“Both the Aryans and Dravidians were immigrants to the country … the original inhabitants were scheduled tribes who were pushed to forests by the immigrants.” – Justice Katju
Chennai: Setting up the stage for yet another controversy, Press Council of India chairman and former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju on Thursday claimed that the spirit of Sanskrit is the factor that unites India.
The proposal for celebration of Sanskrit week in CBSE schools across the country attracted strong opposition from all political parties in the state just a few weeks ago.
“Despite tremendous diversity in India, the factor that is uniting us is a spirit of Sanskrit culture. Something special about Sanskrit that helps us remain united,” Justice Katju said while inaugurating 71st Y’s Men International Convention here. Stating that there was a misunderstanding that Sanskrit dominated other languages including Tamil, he said he respects all the languages including Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Punjabi.
The former CJI also dismissed as myth that Sanskrit is a language of religion and worship. “About 95 per cent of Sanskrit literature has nothing to do with religion. It deals with subjects like philosophy, science and laws. It also teaches anti religion. It covers wide spectrum of subjects,” he said.
Justice Katju rubbished the claim made by some people that in ancient India there was atom bomb and aeroplane as nonsense. “Ramayan and Mahabarath are epic poems. Poets always has poetic licence. It means that poets can exaggerate and they can embellish. Don’t take it literally,” he said.
Mr Markandey Katju also claimed that the theory of Dravidians as original inhabitants of India is also proved wrong.
Both the Aryans and Dravidians were immigrants to the country, he said, adding that original inhabitants were scheduled tribes who were pushed to forests by the immigrants. – Deccan Chronicle, 8 August 2014
See also
- The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India – David Frawley
- 1 & 2 – Indo-Europeans: Their origins and the natural history of their languages – N.S. Rajaram
- 3 – Indo-Europeans: Pashupati’s animals on the march – N.S. Rajaram
- 1 – Indian Third Wave West: Fertile Cresent and mathematics – N.S. Rajaram
- 2 – Indian Third Wave West: From language to thought – N.S. Rajaram
Filed under: india | Tagged: aryan, aryan race theory, culture, dravidian race theory, dravidians, hindu culture, india, justice katju, national language, national unity, sanskrit, sanskrit literature, tamil, tamil language, tamils |
If you speak an Indian language (including Tamil), you are using Sanskrit terms embedded in the language. Most North Indian languages are Sanskrit based.
Also what is meant by terming Sanskrit universal is that it does not belong to any group or class or geographical area (state). Sanskrit belongs to everybody and some Sanskrit vocabulary is used by everybody though they may not be aware of it.
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Not sure how sanskrit is ‘unversally and known throughout the country’. can you please tell me how many people know sanskrit in india
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That shows how Indians are enemy to themselves. While Aryan theory was debunked by west historians now, stupid Indians are still living in dark era of history. Read first.
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Anybody who has read the Rig Veda carefully knows that there was no Aryan invasion or migration into India. The Aryans so-called—they are not a race—are indigenous to North India. However Justice Katju and many others of his generation were taught otherwise, that there was an Aryan invasion from some supposed Aryan homeland in Central Asia, so they repeat it as fact. Justice Katju is not the only high profile commentator to make such a claim. A few months ago Ram Jethmalani did the same in an article in The Sunday Guardian. No doubt there will be more to come as newspaper editors are witless and fearful creatures when it comes to evaluating the opinions of ’eminent’ public intellectuals who, for the most part, continue to follow the established Macaulay-Marxist line on Indian history.
There is another school of thought of course, which declares that there was no Aryan invasion and that, in fact, ancient Indians originated in India and migrated west out of India to West Asia and Europe. They have the evidence of the Vedas themselves, which describes the areas we now know as Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh as the Aryan homeland. But these scholars are not well-known and their work remains on the periphery of academia because they are not supported by government and do not have position in the universities.
As to Justice Katju’s assertion that the Dravidians are also immigrants, we had better leave that question for Kalaignar Karunanidhi to answer in detail. He is the self-styled chief of the Dravidian race—a race invented by a Christian missionary in the 19th century—but if we remember correctly he has said that the Dravidians originated in Lemuria—Kumari Kandam in Sanskrit—and entered the subcontinent some 18000 years ago. So they are immigrants too, even if they immigrated from a non-existent imaginary place!
We agree with Justice Katju that Sanskrit culture unites India and that Sanskrit should be promoted and made the national language. It would be politic to include Tamil with Sanskrit as the national languages, as Tamil is equally ancient with a vast literature that can reveal the history of India, though it may not be universally known throughout the country like Sanskrit.
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