Many books have been written on the Indo-Aryan debate, including Edwin Bryant’s comprehensive work, *The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate* (Oxford University Press, 2001; 2002 Indian edition). One major issue in this debate revolves around the racial theory, particularly linked to the term ‘varna,’ often translated as ‘color,’ implying the skin color of the Aryans.
However, Thomas Trautmann argues against this interpretation. He points out that, based on usage, “varna” simply means “category” or “social group” (p. 148). He sharply critiques the persistence of the racial theory, stating, “That the racial theory of Indian civilization has survived so long and so well is a miracle of faith. It is high time to get rid of it” (p. 152). His perspective is worth exploring further:
This brief introduction sets the stage for a more nuanced understanding of the Indo-Aryan debate, moving away from outdated racial interpretations toward more historically grounded insights. Having said this I would prefer to share the entire section from Trautmann for others to understand it very clearly:
…This is the theory that Indian civilization was formed by a big bang, caused by the conquest of light-skinned, Aryan, civilized invaders over dark-skinned savage aboriginal Indians, and the formation of the caste system which bound the two in a single society, at once mixed and segregated. (p. 148)….
4. Much is made of the fact that the four varnas, that is the central institution of caste which under the racial theory of Indian civilization configures the intermixture and segregation of the foundational ethnic groups, employs a Sanskrit word having the ordinary meaning of “color”; and furthermore that the Vedic texts speak of an Aryan-varna in contrast to the Dasa-varna (discussed at Max Muller, The last results of the researches respecting the non-Iranian and non-Semitic languages of Asia and Europe, or the Turanian family of languages. In Bunsen 1854, I: 263-472. but without mention of skin color; but see Macdonell, Arthur Anthony, and Arthur Barrriedale Keith, Vedic index of names and subjects. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1912, s.v. varna). This second point is crucial, for the doctrine of the four varnas makes no mention of skin color as such, and it would go against the theory in question if it were taken to refer to a racial difference between all four. But the argument is of no effect by itself and without the crucial reference to physical features. On the evidence of use it appears that varna here simply means “category, social group”.
Taking the evidence together, if we wish to cast the Dasas or Dasyus in the role of the dark-skinned savage, we have very little help from the Vedic text as to physical features, while on every hand the authorities agree that religion and language are mentioned again and again. What about the other side of the binary, the savagery of the Dasa or Dasyu? Here if anything the evidence of the Rg Veda is directly unhelpful, depicting the Dasa or Dasyu chief Sambara, for example, as possessed of 90, 99 or 100 forts which Indra destroys to aid the Aryans, who are evidently weaker and poorer than their enemies. This gets minimized by Macdonnel and Keith (Macdonell, Arthur Anthony, and Arthur Barrriedale Keith, Vedic index of names and subjects. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1912: s.v. Sambara), who suggest, “Sambara was quite possibly an aboriginal enemy in India, living in the mountains”—that is, they (p.150) assimilate him to the old idea of pre-Aryan mountain-dwellers. This downplays Sambara’s power where the text plainly means to magnify it.
In conducting this analysis—of which I can only give a brief indication here—I have argued that if one adopts a moderate degree of skepticism to the re-reading of the evidence for the racial interpretation one discovers that it rests on very little, and that a considerable amount of evident overreading is necessary to reach the desired result.
Discussion
But is not the minimizing interpretation guilty of the opposite fault, of underreading the evidence for color prejudice in the Rg Veda? Evidence that Indians of all periods took a great interest in complexion is abundant, as one can read in Madhav Deshpande’s Sanskrit and Prakrit: socio-linguistic issues, in which for example he cites a passage from Patanjali’s Mahabhasya to the effect that a Brahmin is gaura, “fair” and that no dark person can normally be identified as a Brahmin (Deshpande, Madhav M. Sanskrit and Prakrit: sociolinguistic issues. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 1991). Deshpande opens a window on the complexion geography of India in Rajesekhara’s Kavyamimsa, according to which the people of northern India are gaura, “fair”, those of eastern India are syama, “dusky”, of the south are krsna, “dark”, and of the west are pandu, “pale, yellowish-white”, while the Middle Country is a mixture of gaura, syama and krsna. Indian preference for a bride of fair complexion is attested in texts as ancient as Vasistha Dharma Sutra 18.18 and as recent as the matrimonial advertisements in last Sunday’s newspaper. How can one argue against the racial theory in the face of such facts?
It is important to be clear what is at issue, and not be distracted by facts of this order. Complexion is not race, but at most it is a suppositious sign of race—which has to do with the conception of a fixed, inner essence that is unseeable and known only through external signs—and to collapse the two is to confuse the signifier with the signified. Such narrowing of the discussion will miss the main point, which is that the racial theory is a double binary of skin color and civilization; so that even if a difference of complexion between Aryan and Dasa/Dasyu existed (it may have) and even if we take it to have been socially salient (which is at best very weakly attested by the Rg Veda), archaeology has shown that the inhabitants of India at the time at which the Sanskrit language makes it appearance were already greatly advanced, in many respects more so than the people of the Veda. (p.151)
The second half of the nineteenth century when the racial theory of Indian civilization took shape was a period in which there was an unprecedented juxtaposition of peoples brought about by European conquest, settlement and empire. Because of this new rules had to be devised for the relations among peoples that would produce the desired cocktail of (largely economic) mixture and (especially sexual) segregation, new rules justified by reference to racial attitudes which were attributed to a fixed and immutable human nature. It is not surprising that the British Sanskritists were affected by the prevailing racial thinking of the high Victorian period, or that they explained the system of castes by analogy to the Jim Crow system of the American South after the Civil War or the racial apartheid of South Africa, and derived all of them from inborn, permanent attitudes of whites toward blacks. From these beginnings a large literature on the relation of caste and race has grown up, asking whether, as systems of mixture and segregation, they are the same.
What has changed since then is that race, like caste, has come to be viewed as socially constructed and historically contingent. The problem with the racial theory of Indian civilization is that it is struck in the racial essentialism of its first formulation, founded on attitudes believed to be inborn and unchanged by history. Indian civilization as we know it is certainly a product of conjuncture: the conjuncture of the people of the Indus Civilization and the Sanskrit-speakers; of Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Munda; but not of the logic, supposed immutable, of white and black races. That the racial theory of Indian Civilization has survived so long and so well is a miracle of faith. It is high time to get rid of it.—ibid. Constructing the Racial Theory of Indian Civilization. Pp. 137-152, in, pp. 148, 150-152
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