[INDOLOGY] Interview with the new ICHR Chairman

Sun Jul 13 15:16:33 UTC 2014

[https://webmail.login.vu.nl/OWA/14.3.174.1/themes/base/pgrs-sm.gif] Below is the context of the discussion:

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Mrinal Kaul
In this context the perspective of Prof Romila Thapar might also be interesting. I am copying the links of her recent article below: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/romila-thapar-smriti-irani-old-history-baiters-of-bjp/1/370799.html Best wishes. Yours, Mrinal
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INDOLOGY [indology-bounces at list.indology.info] on behalf of Mrinal Kaul [mrinalkaul81 at gmail.com]
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Dipak Bhattacharya ‎[dipak.d2004 at gmail.com]‎
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Sunday, July 13, 2014 2:02 PM
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In this context the perspective of Prof Romila Thapar might also be interesting. I am copying the links of her recent article below:

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/romila-thapar-smriti-irani-old-history-baiters-of-bjp/1/370799.html

Best wishes.

Yours,

Mrinal Kaul
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Dipak Bhattacharya
This is not a new phenomenon. Rao is not the first prominent Indian in position of power to entertain such ideas. It is for more than a decade or so that critical historians are on the defensive. Elements of the Western Indology are partly responsible. Many
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INDOLOGY [indology-bounces at list.indology.info] on behalf of Dipak Bhattacharya [dipak.d2004 at gmail.com]
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Walter Slaje ‎[slaje at kabelmail.de]‎
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indology at list.indology.info‎; Informationsaustausch der deutschsprachigen Indologie ‎[INDOLOGIE at listserv.uni-heidelberg.de]‎
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Sunday, July 13, 2014 1:55 PM
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This is not a new phenomenon. Rao is not the first prominent Indian in position of power to entertain such ideas.
It is for more than a decade or so that critical historians are on the defensive. Elements of the Western Indology are partly responsible. Many obscurantist elements were encouraged during the final decades of the cold war in the name of research into the true Indian tradition.    The enlightened tradition that saw its beginning in the 1860s in Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, R.G. Bhandarkar and others rapidly waned in the eighties when the cold war was in its peak. The present correspondent too suffered and was even mocked at for his way of enquiry by friends in the West who hardly saw the danger. Only an insignificant percentage of the Western Indologists has cared to sift the husk fron the grain. As you sow so shall you reap!
Best
DB

On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 12:43 PM, Walter Slaje <slaje at kabelmail.de<mailto:slaje at kabelmail.de>> wrote:
Indological expertise is in demand,

FYI,

WS

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Steve Farmer saf at safarmer.com<mailto:saf at safarmer.com> [Indo-Eurasian_research] <Indo-Eurasian_research at yahoogroups.com<mailto:Indo-Eurasian_research at yahoogroups.com>>
Date: 2014-07-13 8:11 GMT+02:00
Subject: [Indo-Eurasia] Interview with the new ICHR Chairman
To: Indo-Eurasian_research at yahoogroups.com<mailto:Indo-Eurasian_research at yahoogroups.com>
Cc: Steve Farmer <saf at safarmer.com<mailto:saf at safarmer.com>>

Revealing interview with Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, Modi's new Chairman of the powerful Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), in today's _Outlook India_:

"Ramayana, Mahabharata Are True Accounts Of The Period...Not Myths"
http://tinyurl.com/qadhsft

Commentary in the same edition by Anuradha Raman:
"Ram, Where Art Thou"?
http://www.outlookindia.com/article/Ram-Where-Art-Thou/291362

Total public silence from Western Indologists so far on Rao's appointment, which is curious.

Typical quotation from the interview with Rao, a colleague of NS Rajaram, responding to questions from the interviewer:

You are the author of the Mahabharata project? What is the project about?

There is a certain view that the Mahabharata or the Ramayana are myths. I don’t see them as myths because they were written at a certain point of time in history. They are important sources of information in the way we write history. What we write today may become an important source of information for the future in the future. When analysed, of course, they could be declared to be true or false. History is not static. It belongs to the people, it’s made by the people. Similarly, the Ramayana is true for people...it’s in the collective memory of generations of Indians. We can’t say the Ramayana or the Mahabharata are myths. Myths are from a western perspective.

What does that mean?

For us, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are true accounts of the periods in which they were written.

Steve

__._,_.___

________________________________
Posted by: Steve Farmer <saf at safarmer.com<mailto:saf at safarmer.com>>

________________________________

From: Dean Michael Anderson [eastwestcultural at yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2014 3:16 PM
To: Bijlert, V.A. van
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Interview with the new ICHR Chairman

Interesting points. Was this somehow in the context of an interview that I missed?

Best,

Dean

Dr Dean Anderson
East West Cultural Institute

________________________________
From: "Bijlert, V.A. van" <v.a.van.bijlert at vu.nl>
To: "indology at list.indology.info" <indology at list.indology.info>
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2014 5:13 PM
Subject: [INDOLOGY] Interview with the new ICHR Chairman

It seems to me there is a task for hermeneutics rather than pure philological indology. We are dealing with rather simplistic views of what the Mahabharata and Ramayana (and other puranas as well?) represent. The idea that these texts are historical seems to derive from the rather fundamentalist evangelical christian view of the Bible as containing undiluted historical truth. Hindus since the nineteenth century were confronted with this view propounded by missionaries and as a reaction claimed that their own Sanskrit texts were also historical. In christian hermeneutics and Biblical philology as indeed in theology such simplistic historical views have long been discarded. But apparently not so among some Hindus with regard to epics and the puranas.
Victor van Bijlert

________________________________
Dr. Victor A. van Bijlert
Associate professor Religious Studies
Department of Philosophy of Religion and Comparative Study of Religions
Faculty of Theology, VU University
De Boelelaan 1105, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
v.a.van.bijlert at vu.nl<mailto:v.a.van.bijlert at vu.nl>
+31613184203

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