Nandakishore Mridula's Reviews > Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity

Indians are a people in search of identity.

If one looks at it objectively, national identities do not make much sense, as the current nation states are all of recent origin: and even now, they are in a state of flux. Racial identities go a little bit deeper, as they are easier to physically distinguish and many a time, tied up indistinguishably with one’s religious identity – especially in the case of non-proselytising religions like Hinduism and Judaism.

India as a country is of relatively recent origin. What was a multitude of indigenous kingdoms, threaded loosely together by a common culture was stitched together into a country by the British conquerors. In the process, they also institutionalised the plethora of religious beliefs into a monolithic religion under the name of Hinduism. Over the years, the nationalists (mostly from the privileged upper castes) standardised this religion under the Vedic practices, and the “Hinduism” as we come to know of it today was born.

All of this is becoming much more relevant today as the country is reeling under the onslaught of militant Hindu fundamentalist revivalism. The country’s secular fabric is under attack as never before as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, with the help of its political wing the Bharatiya Janata Party which is in power, is trying convert India into a Hindu Rashtra – a fascist Hindu theocracy. In this context, I felt it prudent to examine some of the myths underlying our fictitious identity.

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The Aryan is a potent historical and mythological figure in world history. This race who supposedly inhabited the Middle Asian plains and spread across the world in a conquering spree is supposed to have “civilised” most of Europe and India. In this book, Dorothy M. Figueira takes a long, hard look at this enigmatic figure – not through the lens of historical analysis, but through a literary and cultural perspective; and thus provides a fascinating insight into how a “myth of identity” is created.

It all started with the Enlightenment. In search of a new, pure religion different from the Church with its sectarian disputes and suppression of liberty, they found it in India. Starting with Voltaire for whom the Vedas were largely an absent text and moving on through Herder, the myth of an Aryan civilisation in India which was pristine in its purity was invented from very scanty sources: by linking this Aryan to the common ancestor of Europeans as well, the main aim of divorce from Judaism was effected. Later on, the romantics made this civilisation poetic, of which nothing was visible in current idolatrous India. Thus, the twin requirements the rejection of Judaism as well as the separation of "decadent" Hinduism from its great past was accomplished - identifying the white European as the natural heir of this pure race. Nietzsche with his Ubermensch clearly stamped the Aryan with racial superiority; and finally, Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Alfred Rosenberg (the Nazi ideologue) after him transplanted him to Germany, giving him blonde hair and blue eyes in the process.

In India, the second chapter in the myth of the Aryan started with the great reformer Raja Rammohan Roy. Now mainly known to posterity for his role in abolishing the Sati, the custom of immolating the wife on the husband's funeral pyre, the Raja was an apologist for Hinduism. A fan of Utilitarianism, Roy sought to prove that Sanskrit scripture espoused monotheism and rejected idol worship; his reading and interpretation of the Vedas were significantly skewed to this end.

Raja Rammohan Roy created the Brahmo Samaj with the aim of the cultural purification of Hinduism. He also posited the pure Aryan. The concept was carried forward by Dayanand Saraswati, who founded the Arya Samaj in 1875. He also translated the texts with considerable leeway. Both these reformers, like the Orientalist Westerners before them, saw the current form of the Hindu religion as a decayed version of the pristine Vedic religion (a myth propagated by Hindu fundamentalists even today). This was further established as a cornerstone of Hindu revivalism by Justice Ranade and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, while the myth of the Vedic people was sold abroad by the charismatic monk and orator Swami Vivekananda, who is largely responsible even today for the respect Hinduism commands in the West. However, it is a little known fact that his vision of the Aryan was racial, and he identified them with the "pure" modern Brahmins!

Enter now the Anti-Myth. For in however glowing colours one painted Indian culture, there was no gainsaying the fact that it was one of the most non-egalitarian. The caste system held its horrendous sway across the subcontinent, and the worst sufferers were the ones at the bottom rung of the social ladder, the so-called "untouchables". It was only a matter of time before someone in this strata revolted. It came through Mahatma Jothiba Govind Phule, an activist of the gardener caste. He stood the myth on its head by picturising the Aryans as barbarian invaders, who destroyed the cultured Indian civilsation and imposed their draconian laws.

The strongest critic of the Aryan myth was Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the architect of India's constitution and a brilliant scholar. Stemming from his fight with Gandhi within the Congress party to establish an identity for the untouchables separate from the Hindu religion (a battle which he lost), Ambedkar rejected the Aryan myth in toto. For him, there was no separate Aryan race: it was a battle of the Brahmin priests against the Buddhists, whom they branded as untouchable. For him, the whole Hindu religion is nothing but set of ordnances, and does not deserve to be called a religion at all (this view is prevalent among the Dalit groups today).

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So who was the Aryan? Well, most probably a group of people migrated to India during the bronze age, mingling and intermarrying with the indigenous populace, creating the incredibly assimilative and multi-hued Hinduism in the process. However, the image of the conquering Aryan on a horse, spreading his superior seed across the inferior peoples of the globe is certainly a myth: a myth which had such tragic consequences in the 1930's.

Interestingly, Hindu apologists today reject this myth not because of their dedication to any kind of historical accuracy but because of their political need to show Indians as a homogeneous people. They have invented a new myth about India as the oldest civilisation in the world, with Hinduism - or Sanatana Dharma, or "eternal law", as they call it - as a religion without a historical beginning. Dalits still hold on to the myth of the marauding Aryan, again due to political exigencies. The debates go on and on, and seems to have no intention of subsiding.

Ultimately, all national and racial identities are myths - myths which are more potent than truths.