While the Aryan Invasion Theory/Aryan Migration Theory has been debunked beyond doubt by genetics, its proponents still try to claim ambiguity (similiar to how creationists claim that Creationism is as plausible an explanation as Evolution for origin and development of life in the earth) on other grounds like linguistics, archaeology, mythology etc.
Since genetics debunks AIT/AMT, linguistic arguments are the first refuge for the AIT/AMT apologists. The reasoning for supporting the AIT/AMT is the similarity between North Indian and European languages, which leads to the conclusion that Aryan invasion/migration must have happened. However, the problem with this assertion is that it derives its conclusion based on partial information. The similarity of languages could have come from migration on either side and one cannot claim that Europe is the origin for the Indo-Aryan language family based on the similarty of Indo-European languages alone. The British, who first propounded the AIT/AMT didn’t like the idea that the west might have had origin from Indians, and so they instead postulated that Europe gave rise to Indian languages and culture and this is exactly what the people trained in leftist/Marxist schools push even today. Since linguistic arguments are difficult to prove/disprove, it has provided a fertile ground for politics.
However, recent analysis on linguistics is also making the life of AIT/AMT proponents difficult. For instance, the recent studies on linguistics show that Sanskrit has more in common with the proto Indo-European language, which gave rise to the Indo-European language family, than any other European languages.
Here is a brief summary of the above video talking about linguistic argument. The linguists have reconstructed the proto Indo-European language based on the words spoken today. The most important finding is that Sanskrit has the most in common with the proto Indo-European language and not the Central Asian, Eastern European languages. For eg., Childe gives 72 basic cognate proto Indo-European words constructed scientifically of which Sanskrit has 70 words, German- 46 words, Baltic – 23 words, Slavic -16 words, Greek – 48 words etc. There are some unique cases in Sanskrit resembling the proto Indo-European language. For instance, it has three genders, three numbers (I, we two and we all) and eight cases and that it is the only Aryan language besides the proto Indo-European language to have all of this intact.
Another evidence is presented using the ancient mythologies based on the fact that Vedic mythology shares the most common elements with other mythologies. For eg. when you compare Greek and Vedic mythologies, there are many common elements. Similarly German and Vedic mythologies again share many common elements. But if you compare German and Greek, there are no common elements, meaning Sanskrit/Vedic myth is the common element which connects the European language tree and mythologies. Also Iranian Mythology has common elements ONLY with Vedic mythology. But, according to AIT- Aryans came from South Russia to Central Asia and separated in Iran. This can’t be the case when Iranian mythology has nothing in common with any other mythology of the European countries of that time.
The initial basis for the AIT was based on the claim by Mortimer Wheeler when he found some skulls in the archaeological sites around Harappa and used it to support AIT by claiming that the skulls belonged to the Dravidians, who got killed by the invading Aryans. However, the subsequent archaeological evidence and further research showed that the skulls were mere burial sites of the IVC people and not the result of any fighting between the invading armies and locals. In fact, there is no archaeological proof that any kind of invasion ever took place. This is the reason the Aryan invasion theory proponents have recently changed their stand to Aryan Migration theory, much like how the creationists changed their theory to intelligent design keeping all but the name of the original creationist theory. But unfortunately for the proponents of the AMT/AIT, even AMT falls flat on the archaeological evidence. This is so because there is no archaeological evidence for any kind of migration into IVC either.
Another popular argument used by the AMT/AIT side is that IVC had no chariots and it was the Aryans who brought the chariots and horses into India. This is a preposterous claim and fails the basic common sense. India is protected from the north and north-west from Europe and Central Asia by Hindukush and any invader who had to come into India had to overcome the Hindukush. The Greeks who were known for their chariots had to leave them behind when Alexander invaded India. So it is nothing more than wishful thinking to assume that a bunch of nomadic barbarians like Aryans of Central Asia could have achieved the feat of bringing chariots from Central Asia/Russia into India through Hindukush some two thousand years before Alexander, something that even he didn’t achieve. What makes this theory more suspicious is the claim that India didn’t have native horses and the Aryans brought them into India which is again based on misinterpretation of the Vedas. Michael Danino presents detailed evidence on the horse debate here. Danino presents the recent archaeological evidence to show that horses were present in India much before the supposed Aryan invasion. Some recent studies actually go so far as to claim that horses are actually native to India. See the related news here.
Ice Age evidence
The world came out of the last ice age roughly around 10000-12000 years ago. It is important to note here that India was not affected by the ice age to the same extent as Europe and Central Asia because of the presence of Himalayas to the North. So the population living in India at that time could have easily migrated north towards Central Asia and then Europe as the ice age began to end and the glaciers began retreating. This is consistent with what is observed in the genetic studies.
However, the AIT/AMT posits an opposite direction for migration. Why would Europeans/Central Asians, who were by then accustomed to the ice covered climate of the Europe or Central Asia migrate south into India specially at a time when Ice Age had ended and the glaciers were receding and the climate was getting hotter? It makes no sense that people who lived and survived in ice covered plains of Europe and Central Asia decided to abandon it specially at a time when their native land was turning greener and the food was getting plentiful. Also, the cold temperature during Ice Age would have supported smaller population in Central Asia compared to India. So again, the migration would have been possible only from the high density area like India to Central Asia and Europe and not the other way around from a lower density area like Central Asia.
And finally the latest attempt by the AMT/AIT pushers is the absurd theory of cultural assimilation since this way they don’t have to present any evidence, genetic or archaeological, other than merely stating that their assertions are true and brow-beating everyone else into silence. As per this version of AMT/AIT, Aryans were not invaders but small number of migrants, who are too small to be detected by any genetic or archaeological evidence, over a very large period of time. However these Aryans successfully managed to force millions of people living in IVC at the time, namely Dravidians, to give up their religion and language in favour of the Indo-European languages they spoke as well as their gods, that too without invading or migrating in large numbers.
By far this is the stupidest and the most funny explanation for the Aryan Invasion theory as this theory assumes that millions of Dravidians, who lived in IVC, which at that time was the most populous region on the planet, had no good language or religion of their own. Thus they gave up their own civilization and copied the few hundred migrating Aryans, whose numbers were so low that it is almost impossible for current archaeology or genetic studies to pick it up. Some how many Dravidians and the wannabe Aryan north Indians, prefer such mental gymnastics of logic rather than the much simpler explanation that the Aryan invasion/migration never happened and that this Aryan-Dravidian divide was an artificial construct of the British.
Even after all these attempts, the Aryan Invasion theory leaves behind many more questions than it solves successfully. There are crores of temples for Dravidian Gods- Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma all over India while the Aryan gods- Indira, Varuna, Vayu, Agni etc. have very few temples dedicated to them. Unless one is wilfully disingenuous, it makes no sense that the Aryan Invaders/Migrants who supposedly defeated the Dravidians and made them the lower castes and/or forced them to migrate to the south, would have adopted the gods of the Dravidians as the primordial deities above their own Indira or Vayu.
This brings to an end this series of articles. The articles here have tried to debunk the most common arguments used by the supporters of AIT/AMT. Given the amount of propaganda and politics which supports the pro-AIT lobby, the mounting evidence against this theory will take some time to change things on the ground. Till that happens, the job of debunking this theory should continue at all levels.