Michel Danino | |
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| Born | |
| Nationality | French (former) Indian |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Organization | IIT Gandhinagar |
| Honours | Padma Shri |
Michel Danino (born 4 June 1956) is a French-born Indian writer. [1] He is a guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar [2] and has been a member of the Indian Council of Historical Research. In 2017, Government of India conferred Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian honor for his contribution towards Literature & Education. [3]
Danino spent a few years in Auroville, Tamil Nadu before shifting to the Nilgiri mountains, where he resided for two decades. In 2003, he settled near Coimbatore and accepted Indian citizenship. [1]
Danino wrote The Lost River: On The Trail of the Sarasvati (2010), which tentatively identified the legendary Sarasvati River, mentioned in Rigveda with the current Ghaggar-Hakra River. [4] V Rajamani over Current Science reviewed it in favorable terms and praised Danino for his meticulous research. [5]
Peter Heehs's opinion of one of Danino's works, Sri Aurobindo and Indian Civilization, is that it was lacking in linguistic knowledge, and being made up by attacks on colonial orientalists and half-informed invocations of nationalist orientalists. [6] Heehs also criticized Danino's other works for appropriating Sri Aurobindo in his campaign against the Indo-Aryan migrations, and for distorting Aurobindo's speculative views as assertions. [6] Heehs added that Danino selectively cherry-picked quotes from his draft-manuscripts and ignored his published works, which were far more nuanced. [6] Others have accused Danino of pursuing a sectarian Hindutva oriented scholarship based on historical negationism. [7] [8] [9]
Danino was a contributing author to an encyclopedic volume by Wiley-Blackwell, on South Asian history and archaeology, about the domain of Indus Valley civilisation. [10]
Harappa is an archaeological site in Punjab, Pakistan, about 24 km (15 mi) west of Sahiwal.The Bronze Age Harappan civilisation, now more often called the Indus Valley Civilisation, is named after the site, which takes its name from a modern village near the former course of the Ravi River, which now runs 8 km (5.0 mi) to the north. The core of the Harappan civilisation extended over a large area, from Gujarat in the south, across Sindh and Rajasthan and extending into Punjab and Haryana. Numerous sites have been found outside the core area, including some as far east as Uttar Pradesh and as far west as Sutkagen-dor on the Makran coast of Balochistan, not far from Iran.
The Sarasvati River is a deified mythological river first mentioned in the Rigveda and later in Vedic and post-Vedic texts. It played an important role in the Vedic religion, appearing in all but the fourth book of the Rigveda.
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area from much of Pakistan, to northeast Afghanistan, and northwestern India. The civilisation flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.
David Frawley, also known as Vamadeva Shastri is an American author, astrologer, teacher (acharya) and a proponent of Hindutva.
Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies.
Navaratna Srinivasa Rajaram was an Indian academic.He is notable for propounding the "Indigenous Aryans" hypothesis, asserting that the Vedic period was extremely advanced from a scientific view-point, and claiming of having deciphered the Indus script. Academics find his scholarship to be composed of dishonest polemics in service of a communal agenda.
The Ghaggar-Hakra River is an intermittent river in India and Pakistan that flows only during the monsoon season. The river is known as Ghaggar before the Ottu barrage at 29.4875°N 74.8925°E, and as Hakra downstream of the barrage in the Thar Desert. In pre-Harappan times the Ghaggar was a tributary of the Sutlej. It is still connected to this paleochannel of the Sutlej, and possibly the Yamuna, which ended in the Nara River, presently a delta channel of the Indus River joining the sea via Sir Creek.
Braj Basi Lal was an Indian writer and archaeologist. He was the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) from 1968 to 1972 and has served as Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. Lal also served on various UNESCO committees.
Swaraj Prakash Gupta was a prominent Indian archaeologist, art historian authority, Chairman of Indian Archaeological Society, founder of the Indian History and Culture Society, and Director of the Allahabad Museum. He was most noted for several excavations Indus Valley civilisation sites and for his support of the existence of a destroyed Ram Mandir underneath the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.
Chanhu-daro is an archaeological site belonging to the Indus Valley civilization. The site is located 130 kilometers (81 mi) south of Mohenjo-daro, in Sindh, Pakistan. The settlement was inhabited between 4000 and 1700 BCE, and is considered to have been a centre for manufacturing carnelian beads. This site is a group of three low mounds that excavations has shown were parts of a single settlement, approximately 7 hectares in size.
Madhav Vittal Kamath was an Indian journalist and broadcasting executive, and the chairman of Prasar Bharati. He worked as the editor of The Sunday Times for two years from 1967 to 1969, as Washington correspondent for The Times of India from 1969 to 1978 and also as editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India. He had also written numerous books and was conferred with the Padma Bhushan award in 2004.He was born in a brahmin family
Indigenous Aryanism, also known as the Indigenous Aryans theory (IAT) and the Out of India theory (OIT), is the conviction that the Aryans are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, and that the Indo-European languages radiated out from a homeland in India into their present locations. It is a "religio-nationalistic" view on Indian history, and propagated as an alternative to the established migration model, which considers the Pontic–Caspian steppe to be the area of origin of the Indo-European languages.
Bhirrana, also Bhirdana and Birhana, is an archaeological site, located in a small village in the Fatehabad district of the north Indian state of Haryana. Bhirrana's earliest archaeological layers predates the Indus Valley civilisation times, dating to the 8th-7th millennium BCE. The site is one of the many sites seen along the channels of the seasonal Ghaggar river, thought by some to be the Rigvedic Saraswati river.
Peter Heehs is an American historian living in Puducherry, India who writes on modern Indian history, spirituality and religion. Much of his work focuses on the Indian freedom fighter and spiritual leader Sri Aurobindo. His publications include twelve books and more than sixty articles in journals and magazines.
The Sarsuti river, originating in Sivalik Hills and flowing through the palaeochannel of Yamuna, is a tributary of Ghaggar river in of Haryana state of India. Its course is dotted with archaeological and religious sites dating back to post-Harrapan Mahabharata sites from Vedic period, such as Kapal Mochan, Kurukshetra, Thanesar, Brahma Sarovar, Jyotisar, Bhor Saidan and Pehowa.
Adi Badri, also Sri Sarasvati Udgam Tirath, is a tourist site of archaeological, religious and ecological significance in a forest area in the foothills of the Sivalik Hills in Bhabar area, situated in northern part of Yamunanagar district, of the north Indian state of Haryana. There are remains of many Buddhist stupas and monasteries, which are about 1500–2000 years old, and there is also a group of Hindu temples from the 9th century. Based on the multiple archaeological excavations undertaken here, archaeologists have sent the proposal to Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to include this site in the list of protected heritage site. Several popular annual festivals are held here, including the five day long National Saraswati Festival in January, Adi Badri Akha Teej Mela in Vaisakh around April–May, week-long Adi Badri-Kapal Mochan Kartik Purnima religious mela around November.
The Kaushalya river, a tributary of Ghaggar river, is a river in Panchkula district of Haryana state of India.
The Tangri River, also called the Dangri River, which originates in the Shivalik Hills, is a tributary of the Ghaggar River in the Haryana state of India.
The Markanda is a river in the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Haryana. It is a tributary of the Ghaggar river, flowing through Sirmaur District, Ambala district and Shahabad Markanda, a town in Kurukshetra district. The Markanda river's ancient name was Aruna.
Technically, I am not a 'foreigner': I adopted Indian citizenship some years ago.
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