Help preserve cultural diversity (Was: Language barriers --- financial barriers)

[Sven Sellmer]

Looking back at the discussion so far, which has taken very  
interesting turns, it seems to me that there are two basic problems:

P1: The problem, especially (but not only, it seems) for Indian  
colleagues, of reading indological works written in languages other  
than English.
P2: The problem of cultural diversity that is endangered by a  
pervasive use of English in scholarly discourse.

I take both problems to be genuine and serious ones. Unfortunately,  
the easiest way to solve P1, namely to switch to English altogether,  
would only worsen P2, so we seem to face a classical dilemma. But if  
we have a closer look at the situation, perhaps the dilemma is not so  
huge as it appears at first sight, and that is the point I would like  
to make:

"Indology" is not a monolithic science, there are many different  
fields belonging to it. Now, in some of them, I would contend,  
switching to English would indeed greatly enhance scholarly exchange  
without doing much harm to cultural diversity. I have in mind topics  
like logic, grammar, textual history etc. But concerning other fields  
Paolo's remarks are highly valid. When one is dealing with poetry,  
certain philosophical or religious points and many other comparable,  
less "matter of fact" topics there can be hardly any doubt that the  
usage of just one language (be it English or any other) cannot but  
grossly reduce the quality of the discussion. Both reasons for that  
have already be mentioned: (1) the less-than-perfect command of  
English on part of the non-native speakers; (2) the loss of the  
specific hermeneutical perspectives that each language offers.

The upshot is, in my mind, that someone planning to engage in  
international discussions of the second type should have at least a  
good passive command of a couple of modern and ancient Western and  
Indian languages. If a student does not want to spend that much time  
on learning non-Indian languages, he or she can still do a lot of  
important work in fields of the first type. (No degradation implied  
here, of course.) To be sure, in that way the dilemma is not solved,  
but at least somewhat mitigated.

Best wishes,
Sven Sellmer


************************************
Dr. Sven Sellmer
Adam Mickiewicz University
Institute of Oriental Studies
South Asia Unit
ul. 28 czerwca 1956 r. nr 198
61-485 Poznań
POLAND
sven at amu.edu.pl