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Post colonial scene: passing of the Aryan gods
The post colonial era may conveniently be dated to 1950. India was free and the great Aryan ‘Thousand Year Reich' lay in ashes. In Europe at least the word Aryan had acquired an infamy comparable to the word Jihadi today. Europeans, Germans in particular, were anxious to dissociate themselves from it. But there remained a residue of pre-war Indology (and associated race theories) in various guises that succeeded in establishing itself in academic centers mainly in the United States. Its most visible spokesman in recent times has been one Michael Witzel, a German expatriate like Max Müller, teaching in the Sanskrit Department at Harvard University in the United States. In a bizarre replay of Max Müller's flip-flops Witzel too is better known for his political and propaganda activities than any scholarly contributions. Witzel's recent campaigns, from attempts to introduce Aryan theories in California schools to his ill-fated tour of India where his scholarly pretensions were exposed in broad daylight highlight the continuing centrality of politics to Western Indology.
While the field of Indo-European Studies has continued on the fringes of academia, it has become the subject critical analysis by scholars in Europe and America. Unlike Indians who treat the field and its practitioners with a degree of deference, European scholars have not hesitated to call a spade a spade, treating it as a case of pathological scholarship with racist links to Nazi ideology. (This is no doubt because Europeans have experienced its horrors while Indians have learnt about it only at second hand.)
In a remarkable article, "Aryan Mythology As Science And Ideology" (Journal of the American Academy of Religion1999; 67: 327-354) the Swedish scholar Stefan Arvidsson raises the question: "Today it is disputed whether or not the downfall of the Third Reich brought about a sobering among scholars working with 'Aryan' religions." We may rephrase the question: "Did the end of the Nazi regime put an end to race based theories in academia?"
An examination of several humanities departments in the West suggests otherwise: following the end of Nazism, academic racism may have undergone a mutation but did not entirely disappear. Ideas central to the Aryan myth resurfaced in various guises under labels like Indology and Indo-European Studies. This is clear from recent political, social and academic episodes in places as far apart as Harvard University and the California State Board of Education. But there was an interregnum of sorts before Aryan theories again raised their heads in West.
Last update : 10-10-2009 17:44
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