Rules of Membership

[Koenraad Elst]

(this mail was initially withheld in the hope of de-escalating tensions, but
since the attack on me has continued, I am now posting it for the record)

> This is K. Elst

commenting on

George Thompson <GthomGt at CS.COM>
Aan: <INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK>
Verzonden: dinsdag 11 juli 2000 4:54
who wrote:

> I call the List's attention to K. Elst's very first post to this List
[dated
> 9/2/99], in which he defends his dear friend "Vishalji", who had just
> finished threatening me, clearly and directly and publically, by reminding
me
> of the wisdom of the principle of self-preservation. (...)
>  And he continues to hide behind the mask of the victim. (..)
> Please recall that I was the first member of this list to welcome him.
> And I will be the last one to forgive him.

If someone has a penchant for victimhood, it is the touch-me-not
who fancies himself the target of a "threat".  What happened was that Vishal
Agarwal, on the
assumption that the OIT might be the wave of the future, pointed out that
observing normal decorum when discussing that theory would favour the
"preservation" of the academic standing of indologists.  The implied
prediction (not threat, much less physical threat) was that those who went
all the way in lambasting the OIT would find themselves exposed as
laughing-stocks once the OIT would become the dominant paradigm.  Maybe the
fortunes of the OIT are not such as to warrant that prediction, but then
neither was George's claim of a "threat" warranted.

I am sorry to note that even after Vishal's clarification, not to mention my
own,
and after the passing of ten months, George Thompson is still labouring
under the delusion that a "threat" was issued against him.  Back then, not
being an AIT
academic lambasting an OIT outsider, i restrained myself from calling
his delusion pathological.  But after his relapse, it is so obvious that it
can indeed be said openly: George Thompson suffers bouts of paranoia.
Nothing to
worry about, George:-- Mohammed was a paranoia sufferer too (actually a
textbook case), and they still talk about him.

> he insinuates
> elaborately a common cause between the historian Romila Thapar and Hitler,
> and then later suggests that it is M. Witzel who is guilty of initiating
this
> tactic of using the Nazi card;

In the Marxist hate rhetoric against the Hindu revivalist movement, cries of
"fascism" are never far away, as i have documented and discussed in detail
in my forthcoming book The Saffron Swastika.  Because of the sloppy
identification of
the OIT with Hindu revivalism, that shrill rhetoric has also been
transferred to the AIT debate.  In order to put people, especially innocent
newcomers influenced by this roaring and hysterical rhetoric, back with
their feet on the ground, I sometimes remind them that
Hitler was, after all, a very firm AIT believer.  An update on the
centrality of the AIT to the racist worldview can be found in David Duke's
book My Awakening, where he says in so many words that he would never have
become a racist activist but for his seeing the miserable consequences of
race-mixing in India, land of the pitiable degenerate half-breed descendants
of the once-pure Aryan invaders.
Conversely, Steve Farmer's hero Voltaire was a firm OIT believer.

I have repeatedly stressed that to me, these accidental associations with
the
heroes and villains of history make no difference at all to the truth or
otherwise of any theory.  I have never accused Romila Thapar of being anyhow
Hitlerian: I don't think she wants to invade Poland, build concentration
camps (then again, being a Marxist, she just might) or design a Volkswagen
beetle car.  But if she wants to throw that kind of hate rhetoric around
herself (as she has done in several publications, though still more politely
than many others), she needs to be reminded that on the AIT, she and most of
you here just happen to be in the same camp with Hitler, while the OIT
oddballs can bask in Voltaire's reflected glory.  Can't help it, it's a
fact.

The "Nazi card" is part of a larger phenomenon: the systematic jettisoning
of normal scholarly decorum by even the most prominent indologists and
indo-europeanists when faced with the rejection of the AIT paradigm, or even
with theory fragments which might undermine the AIT.  For an example,
unrelated to this list, of how the Indo-Europeanist
orthodoxy misbehaves in its treatment of dissidents, consider the attack of
a Dutch-Indian duo (it is really not a matter of race) on Claus Zoller after
his
discovery of a kentum language in the Himalayan foothills, which need not
but may well have consequences for the AIT debate.  After the leading
journal Indogermanische Forschungen had given the duo prominent space to
attack Zoller's competence and integrity, it refused to Zoller the
opportunity of a rebuttal to their smears.  (Fortunately, his name has been
cleared by other
researchers who confirmed his findings.)

As we have seen numerous times on this list and in other forums, AIT
proponents routinely use disparaging and even foul
language against AIT skeptics.  Even apparent outsiders without an axe to
grind quickly pick up what is the done thing here, and immediately impute
motives and dirty tricks ("ducking", "fudging", to cite a few recent ones),
possibly as a projection of the dirt clouding the eye of the beholder.  But
when this is pointed out, or indeed when the other side does half as much,
they loudly
blame the other side for derailing academic debate into a slanging-match.
This doesn't impinge on their self-image as fair and dispassionate, for then
they go home satisfied, saying to themselves: see, talking with
them Hindu chauvinists is just impossible.  This is not a deliberate lie,
merely a firmly installed prejudice distorting their perception of the
debate.  Indeed, most likely George will come away from my reply to his
unprovoked attacks with the impression that, in spite of my repeatedly
ignoring provocations by himself and others, it is me who is quarrelsome
etc., confirming all the worst he always thought about them OIT
"scoundrels".

> he writes eloquent defenses of the assassin of
> Gandhi [who, he says, had retreated from morality by attempting to
reconcile
> with Muslims] all this at his bizarre web site [and he thanks me cynically
> for calling attention to this  site-- grateful as all scoundrels are for
the
> free publicity]; he makes a weird threatening allusion to having to take
care
> of Salman Rushdie instead of pursuing his Vedic studies -- as if silencing
> Rushdie seemed more important to him at the time than Vedic studies or
> silencing me [thank goodness].
> He refuses to renounce the rampant fascism
in
> the popular press of India, since it exalts him as a hero of so-called
free
> thought [a rare European exception, he is]. He disparages all western
> scholarship as motivated by some kind of Max Mueller syphilitic disease
that
> converts us all into fundamentalist Christians, simply because we are
> appalled by the idea that India IS, all minds closed to reality, *the
cradle
> of civilization*, no matter what history actualy tells us.

I will not dignify this diarrhoea of nonsensical defamation with an answer
(though I
have answered much of it on past occasions), except for
the most absurd item in a uniformly ludicrous list: my plan of "silencing
Salman Rushdie".  For your information, I have the honour of having
contributed the foreword to the Indian reprint (1998) of Dr. Daniel Pipes'
authoritative book The Rushdie Affair, also published in shorter form in the
Middle East Quarterly.  That postscript, as well as my reporting on the
Rushdie affair when it happened (in both the Flemish conservative daily
Gazet van Antwerpen and leftist weekly Toestanden), of course includes a
plea in favour of freedom of expression.  Being acquainted with ostracism,
disinvitations and other forms of being silenced myself, and conversely also
having tasted the beneficial fruits of controversial debate (du choc des
idées jaillit la lumière), I am a known opponent of "silencing".

That is also why I have failed to second Subrahmanya's question (10 July) to
Dr.
Wujastyk whether the same rules apply to all list members here.  If they do,
it would obviously  imply that George Thompson must go the way of those
who were thrown off the list for lesser offences than his latest hate mail,
totally uncalled-for and off-topic.  But no, quite unlike some others, he
got off with a polite
request to keep out "scoundrel" rhetoric.  Just as well, for I thought that
even a Vedic scholar with a mental problem should have a chance
to vent
his spleen.  Whether an academic list is the right medium for that is a
different question, but since none of the list members (certainly not those
of the old boys' network whom Subrahmanya suspects of being favoured over
the others) has tried to rein him in after his ill-inspired outburst, I
suppose this list must indeed be the right medium.  But frankly, I find that
approving silence disappointing.

>  Blah blah blah blah blah.

That's right, George.

All the best, really.

K. Elst