Contested past

Abstract

Summary During the British colonial regime in the 19th century Western Indologists and missionaries, with the participation of the indigenous scholars who controlled traditional systems of knowledge, formed models for the description of early religious history which was especially inspired by linguistic ideas whose central concept was the so-called ‘Aryan immigration’ into Northern India. This Orientalist historiography concerning events that lay back several thousand years found its way into political and religious discourse in one form or another. These projections developed into highly significant ingredients of the various political, ethnic, and religious movements and parties, such as the Dravidian Movement or the Nationalist Hindu groupings. The present paper tries to map out the corner stones of modern-day discourses concerning Indian pre- and early history which has developed into something of a veritable battle about the past..

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