'Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate' is a scholarly yet highly readable account of some of the major developments that have emerged in the debate surrounding hotly debated 'Aryan Invasion Theory' (AIT). The AIT was first proposed by the German indologist Friedrich Max Müller, who hypothesised that fair skinned people called the Aryans invaded India around 1500BCE. The Aryans were supposed to have conquered the indigenous people, destroyed the existing civilisation and brought the Vedas to India. Max Muller himself stated that the theory was just that - a theory. However the AIT gained credibility, and eventually came to be treated as fact in textbooks throughout the world.

One of the reasons why the theory gained in popularity is because it was convenient to the colonial British power at the time. To illustrate colonial use of the AIT we can take the example of Winston Churchill who in 1935 declared that the British had as much right to be in India as anyone else there, except perhaps "the Depressed Classes, who are the native stock", meaning that most Indians were the progeny of the Aryan invaders equally foreign in origin as the British. The AIT also helped the Colonists to pit North Indians (supposedly the descendents of Aryans) against South Indians (supposedly descendents of the indigenous Indians), when Hindu history had never previously known this divide.

In recent years a number of archaeological discoveries have thrown doubt on the authenticity of the entire theory, and voices that oppose the theory are finding their way into the mainstream. For example, "Survey of Hinduism", one of the main textbooks used in North America for university courses on the study of Hinduism says: "The certainty seems to be growing that the Indus civilization was carried by the Vedic Indians, who were not invaders from Southern Russia but indigenous for an unknown period of time in the lower Central Himalayan regions."

Yet many scholars vigorously defend the AIT, albeit in a modified form. The debate continues, and is likely to do so for several years.

In the present book, the author shows that the AIT in its traditional form is quite untenable, but that modified forms of the theory do have some merits. He urges the scholars who reject the AIT to answer some of the points still remaining to be clarified in order to create a proper alternative model to the AIT. He laments on the deafness and over confidence of the scholars in each camp. There is a good discussion of the linguistic issues and the evidence provided by the Vedas, which is often left out of the discussion altogether. The book draws the reader in right from the first page and is hard to put down.

This book is a recommended reading for anyone who has an active interest in history of the ancient civilisations, of ancient India in particular. However, some background knowledge of the issues involved is required to make sense of the book, which limits the usefulness of the book for people who have no previous experience of the subject.

Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate by Koenraad Elst has recently been published on-line, and can be accessed at the following URL:

http://www.voi.org/books/ait/