some remarks

[anil k gupta]

excellent note after a long time shorn of extremist notions, lucid and
likeable

anil

-----Original Message-----
From: Dominique.Thillaud <thillaud at UNICE.FR>
To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK <INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK>
Date: Wednesday, March 18, 1998 3:13 PM
Subject: some remarks


>Dear Indologists,
>        Despite my intention don't to touch my keyboard in dubious debates,
>I can't restrain to write few words ;)
>
>1) can we stop to playing with words ?
>
>Bhadraiah Mallampalli wrote: "can not grasp and remember simple words like
>"Scheduled castes" of Indian society, and continue to use the incorrect
>"untouchables" (a word banished from official Indian media long ago)"
>        1) I suppose English and American peoples are better judges about
>the use of their own mother tongue ;)
>        2) Changing names don't change the reality. I find ridiculous the
>new tendancy of "banishing words". In France, it's today incorrect to say
>"aveugle" (blind) or "sourd" (deaf), they must be replaced by "non-voyant"
>(not seeing) and "mal-entendant" (badly hearing): what is changing for
>them? I agree with a french humorist who suggested to replace "con"
>(bloody) by "mal-comprenant" (badly undrstanding). I'm afraid that
>rejecting "untouchables" is nothing but a poor essay to close the eyes over
>a real problem; "scheduled castes" seems to me an insulting euphemism and,
>speaking French, I'll continue to use the words "intouchables" or "parias".
>
>George Thompson wrote: "we're supposed to be talking about a *migration
>theory*. If you keep on insisting on an *invasion theory*, where there is
>none ..."
>        I don't understand clearly the difference between the two words.
>Was the coming of Europeans in East America a migration or an invasion? Was
>the coming of East Americans in West America a migration or an invasion?
>        From the American point of view they were peaceful farmers going
>toward free lands, undoubtly a migration. Alas, Amerindians knew well the
>land was not "free", the peaceful farmers were armed with guns and
>travelling with a powerful army, undoubtly an invasion (some
>ill-intentioned people say a genocid)!
>        Once again, debating about words is not debating about reality but
>about ideological point of view ;)
>
>2) colonialist scholars ?
>
>        I, personnally, reject firmly any accusation of colonialism or
>neo-colonialism. I know perfectly that India was colonized by England, a
>big part of Africa by France, Greece and Gaul by Roma, &c. I know perfectly
>that few scholars gave an ideological support to all conquests and
>slaveries, eurindianist Germans to the nazi power, Russian biologists to
>the stalinian one, &c. But they were very few!
>        In a large majority, scholars are honest and honourable* peoples,
>rarely supporting the politic of their government, rarely involved in
>military or economical war. To reject the point of view of westerner
>scholars with an accusation of colonialism is not only insulting, but also
>stupid.
>        When I consider the Indian civilization as an Eurindian one, that's
>based on many serious and published studies. I have nothing to do with the
>eventual "greatness" of any land! I'm studying them but I don't like
>Eurindians nor their ideology. They were war fans and the extension of
>Eurindian languages all over the world shows perfectly they had no problems
>in destroying civilizations. It's true that some of them, by a later
>evolution, attained a wonderful state of spiritual development, but just
>few of them (I know only Greece and India in this way). I suppose (just my
>religious opinion: no debate, please) that other ones were "perverted" in
>their evolution by bellicist monotheistic ideologies ("Dieu reconnaitra les
>siens", "Gott mit uns", "the Holy Bible in each GI's pocket", &c.).
>        I hope to be a religious, peaceful and honnest man, but I'm not
>sure that all my pitaras were good guys and I don't intend to defend them
>blindly. Hence, I don't intend to be judged for their faults and, in the
>actual case, for the English conquest of India! ...
>
>        Regards,
>Dominique
>
>* not in Antonius' sense ;)
>
>
>
>Dominique THILLAUD
>Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France
>