De/Increase in USA's India interest, 1970's??

[Gail Coelho]

At 07:16 AM 9/17/99 -0400, you wrote:
>    The above exchange occurred on Indology today.  Since my first �serious� 
>(?) interest in India began in 1967-70 (following university-based 
>anti-Vietnam non-violent action projects based on MLKing following Gandhi 
>following Thoreau....), my first Fulbright there in 1971-72, I have to wonder 
>what �significant diminution of interest in India� refers to, vis a vis 
>Americans.  Surely historians cannot forget all those American Seekers (and 
>such-like hippies from "the West") who followed the Beatles who followed 
>Allen Ginsberg to India in the late 60� and 70�s, and the explosion of 
>interest in Gurus, Rishis, Yoga and Transcendental meditation in the US 
>througout the 70s.  I thought this was a forum of historians, even though 
>Indologists!!!   

Well, the remark refers to scholarly interest in India.

>
>    Well, to tell the truth-- and why not?-- I know the EPW remark refers to 
>other professional historians/Indologists, and the issue has been joined 
>around the amount of US government support of �professional interest.�  
>Still, I would be very surprised if indeed the numbers of (US and other 
>"Western") students involved in studying India and classes offered (I gave a 
>couple myself!) decreased around the �70s.  In fact, my impression is that 
>they increased!  Who can get the accurate stats, please!?  

Perhaps, the word 'interest' in the article should have been changed to
'funding'. I've been a graduate student in Linguistics in the US for the
past 8 years, and my impression is that there is more funding available for
studies on East Asia then on South Asia. I don't know what political and
economical forces are responsible for the available funding, but there seem
to be more professors who study the East Asian languages, and more grants
available for research in East Asia. But, this is only an impression --
perhaps its true only of my discipline, or perhaps its just not true at all! 

Gail Coelho