Michel Danino

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.

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.{{cite news|newspaper=The Times of India|title=TOI Crest: Quick review|url=https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/TOI-Crest-Quick-review/articleshow/5988271.cms|access-date=17 February 2020|date=29 May 2010}} V Rajamani over Current Science reviewed it in favorable terms and praised Danino for his meticulous research.{{Cite journal|last=Rajamani|first=V.|date=2010|title=Review of The Lost River – On the Trail of the Sarasvati|journal=Current Science|volume=99|issue=12|pages=1842–1843|issn=0011-3891|jstor=24073512}}

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.{{Cite journal|last=Heehs|first=Peter|date=2003|title=Shades of Orientalism: Paradoxes and Problems in Indian Historiography|journal=History and Theory|volume=42|issue=2|pages=169–195|issn=0018-2656|jstor=3590880|doi=10.1111/1468-2303.00238}} 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. Heehs added that Danino selectively cherry-picked quotes from his draft-manuscripts and ignored his published works, which were far more nuanced. Others have accused Danino of pursuing a sectarian Hindutva oriented scholarship based on historical negationism.{{Cite journal|last=Guha|first=Sudeshna|date=2005|title=Negotiating Evidence: History, Archaeology and the Indus Civilisation|journal=Modern Asian Studies|volume=39|issue=2|pages=399–426|issn=0026-749X|jstor=3876625|doi=10.1017/S0026749X04001611|s2cid=145463239 }}{{Cite journal|last=Chadha|first=Ashish|date=2011-02-01|title=Conjuring a river, imagining civilisation: Saraswati, archaeology and science in India|journal=Contributions to Indian Sociology|language=en|volume=45|issue=1|pages=55–83|doi=10.1177/006996671004500103|s2cid=144701033 |issn=0069-9667}}{{Cite journal|last=Bhatt|first=Chetan|date=2000-01-01|title=Dharmo rakshati rakshitah : Hindutva movements in the UK|journal=Ethnic and Racial Studies|volume=23|issue=3|pages=559–593|doi=10.1080/014198700328999|s2cid=144085595 |issn=0141-9870}}

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.{{Cite book|date=2016-06-08|editor-last=Schug|editor-first=Gwen Robbins|editor2-last=Walimbe|editor2-first=Subhash R.|title=A Companion to South Asia in the Past|language=en|doi=10.1002/9781119055280|isbn=9781119055280|s2cid=132664143 }}

• Indigenous Aryanists

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite web|url=http://www.iitgn.ac.in/faculty/humanities/michel.htm|title=Michel Danino |website=IIT Gandhinagar |access-date=12 November 2013|archive-date=4 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170104112249/http://www.iitgn.ac.in/faculty/humanities/michel.htm|url-status=dead}}

{{Padma Shri Award Recipients in Literature & Education}}{{Sangh Parivar|Michel Danino=Michel Danino}}{{Authority control}}

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Category:1956 births

Category:Living people

Category:20th-century Indian writers

Category:21st-century Indian writers

Category:French emigrants to India

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Category:Indian people of French descent

Category:French Indologists

Category:Indian Indologists

Category:Indian spiritual writers

Category:French spiritual writers

Category:Indigenous Aryanists

Category:20th-century French writers

Category:Recipients of the Padma Shri in literature and education