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The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a divide-and-conquer
strategy. They promoted religious, ethnic and cultural divisions among
their colonies to keep them under control. Unfortunately some of these
policies also entered into the intellectual realm. The same simplistic
and divisive ideas that were used for interpreting the culture and history
of India. Regrettably many Hindus have come to believe these ideas, even
though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or
scientific basis.
One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter-
skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians
were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered
and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we
call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans
who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea
has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north
India, as if the southerners were a different race.
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