Who Created Harappan / Indus Valley Civilisation? | How Did It End? | Samvaad With Devdutt Pattanaik

[Neojinnah]

No one in Italy disowns Roman Empire. Latin Alphabet and Christianity is from Roman Era. No one in Germany disputes their descendants were the Germanic tribes. the definition of what is Germanic has evolved over time. It is German.

Both Italy and Germany are basically originally multiethnic countries where large swathes of people are not descended from Germanic tribes or ancient Romans and were assimilated into that identity very recently, so you're wrong. It's this kind of elementary level understanding of the world which leads to Indians making ridiculous assertions.

The language, culture is all there.

Not true. India is a typical post colonial country born out of foreign British rule, modernity, globalization, etc. The culture is a product of this and the official language is English because the inhabitants dont have a common language. But the elite of India are religious fanatics and chauvinists in denial, so they have this delusion that they're exactly the same as people from thousands of years ago.

 

[nahtanbob]

Both Italy and Germany are basically originally multiethnic countries where large swathes of people are not descended from Germanic tribes or ancient Romans and were assimilated into that identity very recently, so you're wrong. It's this kind of elementary level understanding of the world which leads to Indians making ridiculous assertions.

What other ethnicity lives in Italy and Germany proper ?

Not true. India is a typical post colonial country born out of foreign British rule. The culture is a product of this and the official language is English because the inhabitants dont have a common language. But the elite of India are religious fanatics and chauvinists in denial, so they have this delusion that they're exactly the same as people from thousands of years ago.

I have told you the definition keeps changing

you have not answered which people called Indika gets written in 3rd century BC
Or why half a dozen European countries would start East India Companies in the 16th century ?

 

[Neojinnah]

What other ethnicity lives in Italy and Germany proper ?

Albanians, Slavs, and Germanic people in Italy. Poles and Slavs in Germany.
It's incredible how as an Indian you make so many confident assertons about the world and yet demand to be spoonfed what should be basic information. Just one among the myriad of ways engaging with ignorant and obnoxious Hindu fanatics becomes a tiresome chore.

You have not answered which people called Indika gets written in 3rd century BC
Or why half a dozen European countries would start East India Companies in the 16th century ?

Why does it matter? Indika comes from the Sanskrit word Sindhu. There are hundreds of millions of Dravidian Hindus in India today with ancestors who spoke a completely different language to Sanskrit. So why are you kanging on Indika and thinking it will prove your point?

 

[Master Chief]

What other ethnicity lives in Italy and Germany proper ?


I have told you the definition keeps changing

you have not answered which people called Indika gets written in 3rd century BC
Or why half a dozen European countries would start East India Companies in the 16th century ?

You're recycling the same old argument. Not sure why Germania is cited as an example of disparate cultures forming a single polity, as the features of this supposed analogue are quite different from what we see in South Asia.

Germania was the Latin name for Deutschland. Deutschland was the endonym for the Rhineland germanic peoples who resisted Roman rule together (no foreign power imposed the name upon them). The Roman advance politically unified these once warring peoples. Beyond that, they shared languages, DNA, and cultures. This is already substantially different to the South Asian experience. You can take any period in history you like, IVC, Alexander, Maurya, Mughals, British - the traits shared between germanic peoples (DNA, linguistics, culture, religion, even endonymy) did not (to varying degrees) align for South Asian peoples.

Even having said all that, Germanic peoples NEVER actually unified entirely. Hitler didn't even manage it. Anglo-Saxons are a germanic people and they spread far and wide, so how on earth is it even possible for them to unify into a single nation state?

Here's what "India" looked like when white colonisers decided to take over. You're sitting here telling me this was some "unified" front against "non-natives"? (See below)

You can go further back.

Did the Nandas suggest a united defence with Porus against Alexander's advance, or were the Nandas and Porus actually rivals, so much so that Porus was left to his fate despite being supposedly "native barhadari"?

At NO SIGNIFICANT POINT in known history (Harappan era, post-Harappan era, Mauryan era, Mughal era, British colonial era..) can the claim be justifiably and evidently made that the tribes of the Indus and the tribes of the Ganga (+southies) were EVER a united political entity. On the contrary, they rivalled each other (as did MANY other groups within south Asia) and even REPEATEDLY AND CONSISTENTLY plotted each other's downfall with help from Europeans!

Shall we discuss the Marathas and their "unified defence of mother India" next?? Tipu might want to join the chat.

 

[Vikramaditya1]

What does "scholarly consensus" tell us about the Achaemenid satrapy called Hindush? That it did not extend into eastern gangetic realms.

Big deal. Later it did and you can't freeze it neither can it is violating any rules or laws. But then again where is the proof that both had different cultures?

What does "scholarly consensus" tell us about the land mass called "India" as a geographical entity, in terms of its unified status (whether a single polity or united city states)?

Nobody gives a shit about if it was unified seperated by political boundaries. If it did then historical accounts would have used different names for each political entity.

AI response explicitly from scholarly works: "India became a single unified nation-state under a single sovereign government when the Republic of India was established with its constitution in 1950, following independence from Britain in 1947.

You're confusing a modern nation state with a historical geographical, civilisational term again. Also, India became an independent Dominion in 1947 and 1950 marks becoming a republic under its Constitution, not the first existence of India as a political entity.

Before this modern era, the Indian subcontinent was never a single unified nation-state, though certain large empires brought vast regions under one imperial ruler.Early Imperial UnificationThe Mauryan Empire (c. 300–185 BCE): Emperor Ashoka united a large majority of the northern and central subcontinent under one rule, though parts of the far south remained independent.The Mughal Empire (16th–17th century): Under rulers like Akbar and Aurangzeb, the Mughals controlled most of northern and central India, but they never fully conquered the far south or the northeast."

So what? My argument has never required continuous political unity. Political fragmentation does not invalidate a geographical or civilisational category.

Did we not already agree that the land mass of "India" (the erroneous and oversimplified extrapolation of the original Achaemenid definition) was only ever unified by Mauryans, Mughals, and Brits? Similarly, Europe has been forcibly unified at several points in history. The similarities are uncanny in fact. India is as much a country as Europe is. Luckily for you, keeping everybody deliberately stupid in your country helps preserve the illusion.

Except Europe never became a sovereign state called Europe in 1947 whose predecessor administration was already officially called the Government of India. You're comparing a continent with an actual successor state while pretending political nomenclature doesn't matter.

The names are irrelevant to my specific analogy. Let's use a real analogue, the Eternal Reich, or the "Greater Germanic Reich" as hitler explicitly wanted occupied Europe to be called. Did that work out well for all parties concerned, even though they had religious and significant cultural and racial congruence? Indeed, Europe was and is significantly MORE homogenous than India.

Hitler is irrelevant to the naming question. Calling Gandhara or Magadha parts of Ancient India does not mean Delhi had a sovereign right to conquer them. Historical geography is not entitlement to imperial rule. What kind of argument is this Reich blah blah blah. Where did I say we should unify India?

I keep reminding you - we are referring to the naming of South Asian political entities. Did locals establish the name "India" or was it an exonym?
Who gave the Greeks their name "Hellas"? In case you haven't figured it out, it was the Hellenes themselves! Spartans and Athenians BOTH arose directly from hellenic tribes and shared identical genomic ancestry (afaik).

For the nth time India is an exonym in its Greek form. Its ultimate source, however, is the indigenous Sindhu. Nobody disputes either fact. An exonym being foreign does not make the geography it eventually denotes illegitimate.
And great example bringing hellas, here hellas itself expanded from a more restricted designation into a collective Greek one. Thucydides explicitly describes the name hellenes as gradually spreading among communities rather than existing eternally with its later scope. Your Greek example therefore demonstrates that geographical ethnic names can expand.

Ancient Greek identity was not established by genomic testing. Scholarship treats Greek identity as historically constructed through language, religion, genealogy, sanctuaries and other collective institutions. Political and local identities remained extremely strong.

With that in mind, do remind us if gangetics were genetically the same as indus inhabitants (BEFORE the collapse of the IVC, the flight of Harappans eastward, and the arrival of Steppelanders...events that homogenised north Indian and ancient Pakistani profiles to a degree).

And with that in mind, Modern Indian subcon populations themselves derive in varying proportions from overlapping IVC related, AASI and Steppe related ancestries. Genetics shows mixtures and clines what it does not show is a biological wall conveniently matching your proposed "ancient Pakistan" and India frontier.

Also, this migration point you made makes your argument stranger. You're acknowledging major prehistoric population movement and mixture across the very northwest gangetic geography you simultaneously describe as a hard civilisational divide.

Essentially, you're comparing an alliance of City States that decided for themselves they were all GREEK and had the genetic evidence to support that claim starting from their progenitor status....

Eventually, yes. Thucydides specifically says the collective name Hellenes spread gradually and that Homer did not apply it collectively to all Greeks. Collective identities can develop and expand without every constituent population first holding a referendum.

with a geographical lumping together of rival City States who, at best, could be called Bharat if left to their own devices to come up with a name,

Then you've conceded that an indigenous supra-regional name existed. Whether you personally prefer Bharat to India doesn't demonstrate that the latter geographical term is erroneous.

who moreover do not have the cultural, religious, and genetic basis upon which to "merge" with one another (and consequently were not able to, EXCEPT BY FORCE FROM A THIRD PARTY - Maurya, Aurangzeb, Queen Victoria).

Languages, religions, philosophical traditions, epics, pilgrimage networks, political ideas and populations circulated across the subcontinent for millennia. Political diversity doesn't erase those connections. However we don't have a cultural identity to now merge with the two modern political entities created in 1947 neither should we.

Who said it was anything other than a temporal descriptor? You're right that "vedic" is a meaningless qualifier for "brahmi" in a linguistic sense, but brahmi script arose in the era after the vedics had arrived from the Eurasian Steppeland,

Huh? Then withdraw it as evidence of a hard cultural boundary, because a temporal label tells us precisely nothing about whether Hindush and Magadha constituted separate civilisations.
Small correction though, vedic era is hundreds of years after the arrival of steppe nomads. The steppe nomads are not vedic.

which is all that was meant by this qualifier in the above context, distinguishing it temporally from indus script, which was clearly "pre-vedic".

No. You claimed the absence of one proved cultural discontinuity. The ASI itself says that between Indus writing and the ashokan inscriptions the writing situation is unknown, while literary references suggest writing and pre ahokan knowledge of brahmi remains possible. 'Unknown' is not evidence for your claimed hard boundary

I don't need to prove a negative. You prove to me there was a native script in the Indus Valley before the Mauryan empire controlled it (which was the first point of imperial contiguity between the old Achaemenid satrapies, then ruled by Seleucids after the Achaemenids fell) and the regions to the east that was ANYTHING SIMILAR to Brahmi. It may interest you to know that Brahmi script was read left to right, whereas IVC script was read right to left - they're already substantially different. Being a fan of Ashoka's magnanimous learnings, I expected you of all people to know this much. The point being made is that Magadhan script was Brahmi, which has no conceivable roots in IVC script.

Yes. And? Different scripts do not establish different civilisations. Ashoka's own empire used Brahmi in much of the subcontinent and right to left Kharosthi in the northwest.

Nobody needs Brahmi to descend from Indus script for cultural continuity to exist. Britain changed from runes to latin script without becoming a different civilisation every time its writing system changed.

Stolen from whom?? Were you paying attention to the thread and our discussion...stolen from Pakistan of course!

I chuckle everytime I read that. The name India was being used for more than two millennia before Pakistan existed. Pakistan cannot retrospectively own a name that predates the Pakistani state by millennia.

And yes, it is a theft of intellectual property that leads to genuine economic harm. Once definitions are established accurately, everything associated with coterminous Pakistan historically is NOT associated with the Secular Republic of India, BY DEFINITION. The problem is obvious. Call it "saltiness" if that helps you cope but that top tier whinging won't stop the truth from being written. I understand you fear this because of all the stolen property your Secular Republic stands to lose as a result!

Ancient geographical history is not Pakistans intellectual property. Harappa, Gandhara, Vedic traditions, Buddhism, the Mauryas etc. are historical subjects, not copyrighted national assets allocated by the Radcliffe Award.

India was a name given by foreigners to coterminous Pakistan, then erroneously extrapolated to incorporate eastern territories. Those eastern territories than had the nerve to retroactively "claim" Pakistan and its heritage!

No such historical “definition” exists. Modern borders don't retroactively sever ancient historical geography. Takshashila can simultaneously belong to the ancient history of the Indian subcontinent and to the national heritage of modern Pakistan.

It is a case of civilisational PARASITISM and we shall treat it aggressively.

Too little too late. I have said before. This sudden interest in "Ancient Pakistan" is a healthy one if it can preserve some artefacts from your own populace who is more interested in defacing things.

Missed this one...

Look we don't care what you call your primordial milieu of a nation state as long as it doesn't impinge on our rightful legacy and heritage. It's that simple.

You evidently care enormously because your argument requires India to rename itself so that Pakistan can claim exclusive possession of particular strands of pre 1947 history. Pakistan is a state for 70+ years, just like India. If you want you can rename yourself as "original India" for all I care because there is nothing stopping you from doing it.

Greece fought for decades against FYROM for EXACTLY THIS REASON. There is precedence over the importance of this matter. I'm not just fahrting in a wind tunnel for laughs here.

The Macedonia dispute proves that modern states can dispute names and heritage it does not establish that modern states obtain exclusive ownership of all antiquity occurring inside their current borders. The eventual settlement was a negotiated modern political agreement, not a universal law of historical nomenclature.

Go with Bharat. Or Gangadesh as has been suggested. How about Marathastan (please credit me appropriately if you go with this one)?

And this rather gives the game away. You've moved from historical analysis to telling another sovereign country what name would make your preferred Pakistani national narrative more comfortable.
India chose India, constitutionally also Bharat. Pakistan chose Pakistan. Neither side gets to rewrite antiquity merely because the other's name is politically inconvenient.

 

[Master Chief]

Big deal. Later it did and you can't freeze it neither can it is violating any rules or laws. But then again where is the proof that both had different cultures?

Plenty of proof the Indus was not aligned with the lands to the east. Where would you like to sample evidence from?

1. Genetically AND linguistically AND religiously not the same at the time of the Harappans.

2. Culturally rivals at the time of Alexander (nobody came to help Porus when Alexander arrived yet the Nandas could easily have turned the odds against Alexander had they aligned with Porus).

3. Linguistically different at the time of the Achaemenids.

We can highlight differences in religion, genetic composition, and culture once again during the medieval era but I'm sure you are familiar with those.

YOU ARE FORCING TOGETHER DISPARATE AND SUBSTANTIVELY DISTINCT PEOPLES TO RETROFIT THE POLITICAL CONCEPT OF "INDIA" ONTO A GEOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTOR.

Nobody gives a shit about if it was unified seperated by political boundaries. If it did then historical accounts would have used different names for each political entity.

I just explained to you above why I do give a shit. You have overlaid the political concept of "India" (bharata as per your scriptures) onto a geographic descriptor.

So what? My argument has never required continuous political unity. Political fragmentation does not invalidate a geographical or civilisational category.

Your argument is simply your subjective opinion. I have presented DIFFERENCES between the very nature of these tribes, their composition, their behaviour, their beliefs, their writing, their technology, their influences....all over many different eras of history. I have pointed out their "unification" is based on a geographic descriptor for a continent, imposed by foreigners. Who squatting in Persepolis or London or even on secondment to Pataliputra bequeathed the name "India" to your people, as anything other than a convenient descriptor for "you brown lot"? You neglect this reality. India is not different to Europe or Africa in this context. When Europeans arrived in Africa, they saw varying shades of black and jungles as far as the eye could see - this is why they gave it one descriptor and retained that descriptor for what lay beyond and yet undiscovered! That "Bharata" is mentioned in scriptures is of no consequence because it was a simple mythology of a supposedly unified land mass that was never realised! It doesn't mean it existed or that all these tribes in South Asia were somehow unified. I hope you AT LEAST understand that the Emperor Bharata is a mythological being.

Except Europe never became a sovereign state called Europe in 1947 whose predecessor administration was already officially called the Government of India. You're comparing a continent with an actual successor state while pretending political nomenclature doesn't matter.

Hitler is irrelevant to the naming question. Calling Gandhara or Magadha parts of Ancient India does not mean Delhi had a sovereign right to conquer them. Historical geography is not entitlement to imperial rule. What kind of argument is this Reich blah blah blah. Where did I say we should unify India?

Europe was occupied by Nazis and Hitler wanted to give it a single unifying name "Greater Germanic Reich". When he failed to achieve this, the independent nations became independent individual nations again.

Your post here actually demonstrates an agreement with me that barring forcible conquest of South Asia (by the British in this case and others before them), there is no unified polity present. Don't show me the map in 1947. Show me the map just before the East India Company fired their first shot (hint: there ain't no unified "India" but lots of little polities within a CONTINENTAL LAND MASS CALLED "INDIA").

For the nth time India is an exonym in its Greek form. Its ultimate source, however, is the indigenous Sindhu. Nobody disputes either fact. An exonym being foreign does not make the geography it eventually denotes illegitimate.
And great example bringing hellas, here hellas itself expanded from a more restricted designation into a collective Greek one. Thucydides explicitly describes the name hellenes as gradually spreading among communities rather than existing eternally with its later scope. Your Greek example therefore demonstrates that geographical ethnic names can expand.

Ancient Greek identity was not established by genomic testing. Scholarship treats Greek identity as historically constructed through language, religion, genealogy, sanctuaries and other collective institutions. Political and local identities remained extremely strong.

Ermm.. it's not the exonymity itself that renders "India" illegitimate - it's the fact that you have misinterpreted and misrepresented that exonym. Don't put words into my mouth. Exonymity is not a crime and is nothing to be ashamed of for any nation. Stealing another nation's legacy by the false utility of a name (WHETHER EXONYM OR ENDONYM) is the issue here.

And yes, I know Hellenes "expanded" from their original origin point. Of course they did. Duhh. My point is that your "India" did not arise from the real "India". The legacy of the IVC was usurped. You seem to repeatedly claim I am making arguments that I have not made. We all know what this practice is called and why it is deployed.

And with that in mind, Modern Indian subcon populations themselves derive in varying proportions from overlapping IVC related, AASI and Steppe related ancestries. Genetics shows mixtures and clines what it does not show is a biological wall conveniently matching your proposed "ancient Pakistan" and India frontier.

Also, this migration point you made makes your argument stranger. You're acknowledging major prehistoric population movement and mixture across the very northwest gangetic geography you simultaneously describe as a hard civilisational divide.

Remind yourself of the history. There was a biological, religious, linguistic, and ethnic wall when the IVC existed. The IVC then collapsed. Genomes then naturally diffused outwards to what we see today. So whether you like it or not, the Harappan genome was NOT shared by gangetics originally. I have already said clearly that genetics, linguistics, culture, religion, all contributed to the differences between our peoples, each to varying degrees in different eras of human history. Shared MODERN genomes across modern Pakistan and modern North India are STILL not inclusive of vast swathes of the Secular Republic's territory (the whole south!) even to this day. The ORIGINAL genomes were categorcially different (you need to re-read the works of Reich if you still haven't figured this much out)...

PRE-HARAPPAN MATURE PHASE IVC:
-- AASI: 15-35%. IRANIAN RELATED: 65-85%.

PRE-HARAPPAN MATURE PHASE GANGETICS:
-- AASI: 50-70%. IRANIAN RELATED: MINIMAL TO NO INITIAL PRESENCE.

The diffusion of Iranian genomes and mixing of Iranian DNA EASTWARDS across the Gangetic region occurred AFTER THE IVC FELL.

Want me to say it over and over?

Then you've conceded that an indigenous supra-regional name existed. Whether you personally prefer Bharat to India doesn't demonstrate that the latter geographical term is erroneous.

Conceded not 1 inch mate. The latter geographical term is not of itself erroneous (why shouldn't westerners, or indeed anyone, refer to areas of the world in simplified terms for their own practical purposes?) but you deploying it for any political entity east of the Indus categorically IS ERRONEOUS. Using the term "Bharat" is not erroneous in this context. You will have to work harder to pick holes in my argument. Take a couple of days off work if needed. This stuff is more important than selling antivirus software bundles.

No. You claimed the absence of one proved cultural discontinuity. The ASI itself says that between Indus writing and the ashokan inscriptions the writing situation is unknown, while literary references suggest writing and pre ahokan knowledge of brahmi remains possible. 'Unknown' is not evidence for your claimed hard boundary

Yep. Unknown. So you can't use an "unknown" or a void in knowledge to prove continuity. Therefore the default stands, that no continuity existed until proven otherwise. We prove the continuity of all historical empires and nations with hard evidence, not by way of a gap in evidence.

Huh? Then withdraw it as evidence of a hard cultural boundary, because a temporal label tells us precisely nothing about whether Hindush and Magadha constituted separate civilisations.
Small correction though, vedic era is hundreds of years after the arrival of steppe nomads. The steppe nomads are not vedic.

Nothing to withdraw here since I have pointed out that there is no known script for the period in question, while Magadha had a known script. I don't see the problem. You can't use the absence of something to prove something existed in continuity with something else.

Yes. And? Different scripts do not establish different civilisations. Ashoka's own empire used Brahmi in much of the subcontinent and right to left Kharosthi in the northwest.

Nobody needs Brahmi to descend from Indus script for cultural continuity to exist. Britain changed from runes to latin script without becoming a different civilisation every time its writing system changed.

Difference in scripts does very much create a rationale for the existence of two different political entities. In the context of multiple other layers of identity variance between the peoples in question, there is ample evidence of independence of these regions except when forced together under the imperial yoke.

The name India was being used for more than two millennia before Pakistan existed. Pakistan cannot retrospectively own a name that predates the Pakistani state by millennia.

"INDIA" was used in only 1 known context: As a geographical descriptor by westerners. Just like "Africa". Pakistan can very much own this name, just as any modern nation state lays exclusive claim to its progenitor civilisation. Can FYROM claim to call itself "Macedonia"?

Ancient geographical history is not Pakistans intellectual property. Harappa, Gandhara, Vedic traditions, Buddhism, the Mauryas etc. are historical subjects, not copyrighted national assets allocated by the Radcliffe Award.

Of course you may study the history of Pakistan. You can even worship it if you see fit or imitate it (giving due and explicit reference in the process) but you cannot simply usurp it and claim it as your own (and worse still, deny Pakistan's right over it).

The rest of your posts have already been answered by my responses above. Happy reading!

 

[nahtanbob]

You're recycling the same old argument. Not sure why Germania is cited as an example of disparate cultures forming a single polity, as the features of this supposed analogue are quite different from what we see in South Asia.

Germania was the Latin name for Deutschland. Deutschland was the endonym for the Rhineland germanic peoples who resisted Roman rule together (no foreign power imposed the name upon them). The Roman advance politically unified these once warring peoples. Beyond that, they shared languages, DNA, and cultures. This is already substantially different to the South Asian experience. You can take any period in history you like, IVC, Alexander, Maurya, Mughals, British - the traits shared between germanic peoples (DNA, linguistics, culture, religion, even endonymy) did not (to varying degrees) align for South Asian peoples.

Even having said all that, Germanic peoples NEVER actually unified entirely. Hitler didn't even manage it. Anglo-Saxons are a germanic people and they spread far and wide, so how on earth is it even possible for them to unify into a single nation state?

Here's what "India" looked like when white colonisers decided to take over. You're sitting here telling me this was some "unified" front against "non-natives"? (See below)

You can go further back.

Did the Nandas suggest a united defence with Porus against Alexander's advance, or were the Nandas and Porus actually rivals, so much so that Porus was left to his fate despite being supposedly "native barhadari"?

At NO SIGNIFICANT POINT in known history (Harappan era, post-Harappan era, Mauryan era, Mughal era, British colonial era..) can the claim be justifiably and evidently made that the tribes of the Indus and the tribes of the Ganga (+southies) were EVER a united political entity. On the contrary, they rivalled each other (as did MANY other groups within south Asia) and even REPEATEDLY AND CONSISTENTLY plotted each other's downfall with help from Europeans!

Shall we discuss the Marathas and their "unified defence of mother India" next?? Tipu might want to join the chat.

View attachment 213511

Incorrect map - British were real rulers of Bengal and Carnatic