The point I am trying to make the foreign accounts we use in our history are often biased and inaccurate.They are essentially what we now call colonial historiography historians who were or are characterised by a colonialist ideology.Many of the front rank colonial historians were British officials.
One good example of such case is James Mill.Between 1806 and 1818, James Mill wrote a series of volumes on the history of India and this work had a formative influence on British imagination about India. The book was titled History of British India, but the first three volumes included a survey of ancient and medieval India while the last three volumes were specifically about British rule in India. This book became a great success, it was reprinted in 1820, 1826 and 1840 and it became a basic textbook for the British Indian Civil Service officers undergoing training at the East India's college at Hailey burg.
How ever the funny thing is Mill in his entire life had never been to India and the entire work was written on the basis of his limited readings in books by English authors on India. It contained a collection of the prejudices about India and the natives of India which many British officers acquired in the course of their stay in India.Later on this book became the single most important source of British Indophobia and hostility to Orientalism.
Their are plenty of examples like him.
To repeat once again, these patently propagandistic versions were among the first to be discarded; only the lunatic fringe among the colonisers took any notice of them after the first flush of enthusiasm. It was far too apparent that such histories were biased and filled with prejudice, and written to establish useful facts to be used by the administration.
The Aryan Invasion Theory(Indo-Aryan migration As it is now called) was used to justify European Colonialism in India.There has many evidences emerged that British promotion of AIT was motivated by a political agenda.It was created to make it appear that Indian culture and philosophy was dependent on the previous developments in Europe, thereby justifying the need for colonial rule and Christian expansion in India.
Why on earth should this be so? Let us consider this argument piece-meal, beginning with the mention of Europe, which seems to be essential in the alleged attempt to use the AIT for colonial purposes.
First, what gives anyone the impression that these aspects of culture or philosophy had any links with Europe? Europe was another destination for another, different section of the Aryan speaking melange on the steppes, and their culture and philosophy developed far later than the Indian sections, even according to those early scholars who developed the Aryan Invasion Theory to account for the sudden appearance of a member of the Indo-European language family in India. Greece was the earliest to develop a philosophical body of thought, and that happened geographically far away, temporally later than the period of the Upanishads. That being so, where was there any question of Europe influencing India?
Second, it was the incursion of external rulers who were not Hindu which was used to justify colonial rule: if Turks, Afghans and Turkicised Mongols could invade, conquer and rule with perfect legitimacy and the acceptance of their rule by the people whom they ruled, so could the British invade, conquer and rule. The Aryan Invasion Theory hardly came into it.
Third, the reference to Christian expansion in India is mysterious. There was a school of thought among the colonial administrators that denigrated Indian thought systems and philosophy, and religion as well, and it was this school of thought that felt that missionary activity would be positive and wholesome. This was
not the unified policy of the administration in general at all; that policy fluctuated between banning missionary activity to permitting it freely. Dozens, scores of the administrators in question were at the same time translating and dwelling with great regard and fondness over the fruits of the philosophy that they were supposed to be uprooting with the help of Christian missionaries. Certainly the possibility of the invasion of India by a mythical Aryan race had no bearing on the policy towards missionaries and missionary activity, not until towards the end of British rule in general.
in essence, the British used the theory of the Aryan invasion to further their divide and conquer policy. With civil unrest and regional cultural tensions created by the British through designations and divisions among the Indian society, it gave a reason and purpose for the British to continue and increase their control over India.Our historians often don't realize when they quote the work of these European historians.
While the first part is increasingly revealed to be true, ironically in great part by European historians such as Dalrymple, the second part is a bizarre statement. Our historians are not as stupid as the statement above seems to imply. They had the discretion and the judgmental capacity to sift through the histories concerned and to eliminate obvious distortions and propaganda elements.
It is sometimes baffling to read laymen write with great authority about how trained Indian historians get taken in by European propaganda, when these laymen can see right through the conspiracies with their penetrating vision. Does this seem likely, even to the blithe exegetes who come out with these breath-taking statements?
Their are often people who make revisionist histories to further their political agenda and I am totally against but in the name of that we must not shy away from revisiting the works of this European historians and the circumstances and their political views.
Ask any Indian historian. The answer you will get will be short and to the point: "Been there, done that."