Introduction

Indian culture and civilization have contributed significantly to humanity's heritage. They are as ancient as any, more ancient than many. Indian civilization is remarkable in its uninterrupted continuity since the misty millennia of unrecorded history. Scholars are unable to trace its precise roots, except to note that there flourished in India cultures that preceded the Vedic-Sanskritic and the Dravidian-Tamil which are the principal weaving threads in the fabric of current Indic civilization.  

The Indian subcontinent has witnessed countless triumphs and tribulations, with more than its share of famines, frustrations, wars and battles. The resilience of Indic culture to alien intrusions, whether pillaging and plundering, or of the occupying kind, has few parallels in history. Religions which practically obliterated many ancient cultures to whom they brought their messages, did not destroy Hinduism. Every outsider who ever walked into India has been touched one way or another by the Indian people. In the long run, India has also benefited from her contacts with the aliens who barged into her shores.

Whether in food or costume, in marriage customs or festivals, there are significant regional variations within India. Not unlike in Europe when Christendom reigned supreme, the people of India, even with their linguistic and alimentary diversity, have maintained a commonalty, bound together largely by their Sanskritic and Tamil heritages. In our own times, English and  modern science bind the elite of the nation, while the people at large are woven together in a political, cultural, and national fabric through a democratic system of government and by a unified framework of culture such as they have seldom experienced before in their long history.

The inhabitants of India range from primal tribes that still guard their one-with-nature ways to sophisticated groups that contribute to international debates and to modern science and technology. Present day Hindus are products of healthy mixtures from waves upon waves of immigrants and invaders. They include descendents from Africans, Greeks, Mongols, Persians, Afghans, Portuguese, and more.

Indic visions in an age of science is a vast subject. Indic visions include profound insights and illuminating thoughts, poetic imagination and flights of fancy, breakthroughs in mathematics, and ethical principles that range from the purely pragmatic to the impractically idealistic. They are reflected in art, music, science, philosophy, poetry, even pornography, in grammar, gourmet cuisine, stories, sinful and sacred..

Indus Valley civilization

The Indus valley civilization is one of the most ancient civilizations unearthed by archeologists. It has received more attention and commentaries than most other submerged civilizations have. It is said to have flourished between 2500 and 1900 B.C.E. Sir John Marshall often gets the lion's share of the credit for this, but other important scientists in the field, such as; D. Banerji, K. N. Dikshit, E. Mackay, and M. S. Vats, must also be mentioned in this context.

The question of whether the Indus civilization had developed a script is a fascinating one. Here, as in other similar situations, there are divergent views among specialists in the matter of interpreting ancient data. Some have claimed to have deciphered it, others are still struggling with the task.  There is also new hypothesis to the effect that they are not scripts at all. What is known is that there were mass-produced inscriptions in the Indus civilization such as are found nowhere else among ancient civilizations. Thus in a sense it may be said that the first version of printing began in the Indus valley.

The people of the Indus valley civilization were adepts in the construction of roads and residential structures, but there seem to be no big monuments or places for worship there. A building which in the ruins has been interpreted as a granary.  The findings of archeologists make it clear that those people had the technologies of brick-making and pottery. We have no idea of what they thought or reflected upon, their religion or philosophy.

An old and a new theory

Nineteenth century Indologists discovered that many words in Sanskrit sound similar to roots words in some European languages. There are also some striking parallels between the Vedic pantheon and the ancient Greek. From phonetic and mythopoeic similarities, they formulated a theory by  which in the remote past, nomadic peoples streamed from Central Asia into  India via the Afghan passes and established a new civilization in  the northern plains of India.

This so-called ‘Aryan Invasion Theory’ was held suspect right from the start by Indian thinkers. It has been subjected to critical deconstruction in recent decades. In the new century, it has hardly any adherent, staunch or lukewarm, in India or beyond, though slightly modified versions of it still persist. The idea of Dravidians having been pushed from the north has also been rejected by most serious scholars. It often happens that yesterday's theory in history is today's nonsense.  Some Indian scholars even suggest that the Aryan Invasion Theory was a carefully crafted scheme, a trickery perpetrated by the colonial British to justify their occupation of India as just another instance in a long pattern of alien intrusions, on the questionable moral principle, it would seem, that if a bank had been robbed many times before, I too should have the right to do so now.

In a new paradigm, which is slowly gaining ground among an increasing number of people in India, the Indus-Saraswati culture which emerged in the northern river valleys was in fact the original civilization of India. The proponents of this model remind us that the townships in Indus valley were no less impressive than their Mesopotamian counterparts. An eminent scholar arguing for this theory believes th