'The whole world is but one family' - Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Australia

The Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has published in eleven
bulky volumes “The History and Culture of Indian
People” involving work by 60 Historians and Scholars,
with Dr R.C. Majumdar as the Chief Editor. It took
32 years to complete the eleven volumes. The first
volume deals with “The Vedic Age” and gives an idea
of the evolution of common Indian Culture 5000 years
ago. To quote from the book “We have the Nordic
Aryan speaking group of India, who gave to India its
Aryan speech and by their organisation, imagination
and adaptability helped to bring about a great Cultural
Synthesis leading to the foundation of the Hindu
Civilisation of India. The antiquity of Indian History
and Culture as gleaned from Vedic Literature is also
not supposed to go beyond the second millennium
before Christ. But the archaeological discoveries at
Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro and other localities in the
Indus valley have pushed back this limit at a single
stretch to 3000 BC, if not to a still remoter period and
India can now claim the honour of being a pioneer
of civilisation along with Sumer, Akkad, Babylon,
Egypt and Assyria.”
The real visible culture started with the Indus
Civilisation as seen from the excavations of
MohenjoDaro and Harappa. Some of the tanks 5000
years old are still preserved. The culture of writing
was invented by the Indus people. Agriculture had
developed with evidence of specimens of wheat and
barley. Female statues were common representing the
Divine Mother similar to the Indian religious tradition.
“Thus this prehistoric culture (3250–2750 BC) mainly
as indigenous growth is the linear progenitor of the
Indian Culture of today”.
The Indus culture preceded the Rig Vedic Culture and
there are references in Rig Veda to the non Aryans.
Opinion is gaining ground that this Indus culture
and civilisation is the earliest in the world. This is
suggested by scientific research in plant breeding in
wheat. The Indian people had initiated growth of food
crops through agriculture.
In the recent publication “The invasion that never
was” by Michel Danino, the Author has questioned
whether there was any Aryan invasion at all
or immigration. The Author contends that “the ancient
Indian civilisation was in fact the Indus, Saraswathi
civilisation of Aryavartha and it began as a pastoral
civilisation around 6500 or 6000 BC and then entered
a matured phase around 2600 to 1900 BC”. The
occurrence of the word ‘Krishna has been wrongly
used by the Aryan Race theorists to conjecturally
advance the theory of, invading Aryans annihilating
indigenous and earlier dark-skinned inhabitants of
India; of the dark skinned people being forefathers of
the so called non Aryan Dravidians who were pushed
south from their earlier northern abodes, of the
so called invading Aryans burning the cities and
villages of indigenous people and of the inhuman
cruelty with which these so called invading Aryans
treated the original inhabitants of India” Ladli Nath
Renu ‘Aryan Cult : No Aryan Race’. Ladli Nath Renu
(2000) was passionate about research into the Vedas
with particular reference to Aryan origin. Based on
intensive research on Rig Veda, Nath came to the
conclusion that there is no Aryan race. There is only
the Aryan Cult which originated in India with the
sound of OM.
It spread all over the country and abroad. Its
followers were called Aryans.
From 650 BC there is political history as separate
from cultural history. Indian Culture seems to have
got mixed up with political culture, through political
history involving the Mauryas, Kushanas, Guptas etc.
in the north and the Pallavas, Cholas, Pandyas and
Cheras in the South. Later history tells us about the
Muslim invasions and the British rule. It was only
once in the cultural history of the country that the
whole of India including the present Baluchistan and
Afghanistan had a common history and culture
under the control of a common Government, the
Mauryan empire under Ashoka. In the sixth century,
Buddhism and Jainism added a new dimension to
Indian culture.