Dr Ali's message regarding "Negationism" by Koenraad Elst

[Voice of India]

Dear Dr. Ali,

It was not our intention to single out the Indology net. Being a 
non-specialist myself, as are our other volunteers in the US, I was not 
aware of other scholarly networks like H-ASIA, which was brought to our 
notice by a mail responding to our introductory message.
	The cacophony we referred to is what we have come to expect from 
other networks like soc.culture.indian. 
	I understand that people who study pre-modern India are not an 
automatic audience for political propaganda. However a book which deals 
with the way history is written is not merely of interest to people who 
specialise in politics. A few readers of this net have responded to our 
earlier message, without reacting in the way you have. We feel justified, 
therefore, in posting such messages. 

We make no pretensions to scholarship -- we will refrain from trying to 
hijack this group. If you have any other objections to this sort of 
messages, other than a visceral antipathy to subjects you do not wish
 to deal with, we will be glad to hear from you, and to learn from your
 feedback.
	I remind you that I am only inviting people to tell me if they 
wish to have an electronic copy of the book sent to them -- at their 
personal address. Except for another couple of introductory messages, I 
will not send any more mesages.

I will post some excerpts from the book, which should make it clear that 
the book is of interest to bona fide historians.
	I will also ask other friends who had volunteered to proof-read 
the book for the net, not to send any messages to this newsgroup. This 
way I will be solely responsible for the messages that appear.

We are having some problems with our account and mails sent to it are 
bouncing back. I apologise to all those who tried to reach us, but could 
not. The VOI is not on the indology net, so please respond to me directly.
If the learned members of the net do not object, I will try to get the 
VOI on the indology mailing list. I will be very grateful to anybody who 
can tell me how to do so.

Please read "I" for "We" in this message. I promise to learn about the 
Indolgy nettiquette from your response.

Sincerely,

Shreenivas Sharma
(Volunteering for VOI)

 ---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 04:42:53 BST
From: Daud R. Ali <daudali at uclink3.berkeley.edu>
To: Members of the list <indology at liverpool.ac.uk>
Subject: VOI message

It seems that Indology is not so a-political after all.  Of the various 
internet 
venues, indology has been singled out by Voice of India as "cacaphony" 
free for the dissemination of such a book.  
I believe that VOI should understand that just because we study 
pre-modern India does not mean that we should be receptive to what I think
can hardly be considered an a-political message.  Of course I am 
assuming, perahps naively, that everyone would agree on this point.

I suggest that we, if there is some consensus, should respond to Voice 
of India that this venue is not for politics.  If we fail to do so, 
then, well, we must admit that a very hot political topic has been 
dropped in our midst, and then, I'm afraid, we will be forced to talk 
about it.  Communalism and the writing on pre-modern India might actually 
be a very interesting topic.  If we don't want to take it up, and stick 
to our stated "apolitical agenda," then, I think a response to VOI is 
in order. 
daud ali