[INDOLOGY] Article about the politics surrounding indology at the IHRC

Mon Jun 8 19:57:44 UTC 2015

Dear All,

If we had access to more of the context in which Dilip Chakrabarti is reported to have made his comments, we might perhaps be able to have a better idea of what he was referring to.

What may be of some relevance is that in his Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the ancient Indian past (1977), Dilip Chakrabarti expressly claims that the idea that the “Aryans” came from outside India is a “racist myth” (p. 158). He gives an extensive catalogue of western attempts at defining the “Aryans” and their Vedic opponents in racial terms. His major specific argument against the outside origin is the well-known one that there is no  skeletal evidence for the arrival of a new population into South Asia during the entire 2nd millennium BC. He notes that there later, known incursions likewise have left no skeletal traces and explains this fact as follows ‘Looked at from this point of view, the invasions, which are considered foreign invasions in the study of Indian history all originated precisely in this interaction area [between the Oxus and the Indus].  Geopolitically, these invasions, inclusive of the Muslim invasions right up to the invasion of Nadir Shah …, can hardly be called entirely alien in the subcontinental context.’  (1977: 225) What he fails to address that, if the “Aryans”, i.e. speakers of Indo-Aryan, came from the outside they would have had to come by the same route …

Best wishes,

Hans Henrich Hock

On 8 Jun 2015, at 12:26, Jesse Knutson <jknutson at hawaii.edu<mailto:jknutson at hawaii.edu>> wrote:

I think Dilip Chakrabarty is actually thinking about racism from a totally different angle. What is racist is the notion that 'aryans'--the speakers of Old Indo-Aryan, or what have you--originated within the subcontinent, and that they predate and include the Indus Valley Civilization. Bharadvaj clearly wants to demonstrate that the composers of the Vedas were indigenous, and of an antiquity greater than the Indus Valley Civilization. This is racist on many levels. 1. There is a cultural chauvinism that anything good must originate in the womb of Bharata Mātā 2. Bharadvaj wants to say that the Indus Valley Civilization emerged from the Vedic culture, when in fact the IVC was a highly developed civilization, of greater antiquity than the Veda, which did not speak an Indo-Aryan or Indo-European language. To attribute the IVC cultural achievements to the speakers of Vedic is extremely racist and chauvinistic.

On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 8:02 PM, Simon Brodbeck <BrodbeckSP at cardiff.ac.uk<mailto:BrodbeckSP at cardiff.ac.uk>> wrote:
Dear Howard,

I think that regardless of any etymological link, we need to apply a semantic distinction between the Sanskrit word arya and the English word Aryan. When the former is translated, it tends to come out as “noble” or something like that (e.g. in truths 1 to 4 of that ilk), rather than as “Aryan”. Under the latter, the OED reads as follows (“arya” has no entry):

A. adj.
 1.

a.       Applied by some to the great division or family of languages, which includes Sanskrit, Zend, Persian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic, with their modern representatives; also called Indo-European, Indo-Germanic, and sometimes Japhetic; by others restricted to the Asiatic portion of these. absol., the original Aryan or Arian language.

b.      spec. Of or pertaining to the ancient Aryan people.
2. Under the Nazi régime (1933–45) applied to the inhabitants of Germany of non-Jewish extraction.

B. n.
1. A member of the Aryan family; one belonging to, or descended from, the ancient people who spoke the parent Aryan language.
2. spec. under the Nazi régime (cf. sense A. 2<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.oed.com_view_Entry_11296-3FredirectedFrom-3Daryan-23eid38293561&d=AwMFaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=yKOAMu7Fm_W5kv9CXfjbmb6aWTY6BVQCYZ5TKkB486Q&m=wUDvY9e_NdqTHF6-e_eEHO6Aje9wt6esP0d3jKKC1Dc&s=mbil4XFOw09fGugpOVslqcWPyw5ms1crnu6HF58Myas&e=>).

I think Chakrabarti is probably thinking in terms of meanings A1b and B1. But I can’t speak for him.

All the best,
Simon Brodbeck
Cardiff University

From: INDOLOGY [mailto:indology-bounces at list.indology.info<mailto:indology-bounces at list.indology.info>] On Behalf Of Howard Resnick
Sent: 08 June 2015 15:10
To: Geoffrey Samuel
Cc: Dominik Wujastyk; Indology List
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Article about the politics surrounding indology at the IHRC

As we know, Arya is a Vedic term. In the Telegraph article, Bharadwaj states that he wants to research the notion of Aryan migration. Bharadwaj does not state that he takes ‘Aryan’ as a racial, rather than a cultural, term. So please help me here. Where is the racism?

Thanks,
Howard

On Jun 8, 2015, at 5:04 PM, Geoffrey Samuel <SamuelG at cardiff.ac.uk<mailto:SamuelG at cardiff.ac.uk>> wrote:

If you read Dilip Chakrabarti's comment as quoted in the Telegraph article, what he was actually saying was that the concept of Aryans was 'racist and historically puerile' and that research on it was therefore a waste of resources in comparison with other possible uses - he specifically referred to training more palaeographers and epigraphists, 'who will soon be an extinct class of scholars in the country'.

That seems a reasonable and defensible position.

Geoffrey
________________________________
From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info<mailto:indology-bounces at list.indology.info>> on behalf of Howard Resnick <hr at ivs.edu<mailto:hr at ivs.edu>>
Sent: 08 June 2015 09:12
To: Dominik Wujastyk
Cc: Indology List
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Article about the politics surrounding indology at the IHRC

"Dilip K. Chakrabarti, emeritus professor of South Asian archaeology with Cambridge University and a member of the council and its research project committee, said the proposal was "racist and historically puerile”.

How racist?

h.r.

On Jun 8, 2015, at 11:00 AM, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com<mailto:wujastyk at gmail.com>> wrote:

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150606/jsp/nation/story_24264.jsp<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.telegraphindia.com_1150606_jsp_nation_story-5F24264.jsp&d=AwMFaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=yKOAMu7Fm_W5kv9CXfjbmb6aWTY6BVQCYZ5TKkB486Q&m=wUDvY9e_NdqTHF6-e_eEHO6Aje9wt6esP0d3jKKC1Dc&s=s1segOdTYe3wWX6cHzvf4bZFQCe1wuslXmc9V8KNByA&e=>
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--
Jesse Ross Knutson PhD
Assistant Professor of Sanskrit and Bengali, Department of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
452A Spalding
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