To Whom Does This Land Belong?

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Stalin, based on new research about pre-modern history, stated that the archaeologists have concluded that the Iron Age first began in Tamil Nadu. Stalin emphasised this finding to be pivotal to understanding the historical timeline of the Indian subcontinent and said proudly that “I’m constantly saying that the history of India will be written from Tamil Nadu,” highlighting the research’s potential to reshape historical narratives. Should it matter so much to the present time?

In a way proving that ‘we’ were the ‘first comers’ here many ‘nationalist’ ‘ethnic’ tendencies used it to dominate the society in various countries. One recalls that the Sinhala assault on Tamil (Hindus) in Sri Lanka had to suffer a lot at the hands of Sinhala ethnic nationalism, which claimed that Sinhalas are the first comers on that Island so the island belongs to them!

Nearer home Hindu nationalism is no different. It regarded Hindus as synonymous with Aryans and went on the claim that Aryans are the original inhabitants of this land. This claim was articulated by the second Sarsanghchalak of RSS, M S Golwalkar, who in his book, ‘We or Our Nationhood Defined’ wrote that, “We—Hindus—have been in undisputed and undisturbed possession of this land for over 8 or even 10 thousand years before the land was invaded by any foreign race” and therefore, this land, came to be known as Hindustan, the land of the Hindus”.

This was in contrast to Lokmanya Gangadhar Tilak who had said that Aryans came from the Arctic region. Golwalakar solved this dilemma without contradicting Tilak by saying that the Arctic area itself was here in the Orissa- Bihar Region, which later shifted to the north.

These acrobatics had to be performed to prove that the Aryans were natives of this land. So, Hindus are the natives.

Many theories prevail about this. Many European scholars including Indophile Max Muller believed that Aryans had invaded India. This theory is baseless as it was the era of pastoral society, where migrations were the norm and not invasion. Invasions came up later with the formation of Kingdoms. The other most logical one, based on linguistics and geological evidence, argued that Aryans came here in a series of waves of migration.

The whole Race theory stands discredited today. It was an attempt by colonial powers to show their racial superiority giving them the right to rule. On similar lines Brahmanical ideology also claimed Brahmins and upper caste to be descendents of a superior race so entitled to have a superior position in society.

The BJP-led central Government has formed a committee to document the 12000 -year- old history of India. As things are so crystal clear from the DNA-Genetic studies about the fact which says Indians are all mixed up people; why such a committee? The idea is to prove that Hindus (Aryans) are the original inhabitants of this land. After the result of population genetics not much remains to dig into this issue except for claiming the ‘land’.

[Contributed by Ram Puniyani]

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 36, March 2 - 8, 2025