Politics on this list; goodbye

[Robert Zydenbos]

A few words, in an attempt at countering a rewriting of some most recent
history (for those who are still interested. Dr. Elst's recent
performance suggests that he will be reading this too):

Am Sat, 15 Jul 2000 schrieb Koenraad Elst:

>             As you can verify, it was Zydenbos himself
> who chose to introduce Hitler into the recent discussion on Vedic
> chronology.  It
> was also he who on October 28 made an uncalled-for reference to an unnamed
> "political personality" as saying that a lie repeated often enough will end
> up passing for the truth,

(Here I thank Dr. Elst for again demonstrating his fixation on Hitler.
The unnamed "political personality" was Goebbels, who *was* a
different person.)

> he
> started this whole wrangle on 12-12-1993 in
> his Indian Express article "An obscurantist argument".

My article was (let us not conveniently forget that, Dr. Elst) a
response to what N.S. Rajaram had written before, in that same paper. I
did *not* start. It is all perfectly documented and dated, and I am
growing tired of repeating this.

>  There he made
> several Nazi references in his attack on NS Rajaram (who didn't know
> Zydenbos and hadn't attacked him),

Several references? Elst has not shown us, despite my openly offering
all the materials in electronic, easily searchable form on this forum.

Why should Rajaram first know me? He writes things in a public
newspaper about Western scholars. I am a scholar from the 'West' and
have every right to respond. And the Indian Express thought so too.

>             If Zydenbos doesn't want to own up his "Nazi" attack on Rajaram,

I never own up what I have not done. Instead, I have offered everyone
the text of my article (see below).

> We welcome conversions to fairness.

Yes, even if it takes more than a year for Dr. Elst to admit that 3
follows 2, I too welcome it. (See below for more.)

> not because I have anything against Dr. Zydenbos (do
> reread those September E-mails or my website article to see for yourself
> what kid gloves I had put on before expressing my disagreement with him),

Yes, gloves covered with the sweet poison of misinformation. All the
e-mail is available, conveniently grouped, at:

http://www.bigfoot.com/~zydenbos/laermendepolemik.html

together with Rajaram's article and my response to that article.
There's openness and fairness for you.

(By the way: Dr. Elst also mentioned on 5 Sept. 1999 that my identity
was confused with that of Rajesh Kochhar, "who had been defeated by
Rajaram in a public debate on the AIT some time before and was smarting
for revenge". Prof. Kochhar is with us on this list now and may be
interested in giving a short update of that story - if it is not too
distasteful.)

>             By the way, apart from the AIT, Hitler had something else in
> common with most India-watchers.  From Mein Kampf and from
> the minutes of his meeting with Congress leftist Subhash Bose, it is clear
> that Hitler had a steep contempt for Hindus, much in contrast with his high
> esteem for Islam.

What should we do with such a statement? I hope he is not saying that
Indologists in general contemn Hindus and / or favour Islam, or that
anyone who dares disagree with his version of Indian studies is a
Hitlerite. That would be 'smearing', and in September 1999 he said that
he disliked that...

>             Most elementary was certainly the question "whether 2
> comes before 3".  [...]
> Alright, my mistake. [...]
> I had also noticed the mistake when rereading the article, but since
> changing things on a website is pretty cumbersome for an internet beginner,

I will refrain from commenting on Elst's apparent difficulties in
reading modern newspaper English and what this means for his general
qualifications as a researcher. But if ever I see a printed copy of Dr.
Elst's book, I will see whether it is corrected there, and if not, I
will report it here on this list - whether he is still a member or not.
Correcting the text before it went to print surely would have been
still less cumbersome than uploading a file.

> I had postponed correcting it, on the assumption that it was
> inconsequential.

If the consequence is that one rambles further, with misplaced irony,
on the basis of that mistake, it is not inconsequential.

> So for his
> benefit, I can now clarify that upon closer inspection, 2 does precede 3
> (except in numbers like 32 or 9392).

No. The '3' in those numbers is not a three (as in 1993) but a thirty
and a three hundred respectively, which is rather important in
chronological questions. *Very* bad fudging - *especially* for an
Indologist with scientific interests!

The other question I repeated remains fudged - typically - between all
the tangled political diatribe that confirms what I have believed for a
long time: that these 'debates' about 'AIT' and ancient Indian history
are not at all what they ostensibly claim to be (viz., a search for
scholarly truth about ancient India), but an instrument of present-day
political propaganda in the hands of people with a particular agenda
and mindset. Cf. the discussions about the rewriting of history here
and on RISA-L (October 1999).

> My conclusion regarding Dr. Zydenbos is that one
> just can't argue with a sick mind.

What a delightfully ambiguous statement. Perhaps it is not the wild
insult it seems to be at first sight, but rather an unexpected and sad
moment of confession. ;-)

I think Dr. Elst needs a long vacation.

To conclude: A bully (whether his name is Rajaram or Elst) should not
complain when a bullied person (whether as a member of a group or as a
named individual) has the guts to hit back.

Anyhow, I am going on a trip for a month and will not write to this
list for a while - and I really mean this, and will not keep making
encores like Dr. Elst.

RZ