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.[1]
Work and reception
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.[4] V Rajamani over
Current Science reviewed it in favorable terms and praised Danino for his meticulous research.[5]
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.[6] 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.[6] Heehs added that Danino selectively cherry-picked quotes from his draft-manuscripts and ignored his published works, which were far more nuanced.[6] Others have accused Danino of pursuing a sectarian
Hindutva oriented scholarship based on
historical negationism.[7][8][9]
^Chadha, Ashish (1 February 2011). "Conjuring a river, imagining civilisation: Saraswati, archaeology and science in India". Contributions to Indian Sociology. 45 (1): 55–83.
doi:
10.1177/006996671004500103.
ISSN0069-9667.
S2CID144701033.