"Hindu writer who lives in New York"

[Michael Rabe]

On 11 Jan 1999 14:01:16 -0500 Ashish Chandra wrote:

>I wonder if "a Hindu writer who lives in New York" has the same ring to it
>as Mr. So and So, professor of Theology ... Are we to
>assume that the article is impartial just because it has been written by a
>"Hindu writer" ...

Dear Ashish Chandra,

You'll be glad to know that Dominik, the list owner agrees with those that
object to this thread by saying, in a private admonition to me, that this _
topic isn't really the meat and drink of INDOLOGY._  And I too agree that
the ostensibly disparate realms of political and academic discourse should
be kept separate as much as possible.  Sadly, however, and with increasing
frequency, it seems to me, events in the real world impinge dangerously
upon the foundations of our ivory towers.

I forwarded  Tunku Varadarajan's op-ed piece [so the question of
impartiality does not arise, and he is perfectly justified in identifying
himself as a Hindu if he choses to imply that others in what he calls an
emerging Hindu Taliban don't speak for him] because it is germane to the
various threads  on Indology that I've been following for at least 4 years
pertaining to whether there was or was not a migration of Aryan-language
speaking peoples into India.  While some researchers may have only the
purest of academic reasons for hypothesizing _out of India_ alternative
explanations for commonalites of language and ritual elsewhere in ancient
Asia and Europe,  there is a school of thought that believes attacks on
Muslims, and now Christians, are rationalized  by their purpetrators
[including some VHP and Bajarang Dal members photographed and interviewed
in the current _IndiaToday International_, January 11,1999, pp. 10-13]
rationalized as _reconversion_ counterattacks against foreign ideologies.
This argument is harder to make if it must be conceded that the Vedic
peoples also migrated into the subcontinent.

As to why I should care about about the political ramifications of this
academic debate, let self interest suffice--I admit to hoping that India
shall remain a relatively safe _secular democracy_ to visit on research
forays for many decades to come. Unlike the real Taliban's Afghanistan, or
Prabhakaran's Eelam.

I write this from Al Capone's [and no longer Michael Jordan's] Chicago,
murder capital of the U.S., according to the most recent annual crime
statistics.  Not that it makes much difference to the victims, that here
perpetrators of violence favor guns over fire.

Michael Rabe