Why would they want to abandon the Indus Valley and traverse a Jungle and a Desert to get the Ganges and the Narmada Valley?
For the simple reason that some reaches of the culture were running short of water; shortage of water is still the most persuasive reason that has been found for the winding down of that culture around 1300 BC. Many of the rivers running across a still relatively liveable Thar were dried up by the end of that period; it is also probable that the Yamuna swung east to flow within the catchment area of the Ganges around that time.
We have to remember that the Yamuna was one of the major rivers of the region before its shifting course; that would have had a catastrophic effect on the entire culture.
Indians want to claim the IVC by obsessing over the absurd theory that an entire civilization (one of the largest in the world at that time) moved from modern-day Pakistan to modern-day India.
There is no logic to this theory and there is hardly any evidence supporting it.
The "Nile Civilization" has "collapsed" multiple times, why didn't they migrate into Fertile Crescent? All that happened was a breakdown in urban society, followed by a recovery and resumption of urban growth.
There is no question of Indians 'claiming' it; the archaeological remains of a culture hardly resemble a lost suitcase in a busy railway station, for finders to be keepers. Nobody can claim it; nobody knew about it until the archaeological discoveries of the 1920s. It is quite possible, indeed probable, that the people living in the general area are partly descended from the people who built this major culture; it is also true that during the entire period from 1500 BC down to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, down to the time that the Aga Khan made himself a part of the Indian sub-continent, in fact, migration from the mountains and valleys of the neighbouring uplands continued; nobody in the region can claim to be a pure-blooded descendant of the inhabitants of the IVC.
It might be sensible on your part to pause for a moment and consider how to reconcile the opposing facts of the strong genetic evidence that the people who now inhabit the Indus Valley migrated here, and the evidence that these migrations were well after the probable date of collapse of the IVC. How do you propose to make this jump, first floating in 200 years after the collapse, then jumping back a millennium to found the culture?
The position today is that the nation-state of Pakistan is the proud custodian of a brilliant culture, and should take pride in their stewardship, not imitate the infantile attempts of some foolish people in India to 'claim' authorship of this culture. These 'claims' are unfortunately a sign of lack of application of mind, and need to be avoided by sane and rational people.
We know that after the supposed collapse of IVC, many Kingdoms began to spring up in the Indus Valley. Did they appear out of thin air or were they a fragmented continuation as supported by common sense?
They appeared centuries afterwards. What an amazing argument.
Was the Ganges and Narmada Valley uninhabited or were they too stupid to make a civilization of their own?
They were inhabited just as much as Europe was, or Persia. Culture marched at different paces through the world. There were no parallels to the IVC, one reason for terming them 'unparalleled'.
The efflorescence of urban civilisation in the Ganges and Narmada Valleys is known among historians and archaeologists as the Second Urbanisation of India. This culture picked up seeds of the IVC - pottery is a visible example, but there are others, not so clearly linked - added the linguistic facile domination of the Indo-Aryan language that was just coming into the region, and introduced a combination of theology and state ideology that was studied in very great depth many centuries later, with a multitude of epigraphic evidence, in other parts. Wooden buildings and establishments did not last; later, with the increasing use of stone and clay (terracotta) to simulate woodwork, for instance at Sanchi, there were visible records of this Second Urbanisation. You may have heard of the remains of Pataliputra, the city to which Megasthenes was an ambassador; the vast bulk of the remains show that building in the city, a metropolis that Megasthenes admired, was primarily of wood.
Please avoid condescension in these notes. I am giving willingly of my time and knowledge to answer you, politely, without sarcasm; do bear that in mind.
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