Indo-Aryan migration vs Indigenous origin - scholarly debate

[Prof P Kumar]

Dear Robert Zydenbos,

For a serious scholars like yourself, your comments (just a sample is
attached) are full of sarcasm. While I agree with your general argument, as
you yourself indicate serious scholars in India are still unconvinced about
the revisionist theory. However, I hope you are not implicitly indicating
therefore that the revisionist attempt is to be abandoned. As someone else
(I cant remember who it was) suggested recently on this list that altough
generally the revisionist arguments are lacking in evidence and
academically sound arguments, there are none the less some points that are
valid. But what is important is that we need to keep the debate open and
yes indeed there will be a lot of substandard (I wouldn't call it garbage
for reasons of political correctness) material gets circulated on this
debate, as serious scholars we need to separate the junk from the good
material which often gets enmeshed in each other. Cheers, Pratap

>(In a similar way: the AIT/AMT came from the West, so it must be sinful
>and condemned. We'll receive enlightenment / entertainment from some
>Indian savants and take care not to criticise them too much, just as we
>don't criticise Vivekananda.)
>
>By the way, the Indian press is catching up on Madonna, whom one paper
>describes as "the mistress of musical metamorphosis and media
>manipulation," I found out today. Poor material memsahib. Suppose there
>is something genuine in this new turn of hers? We'll never know. Maybe
>she will never know either. Deepak Chopra and the soft circuit must be
>cashing in on this.
>
>RZ

Prof. P. Kumar (Head of Dept)
Department of Science of Religion
University of Durban-Westivlle
Private BagX54001
Durban
4000
South Africa
Tel: 027-31-204-4539 (work)
Fax: 027-31-204-4160 (work)
Email: kumar at pixie.udw.ac.za

Director of the 18th Quinquennial Congress of the IAHR Durban- August 5-12 2000
For more info on the Congress please see:
http://www.udw.ac.za/iahr