School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences a session featured Dr Koenraad Elst, Shri Shrikant Talageri (online), and Shri Jijith Nadumuri Ravi as panellists. Dr Elst is an Oriental philologist and historian, who has authored more than 30 books on the Aryan debate, the Ayodhya movement and many other political and religious issues. Talageri is the pioneer of the Out of India Theory (OIT), which places the Indo-European (IE) homeland in northern India and argues for an east-to-west migration of IE speakers to the West, Central Asia, and Europe. Jijith is a former ISRO scientist and researcher who has reinterpreted ancient timelines using textual, geographical, and archaeological evidence, challenging conventional chronologies.
The session focused on the debates within the OIT — the Sarayu River debate, migration patterns, and Rigvedic chronology. Dr Elst introduced the mythical Puranic perspective of early settlements, but warned against the dangers of taking Puranic data at face value, noting how they hyperbolically depict historical personalities and incidents. Talageri identified two historically attested Sarayu rivers – the Ghaghara in Uttar Pradesh and the Harirud in Afghanistan, arguing for the latter as the Rigvedic Sarayu. On the other hand, Jijith proposed multiple Sarayu rivers, identifying the Rigvedic Sarayu with the Haro River (eastern Sindhu tributary) and suggesting Sarasvati as the “Ancestral Sarayu”, from which migrations proceeded in both directions.
The discussion also examined migration patterns, with Talageri emphasising the Puru tribe’s movement from the Sarasvati area and later eastward expansion up to Bihar and beyond, and the Ikshvaku tribe’s origination from central-eastern Uttar Pradesh, while Jijith proposed a bi-directional migration model originating from the Sarasvati region, supported by archaeological evidence showing progressively younger sites radiating outward. Both scholars presented evidence from various textual sources, including the Rigveda, Ramayana, Mahabharata and Puranas, with decreasing order of reliability, to support their respective positions.
Audience questions explored the discovery of iron metallurgy and other archaeological findings in Tamil Nadu, adding depth to the debate. Talageri emphasised India as a “huge banyan tree of cultures,” arguing that Indian civilisation did not derive solely from the northwest or Sarasvati area, highlighting how Hinduism evolved by incorporating local deities, beliefs, and practices from across the Indian subcontinent, unlike the monopolistic Abrahamic religions. The session concluded with an emphasis on integrating multiple disciplines to understand ancient Indian history. This insightful discussion highlighted scholarly disagreements yet common ground in advocating indigenous origins for Indian civilisation.
