Klostermaier's Vedic civilization

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>        The mainstream is always in the eye of the swimmer...
>

Pushed to an extreme, the above makes everything dangerously
subjective, does it not? There can then be many streams, so
what makes the mainstream *the* mainstream?

>
>K.Klostermaier (now Cambridge, UK?)  was deliberatedly described as such.

Yes, and I deliberately picked his example, to make the
point that such things as degrees, years of training,
academic positions, no. of publications and books are
all of apparently of no avail. I think he is currently
somewhere in Oxford.

When Klostermaier's first edition of _A Survey of Hinduism_
appeared from SUNY Press, I spotted a few errors and wrote
to him privately, pointing to appropriate references to back
up my stand. He replied to me after going through some of the
references I had mentioned. I don't think he simply accepted
that I was right because of my Indian heritage. I don't think
he has been forced by any extraneous considerations to accept
any particular brand of thinking. And even if he thinks that
there is strength to the stances of Rajaram et. al., he cannot
be called New Age, without substantially redefining what one
means by that term too. I hardly think a Roman Catholic priest
(so I've heard) would jumble up everything from Nefertiti to
Netanyahu in his personal version of religion.

One could emulate Gandhiji and bring some maitrI and a sense
of humour to bear upon some of these discussions. That might
even be more effective in the long run.

Best regards,
Vidyasankar

ps. I think someone should set up an anonymous survey to find
out how influential various revisions of history really are.
Not on the internet and mailing groups. I would expect those
samples to be all inherently biased.