Indo-Aryan migration vs Indigenous origin - scholarly debate

[Robert J. Zydenbos]

Prof P Kumar wrote on Tue, 17 Mar 1998 14:03:05 +0200:

> 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.

Surely not offhand -- I quite agree with you on that point.
Marvellous discoveries are often made in totally unexpected
corners, and all should get a fair hearing. My only concerns in
that posting of mine are that researchers should beware of double
standards (e.g.: "old Western researchers and their Indian
followers had hidden political and racialist agendas, recent Indian
researchers and their Western followers cannot have any") and that
besides being self-critical, we should not be afraid of being
critical of our opponents in scholarly debates when there are clear
signs of foul play in certain quarters - irrespective of who the other
is.

> For a serious scholars like yourself, your comments (just a sample
> is attached) are full of sarcasm.

Here I have to admit that I do not quite know to what extent our
list is a serious scholarly forum!... The seriousness varies from
thread to thread. If the treatment of this topic in the list had
been less bizarre, I surely would have been less sarcastic and fiery.

Regards,
RZ