Need comments on book Cradle of civilization

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> From -

>3. D.N.Jha's review of Trautman's Aryans and British India at
>http://www.indolink.com/Book/archive.html

"...some scholars in contemporary India have tried to whip up the Aryanness
of the Hindus as against the followers of Islam. The degree of their success
is difficult to assess but one thing is quite clear: the champions of the
idea of the Aryan as a race in the biological sense today have much in
common with our erstwhile imperial masters."

The question is whether these said people think of Aryan as a "race
in the biological sense", when they talk of the Aryanness of Hindus.
For one, I doubt if many have the sophistication to distinguish a
false idea of "biological race" from other equally (or more) false
ideas of race. For another, inasmuch as they object to conversions
of Hindus to other religions, they must surely agree that Muslims
in India belong to the same "race(s)" as other Indians in their
immediate neighbourhoods.

As for Frawley, the author of the "Cradle of Civilization", he would
share little with the erstwhile imperial masters of India. I think
Trautmann (and Jha) have to talk of a different kind of Indomania,
in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Best wishes,
Vidyasankar

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