Deciphered!!! (was: Harappan Deciphered?!)

[Arun Gupta]

Perhaps the list might be interested in the effect of their arguments on the
Hindu layperson, e.g., me.

Yours truly was a physicist educated in the Nehruvian schools and blissfully
unaware of all this until 1990, when I first heard of the Ram Janmabhoomi/
Babri Masjid dispute.  I was in Pittsburgh at the time, and had access to a
fairly decent library at the U. of Pittsburgh.  Reading everything I could
find, it was clear that there was at least a twelvth century Vishnu or Ram
temple in Ayodhya that had been demolished because of Babar, and a mosque had
been built at the site.  Moreover, Babar's descendant, Aurangzeb, had renewed
the family tradition of demolishing Hindu temples, having done so at at least
two other sites associated with Rama in Ayodhya.

I was also very much against doing anything to the Masjid.  In this dispute I
saw the opportunity for India to make a break with the many unfortunate
things in her past, continuing the trend marked by Independence, declaration
of a Republic, and so on.  Unfortunately that was not to be.

What is relevant here is that I did discover during this dispute, that a
historian like Romila Thapar was willing to lend her name to a lie for
political reasons.  In fact, people whom I would call leftists today, argued
that lies were necessary and essential to fight the Hindutvawaadis.

So, while I have little trust in the scholarship of the Hindutva folks, I
have lost trust in the "mainstream" scholars as well.

The high emotions expressed on this list also prove to me that neither side
has convincing arguments to back up their positions.

Re: decipherment of the Harappan script -- you people will make it like
Fermat's last theorem in mathematics -- no respectable academic will be able
to admit in public to working on the problem.  You all should be ashamed
of yourself.

-arun gupta