Bal Gangadhar Tilak said in 1903 that the Arctic was the original home of the Aryans, and that climate change in 8000 BCE forced them to move into northern Europe, later into Asia and into India. Now another climate change is nudging India to seek out the Arctic.
First about Tilak and his theory. Tilak analysed vedic hymns, created a chronology of vedic events, and looked into passages from the Zoroastrians’ Zend Avesta, to arrive at a migration theory from the Arctic. The subsequent discovery of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, and the argument by European antiquarians that those had been Dravidian cities destroyed by invading Aryans from central Asia, jelled with the theory. The Hindu right, who were Tilak’s admirers, got disenchanted. Soon the Aryan invasion theory itself got discredited, and Tilak’s theory fell out of favour with the rightist, the leftist and the straightforward historians.
We will leave the digging to archaeologists, the discoveries to scientists, the debate to historians, the diatribe to politicians, and look at our government. It is taking an interest in the Arctic—not to seek an Aryan home, but for the riches there.
There’s lot more in the Arctic than polar ice, the polar bear, the reindeer, the eskimo, and any sort of mythical Aryan igloo home. With the globe warming fast, the Arctic and neighbouring Siberia are losing about 13 per cent of the ice cover every decade, revealing metals, minerals, and possible routes to cart the stuff away. They are already talking of a polar sea route, far shorter than the Trans-Siberian Railway, between Europe and the Asian far east.
The Russians say it would work out much before the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor gets drones-free and missiles-free. Got the point? The Arctic snows would melt before the Israelis and the Palestinians learn to live in peace.
India is not interested in just a polar passage to Europe, but also in the riches on the way. Who owns them? Unlike the Antarctic, there is no global treaty regime that guards the northern ice. Not that it is a free-for-all around the North Pole. The first claimants to the gold, diamond, nickel, lead, coal, gypsum, silver, zinc and oil hidden under the ice are the eight Arctic Council members—Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US—who have borders in the frigid zone. Then there are observers to the council, including India and China, who are greedy for resources and possess the skills to mine them.
We have been seeking partners for our polar forays, ever since we launched our first expedition in 2007 and set up research station Himadri in Norway’s Svalbard. In 2017, Narendra Modi told Vladimir Putin that we are “interested in… exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons in the Arctic shelf of the Russian Federation”. Justin Trudeau overheard it, and came in 2018 offering the Canadian snowland, but India was by now beginning to get cold towards him for the Khalistani company he kept. The next year Modi told Putin—we will be there with you out in the snow.
Now that ties with Canada have gone into the frigid zone, the US always having been a fair-weather friend, and the rest of them being small fry, Modi seems to have decided that India’s northern route will be through the Siberian wastes. No wonder he flew twice to Russia in four months of his third term, and initiated talks, a week before his flight to Kazan, on building ice-breaking ships, training sailors to walk in the snow, and to jointly search for the under-snow riches.
prasannan@theweek.in