Thread by @JoeAgneya

"The Hindu right struggles to prove that Indians are direct descendants of Harappans"

Mr 'Vir Sanghvi', 5 million Harappans (~25% of humanity in 2000 BCE) did not vanish into thin air. No struggle is required. Common sense. You should try it sometime.
scmp.com/week-asia/opin…

"Very little evidence to suggest there were horses in the Indus Valley while early Hindu texts mention Arya riding horse-drawn chariots."

The author seems extremely confused. He says this and yet the picture on his article is of the Sanauli Chariot! Let's not beat a dead horse.

"Aryans came from steppes & brought early Hinduism. How are they different from Muslims?"

Vedic is North India's OLDEST recorded cultural layer. Not even ONE Vedic place/river/Fauna/Flora name is Dravidian. There is ZERO evidence that North Indians once spoke an older language.

If Mr Sanghvi is trying to say that Vedic people forcibly displaced, culturally annihilated and linguistically transformed 5 million original inhabitants of North India who spoke 'language X' within a 100 years or so, he needs to demonstrate the existence of the older language.

"Nobody in the UK for instance, bothers about Normans and Saxons."

Funny that he mentions Normans. Let us tell him the short linguistic history of Britain. The Druid Celts, close cousins of the Vedic people, started invading the British Isles after ~2000 BCE.

There were farming communities and hunter gatherers in these Islands for thousands of years before this. But no one knows what languages they spoke. Soon, within a few centuries the entire British Isles was speaking Celtic languages. The older, native languages were wiped out.

But no one has any doubt that these languages once existed and were spoken by the original inhabitants. There are plenty of words in surviving Celtic language records that were borrowed from native languages.

Can Mr Sanghvi show us some non-Vedic 'Harappan' words in the Vedas?

Celtic folks enjoyed peace & supremacy on the Isles as well as parts of mainland Europe until Latin speaking Romans began their conquests. But note, Latin is the closest language to Proto-Celtic, both descending from the proposed 'Italo-Celtic'.

Just like Vedic & Proto-Iranian.

Despite organized military might and CENTURIES of campaigns, Latin FAILED to replace Celtic in the Isles. Even though the Romans were MUCH more technologically advanced.

Yet Mr Sanghvi believes that a bunch of steppe nomads converted 5 million ADVANCED Harappans into 'Vedic'.

Next, from the 5th century, comes the Anglo-Saxons whose West Germanic language eventually evolved into English. Where Latin failed, English succeeded. Today Celtic languages face near extinction. But they left SUBSTANTIAL influence on English linguistics, phonetics & vocabulary.

Even better, many cities and towns in Britain as well as all over Europe still preserve their ancient Celtic names from the primitive time when Celtic was the dominant language. Much of Europe once spoke Celtic before Latin & Germanic replaced it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_to…

Did you know?

The name of the river Thames is from Brittonic Celtic 'Tamesas'. Meaning the 'Dark river'. There is a river with the same name and meaning 'Tamasa' in India(Tons). A tributary of Ganges!

To conclude we raise our final questions for @virsanghvi

1. Name a single ancient place name in North India that is NOT Sanskrit/Prakrit/IE
2. Name a single Indus/Gangetic valley river with a Dravidian or Austroasiatic name

If you can't, please stop publishing utter rubbish.

Remember this universal fact.

Whenever a new, invasive language replaced an older one, ANYWHERE on earth, at ANYTIME, the new language ALWAYS preserved influence/loanwords/toponyms from the old one. ALWAYS.

But Vedic does NOT obey this rule. Because it DID NOT replace anything.