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

[Jesse Knutson]

Yet I still think it's correct to call Hindutva and Bharavaj's project
racist, albeit implicitly and convolutedly so, because there is an implicit
judgment of racial superiority. And chauvinism/triumphalism rarely come in
some kind of pure form, free of a racist sediment. Explicit racism is
highly tolerated in right-wing political/academic circles in India today as
you all know. It might be a more confusing type of racism for us to
disentangle because it is not as black and white, involving complex
judgments about people's origins via caste, language, and way of life etc.
But racism is very real both in life and "scholarship".

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 1:52 PM, Dean Michael Anderson via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

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> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Dean Michael Anderson <eastwestcultural at yahoo.com>
> To: "Hock, Hans Henrich" <hhhock at illinois.edu>, Matthew Kapstein <
> mkapstei at uchicago.edu>, George Thompson <gthomgt at gmail.com>
> Cc: Indology List <indology at list.indology.info>
> Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2015 08:22:37 +0000 (UTC)
> Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Article about the politics surrounding Indology at
> the IHRC
> I agree with Hans Hock, George Thompson and others that we can't say for
> certain what the language of the IVC was, and that it was mostly likely
> multilingual. And, I would add multicultural, since it was at the
> intersection of several different cultures: Coastal Indian, Doab Indian,
> Central Indian, Himalayan, Iranian, and Central Asian, not to mention the
> evidence for oceanic trade with Mesopotamia.
>
> I am not saying that there were definitely large numbers of Indo-Iranians
> in the Harappan Civlization but, according to mainstream Indo-European
> scholars, they were not that far away in Central Asia, and the Harappans
> did have overland trade with and through those regions. So the existence of
> Indo-Iranian communities among the Harappans is not at all unreasonable. I
> believe Asko Parpola proposed as much; and perhaps Madhav Deshpande,
> although I don't have their publications at hand. Perhaps they could
> comment.
>
> On another topic, the reason scholars reject the Hindutva-inspired
> theories is not because of their politics but because of generally poor
> quality of their scholarship. This is as it should be. I'm glad to see that
> accusations of racism and nationalism have not gained traction in this
> discussion because such inflammatory terms only serve to distract us from
> the real scholarly issues pertaining to ancient India.
>
> This is not, of course, to declare that the study of the effect of modern
> racist or nationalist ideologies on Indology should be off-limits. But they
> are two different, yet often conflated, topics that should be kept separate.
>
> Best,
>
> Dean Anderson
> East West Cultural Institute
>
>   ------------------------------
>  *From:* "Hock, Hans Henrich" <hhhock at illinois.edu>
> *To:* Matthew Kapstein <mkapstei at uchicago.edu>
> *Cc:* Indology List <indology at list.indology.info>
> *Sent:* Friday, June 12, 2015 7:36 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [INDOLOGY] Article about the politics surrounding Indology
> at the IHRC
>
> Dear Matthew and George,
>
>  I agree with both of your comments. To avoid raising too many red flags,
> I confined my comments to the issue of the decipherment (or not) of the
> Indus symbols. There clearly are great cultural differences between the
> Indus Civilization and the Vedic one, including the great role of the
> unicorn in the IC and its absence in (early) Vedic.
>
>  Best wishes,
>
>  Hans Henrich
>
>
>
>
> On 11 Jun 2015, at 14:53, Matthew Kapstein <mkapstei at uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
>  Dear everyone,
>
> I would suggest that all be more restrained in the use of the term
> "racist," the connotations of which
> generally suggest that the person so characterized attributes
> constitutional inferiority, or ritual pollution,
> or moral degradation, or animality, etc., to certain classes of persons on
> account of their "race," a term
> whose precise significance is deeply problematic. Chauvanism is not the
> same thing, nor is triumphalism, though
> these also involve judgments of human inequality.
>
> The Aryan topos frequently is imbricated with racism, but it is not
> necessarily so. More damning, in my view,
> have been the reckless, unscientific confusions of historical linguistics,
> cultural history, mythology,
> genetics, archeology, nationalism, etc., that characterize many of the
> recent discussions. These are not by any
> means to be mixed indiscriminately.
>
> Best in my view to be cautious in one's methodology and prudent in one's
> vocabulary.
>
> Matthew Kapstein
> Directeur d'études,
> Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
>
> Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies,
> The University of Chicago
>
>
>
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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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