CHENNAI: Governor RN Ravi on Monday alleged that the proponents of Dravidian ideology, with their “lies” regarding the “Aryan-Dravidian” divide and the “Aryan invsion theory” are threatening the unity and diversity of India.
In his inaugural address at the two-day conference on ‘Indus Civilisation: Its Culture and People - Archaeological Insights’ at D G Vaishnav College, he contended that the ancient literature in neither Tamil nor Sanskrit had any reference to the word Aryan as a race.
Reiterating his earlier blame that the British missionary Robert Caldwell played a major role in creating this Aryan-Dravidian divide, Ravi alleged that while the states speaking Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu have moved away from its influence, a political ecosystem has been created in Tamil Nadu that is threatening the country’s unity.
Arguing that recent scientific studies have proven the contested existence of the Sarasvati river, the Governor said the Indus Valley civilisation should ideally be called the Sindu-Saraswati civilisation.
In what appeared as a reference to the recent efforts of Tamil Nadu government, Ravi said there has been an attempt to claim the Indus-Valley civilisation as the civilisation of Tamil-speaking people, who had to migrate to the south due to invasion of Aryans. He contended that “polemical” literature is being used to make this claim, which he said had no truth.
Stating that Saraswati-Sindu civilisation is a Vedic civilisation that embraced the whole of Bharat, he urged the participants to rescue this from what he alleged as the “intellectual and political” violence done to this by colonisers and those wedded to “Marxist” and “Dravidian” ideologies.