Dravidian Invasion, caste and challenging the orthodoxy

Iranian Farmer (left); South Indian Tribal (right)

Note: This is a repost of an article from 2018 which I wrote for my now defunct blog. There could have been some updates to findings in this domain since then. But overall this article still remains relevant.

The Indian academic orthodoxy (Marxists) and Tamil political orthodoxy (Dravidian racists) often whip up passionate defense of Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) by making claims that Dravidians were the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent and are the original descendants of Indus Valley people. The Hindu patriots often respond in kind with the Out of India Theory (OIT).

The above mentioned orthodoxy makes these assertions:

1. Dravidians were original inhabitants of Indus Valley and of rest of India and were displaced by Aryan Invaders. The people displaced from Indus Valley settled in South India.
2. The Aryans imposed upon the egalitarian society of the Dravidians, the Hindu religion, the caste system and untouchability.
3. Present day North Indians and Brāhmaṇas of Tamil Nadu are the descendants of these invaders.

I won’t go into the evidences for and against the AIT or the OIT. Rather the focus is on Dravidian Invasion Theory(DIT).

Geneticist Razib Khan, whose research and writings I’ve been following for a while, believes Dravidians were invaders (or migrants) from West Asia and Iran. In a recent article[1], he concludes that “Dravidian speaking groups are not the aboriginal peoples of the subcontinent. Rather, their settlement across much of South Asia is very recent. Almost as recent as Indo-Aryan habitation“.

Also, genetic data suggests that the population of India is pretty mixed. That is, there is no pure Aryan or Dravidian race today. Khan mentions that “.. some Dravidian populations assimilated and integrated Indo-Aryan tribes and bands, while Indo-Aryans as newcomers assimilated many Dravidian populations.”

In Khan’s article, some key points are made which debunk the dogma of the orthodoxy mentioned at the beginning of this post:

1. There is ancestry/caste stratification in South India even excluding Brahmins (e.g., Reddys and Naidus in Andhra Pradesh look somewhat different from Dalits and tribals)
2. Some scholars claim that there isn’t a Dravidian substrate in the Gangetic plain
3. R1a1a-Z93, almost certainly associated with Indo-Aryans, is found in South Indian tribal populations

I would recommend checking out the full article of Razib Khan for more interesting information.

National Geographic had done a genographic study of South Indians a few years ago and had also found that caste system existed among Dravidians prior to the mingling with Indo-Aryan people. This further debunks the dogma that Aryans imposed caste on the ‘egalitarian’ Dravidian society.

The report[2] published by National Geographic says:

“The genetic data also revealed that genetic differentiation among populations in Tamil Nadu began as early as 6,000 years ago, with no significant genetic admixture among them for at least the last 3,000 years. These results indicate a minimal genetic impact from the Indo-European migrations into the region over the past 2,000 years. These results are consistent with the earliest historical records of the region that document a highly structured society prior to the establishment of the Hindu Varna system.”

Indologist Dr. Koenraad Elst had also arrived at similar conclusion two decades ago based on literary evidence. He says that untouchability was an essential feature of Dravidian society[3]:

“It is at any rate not due to the much-maligned ‘Aryans’, who originally had no such notion (untouchability) whether in India or abroad. Neither do the Vedic Samhitas contain any reference to Untouchability; Vedic Hinduism, at least, could exist without untouchability. The Dravidians, by contrast, seem to have had the notion in complete form: Before the coming of the Aryan ideas the Tamils believed that any taking of life was dangerous, as it released the spirits of the things that were killed. Likewise, all who dealt with the dead or with dead substances from the body were considered to be charged with the power of death and were thought to be dangerous. Thus, long before the coming of the Aryans with their notion of varna, the Tamils had groups that were considered low and dangerous and with whom contact was closely regulated.”

Right minded scholars and Hindu patriots should focus on dismantling the orthodoxy’s dogma, which is an instrument for aggression and hate-mongering, rather than being obsessed with AIT. As we have seen, there is enough evidence in favor of DIT.

References

1. Khan, R. (2018, January 18). The Dravidianization of India. Retrieved January 27, 2018, from https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/01/18/t/
2. Room, N. G. (2012, November 28). Southern India’s Caste System Predates Arrival of Indo-Europeans, Genographic Project Reveals. Retrieved January 27, 2018, from http://press.nationalgeographic.com/2012/11/28/southern-india-caste-system-indo-europeans-genographic/
3. Elst, K. (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism. New Delhi: Voice of India.