Qualifications for entering into a debate

[Frank Conlon]

With full respect to the likelihood that Mr. Karanth, in his own innocent 
virtue, really believes that an offhand characterization of the arguments 
of J. B. Sharma somehow do a great wrong to Sharmaji, let me say that 
from my perspective, "why not give it a rest?"  I have refrained from 
entering into the slanging around this issue, but Mr. Karanth, whom I 
believe to be an honorable, but substantially unqualified commentator on 
the history of India, persists.

Why not leave it alone?  Probably  because, like a whole cohort of 
Indo-North American science types, he feels that he is perfectly 
qualified to discuss Indian history on the basis of his Indianness, 
whereas if I were to offer some hare-brained intervention on his 
particular field of scientific knowledge, he would,  in the terminology 
of the Simpsons, have a cow.   Don't misunderstand me, he's entitled to 
his opinion, as for that matter are those scoundrels LaRiviere and 
Rocher, but the posturings of the "interested parties", and the 
expectation that we are all supposed to fall down and ignore one hundred 
years of scholarship just because one or two new dudes have had an 
inspiration strikes me as pushing the envelope just a tad beyond the  
believable.

But, of course, I may have it all wrong.  In which case, just have a nice 
day and stay tuned.

Frank Conlon