Aryan invasion debate

[Paul Kekai Manansala]

(continued from last post)

3. Samar suggested that there the present Aryan-Dravidian conflict
supports the idea of an invasion. I'm not sure if this is the case.
There are different groups present in India, but not all got there
via invasion. The roots of some of the current hostilities are of
more modern origin or aren't necessarily racial in origin.

A lot of the modern color-preferences, for example, can be traced more
to Islamic and Western periods, than to the classical times where both
dark and fair complexion were usually considered attractive. For
example, in the epics you have the dark heroes Rama, Krishna and
Draupadi.

The arguments of Risley that one could distinguish castes by complexion
and nasal indice have been refuted with the possible exception of the
northwest region. And the latter instance need not be linked back to a
proposed invasion three thousand years ago or so.

In my opinion, the movement of people in through this region was much
easier in early periods especially after the fall of IVC. Natural back
and forth flow could have resulted in the establishment of population
centers between India and regions to the West and Northwest. One need
not suggest an armed juggernaut as the cause of demographic changes and
indeed there is nothing to support such a theory.

Eventually,  conflicts could arise between different ethnic populations.

As an example, I might point to the case of Nepal.  How does one account
for the dizzying array of ethnic groups in that country?  How often does
an invasion scenario arise in such explanations? Is the Dravidian,
Indo-European, Himalayan, Austric and other presence there always to be
ascribed to military incursion?

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9845/austric.htm