The Aryan Invasion Theory was designed not only to INVENT a fake history for India but more importantly to CREATE a fake civilisational identity for the colonisers. They did not have any.
European colonisation did not start with the British. Columbus, a Spaniard, and Vasco-Di-Gama, a Portuguese, had set out in two different directions by sea to search for India. Why? Because the Ottoman Empire had blocked the trade routes between Asia and Europe. As a result, Europe was in distress because Indian goods were in great demand worldwide. India was then a huge manufacturing superpower which specialised in steel, textiles, medicinal herbs, jewellery and many other products. In exchange for these supplies Europe had nothing that India needed, except gold. That is how gold became a standard currency and even today India has one of the richest reserves of gold in Her coffers.
Vasco-Di-Gama managed to reach Goa while Columbus accidentally landed on the shores of the great continent of two ancient civilisations, the Aztec and the Maya. Columbus is credited with having DISCOVERED America which has now become a joke even among school going kids. The Pope, in order to justify this absurdity, ordained that the expression DISCOVERED can only be used when a white Christian first finds a new land.
Waves of infiltration followed. The Portuguese to India and the Spaniards to America. Native Americans were decimated as other Europeans followed their predecessors’ trail to grab their share of land and resources. The Portuguese, in the meanwhile, managed to capture and occupy some of the western areas of India. Soon the Dutch, the French and the British sniffed their chances.
The early invaders realised soon enough that a direct confrontational approach would not work well in India as it had in America. Though India was politically fragmented with many kingdoms and princely states, the armies were well equipped in modern warfare. The Dutch, for example, were comprehensively defeated in the South. The British were masters of deceit. Thus began the saga of the East India Company.
What followed was a systematic demolition of the powerful Indian industries like steel and textiles, a devastation of the agricultural sectors and indigenous medical traditions. What was sucked out from India became the foundation of what we know as the industrial revolution.
How to justify these atrocities except to claim that they had taken all this trouble to actually CIVILISE us?
(To be continued)
Joydeep