Governor R.N. Ravi felicitating S. Kalyanaraman, Director, Saraswati Foundation, with a lifetime achievement award for his research work on Monday.
| Photo Credit: S.R. RAGHUNATHAN

Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi on Monday said the Indus Valley Civilisation should be henceforth called ‘Saraswathi Civilisation’ and contended the Rig Veda and Mahabharatha were not ‘fiction’.

“Through constellations, modern science, and modern astronomy models’ the approximate time of Rig Veda (2,000 years before Mahabharatha) and Mahabharata (3,100 years ago) could be established,” he said at a two-day national conference ‘Indus Civilisation: It’s Culture and people – Archaeological Insights’ being held at Dwaraka Doss Goverdhan Doss Vaishnav College in Chennai.

Mr. Ravi criticised the Marxist historians and ideologues and Dravidian ideologues for supporting the ideas furthered by Europeans, who needed a moral and intellectual argument to justify imperialism.

“Rig Veda, Mahabharata, and Ramayana are not fiction. E.V. Ramasamy Naicker (Periyar) says Aryans were barbarians, they came and invaded and they were all drunk, intoxicated, they were dancing and singing and Ramayana and Mahabharata are all intoxicated imaginations of drunken barbarians,” he said.

“This (idea of) ‘Aryan came from outside, Aryan as a race and Vedas’ are a myth….Even in our literature, it is said Saraswati is a mythical river. It is not a myth. Today, it has been scientifically established through satellite imagery and nuclear physics, that Saraswati river existed and the approximate time when it dried,” he said.

Mr. Ravi urged a move away from ‘Indus Civilisation’. “The past becomes relevant because the present uses the past to serve its purpose. Earlier, the Europeans used it to downgrade us. It is not just Marxists and Liberal scholars who have done it, but we have Dravidian ideology that believes in Aryan and Dravidian separate races. These lies have created a political ecosystem that is threatening the unity and integrity of our nation. The history and truth of Saraswathi-Sindhu Civilisation should come out in intellectual and public discourse.”

According to him, British scientist Charles Darwin and his Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection, was also just a ‘hypothesis’, but was exalted to the level of scientific fact in support of the ‘race-theory’ that posited white race as superior to other races.

“What Darwin said is that the smartest shall survive, and it is the destiny of the weak to perish. Theory of evolution is nothing else than to say that in the evolutionary process, it is the smarter one that survives, and dumb one will perish and it is their natural destiny. Then Nietzsche came up with Ubermensch, superior man and of course, it was the white races,” he said.

He added it was Max Mueller who came up with the idea of Aryan as a nation, which gained currency despite ancient Indian literature – Sangam and Sanskrit – not making a mention of ‘Aryan’ as a race.