[ADMIN] Closing INDOLOGY

[Arun Gupta]

Dominik, Thanks for Indology !
---

Speaking only for myself, there were three recent occasions when I wrote,
when silence was probably more appropriate to the goals of Indology.

1. The Pythogoras/Bose/gravity etc. - the first item in the thread started
by attacking an RSS pamphlet, and then went beyond that.

2. The thread about possible introduction of Vedic astrology courses in
Indian universities -- the first item pointed to an article, that while
informative, also contained a political attack.

3. The Gita thread -- this was prompted by a reference to Doniger's
statement that the "Gita is dishonest".  Though a statement by a scholar,
that is not a scholarly statement.

Then there is the general naivete or willful ignorance on this list that the
Aryan invasion/immigration issue is purely a Hindu-right-wing fanatic issue.
The fact is that part of the Dalit movement, the Dravidian movement in South
India and the Sinhalese-Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka all have as an
underlying assumption a version of AIT.  There are right-wing groups in
Europe who use AIT as well.

I am sorry for having added noise to Indology.  To be frank, it does not
change my emotional well-being if the RV was composed in 5000 BC or 500 BC,
whether the Gita is single-layered, multi-layered, part of the original
Epic, or interpolated later.  I execrate the VHP and RSS and am becoming an
active Hindu at least in part to be able to deny their claim to represent
me.  I have no compelling need to respond to a scholarly dissection of any
ideology.

So you can deduce what prompts me to speak up.  Apart from that, myself and
many like myself, I suspect, would be happy to be silent observers.

-Arun Gupta