Aryan Debate

As soon as we start looking for Rig Vedic archaeology, we come across two serious debates of  Ancient Indian History; End of Harappan Civilization and the Aryan debate,both inter-related. Aryan debate is perhaps the most debatable topic of Ancient Indian History.The debate has two notions of Aryan identity:  first, immigrant Aryans and second, indigenous Aryans. Both these views have prevailed among the scholars for long. Though, earlier it used to be polite disagreement among scholars but today, as Trautman puts in, it has become a large noisy public debate.Scholars opine that history of past often becomes the object of public debate because ancient past serves for a particular vision of what the society should be and as for what it was in the past. Any society not having consensus  for its future blue-print often starts interpreting and debating its past to support particular ideological and politico- religious views.Truth diminishes under such conditions, primarily because evidences from deep past are pretty incomplete(and fragile at the same time). Secondly, whatever evidences or facts we gather in form of archaeological remains and literature are difficult to interpret and need a careful scrutiny.Neither literature of the ancient past, nor archaeological remains were written and left over to teach us a lesson in history. Special disciplinary skills of history, archaeology, philology and anthropology(to mention a few) are needed for evaluation of past documents.This can be only done with scholarly grace, humble disagreements while debate among scholars and sober-serious academic writings in place of mud-slinging, personal insults and derogatory remarks.

Arguments and disagreements have always been a welcome part of scholarly debates and will always be, as they help in writing and interpreting our past better. In recent past ARYAN DEBATE has been over-shadowed by political and religious objectives. Under such circumstances it has become difficult to determine the truth. India being a democracy, we all, Indians , can have our independent politico-religious views and ideologies. But it should be kept in mind that history of our countries past is indifferent to our views and ideologies. It is what it is either it graces our politico-religious views or disgraces it.