Pagla Dashu
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That is a legitimate grouse you have. I have no bones to pick.By modern political reality, I meant that foreigners generally talk of Indian food or music or dress, even though the actual item may come from Pakistan or Bangladesh, etc. Most foreigners lump south Asian culture into one bucket, generically referred to as 'Indian'.
Genetics cant refute, neither can it confirm with utmost certainty, any claims of mass population shifts. What it can do is point in a general direction i.e. give an indication, of the origin of a group of people or may be the history of admixture. The science of genetics is many lightyears away from being able to establish with reasonable accuracy, how they ended up today in a certain geographical location from where their ancestors were located, thousands of years ago. We can only speculate.The claim is based on geography and historical artifacts. Genetics is only used to refute claims of mass population shifts.
And no, the claim that IVC is exclusive to Pakistan is not based on geography. It is a political claim. Pakistan is the political identity of the region that Pakistan occupies today. Its geographical identity is ancient India.
A few posts back I commented on this. Anyway, India has existed even couple of thousand years ago - not as a homogeneous political entity but as a geographical entity which later assumed this geo-political identity that it is today. That the region east of Indus had a distinctive geographical identity is attested by several foreign scholars who visited this region during those times, as part of any conquest or on purely scholarly pursuit. This geographical identity, 'India', was latter borrowed to create a political identity once the foreign invaders decided to set shop in this region.Foreign scholars use the phrase 'ancient India' in deference to its use in historical texts which, as I have indicated, was sloppy wording by people throughout the ages. Certainly there were brief periods when these lands were united under common rule, but they were exactly that -- brief periods. For most of its history, the lands comprising modern Pakistan were not ruled by Gangetic rulers.
What Im saying is that ancient India is not a political identity but a _geographical_ identity. So it is irrelevant if Gangetic rulers ever ruled the region that is Pakistan today.
Calling scholars sloppy is probably not a wise thing to do, given our own credentials.
The analogy is red herring. USA was/is formed through migration, which is pretty recent, India wasnt. Aryan migration in India happened so long ago that it is impossible to scientifically identify these Aryan migrants as separate group. A Mexican-American migrant cant lay claim to Greek heritage by being co-citizens with the Greek emigrants, but a Bihari, for example, from India can claim his IVC heritage by being descendants of largely the same stock as the Tamils are. This is how a Pakistani can claim heritage, not because a segment of ruins of IVC are in Pakistan.It's a matter of degree. The further away you go from the core cities of Harappa, Taxila and Mohenjo-daro, the less relevance IVC has to these cultures. Taking your own argument in reverse, the Dravidian refugees from Aryan invasions would form a miniscule percentage of the already established, indigenous population. Modern day Tamil Nadu laying claikm to IVC would be like USA laying claim to ancient Greek heritage because of a few thousand Greek-American migrants.
Whether IVC culture fades away and finally appears to disappear as one moves to the east, south or south east, is irrelevant. Culture is not static. It evolves with time. But the vestiges do remain as undeniable link to the past. The problem is with the basis of apportion of history. If it is the history of peoples we are talking, then it should ideally be based on cultural heritage. If it is the history of land we are talking, then it is of course geography. History, however, is generally the history of peoples, not of land. Pakistan, in any case, cant claim exclusivity to IVC on the basis of any of the two.