of India than Kashmir go way beyond 2,000 BC.

Another classic scriptural reference concerns everything relating to the enemies of the Vedic Aryans, such as the "aboriginal" Dasas. Very aptly, Sergent identifies the Dasas and the Panis as Iranian, and the Pakthas (one of the tribes confronting the Vedic king Sudas in the Battle of the Ten Kings) as the Iranian Pathans. (p.241-244) He specifically rejects the common belief that the Dasas were black-skinned, in spite of their occasional description as "black-covered" or "from a black womb", pointing out that even the fair-haired and white-skinned Vikings were called the "black foreigners" by the Irish, with "black" purely used as a metaphor for "evil". (This is even the case in some African languages, for there is no relation between colour symbolism and skin colour: white is the sacred colour to dark-skinned Indian tribals, while black is auspicious to the whitish Japanese, who consider white as the colour of mourning, just as Sanskritic Hindus do.)

Yet, Sergent doesn't identify the said Iranian tribes with the Bronze Age Bactrians, arguing that in Alexander's time, Greek authors locate the Parnoi and Dahai just south of the Aral Lake. But that was almost two thousand years after the heyday of the Bactrian Bronze Age culture and arguably even longer after the Rg-Veda. The only mystery is that these ethnonyms managed to survive that long, not that during those long centuries, they could migrate a few hundred miles to the northwest -- centuries during which we know for fact that the Iranians expanded westward from their Bactrian heartland across rivers and mountains to settle as far west as Mesopotamia.

Moreover, the Vedas locate the confrontations in the prolonged hostility between IndoAryans and Iranians not on the Saraswati (which could in theory be identified as the homonymous Harahvaiti/Helmand in Afghanistan) (p.242), but on the riverside of the Parush-ni/Ravi and other Panjab rivers, unambiguously in India. This is only logical if the Vedic Aryans were based in the Saraswati basin and their Iranian enemies were based in an area to their west near the Khyber pass: they confronted halfway in Panjab. So not only did these Iranian tribes (Dahai, Parnoi) move from Bactria to the Aral Lake area in 2000-300 BC, but they had started moving northwestward centuries earlier, in the Rg-Vedic period, in Panjab.

With every invasionist attempting to strengthen his case by appealing to the testimony of Hindu scripture, the collective failure becomes more glaring.

3.10. Comparison with archaeological reconstruction in Europe

The westward expansion of the Kurgan culture has been mapped with some degree of accuracy: "If an archaeologist is set the problem of examining the archaeological record for a cultural horizon that is both suitably early and of reasonable uniformity to postulate as the common prehistoric ancestor of the later Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, and possibly some of the Indo-European languages of Italy, then the history of research indicates that the candidate will normally be the Corded Ware culture. At about 3200-2300 BC this Corded Ware horizon is sufficiently early to predate the emergence of any of the specific proto-languages. In addition, it is universally accepted as the common component if not the very basis of the later Bronze Age cultures that are specifically identified with the different proto-languages. Furthermore, its geographical distribution from Holland and Switzerland on the west across northern and central Europe to the upper Volga and middle Dniepr encompasses all those areas which [have been] assigned as the 'homelands' of these European proto-languages."

(J.P. Mallory: In Search of the Indo-Europeans, Hudson & Hudson, London 1989, p.108)

This is a very important insight for understanding the large common (partly pre-IE substratal) element in the European IE languages, distinguishing them collectively from Anatolian, Tocharian and Indo-Iranian: "The study of the lexicon of the Northern European languages, especially Germanic and Baltic, reveals that a large number of terms relevant to the ecology of the habitat of the early populations of the area and to their socio-economic activities have no plausible Indo-European etymology. (...) it is possible to ascribe to the pre-Indo-European substrate in the Baltic area a number of names of plants, animals, objects and activities characteristic of the Neolithic cultures." (Edgar C. Polomé: "The Indo-Europeanization of Northern Europe: the Linguistic Evidence", Journal of Indo-European Studies, fall 1990, p.331-337) Many of these terms also extend to Celtic, Slavic and sometimes Italic and Greek.

Examples include the words barley, Russian bor ("millet"), Latin far ("spelt"); Irish tuath, Gothic thiuda, "people", whence the ethnic names Dutch/Deutsch; German wahr, Latin verus, Old Irish fir, "true"; Latin granum, Dutch koren, English grain and corn; Lithuanian puodas, Germanic fata, whence Dutch vat, "vessel"; Dutch delven, "dig", Old Prussian (Baltic) dalptan, "piercing-tool"; Old Irish land, Old Prussian lindan, Germanic land; Latin alnus (<alisnos), Dutch els, Lithuanian elksnis, "alder", also related to Greek aliza, "white poplar"; Dutch smaak, "taste", Gothic smakka, "fig, tasty fruit", Lithuanian smaguricu, "sweet, treat"; from an ancient form *londhwos, Dutch lenden, Latin lumbus, "waist". Likewise, the Germanic words fish, apple, oak, beech, whale, goat, elm, (n)adder have counterparts in other European languages, e.g. Latin piscis, Old Irish aball, Greek aig-ilops or krat-aigos (possibly related to Berber iksir, Basque eskur, as suggested by Xavier Delamarre: Le Vocabulaire Indo-Européen, Maisonneuve, Paris 1984, p.167), Latin fagus, squalus, haedus, ulmus, natrix; but they have no attested counterparts in the Asian IE languages. Archaeology and linguistics reinforce each other in indicating the existence of a second centre of IE dispersal in the heart of Europe, the Corded Ware culture of ca. 3000 BC, whence most European branches of IE parted for their historical habitats.

Even earlier demographic and cultural movements have been mapped with promising accuracy. The sudden apparition of full-fledged Neolithic culture in the Low Countries in about 5,100 BC can clearly be traced to a gradual expansion of the agricultural civilization through Hungary (5700) and southern Germany (5350 BC), from the Balkans and ultimately from Anatolia. (Pierre Bonenfant & Paul-Louis van Berg: "De eerste bewoners van het toekomstige 'België': een etnische overrompeling", in Anne Morelli ed.: Geschiedenis van het eigen volk, Kritak, Leuven 1993, p.28) It is this gradual spread of agriculture and its concomitant changes in life-style (houses, tools, ceramics, domesticated animals) which the leading archaeologist Colin Renfrew has rashly identified as the indo-europeanization of Europe, but which Marija Gimbutas and many others would consider as the spread of the pre-IE "Old European" culture.

It remains possible that in some outlying regions, the early Indo-Europeans arrived on the scene in time to capture this movement of expanding agriculture, but it did not originate with them, because Anatolia and the Balkans were demonstrably not the IE Urheimat. On the contrary, in the northeastern Mediterranean, the presence of pre-IE elements in the historically attested IE cultures and languages (Greek, Hittite) is very strong, indicating that the Indo-Europeans had to subdue a numerous and self-confident, culturally advanced population. It is this Old European people, known through towns like Catal Hüyük and Vinca, which gradually spread to the northwest and civilized most of Europe before its indo-europeanization.

So, that's archaeology in action. After the wave of agriculture spreading to the farthest corners from the southeast in the 7th-4th millennium BC (linguistically unidentified), the wave of the horse-riding late-Kurganites has been identified as bringing the IE languages. There is as yet no parallel map of a Kurgan-to-India migration. Thus, the material relation between the Andronovo culture in Kazakhstan (often considered as the Indo-Iranians freshly emigrated from the Kurgan area) and the Bactria-Margiana culture (presumed to be the Indo-Aryans and the Iranians on their way to India and Iran) has been established only vaguely, certainly not well enough to claim that the latter was an offshoot of the former (which would support the AIT). As we saw, even tracing a migration from Bactria across the Indus has not succeeded so far.

But then, neither has a reverse migration been mapped archaeologically. If the Bactrian Bronze Age culture was Iranian and the Iranians had earlier been defeated in India, where is the archaeological trail of the Iranians from India to Bactria? And earlier, where is the evidence of Proto-Indo-Europeans on their way from India to the Kurgan area? Those who consider India as the Urheimat of IE should suspend their current triumphalism and take up the challenge.

3.11. Indo-Aryans in West Asia

Another challenge to the Indocentric school has been thrown by Bernard Sergent without his realizing it. On p.206 ff., he adds some new data about the large IE and specifically Indo-Aryan presence in West Asia: Indo-Aryan names are quite common in Syria and Palestine in the 15th-13th century BC, e.g. the Palestian town of Sichem was ruled by one Birishena, i.e. Vira-sena, "the one who has an army of heroes", and Qiltu near Jerusalem was ruled by one Suar-data, i.e. "gift of Heaven"; to Sergent, this also proves that the Indo-Aryans maintained a separate existence after and outside the Mitannic kingdom until at least the 13th century BC.

A fairly serious problem for the non-invasionists in this regard concerns the term Asura: in the Rg-Veda a word for "god" (cfr. Germanic Ase, Aesir), in later Vedic literature a word for "demon", obviously parallel and causally related with the Iranian preference for Asura/Ahura as against the demonized Deva/Daeva, the remaining Hindu term for "god". On p.211 and p.280, Sergent makes the very popular mistake of seeing "the Asuras" as a separate class of gods next to "the Devas". In fact, the distinction and opposition between them is a late-Vedic development connected with the Irano-Indian (or Mazdeic-Vedic) conflict. In the Rg-Veda, Deva and Asura are not two tribes of gods; they are as synonymous as "God" and "Lord" are in Christian parlance.

That state of affairs seems to persist in the Indo-Aryan diaspora in West Asia of the 2nd millennium BC, i.e. long after the completion of the Rg-Veda in the non-invasionist chronology.

Sergent has found quite a few personal names with Asura in West Asia, e.g. the Mitannic general Kart-ashura, the name Biry-ashura attested in Nuzi and Ugarit, in Nuzi also the names Kalm-ashura and Sim-ashura, the Cilician king Shun-ashura, while in Alalakh (Syria), two people were called Ashura and Ashur-atti. (p.210) He explicitly deduces a synchronism between early Vedic and Mitannic-Kassite, which tallies splendidly with the AIT chronology. But in that case, the problem which I am drawing attention to, disappears: of course the West-Asian Indo-Aryans practised a form of the Vedic religion consistent with the early Vedic data, because theirs was the early Vedic age. And that is why Sergent doesn't see the problem which arises when the wild non-invasionist chronology is accepted: if two millennia have passed between the Rg-Vedic seers and the said testimony of an Indo-Aryan presence in West Asia, how is it possible that these West-Asian Indo-Aryans have missed the late-Vedic developments which turned the revered Asuras into demons?

At present, this problem for the non-invasionists can only be solved at the level of hypothesis. It is perfectly possible, even if not yet attested archaeologically or literarily, that along with the Iranians, a purely Indo-Aryan-speaking group emigrated from India in the Rg-Vedic period to seek its fortune in the Far West. Perhaps it is from them that Uralic speakers borrowed the term Asura, "lord", along with Sapta, "seven, week", Sasar, "sister", and a few other Indo-Aryan words. Some of these Indo-Aryans, organized as bands of warrior, engineered the conquests of their Mitannic and Kassite host populations. Considering that Vedic names are still given to Hindu children today, thousands of years after Vedic Sanskrit went out of daily use, and often in communities which speak a non-Indo-Aryan language, it is conceivable that the Indo-Aryans in West Asia managed to preserve their Vedic tradition from the time of their emigration from India during the Vedic age until the mid-2nd millennium BC. And if so, they had to preserve it in the form it had at the time of their emigration, i.c. complete with the veneration for Asura, the Lord.

A related problem concerns the Kassites, who were also Indo-Aryan to a extent. Non-in-vasionists have made much of the presence of Sanskrit names in the Kassite dynasty in Babylon. However, we have information from Semitic Mesopotamians about the Kassite language, and it was not Indo-Aryan. A number of known Kassite words are apparently unrelated to any known language, e.g. mashu, "god"; yanzi, "king"; saribu, "foot". They also seem to have a formation of the plural unknown in IE, viz. with an infix, e.g. sirpi, sirpami, "brown one(s)", or minzir, minzamur, "dotted one(s)". (Wilfred van Soldt: "Het Kassitisch", Phoenix, Leiden 1998, p.90-93) Assuming that the language described as "Kassite" and located by the Babylonian sources in the hills east of Mesopotamia was indeed the language of the Kassite dynasty (for language names sometimes change referent), does this not refute the Indian connection of the Kassites?

No: this state of affairs suggests a third scenario, viz. that a non-IE population in Iran used Sanskrit names referring to Vedic gods. This would be the same situation as in the Dravidian provinces: a non-IE-speaking population maintains its own language but adopts Sanskritic lore and nomenclature. It would mean that Vedic culture had spread as much to the west as we know it has spread to the east and south, and that a part of western Iran (well before its iranianization) was as much part of Greater India as Kerala or Bali became in later centuries.

4. Linguistic arguments

4.1. East-Asian influences

Bernard Sergent traces practically all Indian language families to foreign origins. He confirms the East-Asian origins of both the Tibeto-Burmese languages (Lepcha, Naga, Mizo etc.) and the Austro-Asiatic languages (Santal, Munda, Khasi etc.). Though many tribals in central and southern India are the biological progeny of India's oldest human inhabitants, their adopted languages are all of foreign origin. To Sergent, this is true of not only Austro-Asiatic and Indo-Aryan, but also of Dravidian.

The Himalayan branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, distinct from Tibetan, already has a very long but inconspicuous presence in northern India. Originating in China, this group of now very small languages once embraced parts of the northern plains. Of greater historical importance is the Austro-Asiatic family, which Sergent describes as once the predominant one in a continuous area from central India to Vietnam, but now reduced to a series of pockets in between the riverine population centres dominated by the immigrant Thai and Tibeto-Burmese languages (originating in China) and in India by the Indo-Aryan languages.

Sergent is merely following in others' footsteps when he assumes that mayura, "peacock", gaja, "elephant", karpasa, "cotton", and other Sanskrit fauna or flora terms are loans from Austro-Asiatic. (p.370) In most such cases, the only ground for this assumption is that similar-sounding words exist in the Munda languages of Chotanagpur, languages which have not been committed to writing before the 19th century. Chances are that in the intervening millennia, when these words were attested in Sanskrit but not necessarily in Munda, they were borrowed from Indo-Aryan ino Munda, or from an extinct language into both. At any rate, the hypothesis of an Austro-Asiatic origin should only be accepted in case the term is also attested in non-Indian branches such as Khmer.

The alleged loans only start appearing in the 10th and youngest book of the Rg-Veda and really break through in the Brahmanas. Sergent follows the classical interpretation, viz. that this shows how the Vedic Aryans gradually moved east, encountering the Austro-Asiatic speakers in the Ganga basin. While I am not convinced of the existence of more than a few Munda terms in Sanskrit (more in the adjoining Indo-Aryans Prakrits: Hindi, Bengali, Oriya), I would agree that there are other Munda influences, notably in mythology, as we shall discuss separately. Non-invasionists will have to account for this Munda contribution.

Here too, I suggest that chronology is all-important. It is quite possible that Munda had not arrived in India at the time of the Rg-Veda. When the Harappans migrated eastward (as demographically expansive populations do), or when the post-Harappans fled eastward from the disaster area which the Indus-Saraswati basin had become, the Munda-speaking people they encountered in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar may have been recent immigrants from the agricultural civilization of what is now Thailand and southwestern China. All the same, it remains possible that for local flora and fauna, the Indo-Aryans did adopt some Munda terminology.

Broadly, the Austro-Asiatic expansion can be compared with the gradual spread of the Old European Neolithic from Anatolia and the Balkans to the far corners of Europe, and with the spread of India's Northwestern Neolithic to the rest of the subcontinent. In that case, the Munda-speaking farmers in the eastern Ganga basin must have assimilated into the Indo-Aryan population, with only the peripheral populations in the hills retaining their imported languages. This Munda contribution is by no means incompatible with a native status of IE.

4.2. Is Dravidian native to India?

In one of his most innovative chapters, Sergent reviews all the evidence of Dravido-African and Dravido-Uralic kinship. In African languages spoken in the entire Sahel belt, from Sudan to Senegal, numerous semantic and grammatical elements are found which also exist in Dravidian. The similarity with the Uralic languages (Finnish, Hungarian, Samoyedic) is equally pronounced. Sergent offers the hypothesis that at the dawn of the Neolithic Revolution, some 10,000 years ago, the Dravidians left the Sudan, one band splitting off in Iran to head north to the Urals, the others entering India and moving south.

Within this scenario of a Dravidian immigration, it is tempting to speculate that upon entering India, the Dravidians first of all founded the Indus civilization. Surprisingly, Sergent rejects this otherwise popular hypothesis, on the impeccably rational ground that there is no evidence for it. Thus, except in coastal Sindh and Gujarat, geographical terms in the Indus-Saraswati area are never of Dravidian origin. There is also no continuity in material culture between Harappan culture and the oldest known Dravidian settlements.

True to scholarly norms, Sergent pleads for a provisional acceptance of our ignorance about the identity of the Harappans. However, as a concession to impatient readers who insist on having some theory at least, he gives one or two very slender indications that the Burushos (who preserve their Burushaski language till today in Hunza, Pak-Occupied Kashmir) may have played a role in it. (p.138) However, he finds no Burushaski lexical influence on Indo-Aryan except possibly the word sinda, "river", connected in one direction or the other with Sanskrit Sindhu, "river, Indus", not otherwise attested in IE. (Remark that the Iranian name Hindu for "Indus", hence also for "India", indicates that the Iranians have lived near the Indus. If they had not, then Sindhu would have been a foreign term which they would have left intact, just as they kept the Elamite city name Susa intact rather than evolving it to Huha or something like that; but because Sindhu was part of their own vocabulary, it followed the evolution of Iranian phonetics to become Hindu.)

Sergent is also skeptical of David MacAlpin's thesis of an "Elamo-Dravidian" language family: what isoglosses there are between Elamite and Dravidian can be explained sufficiently through contact rather than common origin.

Like many others, Sergent suggests that the early Dravidians can be equated with the "southern Neolithic" of 2500-1600 BC. Their round huts with wooden framework are the direct precursors of contemporary rural Dravidian housing. Two types of Hindu vessel have been discovered in southern Neolithic sites, including a beaked copper recipient still used in Vedic fire ceremonies. (p.48, with reference to Bridget and Raymond Allchin and to Dharma Pal Agrawal) Though the prehistory of the southern Neolithic is difficult to trace, it can be stated with confidence that the best candidate is the Northwestern Neolithic, which started in Mehrgarh in the 8th millennium BC. It is, by contrast, very unlikely that it originated as an outpost of the Southeast-Asian Neolithic, which expanded into India at a rather late date, bringing the Austro-Asiatic languages. According to Sergent, a link with the mature Harappan civilization is equally unlikely: neither in material culture nor in physical type is such a link indicated by the evidence. The Dravidians were certainly already in the Deccan when the mature Harappan civilization started. Sergent suggests that the Dravidians formed a pre-Harappan population in Sindh and Gujarat, and that they were overwhelmed and assimilated, not by the invading Aryans, but by the mature-Harappan population. (p.52)

The picture which emerges is that of a multi-lingual Indus-Saraswati civilization with Dravidian as the minor partner (possibly preserved or at least leaving its mark in the southern metropolis of Mohenjo Daro) who ended up getting assimilated by the major partner, a non-Dravidian population whom we may venture to identify as Indo-Iranian and ultimately Indo-Aryan.

4.3. Afro-Dravidian kinship

One of the most remarkable findings related in some detail by Bernard Sergent, on the basis of three independent studies (by Lilias Homburger, by Tidiane Ndiaye, and by U.P. Upadhyaya and Mrs. S.P. Upadhyaya) reaching similar conclusions, is the multifarious kinship of the Dravidian language family with African languages of the Sahel belt, from Somalia to Senegal (Peul, Wolof, Mandé, Dyola). As Sergent notes, all Melano-African languages have been credibly argued to be related, with the exception of the Khoi-San and Korama languages of southern Africa and the Afro-Asiatic family of northern Africa; so the kinship of Dravidian would be with that entire Melano-African superfamily, though it would be more conspicuous with some of its members.

Thus, between Dravidian and Bantu, we find the same verbal endings for the infinitive, the subjunctive, the perfect, the active participle or nomen agentis, related postpositions or nominal case endings, and many others. In over-all structure, Dravidian and the Melano-African languages (as distinct from North-African and Khoi-San languages) form a pair when compared with other language families: "The tendency to agglutination, the absence of grammatical gender, the absence of internal vowel change, the use of pre- or postpositions instead of flection are some of the main traits which set the Negro-African and Dravidian languages jointly apart from the Indo-European and Hamito-Semitic groups." (p.55) Here I would say that this doesn't prove much: the first trait is shared with some more, and the other ones are shared with most language families on earth; it is IE and Semito-Hamitic which stand out jointly by not having these traits.

That Hamito-Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) and IE stand jointly apart and may have a common origin in Mesopotamia, has been argued by B. Sergent himself (Les Indo-Européens, p.431-434). Critics such as the reviewer in Antaios 10, Brussels 1996, have suggested that with this position, he is playing a political game. This much is true, that by design or by accident, Sergent is pulling the leg of far-rightist adepts of IE studies who consider the reduction of IE to sisterhood with Semitic as sacrilege. All the same, his position is quite sound linguistically.

But between Melano-African and Dravidian, there are more specific similarities: "A simple system of five basic vowels with an opposition short/long, vocalic harmony, absence of consonant clusters in initial position, abundance of geminated consonants, distinction between inclusive and exclusive pronoun in the first person plural, absence of the comparative degree in adjectives, absence of adjectives and adverbs acting as distinct morphological categories, alternation of consonants or augmentation of nouns noted among the nouns of different classes, distinction between accomplished and unaccomplished action in the verbal paradigms as opposed to the distinction of time-specific tenses, separate sets of paradigms for the affirmative and negative forms of verbs, the use of reduplicated forms for the emphatic mode, etc." (Genèse de l'Inde, p.55)

Sergent himself adds more isoglosses: "Preference for open syllables (i.e. those ending in vowels), the rejection of clusters of non-identical consonants, the generally initial position of the word accent in Dravidian and in the languages of Senegal". (p.56) The similarity in the demonstrative affixes is among the most striking: proximity is indicated by [i], initial in Dravidian but terminal in Wolof; distance by [a], intermediate distance by [u].

Knowing little of Dravidian and nothing at all of African languages, I don't feel qualified to discuss this evidence. However, I do note that we have several separate studies by unrelated researchers, using different samples of languages in their observations, and that each of them lists large numbers of similarities, not just in vocabulary, but also in linguistic structure, even in its most intimate features. Thus, "the preposed demonstratives of Dravidian allow us to comprehend the genesis of the nominal classes, the fundamental trait of the Negro-African languages". (p.53)

To quite an extent, this evidence suggests that Dravidian and some of the African languages (the case has been made in most detail for the Senegalo-Guinean languages such as Wolof) have a common origin. At the distance involved, it is unlikely that the isoglosses noted are the effects of borrowing. Either way, Proto-Dravidian must have been geographically close to the ancestor-language of the Negro-African languages. Did it come from Africa, as Sergent concludes? Should we think of a lost Saharan culture which disappeared before the conquests of the desert? Note that earlier outspoken fans of Dravidian culture (e.g. Father H. Heras: Studies in Proto-Indo-Meditarranean Culture, 1953, and Alain Daniélou: Histoire de l'Inde, 1983) didn't mind describing the Dravidians as immigrants: unlike the Aryans, they were bringers rather than destroyers of civilization, but they were immigrants nonetheless. Or should we follow Tamil chauvinists in assuming that the Dravidians came from Tamil Nadu and the now-submerged lands to its south, and took their language and civilization to Africa?

4.4. Additional indications for Afro-Dravidian

Bernard Sergent argues against the Indian origin of Dravidian. One element to consider is that the members of the Dravidian family have not diverged very much from one another. The relative closeness of its members suggests that they started growing apart only fairly recently: a thousand years for Tamil and Malayalam (well-attested), perhaps three thousand for the divergence of North- from South-Dravidian. This would indicate that Dravidian was still a single language covering a small area in the early Harappan period, after having entered the country from the West.

That the "genealogical tree" of the Dravidian family seems to have its trunk in the coastal West of India, i.e. to the northwest of the main Dravidian area, has long been recognized by scholars of Dravidian. A map showing this "tree" is given in G. John Samuel, ed.: Encyclopedia of Tamil Literature, Institute of Asian Studies, Madras 1990, p.45, with reference to Kamil Zvelebil, who locates the Proto-Dravidians in Iran as late as 3500 BC. It also fits in with the old Brahminical nomenclature, which includes Gujarat and Maharashtra in the Pancha-Dravida, the "five Dravida areas of Brahminical settlement" (as contrasted with Pancha-Gauda, the five North-Indian ones). The northwestern coast was the first part of India to be dravidianized, the wellspring of Dravidian migration to the south, but also an area were Dravidian was gradually displaced by Indo-Aryan though not without influencing it.

Another indication for the Dravidian presence in Gujarat is the attestation in Gujarati Jain texts of inter-cousin marriage, typically South-Indian and quite non-Indo-European. (p.51) The IE norm was very strict in prohibiting even distant forms of incest, a norm adopted by both Hinduism and Christianity. Linguists had already pointed out, and Sergent confirms, that Dravidian has left its mark on the Sindhi, Gujarati and Marathi languages (as with the distinction between inclusive and exclusive first person plural) and toponymy. So, it is fairly well-established that Dravidian culture had a presence in Gujarat while spreading to South India.

It is possible that Gujarat was a waystation in a longer Dravidian migration from further west. Whether the itinerary of Dravidian can ultimately be traced to Sudan or thereabouts, remains to be confirmed, but Sergent already has some interesting data to offer in support. Africans and Dravidians had common types of round hut, common music instruments, common forms of snake worship and tree worship. A South-Indian board game pallankuli closely resembles the African game mancalal; varieties of the game are attested in Pharaonic Egypt and in a pre-Christian monastery in Sri Lanka. (p.59)

A point which I do not find entirely convincing is the distinction, based on Mircea Eliade's research, between two types of Shamanism, one best known from Siberia and in evidence among all people originating in North and East Asia including the Native Americans and the Indian Munda-speaking tribes, another best known from Africa but also attested among some South-Indian tribes. (p.62) This is a distinction between Shamanism properly speaking, in which the Shaman makes spirit journeys, despatches one of his multiple souls to the spirit world to help the soul of a sick person, etc.; and the religion of ghost-possession, in which the sorcerer allows the ghost to take him over but at the same time makes him obey. The latter is perhaps best known to outsiders through the Afro-Caribbean Voodoo religion, but is also in evidence among South-Indian tribals such as the Saora and the Pramalai Kallar.

If anthropologists have observed these two distinct types, I will not disbelieve them. It does not follow that there must be a link between Africa and South India: Sergent himself notes that the same religion of ghost-possession is attested among the Australian aboriginals, who may be related with the Veddoid substratum in India's population. (p.62) On the other hand, this theme of ghost-possession is but one of Sergent's numerous linguistic and anthropological data which all point in the same direction of Afro-Dravidian kinship.

4.5. Uralic-Dravidian kinship

If Dravidian migrated from Africa to India through the Middle East, it could have left traces in Egypt and countries under Egyptian influence as well, explaining the data which led earlier researchers to the thesis of a Dravidian "Indo-Mediterranean" culture, most influentially Father H. Heras: Studies in Proto-Indo-Mediterranean Culture, 1953. Sergent links Indian forms of phallus worship with Sahel-African, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Mediterranean varieties of the same. The Egyptian uraeus ("cobra"), the snake symbol on the pharaonic regalia, has been linked in detail with Dravidian forms of snake worship, including the priest's possession by the snake's spirit. Dravidian cremation rituals for dead snakes recall the ceremonial burial of snakes in parts of Africa. Others have added the similarity between the Dravidian nâga-kal (Tamil: "snake-stone", a rectangular stone featuring two snakes facing one another, their bodies intertwined) and the intertwined snakes in the caduceus, the Greek symbol of science and medicine.

It has consequently been suggested that some Dravidian words may also have penetrated into the European languages. Thus, Dravidian kal, "stone", resembles Latin calculus, "pebble", and Dravidian malai, "mountain", resembles an Albanian and Rumanian word mal, "rock, rocky riverside". (Sorin Paliga: "Proto-Indo-European, Pre-Indo-European, Old European", Journal of Indo-European Studies, fall 1989, p.309-334) But this hypothesis is a long shot and we need not pursue it here.

Far more substantial is the Dravidian impact on another language family far removed from the present Dravidian speech area, viz. Uralic. The influence pertains to a very sizable vocabulary, including core terms for hand, fire, house (Finnish kota, Tamil kudi), talk, cold, bathe, die, water, pure, see, knock, be mistaken, exit, fear, bright, behind, turn, sick, dirty, ant, strong, little, seed, cut, wait, fish (Hungarian men, Tamil min) tongue, laugh, moist, break, chest, tree; some pronouns, several numerals and dozens of terms for body parts. (p.66-67) But it goes deeper than that. Thus, both language families exclude voiced and aspirated consonants and all consonant clusters at the beginning of words. They have in common several suffixes, expressions and the phonological principle of vocalic harmony.

As the Dravidian influence, like that of IE, is more pronounced in the Finno-Ugric than in the Samoyedic branch, we may surmise that the contact took place after the separation of the Samoyedic branch. But the main question here is how Dravidian could have influenced Uralic given their actual distance. Sergent suggests that a lost branch of Dravidians on the way from Africa strayed into Central Asia and got assimilated but not without influencing their adopted language.

On the other hand, he rejects the theory that Dravidian forms one family along with Uralic, Turkic, Mongolian and Tunguz. The latter three are often grouped as "Altaic", a partly genetic and partly areal group which may also include Korean and Japanese, and all the said languages including Japanese have at one time or another been claimed as relatives of Dravidian, with which they do present some isoglosses. However, the isoglosses are fragmentary and mostly different ones for every language group concerned. Moreover, some Dravidian influences are also discernible in Tocharian, or Arshi-Kuchi (Tocharian A c.q. Tocharian B) as Sergent appropriately calls it, which is obviously a matter of influence through contact. So Sergent concludes that this is a matter of areal influence rather than genetic kinship: Dravidian was a foreign language entering Central Asia at some point in time to briefly exert an influence on the local languages before disappearing. (p.71-76) This goes against a fairly popular theory locating Dravidian origins in Central Asia whence a Dravidian immigration preceded the Aryans one.

I am not sure this will convince everyone: if Dravidian is not genetically linked with all the said language groups, it might still be so with one of them, viz. Uralic, at least on the strength of the data Sergent offers. Tamil chauvinists may well be tempted to complete the picture by claiming that before the Indo-Europeans from India colonized Central Asia and Europe, it was the turn of the Dravidians to colonize Central Asia and, after mixing genetically and linguistically with the natives, to develop the Uralic languages. At a time when subtropical Neolithic cultures had a tremendous technological and demographical edge over the hunter-gatherers in the inhospitable northern countries, it would not even be so far-fetched to imagine that a small wayward group of Dravidians could enter the vast expanse of Central Asia and completely change the linguistic landscape there.

At any rate, Sergent's observations represent a clean break with earlier theories which had the Dravidians originate in the Uralic speech area and preceding the Indo-Aryans in an invasion of India from Central Asia.

4.5. Geographical distribution of IE languages

Since Bernard Sergent doesn't take the Indocentric case for IE seriously, he doesn't bring out all the linguistic data which to him support the Kurgan scenario. One classical argument from linguistics is nonetheless developed at some length: "In Europe one finds the most numerous and geographically most concentrated IE language groups. Such a situation is not unique, and invariably denotes the direction of history: the Indo-Iranian languages represent a branch extended to the east and south, starting from Europe and not the other way around. It is obviously not the IE languages of Europe which have come from India". (p.29-30)

This early in his book (p.30 of 584 pp.), he is already so sure that "obviously" the central question of the Urheimat has been decided to the disadvantage of India. That is a great pity, for it is the reason why he has not applied himself to really developing the argument against the Indian Urheimat. If anyone is capable of proving the AIT, it must be Sergent. Yet, because he assumes no proof is necessary, he gives the question much less attention than

e.g. the much less contentious (though more original) question of the geographical origins ofDravidian.

To be sure, the pattern of language distribution invoked by Sergent as "not unique", is indeed well-attested, e.g. in sub-Saharan West Africa, there are about 15 language families, while in the much larger region of sub-equatorial Africa, a very large majority of the people speaks languages belonging to only one family, Bantu. Though it is only a branch of a subfamily of the Niger-Kordofanian language family, Bantu easily outnumbers all the other branches of this family combined: "Africanists conclude that Bantu originated in a small area, on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon." (p.30)

But in fact, India is in this respect more akin to West Africa, and Europe more to subequatorial Africa. India has more language families: Nahali, Andamanese, Burushaski, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic (Munda and Mon-Khmer), Sino-Tibetan (Himalayan, Tibetic and Burmese) and IE (Iranian, Kafir, Dardic, Indo-Aryan, and possibly proto-Bangani). Europe is almost entirely IE-speaking, with Basque serving as the European counterpart to the Khoi-San languages in subequatorial Africa, a left-over of the original linguistic landscape largely replaced with the conquering newcomer, IE c.q. Bantu; and Uralic (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian) a fellow if perhaps slightly later intruder in the European landscape, vaguely comparable to the intrusion of an Austronesian language in a part (viz. Madagascar) of southern Africa.

Therefore, I reject the argument from the geographical distribution. If the spread of the IE languages to Europe was often a matter of assimilating divergent native populations, this process promoted the speedy diverging of the IE dialects into distinct language groups. Though this is not a conclusive argument against the possibility of IE settlement in Indian being younger than in Europe, it at least terminates the impression that there was a compelling case in favour of that possibility. So, even under Bernard Sergent's hands, the fabled "linguistic evidence" has failed to decide the IE Urheimat question once and for all.

5. The evidence from comparative religion

5.1. Aryan contributions to indigenous culture

Unlike most invasionists, who minimize the IE contribution by seeing "pre-Aryan" origins behind every (post-Harappan) Hindu cultural item, Sergent admits the IE origin of numerous elements of Hinduism usually classified as remnants of earlier populations. This is one of the most elaborate and original sections in his book.

In invasionist sources, and more so in politicized writings against the "Aryan invader religion" Hinduism, it is claimed that the two most popular gods, Vishnu and Shiva, are (the former partly, the latter wholly) sanskritized pre-Aryan indigenous gods. Sergent argues that they are in fact neat counterparts of IE gods attested in distant parts of the IE language domain, Vishnu corresponding to the Germanic god Vidar, Shiva to the Greek and Thracian and Phrygian god Dionysos and to an extent also to the Celtic god Dagda. (p.310, p.402) He notices the puzzling fact that the classical Shiva is unattested in the Vedas (though Shiva's persona includes some elements from Indra, Rudra and Agni who are not counterparts of Dionysos); so he suggests that the Shiva tradition, definitely part of the common IE heritage, was passed on through a Vratya or non-Vedic Indo-Aryan circle. (p.323-324) This is an important acknowledgment of the fact that the Vedic tradition is only one tradition in the Indo-Aryan religious landscape, a key element in Shrikant Talageri's reconstruction of ancient Indian history (The Aryan Invasion Theory, a Reappraisal, Ch.14): just as Sanskrit is not the mother of all Indo-Aryan languages (rather an aunt), the Vedas are not the wellspring of the whole of Hindu tradition.

Sergent goes into great detail in showing how the IE trifunctionality model does apply throughout the Vedic and Puranic worldview, in fact far more splendidly than in any other IE culture. (p.252-278) Thus, the first function is juridical-religious and corresponds with sattva, the transparent and truthful quality in the Hindu triguna or three-qualities model; the second function is martial-political and corresponds with rajas, the passionate and energetic quality; the third function is production and consumption, corresponding with tamas, the quality of materiality and ignorance. This threesome also corresponds with the trivarga ("three categories") model, where dharma or religious duty is sattvik, artha or striving for worldly success is rajasik, kama or sensuous enjoyment is tamasik, though there is a fourth (nirguna, "quality-less") dimension, viz. moksha, liberation. Likewise for the three states of consciousness: dreaming, waking, sleeping, surpassed by "fourth state", turiya, the yogic state. This scheme can then be applied to the Hindu pantheon, e.g. Brahma the creator is rajasik, Vishnu the maintainer is sattvik, Shiva the dissolver is tamasik; or the white mountain goddess Parvati is sattvik, the tiger goddess Durga rajasik, the black devouring goddess Kali tamasik.

Many more IE elements in Hinduism could be cited to the same effect, such as the numerous correspondences in epic motifs between Hindu and European sagas, which Sergent discusses at length. But the interesting ones for our purpose are those which already existed in the Harappan civilization.

5.2. The linga

Dr. Sergent goes quite far in indo-europeanizing the alleged aboriginal contribution to Hinduism. He even asserts that "the linga (or Shiva's phallus) cult is of IE origin". (p.139) An important detail is that Aryan linga worshippers venerated the linga by itself, not in the linga-yoni combination common in Hindu shrines, for "the yoni cult is without IE parallel". (p.139) Sergent makes a distinction between the sculpted stone phallus and the unsculpted variety. The first type is attested in the Harappan area and period, as well as in Africa and the Mediterranean, while the second type is common in historical and contemporary Hinduism. However, on linga worship in the Harappan cities, we find conflicting presentations of the facts, with Sergent assuming that the same Mediterranean-type phallus worship flourished, while no less a scholar than Asko Parpola claims the exact opposite. Parpola (Deciphering the Indus Script, p.221) contrasts the "earliest historical (1st-2nd century BC) lingas", which are "realistic", with the "abstract form of the Harappan conical stones". If Parpola is right, the Harappan linga cult was more akin to the classical Hindu form than to Mediterranean phallus worship. However, the crucial point of comparison in this case is not Harappa but the Indian tribals.

Votaries of the Indo-Mediterranean school claim that the cult of phallus-shaped stones is unknown among the indigenous (though in many cases historically dravidianized) tribal populations of India, implying that the Dravidian immigrants brought it from abroad, first to the Indus Valley, next to the whole of India. The same claim, that the untainted tribals are unattracted to the urban Hindu depravity of phallus-worship, has often been made by Christian missionaries as an argument in support of their doctrine that "tribals are not Hindus". But is this true?

First of all, many Indian tribals do practise linga worship. Pupul Jayakar (The Earth Mother, Penguin 1989/1980, p.30) situates both Shiva and the linga within the culture of a number of tribes, e.g. the Gonds: "There are, in the archaic Gond legend of Lingo Pen, intimations of an age when Mahadeva or Shiva, the wild and wondrous god of the autochthons, had no human form but was a rounded stone, a lingam, washed by the waters of the river Narmada. Even to this day there are areas of the Narmada river basin where every stone in the waters is said to be a Shiva lingam: '(...) What was Mahadev doing? He was swimming like a rolling stone, he had no hands, no feet. He remained like the trunk (of a tree).' [Then, Bhagwan makes him come out of the water and grants him a human shape.]" Till today, Shiva or a corresponding tribal god is often venerated in the shape of such natural-born, unsculpted, longish but otherwise shapeless stones.

At the same time, female yoni symbols are common enough among Indian tribals, esp. inverted triangles, the origin of the Hindu plural-triangle symbols called yantra, venerated in such seats of orthodoxy as the Shankaracharya Math in Kanchipuram, where celibacy is the rule and thoughts of fertility unwelcome. In a palaeolithic site in the Siddhi district of Madhya Pradesh (10th or 9th millennium BC), a Mother Goddess shrine has been found containing well-known Hindu symbols: squares, circles, swastikas and most of all, triangles. (Pupul Jayakar: The Earth Mother, p.20-22) A participant in an excavation in Bastar (Jan Van Alphen, of the Etnografisch Museum, Antwerp) told me of how a painted triangular stone was dug up, and the guide, a Gond tribal, at once started doing puja before this ancient idol. Such is the continuity of indigenous Indian religion across eleven thousand years.

However, these two-dimensional triangles constitute a different symbolism from the three-dimensional ring-shaped or oval-shaped sculpted yoni symbols used in the linga-yoni combination. Sergent sees these sculpted yoni symbols as part of the Dravidian tradition with African links, while the triangles, like the unsculpted linga stones, might be older in India than even the Dravidian invasion as imagined by Sergent.

Quite separate from these abstract triangles and unsculpted stones, explicit sexual imagery is also common among the "untainted" tribals: "When the Bhils, primitive people of western India, paint their sacred pithoras, they include in an obscure corner a copulating man and woman. When asked to explain, they say, 'without this, where would the world be?'" (Pupul Jayakar: The Earth Mother, p.36) When they want to express the fertility process, they do so quite explicitly, and they don't have to make do with a shapeless stone. Conversely, when they do choose to use a shapeless stone, it must be for a different purpose. Therefore, it is logical that the tribal linga cannot be equated with the sexually explicit sculptures of the ancient Mediterranean cultures.

Like the tribals, Vedic Hindus worship unsculpted lingas without explicit sexual connotation. Most Hindus will reject the Western interpretation of their idol as a phallic symbol, and the quoted details of tribal linga worship tend to prove their point, as would the abstract uses of the term linga ("sign", "proof", one of the terms in a syllogism, and symbol of the nirguna/undefined primeval reality; for a serious discussion of the profound meanings of linga worship, see Swami Karpatri & Alain Daniélou: Le mystère du culte du linga, Ed. du Relié, Robion 1993). The pebbles picked up from the Narmada river are hardly phallus-shaped, in contrast to the phallic pillars in the Mediterranean.

When Hindus object to the purely sexual reading of their symbols by Western authors, the latter, irritated with the "refusal of prudish Indian hypocrites to face facts", retort that "after all, anyone can see that this is explicit sexual imagery". Or for a more academic variation: "The Brahmans succeeded in concealing the alcoholic and sexual-orgiastic character of the adoration of the phallus (lingam or linga) and transformed it into a pure ritualistic temple cult", according to Max Weber: The Religion of India, Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi 1992 (ca. 1910), p.298.

Clearly, both conflicting interpretations have their validity, and linga worship in India is probably a syncretic phenomenon. If "phallus worship" was scorned in the Rg Veda (in the much-discussed verses where the enemies are abused as shishna-devâh, "those who have the phallus for god", Rg-Veda 7:21:5 and 10:99:3.), we do not perforce have to deny, as most anti-AIT authors do, that this concerned non-Aryan people who worshipped phallic stones. There were non-Aryans in many parts of India, though these phallus worshippers may equally have been Indo-Aryan-speaking cultists. We have at any rate a testimony for an ancient religious dispute. A clue has perhaps been given in Sergent's information that the lone linga ("objects which are interpreted as phalli", p.139; emphasis added) has been found in the northern half of the Indus-Saraswati civilization, the yoni-linga couple with ring-shaped yoni stones in its arguably Dravidian south.

Anyway, the point for now is that the alleged tribal and Vedic Aryan forms of linga worship are very similar. If this linga worship was IE, as Sergent claims, and if it is an age-old Indian tribal tradition at the same time, may I suggest that the Indo-Europeans discovered or developed it in India itself? Could this be an instance of what should at present be the Holy Grail of non-invasionist researchers, viz. a case of decided continuity between native tribal and IE cultures, distinguishing both together from imported cultures such as that of the Dravidians?

5.3. Harappan and Vedic fire cult

Most invasionist accounts of Hindu history acknowledge that classical Hinduism has included elements from the "Indus civilization". Thus, the unique water-supply system in the Indus-Saraswati system and the public baths so visibly similar to the bathing kunds still existing in numerous Indian cities have been interpreted as early witnesses to the Hindu "obsession" with purity. Though open to correction on details, this approach is not controversial. However, it runs into difficulties when items are discovered which are not typical for the Indian IE-speaking culture alone, but for the whole or larger parts of the IE-speaking family of cultures: how could these have been present in Harappa when the IE contribution was only brought in during or after Harappa's downfall by the Aryan invaders?

The bathing culture which the Harappans shared with the later Hindus is often cited as a pre-IE remnant which crept into Hinduism. However, this is also attested (with local differences, of course) among such IE tribes as the Romans and the Germanic people, and may therefore be part of the common IE heritage. Of course, a general concern about cleanliness is not a very specific and compelling type of evidence. More decisive would be a case like the famous Harappan seal depicting the so-called Pashupati (Shiva as Lord of Beasts), long considered proof that the Shiva cult is indigenous and non-Aryan. It is found to have a neat counterpart, to the detail, in the horned god Cernunnos surrounded by animals (largely similar ones and in the same order as on the Pashupati seal) on the Celtic Gundestrup cauldron made in central Europe sometime in the last centuries BC. So, this Harappan motif may well be part of the common IE heritage.

For another very general trait, the absence of distinct temple buildings in the Harappan cities constitutes a defect in the AIT postulate of a Vedic-Harappan cultural opposition. The fact that no temples are attested is a common trait of Harappa, of some ancient IE cultures (Vedic, Celtic, Germanic), and of that other acclaimed centre of Aryanism, the South Russian Kurgan culture, where "no real sanctuaries have ever been found; they probably had open sanctuaries" (M. Gimbutas: "Proto-Indo-European Culture: The Kurgan Culture during the Fifth, Fourth and Third Millennia BC", in George Cardona et al., eds.: Indo-European and Indo-Europeans, p.191). It contrasts with Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures and with the bhakti cult in later Hinduism, which venerates the deity as if it were a human person and consequently gives the deity a house to live in: a temple. Harappans, Vedic Aryans, many ancient IE-speaking Europeans and contemporary Indian tribals have this in common: they worship without temple buildings.

For a more specific example: fire plays a central role in most historically attested IE religions, most emphatically in the Indo-Iranian branches. A fire-cult was present in the Indus-Saraswati civilization, and it resembled the practices of the Vedic people. The presence of Vedic fire-altars in several Harappan cities (Lothal, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi) has been noticed by a number of authors, but is somehow always explained away or ignored. Parpola ("The coming of the Aryans to Iran and India and the cultural and ethnic identity of the Dasas", Studia Orientalia, Helsinki 1988, p.238) admits as "quite plausible" the suggestion (made to him by Raymond and Bridget Allchin) that they form an Indo-Aryan element within Harappan civilization, but he explains them as imported by "carriers of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran, who had become quickly absorbed into the Indus Civilization, culturally and linguistically".

Likewise, Sergent admits that "the Indian Vedic fire altar seemed to have borrowed its construction principles from the Indus civilization", all while "the very idea of the fire cult was Indo-Iranian". (p.161) This falls neatly into place if we equate proto-Harappan with Indo-Iranian: the idea of a fire cult was taken along by the emigrating Iranians, while the Indo-Aryans stayed on in the Indus-Saraswati region to develop their altars' distinct Indian style of construction.

At any rate, how deeply had these Aryan fire-worshippers not penetrated the Harappan civilization, that they had installed their altars in patrician mansions of three of the largest Harappan cities, all three moreover very far from the northwestern border? If they were imported from outside, it rather seems they came from the east, which would bring us back to Shrikant Talageri's thesis that IE originated in the Ganga basin and entered the Harappan area from there. Leaving aside this question of ultimate origins, the very fact of the Vedic fire-altars in the Indus-Saraswati culture is a serious problem for the AIT.

5.4. More on Harappan vs. Vedic

The stellar cult is common to the Harappan and Vedic religions. This is explained by Asko Parpola as the effect of borrowing: the barbarian invaders adopting the religion of the empire they just conquered, somewhat like the Heathen Germanic tribes did when they conquered the Christian Roman empire. In fact, the whole of Vedic and core-Puranic literature has been explained as essentially translations of non-Aryan Harappan traditions.

A similar explanation is given for the "soma filter", often depicted on Harappan seals, and of which an ivory specimen has been discovered by J.M. Kenoyer's team. Iravathan Mahadevan (interviewed by Omar Khan, Chennai, 17-1-1998, on http://www.harappa.com/script/mahadevantext.html) proposes that "the mysterious cult object that you find before the unicorn on the unicorn seals is a filter. (...) Since we know that the unicorn seals were the most popular ones, and every unicorn has this cult object before it, whatever it represents must be part of the central religious ritual of the Harappan religion. We know of one religion whose central religious cult [object] was a filter, that is the soma [cult] of the Indo-Aryans." If this is not an argument for the identity of Vedic and Harappan, I don't know what is. Yet, Mahadevan dismisses this conclusion citing the well-known argument that the Vedas know of no cities while Harappa had no horses, so "the only other possibility is that a soma-like cult (...) must have existed in Harappa and that it was taken over by the Indo-Iranians and incoming Indo-Aryans." This is a case of multilying entities without necessity.

Speaking of the unicorn: Prof. R.S. Sharma ("The Indus and the Saraswati", interview published on http://www2.cybercities.com/a/akhbar/godown/history/RSSIndus.htm) defends the AIT pointing out that the unicorn/ekashrnga is popular on Indus seals and in late- or post-Vedic literature but is not mentioned at all in the Rg-Veda. Within the AIT, this would be an anomaly: first the Harappans had unicorn symbolism, then the Vedic-Aryan invaders didn't have it, and finally the later Aryans again had it. The implied and slightly contrived explanation is that native unicorn symbolism went underground after the Aryan invasion, but reasserted itself later. But this pro-AIT argument is circular in the sense that it is dependent on the AIT-based chronology, viz. of the Rg-Veda as post-Harappan. Its force is dissolved (along with the anomaly) if the possibility is considered that the Rg-Veda was pre-Harappan, with the Unicorn an early Harappan innovation attested in both the the archaeological and the late-Vedic literary record.

Asko Parpola (in G. Erdosy: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.370) has developed the theory that there is at least one clearly identifiable Hindu deity whose trail of importation from abroad we can follow. In the Bactrian Bronze Age culture, deemed Indo-Iranian if not specifically Indo-Aryan, ample testimony is available of the cult of a lion goddess, known in Hinduism as Durga, "the fortress", and who is "worshipped in eastern India as Tripura, a name which connects her with the strongholds of the Dasas". Politicized Indian invasionists usually claim goddess worship as a redeeming native, non-Aryan, "matriarchal" and "humanist" contribution to the "patriarchal" and "oppressive" Hindu religion, but now it turns out to have been brought along by the Bactrian invaders: how one invasionist can upset another invasionist's applecart.

However, Parpola himself reports elsewhere ("The coming of the Aryans to Iran and India and the cultural and ethnic identity of the Dasas", Studia Orientalia, Helsinki 1988, p.238) that the same lion or tiger goddess was worshipped in the Indus-Saraswati civilization as well.

Discussing "carriers of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran" as having been "quickly absorbed into the Indus civilization", he finds support in "the famous Kalibangan seal showing a Durga-like goddess of war, who is associated with the tiger". For now we retain Parpola's confirmation of a common religious motif in a Harappan city and an Aryan culture (on top of the indications mentioned above of a soma cult in both the Harappan cities and the Bactria-Margiana Bronze Age culture); but whether this shows an early Bactrian penetration of India as far as the Saraswati riverside remains to be seen. The hypothesis that both Harappa and Bactria were Aryan, is less contorted.

Just like those few colleagues who have paid attention to the elements of continuity between Harappa and Aryan India, Sergent fails to discuss the most plausible conclusion that could be drawn from all this material: that Harappan and post-Harappan or Aryan are phases of a single civilization.

5.5. The impact of East-Asian mythology

Indo-European mythology, or some of its branches, has certain motifs and stories in common with mythologies of non-IE cultures. Some of these are a common heritage dating back to long before a separate IE linguistic and cultural identity existed.

Conversely, some myths can be shown to have been transmitted in a fairly recent time,

e.g. the Excalibur myth known to most readers through the King Arthur saga has an exactparallel in a North-Iranian myth, with the sword being drawn from the stone (a poetic reference to the mystery of metallurgy, transforming shapeless ore into metal implements), making its bearer invincible, and finally getting thrown into a lake. This is not because of a common IE heritage of the Celtic and Iranian communities, but because in the 2nd century AD, Sarmatian mercenaries in the Roman army were garrisoned in Britain and, well, told their story. (Shan

M.M. Winn: Heaven, Heroes and Happiness. The Indo-European Roots of Western Ideology, p.34-35) Through Mongolia and Korea, elements of this myth have even reached Japan when the supremacy of the sword was established there. So, myths are not necessarily witnesses from the night of time; their invention and transmission can sometimes be dated.

In the case of the transmission of East-Asian myths into Hindu tradition, by medium of the Munda-speaking culture of the eastern Ganga basin, the apparent date might pose a problem. Some contributions are fairly late: "The puja, that extremely common and important practice of covering the gods' idols with flowers and perfumes, is rather late in India, and succeeds wholly different practices: could that also be an East-Asian substratum?" (p.483, n.639, with reference to Louis de la Vallée Poussin: "Totémisme et végétalisme", 1929, who emphasizes the similarity with devotional practices among the Kol tribe and among the Semang, a tribe in Malaysia. The more usual explanation is that puja came from the Dravidian south.) On the other hand, Sergent mentions several apparently East-Asian contributions to Vedic and Puranic lore which point to the ultimate beginning of those traditions themselves.

The name of Ikshvaku, founder of the Solar Dynasty of Ayodhya, whom the Puranic genealogies place several dozen generations before the Rg-Vedic seers, literally means "bitter gourd". Likewise, Sumati, wife of the early Ayodhya king Sagara, is said to produce offspring with the aid of a bitter gourd. Sergent attributes this to the Southeast-Asian mythic motif of the birth of humanity from a bitter gourd: "The Austro-Asiatic myth has visibly been transposed in the legends of Sumati and Ikshvaku". (p.386)

The birth of Vyasa's mother Satyavati from a fish equally refers to a Southeast-Asian myth, unknown in the IE world. The Brahmanas have a story of Brahma or Prajapati, the Creator, taking the form of a boar and diving to the bottom of the ocean to extract the earth and bring it to the surface (p.372, citing Taittiriya Brahmana 7:1:5:1-2 and Shatapatha Brahmana 14:1:2:11). This myth of the "cosmogonic plunge" is widespread in Siberia, among the native Americans, and among some Southeast-Asian peoples, but is foreign to the IE mythologies and to the Vedic Samhitas. The same is true of another innovative mythic motif appearing in the Brahmanas: Brahmanda, the cosmic egg which, when broken, releases all creatures.

Sergent explains that the Rg-Veda could not yet know these myths, just as it had not yet adopted items of Munda vocabulary, because its horizon was still confined to the northwest (note that Ikshvaku is first mentioned in the youngest part of the Rg-Veda: 10:60:4). But once the Vedic Aryans settled in the Ganga basin, they started assimilating the mythic lore of the Munda people, also immigrants, but who had settled there earlier. So, this seems to confirm the classic picture of the Aryans moving through North India from east to west.

However, even the non-invasionist school accepts that the Vedic tradition spread eastwards during and after the Harappan period, just as it spread to South India in subsequent centuries; but it maintains that the Ganga down to Kashi or so, already had an Indo-Aryan (but non-Vedic) population. This population was obviously exposed to influences from its eastern neighbours, immigrants from Southeast Asia. And their non-Vedic, partly borrowed traditions were incorporated in later Vedic and especially in Puranic literature. By contrast, the IE-speaking people living to the west of the Vedic Puru tribe, those who migrated to the west and formed the other branches of IE, were not exposed to this Austro-Asiatic lore, which is why their mythologies have not adopted elements from Southeast-Asian myths, just as their languages have not borrowed from Munda (or if they have, those words or those mythic motifs would be pan-IE and consequently not recognizable as borrowed).

If Ikshvaku, one of flood survivor Manu Vaivasvata's immediate successors, was indeed a historical figure, and if his name really refers to an Austro-Asiatic myth, then that would prove either that Manu and his crew had come from the southeast (but then why hasn't the bitter gourd myth become a pan-IE myth?), or that the Mundas were already in the Ganga basin at the beginning of IE history as narrated in the Puranic genealogies (6776 BC?). In that case, shouldn't non-invasionists be able to find more points of contact between IE and Munda, linguistically too?

A parallel argument could be made from the commonly assumed etymology of Ganga, a name already appearing in the oldest part of the Rg-Veda (6:45:31), viz. as an Austro-Asiatic loan cognate to Chinese kiang/jiang, "river". This would mean that the Munda presence in the (western!) Ganga basin well precedes the beginning of the Vedic period, and that they were either the first or the dominant group, so that they could impose their nomenclature. However, Zhang Hongming: "Chinese etyma for river", Journal of Chinese Linguistics, January 1998, p.1-43, has refuted the derivation of Chinese kiang from Austro-Asiatic, arguing among other things that the reconstructed Austro-Asiatic form is *krong, still preserved in the Mon-Khmer languages. This makes the Munda origin of Ganga less likely. A third language family may be involved, or an obscure IE etymon. How about kinship with Middle Dutch konk-el, "twist, turn, whirlpool"? Or simply a Vedic reduplication, nasalized for onomatopoeic effect, of the root ga-, "go", meaning "the fast-flowing"?

How exactly should we imagine the beginning of IE history in India, in what cultural and linguistic environment? For example, one could imagine that the Aryans overran the Indus basin, then Afghanistan and beyond, because they had been pushed to the west by invading Mundas from the east. If the idea of the fierce Aryans being put to flight by the fun-loving Mundas seems strange, remember that the invasion of the Roman Empire by the fierce Germanic tribes was partly caused by their being pushed westward by the Slavs. For another question: does this evidence of Munda contributions support the mainstream indological position that the entire Puranic history of the Vedic and pre-Vedic age in Ayodhya, Kashi or Prayag is but "reverse euhemerism", i.e. the transformation of myth into fabulated history, so that Ikshvaku and his clan never existed except as projections by aryanized Mundas of their gourd-god onto the ancestry of their conquerors? This is worth a discussion in its own right.

For now, I propose a hypothesis which takes care of all the data: there was a period of neighbourly coexistence of Indo-Aryans and Mundas in the Ganga basin, with a very limited exchange of cultural items (mythic motifs, vocabulary), which suddenly increased when the

Indo-Aryans started incorporating parts of the Munda territory and assimilating its inhabitants. This does not exclude that the Mundas entered India in the late-Vedic period; after all, even a pre-Munda population of the lower Ganga basin may have known some Southeast-Asian myths. But the main point is that North India was big enough to contain both Indoa-Aryans and Mundas, and that a Munda presence does not imply an Aryan invasion from outside India.

5.6. Some caveats to comparatists

Mythology is a large subject, and numerous myths are not well-known even to aficionados of the subject. This way, it sometimes happens that a Hindu myth gets classified as non-IE because it is not reported in any other IE mythology, only to show up in some far corner of the IE world upon closer scrutiny. Sergent provides one example.

Everyone knows the Hindu myth of the "churning of the ocean" with which the gods and demons jointly produce the amrta, the immortality drink. Sergent assures us that this myth "has no parallel in the IE world" (p.116), that it "is ignored by Vedic India and the IE world outside India" (p.378-379) but present in Mongolian mythology and in the Kojiki, a kind of Japanese Purana. Yet, he also informs us of a lesser-known Germanic myth in which the god Aegir churns the ocean to make the beer of the gods. (p.378-79, with reference to Georges Dumézil: Le Problème des Centaures, Paris 1929, p.51-60) But that one finding, even if it is in only one (but certainly distant) corner of the IE world, completely nullifies the earlier statement that the myth "has no parallel in the IE world". It is in fact possible that the Mongolian version (which is closer to the Germanic one, with a single deity doing the churning) and the Japanese version have been adapted from an IE original, just like the Excalibur myth.

Secondly, eastern contributions to Hindu tradition are not exclusively from the Mundas. The Rajasuya ceremony described in the Shatapatha Brahmana has an exact counterpart, not in Rome or Greece, nor in Chotanagpur or Japan, but in Fiji. The latter coronation ceremony has been analyzed into 19 distinct elements, and practically all of them are found in the Rajasuya. (p.381, with reference to Shatapatha Brahmana 5:3-5, and Arthur M. Hocart: Kingship, OUP 1927, p.76-83) This island culture is part of the vast expanse of the Austronesian language family. And indeed, a number of scholars have pointed out remarkable lexical similarities between IE and Austronesian. Unlike in the case of the Mundas, contacts of the Indo-Europeans with the Austronesians are hard to locate even in theory, unless we assume that the Austronesians at one time had a presence in India.

Finally, if a myth or religious custom is attested in India but not in the other IE cultures, this need not mean that the Indians have borrowed it from "pre-Aryan natives" or so. It can also mean that the other Indo-Europeans have lost what was originally a pan-IE heirloom. All of them have started by going through the same bottleneck, passing through Afghanistan, immediately plunging themselves into a very different climate from India's permanent summer, so that they had to adopt a very different lifestyle. And as they moved on, the difference only got bigger. Of practically all IE myths attested in some IE cultures, we know that they have been lost in other (generally in most) IE cultures; it is statistically to be expected that some myths have survived only in the Hindu tradition. And because of the full survival of Pagan religion in India plus the long centuries of literacy, it is in fact to be expected that a much higher percentage than the statistical average has only survived in India. So, probably, some myths attested only in Hinduism are purely IE, and if they are also attested in a non-IE neighbouring culture, the possibility remains that the latter has borrowed it from the Indo-Europeans rather than the reverse.

5.7. Harappa, teacher of China?

Quite separate from the importation of Southeast-Asian myths through the Austro-Asiatic population of the Ganga basin, Sergent also notes similarities between Harappan and Chinese civilizations unrelated to Munda lore. An important myth is that of the cosmogonic tortoise, the Chinese symbol of the universe; also the vehicle of Varuna, god of world order, and the form which, in the Shatapatha Brahmana, Prajapati takes to create the world. A tortoise-shaped construction forms part of the Yajur-Vedic fire altar, and the tortoise has also been depicted in a giant sculpture found in Harappa, indicating a similar myth. (p.116, with reference to John Marshall: Mohenjo Daro and the Indus civilization, London 1931) The tortoise as a cosmogonic symbol may well be one such mythic motif which is purely IE yet not attested in the non-Indian branches of IE. There is no indication for a foreign origin, and the tortoise's association with the Yamuna river (like the crocodile with the Ganga, the swan with the Saraswati) adds to its indigenous Northwest-Indian character.

Sergent also mentions the common origin of the Chinese and Hindu systems of 27 lunar mansions (Xiu, Nakshatra), which we have already considered. He admits that it could only have originated in an advanced culture, and that this was not Mesopotamia. He also notes that the Nakshatra system starts with the Pleiades/Krttika, which occupied the vernal equinox position in the centuries around 2,400 BC, exactly during the florescence of the Indus cities. This date, approximately, has been accepted by Jean Filliozat: "Notes d'astronomie ancienne de l'Iran et de l'Inde", Journal Asiatique 250, 1962, p.325-350; Albert Pike: "Lectures on the Arya", Kentucky 1873; and A.L. Basham: The Wonder That Was India, London 1954, according to Bernard Sergent: Genèse de l'Inde, p.422, n.65. We'll stick to this date for the present discussion, but not without mentioning that Asko Parpola (Decipherment of the Indus Script, p.206, p.263-265) himself gives reasons for thinking that Aldebaran had been the starting-point earlier, which would push back the birthdate of the Nakshatra system to ca. 3054 BC, the time of the pre-Harappan Kot Diji culture.

So, Harappa is the best bet as originator of this system, which spread to China and later also to West Asia. Sergent wonders aloud whether the similarities should be attributed to Harappa being "the teacher of China, whose civilization's beginning is contemporaneous". (p.380)

He informs us that the Nakshatra division of the heavens is unknown in other IE cultures, and in this case I would not speculate that they had known it but lost it along the way: rather, the system was invented after they had left India. This simple fact that there already was IE history before the genesis of the Nakshatra system also explains another fact he mentions: "The Rg-Veda doesn't allude to it, except in its 10th mandala, the youngest one occording to most indologists." (p.118) And even the youngest book only mentions "constellations" (RV 10:85:2), a concept known to all cultures, without specifying them as lunar mansions. At any rate, it is only at the end of (if not completely after) the Rg-Vedic period, well after the European branches of IE had left India, that the Nakshatra system was devised. This indicates once more that the Rg-Veda was pre-Harappan.

This chronology is confirmed by another fact related by Sergent: "Another aspect of the continuity between Indus and historical India is marked in the personal names: the oldest in Vedic India are in perfect conformity with Indo-European customs and highlight mostly the attributes with which an individial (or his family) adorns himself. In a later period astral names appear in India, which is foreign to the customs observed elsewhere among the Indo-Europeans". (p.121) Exactly: the Rg-Vedic people lived before the heyday of astronomy in Harappa and before the starry sky acquired a central place in the late-Vedic "and" in the Harappan religion.

5.7. The Harappan contribution

Sergent has identified the Oriental origin of so many Hindu myths, and the Dravidian (ultimately even African) origin of so many Hindu customs, including even the purity concept underlying post-Vedic caste relations: "As the same importance of purity is found in other societies, e.g. Semitic societies including even Islam and sub-Saharan Africa, it is not impossible that we have here another substratum: that of the ex-Dravidians of North India [Sindh-Gujarat], for instance?" (p.483, n.639) Yet, he has said relatively little about specifically Harappan contributions, eventhough these should logically have made a much larger impact. After all, the Harappans were more numerous, more advanced and more literate than the Mundas, and it is in their territory that the invading Aryans settled before scouting around in the then peripheral and relatively backward Munda-speaking region.

To be sure, Sergent devotes a chapter to the Harappan heritage in Hindu civilization. Thus, the weights and measures found in Lothal are the same ones which Kautilya has defined in his Arthashastra. (p.113) Personally, I would add that apart from being an important fact in itself, this continuity may also be symptomatic for a profounder continuity pertaining to fundamental cultural traits. Thus, the same search for standardization visible in the decimal measurements and in the orderly geometrical lay-out of the Harappan cities is evident in the rigorous structure of the Vedic hymns; in the attempt in the later Vedic literature to categorize all types of phenomena in neat little systems (from verbal conjugation classes listed by the grammarians through the Manu Smrti's artificial genealogy of the occupational castes in society to the Kama Sutra's varieties of sexual intercourse); and in the laborious ritual and architectonic details laid down in Brahminical texts for the proper construction of Vedic altars.

Sergent correctly notes that statuettes of mother goddesses have been found in large numbers in the Harappan cities, that mother goddesses are equally common in popular Hinduism, and that these are very uncommon in the historic IE religions. He also adds that in Europe, mother goddesses originated in the neolithic Old European culture, and remained popular all through the IE Pagan period to be picked up for christianization as Our Lady, suggesting a parallel: in India like in Europe, the popular pre-IE mother goddess survived and even asserted itself against the male-dominated IE official religion.

But clearly, IE religion was not hostile to the goddess cult: when the Church sought to win over the devout by accepting their goddess worship in a christianized form, most of Europe had been IE-speaking for several thousand years. All memory of a pre-IE period had vanished, yet these Celts and Romans and Germans venerated goddesses. In their mythologies, goddesses played only a supporting act, but this is the same situation as in Puranic Hinduism, in which goddess worship is widespread eventhough most myths have the male gods in the starring roles. It is like in real life: men need to dramatize their importance with all kinds of heroism, women simply are important without making such fuss over it. The Virgin Mary is by far the most popular Catholic saint, still present on every rural street corner around my village, much more popular than Jesus and His Father, yet the parts about her in the New Testament and the stories confabulated about her are very few. Therefore, our view of IE religion may be distorted by the fact that we rely on textual sources and myths, which belong to the public and official part of the religion; while by contrast, of Harappan religion we only have cult objects, showing us religion as it was lived by the people.

Sergent mentions the association of gods with animals as their respective "vehicle" (vahana: Vishnu's eagle, Shiva's bull, Saraswati's swan etc.) as an element of Hinduism which is commonly attributed to the pre-Aryan Harappans. But he minimizes this contribution, pointing out that such associated animals are common throughout the IE pantheon, e.g. Athena with her owl, Wodan with his raven, Jupiter who can appear as an eagle, Poseidon as a horse, Demeter as a cow. (p.115) In one case, the correspondence is even more exact: like Hindu goddess Saranyu (mother of the Ashwins), Celtic goddess Epona is imagined as either mare or rider.

Several more astronomy-based amendments to IE customs are mentioned as effects of Harappan influence, e.g. the fixation of the goddess festival (which existed in other parts of the IE world as well -- see that the Indo-Europeans had goddess cults of their own?) at the autumnal equinox. Very significant is the "stellar vestment": the shirt worn by the famous Harappan "priest-king" shows little three-petaled designs (also in evidence on other Harappan depictions), which Sergent, following Parpola, interprets as depictions of stars, exactly like in the scriptural description of the tarpya coat which the king must wear at some point in the Rajasuya ceremony. (p.121, with reference to Asko Parpola: Deciphering the Indus Script, p.201-218) In post-Harappan centuries, Mesopotamian kings are known to have worn such stellar vestments, and the China court ritual was likewise full of celestial symbolism.

What we see happening in the Harappan period is that a particular IE culture transforms itself under the impact of the florescence of what I would call a first scientific revolution; there is no indication of a foreign impact. Sergent has the facts under his own eyes without realizing their significance: "Shiva, Varuna, Yama, Durga-Parvati, we already said it, are deities of IE origin, the rituals concerning fire, soma and the person of the king are equally of IE if not Indo-Iranian origin. But it is now obvious that the Indo-Aryans, upon arriving in India, have amply harvested the Harappan heritage and included its ritual customs (construction of hearth-altars, rites inside buildings, use of the stellar vestment, ritual baths, fixation of feasts on the stellar equinoxes...) in their own religion." (p.124) Well, building facilities had been vastly improved, astronomical knowledge had been developed, so these innovations are not a matter of syncretism, merely of material and intellectual progress.

What more continuity was there? Apart from numerous material items, we note Harappan depictions of men wearing a tuft of hair on their backheads like Brahmins do, and of women wearing anklets. Some pictures suggest the notion of the "third eye". Most importantly, the Harappan people have remained in place: "the Italian anthropologist has emphasized not only that the skulls of Mohenjo Daro resemble those of today's Sindh and those of Harappa resemble those of today's Panjab, but even that the individual variability is identical today to what it was four thousand years ago." (p.128, quoting Mario Cappieri: "Ist die Indus-Kultur und ihre Bevölkerung wirklich verschwunden?", Anthropos 60:22, 1965, p.22)

Though Sergent considers it exaggerated to say that "the Indus civilization is still alive today", I would comment that it is not very exaggerated. (p.128; the quoted phrase, which Sergent dismisses in footnote 146, p.425, as "a Hindu nationalist myth", is from Dharma Pal Agrawal: L'Archéologie de l'Inde, CNRS, Paris 1986, p.2) But the point for now is that we really have seen very little evidence of the incorporation in Vedic tradition of elements which are foreign to it and which are traceable to the Harappan civilization. Compared with the limited but very definite list of items borrowed by Hindu tradition from cultures of East-Asian origin, the harvest in the case of the Harappan contribution is of a different type, larger but murkier. In spite of the ample archaeological material (quite in contrast with the zero objects identified as Vedic-age Austro-Asiatic), we don't get to see a sequence of "now it's in Harappa, and now it enters Vedic tradition". We don't get to see that clear contrast between Harappan and Vedic which most scholars have taken for granted. What we see is on the one hand plenty of elements which are simply in common between the Vedic and Harappan cultures, and on the other certain late-Vedic innovations which match the Harappan data and which constitute a departure from the common IE heritage: they are perfectly explainable through internal developments, particularly in proto-scientific knowledge and material control of the environment.

6. Conclusion

Bernard Sergent has written a book of incomparable erudition to narrate the genesis of the "composite culture" of Hinduism from what to him are the separate sources of Harappan, Dravidian, Indo-European and Austro-Asiatic elements. As part of this effort, he has tried to pinpoint the arrival of the Indo-Aryans in India, and this attempt has become the heroic failure of his book. Even in his two fields of expertise, he has not succeeded in finding decisive evidence for the Aryan invasion: in archaeology, he has not shown where a Bactrian or otherwise foreign culture crossed the Indus into India (indeed, the one entry he identifies as the Indo-Aryan invasion doesn't get farther than Pirak in Baluchistan); and in physical anthropology, he has not been able to identify an immigration wave coinciding with the supposed aryanization of northwestern India.

In comparative religion and mythology, he has thrown a few interesting challenges to non-invasionists, giving them some homework to do in fact-finding as well as in interpreting the data. But here too, he has not presented any insurmountable difficulties for a noninvasionist reading of the Harappan and Vedic information. On the contrary, many bits of information which he has either discovered or synthesized from secondary sources actually add substance to the emerging outlines of a non-invasionist version of ancient Indian and Indo-European history. For once the trite reviewer's phrase fully applies: one need not agree with Sergent's position, but his work is highly thought-provoking and bound to stimulate further research.

This is a shorter version of a chapter of Koenraad Elst's new book: Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate, Aditya Prakashan, Delhi.

 

 

Karzai s’éloigne du Pakistan et se rapproche de l’Inde

Ferdinando CALDA:

Karzai s’éloigne du Pakistan et se rapproche de l’Inde

Le Président afghan rencontre Singh pour renforcer les rapports bilatéraux

Le Président de l’Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, revient d’une mission en Inde, à un moment plutôt délicat pour les équilibres et les alliances qui sont en train de se modifier dans la région. La visite du leader afghan —qui, le 4 octobre 2011, a rencontré le premier ministre indien Manmohan Singh et le ministre des affaires étrangères S. M. Krishna—  revêt une signification particulière, à la lumière des tensions récentes entre les Afghans et leurs voisins pakistanais, ennemis historiques de la Nouvelle Dehli.

Tout en rappelant qu’Islamabad est l’unique interlocuteur plausible pour chercher à faire avancer un processus de paix avec les Talibans (vus les rapports présumés et privilégiés des services secrets pakistanais de l’ISI avec les miliciens islamistes et vu le fait que “tous les sanctuaires des terroristes se trouvent sur le territoire pakistanais), Karzai et quelques autres ministres de son gouvernement ont accusé le gouvernement du Pakistan de “ne pas soutenir nos efforts pour ramener la paix et la sécurité en Afghanistan”. L’assassinat récent de Burhanuddin Rabbani, chef du Haut Conseil de Paix afghan en charge des négociations avec les Talibans, a refroidi les rapports entre l’Afghanistan et le Pakistan. Une commission d’enquête afghane a affirmé que le fauteur de l’attentat est venu du Pakistan; hier, Kaboul a accusé les Pakistanais de ne pas collaborer à l’enquête.

Et tandis que le gouvernement afghan envoie des inspecteurs à Islamabad, Karzai s’envole vers la Nouvelle Dehli, pour la deuxième fois en un an, avec la ferme intention de renforcer dans l’avenir la coopération entre son pays et l’Inde. L’Inde ne peut certes étendre “militairement” son influence sur l’Afghanistan (du fait qu’elle n’a pas de frontière commune avec ce pays) mais pourrait très bien devenir un important partenaire commercial de Kaboul. Ce n’est pas un hasard si l’Inde est de fait l’un des principaux donateurs pour l’Afghanistan, où elle a investi plus de deux milliards de dollars depuis 2001. Cet effort semble avoir donné ses fruits, si l’on considère qu’au cours de l’année fiscale 2009-2010, le volume des échanges commerciaux entre les deux pays a atteint le chiffres de 588 millions de dollars. Il faut souliger tout particulièrement que l’Inde est aujourd’hui l’un des plus importants marchés pour les exportations afghanes de produits agricoles, un secteur sur lequel le gouvernement de Kaboul mise beaucoup. Cette nouvelle visite de Karzai devrait renforcer ultérieurement l’implication indienne en Afghanistan. Certaines sources évoquent d’ores et déjà un “accord de partenariat stratégique”, qui impliquerait les Indiens dans l’entraînement et la formation des forces de sécurité afghanes.

Mais l’Inde n’est pas le seul pays à vouloir occuper une place de première importance en Afghanistan, dès que les troupes de l’OTAN auront quitté le pays. Par sa position stratégique, tant économique que militaire, l’Afghanistan, comme depuis toujours, suscite bien des convoitises. Mis à part les Etats-Unis, qui sont en train de négocier avec Kaboul le droit de maintenir leurs bases pendant quelques décennies, il y a aussi la Russie et, surtout, la Chine qui investissent déjà dans la reconstruction du pays, dans l’espoir de s’accaparer des riches ressources du sous-sol afghan et de se réserver une présence garantie et stable sur le territoire. Il ne faut pas oublier non plus deux autres puissances régionales, l’Iran et l’Arabie Saoudite, dont la présence potentielle n’est certes pas aussi affichée, mais qui ne voudront sûrement pas courir le risque d’être exclus de tout contact avec l’Afghanistan dans les prochaines décennies.

Enfin, et ce n’est certainement pas là le moins important des facteurs en jeu, le Pakistan continue à voir dans les massifs montagneux afghans un éventuel refuge inaccessible, tout comme sont inaccessibles les dangereux sanctuaires des groupes armés islamistes, en cas de nouvelle guerre avec l’Inde.

Ferdinando CALDA.

( [e-mail] ).

(article paru dans “Rinascita”, Rome, 5 octobre 2011 – http://www.rinascita.eu ).

Das europäisch-indische Freihandelsabkommen

Kavaljit Singh

Seit 2007 verhandeln Indien und die Europäische Union (EU) bereits über ein Freihandelsabkommen (FHA), das die Bereiche Handel von Gütern und Dienstleistungen, Investitionen, geistiges Eigentumsrecht und das Beschaffungswesen der öffentlichen Hand umfassen soll – aber die Verhandlungen haben mit zahlreichen Problemen zu kämpfen. Bisher fanden schon zehn Verhandlungsrunden statt. Das Abkommen soll Mitte 2011 unterschriftsreif sein.

Mehr: http://info.kopp-verlag.de/hintergruende/europa/kavaljit-singh/das-europaeisch-indische-freihandelsabkommen-die-liberalisierung-von-dienstleistungsverkehr-und-inv.html

Russie/Inde: énergie nucléaire et clairvoyance géopolitique

Pietro FIOCCHI :

Russie/Inde : énergie nucléaire et clairvoyance géopolitique

 

La Russie est favorable à un siège indien au Conseil de Sécurité de l’ONU

 

Le chef du Kremlin, Dimitri Medvedev s’est rendu récemment à Nouvelle Delhi pour une visite de quelques jours durant lesquels, disent les sources gouvernementales indiennes, les partenaires russes et indiens signeront de nombreux contrats, pour une valeur totale de 30 milliards de dollars, surtout dans les domaines de la défense et de l’énergie nucléaire.

 

La Russie et l’Inde ont conclu divers accords relatifs à la construction de deux réacteurs nucléaires de technologie russe, qui seront installés dans l’Etat de Tamil Nadu. Le porte-paroles du ministère indien des affaires étrangères, Vishnu Prakash, a déclaré « qu’il ne s’agissait pas d’un simple accord commercial, car les parties contractantes cherchent à développer des projets liés à la recherche, au développement et à la production commune ». Le ministre des affaires étrangères indien, S. M. Krishna, a indiqué que, parmi les thèmes inscrits à l’ordre du jour, il y a également la lutte contre le terrorisme et la situation dans la région actuellement en ébullition, à cheval sur l’Afghanistan et le Pakistan.

 

Sur le plan plus strictement politique, une nouveauté émerge, qui était déjà dans l’air : la Russie, désormais, est entièrement favorable à un siège indien permanent au Conseil de Sécurité de l’ONU. Medvedev, à la fin d’une cérémonie tenue à l’occasion de la signature de onze accords et memoranda bilatéraux, a déclaré que « l’Inde mérite pleinement d’être candidate à un siège permanent au Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU, dès que l’on aura pris la décision de réformer cet organisme ».

 

La visite de Medvedev en Inde coïncide avec le dixième anniversaire de la Déclaration de Delhi, qui avait consacré le partenariat stratégique entre les deux pays. Une période pendant laquelle « les liens entre les deux Etats ont permis d’atteindre de nouveaux stades, y compris sur le plan des principes », a dit Aleksandr Kadakin, ambassadeur russe en Inde. Les liens ont sextuplé en l’espace d’une décennie et le niveau désormais atteint par les échanges économico-commerciaux est notable. Cette fois-ci, cependant, le bond en avant ne doit être attribué aux échanges de matières premières mais à toutes les innovations qu’autorise une coopération accrue.

 

Les exportations russes consistent principalement en armes de haute technologie, à des infrastructures destinées au lancement de satellites et à des équipements pour centrales atomiques. Les projets de haute technologie, comme celui des avions de chasse de la cinquième génération ou celui du système de navigation satellitaire Glonass, sont le fruit de recherches conjointes entre Russes et Indiens. A cela s’ajoute un accroissement de la coopération entre les deux pays en matière de recherche spatiale, notamment de projets lunaires, de missions spatiales habitées et d’un satellite baptisé « Youth Sat ». Tous ces projets ne sont que les fleurons de la coopération industrielle entre Nouvelle Delhi et Moscou.

 

Pietro FIOCCHI.

( [e-mail] ; article tiré de « Rinascita », Rome, 22 décembre 2010 ; http://www.rinascita.eu/ ). 

Russie, Chine, Inde: une voie trilatérale vers un monde multipolaire

Russie, Inde, Chine : une voie trilatérale vers un monde multipolaire

Ex: http://fortune.fdesouche.com/

Une semaine après que le président américain Barak Obama eut annoncé son soutien à l’Inde qui revendique un siège permanent au Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU, les ministres des Affaires étrangères de la Russie, de l’Inde et de la Chine (RIC) se sont réunis à Wuhan en Chine, les 14 et 15 novembre.

Les réformes de l’ONU faisaient partie des questions internationales les plus pressantes abordées par S.M. Krishna (Inde), Yang Jiechi (Chine) et Sergei Lavrov (Russie). Mais New Delhi est resté sur sa faim : la rencontre s’est clôturée par un communiqué conjoint en faveur des réformes mais n’allant pas au-delà d’une « appréciation positive du rôle joué par l’Inde dans les affaires internationales » .

La Russie a fortement appuyé la candidature indienne à un siège permanent, mais la Chine a refusé de clarifier sa position, mettant ainsi en évidence une compétition d’ambitions et de projets entre les deux membres pourvus du droit de véto au Conseil de sécurité – Chine et Russie – et le pays qui aspire à les rejoindre à la grande table.

Ces dissonances sur les questions décisives versent de l’eau au moulin des sceptiques qui considèrent que la RIC n’est qu’un club de parlote de plus. Cette conclusion est pourtant erronée. Ce qui compte ici, c’est l’importance croissante de la consultation au sein du trio des puissances émergentes qui détiennent les clés de l’ordre changeant du XXIe siècle.

 

De façon significative, la dixième rencontre trilatérale à Wuhan s’est tenue une semaine après que l’Association des nations de l’Asie du Sud-Est (ANASE [ou ASEAN]) eut approuvé l’admission des États-Unis et de la Russie au sommet de l’Asie orientale. Au lendemain aussi d’une rencontre entre les dirigeants indiens et chinois à Hanoï, dans un contexte tendu.

Pour conclure, la triade a réitéré son appel à un ordre mondial multipolaire, tout en insistant, dans le même mouvement, qu’ « aucun pays tiers » n’était visé (un euphémisme pour les États-Unis).

L’Inde, la Russie et la Chine ont manifesté des inquiétudes communes à propos de l’Afghanistan, mais leur coopération sur ce point n’a pas avancé. La triade a résolu d’intensifier la coopération antiterroriste mais il semble que Pékin ait bloqué la proposition indienne d’inclure une référence à l’élimination des « refuges » pour les terroristes, allusion au Pakistan pour son rôle en Afghanistan.

Ces différences d’approche et de point de vue des trois puissances émergentes sont naturelles, et c’est exactement pour cela que l’idée de cette triade avait été proposée il y a plus de dix ans par le Premier ministre russe Evgueny Primakov, afin de contrebalancer l’hégémonie de Washington.

La triade encourage aussi l’approfondissement de la coopération dans des domaines divers : agriculture, santé, changements climatiques, catastrophes naturelles et problèmes économiques mondiaux, qui peuvent transformer la vie des populations. La proposition de relier les centres d’innovation des trois grandes économies (Bangalore et Skolkovo par exemple), noyau de la croissance mondiale, est l’une de ces idées qui mêle l’ambition d’une renaissance nationale partagée par les trois pays à leur désir collectif d’avoir plus de poids dans les questions internationales.

Trois, c’est peut-être un de trop, mais dans ce cas-ci, le trio n’a d’autre choix que de gérer ses divergences car chacun des trois pays a plus d’intérêts que de désavantages dans les progrès réalisés par les deux autres. Alors que l’idée d’un G2 est une chimère et tandis que la réforme du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU reste une perspective à long terme, le RIC représente un microcosme d’une ère asiatique en gestation qui accentue la nécessité de renforcer la confiance entre les trois piliers d’un monde multipolaire.

La Russie d’Aujourd’hui

Una nuova geopolitica indiana?

Una nuova geopolitica indiana?

Daniele GRASSI

Ex: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org/

Una delle maggiori novità sullo scenario geopolitico degli ultimi due decenni è certamente rappresentata dall’India.

Sebbene l’ascesa della Cina abbia come effetto quello di mettere in secondo piano ogni altra realtà, non si può affatto trascurare il percorso che ha portato New Delhi a proporsi come una delle maggiori economie globali in termini assoluti.

Certo, i numeri aiutano e non poco. L’India infatti, con i suoi 1.2 miliardi di abitanti costituisce il paese più popoloso al mondo e ciò fa sì che ogni suo passo getti una lunga ombra su gran parte del globo. Non bisogna dimenticare infatti, che il suo tasso di crescita economica annua, dal 1997 ad oggi, è di circa il 7% ed è secondo solo a quello cinese.

Tuttavia, l’India resta il paese col maggior numero di gente che vive sotto la soglia di povertà, vale a dire, circa il 25% della sua popolazione.

Ci vorranno dunque, tassi di crescita molto elevati per almeno altri due decenni perché la condizione della popolazione più disagiata subisca dei miglioramenti veri e propri.

 

 

 

La politica estera indiana dopo l’indipendenza

 

Il percorso di crescita indiano è cominciato ad inizio anni Novanta, quando si è proceduto alla liberalizzazione di molti settori economici ed il Paese si è aperto all’economia di mercato.

La trasformazione economica ha proceduto di pari passo con un radicale cambiamento riguardante la politica estera.

 

L’idea di Nehru era quella di dare vita ad un grande paese che perseguisse una politica di pacifica coesistenza con gli altri attori regionali e globali.

Il suo profondo idealismo si scontrò ben presto con una realtà che non lasciava spazio a velleità neutralistiche e richiedeva prese di posizione nette.

Le tensioni col Pakistan circa il controllo del territorio del principato kashmiro sfociarono in diversi conflitti armati, il primo dei quali nel primo anno dell’indipendenza dei due Paesi, il 1947.

Ciò però non distolse Nehru dal suo intento di percorrere una strada di non allineamento e di guidare gli altri Paesi che volessero intraprendere il medesimo percorso.

Nei primi anni della sua esistenza, New Delhi tentò di sganciarsi dal confronto bipolare alleandosi con Pechino, ma questo tentativo sfociò in una delle maggiori umiliazioni della storia indiana: la sonora sconfitta subita proprio da parte della Cina nel 1962.

 

Il risultato fu un sostanziale isolamento a cui l’India tentò di porre rimedio avvicinandosi progressivamente alle posizioni del blocco sovietico.

Questa politica la danneggiò tanto in termini economici, quanto a livello geopolitico. Il Pakistan infatti, approfittò di questa situazione per proporsi come maggiore alleato degli Stati Uniti nella regione sud-asiatica, ricevendo enormi benefici in termini di aiuti finanziari e soprattutto militari.

Islamabad si fece anche mediatore tra Washington e Pechino e fu l’artefice dell’incontro avvenuto nel 1972 tra Nixon e Mao Zedong, il quale pose fine alla politica americana delle “due Cine”.

Il tutto si tradusse in un isolamento ancora più accentuato dell’India, che sarebbe terminato solo nei primi anni Novanta.

 

 

L’asse Washington-New Dehli-Tel Aviv

Il crollo dell’Unione Sovietica ed una profonda crisi economica spinsero infatti New Delhi a rivolgersi al Fondo Monetario Internazionale per ottenere un prestito che l’aiutasse a superare il momento difficile che stava attraversando. In cambio, all’India fu chiesto di liberalizzare la propria economia e di aprirsi ai mercati internazionali.

Non è una caso che fu proprio in quegli anni che il Pressler Amendment pose fine agli aiuti economici che Washington si era impegnata a fornire al Pakistan, interrompendo una collaborazione che si era intensificata durante l’invasione sovietica dell’Afghanistan.

Gli Stati Uniti decisero di fare dell’India il loro maggiore alleato nell’Asia meridionale e ciò ebbe inevitabilmente ripercussioni negative sul rapporto con Islamabad, storica rivale di New Delhi.

 

La politica estera indiana è stata da allora contraddistinta dallo stretto legame con Washington, il quale ne ha fortemente condizionato l’andamento e continua tuttora a farlo.

L’India rappresenta, col Giappone ed altri Stati della regione asiatica, una delle armi usate dagli Stati Uniti per contenere l’ascesa della Cina. L’obiettivo americano è infatti quello di impedire che Pechino assurga al ruolo di leader incontrastato dell’area e New Delhi costituisce un alleato fondamentale per la buona riuscita di questa strategia.

La crescente collaborazione tra l’India ed Israele rientra proprio in questo progetto di contenimento della Cina e si è tradotto, specie negli ultimi anni, in un legame molto stretto soprattutto dal punto di vista militare.

New Delhi e Tel Aviv sono infatti impegnate in attività congiunte di lotta al terrorismo e l’India rappresenta ormai il più importante mercato di sbocco per gli armamenti prodotti in Israele.

Tutto ciò ha delle importanti ricadute a livello geopolitico e l’asse Washington – New Delhi – Tel Aviv costituisce ormai una realtà capace di influenzare le dinamiche interne all’Asia e al Medio-Oriente, producendo inevitabili ricadute sulla politica globale.

 

 

 

Riposizionamento strategico?

 

Tuttavia, la posizione indiana si sta facendo sempre più complicata e richiede un’analisi piuttosto complessa.

Le vicende afghane degli ultimi 3 decenni hanno avuto ripercussioni importanti sulla politica estera indiana e continuano a produrre effetti di non poco conto.

L’ascesa dei talebani a metà anni ’90 ebbe come risultato quello di avvicinare New Delhi a Teheran e Mosca, paesi molto attivi nel sostegno alla cosiddetta Alleanza del Nord, fazione non-pashtun che si opponeva al dominio talebano.

In seguito all’occupazione afghana da parte degli USA e dei suoi alleati nell’ottobre del 2001, l’India è stata uno dei paesi più attivi nella ricostruzione dell’Afghanistan e figura attualmente tra i maggiori donatori del governo di Kabul.

I buoni rapporti col governo guidato da Karzai, il quale ha effettuato i suoi studi proprio in India e conserva legami personali con questo Paese, e l’implementazione di numerosi progetti infrastrutturali hanno fondamentalmente come obiettivo, quello di dar vita ad un’alleanza in grado di contenere l’influenza esercitata dal Pakistan su Kabul.

La presenza indiana in Afghanistan rappresenta dunque una delle maggiori preoccupazioni per Islamabad e ha avuto un peso molto importante nel delineare la politica adottata dal Pakistan nel Paese confinante. Il timore di un governo filo-indiano insediato a Kabul dopo il ritiro delle truppe straniere, ha infatti spinto Islamabad a supportare con decisione gruppi di militanti che hanno proprio nella regione occidentale del Pakistan, le loro basi operative.

Lo scopo è quello di utilizzare questi gruppi come assets strategici, una sorta di asso nella manica da tirar fuori al momento opportuno.

Quel momento sembra oggi essere giunto e il tentativo del governo Karzai di negoziare coi talebani sta dando ragione alla strategia pakistana.

L’ammissione dell’amministrazione Obama di non poter fare a meno del supporto di Islamabad per porre fine al conflitto che da anni sta dilaniando l’Afghanistan, suona infatti come una sorta di resa e apre importanti spazi per la politica estera pakistana.

L’avvicinamento degli ultimi mesi tra Zardari e Karzai costituirebbe un’ulteriore prova di quel che sta accadendo oggi a Kabul.

Gli Stati Uniti hanno ormai compreso di non poter conseguire una vittoria effettiva sui talebani e hanno così deciso di intraprendere la strada dei negoziati e non possono dunque fare a meno del sostegno delle forze armate e di intelligence pakistane.

La promessa fatta da Obama al governo indiano di impegnarsi affinché New Delhi consegua un seggio permanente al Consiglio di Sicurezza delle Nazioni Unite, suona un po’ come un contentino, peraltro difficilmente realizzabile, per mettere a freno le crescenti ansie indiane.

 

Le vicende afghane stanno facendo emergere una verità con cui gli Stati Uniti dovranno fare i conti nei prossimi anni: l’estrema difficoltà di intrattenere rapporti di cooperazione sia con l’India che col Pakistan.

L’incapacità di risolvere la questione kashmira richiede, da parte di Washington, un continuo barcamenarsi tra le richieste indiane e quelle pakistane, spesso inconciliabili tra di loro.

Col tempo diventerà sempre più difficile mantenersi in equilibrio tra Islamabad e New Delhi e, a meno di un improbabile avvicinamento tra i due Paesi, gli Stati Uniti potrebbero essere chiamati a compiere una scelta di campo definitiva.

Il Pakistan e l’India sono consapevoli di ciò e stanno entrambi tentando di acquisire un maggiore potere negoziale nei confronti di Washington.

 

 

 

L’India strizza l’occhio all’Iran

 

Mentre Islamabad è impegnata ad approfondire i suoi legami storici con Pechino, specie dal punto di vista militare, l’India sta cercando di trovare una posizione di maggiore indipendenza per quel che concerne la sua politica estera.

Sebbene sia ben lungi dal trovarla, alcuni segnali di ciò sono già ravvisabili nei suoi rapporti con l’Iran.

Risalgono, ad esempio, allo scorso 28 ottobre le dichiarazioni del governo indiano circa una presunta volontà di volere riprendere il dialogo con Teheran per la realizzazione di un gasdotto che dovrebbe collegare Iran, Pakistan ed India.

La strenua opposizione di Washington nei confronti di questo progetto, ed i problemi che caratterizzano la regione pakistana del Baluchistan, hanno finora frenato la sua realizzazione.

Tuttavia, i crescenti bisogni energetici dell’India potrebbero spingerla ad esplorare strade affatto gradite all’amministrazione americana.

 

La recentissima notizia dell’accordo raggiunto dai governi turkmeno, afghano, pakistano e indiano per la realizzazione del gasdotto TAPI, sembrerebbe andare in direzione contraria rispetto a quanto detto, ma i dubbi circa l’effettiva capacità del Turkmenistan di pompare gas a sufficienza, oltre ai problemi di sicurezza che attanagliano il territorio afghano, potrebbero comportare notevoli ritardi di realizzazione, costringendo i paesi dell’Asia meridionale a cercare percorsi alternativi.

 

La collaborazione tra New Delhi e Teheran riguarda diversi altri progetti e non si ferma dunque all’IPI.

Il porto iraniano di Chabahar risulta centrale nell’ottica di tale cooperazione. Progettato e finanziato proprio dall’India, questo porto detiene un valore strategico molto importante.

L’importanza di Chabahar è legata, ad esempio, alla sua capacità di fare da sbocco per le risorse energetiche della regione centro-asiatica, permettendo all’India di rafforzare le sue relazioni commerciali con questi paesi ritenuti di fondamentale importanza ai fini dello sviluppo economico.

Inoltre, tramite Chabahar, l’India è in grado di aggirare il Pakistan ed esportare le proprie merci in Afghanistan e negli altri Paesi dell’area. Il nuovo accordo di transito siglato da Afghanistan e Pakistan infatti, non permette a New Delhi di utilizzare il territorio pakistano per il trasporto dei beni da esportazione e Chabahar rappresenta la migliore alternativa possibile.

L’Iran soddisfa circa il 15% del fabbisogno energetico indiano, una percentuale piuttosto bassa se si considerano le enormi potenzialità del patrimonio gassifero iraniano.

Tuttavia, è ancora presto perché l’India adotti posizioni non gradite a Washington e per il momento, New Delhi è impegnata in un’azione di mediazione tra l’Iran e gli Stati Uniti.

Nonostante l’opposizione indiana all’acquisizione del nucleare da parte di Teheran, il Paese sud-asiatico si sta impegnando affinché non vengano adottate nuove sanzioni nei confronti dell’Iran.

Complici gli importanti interessi economici nutriti da molte compagnie indiane, New Delhi sta cercando di ammorbidire la posizione americana sull’argomento ed ha come obiettivo ultimo, quello di sottrarre l’Iran all’isolamento in cui si trova attualmente, in modo da poter sviluppare ulteriormente le enormi potenzialità di un’eventuale cooperazione economica e politica.

Gli interessi che legano i due Paesi sono infatti numerosi e vanno dall’energia all’Afghanistan, senza dimenticare che l’India ospita la più numerosa comunità sciita al mondo dopo l’Iran.

Sono troppe le variabili in gioco per poter azzardare, al momento, previsioni circa le dinamiche geopolitiche che caratterizzeranno il futuro prossimo.

I segnali che ci giungono oggi sono talvolta contrastanti e ancora troppo soggetti alla volatilità del presente e dunque suscettibili di smentite ed inversioni di rotta.

Quel che però è certo è che in Asia si sta assistendo ad una netta ridefinizione degli equilibri di forza e nessuno degli attori coinvolti lascerà nulla di intentato per spuntarla sugli altri.

* Daniele Grassi è dottore in Scienze Politiche e specializzando in “Relazioni Internazionali” presso la LUISS Guido Carli. Attualmente è impegnato in uno stage di ricerca presso lo “Strategic Studies Institute” di Islamabad.

Europese Unie en India gaan gezamenlijke strijd tegen terrorisme opdrijven

Europese Unie en India gaan gezamenlijke strijd tegen terrorisme opdrijven

       
BRUSSEL 10/12 (BELGA) = De Europese Unie en India gaan nauwer samenwerken
in de strijd tegen terrorisme. Dat hebben ze vrijdag beslist tijdens
een EU-India-top in Brussel. Een belangrijk deel van die ontmoeting
was ook gereserveerd voor gesprekken over het nakende
vrijhandelsakkoord tussen beide "strategische partners", dat in de lente van
2011 groen licht zou moeten krijgen.

"De aanslagen in Londen, Madrid en Bombay hebben bewezen dat
terrorisme geen rekening houdt met de grenzen en dat een gezamenlijke
aanpak nodig is", zei Europees Raadsvoorzitter Herman Van Rompuy, daarin
bijgetreden door de Indische premier Manmohan Singh.

De Europese Unie en India zijn samen goed voor ruim anderhalf
miljard inwoners. Om die te beschermen, willen ze hun gezamenlijke strijd
tegen terrorisme nu opdrijven. Ze denken daarbij aan nauwere
samenwerking van hun respectieve anti-terreurdiensten, maar ook aan
strengere internationale veiligheidsnormen voor vliegverkeer, striktere
identiteitscontroles en het droogleggen van de financiële bronnen van
terreurorganisaties.

Opsteker voor India is voorts dat de gezamenlijke mededeling andere
landen ook oproept "terroristen hun veilige uitvalsbasis te
ontnemen en alle terroristische infrastructuur op het grondgebied dat ze
controleren te ontmantelen". De verklaring noemt geen enkel land bij
naam, maar India verweet erfvijand Pakistan al vaker dat het
terroristen teveel vrij spel geeft. 

Als opkomende grootmacht is India voor de Europese Unie ook
economisch erg aantrekkelijk. "Er bestaat nog steeds een enorm onaangeboord
potentieel", benadrukte Commissie voorzitter Jose Manuel Barroso.
De huidige handel tussen beide partners bedraagt zo'n 52 miljard euro
per jaar, "maar dat is niet genoeg", vulde Van Rompuy aan.

Bedoeling is begin 2011 een grootschalig vrijhandelsakkoord af te
sluiten, dat zo'n 90 procent van alle in- en uitvoerrechten schrapt.
"We geven hiermee een duidelijk signaal voor globale openheid en
tegen protectionisme", benadrukte Barroso, verwijzend naar de
aanslepende economische malaise.

KNS/(PIM)/

EU und China knüpfen engere Verbindungen, USA unterstützen Indien

F. William Engdahl / ex: http://info.kopp-verlag.de/

 

In den vergangenen Wochen hat die Volksrepublik China einzelnen EU-Ländern bemerkenswerte wirtschaftliche Offerten unterbreitet. Im Lichte der offenen Kritik, die China an der amerikanischen Zentralbank Federal Reserve und am US-Finanzministerium wegen deren jüngster abenteuerlicher Geldpolitik erhebt, ist diese Öffnung ein deutliches Anzeichen dafür, dass sich China, die am schnellsten wachsende Wirtschaftsnation der Welt, von einer Orientierung, die bislang hauptsächlich auf die USA ausgerichtet war, nun in Richtung EU bewegt. Dies würde weitreichende Auswirkungen haben.

 

 

Chinas Staatspräsident Hu Jintao hat soeben dreitägige Gespräche mit dem französischen Präsidenten abgeschlossen, bei denen sich beide Seiten auf neue Wirtschafts- und Handelsverträge in einem bisher noch nie erreichten Umfang von über 20 Milliarden Euro geeinigt haben. Es geht um Kernenergie, Luftfahrt, Finanzen, Energieeffizienz und Umweltschutz. Ein wichtiger Bereich ist die Beteiligung Frankreichs an Chinas ehrgeizigem Programm zur Ausweitung der Nutzung der Kernenergie. Nach Angaben des beteiligten französischen Kraftwerkbauers Areva werden die Beziehungen zu den chinesischen Partnern auf dem größten Kernkraftmarkt der Welt durch diese Verträge auf eine neue Stufe gehoben. China wird außerdem 100 neue Airbus-Maschinen kaufen.

Frankreich rollt für Chinas Präsident Hu den roten (!) Teppich aus, während China engere Verbindungen zur EU knüpft.

Präsident Hu folgte einer Einladung des französischen Präsidenten, der Anfang dieses Jahres China besucht hatte. In Paris trafen die beiden Staatschefs innerhalb von drei Tagen fünf Mal zu Gesprächen zusammen. Frankreich hat Hu buchstäblich einen »roten Teppich« ausgerollt und ihn mit allen Ehren empfangen. Die beiden Präsidenten unterzeichneten eine umfassende Erklärung, in der sie sich zur Festigung der strategischen Partnerschaft zwischen den beiden Ländern verpflichten.

Beide Länder sind ständige Mitglieder des UN-Sicherheitsrates mit Vetorecht, was politisch von großer Bedeutung ist. China ist darauf bedacht, Verbündete zu finden, um bestimmte Initiativen der USA blockieren zu können, wie beispielsweise zusätzliche Sanktionen gegen den Iran, der ein wichtiger Erdöllieferant für China ist. Außerdem wolle man sich gemeinsam mit Frankreich der Frage des iranischen Atomprogramms, der Entnuklearisierung der koreanischen Halbinsel und des Konflikts in Afghanistan annehmen. In Washington wird man darüber sicher nicht erfreut sein.

Die jetzt getroffene Vereinbarung stellt auch für Sarkozy und Frankreich eine bedeutende Wende dar, denn noch vor den Olympischen Spielen vor zwei Jahren hatte Frankreich für die amerikanischen Destabilisierungsversuche in China Partei ergriffen und den Dalai Lama und die mit amerikanischer Hilfe angefachten Unruhen in Tibet unterstützt. Eindeutigerweise schätzt die französische Wirtschaft bessere Beziehungen zu China jedoch als wichtiger ein als solche zu den USA, denn die US-Wirtschaft rutscht immer tiefer in die Depression, während China boomt.

 

Anschließend in Portugal

Im Anschluss an den Frankreich-Besuch reiste Präsident Hu nach Lissabon, wo er mit dem portugiesischen Premierminister José Sócrates Gespräche über die Entwicklung einer umfassenden strategischen Partnerschaft beider Länder führte. Dabei wurde über die Vertiefung der bilateralen Wirtschafts- und Handelsbeziehungen gesprochen. Hu unterstrich, er betrachte Portugal als potenziellen Alliierten in der Strategie zum Ausbau einer strategischen Partnerschaft zwischen China und Europa.

Den Staatsbesuchen des chinesischen Präsidenten in Frankreich und Portugal war die beispiellose Unterstützungsaktion Chinas für den griechischen Anleihemarkt vorausgegangen. Wie ich Anfang Oktober an dieser Stelle geschrieben habe, war der chinesische Premierminister zu einem überraschenden Staatsbesuch nach Griechenland gereist, in ein Land also, das normalerweise eines so hochrangigen Besuchs nicht würdig wäre. China bot Griechenland damals seine Hilfe bei der Schuldenkrise an. Bei einer Pressekonferenz Anfang Oktober in Athen erklärte Wen Jiabao: »Wir besitzen bereits griechische Staatsanleihen und werden solche auch in Zukunft kaufen. Wir werden Anstrengungen unternehmen, den Ländern der Eurozone und Griechenland zu helfen, die Krise zu überwinden.«

Insgesamt gesehen wird nun deutlich, dass man sich in Peking entschlossen hat, eine politische Wende in Richtung auf die Europäische Union zu vollziehen und sich schrittweise aus einer zu großen Abhängigkeit von Washington zu lösen. Bezeichnenderweise hält sich US-Präsident Barack Obama, der darum kämpft, seine angeschlagene Präsidentschaft nach der vernichtenden Niederlage bei den Zwischenwahlen zum US-Kongress zusammenzuhalten, derzeit zu einem Besuch in Indien auf, wo das Pentagon ausdrücklich seine eigene Version einer »militärisch-strategischen Partnerschaft« aufbaut. Wenn die USA Indien militärisch umgarnen, so haben sie dabei ein Land im Auge, das zu einer strategischen Bedrohung werden könnte: China. Doch China antwortet jetzt mit einer Gegenstrategie, sodass man in Washington die eigenen Initiativen vielleicht schon bald bereuen wird. Bleiben Sie dran …

 

The Primordial Tradition: A Tribute to Ananda Coomaraswamy

The Primordial Tradition:
A Tribute to Ananda Coomaraswamy

by Ranjit Fernando

Ex: http://www.freespeechproject.com/ 

Ananda Coomaraswamy once suggested that Buddhism has been so much admired in the West mainly for what it is not; and he said of Hinduism, that although it had been examined by European scholars for more than a century, a faithful account of it might well be given in the form of a categorical denial of most of the statements that have been made about it, alike by European scholars and by Indians trained in modern modes of thought.

In the same way, it could perhaps be said of Coomaraswamy himself, that he is admired in Lanka, as in India, almost entirely for what he was not, and that a true account of his ideas might well take the form of a denial of most of the statements made about him in the land of his birth.

Coomaraswamy has long been presented, both in India and in Lanka, as a patriot, a famous indologist and art historian, an eminent scholar and orientalist; it would be as well to examine the validity of these widely-held beliefs about a man who was undoubtedly one of the greatest figures of our time.

The subject matter of all Coomaraswamy's mature writings can be placed under one heading, namely, Tradition. The Tradition that he writes about has little to do with the current usage of this term to mean customs or social patterns that have prevailed for some time. Coomaraswamy's theme is the unchanging Primordial and Universal Tradition which, as he shows, was the source from which all the true religions of the present as well as the past came forth, and likewise the forms of all those societies which were molded by religion.

The particular aspect of Tradition which Coomaraswamy chose as his own specialty -- the one best suited to his own talents -- was, of course, the traditional view of art, now mainly associated with the East, but once universally accepted by East and West alike, as also by the civilizations of antiquity and, indeed, by those societies which we are pleased to call primitive. Coomaraswamy never tired of demonstrating that the traditional view of life and of art was always the universal and normal view until the Greeks of the so-called classical period first introduced a view of life and of art fundamentally at variance with the hitherto accepted view.

In his aversion to what has been called 'the Greek miracle', Coomaraswamy is at one with Plato whose attitude to the changes that were taking place in his time was, to say the least, one of the strongest disapproval. Coomaraswamy shows, as Plato did, that the view of life and of art invented and glorified by the Greeks, and subsequently adopted by the Romans was, in the context of the long history of mankind, an abnormal view, an aberration; and that although this view lost its hold on men's minds with the rise of Christendom in the Middle Ages, it was to re-establish itself with greater force at the Renaissance thus becoming responsible for the fundamental ills of the modem world.

In all traditional societies, quite apart from his ability to reason, man was always considered capable of going further and achieving direct, intuitive knowledge of absolute truth which, as the traditionalist writer, Gal Baton says, "carries with it an immediate certainty provided by no other kind of knowledge."

"In the modem world," he continues, "we think in terms of "intellectual progress", by which we mean a progress in the ideas which men formulate with regard to the nature of things; but, from the point of view of traditional knowledge, there can be no progress, except in so far as particular individuals advance from ignorance to reflected or rational know ledge, and from reason to direct intuitive knowledge which, we might add, by its nature cannot be defined, but which, nevertheless stands over and above all other forms of knowledge being nothing less than knowledge itself.

From a traditional point of view, the fault of the Greeks lay in their substitution of the rational faculty for the supra-rational as the highest faculty of man, and in the words of Coomaraswamy's distinguished colleague, Rene Guenon, "it almost seems as if the Greeks, at a moment when they were about to disappear from history, wished to avenge themselves for their incomprehension by imposing on a whole section of mankind the limitations of their own mental horizon." Since the Renaissance, as Baton points out, the modem world has, of course, gone much further than did the Greeks in the denial even of the possibility of a real knowledge which transcends the narrow limits of the individual mentality." Moreover, as we are all aware, that which, from a traditional point of view, appears to be a serious narrowing of horizons, is seen from our modem point of view as an unprecedented intellectual breakthrough!

While it is hardly possible in a brief summary, such as this, to further discuss the issues involved, we might usefully ponder on Plato's story of the subterranean cave where some men have been confined since childhood. These men are familiar only with the shadows cast by a fire upon the dark walls of the cave, which they have all the time to study, and about which they are most knowledgeable. They know nothing of the outside world and therefore do not believe in its existence.

Coomaraswamy, like Plato, would have us realize that we, too, are in darkness like these men, and that we would do well to seek the light of another world above by concerning ourselves with those things, which our ancestors knew and understood so well. He constantly points out, that modem or anti-traditional societies are shaped by the ideas men develop by their own powers of reasoning, there finally being as many sets of ideas as there are men; he also tries to show that traditional societies, on the other hand, were based on perennial ideas of quite another order -ideas of divine origin and revealed -- whereby all the aspects of a society were determined.

A recurrent theme in Coomaraswamy's writings was the traditional view of art. When referring to European art, he repeatedly stressed that Graeco-Roman art and Renaissance art, like all the more modern schools of European art, were of earthly inspiration and therefore of human origin like the philosophies that went with them, whereas traditional art, like traditional philosophy, was related to the metaphysical order and therefore religious in character and divine in origin.

We now see that in his earliest works such as the monumental Medieval Sinhalese Art, Coomaraswamy did not as yet fully understand the difference between these two contrasting points of view which were to form the basis of his later and more significant work; in his early writings, his profound understanding of the traditional arts of Greater India, as indeed his already considerable grasp of the true meaning of religion, was a little clouded with modernistic prejudice, the outcome, no doubt, of his early academic training in England which was of a kind that he had, even then, begun to despise. But later, following his association with the French metaphysician, Rene Guenon, Coomaraswamy's writings assumed the complete correctness of exposition and the great authority, which we associate with his most mature work.

Insofar as we are able to see that a universalist approach to the study of the world's religions, coupled with an understanding of the true meaning of Tradition, have, at the present time, a special importance for the modern world, we shall also see that two men, the Frenchman, Rene Guenon, and Sri Lanka's Ananda Coomaraswamy, stand out as the greatest thinkers of the first half of this century. A great gulf separates their thought from the thought of nearly all their contemporaries. The second half of this century has witnessed the emergence of a whole school founded on their pioneering work and on the Perennial Philosophy, a movement which has found acceptance in many parts of a confused and bewildered world.

It will now be apparent that, if we are to regard Coomaraswamy as an eminent orientalist and art historian, it must first be clearly understood that he stands apart from almost all those other scholars who can be similarly described, in that while they approach the life and art of traditional societies from a modern standpoint {which is both "skeptical and evolutionary", to use his own words), Coomaraswamy, like his few true colleagues and collaborators, takes the view that takes the view that Tradition can only be understood by a careful consideration of its own point of view however inconvenient this may be. Once this is realized, it would certainly be true, not only to say that Coomaraswamy was an eminent scholar but, as Marco Pallis has said, a prince among scholars.

Coomaraswamy saw that a feudal or hierarchical society based on metaphysical principles is essentially superior to the supposedly egalitarian systems held in such high esteem today. Like Plato, he maintained that democracy was one of the worst forms of government, nor did he view any other materialistic system with more favour. His enthusiasm for such institutions as caste and kingship was based, not on sentiment, but on a profound understanding of the vital relationship between spiritual authority and temporal power in society and government. He would hardly have approved of the road which India and Lanka have taken since achieving their so-called independence, although he would have regarded it as inevitable.

It is well known that, from the very beginning, Coomaraswamy deplored the influence of the West on Eastern peoples, and especially the consequences of British rule in Greater India. He has therefore been placed alongside those who in India and Lanka have been regarded as national leaders in the struggle for independence. But here again, a complete difference of approach separates Coomaraswamy from his contemporaries, for it was not imperialism or the domination of one people by another that he was concerned about, but rather the destruction of traditional societies by peoples who had abandoned sacred forms. It was what the British stood for and not the British that he detested; on the contrary, there is no doubt that he loved England because he knew another, older England which in form as well as spirit was so much like the oriental world he understood so well.

It would, in conclusion, be appropriate to quote the words of that highly respected English artist-philosopher, Eric Gill, who in his autobiography paid Coomaraswamy this great tribute:

"There was one person, to whose influence I am deeply grateful; I mean the philosopher and theologian, Ananda Coomaraswamy. Others have written the truth about life and religion and man's work. Others have written good clear English. Others have had the gift of witty exposition. Others have understood the metaphysics of Christianity and others have understood the metaphysics of Hinduism and Buddhism. Others have understood the true significance of erotic drawings and sculptures. Others have seen the relationships of the true and the good and the beautiful. Others have had apparently unlimited learning. Others have loved; others have been kind and generous. But I know of no one else in whom all these gifts and all these powers have been combined. I dare not confess myself his disciple; that would only embarrass him. I can only say that I believe that no other living writer has written the truth in matters of art and life and religion and piety with such wisdom and understanding."

Le cochon: porte-bonheur ou véhicule d' "impureté"?

« Moestasjrik » / «  ‘t Pallieterke » :

 

Le cochon : porte-bonheur ou vecteur d’ « impureté » ?

 

 

Mes lecteurs me posent des questions ? Je réponds ! Un lecteur veut savoir pourquoi le cochon est un animal symbolique positif en Chine, de même qu’en Europe ( « Schwein haben » en allemand signifie « avoir de la chance »), alors qu’au Moyen Orient, on le considère comme un animal impur. De fait, ce lecteur pose là une question bien utile.  Surtout en ces jours où des organisations caritatives distribuent du bouillon de porc et quelques tranches de pain aux sans-abri, ce qui provoque immédiatement un tollé chez les tenants les plus délirants du « politiquement correct ». Un juge parisien vient d’interdire cette générosité culinaire parce qu’elle constituerait une discrimination à l’endroit des musulmans, alors que les dites organisations caritatives n’ont jamais eu la moindre intention d’empêcher un pauvre, quelle que soit sa religion, de recevoir son bol de soupe. Pour brouiller encore les pistes et insinuer qu’il y a de l’antisémitisme dans l’air, certains agents désinformateurs ont même été jusqu’à affirmer que ces distributeurs de soupe discriminaient et les clochards juifs et les clodos musulmans ; les Juifs, que je sache, n’ont jamais cherché, au cours des siècles, à imposer leurs interdits alimentaires aux autres comme le font aujourd’hui les musulmans dans nos écoles et nos prisons. Quoi qu’il en soit, ces manipulations rhétoriques ne s’avèrent possibles que parce qu’à la base le judaïsme et l’islam interdisent effectivement de consommer de la viande de porc, tandis que les religions dominantes en Europe et en Asie orientale s’abstiennent de prononcer un tel interdit.

 

On explique généralement que cette différence provient de ce que les matrices territoriales de ces différentes religions se situent chaque fois en des zones climatiques différentes. Contrairement aux bovins, ovins et caprins, qui sont exclusivement herbivores, les porcs sont omnivores. Les végétariens n’ont pas entièrement tort lorsqu’ils nous disent que la consommation de viande génère de l’impureté. Les moutons possèdent un système intestinal de dimension très longue afin qu’ils puissent tranquillement absorber et épurer les éléments nutritifs de leur alimentation. Les lions en revanche possèdent un système intestinal court pour pouvoir, après une digestion sommaire, se débarrasser aussi rapidement que possible de la viande qu’ils ont absorbée et qui entre en putréfaction dans leur corps. Au départ, le porc, lui aussi, était végétarien, et donc son système intestinal n’est pas parfaitement adapté à une diète faite de viande. Ils deviennent ainsi assez aisément la proie de vers, de parasites et d’autres germes pathologiques. D’autres animaux carnivores, consommés par l’homme, ont souvent transmis des maladies dangereuses pour l’être humain, notamment la volaille qui nous transmet la grippe.

 

Transmission de maladies

 

Ceux qui tabouisent la consommation de viande de porc prétendent dès lors que leur position est rationnelle ; d’autres éléments apportent de l’eau à leur moulin : l’animal aime se vautrer dans la saleté et le rôle qu’il joue dans la transmission de maladies. A cela s’ajoutent l’amour immodéré du porc pour la boue et le fait qu’il ne mange pas d’herbes mais concurrence l’homme dans la manducation de fruits et de graines.

 

Cette carte d’identité biologique du porc entraine plus de problèmes dans certaines zones climatiques que dans d’autres. Un climat froid, avec de longues périodes de gel, procure à intervalles réguliers, une phase de désinfection générale, tandis que dans les climats chauds tous les microbes et bactéries prolifèrent sans arrêt. En Inde, il y a chaque année prolifération de vermines de toutes sortes juste avant la mousson. Pendant la saison torride, même les moustiques estiment qu’il fait trop chaud pour voler mais après les premières pluies, moustiques, cancrelats et scorpions apparaissent par centaines de millions. Les cadavres commencent alors immédiatement à pourrir : c’est la raison pour laquelle on les brûle le jour même de leur décès avant le coucher du soleil (ou qu’on les enterre s’ils sont musulmans). Sous de tels climats, on ne prend aucun risque avec tout ce que l’on considère comme vecteur d’impureté.

 

Ce problème n’existe pas dans le nord. En Chine, qui est une civilisation née dans le bassin du Fleuve Jaune (Huanghe), nous avons affaire à une zone climatique modérément froide, comparable à nos latitudes. Il n’y existe aucun tabou alimentaire. On y mange de tout : des serpents, des singes, des insectes, des tortues et donc aussi du porc. C’est même cet animal-là qui forme l’essentiel de l’élevage en Chine. Le signe chinois, qui signifie tout à la fois « maison », « foyer » et « famille » (jia), est constitué d’un toit, avec, sous lui, un cochon. Les Chinois accueillent l’Année du Cochon avec joie et les jeunes mariés espèrent, au cours de ces douze mois, avoir un enfant.

 

Et qu’en est-il parmi les peuples indo-européens, que l’on a improprement appelés naguère « Aryens », selon le nom que se donnaient les Indo-Iraniens ? L’opposition nord-sud, que nous avons évoquée en début d’article, est aussi d’application dans le monde indo-européen. En Europe et en Russie, le porc est totalement accepté dans les régimes alimentaires. En Asie du Sud, il n’entre pas dans la cuisine, même chez ceux qui ne suivent pas un régime végétarien. Le sanskrit ne connaît d’ailleurs pas de mot pour désigner le « porc domestiqué » ; il ne connaît seulement qu’un mot, « varahaa », pour le « porc sauvage ». Seules les castes « impures », les plus basses dans la hiérarchie indienne, gardent quelque fois des porcs ; il y a souvent des émeutes quand un de leurs porcs s’échappe et s’égare dans un quartier musulman.

 

Et qu’en est-il entre l’Inde et la Russie, en Asie centrale ? Cette région nous réserve une fameuse surprise. Les archéologues savent que s’ils tombent sur un site de 2000 av. J.C. qui ne contient aucun trace de la présence de porcs, ils l’identifient automatiquement comme indo-européen (1). C’est pour eux une règle d’or. Eviter la viande de porc était donc une caractéristique typique des « Aryens », qui les distinguaient des autres peuples de cette vaste région. On ne doit donc pas partir du principe qu’il y a, d’une part, des Sémites hostiles au cochon et, d’autre part, des « Aryens » adorateurs du cochon.

 

Vishnou le Sanglier

 

Malgré ce rejet du porc chez leurs ancêtres, les Hindous, qui ne mangent pas davantage de porc que les musulmans, ont réussi tout de même à jeter un trouble sacré parmi les musulmans, en évoquant un suidé. Les adorateurs de Vishnou croient que leur dieu se montre à intervalles réguliers dans le monde par le truchement d’une incarnation. Ces incarnations suivent une sorte de modèle ascendant, comme dans la doctrine de l’évolution de Darwin, raison pour laquelle cette doctrine évolutionniste n’a jamais choqué les Hindous. Bien avant que Vishnou ne viennent sur terre, en tant que Rama, ou que Krishna, il fut successivement poisson, tortue et, ensuite, sanglier, « varaaha ». Les musulmans s’insurgent lorsque les chrétiens présente Dieu sous la forme d’un homme souffrant ou humble, comme Jésus le fils du charpentier, ou Krishna comme conducteur de chariot. Alors quand on représente Dieu sous les formes d’un suidé, on tombe pour eux dans le blasphème suprême !

 

« Moestajrik » / «  ‘t Pallieterke ».

(article paru dans « ‘t Pallieterke », Anvers, 21 février 2007 ; trad. franç. : octobre 2010).

 

Note :

 

(1) (ndt) Les Indo-Européens d’Asie centrale sont nomades. L’élevage du porc est signe de sédentarité, comme l’indique d’ailleurs le signe chinois « jia », évoqué par notre auteur. 

Swami Vivekananda e il suo tempo, tra modernità e tradizione

Swami Vivekananda e il suo tempo, tra modernità e tradizione

Elena BORGHI

Ex: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org/

Il quadro storico

Il periodo storico in cui visse ed operò Swami Vivekananda, la seconda metà dell’Ottocento, fu per l’India un momento particolarmente intenso.

Sul piano politico, caratterizzò questi anni il passaggio del governo dell’India dalla Compagnia delle Indie Orientali alla Corona inglese, che assunse il controllo diretto del Paese nel 1858, a seguito del Mutiny. Considerato da alcuni il primo scoppio del fervore nazionalista ed indipendentista, questo evento ebbe come principali conseguenze un’ondata terribile di violenze e la deriva ancor più autoritaria del governo inglese in India. Certamente, la rivolta fu indicativa del carattere predatorio della Compagnia e del livello di esasperazione da essa indotto nella popolazione, che cominciava a mal sopportare il peso del dominio inglese. Se, infatti, il regime coloniale trasformava gradualmente l’India in una nazione moderna – introducendo infrastrutture, reti di comunicazione, organizzazione della burocrazia e della società civile – d’altro canto il Paese pagava un prezzo altissimo in termini economici, sociali e politici.

Sul piano economico, l’India subì in questo periodo la devastazione causata dai legami sproporzionati tra centro e periferia dell’impero, che distrussero la preesistente economia, anche se, per quanto sfrenato, lo sfruttamento economico dell’India garantiva alla Gran Bretagna guadagni complessivamente piuttosto limitati. L’apporto fondamentale della colonia, infatti, rimase sempre la sua funzione di bacino potenzialmente inesauribile di reclutamento di uomini per l’esercito inglese in India, per l’apparato burocratico coloniale e per l’indentured labour, il sistema di “lavoro a contratto” che sostituì gli schiavi africani con migliaia di contadini e braccianti indiani, trasferiti nelle piantagioni e nelle miniere dei luoghi più disparati, legati a contratti che mascheravano uno stato di effettiva schiavitù.

Questi erano tra gli aspetti che, naturalmente, contribuivano a disintegrare il tessuto sociale indiano; vi si aggiungeva il portato del bagaglio ideologico introdotto dal regime coloniale, che cooperò enormemente alla cristallizzazione delle differenze castali e religiose e, dunque, alla frammentazione della società indiana in una miriade di blocchi contrapposti ed ostili, chiusi a livello endogamico, regolati da criteri gerarchici e definiti su basi di purezza razziale e rituale.

I movimenti di riforma

Di pari passo con il potere coloniale, cresceva lo scontento ed il senso di inadeguatezza di alcune categorie, perlopiù intellettuali di classe media ed estrazione urbana, figli di un’educazione di stampo occidentale, dalla cui iniziativa scaturì quel processo di rinnovamento sociale e culturale – nonché di ridefinizione identitaria, presa di coscienza nazionale e critica del regime coloniale – che investì l’India nel periodo in esame.

Si trattò di un periodo di fermento culturale e di tentativi di riforma sociale e religiosa, volti a ripensare le pratiche considerate più aberranti della tradizione hindu (come la sati, l’immolazione delle vedove sulla pira del marito, o il matrimonio infantile), a diffondere un’istruzione di tipo moderno, a ridiscutere la condizione femminile. Motore e scopo ultimo di questi movimenti era l’acquisizione di strumenti atti ad affrontare «l’esibita superiorità dell’Occidente cristiano nei confronti della cultura e delle religioni indiane»¹, come dimostrarono, in particolare, le misure a favore dell’istruzione femminile. Auspicate dai riformatori per motivi che poco avevano a che fare con il reale desiderio di apportare miglioramenti alla generale condizione delle donne, queste misure si rivelarono, in realtà, necessarie ad altri scopi: confutare le teorie europee – secondo le quali la discriminazione cui erano sottoposte le donne in India e la loro condizione erano immagine dell’arretratezza del Paese in generale –, dando prova dell’adeguatezza dell’India all’autogoverno; creare “nuove donne indiane” capaci di essere mogli e madri più adatte alle necessità (pratiche, ma anche identitarie e d’immagine) della classe emergente, e di socializzarne i valori e le aspirazioni, pur entro i confini della tradizione patriarcale, che restava per i riformatori un punto fermo e indiscutibile.²

In ambito religioso, la riforma si concretizzò nelle figure di alcuni pensatori e nella fondazione di istituzioni, volte a rivedere le più grandi tradizioni indiane – hindu e musulmana – alla luce di uno spirito più moderno e razionale.

È tra questi riformatori che si colloca Vivekananda, al secolo Narendranath Datta, nato in quella Calcutta all’epoca centro della vita politica e culturale del Paese, e in una famiglia di scienziati e pensatori illustri.

Fin da bambino profondamente interessato ai temi dell’Hinduismo e della meditazione e dotato di un carisma e di una passione per la ricerca della verità inusuali per la sua età, Narendranath ricevette un’istruzione di stampo occidentale, appassionandosi in particolare alla filosofia, e coltivando allo stesso tempo lo studio della poesia sanscrita, dei testi sacri e degli scritti del riformatore suo contemporaneo Rammohan Ray.

Razionale, dedito al ragionamento logico e sprezzante dei dogmi religiosi tradizionali, Narendranath si avvicinò al Brahma Samaj, l’istituzione fondata a Calcutta nel 1828 da Rammohan Ray al fine di operare una trasformazione dello Hinduismo in senso moderno, depurando la religione dalle pratiche più barbare ed introducendo nello studio della stessa il principio di ragione. Narendranath, affascinato dalle arringhe dei riformatori che facevano parte del movimento, sembrava destinato ad una carriera del tutto simile, borghese e socialmente impegnata, fino a quando un incontro introdusse nel suo percorso un cambiamento di rotta.

Da Narendranath a Vivekananda

Era il 1880, quando Narendranath incontrò per la prima volta Ramakrishna, il sacerdote officiante di un tempio situato a Dakshineshwar, un sobborgo di Calcutta, e dedicato ad una forma del dio Shiva, che veniva lì adorato insieme alla dea Kali. Brahmano di estrazione contadina, con un’istruzione limitata cui sopperivano buon senso, mitezza e profonda devozione, costui era un rinunciante di eccezionale spessore, un rappresentante della corrente mistica della bhakti, la “devozione”, e un punto di riferimento per gli intellettuali bengalesi, affascinati dalla schiettezza dei suoi insegnamenti.

Quell’incontro provocò un imponente cambiamento nella vita del giovane Narendranath, che in pochi anni, durante i quali proseguì nel tentativo di conciliare il materialismo delle scienze occidentali e lo spiritualismo in cui lo precipitavano i momenti a Dakshineshwar, divenne il discepolo prediletto di Ramakrishna. Come il suo Maestro, divenne un Advaitavedantin, un sostenitore dell’indirizzo dottrinale del non-dualismo, che predicava l’unità tra Sé individuale e Assoluto. Da questi insegnamenti Narendranath avrebbe in seguito derivato la convinzione della divinità degli esseri umani, dunque la considerazione di tutte le forme dell’esistenza quali manifestazioni dello spirito divino.

Nel 1886 Ramakrishna, dopo aver iniziato i discepoli alla loro nuova condizione di sanyasin³, indicò Narendranath come loro guida. Fu così che egli divenne Vivekananda, “colui che ha la beatitudine della discriminazione spirituale”. Due anni più tardi Vivekananda cominciò la sua vita di parivrajaka, “monaco errante”, partendo per un pellegrinaggio che durò anni, un viaggio solitario compiuto a piedi sulle strade polverose dell’India, dallo Himalaya fino a Kanyakumari. Questa esperienza fornì a Vivekananda una conoscenza profonda del Paese, quale non aveva mai posseduto. Alla fine del viaggio, quando finalmente raggiunse Kanyakumari, Vivekananda rifletté su tutto quello che aveva visto: «Un Paese dove milioni di persone vivono dei fiori della pianta mohua, e un milione o due di sadhu e circa cento milioni di brahmani succhiano il sangue di queste persone, senza fare il minimo sforzo per migliorare la loro condizione, è un Paese o l’inferno? È quella una religione, o la danza del diavolo?»⁴

Partito con l’obiettivo di portare unità tra le varie sette e confessioni indiane, radunandole sotto l’ombrello del messaggio vedantico, Vivekananda comprese che al suo Paese servivano istruzione e cibo, più che insegnamenti religiosi. Ripensò a quel che aveva sentito dire alcuni mesi prima, circa l’organizzazione a Chicago del World’s Parliament of Religions, un congresso che avrebbe ospitato rappresentanti di ogni religione del mondo; Vivekananda decise che si sarebbe recato negli Stati Uniti, per predicare il messaggio vedantico e chiedere in cambio il sostegno economico necessario a fondare in India istituzioni educative e caritative per le classi più svantaggiate.

Pochi mesi più tardi ebbe inizio la sua missione in Occidente, che lo vide tenere innumerevoli conferenze e radunare intorno a sé molti sostenitori.

Un pensiero moderno e rivoluzionario

Attualizzando gli aspetti religioso-filosofici della dottrina vedantica, all’interno di un pensiero in cui la speculazione teorica e dogmatica veniva costantemente riportata alle necessità pratiche del suo tempo e del suo luogo – percepite come urgenti ed imprescindibili –, Vivekananda divenne l’esempio di una nuova tipologia di riformatore, capace di coniugare gli insegnamenti ancestrali del pensiero vedantico con l’attualità dell’India più comune. Questa narrazione, dunque – a differenza di quelle costruite da altri riformatori, che auspicavano un ripensamento, quando non un distacco, della “tradizione” sociale e religiosa, sentita come ostacolo al “progresso” –, non presupponeva una revisione in chiave filo-occidentale del bagaglio culturale e religioso indiano, bensì glorificava quel passato, proponendolo come la chiave che avrebbe aperto all’India le porte della giustizia sociale, dell’istruzione, dello sviluppo materiale e spirituale.

«La società più grande è quella in cui le verità più alte diventano concrete»⁵, sosteneva Vivekananda, facendo riferimento alla necessità di costruire una società strutturata in modo da permettere la realizzazione della divinità umana. Da questa convinzione di base, derivata dalla filosofia vedantica, egli ricavò il suo progetto di società utopica, che si sarebbe retta sul pilastro dell’uguaglianza tra gli uomini. Il fatto che egli ritenesse necessarie all’avverarsi di questa idea da un lato la diffusione dell’istruzione – che doveva diventare di massa, affinché gli strati più svantaggiati acquisissero forza e coscienza del proprio valore – e, dall’altro, la soppressione di ogni privilegio – politico, economico o religioso che fosse – dimostra il carattere rivoluzionario del pensiero di Vivekananda. Diversamente da molti suoi contemporanei, egli non era disposto a prevedere risultati parziali; eppure, l’imponenza di questo progetto e il suo carattere utopico non compromettevano in alcun modo la fede di Vivekananda nella sua realizzabilità.

«Pane! Pane! Non credo in un Dio che non riesce a darmi il pane in questo mondo, mentre mi promette la beatitudine eterna nei cieli! Bah! L’India deve essere affrancata, i poveri devono essere nutriti, l’istruzione deve essere diffusa, e la piaga del potere sacerdotale deve essere eliminata».⁶

Anche nel suo rapporto ideale con l’Occidente Vivekananda differiva dal resto dei riformatori: non prevedendo né una forma di riverente assimilazione ai suoi valori, né il rifiuto astioso di essi, egli auspicava una sorta di collaborazione e di mutuo scambio di eccellenze: «Direi che la combinazione della mente greca, rappresentata dall’energia dell’Europa, e della spiritualità hindu darebbe origine a una società ideale in India. […] L’India deve imparare dall’Europa la conquista del mondo esteriore, e l’Europa deve imparare dall’India la conquista del mondo interiore. Allora non ci saranno hindu ed europei: ci sarà un’umanità ideale, che ha conquistato entrambi i mondi, quello esterno e quello interno. Noi abbiamo sviluppato una parte dell’umanità, e loro un’altra. È l’unione delle due ciò cui dobbiamo aspirare».⁷

Ancora, la modernità del pensiero di Vivekananda si espresse nella sua considerazione del gesto filantropico che, come in ambito cristiano, fino a quel momento era stato reputato dal sistema hindu tradizionale una questione privata tra donatore e beneficiario. Egli fu il primo a proporre un’etica del seva (il “servizio”) istituzionalizzata – così come è divenuta la filantropia, un po’ ovunque nel mondo, in tempi recenti –, con lo scopo di garantire una ripartizione equa e il più possibile estesa di azioni di solidarietà nei confronti di persone bisognose: “Fare del bene agli altri è l’unica grande religione universale”⁸, sosteneva Vivekananda, accordando alla pratica del seva un significato che andava ben oltre la semplice azione filantropica. Teorizzò, inoltre, che la figura sociale più autorevole in India – e dunque più adatta a diffondere un pensiero in certo modo rivoluzionario – era quella del sanyasin. Mentre i suoi contemporanei proponevano modelli borghesi, di uomini d’alta casta colti e mondani, o figure eroiche della tradizione storica e religiosa indiana, Vivekananda individuava nel monaco, nell’asceta e nel rinunciante la sede della saggezza e della credibilità presso il popolo; era a queste figure, estranee ai meccanismi del potere, all’avidità e al perseguimento dell’interesse personale, che Vivekananda avrebbe affidato il compito di diffondere il messaggio, dimostrando ancora una volta l’intransigenza che guidava il suo pensiero.

Su questi pilastri poggiava la Ramakrishna Mission, istituita da Vivekananda a fine secolo quale organizzazione impegnata in ambito sociale e strettamente connessa alla vita del monastero dell’Ordine di Ramakrishna, i cui monaci fondevano nella propria esperienza quotidiana lavoro sociale e pratica spirituale – due aspetti che, completandosi a vicenda, fungevano l’uno da motore dell’altro. Intervenendo inizialmente soprattutto in ambito educativo e nella lotta alla povertà, la Ramakrishna Mission cominciò così in quegli anni il suo servizio all’India, che Vivekananda descriveva in termini angosciati:

«Fiumi ampi e profondi, gonfi e impetuosi, affascinanti giardini sulle rive del fiume, da fare invidia al celestiale Nandana-Kanana; tra questi meravigliosi giardini si ergono, svettanti verso il cielo, superbi palazzi di marmo, decorati da preziose finiture; ai lati, davanti e dietro, agglomerati di baracche, con muri di fango sgretolati e tetti sconnessi […]; figure emaciate si aggirano qua e là coperte di stracci, con i volti segnati dai solchi profondi di una disperazione e di una povertà vecchie di secoli […]; questa è l’India dei nostri giorni!

[…] Devastazione causata da peste e colera; malaria che consuma le forze del Paese; morte per fame come condizione naturale; carestie mortali che spesso danzano il loro macabro ballo; un kurukshetra di malattie e miseria, un enorme campo per le cremazioni disseminato dalle ossa della speranza perduta.

[…] Un agglomerato di trecento milioni di anime, solo apparentemente umane, gettate fuori dalla vita dall’oppressione della loro stessa gente e delle nazioni straniere, dall’oppressione di coloro che professano la loro stessa religione e di coloro che predicano altre fedi; pazienti nella fatica e nella sofferenza e privati di ogni iniziativa, come schiavi, senza alcuna speranza, senza passato, senza futuro, desiderosi solo di mantenersi in vita in qualche modo, per quanto precario; di natura malinconica, come si confà agli schiavi, per i quali la prosperità dei loro simili è insopportabile. […] Trecento milioni di anime come queste brulicano sul corpo dell’India come altrettanti vermi su una carcassa marcia e puzzolente. Questo è il quadro che si presenta agli occhi dei funzionari inglesi».⁹

Costituito inizialmente da appena una dozzina di monaci, nei cento e più anni che ci separano dalla sua fondazione l’Ordine di Ramakrishna è oggi un movimento transnazionale di proporzioni enormi, simbolo di pace ed ecumenismo, fondato sulla pratica del servizio disinteressato come metodo per la realizzazione del divino e caratterizzato da un approccio razionale alla religione – considerata non un apparato ritualistico ma una scienza dell’essere e del divenire –, da una tradizione colta e dall’efficacia dei suoi interventi in campo sociale.

Definiscono Ramakrishna Mission e Ramakrishna Math (rispettivamente la componente pratica del movimento e l’organizzazione monastica) le tre caratteristiche che sono state segni distintivi di Vivekananda e del suo operato e che, risultando a tutt’oggi innovative, dimostrano la statura di un riformatore illuminato, rivoluzionario per il tempo e il luogo in cui visse: la modernità – che si esprime nell’attualizzazione dei principi vedantici, e nel collocare nel presente il pensiero guida dell’operato di queste istituzioni; l’universalità – data dal rivolgersi non ad un unico Paese o ad uno specifico gruppo di persone, ma all’umanità intera; e la concretezza – che risiede nel porre i principi teorici e spirituali a servizio del miglioramento delle quotidiane condizioni di vita delle persone.

* Elena Borghi, dottoressa in Studi linguistici e antropologici sull’Eurasia e il Mediterraneo (Università “Ca’ Foscari” di Venezia), è autrice di Sai Baba di Shirdi. Il santo dei mille miracoli (Red, Milano 2010) e Vivekananda. La verità è il mio unico dio (Red, Milano 2009)

1 Torri, M., Storia dell’India, Editori Laterza, Roma-Bari 2000, p. 453.

2 Jayawardena, K., Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World, Zed Books, Londra 1986.

3 Asceta errabondo, che ha rinunciato ad ogni piacere mondano e ad ogni forma di possesso materiale ed umano, per dedicarsi unicamente al conseguimento della liberazione, il moksha. Il monaco rinunciante trascorre la propria vita in solitario cammino, elemosinando il cibo, coltivando il silenzio e il raccoglimento, inaccessibile ad ogni desiderio e ad ogni umana debolezza. La contemplazione dello Spirito supremo, il distacco, la disciplina e la meditazione profonda sono i suoi compiti, che lo preparano ad abbandonare per sempre la dimora terrena ed il corpo mortale, liberandolo dal ciclo di rinascita e rimorte.

4 The complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Mayavati Memorial Editing, Advaita Ashrama, Calutta 1992-95, vol. VI, p. 254.

5 Ibid., vol. II, p. 85.

6 Ibid., vol. IV, p. 368.

7 Ibid., vol. V, p. 216.

8 Ibid., vol. IV, p. 403.

9 Ibid., vol. V, p. 441-442.

L'imputato per la strage di Mumbai lavorava per il governo USA

L’imputato per la strage di Mumbai lavorava per il governo USA

di Kurt Nimmo

Fonte: megachip [scheda fonte] 

La settimana scorsa i funzionari USA dichiaravano che c’era ancora una minaccia proveniente da indimostrati terroristi in Europa, mentre la polizia di New York conduceva un’esercitazione che simulava un attacco “stile Mumbai” contro i civili nel distretto finanziario di Manhattan. Il capo dell’antiterrorismo al Dipartimento di Stato ha esposto ai giornalisti a Londra un allarme per i viaggiatori emanato il 3 ottobre che consigliava a chi viaggiava in Europa che un "assalto in stile Mumbai" su obiettivi civili, poteva essere imminente, o forse no.

Tante altre notizie su www.ariannaeditrice.it

Sabato scorso, funzionari federali hanno ammesso che l’uomo d'affari statunitense David Coleman Headley, che si presume abbia confessato di essere un reclutatore di terroristi in relazione agli attentati di Mumbai del 2008, lavorava come informatore della DEA, mentre si esercitava con i terroristi in Pakistan.

«I funzionari federali, che parlavano solo in sottofondo per la delicatezza del caso Headley, hanno dichiarato inoltre di sospettare un legame tra Headley e le figure di al-Qa‛ida le cui attività hanno suscitato recenti minacce terroristiche contro l'Europa», riferisce Pro Publica, un’agenzia on line non-profit indipendente che produce giornalismo investigativo.

Venerdì scorso, Pro Publica ha riferito che l'FBI era stata messa in guardia in merito ai legami terroristici di Headley ben tre anni prima che gli attentati di Mumbai avessero luogo.

Headley, tuttavia, non è stato arrestato fino a 11 mesi dopo l'attacco. «Dopo che Headley è stato arrestato nel 2005 per una lite domestica a New York, la moglie ha raccontato agli investigatori federali il suo duraturo coinvolgimento con il gruppo terroristico Lashkar-i-Taiba e i suoi estensivi programmi di formazione nei campi pakistani», scrive Sebastian Rotella. «Ha anche loro riferito che si era vantato di essere un informatore pagato dagli Stati Uniti, mentre era in corso la formazione terroristica».

Lashkar-i-Taiba è stata programmata per operazioni occulte. Si tratta di una creazione dell'Inter-Services Intelligence, o ISI, i servizi pakistani, e «riceve considerevoli risorse finanziarie e materiali nonché altre forme di assistenza da parte del governo del Pakistan, indirizzate in primo luogo attraverso l'ISI. L'ISI è la principale fonte di finanziamento di Lashkar-i-Taiba. E anche l'Arabia Saudita alimenta la provvista dei fondi», secondo il South Asia Terrorism Portal.

Lashkar-e-Taiba ha inoltre avuto un ruolo nella campagna bosniaca organizzata dall’ISI contro i serbi, che era diretta dalla CIA e dai servizi segreti britannici.

Lashkar è l'ala militare del Markaz Dawat wal Irshad, collegato all’Ahl-e Hadith pakistano, un gruppo con stretti legami di affiliazione ai wahabiti sauditi. Markaz è stata fondata nel 1986 da due professori universitari pakistani assistiti da Abdullah Azzam, uno stretto collaboratore di Osama bin Laden. Azzam è stato "arruolato" da parte della CIA per guidare gruppi islamici a Peshawar e poi come intermediario tra i Mujāhidīn afghani.

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La notizia della connessione di Headley all’intelligence non è una novità.

Nel 2009 è stato riferito che egli poteva «essere stato un agente sotto copertura degli Stati Uniti diventato una canaglia», secondo il «Times of India».

Durante le sue operazioni e contatti in India, Headley si è presentato spesso come un agente della CIA.

David Headley è stato menzionato in un rapporto sul terrorismo interno redatto da Tom Kean, Lee Hamilton, e dall’istituto bipartisan con sede a Washington National Security Preparedness Group.

Kean e Hamilton si erano a suo tempo sforzati di concentrare la colpa per gli attentati dell'11 settembre 2001 a carico di musulmani cavernicoli. «La leadership dei gruppi islamici radicali, tra cui al-Qa‛ida, si è americanizzata attraverso figure come il chierico radicale Anwar al-Awlaki, cresciuto in New Mexico, e David Headley da Chicago, che ha contribuito a pianificare gli attacchi terroristici a Mumbai del 2008», ha riferito il «New York Post» in occasione del nono anniversario dell'11 settembre.

In effetti il terrorismo è diventato "americanizzato", perché in realtà gran parte del terrorismo islamico è una creazione dell'intelligence USA, britannica e israeliana, con l'aiuto di partner gregari come la Germania.

Nel 1997, Headley, alias Daood Sayed Gilani, un condannato per traffico di droga, è stato strappato via dalla prigione dalla DEA e spedito in Pakistan per condurre operazioni di sorveglianza sotto copertura per conto della Drug Enforcement Administration. Nel 2002 e tre volte nel 2003, ha frequentato campi di addestramento in Pakistan di Lashkar-e-Taiba, l’organizzazione creata e finanziata dall’ISI e dai sauditi.

L'FBI era ben consapevole di tutto ciò. Secondo il rapporto di Pro Publica, non solo la moglie di Headley ha raccontato all'FBI che suo marito era un militante attivo di Lashkar-e-Taiba, ma anche che si era a lungo esercitato nei suoi campi pakistani e aveva anche fatto acquisti per visori notturni e altri apparecchi.

Ancora una volta ci verrà detto che tutto questo è stato un «fallimento dell'intelligence» e che Headley ha violato i patti per essere stato radicalizzato da parte di terroristi pakistani.

A questo punto, però, non ci viene detto più di nulla. I grandi media, con la notevole eccezione del «New York Times» e dell'Associated Press, non riportano questa storia. È appena un puntino sullo schermo radar dei grandi organi di comunicazione. La minaccia terroristica europea, ovviamente fraudolenta, ha ricevuto molta più copertura, anche se non vi è assolutamente alcuna prova che dei terroristi avessero intenzione di fare alcunché in Europa o altrove, men che meno negli Stati Uniti.

Di quante altre prove abbiamo bisogno? David Headley stava ovviamente lavorando per il governo degli Stati Uniti ed è stato "radicalizzato" e formato da un gruppo che i documenti indicano come CIA-ISI con collegamenti con i sauditi e il wahhabismo.

La CIA non tenta più nemmeno di coprire le proprie tracce, quando manovra il terrorismo "falso" e i gruppi terroristici. Cinque minuti con un motore di ricerca in internet bastano a produrre informazioni sufficienti a dimostrare il fatto che i governi ingegnerizzano il terrorismo e i terroristi.

I governi usano abitualmente il terrore sintetico per mandare avanti i loro programmi in agenda. È tutto alla luce del sole e ci si presenta di fronte. Ma non aspettatevi che il «New York Times» o la CNN colleghino i puntini. Sottolineare l'ovvio, si sa, è un lavoro per teorici della cospirazione…

 

Traduzione a cura di Pino Cabras per Megachip.

Fonte: http://www.infowars.com/mumbai-terror-suspect-worked-for-....

Russie / Inde: projets militaires communs

Russie / Inde : projets militaires communs

L’Inde est prête à acquérir entre 250 et 300 chasseurs de la cinquième génération et à les coproduire avec la Russie. L’armée indienne achètera également 45 avions de transport russes. Cette décision a été prise suite à la visite en Inde du ministre russe de la défense, Anatoly Serdioukov. Dans les dix prochaines années, la coopération militaire russo-indienne visera la réalisation de ces deux projets : réorganiser et moderniser la chasse de l’aviation militaire indienne et doter celle-ci de bons avions de transport.

Le chasseur de cinquième génération ne sera pas une pure et simple copie du Sukhoi T-50 déjà existant, mais visera la création d’un appareil entièrement nouveau, dont le prix unitaire sera d’environ 100 millions de dollars. La valeur totale du marché est donc d’à peu près 30 milliards de dollars. Moscou et New Delhi programment également la construction de chasseurs monoplaces et biplaces pour 2015-2016, dont le coût de recherche et de réalisation sera partagé à parts égales entre les deux pays.

Le ministre indien A. K. Antony, lors d’une conférence de presse tenue avec son collègue russe, a confirmé le marché et les intentions des deux pays en matière de technologies aéronautiques et militaires. Il a déclaré : « L’Inde recevra entre 250 et 300 FGFA (Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft). Nous avons donc deux projets en commun pour les dix prochaines années, ce qui démontre que la collaboration entre l’Inde et la Russie est optimale ».

New Delhi cherche aussi à acquérir deux appareils A-50, équipés d’un système Falcon de localisation radar, produit en Israël. De son côté, Moscou espère pouvoir convaincre les Indiens d’acheter russe quand ils rénoveront, comme ils le prévoient, leur arsenal d’hélicoptères (197 unités) et d’autres avions (126 unités). Si les Indiens choisissent les MIG-35 et KA-226 russes, l’affaire rapportera une somme supplémentaire de 10,75 milliards de dollars au complexe militaro-industriel russe.

Source : Andrea PERRONE ([e-mail] ), in : Rinascita, 8 octobre 2010 ; http://www.rinascita.eu ).   

Ayodhya ou l'honneur perdu des historiens...

 

 Koenraad Elst:

Ayodhya ou l’honneur perdu des historiens

 

Dans la querelle historique entre les prédicateurs islamistes et le reste du monde, il y eut un grave moment de crise, lorsqu’il s’est s’agi, pour les premiers, de contester la légitimité d’un temple hindou ou d’une mosquée musulmane à Ayodhya. Cette querelle a connu son apogée entre 1986 et 1992. L’édifice contesté s’est retrouvé sous les feux des médias quand des militants hindous l’ont rasé le 6 décembre 1992.

Ayodhya est un important centre de pèlerinage hindou. Selon la tradition, c’est le lieu de naissance du héros Rama, incarnation du dieu Vishnou. Un temple y avait été édifié jadis et, plus tard, il fut remplacé par une mosquée, construite à partir de 1528 selon une inscription sur le portail d’entrée. La mosquée se trouvait donc là depuis plus de quatre siècles. Dans l’architecture de cette mosquée, on avait inclus des colonnes provenant de l’ancien temple, afin de bien mettre en exergue la victoire de l’islam sur le paganisme indien. En 1885, les Hindous entamèrent une procédure, afin de récupérer le site mais en 1886, un juge britannique a tranché comme suit : « C’est grave qu’un temple ait été détruit pour édifier cette mosquée, mais vu que cela s’est passé il y a plusieurs siècles, il est trop tard désormais pour y remédier ». En 1934, les autorités britanniques font fermer la mosquée à la suite d’émeutes organisées par les fidèles de la religion hindouiste. En 1949, les Hindous placent un autel avec des effigies de leurs dieux dans l’édifice. En 1950 commence un nouveau procès où les Hindous, puis, plus tard, les Musulmans, vont exiger que le site leur soit octroyé.

A titre temporaire, le tribunal, en charge de juger l’affaire, n’a ordonné que quelques mesures pratiques. Pendant une seule journée par an, un prêtre hindou pouvait avoir accès à l’édifice, y officier et y pratiquer les rituels traditionnels. De ce fait, l’édifice  se trouvait rouvert en tant que temple hindou. Les Hindous, cependant, voulaient, sur le site de la naissance de Rama, un véritable temple de leur religion, construit selon des critères architecturaux propres à la tradition indienne, ce qui impliquait la destruction de la mosquée musulmane. Quand la mosquée s’y trouvait encore, les Hindous ont décidé de placer la première pierre du futur nouveau temple, précisément à la date du 9 novembre 1989, le jour même où tomba le Mur de Berlin.

Négationnisme

Cet acte symbolique a eu lieu avec l’approbation du Parti du Congrès, alors au pouvoir. Celui-ci procéda à un véritable maquignonnage, en prévoyant d’accorder une grande faveur aux Hindous et un éventail de petites faveurs pour les Musulmans (notamment  la réforme de la législation sur le divorce, en l’infléchissant dans un sens carrément musulman). Les intellectuels de gauche, dominants dans les secteurs académiques, ont entamé, à ce moment-là, une campagne pour un « sécularisme dur » ; il faut savoir que la notion de « sécularisme », en Inde, équivaut à la notion de « multiculturalisme » que l’on cherche à imposer en Occident. Le « sécularisme » multiculturel indien a pour corollaire automatique le soutien à l’islam. Dans le cadre de cette campagne séculariste, multiculturaliste et islamophile, l’intelligentsia de gauche a commencé à nier de manière systématique et à grands renforts de discours tonitruants le récit hindou, qui se voulait reflet de la réalité historique, sur la destruction effective du temple. Ce qui avait fait jusqu’alors consensus et qui se basait sur le témoignage unanime de nombreuses sources, a été, du jour au lendemain, considéré comme une aberration et comme le produit d’une « propagande haineuse des fondamentalistes hindous ».  

Les médias indiens et, à leur suite, les médias de la planète entière, ont adopté cette vision négationniste. Les historiens se sont tenus cois ou se sont pliés à la ligne que leur dictait leur parti. Un indianiste néerlandais qui, peu de temps auparavant, avait effectué des recherches à Ayodhya même, et avait confirmé dans l’un de ses ouvrages la thèse de la destruction du temple de Rama, fut accusé de faire le jeu des fondamentalistes hindous et se récusa misérablement. L’Encyclopaedia Britannica, dans son édition de 1989, rappelait encore les faits et expliquait sobrement et sans emphase que le temple avait été détruit, a changé son fusil d’épaule dans ses éditions ultérieures et évoqué les « affirmations des fondamentalistes hindous ».

A la fin de l’année 1990, le gouvernement invite les deux parties à mandater des savants et des érudits pour participer à un débat. Les représentants de la partie musulmane sont arrivés sur le podium de discussion totalement impréparés, tout en étant sûrs et confiants que leurs adversaires n’allaient évoquer que des « mythes ». Malheureusement pour eux, les défenseurs de la partie hindoue sont arrivés munis d’un dossier bien étayé de documents historiques et de rapports d’archéologues, qui confirmaient les anciennes thèses, qui avaient toujours fait consensus. Après le débat, l’alliance musulmane-marxiste des adversaires de la thèse du temple ont encore composé vaille que vaille un opuscule qui devait servir de réponse aux Hindous. Dans ce petit ouvrage, ils n’avancent pas le moindre fait qui soit en mesure de contredire le scénario mis en avant par les Hindous ou qui pourrait constituer l’amorce d’un scénario alternatif. Leur argumentaire se bornait à essayer de minimiser les preuves pourtant patentes avancées contre eux, en n’en sélectionnant que quelques-unes et en ne les présentant que de manière schématique, tandis qu’ils laissaient la grande majorité des arguments de leurs adversaires sans la moindre réponse. Les médias ont passé totalement sous silence cette victoire hindoue dans la querelle où, pourtant, les défenseurs de l’iconoclasme musulman ont été mis échec et mat.

La preuve par l’archéologie

Et pourtant, fin septembre 2010, la vérité a éclaté au grand jour. Le jeudi 30 septembre 2010, le tribunal d’Allahabad a enfin prononcé ses conclusions dans cette affaire qui traîne maintenant depuis plus de soixante ans. L’affaire avait rebondi lorsque le gouvernement du premier ministre Narasimha Rao avait demandé à la Cour Suprême de donner son avis sur le fonds historique de la question. Au contraire du grand public qui ne s’abreuve qu’aux journaux, Rao était parfaitement bien au courant du résultat du débat entre experts et il s’attendait à ce que les juges du plus haut tribunal indien, après étude du dossier, donnassent raison à la thèse des défenseurs du temple, afin que l’on puisse enfin procéder à la reconstruction de celui-ci et que la question en suspens soit réglée. La Cour Suprême a transmis l’affaire au Tribunal d’Allahabad, qui, lui, n’a eu qu’une envie : se débarrasser de ce dossier fort épineux.

Les juges d’Allahabad ont donné pour mission à l’instance principale des archéologues indiens, l’ « Archeological Survey of India » (ASI), de procéder à des fouilles extrêmement précises. En 2003, l’ASI mettait à jour les soubassements d’un vaste édifice ancien qui, vu le nombre d’objets d’art à fonction cultuelle qui y furent exhumés, ne pouvait être rien d’autre qu’un temple. Ces fouilles ont confirmé les résultats de travaux archéologiques antérieurs et corroboré les témoignages offerts par d’innombrables documents : et, bien entendu, sur le site préalablement présumé du temple de Rama, contesté par les Musulmans, il y a bel et bien eu un temple.

Koenraad ELST.

(article paru dans « ‘ t Pallieterke », 6 octobre 2010).

Por la creacion de un Romanestan - Los Gitanos, ?Un problema Hindu-Europeo?

Por la creación de un Romanestán

LOS GITANOS, ¿UN PROBLEMA HINDU-EUROPEO?

Sebastian J. Lorenz

Ex: http://imperium-revolucion-conservadora.blogspot.com/ 

 

Los “gitanos”, también conocidos como “rom, roma o romaní”, son un pueblo nómada –o mejor decir “itinerante”- procedente de Asia, concretamente del Subcontinente Indio, en la zona que actualmente ocupa la frontera entre los estados de Pakistán y la India. Su pretendido origen egipcio o babilonio (muy difundido por ellos mismos) está descartado. No digamos ya de sus leyendas sobre una procedencia misteriosa. El estudio de la lengua romaní – el romanò-, propia de los gitanos, confirmó que se trataba de una lengua índica, muy similar al panyabí o al hindi occidental. Además, los estudios genéticos corroboran la evidencia lingüística que sitúa el origen del pueblo gitano en dicha área geográfica. Con todo, la inclusión de una persona como perteneciente al pueblo gitano depende no sólo de factores étnicos (únicos reconocidos por ellos, desde su visión etnocéntrica) sino también de indicios socioeconómicos (desde una posición eurocéntrica).

Existen en el mundo unos 12 millones de gitanos, 9 de los cuales reside –o mejor dicho, “se desplaza”- en Europa, continente en el que la mayor cuota se la lleva Rumanía (más de 2 millones) y con importantes minorías en otros países como España (800-000), Francia e Italia, países de recepción de su peculiar diáspora migratoria, que se ha visto incrementada, tras la caída del muro comunista, por una auténtica invasión romaní del occidente europeo procedente de los países del este, y que previsiblemente alcanzará cotas máximas con las actuales medidas adoptadas en varios estados europeos (Austria, Chequia, Italia, Francia).

Los problemas fundamentales de este grupo étnico derivan de su desinterés por la integración y de la discriminación que sufren por parte de las poblaciones europeas de origen. En un principio, su confesionalidad cristiana les hizo ser bien acogidos en todo el continente europeo, pero pronto serían perseguidos por mendicidad y vagabundeo (Carlos V fue un maestro en la materia). La leyenda negra sobre los gitanos gira en torno a su nomadismo, su celo racial, sus costumbres ancestrales (magia, brujería), su falsa sexualidad, su apatía laboral, su tendencia a la delincuencia, su desinterés por la comunidad que les adopta, incluso –con más frecuencia de la deseable- su odio y desprecio a todo aquel que no acepte sus tortuosas leyes consuetudinarias. Con todo, hay que decir que en España los gitanos han logrado reubicarse, aparentemente, en condiciones bastante óptimas, situación, no obstante, que no ha estado exenta de conflictos entre los dos grupos étnicos (payos y gitanos).

La legislación represiva es muy antigua. De 1449 a 1783 -fecha en la que Carlos III equipara jurídicamente a los gitanos con el resto de los españoles, creyendo que la tolerancia aceleraría su integración en la sociedad- se dictan dos leyes punitivas contra ellos, con sanciones que iban desde el destierro o la cárcel hasta la prohibición de hablar su propia lengua. Una disposición de 1878, mantenida todavía en buena parte del siglo XX, establecía que los gitanos debían exhibir ante los agentes de la autoridad cerrespondiente, la cédula personal, la patente de hacienda y la guía de caballería, bajo pena de detención inmediata o embargo (en la práctica, confiscación automática).

En nuestro país, desde luego, sigue existiendo una especie de “apartheid” ibérico en forma de “gitanerías o barrios calorros” (además de los conocidos poblados de chabolas, donde reina el narcotráfico y el crimen organizado), donde la transición del nomadismo y la trashumancia al sedentarismo urbano, provoca el enfrentamiento entre clanes (ahora también, entre mafias), haciéndose difícil el mantenimiento de una mínima cohesión interna (que sólo se manifiesta cuando se unen contra los payos o se alían para seguir siendo subvencionados), todo lo cual explosiona hacia afuera en una acentuada tensión entre las dos comunidades raciales y sociales que no tiene indicios de terminar pacíficamente, sino todo lo contrario.

El proyecto de construir un Estado Romaní, idealizado por una pretendida “nación gitana”, bajo el nombre de “Romanestán”, actualmente es una entelequia. En un principio, este estado se situaba en alguna parte de Somalia o Sudán, posteriormente al norte de la India y Pakistán (una vuelta a los orígenes), actualmente debería pensarse en la despoblada área euroasiática, en las estepas ocupadas por las etnias exsoviéticas de origen turco-mongol (con permiso de los iranios), un espacio geográfico muy apropiado para su estilo de vida nómada (o semi-sedentaria, pero nunca más parasitaria). Pero este proyecto ideal -seguramente, la mayoría de los ciudadanos europeos mostrarían su conformidad- carece de fuertes mentores políticos y económicos que sí concurrieron en la formación del Estado de Israel. Tampoco existe un suelo que reclamar (aunque sea retrocediento varios milenios como los hebreos), donde los gitanos hubieran tenido una vida organizada socialmente autónoma. Sin embargo, considero que la creación de un estado gitano independiente (pero vigilado y tutelado por la Unión Europea y Rusia) es una necesidad acuciante que deberá plantearse en un futuro inmediato. Está mal decirlo (pensarlo en silencio sería lo correcto), pero los problemas étnicos no se solucionan con expulsiones o discriminaciones, aunque tampoco con integraciones y subvenciones.

[Publicado en "ElManifiesto.com"]