Editing Subhash Kak (section)

===Reception===
[[Edwin Bryant (author)|Edwin Bryant]] calls him a well read and articulate spokesman for the [[Indigenous Aryans|Indigenous Aryan]] hypothesis and for other issues concerning ancient Indian science and culture.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gSV-BwAAQBAJ&pg=PT507|title=The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate|last=Bryant|first=Edwin|date=2001-09-06|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780199881338|language=en}}</ref>

Scholars have rejected his theories in entirety and his writings have been heavily criticized.{{sfn|Witzel|2001}} Acute misrepresentation of facts coupled with wrong observations, extremely flexible and often self-contradictory analysis, cherry picking of data and forwarding of easily disprovable hypotheses have been located.{{sfn|Witzel|2001}}<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Guha|first=Sudeshna|date=2007|title=Review of The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History|journal=Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society|volume=17|issue=3|pages=340–343|issn=1356-1863|jstor=25188742|doi=10.1017/S135618630700733X|s2cid=163092658}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kazanas|first=Nicholas|date=1999|journal=Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute|volume=80|issue=1/4|pages=15–42|issn=0378-1143|jstor=41694574|title=The Ṛgveda and Indo-Europeans}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India|first=Meera|last=Nanda|date=2004|publisher=Rutgers University Press|isbn=9780813536347|pages=118|oclc=1059017715}}</ref> His understanding of linguistics and subsequent assertion have been challenged.{{sfn|Witzel|2001}}<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OtCPAgAAQBAJ|title=The Indo-Aryan Languages|last1=Jain|first1=Danesh|last2=Cardona|first2=George|date=2007-07-26|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781135797119|pages=35, 36|language=en}}</ref> [[Romila Thapar]] calls Kak an amateur historian whose views on the Indus Civilization were fringe and who was part of a group that had more to do with waging political battles at the excuse of history.<ref>{{Cite journal|date=2000-01-01|title=Romila Thapar: On historical scholarship and the uses of the past (interview with Parita Mukta)|journal=Ethnic and Racial Studies|volume=23|issue=3|pages=594–616|doi=10.1080/014198700329006|s2cid=151335964|issn=0141-9870}}</ref> [[Michael Witzel]] noted him to be a revisionist and part of a "closely knit, self-adulatory group", members of which often write together and/or profusely copy from and cite one another, thus rendering the whole scene into a virtually indistinguishable hotchpotch.{{sfn|Witzel|2001}} [[Garrett G. Fagan]], a noted critic of [[pseudoarchaeology]] has concurred with Witzel.<ref name=":0" /> Meera Nanda writes about Kak being revered as a stalwart of Hindutva and one of the leading "intellectual Kshatriyas".<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|title=Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India|first=Meera|last=Nanda|date=2004|publisher=Rutgers University Press|isbn=9780813536347|pages=114|oclc=1059017715}}</ref> Similar concerns of his being a Hindutva-based revisionist have been echoed by other writers.<ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=i4TDAgAAQBAJ|title=Hindu Perspectives on Evolution: Darwin, Dharma, and Design|last=Brown|first=C. Mackenzie|date=2012-01-19|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781136484667|pages=239|language=en}}</ref> In a critique of faulty scientific reasoning in Hindutva ideologies and theories, [[Alan Sokal]] sarcastically criticized Kak as "one of the leading intellectual luminaries of the [[Hindu nationalism|Hindu-nationalist diaspora]]".<ref name=":6">{{Cite book|title=Archaeological fantasies: how pseudoarchaeology misrepresents the past and misleads the public|last=Sokal|first=Alan|publisher=Routledge|year=2006|isbn=978-0-415-30593-8|editor=Garrett G. Fagan|page=317|chapter=Pseudoscience and Postmodernism: Antagonists or Fellow-Travelers?}}</ref> Koertge as well as Meera Nanda have remarked that Kak's work advances a Hindutva-based esoteric pseudoscience narrative that seeks to find relatively advanced abstract physics in Vedic texts and assign Indian indigenousness to the Sanskrit-speaking Indic Aryans in a bid to prove the superiority of the ancient Hindu civilization.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3" />