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What is 'Civilizational Continuity'?

what a bunch of utter nonsense.

Chillax and maintain the feel good nature of the discussion till now please. I will take up all your points in a civil manner.

1. There is no intolerance of religion in Pakistan. That is just your fantasy. Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and Hindus leave peacefully with each other for the most part (yes there are a few incidences here and there)
And I know that India for the most part tolerates other religions, but since you chose to make a stupid comment, I a want to know what you think of this thread
http://www.defence.pk/forums/indian-defence/183662-congress-govt-persecuting-hindus-like-hitler-persecuted-jews-4.html#post2991740
Seems to be a lot of hate for minorities from Hindus on this very forum :rolleyes:

This thread is not India vs Pakistan nor should it disintegrate into one.

Hinduism and Indian civilization has welcomed dissent and all faiths for thousands of years.

What has Islam's record been with regard to other faiths since its birth 1400 years ago?

Ask any Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Christian, Jew, or Zoroastrian which society they would prefer to live in - a muslim dominated one or a hindu dominated one. You should get your answer.

Ask any non-muslim the world over, even replacing hindu with christian (historically a much more violent and intolerant religion), and you will get your answer.

Forget that - the number of minorities who chose India over Pakistan at the time of Partition, including Muslims themselves, should have already given you that answer.

Simply put - you make minorities feel very insecure - and with good reason. That (intolerance) is NOT India or part of our culture and civilization. NEVER has been.

What is the dominant and state religion of Pakistan and the plinth on which it was created?

What is the state of your minorities and what percentage of your total population make up minorities? Was pakistan even created for minorities of other states?

And did you even read the thread and Indian responses you have pointed me to? We are collectively pissed with minority appeasement and that anger is showing. Do not mistake it for anti-minority sentiment but recognise it for what it is. The resentment over the perception of majority marginalisation. Not only by the majority but by other minorities as well. Not good for the majority. Not good for the minority. Only good for the politicians.

2. No one is killing in the name of religion, people are killing for their own motives (revenge, greed, power, etc)
And I know for the fact that people in India have killed each other in the name of religion, are you denying this?

Hindus are being killed. Christians are being killed. Ahmedis are being killed. Shias are being killed. Hazaras are being killed. Systematically. Not sporadically.

5. Again a stupid claim. We liberated the women of South Asia, where Hindus in the past (and even some today) view women as a burden or property, Muslims gave them their rights. India has one of the highest levels of female infanticide in the world, and those innocent girls only crime was to be born a girl. So I guess by your logic, murdering baby girls is a very Indian (and thus good?) thing.

Again this is not a Pakistan/muslim versus India/hindu thing please. We are well aware of the evils of our society with regard to women historically. But Islam's views on women are NOT a part of Indian civilization on so many levels man. That is the point I was making.

Notwithstanding the fact that female infanticide happens in India as well as Pakistan. Happens to Hindu babies as well as Muslim. And it is clearly recorded elsewhere that it was a practice common amongst the Arab tribes at the time of the birth of Islam as well. So can we say that the Islamic invasions left us with this legacy - on both sides?

6. This is the funniest one yet. Your whole religion and language hinge on a foreign invasion. The Aryans invaded you and forced their langue of Sanskrit. The Vadas are stories about how the (good) Aryan invaders killed and triumphed over the (evil) indigenous Dravidian. And this is your Holy book!!

I will let Joe answer this. I am weak on the historical and theological aspects of Hinduism. In case you missed the memo, it is not my faith.

7. Really pride is not Indian? have you read any comments by any Indian members here? :rolleyes:

Pride in what our OWN people did. Not what outsiders did to us.

8. and this is topping on the cake.
YOUR ENTIRE HISTORY HAS BEEN STATES FIGHTING EACH OTHER.
India has never been united historically. The history of India has been war and blood, and not just by invaders but by indigenous kingdoms.

None of the warring states ever fought over faith. You are willing to wipe us out on faith, and faith alone. It is the nature of man to fight. But fights can happen within the family (civilization) and they can happen between strangers (civilizations).

Till date we have believed that our fights have been within the family. You have not. But that is changing as well on our side as time rolls on and you move further away.
 
@rusty, what u said abt veda is partially correct. yes there r some mantras which states about clashes with local natives but its not all. Rigveda to be precise tells us about their rituals, science,food habits,medicine and ofcourse tribute to the 33 gods. the rishis who collected these beautiful hymns were scholars not war mongers.
 
Your argument is as silly as saying that Indians have an identity crisis with their caveman ancestors.
I am sorry to burst your wet dreams but there is no "inner struggle" or "conflict in identity" in Pakistan.
We Pakistanis are Muslim, full stop.

Being Muslims does not mean that we are not proud of our ancestors. Same as Europe is proud of Greek/Romans, Egyptians are proud of Ancient Egypt, etc etc.

The "problem" with Pakistan is that we have a neighbor who is still bitter and angry that we left their faith.
They still have dreams of re-converting us to Hinduism and bringing us back to our old ways.

They may not say it in words but their motives are made clear by discussions like this.
Please - respond with civility - your point can be made better, and certainly be taken more seriously, if you refrain from using terms such as 'wet dream'.
 
Another element of confirmation that the language spoken in the IVC was Dravidian by classification is the existence of pockets of Brahui in Baluchistan. Brahui is a distinctly Dravidian language. Other such candidates exist. It is difficult to understand how Brahui, a Dravidian language, came to be spoken in isolated pockets in the north-west, other than if some groups of Brahui speakers managed to reach those present locations and then found themselves stranded there, or unless these pockets are what remains of an entire region speaking that or similar languages.

Unlikely that Brahui is any way indicative of an earlier widespread presence of any Dravidian language in that area. Everything I have read suggests that Brahui was a recent arrival into that area, after 1000 A.D. It would be extremely odd otherwise. To believe that this language & its people survived a Aryan tsunami which swept everyone & everything in its path all the way into central India & somehow left this particular language & community intact would be more than a bit of a stretch. Brahui has a heavy Balochi influence but no loan words from Avestan which it should have had if its presence in the region was from the time of IVC. I do not believe that this argument stands on merit, there is way too much mental gymnastics needed to buy into that idea.
 
If high school history serves me correctly (I remember making a papier mache model of the great bath as a term project :)), Aryan migration and displacement was just one of the possibilities put forward.

Another very plausible reason was climatic changes and the drying up of the river Saraswati (?), making most of the region uninhabitable and forcing the population to drift south in search of sustenance.

Coincidentally, one could merge this thread here

http://www.defence.pk/forums/member...killed-harappan-civilization.html#post2991579

Either way, most historians are agreed that for such an advanced civilization of the Bronze age, sudden and complete disappearance, without any trace of the seals, statuettes, pottery, script, town planning, or architecture popping up elsewhere.

The IVC just suddenly up and disappeared. In toto! No thread. No link. Its as if the earth swallowed it up.

That to me is difficult to explain except for a catclysmic populational shift. Or genocidal eradication. Whichever way your current bread is buttered.

I did a little reading as well. Are such total population displacements or shifts or even disappearances unheard of in recorded history of mankind? Not at all. I cannot comment authoratively on the statistical parameters of whether such would be outliers or de rigeur as my good friend Developer seems to be convinced of - but the possibility exists and the signs to corroborate such are there.

If not signs, at least one would concede that there are questions - to which there are no other plausible answers, be they learned conjecture and extrapolation at best.

Why do we have to go two steps forward and three back? I read Joe's post and I thought 'hey we could be moving to a compromise of sorts' but then bang, somebody plants dynamite again in the form of the proverbial Saraswati. We are back to Hindu gods and Hindu scripture as our standard referance. This stinks of a agenda.

Let us for a second leave the land of legends, scripture, gods, conjecture, opinions, extrapolation, speculations and instead look at some geographic facts that we all can chew on. I must admit I have almost no knowledge in this Hindu field of 'human knowledge' but before people complain of bias I am equally ignorent of Islamic 'human knowledge'. I have no time for faith based 'science'. Instead let us look at some real facts on the ground:-

FACT 1. At present Harappa, Punjab, Pakistan is about 5 miles south of River Ravi. About 40 miles north of the Sutlej River. It is about 100 miles north of the dry riverbed of Hakra-Gaggar, the much talked about 'Saraswati. If you were to drive straight north from Hakra/Gaggar/Saraswati you would will have to navigate the Sutlej about 60 miles into your drive before you can get to Harappa.

FACT 2. Mohenjo Daro which is some 300 miles downstream of Ravi in Sindh, Pakistan. It is just 0.3 miles on the west bank of the Indus River. Yes, that is third of a mile and on the west side of River Indus not on the east side. If you drove from Indian Rajasthan you would have to cross the Indus before you get to Mohenjo Daro.

FACT 3. If you remove Mohenjo Daro, Harappa and Mehr Garh you almost take the heart out of the so called IVC. They are the plats principaux of the Indus Valley Civilization. Everything else is secondary and is always defined in referance to either Harappa or Mohenjo Daro.

So for god's sakes how the hell does the Hakra/Gaggar/Saraswati drying up or not have a effect on the history of these citiers? I maybe missing something here but please do explain. This mythical river even if it existed, which itself is speculation would be of no consequence to Mohenjo Daro or Harrapa.

Yes, maybe it might have had a effect on that 'hole in the sand' Kalibangan but that is not even worth talking about. I would seriously suggest people to use Google Earth to 'fly' to both locations and see for themselves what I am saying. Wikipedia articles although full of subjective rubbish do at least have co-ordinates for navigating to both sites.

And will people stop using the autopsy results of the 1947 event in a vain attempt to tie us down. That is in the past. get over it. We are not tied to 1947 for eternity. If the US can move on from it's founding fathers, so can we. If it was not blacks would still be slaves. No Indian can use that argument. Yes, inside Pakistan we will need to debate and move our people. That is our business.

If you think that Sindh and Punjab ended up in this Pakistan through a fraud of Islam, well get over it. The only reason why Tamil Nadu, Nagaland, Himachal Pradesh and Gujrat are tied into India is thanks to British. Unless you can prove to me that these states were all unified into one whole before the British came. I would not start saying the British bolted togather your country and neither should you bring up the 1947 use of religion.

I have said this more times then I can recall Punjab and Sindh were annexed and chained to the slave colony in 1849 and 1843 respectively. Why don't you philosophize over that? Why don't you try to find some deeper meaning in those events? If you can let me know because then I will be obliged to give you some sane explanation behind 1947. Until then look at the 19th century events as the 'cause' and the 20th century event as the 'effect'.

Developero is right for a people who cry on about secularism you bring up religion at the first chance you get. We, who come from a increasingly radicalized country are arguingour case without bringing religion into the frame. Seems tad strange.
 
I am saying much the same then as which was argued by KS.

We need to separate the political nation state of the present from what we mean by the dominant civilization and its continuity.
That is in fact the position I have taken all along, and therefore been critical of arguments using the constitutional framework of the modern Pakistani State as some sort of justification for a 'disassociation from ancient heritage'.
As I just responded to Developer, we have it. You are on your way to losing it.
And again, this claim by many Indians is one I fail to understand, hence my request for ya'll to elaborate on it, which you have attempted to do below:
Some indicators of civilizational shift?

Besides the fact that Pakistan needed to exist in the first place????????
Yes - the creation of modern political nation-states has a lot to do with the perceptions of the majority communities (or communities in power) in the regions comprising those states that they would 'get a better deal' as independent political entities. The creation of Pakistan really has no relevance here.
Intolerance to other faiths. That is not Indian. Never has been. Everything else pales in comparison but I will continue.
I certainly see that a lot on the aforementioned online Indian fora and sites, along with attempts by some more rational individuals to moderate those views. The communal violence of partition in Punjab and Bengal, by both sides, the massacres in Gujarat, Babri Mosque etc. certainly indicate similarities in religious intolerance between India and Pakistan (leaving out the current religious violence in Pakistan which is arguably exacerbate due to geo-political factors outside of Pakistan's control).

Religious fanaticism, fundamentalism, widespread anarchy, violence, bloodshed, killing in the name of religion. That is not Indian.
See above.
Your faith and your holy script. Not Indian.
Not 'Indian' (Indian defined as citizens of the modern Indian Republic)? I am not sure Indian Muslims would appreciate that.

'Indian' defined as 'South Asian' - why not? You are cherry picking a geo-graphical region and claiming that anything outside of it is 'foreign'. Why not 'Asia'? Islam and the Quran are certainly 'Asian', and by virtue of having spread to South Asia, are also a part of 'South Asian history'.
Circumcision - male or female. Most definitely not Indian.
See above.
Religious indoctrination in the form of the predominant education at the level of the masses (madrassas). Not Indian.
Yet the majority of the arguments by Indians on this thread have focused around discrediting Pakistan's links to its ancient heritage on the basis of religion, with references to the 'IVC and Vedic religious texts and practices', your own 'metric' of 'faith. So one could argue that the Indians on this thread at least are 'religiously indoctrinated and obsessed with religion'.
The burqa and your treatment of and views towards women (property, inheritance, marriage, working, etc.). That is not Indian.
The 'rights of women in Islam' is an evolving subject, with more and more modern scholars challenging older interpretations. One could argue that 'wearing jeans and shades is not Indian', if you are going to use 'fashion sense' as a metric now. And how exactly is the practice of Sati so much better than the poor treatment of women in some parts of the Muslim world?

Celebrating foreign invaders and associating strongly (historically, spiritually, culturally, militarily, socially) with alien people, be they Arab or Iranic or Turkic. That is not Indian.
Why not? These people are a part of our history, they are no more invaders than the rulers of South Asia that fought amongst themselves over power and territorial ambition.

Proudly proclaiming that you ruled Indians for a thousand years, as slaves, etc. That is not Indian.
I certainly don't see that as a viewpoint being presented here, and certainly not one reflected by serious commentators, or with any frequency, on Pakistani media.
Waging wars against India and Indians and calling them your blood enemies. Definitely not Indian man. Even if you may believe that you are waging war against all Indians (Hindus, Sikhs, etc.) but the 170 odd million Indian muslims.
The same kind of hostile rhetoric emanates from Indians.

These 'tangible shifts' you have referred to are pretty subjective, and rather petty little things in the overall scheme. I mean come on, circumcision, dress codes, nationalistic rhetoric?
Not East, but deep South. I believe Joe has already elaborated on this point in a previous post of his.
He has pointed to to a linguistic link, but there is no evidence to suggest a complete migration. I was also under the impression that some research suggests that the Indian South was amongst the first regions to be populated in South Asia, which would imply, if we are to hypothesize linguistic similarities through physical migration, a migration and mingling of people from South to North and North-West.

By Hindutva as our nationalistic cultural identity as a people as against Hinduism as a religion and a faith.
How do you distinguish between 'Hindutva as a nationalistic cultural identity' from 'Hinduism as a religion and faith'? So far it seems like some 'airy fairy, lets hold hands and sing Kumbaya' type of 'common identity', nothing that can be tangibly identified without resort to Hinduism as a religion.
 
Huge Ancient Civilization's Collapse Explained

The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say.

Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia may be the best known of the first great urban cultures, but the largest was the Indus or Harappan civilization. This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10 percent of the world population. The civilization developed about 5,200 years ago, and slowly disintegrated between 3,900 and 3,000 years ago — populations largely abandoned cities, migrating toward the east.

"Antiquity knew about Egypt and Mesopotamia, but the Indus civilization, which was bigger than these two, was completely forgotten until the 1920s," said researcher Liviu Giosan, a geologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. "There are still many things we don't know about them." [Photos: Life and Death of Ancient Urbanites]

Nearly a century ago, researchers began discovering numerous remains of Harappan settlements along the Indus River and its tributaries, as well as in a vast desert region at the border of India and Pakistan. Evidence was uncovered for sophisticated cities, sea links with Mesopotamia, internal trade routes, arts and crafts, and as-yet undeciphered writing.

"They had cities ordered into grids, with exquisite plumbing, which was not encountered again until the Romans," Giosan told LiveScience. "They seem to have been a more democratic society than Mesopotamia and Egypt — no large structures were built for important personalitiess like kings or pharaohs."

Like their contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Harappans, who were named after one of their largest cities, lived next to rivers.

"Until now, speculations abounded about the links between this mysterious ancient culture and its life-giving mighty rivers," Giosan said.

Now Giosan and his colleagues have reconstructed the landscape of the plain and rivers where this long-forgotten civilization developed. Their findings now shed light on the enigmatic fate of this culture.

"Our research provides one of the clearest examples of climate change leading to the collapse of an entire civilization," Giosan said. [How Weather Changed History]

The researchers first analyzed satellite data of the landscape influenced by the Indus and neighboring rivers. From 2003 to 2008, the researchers then collected samples of sediment from the coast of the Arabian Sea into the fertile irrigated valleys of Punjab and the northern Thar Desert to determine the origins and ages of those sediments and develop a timeline of landscape changes.

"It was challenging working in the desert — temperatures were over 110 degrees Fahrenheit all day long (43 degrees C)," Giosan recalled.

After collecting data on geological history, "we could reexamine what we know about settlements, what crops people were planting and when, and how both agriculture and settlement patterns changed," said researcher Dorian Fuller, an archaeologist with University College London. "This brought new insights into the process of eastward population shift, the change towards many more small farming communities, and the decline of cities during late Harappan times."

Some had suggested that the Harappan heartland received its waters from a large glacier-fed Himalayan river, thought by some to be the Sarasvati, a sacred river of Hindu mythology. However, the researchers found that only rivers fed by monsoon rains flowed through the region.

Previous studies suggest the Ghaggar, an intermittent river that flows only during strong monsoons, may best approximate the location of the Sarasvati. Archaeological evidence suggested the river, which dissipates into the desert along the dried course of Hakra valley, was home to intensive settlement during Harappan times.

"We think we settled a long controversy about the mythic Sarasvati River," Giosan said.

Initially, the monsoon-drenched rivers the researchers identified were prone to devastating floods. Over time, monsoons weakened, enabling agriculture and civilization to flourish along flood-fed riverbanks for nearly 2,000 years.

"The insolation — the solar energy received by the Earth from the sun — varies in cycles, which can impact monsoons," Giosan said. "In the last 10,000 years, the Northern Hemisphere had the highest insolation from 7,000 to 5,000 years ago, and since then insolation there decreased. All climate on Earth is driven by the sun, and so the monsoons were affected by the lower insolation, decreasing in force. This meant less rain got into continental regions affected by monsoons over time." [50 Amazing Facts About Earth]

Eventually, these monsoon-based rivers held too little water and dried, making them unfavorable for civilization.

"The Harappans were an enterprising people taking advantage of a window of opportunity — a kind of "Goldilocks civilization," Giosan said.

Eventually, over the course of centuries, Harappans apparently fled along an escape route to the east toward the Ganges basin, where monsoon rains remained reliable.

"We can envision that this eastern shift involved a change to more localized forms of economy — smaller communities supported by local rain-fed farming and dwindling streams," Fuller said. "This may have produced smaller surpluses, and would not have supported large cities, but would have been reliable."

This change would have spelled disaster for the cities of the Indus, which were built on the large surpluses seen during the earlier, wetter era. The dispersal of the population to the east would have meant there was no longer a concentrated workforce to support urbanism.

"Cities collapsed, but smaller agricultural communities were sustainable and flourished," Fuller said. "Many of the urban arts, such as writing, faded away, but agriculture continued and actually diversified."

These findings could help guide future archaeological explorations of the Indus civilization. Researchers can now better guess which settlements might have been more significant, based on their relationships with rivers, Giosan said.

It remains uncertain how monsoons will react to modern climate change. "If we take the devastating floods that caused the largest humanitarian disaster in Pakistan's history as a sign of increased monsoon activity, than this doesn't bode well for the region," Giosan said. "The region has the largest irrigation scheme in the world, and all those dams and channels would become obsolete in the face of the large floods an increased monsoon would bring."

The scientists detailed their findings online May 28 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Collapse of Mythical River Civilization Explained | Harappan Culture & Climate Change | LiveScience
 
Unlikely that Brahui is any way indicative of an earlier widespread presence of any Dravidian language in that area. Everything I have read suggests that Brahui was a recent arrival into that area, after 1000 A.D. It would be extremely odd otherwise. To believe that this language & its people survived a Aryan tsunami which swept everyone & everything in its path all the way into central India & somehow left this particular language & community intact would be more than a bit of a stretch. Brahui has a heavy Balochi influence but no loan words from Avestan which it should have had if its presence in the region was from the time of IVC. I do not believe that this argument stands on merit, there is way too much mental gymnastics needed to buy into that idea.

I did leave a path open for strategic depth - is that not the preferred term? But it may not be necessary to use that path just yet.

First, what should have brought a minority language into this strife-torn region in 1000 AD? What was happening in 1000 AD? The Guptas had fallen; the post-Guptas were working themselves out. It was the high noon of the Rajputs; the Palas ruled in Bengal, and in the south, the Chalukyas flanked by the Kakatiyas of Warangal, both echeloned by the Hoysalas of Darasamudra. And the Ghaznavid Empire had already started clashing with the Hindu Shahi kings of Kabul.

And this was the moment chosen by a Dravidian speaking group to leave the deep south and travel to the hospitable land of Baluchistan?

Did you mean 1000 AD or 1000 BC?

You don't think that anything could have survived this "Aryan tsunami which swept everyone and everything in its path all the way into central India".

Hmmm.

Burushaski?

Your point about loan words from Avestan is not clear. Could you expand on it? Why should Avestan influence Brahui, rather than eastern Iranian?

After reading your arguments, it still seems preferable to remain with a model of an isolated fragment of a language with a much wider original extent.


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Huge Ancient Civilization's Collapse Explained

The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say.

Really? Now we have the Indus Valley Civilization exploding along the entire Ganges plain in India, all the way to Bangladesh and Nepal. What happened to the poor Afghans.

Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia may be the best known of the first great urban cultures, but the largest was the Indus or Harappan civilization. This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10 percent of the world population. The civilization developed about 5,200 years ago, and slowly disintegrated between 3,900 and 3,000 years ago — populations largely abandoned cities, migrating toward the east.

Wow that is a large area and it has expanded eastwards but contracted on the west. Time to change the name from IVC to Gangetic Valley Civilization [ GVC ] ?

"Antiquity knew about Egypt and Mesopotamia, but the Indus civilization, which was bigger than these two, was completely forgotten until the 1920s," said researcher Liviu Giosan, a geologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. "There are still many things we don't know about them." [Photos: Life and Death of Ancient Urbanites]

Nearly a century ago, researchers began discovering numerous remains of Harappan settlements along the Indus River and its tributaries, as well as in a vast desert region at the border of India and Pakistan. Evidence was uncovered for sophisticated cities, sea links with Mesopotamia, internal trade routes, arts and crafts, and as-yet undeciphered writing.

"They had cities ordered into grids, with exquisite plumbing, which was not encountered again until the Romans," Giosan told LiveScience. "They seem to have been a more democratic society than Mesopotamia and Egypt — no large structures were built for important personalitiess like kings or pharaohs."


No castes yet?


Like their contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Harappans, who were named after one of their largest cities, lived next to rivers.


Which river? Ravi ( today 5 miles north of Harappa ) or this mystical Saraswati, the dry riverbed of Hakra being 100 miles South with the Sutlej in between.

"Until now, speculations abounded about the links between this mysterious ancient culture and its life-giving mighty rivers," Giosan said.


Did they now? I heard a rumour that there was a link, that being river fed irrigation? The annual silt deposition enriching the flood plain might explain why they were next to 'life giving rivers'. Nile and Egypt?

Now Giosan and his colleagues have reconstructed the landscape of the plain and rivers where this long-forgotten civilization developed. Their findings now shed light on the enigmatic fate of this culture.

"Our research provides one of the clearest examples of climate change leading to the collapse of an entire civilization," Giosan said. [How Weather Changed History]

The researchers first analyzed satellite data of the landscape influenced by the Indus and neighboring rivers. From 2003 to 2008, the researchers then collected samples of sediment from the coast of the Arabian Sea into the fertile irrigated valleys of Punjab and the northern Thar Desert to determine the origins and ages of those sediments and develop a timeline of landscape changes.

"It was challenging working in the desert — temperatures were over 110 degrees Fahrenheit all day long (43 degrees C)," Giosan recalled.


Must have been even more challanging if you went to Pakistan with all those Jihadi's running about. Mind you, you probably did not bother going to Pakistan anway. Why not go to India, Nepal and Bangladesh where the real , major IVC sites are. Pakistan just has a brick or two from IVC anyway.


After collecting data on geological history, "we could reexamine what we know about settlements, what crops people were planting and when, and how both agriculture and settlement patterns changed," said researcher Dorian Fuller, an archaeologist with University College London. "This brought new insights into the process of eastward population shift, the change towards many more small farming communities, and the decline of cities during late Harappan times."

Some had suggested that the Harappan heartland received its waters from a large glacier-fed Himalayan river, thought by some to be the Sarasvati, a sacred river of Hindu mythology. However, the researchers found that only rivers fed by monsoon rains flowed through the region.


Oh that is bad


Previous studies suggest the Ghaggar, an intermittent river that flows only during strong monsoons, may best approximate the location of the Sarasvati. Archaeological evidence suggested the river, which dissipates into the desert along the dried course of Hakra valley, was home to intensive settlement during Harappan times.

"We think we settled a long controversy about the mythic Sarasvati River," Giosan said.

Initially, the monsoon-drenched rivers the researchers identified were prone to devastating floods. Over time, monsoons weakened, enabling agriculture and civilization to flourish along flood-fed riverbanks for nearly 2,000 years.

"The insolation — the solar energy received by the Earth from the sun — varies in cycles, which can impact monsoons," Giosan said. "In the last 10,000 years, the Northern Hemisphere had the highest insolation from 7,000 to 5,000 years ago, and since then insolation there decreased. All climate on Earth is driven by the sun, and so the monsoons were affected by the lower insolation, decreasing in force. This meant less rain got into continental regions affected by monsoons over time." [50 Amazing Facts About Earth]

Eventually, these monsoon-based rivers held too little water and dried, making them unfavorable for civilization.


Excuse me? What dried up? This Saraswati lark? Hakra? Some genius here please explain if Sraswati/Hakra dried up what is the big deal? We already know that. Harappa is next to River Ravi which is still in flood, Mohenjo Daro is next to Indus which is still in flood. Are these fools telling us that the entire Indus river system dried up?

Or did Hakra/Saraswati dry up. It can't be the Indus so how would Saraswati drying up have a effect on Mohenjo Daro and the Harappa sites. As I said before the Pakistan based sites are the major portion of the IVC. All this report does is kill the Saraswati bubble, something that Indian's have been pumping up. So much so that they have tried to add the label Saraswati to IVC.


"The Harappans were an enterprising people taking advantage of a window of opportunity — a kind of "Goldilocks civilization," Giosan said.

Eventually, over the course of centuries, Harappans apparently fled along an escape route to the east toward the Ganges basin, where monsoon rains remained reliable.

Why in god's name would Harappans flee eastward or even the Mohenjo Daro people? Their rivers, Ravi, Sutlej and most importantly the mighty Indus kept flowing or are Messrs Giosan et al suggesting the entire Indus river system, that is Indus itself, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej all dried up?

This Hakra ( Saraswati ) might have dried up but I have opposed the importance to this so called river because non of the major sites are on this Hakra/Saraswati. The Indians have been floating this river in a desperate attempt to shift the IVC east towards India.


]"We can envision that this eastern shift involved a change to more localized forms of economy — smaller communities supported by local rain-fed farming and dwindling streams," Fuller said. "This may have produced smaller surpluses, and would not have supported large cities, but would have been reliable."

This change would have spelled disaster for the cities of the Indus, which were built on the large surpluses seen during the earlier, wetter era. The dispersal of the population to the east would have meant there was no longer a concentrated workforce to support urbanism.

"Cities collapsed, but smaller agricultural communities were sustainable and flourished," Fuller said. "Many of the urban arts, such as writing, faded away, but agriculture continued and actually diversified."

These findings could help guide future archaeological explorations of the Indus civilization. Researchers can now better guess which settlements might have been more significant, based on their relationships with rivers, Giosan s



Collapse of Mythical River Civilization Explained | Harappan Culture & Climate Change | LiveScience


This article is a joke. It says Hakra/Saraswati dried up. We already know that. How would this effect the Indus Valley Civilization? I guess it kills the Indian pipedream of Saraswati but that is about it.

Mohenjo daro and Harappa both central to IVC are no where near Saraswati/Hakra and did not in any way depend on this Indioan pipedream. So how did drying of that river kil off these major sites in Pakistan? The Indus and Ravi flow would have enabled the continuation of river fed irrigation that was so vital to IVC.

For me the opening paragraph was enough. It is a fact the heart of IVC is in Pakistan. So any fair description should be 'IVC in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan'. Instead Pakistan is relegated to secondary position and Afghanistan is erased. Instead Nepal and Bangladesh pop up. Now we have two more claiments.

I better call Dhaka and Khatmandu to become parties to this discussion.
 
Chillax and maintain the feel good nature of the discussion till now please. I will take up all your points in a civil manner.



This thread is not India vs Pakistan nor should it disintegrate into one.

Hinduism and Indian civilization has welcomed dissent and all faiths for thousands of years.

What has Islam's record been with regard to other faiths since its birth 1400 years ago?

Ask any Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Christian, Jew, or Zoroastrian which society they would prefer to live in - a muslim dominated one or a hindu dominated one. You should get your answer.

Ask any non-muslim the world over, even replacing hindu with christian (historically a much more violent and intolerant religion), and you will get your answer.

Forget that - the number of minorities who chose India over Pakistan at the time of Partition, including Muslims themselves, should have already given you that answer.

Simply put - you make minorities feel very insecure - and with good reason. That (intolerance) is NOT India or part of our culture and civilization. NEVER has been.

What is the dominant and state religion of Pakistan and the plinth on which it was created?

What is the state of your minorities and what percentage of your total population make up minorities? Was pakistan even created for minorities of other states?

And did you even read the thread and Indian responses you have pointed me to? We are collectively pissed with minority appeasement and that anger is showing. Do not mistake it for anti-minority sentiment but recognise it for what it is. The resentment over the perception of majority marginalisation. Not only by the majority but by other minorities as well. Not good for the majority. Not good for the minority. Only good for the politicians.

If Hinduism accepts decent then why do Hindus hate minorities so much? You cannot deny that Hindus hate Islam and Christianity because they seek converts. Some states in India even have an anti conversion law that won't people people convert. So much for accepting decent.

Islam's record with minorities has been excellent until about the last 50 years. In every country where Islam become dominant, the indigenous religion still exists. Christians are still in Egypt, Zarostarians are still in Iran, and Hindus of course are still in India. Compare that with Europe, where no native religion exists, shows that you Islam is extremely tolerant. In the 50 years there have been some issues due to the social and economic breakdown of society. And even then, it been sporadic at best.

Minorities in Pakistan had a choice to become a majority in India, so of course they would leave. And India is huge so it was not feasible for all Muslims to come to Pakistan. Many simply could not afford the train ticket, or did not want to leave their businesses. So this argument is rather silly. I can extrapolate it and say India is a bad place to live since millions of Indians leave for other countries.

Minorities make up 2-3% of Pakistan, what's your point?

Right, but just look at the language being used. There is sheer hatred for minorities and especially Muslims.



Hindus are being killed. Christians are being killed. Ahmedis are being killed. Shias are being killed. Hazaras are being killed. Systematically. Not sporadically.

That is a lie.
There have been sporadic incidences and that too because Pakistan is fighting a war.

Again this is not a Pakistan/muslim versus India/hindu thing please. We are well aware of the evils of our society with regard to women historically. But Islam's views on women are NOT a part of Indian civilization on so many levels man. That is the point I was making.

Notwithstanding the fact that female infanticide happens in India as well as Pakistan. Happens to Hindu babies as well as Muslim. And it is clearly recorded elsewhere that it was a practice common amongst the Arab tribes at the time of the birth of Islam as well. So can we say that the Islamic invasions left us with this legacy - on both sides?

I agree, traditionally woman were seen as a burden in India and pre Islamic Arabia. Thankfully Islam gave women rights and status so to this day (1400 years later) female infanticide is not an issue with Muslims. India on the other hand, well we know what happens.


Pride in what our OWN people did. Not what outsiders did to us.

And pride in what you didn't do as well.
There are like 3000 posts of "India will be future _____________(super power, tech power, sports power etc etc)"
Also, like I said Hinduism is based largely on foreign invaders (the Aryans).
But really, who cares? are foreigners sub humans? Why do Indians show such extreme hatred for them? You are a parsi and thus a foreigner, so does that mean that Indians cannot be proud of what you do?

None of the warring states ever fought over faith. You are willing to wipe us out on faith, and faith alone. It is the nature of man to fight. But fights can happen within the family (civilization) and they can happen between strangers (civilizations).

Till date we have believed that our fights have been within the family. You have not. But that is changing as well on our side as time rolls on and you move further away.

So it's ok to fight, murder and kill as long as you don't do it in the name of faith?
interesting logic.
I don't think any same person would buy it, but if it gets you through the night then all power to you.
 
It all boils down to this. Most of the tectonic events that went on to shape South Asia and much further afield took place in the Indus Valley. Almost all of classic history upto couple of centuries BC toolk place in the Indus Valley. Until then Indos only referred to what is now Pakistan. Sindhu, Indos, Hind as in the Indus Valley. Anything further east ( todays India ) was off the radar screen. Modern day India was Terra incognito to the ancients. An example is when history talks about Alexander's exploits in India the truth is he had not even set a foot in modern Bharat ( Indian Republic ).

But there was nothing incorrect in those writers of old who talked about Alexander in India. He was in 'India' because at that time India was the Indus Valley region , that is present day Pakistan. Over the centuries the meaning expanded to include all of what we now call South Asia and in particular after the British got involved the modern meaning of the word become defined. This slip over time in words happens all the time. Gay meant something else in 1950s then it does now.

Today we have Pakistan and India. There is intense rivalry between both countries. Much to the consternation of patriotic Indian's they find most of South Asian classic history is based out of their reach, bang in middle of their nemisis, Pakistan. History can be cruel sometimes. So in their desperate attempt to salvage something from under the very feet of their enemy Pakistan terms like 'civilizational continuity' are bandied about.

This mantra is the handmaiden of those who want to reverse engineer history to reflect their own prejudices and preferances. Agnostic Muslim has made a brave attempt at trying to nail such a elastic term but much as I respect his tenacity, I suspect he stands as much chance as trying to define the shape of water. It will keeping on changing depending in which vessel it is displaced.

For now please read this article by the eminent Pakistani Prof. Ahmad Hasan Dani ( with some sense of satisfaction I can say he is of Kashmiri extraction ) which runs quite opposite to what many Indian's have been peddling about IVC. For example most Indian's almost regard it as a article of faith that IVC was a product of Dravidian genius. He gaves some telling examples that you can even make a case for drawing links with Altaic languages as found in Uzbekistan/Turkmenistan because of the agglutinitive link.

I doubt anybody can change the Indian viewpoint, it has a 300 years, 1.1 billion mass inertia and there is no stopping that. If they thought they had given the Greeks their alphabet we would not be able to correct such a inertia created by the shear mass. But I take this effort to appeal to fellow Pakistani's to be steadfast and embrace our own heritage. Buckle up, bolster your pride in your land and do not let the 1.1 billion mass inertia to appropriate the contribution of your ancestors to human civilization.

The Indian's can do what they want but Harappa or mohenjo Daro will remain in Pakistan. they are the jewel in the crown of IVC. Panini will remain in Ghandara region of Pakistan only a few miles from Islamabad. Taxila is only a few miles off the Islamabad to Peshawar Expressway ( M-2 ) so Pakistani's take pride in your land. We gave the world a marvel.

Ahmad Hasan Dani - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ahmad Hassan Dani Interview Contents

Ancient Indus Valley Script: Dani Interview Text Only

http://www.heritage.gov.pk/html_Pages/C.V. of .Dani.htm


. A Dravidian Language?

Q: What do you think about the theory today that the Indus language was a Dravidian language and that there is a connection between the Indus culture and today's South Indian culture?

This is generally believed by those who are now working, particularly my friends like Asko Parpola, Professor Mahadevan, and the Russians Professors who have worked on this subject. They have all been working on the assumption that the language of the Indus people was Dravidian, that the people who build the Indus Civilization are Dravidian. But unfortunately I, as well as my friend Prof. B.B. Lal in India, have not been able to agree with this.

Today the Dravidians are living in South India and we always say if they were the builders of the Indus Civilization and if they migrated from here because of some reason or the other, then something of that civilization they should carry into the south except just the language. But so far we have not been able to find any trace of the Indus Civilization in the whole of South India. It is there is Gujarat, it is there in Malabar, but not in the area where Dravidian is spoken today. Not a single evidence has been found.

Recently when Asko Parpola came about three months ago to Pakistan, he said no Professor, what about Gujarat? Certainly in Gujarat we have got the Indus Civilization, right about to the mouth of the Narmada, right up to the mouth of the Tanti we have got this civilization. There is one more place on the Narmada we have got the Indus civilization, but not south of it. He said that this shows that people have been there. I said even then I will not agree.

2. Cultural Connections

But let me correct myself. There is one particular aspect which does survive, not only in South India, but also in Sri Lanka. This came to my mind when the year before last I was in Sri Lanka at the time of their general election and they had a music performance. In the music performance they were having the dance, and with their drum or dholak, and it at once reminded me of my early life, for I was born in Central India, and I had seen this kind of dance. Not with tabla, tabla is a later comer in our country. It at once reminded me that we have got this dholak in the Indus Valley Civilization. I don't know about the dance, but at least the dholak we know. We have not stringed instruments in Indus Valley Civiliztion. We have got the flute, we have got cymbals, we have got the dholak. Exactly the same musical instrruments are played today in Sri Lanka and South India. So I would like to correct myself: to say that nothing is surviving in South India [is wrong]; this is the only instrument which is surviving there according to me from the Indus Civilization.

Q: What kind of traces would you like to have that would make you think that there is more of a connection between the Dravidians and the ancient Indus?

A: If not the urban, the urban life, at least some pottery, some seal, some material of ivory or any material which we find in the Indus Civilization should be found there rather than in North India. In North India, we know it gradually went later on. But nothing has been found in South India as far as a material object is concerned. As far as the literary object or material is concerned, that we have not been able to know because we haven't been able to read the Indus script.

Q: I was just in Madras. As you know, tigers were very important in the Indus civilization. I noticed that in Madras wherever they are constructing a house, they put a tiger mask in front to ward off the evil spirits. Perhaps this is a trace of an Indus Valley period belief?

A: No, the tiger is also very important in Central India, where I have been living myself, very important. In fact, one of the most important animals in the Indus Civilization is the bull. You visit my museum, I have a painted pottery, not excavated by me, in Islamabad, and all around we have got a bull. Although we do not worship animals in Pakistan, but we do respect the bull because of its utilitarian nature. Bull is used for carriage, in the bullock cart, for plowing, and we have got bull festivals every year. The bull is not the sacred animal in that part of India, it is the cow.

3. An Agglutinative Language

On the other hand, I have been talking to Prof. Parpola that certainly this is an agglutinative language, there is no doubt. That has been accepted by all of us. Dravidian is an agglutinative language. But at the same time Altaic is an agglutinative language, and certainly we know that there was a connection beween Turkmenistan [in Central Asia] and this region. Turkmenistan is a region where Altaic languages are spoken. Even in the pre-Indus period we have a connection. In what we call the Kot Diji period, we have a connection between Indus Civilization and excavations in Turkmenistan. So if we insist on an agglutinative language being used inthe Indus period, why not connect it with Altaic, rather than just with Dravidian? Why not connect it with Sumerian, which is also an agglutinative language? In fact, when I was in Korea, I found that their language is agglutinative, which I did not know before. Just because of agglutinative language, it is not necessary that it is connected with Dravidian. But unfortunately, our history has been so written in the time of the British that earlier we tried to trace out history from the Aryans, and we thought that before the Aryans were Dravidians, that was the idea. So when the Indus Civilization was discovered, it was thought if it is not Aryan, it must be Dravidian, that was the general assumption. But it is not necesssary.

4. Aryans?

Q: Do you think that the Indus Valley people could have been Aryans before the Rgvedic Aryans, another group of Aryans who had come down much earlier and created their own civilization?

A: Whatever we know of the Aryans, from the literary records, in the Rgveda, the earliest book or the first nine books of the Rgveda, do not speak at all of any urban life. They speak of only rural life, villages, and as the Indus Civilization is an urban civilization, therefore to talk of any Aryan association with the urban life seems to me rather unthinkable.

If you read the entire book of the Rgveda and you will find it is totally rural life, not nomadic, they were agricultural no doubt, living in small villages. At the same time, they had no concept of irrigation, they had no use of dams on the rivers; in fact their god Indra is the destroyer of the dams. Hence the type of agriculture and the type of urban life the Indus Civilization people built up was beyond the conception of the Aryans or even the earlier Aryans.

This is very important from our angle. If at all, in the Aryan book, the earliest book whatever we know if today, whatever we have been able to gather from other Aryan languages, not just Sanskrit, from old Iranian, there is nothing of urbanity, nothing of irrigation, nothing called building the dams. All these three are basic factors in the development of the Indus Civilization.

Q: So who would these people have been then? It is becoming mysterious.

Certainly it is very mysterious. So far a large number of scholars have been trying to build on the basis that the language is Dravidian, the people are Dravidian. Unfortunately, I have not been able to agree, nor has my friend Prof. B.B. Lal. Those who have excavated in both Mohenjodaro and Harappa, Lal has excavated in Harappa and I in Mohenjodaro, somehow our concept is entirely different. I know South India very well, I have been living in that part, I have excavated in Mysore and also in other places in South India, of course before 1947. Although I have told you about the music and you have told me about the tiger, it may be possible, it may not be possible, but even then the two are so different that it is after a long, long time that we find urbanization taking place in South India. Tamil literature does not give us any information about a literary form before the first century or at the earliest the second century B.C. We do not have any evidence of damming in the Kaveri river, for example, the most important river in Tamil country, earlier than first or second century B.C.

5. Connections to Hinduism?

Q: You don't think that there are some profound connections with later Hinduism, like bathing in the water, or the yogic figure on some of the seals?

This has no doubt been the intepretation given by Sir John Marshall given in his book [193031] when he wrote and described the religion of the Indus people. But that was because he knew the Hindu religion and society, and on that basis he interpreted, and called it, for example, the prototype of Shiva, and about talked about the yoga and so on. But today we know that there is a very great difference between the two. Certainly yoga continued, but it is possible that it continued even later on [outside Hinduism] for it is simply a question of meditation. For example, when I talk about the meditation derived in Islam today among the Sufis, and when I say it is derived from Buddhism, all the Muslims say no, it is nonsense to say that, but I know it is a derivation. It is quite possible something may have continued, but very little is known.

For example, image worship was known in the Indus Civilization but not known to the Aryans. The Aryans were the conquerors, but the people may have continued that. Similarly, yoga probably was not known to the Aryans in the earlier phases, but later it did penetrate into their society, maybe taken from surviving traditions among the common people. But who were those people, we do not know.

6. Evolution of the Writing

Q: Your excavations of the pre-Indus people, at Rehman Dheri and so forth, what do you think the implications are for understanding the Indus people?

In Rehman Dheri, we do have town planning, we have pottery which shows continuity between Rehman Dheri and the Indus Civilization. With terracotta there is a change, no doubt, but there is some continuity, in designs there is some continuity with what we call the Kot Diji [pre-Indus] and the Indus Civilization. This is no doubt true. But we do not find any seal, we do not find any writing. We have got, no doubt, the forms, engravings, or just scrapings on the pottery. But we do not have a system in the pre-Mohenjo-daro period. The system only evolved in the Indus Civilization. Certainly the shapes are there [earlier]; when you write you have to borrow from the older shapes, that is no doubt true. Even the weight system we do not find earlier. Weights, measure and the writing, the base of the economy is not there earlier, although town planning and architecture is there earlier. Pottery, stoneware, some playthings also continue, but what makes the Indus Civilization is the political economy is not found beforehand. So even today I call it pre-Indus Civilization and Indus Civilization, although many of my friends call it the early Indus Civilization.

We do not know how the writing evolved. I think it was as the trade developed, writing was necessary. Writing was already known in Mesopotamia. So if I am trying to develop writing in my country, it is not necessary that I should use your symbol. I will give you an example. I went to Korea, and there I started reading a Korean book. The moment I saw their alphabet I said what is this alphabet? They said this is an alphabet invented by our King in the 15th century A.D. I said nonsense, I can tell you the whole origin from my country! But what has happened, they have not taken the syllables from my country, but based on that they have evolved their own symbols, perhaps done even better, with verticals and horizontals. Where we have got circles, they don't have circles at all. Wherever there was a curved circle, they made it a vertical. I said I can trace this.

So if writing in the Indus Civilization is derived from Western Asia, it is not necessary that the symbols come from that place. We can use our own symbols. But the basic principle comes from there.

Q: Although now I think the evidence is more that the writing here was an indigenous development.

Could be, it is possible. But indigenous development on the basis of the basic principle [from Western Asia]. Because we do not find development from the pictograph right up to the logo-syllabic writing that we know was used in the Indus Civilization. We do not find the earlier one, which is known to us in Mesopotamia, it is known to us in Egypt. Here we find directly logo-syllabic writing. Hence, they must have known about the logo-syllabic writing then in use in Mesopotamia with whom they had trade connections, and then evolved their own, on the same basis. This is what I am maintaining: that as we do not find from the simple pictograph developing into logo-syllabic in Indus Civilization, but we find it in Mesopotamia, and therefore some wise man, some intellectual here in this region must have known that here is a system of writing, why not evolve our own on the same basis.

Q: It may just be that we haven't excavated enough to find the development.

Quite possible, that is no doubt true, tomorrow we may find something and change our opinion.


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© Harappa 1998
 
With all respect to Mr.Dani, he knows a very little about veda.In the other thread"climate killed IVC" the serial no of slokas r given which states opposite what he claims. dont know how a scholar like him is also into this childish fighting over the debate about inheritence. this arguement is useless bcz 4000/5000 years ago who cared about india,pakistan man?
 
Again, changing one's religion is not equivalent to abandoning ones entire heritage and culture.

You and others have bandied this claim, about Pakistanis abandoning the IVC Civilization/culture, without any credible arguments as to how Pakistanis today have abandoned the IVC culture any more than Indians today have. After trying various routes and arguments, you lot invariable end up invoking the 'Religion Card' - Pakistanis are not Hindus anymore so therefore they have no claim on the IVC. For a nation that touts its 'secular' credentials and for posters that routinely criticize Pakistan's theocratic underpinnings, you lot sure are obsessed with making Hinduism a cornerstone of Indian identity.

Bro I am not a religious nationalist but a socialist for that reason nobodies religion matter's to me neither of Pakistani's nor of Indian's. what we are debating here is do the people of Pakistan inherit the great ancient heritage of this sub continent the answer to this is no they do not why? because not only did they converted, which is of no concern to anybody but they worked every possible way to destroy the ancient history be it the ancient temples, the ancient traditions, the ancient languages and the list goes on.
regarding your question that even Indians have changed their conduct of life and do not resemble their ancestors you see evolution is inevitable and this is a case of evolution we have evolved so have you but the difference is we have evolved to respect our heritage may be you have not.if our ancient heritage is a geographical piece of land then you own it but if it is a set of traditions, customs and more of a way of life them i am sorry you are nowhere near it.

and even if you look in the recent past you will find the same thing.
For example
bamian_buddha_caves.jpg


Rariyaway5.jpg


220px-BigBuddha.jpg
 
If Hinduism accepts decent then why do Hindus hate minorities so much? You cannot deny that Hindus hate Islam and Christianity because they seek converts. Some states in India even have an anti conversion law that won't people people convert. So much for accepting decent.

Islam's record with minorities has been excellent until about the last 50 years. In every country where Islam become dominant, the indigenous religion still exists. Christians are still in Egypt, Zarostarians are still in Iran, and Hindus of course are still in India. Compare that with Europe, where no native religion exists, shows that you Islam is extremely tolerant. In the 50 years there have been some issues due to the social and economic breakdown of society. And even then, it been sporadic at best.

Minorities in Pakistan had a choice to become a majority in India, so of course they would leave. And India is huge so it was not feasible for all Muslims to come to Pakistan. Many simply could not afford the train ticket, or did not want to leave their businesses. So this argument is rather silly. I can extrapolate it and say India is a bad place to live since millions of Indians leave for other countries.

Minorities make up 2-3% of Pakistan, what's your point?

Right, but just look at the language being used. There is sheer hatred for minorities and especially Muslims.





That is a lie.
There have been sporadic incidences and that too because Pakistan is fighting a war.



I agree, traditionally woman were seen as a burden in India and pre Islamic Arabia. Thankfully Islam gave women rights and status so to this day (1400 years later) female infanticide is not an issue with Muslims. India on the other hand, well we know what happens.




And pride in what you didn't do as well.
There are like 3000 posts of "India will be future _____________(super power, tech power, sports power etc etc)"
Also, like I said Hinduism is based largely on foreign invaders (the Aryans).
But really, who cares? are foreigners sub humans? Why do Indians show such extreme hatred for them? You are a parsi and thus a foreigner, so does that mean that Indians cannot be proud of what you do?



So it's ok to fight, murder and kill as long as you don't do it in the name of faith?
interesting logic.
I don't think any same person would buy it, but if it gets you through the night then all power to you.

bro i appreciate the missionary zeal of some religions particularly in India where they are helping educate people and help them prosper but the thing is this has made some other people concerned which is a valid concern you know especially because of mass conversions which of course are taking place due to the financial aid the missionaries provide to these people.The anti conversion law exists so that no such mass conversions take place

The rest of your post is not useful i can give examples of your minorities being harshly treated but that's of no use.
 
This may look like greed, an appetite for small causes of interest to nobody but oneself. Look at it as therapy, instead. Drubbing Rig Vedic for what is at best a misdemeanour, not even a felony, allows me to forget some rather trying behaviour.

My good man, again you spend all your time attacking somebody or the other. Read the relevant verses, find Agastya in the hoary Rig Veda itself. The implications I will not repeat, you may go back and read what was spelled out earlier.

The verses in question are not on the subject of Agastya. They are suggested to have been composed by Agastya. Reading those verses will not help us find the author.

As already mentioned, Agastya is not in the Rg Veda Samhita, nor in any other.

Absent your proofs, the 'implications' vanish. Silly word to use about wrong conclusions drawn from wrong premises.


Who says the word Indic can only be used in the context of religion?

What other feature of human culture comes as readily into your comments?

The estimates you cite may or may not be well founded. The point is that there has been no impact on the Indian gene pool from any reverse flow from Central Asia (apart from the relaTtively small Muslim Ashraf caste, I suppose).

I am reminded that there are two ways to avoid any unpleasant and dream-destroying realities, if you get what I mean: suppressio veri and suggestio falsi.Recall your original point: that genetic studies revealed that the direction of travel suggested by genetic analysis was the opposite of of what I had suggested, that it was motto India, but from India.

You were completely correct, of course; but either you did not know, or you suppressed the additional information that this outward flow occurred approximately 40 to 95,000 years earlier. Suppressio veri.

Genetic studies do, on the other hand, suggest an infusion of genes from 'outside', central Asia or Afghanistan, sometime between 3,500 to 1,500 or 1,000 years before now.

It had everything to do with the subject under discussion. It had nothing to do with the Ashraf.

Suggestio falsi.
 
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