Book Review:"Negationism in India"-Part 1

[ucgadkw at ucl.ac.uk]

On Nov 14,  3:43am, Richard Lariviere wrote:

> Is there any way to keep the sort of rancid pablum Mr. Karanth has sullied
> our screens with from re-appearing?   

I'm afraid not, at the moment, Richard.  Freedom of speech and all
that.  I haven't checked whether Karanth is actually a subscribed
member of the list but, as I understand it, anyone can post
mail to INDOLOGY and it will be distributed to members.  I don't think
this is what we really want; people should at least have to subscribe
before being able to distribute messages.  And I gather that the next
version of unix-LISTSERV  -- 6 -- enables us to protect the group more,
along these lines.  But we have to wait until the Liverpool team
(thanks lads!) install the new version.

Another possibility would be for INDOLOGY to become a moderated list,
i.e., the heavy hand of an editor would fall upon all messages before
distribution (and perhaps combine batches of messages into a single
bulletin).  But I don't have time to do this, and I don't think our
volume justifies it.

I know it is annoying to have one's mailbox flooded with unwanted
stuff, but for the present I'm afraid that it's the price paid for
receiving a lot of other, more interesting, messages.

'Just say "Delete".'   :-)

One more thing: Yesterday I returned from Madras, where I had a number
of fascinating discussions about anti-brahmin feelings, about language
controversies, learned about new anti-fundamentalist organizations, and
so on.  I am sure that others have had similar experiences.  It is
clear that India (or at least the subset of people I met in Madras) is
going through a period of great intellectual ferment and
self-examination.  There is a lot of uncritical and dangerous
balderdash in circulation, but I think we ignore it at our peril.  I
was particularly glad to find that some middle-class Indians are
actively forming groups to counter some of these ideas, however
tiresome it may be for them to have to do this.  Although these issues
are not the bread-and-butter (chapatti-and-ghee?) of INDOLOGY it
probably does little harm to be reminded of them by the occasional
irruption.

Dominik