Black as Evil

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

"Dr Y. Vassilkov" <iiasguest10 at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL> wrote:

>then the time came for "patriotic" intellectuals of all these nations who
>started "public discussions" with the neighbours. The topics were usual: 1.
>autochtonism, i.e. "we and nobody else lived on this territory since time
>immemorial", and 2. ethnic superiority. By the way, it is too an

Dr. Vassilkov, you apologized for a non-Indological topic. In
the context of certain recent trends, I think it is extremely
appropriate, or else, in a few years, there will be nothing
remaining that is Indo-, for its -logy to have any relevance.
I don't particularly like the term Balkanization, but that is
what some people want to see happen to India.

If you recollect, a number of posts on this list have pointed
the attention of its members to a website called dalitstan.org,
apparently dedicated to the cause of the "Black Untouchable" in
India, but which seems to champion the cause of all sorts of
imaginary -stans, from Mughalstan to Dravidstan. Well, if one
visits http://rvl4.ecn.purdue.edu/~cromwell/lt/netusers.html,
and scrolls down to the entry on India, one would get an idea
of what political agenda are involved. At the very least, one
will learn that what dalitstan.org claims to have been said
by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar was not said by Ambedkar at all.

Meanwhile, we have this sort of highly polarized white "Aryan"
vs. black "Dravidian" pseudo-scholarly discussion going on here.
I think people interested in scholarship should keep themselves
informed about potential non-scholarly (mis)uses of their work.
I would certainly love to read good studies of Dravidian texts
and hope that interest in that area increases. However, I don't
think that the cause of Dravidian studies is helped by those
who think that the root cause of all problems lie among the
"Vedic Aryans". And that is my basic objection to the way this
thread has developed.

Vidyasankar

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