Origins of Indo-Aryan

[rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu]

To the list:

I've been following and am writing an article about the somewhat
strange fact that the origin of old Indo-Aryan has become a
"hot-button" political issue in India.

Briefly put: the politically popular theory in India is apparently
that Vedic culture is indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, and that
the civilisation that built the Indus Valley Civilisation
(ca. 2800-1800 BC) was the one that wrote the Rig Veda (otherwise
normally dated to 1500 BC, I believe).

There has been a spate of books in the last ten years from people
without backgrounds in history or linguistics arguing this point.
They generally refer to the standard understanding of the arrival of
Indo-Aryan as "the debunked Aryan Invasion Theory".

The party now in power in India, the BJP, strongly supports this view
and I understand that it is being pushed along with other educational
changes the party wants to introduce.

I've already sounded out a few people on the list with questions.  I
wonder if I could ask anyone who has taken an interest to consider
this and provide any information or references they think would be of
interest.

1.  This theory, it seems obvious to me, would require PIE to be
    located in India or thereabouts, which runs into at least three
    problems I can think of: 1. PIE connections to Finno-Ugric; 2.  No
    PIE connections to Dravidian; 3.  Horses not securely established
    in India till end of second mill. BC.

2.  Is anything along these lines taken seriously in IE studies?  Are
    there recent papers that have considered the problem one way or
    another?  Obviously, I am familiar with Mallory's (1989) summation
    of the consensus as finding IE generally intrusive in Asia.

Thoughts welcome (indeed, solicited).

Regards,
Rohan.