I know most of you Indians are too cool to care. As an interested outsider, I am keen to get my facts right. Please correct me if I were wrong, and welcome to more discussions.
So this is what I figured out recently: Aryan invasion theory is utterly fabricated by the British to put down Indians, so they are easily subjected to occupation and exploitation. It's one of the evilest shit ever in human history. For more than 300 years, the British put this in the Indians' mind - You are just a bunch of bastards, you lost your original culture (Indus Valley Civilization), what you have as a culture now, comes from some white dudes who are moving herdsmen and rapists.
Aryan Invasion theory was in each every textbook and each every scholar's mind, it was in each every classroom that studied Indian history and in the South Asia department of each every university and college in the world. This theory was injected in all of South Asians' blood, for centuries. But it just took me, a stay-home mom some reading and India trips to figure it out.
What is the Aryan Invasion theory by the way? In short, it's saying that at the decline of the Indus Valley Civilization (2000 BCE), bands of light-skinned Aryans invaded the Indian Subcontinent from Central Asia and conquered the dark-skinned Indus dwellers. And the light-skinned Aryans were the noble ones who designed the religious ritual system and stayed on top of the pyramid, ruling over the dark-skin ones.
By the saying of it, I could feel that the theory was baked up from an extremely racist place. Not to traumatize you all, the large majority of Chinese who think themselves know something about India, they learned the light-skinned higher caste rulers are white people - the European descendent Aryans who came to invade India.
The sad part is most people are unaware, but in their conscious mind, they are situated to white supremacy without knowing. Good work British, this is how you ruled the world and we are still living in the dark.
Five years ago I was named as one of the 100 people who actually really know something about India (out of the 1.3 billion). Five years later, I am not sure how many of the 100 people are still active. And out of the 100 or whatever number it is, I don't think other than me, any scholar ever openly brought up the evilness or wrongness of the Aryan Invasion theory, or they just never cared to question. So ya, the 1.3 billion Chinese are still in the dark, thanks to the British.
So why Indus Valley Civilization is still alive and active among all Indians? How can you say Indian culture is the only surviving ancient civilization that never died? First of all, with more advanced technology, more and more unearthed artifacts from Indus Valley Civilization are undoubtedly proving, today among Hindus, they are doing pretty much the same thing. For example, worshipping to Goddess (female) statue, worshipping of Shiv lingam, lotus posture found in various artifacts, figure that highly resembled lord Shiv, red-colored Sindhu found on the forehead of women's statue. The evidence is only accumulating.
Also, recent satellite photography has shown that between 1900 and 1600 BCE the Indus River changed course, the cities of the Indus Civilization were being abandoned during that period. Most likely the Indus Valley people just migrated to different locations. Furthermore, Aryans' own extensive writings never mention wars or hostilities against peoples who can be positively identified as indigenous to India.
And take a look at the Durga Puja celebration, one of the biggest events in Hindu culture today. The mythology of Durga maa goes way earlier than Ramayana. Lord Rama chose the date of Durga maa's fighting to go on his own fighting, and he prayed to Durga maa to gain strength. To me, it shows the continuance and persistence of the ancient culture.
And as a human being, I don't think we are recognizing and celebrating enough the fact that, whatever the humans in Indus Valley did 6000 years back, we are still doing it today. This is definitely the biggest miracle in today's living world. And I truly believe that to decipher the ancient culture that has survived through all the ups and downs in human history, is the only way to save us in the future.
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More on Durga Puja
I asked my husband about the story of Diwali, the connection between Diwali and Durga Puja. What I realized is the mythology of Durga maa goes way earlier than lord Rama ("Ramayana" was written at 7th to 4th centuries BCE).
At that time (7th century BC), Durga maa's story must be like lord Rama's story at our time - prominent mythology that came from hundreds and thousands of years back, passed down from generation to generation.
It has to be from a very advanced civilization that had a systematic worshipping mechanism, that civilization must be around for a long long time, and was strong and influential enough to later lead to the creation of Ramayana and Mahabharata. Which is just a development of the same civilization. It has to be Indus Valley Civilization.
This is what I couldn't get out of my mind.
The key to this issue - decipher the ancient words found in Indus Valley, if there is a connection, then it can prove the "out of India" hypothesis. Which will have a stronger and stronger stand in the future, I personally believe.
Even there is no connection between the languages in Indus Valley to Vedic, it doesn't eliminate the fact that the rituals and worshipping system has passed down. The Vedas somehow recorded all of this. By all means, I don't see the sign of "Invasion", maximum "Integration".
I wouldn't at another life, believe the worshipping of Durga maa was imported from Central Asia. lol
Correct me if I were wrong.
My take on Aryan Invasion Theory
The famous Shiva figure with lotus posture, three faces and surrounded by animals
The other figure found in a seal with lotus posture and three faces
"When criticism is suppressed, mild disapproval becomes too harsh. When mild disapproval is suppressed, keeping silent becomes seemly suspicious. When keeping silence is not an option anymore, praising but not hard enough becomes a crime." - translated on October 10th 2019
I have something interesting to share with you all. As a lot of our friends know, my son loves to build from the beginning. His favorite toys are building blocks, train tracks, lego, magnet blocks, puzzles, anything that he could build and create. He is always known as the "little engineer". Meanwhile, my daughter rarely showed any interest in any of her brother's building toys. Instead, she picked the soft toys that her brother seldom touched. She treats them as her "babies" and takes care of them.
I had never worried a thing, because my house is not "pink-blue" marked, meaning all of my kids' toys are gender-neutral, our attitude towards them also gender-neutral. My daughter likes to play with her "babies", she is also wild and full of energy, her other favorites are reading, sports and being mischievous, she is emotionally very mature, she is perceiving and expressive.
But when parents compare notes, you sometimes would hear a little disappointment or concern toward girls' choice of toys. "Why she only likes her dolls?" "We are trying to make her play more of the building blocks." "Well, boys are boys, girls are girls." And in my house, a few times we heard comments like "Aditi, stop playing with your 'babies' and build something with your brother!" "How can you guys let her play dolls all day long? I don't want her to grow up to be unintelligent."
Now this is a very interesting aspect. Most of us literally was raised up in patriarchal society, up to today, large of us still live in such mentality and environment. This is where the "males-who-do-engineering > females-who-Only-nurture, engineering > nurturing" mindset rooted. Well, there are obviously other angles to it, for example, the popular campaign of "STEM" or "STEAM" education that promotes Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics.
As you can foresee, while my daughter is growing out of her infancy, the pressure of making her play with "engineering type of toys" is also growing. I would sit her down and (almost forcefully) teach her puzzles, sometimes on the edge of breaking out, I am holding up my patience but some unhealthy thoughts start racing in my mind "why she is not getting it as fast as her brother?" "When he was at this age, he could do 48 pieces easily, but she can't even figure out 8?"
Before all of this went to a dark and misleading direction, one day something just clicked in my mind as I was recalling why myself loved building wooden blocks when I was little. I was building castles for the "people" to live! Without this emotional element, pure engineering would not excite me.
I believe everybody is triggered by different keywords, while my son's keywords are Train, Plane, Rocket, my daughter's are People, Emotions, Relationship. This absolutely doesn't indicate that she is uninterested for STEM, you just need to guide her by her own keywords.
So I asked her "do you want to build a crib for your baby bunny?" Before we had time to get shocked, she was building crib, highchair and house for her babies, and she was extremely happy and excited that whole night. In the photo, it's the "bunny highchair" she designed and built.
Some of the things I learned from this experience:
1. Parents have no power in choosing the interests of their children, all you need to do is accept it and respect it;
2. For bringing up children, it's really tedious and frustrating sometimes, but there is always a way, you just need to be more patient, get a little deeper and try harder.
