Justification for teaching Sanskrit

[Daud R. Ali]

As I see it, the porblem is that the very notion of "great civilizations" 
and "classical" languages is precisely what is becoming more and more 
suspect or irrelevant.  So it won't do just to replay the old songs.  It 
is not sufficient to simply pine away over the glories and influences 
that Sanskrit has had all over India and southeast Asia. 

This is the very justification that is no longer convincing.
One reason for this is that Area Studies in general are not in the 
best of shape.  With the fall of the Soviet Union, the
global agenda which founded area centers in the US is now 
belly up.  Republicans are preparing to give us an even 
nastier "market place" approach not only to global policy, but to
education as well.
If anyone doesn't see the writing on the wall, they might do well to 
look at the Senate hearings on the NEH (available on H-ASIA).  
Let's face it, for all the "great civilizations" pr that we have 
been pumping into the minds of American students, India remains a 
third world country to most of the people that matter, in very real and 
depressing sense (one that far exceeds academics).  Issues of Indian 
history and culture just won't find the committment that they used to. 

Unfortunately, there is probably not alot that can be done about this 
direction of events int he immediate future.  But the long term survival 
of Sanskrit and Indian studies, I think will depend upon how we as 
scholars of India choose to position ourselves in the changing 
intellectual climate of the academy.  In this sense, I think that the 
other major threat to classicist studies, besides the shrinking universe of 
the university, could actually be healthy for Indology.  
I am referring to "endogenous" intellectual developments within the 
academy in the last 15 years.  I know such trends generally fall outside
the purview of our Indological concerns (often greatly to our benefit),
but when we are talking about justifying the teaching of Sanskrit
not to ourselves, but to others, it might do us well to take a look
at how the interests of the general scholarly audience (students and 
faculty) is changing.   As I see it, any argument that is going to go 
down the "classicist" or "civilizational" road ought to be able to at 
least address the criticisms leveled against these positions in the last 
two or three decades. Such a dialogue is precisely what is missing from 
the discussion so far.   The crticisms from the xholarly world against 
"classicist" approach are 
A) it is elitist, to put it euphemistically (as Kichenasamy 
points out from within Indology) and B) it is tied up 
with all sorts modernist and nationalist fantasies about the past.  Related 
critiques have already been brought to bear on the study of civilization.


But thankfully, civilization and classicism are not the only oreintations 
we can take to Sanskrit in pre-modern India.  Not much work needs to be 
expended to prove that learning Sanskrit (along with other languages) 
is very important for studying and understanding pre-modern India.  
So one issue that must be addressed, is why one should bother to 
study pre-modern India in the first place. The point we must be clear on 
is that simply repeating the important contributions that Sanskrit
and India have made to world culture -- the sort of remarks that Basham
made nearly 40 years ago --  will only indicate the moirbund nature of 
our discipline.

The positive and vital issue that needs to be addressed is whether the whole 
orientation 
of "classical" languages, with all that it implies, or even 'great 
civilizations,' is at all useful for the reasons mentioned above.  Surely 
the study of Sanskrit can be framed within other paradigms of knowledge 
and history.  For my own part, the goal Sanskritic study is simply 
the understanding historical 
formations in the past, for example.  Such an approach might re-conceptualize
Sanskrit not as a pre-ordained "classical language" but a hegemonic language 
of power.  There are other approaches out there, and these need to be raised.

Respectfully to all
Daud Ali