Response to Dr. Vassilkov (August 99' Archives, Post # 28)

[Vishal Agarwal]

Dear Dr. Vassilkov,
I had earlier privately email you a very detailed and point to point
response with a cc: to Dr. Thompson. List members can request a copy of  the
same from if they wish. I add the following two points here:
1. ON DR. KOENRAAD ELST: He is not affiliated to any Univ. right now, though
apart from his PhD. in Indology, he has degrees in Philosophy and Sinilogy.
Ever since he reaped the whirlwind by questioning the methods and findings
of the Indian Academic Establishment in the Ayodhya Controversy (where he
asseerts that of course there was a temple and of course it was destroyed by
Islamic Iconoclasm), he has abandoned all hope of getting an academic
position and now ekes out a living as an independent scholar and columnist.
The questioning of the AIT (not M. Mueller's but say Romila Thapar's) is
almost entirely the work of outsiders: either non-Academics like K D Sethna,
Bhagwan Singh, Shrikant Talegiri, David Frawley and Natwar Jha; or academics
working outside their own field like Mathematicians Subhask Kak and N S
Rajaram; or academics out in the cold like Dr. Elst himself. It is only
recently that top ranking academics like Archaeologist B B Lal (once a
pro-invasionist polemicist) have joined them. Note that Dr. Elst has just
published a lengthy discussion of Bernard Sergent's pro-invasion arguments
at the website:
http://members.xoom.com/KoenraadElst/
2. ON THE FAME OF ROMILA THAPAR ET AL: I think that here you are quite out
of touch with the ground realities and the Truth here. Please read the book
'Eminent Historians' by Arun Shourie. The Leftist Historians published a
totally irrelevant abusive response to this book which is reviewed again by
Dr. Elst at his website. Long extracts from the book were available on the
net but the link does not work. But you might try a search with words
'shourie' AND 'ICHR' or 'Romila'. Again, dont just dismiss this search
saying that it is a 'Hindutva' site--it will not befit a scholar like you
and would be non-academic

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