Raghavan Srinivasan

Members of an archaeological team work in Rakhigarhi on March 4, 2015. Credit: Manoj Dhaka/AFP.and Scroll.in In my novel, Yugantar, I had made several interpretations of Indian history, first of which was: “There was no Aryan invasion from outside India. The earlier Indus civilisation disintegrated over several centuries due to various factors. By 330 BCE'—the period of this novel—there had been sufficient mixing of cultures, languages, religions, scripts and schools of thought which defined the concept of India”. A reader while congratulating my efforts said “I do not agree with 1st interpretation. In the last decade there have been multiple genetic studies that there was an influx of large number of persons from central Asia 4500 years ago. Their genes are found in Indian population. Kokanastha Brahmins of Pune have 73%. The least are found in certain castes in Andhra and north Tamilnadu. The Gond tribals do not have these genes. Brahmins have higher % than others. Some...

 To define Indianness in a country as tremendously diverse as India, home to a billion and above people, communicating through a mind-boggling 1652 languages and dialects(1), belonging to many regions and religions and to many thousands of castes, subcastes and tribal groups, is not an easy task. Any attempt to paint this broad landscape must necessarily involve some selection. In the discussion that follows I have attempted to look selectively at how various people viewed Indianness in various times and circumstances.  To define Indianness in a country as tremendously diverse as India, home to a billion and above people, communicating through a mind-boggling 1652 languages and dialects(1), belonging to many regions and religions and to many thousands of castes, subcastes and tribal groups, is not an easy task. Any attempt to paint this broad landscape must necessarily involve some selection. In the discussion that follows I have attempted to look selectively at how...

Nov 16, 2012  Not much is known about the Vellore uprisings against the British which took place in 1806. Other than British records which present the colonial perspective of the uprising, there are few reliable local  records of this important milestone in the struggle of our people against colonial rule. Amaresh Mishra’s magnum opus, “War of Civilizations: India AD 1857, The Long Revolution” gives a well-researched rendering of the events that swiftly followed one another in the grim days of 1806. Not much is known about the Vellore uprisings against the British which took place in 1806. Other than British records which present the colonial perspective of the uprising, there are few reliable local  records of this important milestone in the struggle of our people against colonial rule. Amaresh Mishra’s magnum opus, “War of Civilizations: India AD 1857, The Long Revolution” gives a well-researched rendering of the events that swiftly followed one another in the grim days...

  Demonization is alien to Indian thought. Demonization is actually preparing the ground for justifying the most heinous acts against the designated ‘demon’ and totally violating the widely accepted concept of a rule based dharmayuddha.  It is no wonder that the so-called “war on terror” that demonizes various peoples is totally alien to everything that makes us Indian, says S Raghavan. In the best-selling mystery-thriller novel by the American author, Dan Brown, called “Angels & Demons”, a Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon tries to stop the Illumaniti, a legendary secret society, from destroying the Vatican City. It is a typical plot, sensationally presented no doubt, about the eternal conflict between angels and demons, between good and evil. When this novel was made into a movie, the conflict looked even more sensational on the celluloid screen. But can humanity be differentiated into Angels and Demons as easily as we differentiate day and night, life and...