supposedly Re: Aryan invasion debate

[George Thompson]

I have already posted too many messages to the list recently, and there are
other responsibilities that demand my attention, and while I sympathize with
Lars Martin Fosse's decision to drop out of the list, I feel compelled to say
one more thing.

K. Elst's exchanges with R. Zydenbos and M. Witzel and myself have at least
shown the list K. Elst's rhetorical style in debate. The list can decide for
itself what value to place on what he has said on this list, and on how he
has said it.

But I find his repeated protestations about being no member of any 'fan club
whatsoever to be far more than merely disingenuous.  These protestations
strike me as being no less than blatant deception.

I have visited Elst's web site, and have read his diatribe against Zydenbos,
and have noticed his proud assertion of association with the likes of Rajaram
and Frawley, and so forth, but what really caught my attention was his
surprisingly sympathetic portrait of one N. Godse, assassin of M. Gandhi.
Without coming right out and saying so, Elst seems to suggest that Gandhi had
it coming to him, for having betrayed his previous 'principled' opposition to
the creation of an independent Muslim state.

Maybe I have misread Elst's subtle wordplay, which prior to this has never
struck me as particularly subtle.  Maybe. If so, I apologize in advance to
him. But if Elst himself does not publically disavow this apparent sympathy
with Godse, well, we will really know who he really is, and what he really
stands for, won't we?

Maybe Lars Martin was right. Maybe I should take seriously these veiled
threats of violence against myself. What kind of people am I talking to on
this list? I used to think that I was talking to scholars, about utterly
harmless and unimportant things like ancient history and Vedic philology. I
used to think that while the rest of the world fought its stupid wars we
scholars could talk reasonably and non-violently about the past.  Apparently
I was wrong.  Perhaps politics is inescapable.

If so, I choose satyAgraha.

George Thompson