Major-General Gagandeep Bakshi has surpassed himself, writing another exceptional book on a historical archetype shift against age-old colonial propaganda of the Aryan Invasion Theory and its gateway drug the Aryan Migration Theory. General Bakshi’s new book is entitled “Beyond the Aryan Invasion Theory: In Quest of the Vedic Horse.” Like his previous book “Saraswati Civilization,” “The Vedic Horse” addresses in tantamount detail many of the major issues surrounding India’s highly contentious early history. General Bakshi’s “Saraswati Civilization” focused on proving the existence of the Sarasvati River which the colonizers labelled as “mythical” relegating the Rig Veda and the rishis who wrote it basically delusional about their environment in favor of a grand European invasion that “civilized” the subcontinent.

“The Vedic Horse” once again decisively dispatches another of these mendacious arguments that the horse did not exist in India before 1500-1200 B.C.E. around the time of the so-called “invasion” by warlike westward incoming “Aryans” into India who brought the horse when they came to conquer the local Dravidian population driving them further south. The Vedic horse has therefore been one of the hallmarks of proving or disproving once and for all the real myth of the Aryan Invasion Theory, a well-peddled colonial indoctrination that has left India’s history and identity in turmoil well into the 21^st century. 

Such colonial disinformation from the likes of Max Mueller, William Mortimer and others propagated a Eurocentric view that western conquering groups from the Caucasus-Steppe regions invaded India and gave rise to what we recognize today as Indic Hindu civilization. What this indirectly says is that the native indigenous Indians did not build such great cities of their own accord, it was Europeans who did it for them. It was not Indians or Bharatiyas who brought forth the great philosophical insights today we collectively call Hinduism but invaders did it. Such theories conveniently and cunningly collectively surmised that if foreigners were the source of Indic civilisation since ancient times, then it is foreigners (like the British) who can still rule them.

The 1500-1200 B.C.E. dating for this event was not arbitrary. It was based on great scientific biblical interpretation of time and the age of the earth so most of Indian history before biblical timing was magically erased and even moved up. All of India’s chronological records of their “king lists” were erased with the stroke of a pen. Dr. G.D. Bakshi elucidates for us, according to untouchable colonial literature Max Mueller dated the Aryan Invasion to 1200 B.C.E and in that time, they managed to compose the mighty Vedas too!

According to the Abrahamic religions, the world was approximately 4500 years old and so our civilization could never be older. Mueller, “decreed that only a period of 200 years would be enough for each of the preceding textual periods of Vedic literature. Mathematically he summarized if the Sutra literature he was able to date to 600 B.C.E. then the others were as follows Aranyakas, 200; Brahmanas, 200; and Vedas, 200 adding up to the divine 1200 B.C.E. None of these points are mentioned in the upholding of the colonial narratives. Neither are references by the leftists of their colonial masters’ interpretations of the indigenous population as “Black snub-nosed Dravidians.”

At the outset, General Bakshi gives us a reconnaissance of Indian history, especially the last thousand years of India’s history which saw the onslaught of brutal Islamic invasion culminating in the last two hundred years of British rule until Independence in 1947. It is from here we are able to hash out an understanding of British imposition of colonial narratives on India and why it was important to their strategy of “divide and conquer” to do so as the General writes, “divide et impera.” As far as my understanding of Indian politics today across the subcontinent it has had dire consequences dividing India ideologically by every social topic possible from geography to language, and culture through weaponizing history. This begs an important question.

Did these historians an era ago simply make a miscalculation on Indic history lacking the science and knowledge we have today? I think not. The British had invested too much into segregating India through careful weaving of fabricated tales by weaponizing history to achieve battle-less goals many of which today are serving the same purpose by anyone conversant in international politics.

In modern-day India you literally have the South asking the North to leave because they are invaders even though DNA analysis shows there has been no “invasion” as there is very little genetic variation between the North and South. Led by Lord Macaulay, they painstakingly dismantled the Indian schooling system of the gurukuls which made India a beacon of literacy. So, these concepts while appearing almost insipid and innocuous on the surface have very real, very modern consequences for the unity of India.

Imagine the simple presence of a horse causing modern political chaos across the landscape of India. Not only India, but this Aryan zeal by the British led to the Nazi-ideologue delusions of a pure Aryan race which in turn unfurled a World War and the genocide of the Jewish people for which only the Nazis are named. Unfortunately, it means an objective analysis of the unravelling of colonial history cannot be severed from the political underlinings. Unlike “Sarasvati Civilization” which I also had the honor of reviewing “The Quest for the Vedic Horse” does not shy away from explaining to the reader or perhaps even the novice of Indian history and politics the academic, and political results and consequences of such distortions. It is another reason this book is incredible in that it speaks to anyone whether of the Indian diaspora or those simply wishing to understand the breadth of such false narratives while maintaining the ethos of great academia.

General Bakshi’s first chapters of the “Vedic Horse” is dedicated to acquainting the reader with how the British came about dismantling the civilizational unity of India not just by denying their great history and kingdoms across thousands of years but by seeding disunity from the very beginning of Indic civilization and allowing the fiends to take hold in the minds of the people. They went to interfere in India’s oldest version of itself, the archaeological record of the Indus-Saraswati Valley civilization.

If they could implant doubt from the root by their concoction of theories masquerading as archaeology, they could destroy India and mould it in their image. One such way was the Aryan Invasion Theory or AIT which basically propagates that the Aryans were Western invaders from the Caucasus Mountains or the original Aryan Urheimat.

One such proof of these Aryans was that there was no horse present in India before the Aryans and it was brought in from outside. Through various means in the following chapters such as literary, archaeological evidence and other means General Bakshi excellently disposes of such colonial notions by proving the great possibility that India indeed had an indigenous horse. A horse that existed long before the purported AIT theory which places the Aryan Invasion in about 1500-1200 B.C.E. The political outcome was to be that if India had originally been subject to foreign rule they should also submit to British rule at that time.

Today such false and dangerous narratives about the unity of India and the foundation of Indic Vedic Hindu Civilisation continue to be broadcasted religiously by the colonial carriers in the modern leftist-Marxist-Leninist-socialist-communist cabal. However, if it was proven India had an indigenous horse or the Vedic horse, whatever its origin, was present in India long before the colonial time frame given for a horse in India then it would be another axe to their nefarious agenda.

To further implement their plans, the British used actual evidence of undeniable Indo-European connections unraveled by scholars like William Jones such as the similarities between the Indo-European languages, cultures, mythologies, rituals and religions as a launching pad and framed it for their own cause. In fact, the word arya in Sanskrit actually meant “noble one” and referred to a person’s character, not their “caste” as it is often deliberately confused in Western academia to discredit Hindu civilization.

The word Aryan referred to one’s varna a term that meant one could serve society by the disposition inherent in their nature not according to birth or caste discrimination. The General takes us through the entire cosmos and the A-Z of Indology giving the reader an extensive Indic perspective resistant to the colonial strain of history being peddled across the world concerning India.

So how do we explain the Indo-European connections of languages, rituals, myths and beliefs found throughout India, Iran, the swath of the Middle East and most of Europe? General Bakshi lays out what scholars have proposed as the Out of India Theory (OIT) in detail which deduces that through varying environmental conditions caused by the drying up of the Saraswati River in 1900 B.C.E. different groups may have moved outwards from India and into the west carrying the traditions we all see common to Indo-European peoples which has been laid out in detail in his treatises “Saraswati Civilization” and “Vedic Horse” and should not be missed by the avid reader of history. Such wars may account for the dharmic way of conducting a fire sacrifice central to Vedic Hindu culture in which we see differences arising from Iranian and Indic traditions.

General Bakshi makes the ingenious link between early Vedic fire sacrifice and the way various recognized scholars such as Noah Yuval Hariri theorises in “The Cognitive Revolution” that it was the fire that had brought an anthropological revolution to Homo Sapiens over 70,000 years ago, again alluding to how ancient Hindu Dharma may be in the early religions of man.

Various internecine wars may also have been fought along the lines for soma-growing lands as recorded in the Vedas. For this General Bakshi also draws upon references to his books “Soma” concerning the real existence of soma (Vedic) or homa (Iranian) a psychotropic plant, a divine herb of the ancient rishis, found throughout the world in many forms among the emerging shamanic religions of early man.

General Bakshi’s sweepingly informative book even familiarizes the reader with an understanding of the many epochs before Indic pre-history and the rest of the world on how divine flora like soma, ayahuasca and others may have even kickstarted Vedic Civilisation (and other global civilisations) referencing examples from far away as the Gobekli Tepi neolithic site in Turkey. Such examples contemplate and tease us with an idea of the age of the Vedas and her rishis perhaps going back to the end of the last Ice Age. The author draws our attention again to how such places of worship may have been the onset of settlement and agriculture as hypothesized by Hariri which may have been the same circumstance in ancient India.

Various homegrown theories have already been dated and corroborated by scientific methodology in favour of the “native Indic” analysis including archaeology, archaeo-botany, archaeo-zoology, geography, hydrology, remote sensing, DNA analysis and even archaeo-astronomy. Not only did the existence of the Saraswati River disprove colonial sacrosanct theory, but another nail in the Aryan Invasion Theory was added when the non-existence of chariots in the Indus-Saraswati Valley Civilization was also invalidated.

Part of the colonial machinations was that the people of the Indus Valley Civilizations did not have chariots but such archaeological findings were difficult to come by in the soil of India due to its hot wet tropical climate. However, in 2018 a war chariot dating to 2000-1800 B.C.E. or 4000 years ago was found in Sinauli, Bagphat, India which predates the Aryan Invasion Theory by 500 years. As an archaeologist, it is only logical to think that a war chariot would have been pulled by horses not giraffes or bison. The colonial historians laid siege to Indian history through some major claims which are proving not to be so water tight. And yet, it seems more for political convenience leftist historians holding on dearly to the colonial-e-Azam and Mughal-e-Azam cannot let go of their former masters’ brainwashing.

General Bakshi has cleverly left us pining for the soma of Indic history just as the rishis sang fervently for theirs, leading us to an insightful glance into the possibility of the existence of the Vedic Horse which could overturn colonial archaeology on its head. He writes, on a family trip with his daughter, the accomplished Dr. Purnima Bakshi to the Bhimbetka Caves located in modern Madhya Pradesh in the Narmada Valley which have been dated as far back as 40 000 to 100 000 thousand years old B.P. (Before Present). They came upon cave drawings of horses which have been staring visitors and historians right in the face. Their tour guide at the time quickly gave reasons why this could not be the fabled “Vedic Horse” because as it so happens colonial historians and their modern champions have dismissed it as belonging to the era of the Maurya Empire so it could be no older than 300 B.C.E.

 The General then follows up with a simple but critical question, one which appears to stun the locals out of their colonial stupor, “has it been dated?” Meaning, that India has simply allowed these narratives to continue unfettered and has not even dared to question or scientifically test British Saheb’s pronouncement even with all the scientific methodology available today. Like India’s own Indiana Jones, General Bakshi sprang into action, and the book, while being academically quite enlightening left me at the edge of my archaeological seat snowballing into a cinematic adventure.

The rishis have sung about the horse divinities who thundered on the battlefield Uchhishravas and Dadhrika Deva so vividly as though they had seen them with their very own eyes just as they saw the Saraswati. “Those great steeds of war are thundering…Dhadrika, that great war horse lays the ground with his hooves…Uchhishravas, that other great war horse,” (Rig Veda 1.94). Were they imagining things or was there a Vedic horse? The most important sacrifice in the Vedas was the aswamedha yagya or horse sacrifice. It was another conundrum just like the rishis had sung about the Saraswati River that no one could see until modern satellite imagery found the ancient desiccated river bed confirming the existence of the “mythical” Rig Vedic River. Hence, what of the Vedic Horse? There was no trace of this horse just like the river after all if a mighty river could disappear without a trace what then for horses?

Major-General Bakshi states the common answer is that absence of proof is not proof of absence just because we can’t find it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. After all, the author explains India has always had a wet and tropical climate, and organic objects like wood, bones and other materials will decay, unlike the harsher drier climates of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the world’s other great ancient civilizations, leaving India wide open to attack by academic predators with an agenda.

I have written many times India is the next frontier of archaeology for the same reason we are now finding chariots and the mighty Saraswati. Most of India’s history has yet to be uncovered as history was left either to succumb to outside forces or left to rot. Another reason stated by General Bakshi is that we might not be digging in the right place. Hindus would not have burnt or buried horses within their cities but outside where we haven’t really looked. I am obliged to agree as even in the classical world ancient Greek cemeteries were usually found outside their cities such as the kerameikos in Athens and Roman law forbade cemeteries within city limits.

While the jury may be out on the dating of the Bhimbetka horses there’s a myriad of observable and deducible evidence which General Bakshi has theorized for us. India did also have an indigenous horse which flourished until the Late Pleistocene Era about 11,700 years ago and perhaps survived into the early Holocene period, thereafter 11,650 B.P. which includes two species known as the Equs Namadicus and Equs Sivalensis found in the Narmada Valley and the Shivalik Hills respectively.

It is not farfetched to think that this horse could have survived well into the “penning” of the Vedas given that some of the oldest Vedic cities such as Bhirrana and Rakhigiri are around 8000-9500 years old. This is far older than Egyptian or Mesopotamian Civilisations thought to be the world’s oldest.

Interestingly, the General found more cave paintings of horses which would surely add to his theories about the Vedic horse but I’ll leave that story to be told in the book itself as it is surely worth the read for the serious historian.

Other deductions can be made from the presence of animals in the caves whose existence at one point or another can be confirmed in India including rhinos, bisons, deers etc. as well as giraffes which have since gone extinct in India and may have endured up until about 5500-6000 B.P. There are scenes of ancient peoples using the horse to hunt these giraffes.

Conclusively, if the other animals were real and existed in India at the time why not the horse which the paintings are also depicting? Why would these cave drawings depict all real animals known to exist or exist in India at some point and paint a single one that did not? It makes no sense. However, if we factor in the extremely revealing theories of the Vedic horse by General Bakshi, India’s earliest history of civilization begins to fall into place.

I am classical archaeologist Nisha Ramracha. I am West Indian-American. While I have spent a great part of my academic career in archaeology in the depths of western classical history (Greek and Roman), I have always been interested in uncovering India’s great majestic past as it is home to my own Indian ancestors and native Hindu religion. Sadly though, over the years it has come to my attention that Eurocentric colonial falsehoods advocated with an agenda to destroy India’s historic foundations continue to be in a state of contention hawked by anti-Hindu socialist leftist divisive forces resolved to bring down a great civilization through numerous cuts, one being the use of history as a tool for destruction.

However, this son of Bharat, patriot and decorated war hero, Dr. Major-General Bakshi who has already given anti-India Hindumisia forces a run for their money on the battlefield is now taking them to the arena of academia. This extremely all-rounded veteran of the 1971 Indo-Pak War has once again mounted a great civilizational defense for Indic history and fights back against such colonial and modern deceptions thrust onto Indian history. If modern Hindus and those among the diaspora want to know their true history it is truly worth picking up a copy of Dr. Major-General’s trilogy of books on “Soma,” “Saraswati Civilization” and certainly the “Vedic Horse.”

Personally, I think India is now starting to rediscover itself and its history, and that history has barely been touched after so long remaining in the shadows of obscurity. It will be a long time before we have all the information, we need braveheart and Dharamveer pioneers like Dr. Major General Bakshi who are changing these false narratives slowly but surely making India the next frontier of archaeology and adventure.

 

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