quitting

[Frederick M Asher]

I'm bothered by the spate of I quit messages.  To assume that what we do 
with our intellectual lives is totally without political ramifications 
seems to me way off base.  Indology may derive its primary stimulus from 
texts of the past--and I include here as text my own primary interest, 
monuments initially constructed in the past--but those texts are 
perpetually reshaped...as much by present-day discourse as by 
ancient interpolations.  I thus don't see the political discussions any 
more out of place in this group than, for example, a debate among art 
historians about an Asokan pillar capital recut during the Gupta period.  
It's just that we're more heavily invested in the current debate.  Rick Asher