Thread by @seshanm

#AGreatMan
Archaeologist B B Lal dies at 101.

Prof BB Lal played a crucial role in bringing out new evidence in favour of a Hindu temple in Ayodhya and also debunked the outside origins of the ‘Aryans’

firstpost.com/opinion-news-e…

"For seven decades he was in the forefront of India’s archaeological research, even charting new ground in our knowledge of the less-known Ganga civilisation (From the Mesolithic to the Mahājanapadas, Aryan Books International) in 2019, at age 98."

"BB Lal came up with archaeological evidence for the temple, of which remains formed part of the foundations and the pillars of the Babri Masjid."

"The then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, ordered Lal to keep silent about it."

"Unfortunately for the ‘eminent historians’, truth bypassed their efforts at suppressing it, and now judgements by Allahabad High Court (2011) and the Supreme Court (2019) have definitively confirmed that Prof Lal had been right all along."

"A similar end of the affair seems to be in store for the Aryan immigration debate. Here Lal is instrumental in a return to the assumption of an Indian homeland of the Indo-European language family, common in Europe in the half-century around 1800."

"Yet, the media kept the old consensus and the new evidence for it for some more years out of view; they stonewalled Lal’s evidence just as the Indo-Europeanist establishment is still doing, or even decried him as a ‘born-again Hindu nationalist’."

"The Out-of-India Theory is not some far-fetched novelty, but stood at the cradle of the very notion of an Indo-European language family. It is to Prof Lal’s eternal credit that he has played a crucial role in restoring the true story with new evidence."

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