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

[Dominik Wujastyk]

​I know that we all know this, but I want to just get it on the table
explicitly.  There is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and
typological conceptualizations of race are untenable​.  All humans are,
biologically speaking, a single race.

We are using the words "race" and "racist" as if they meant something.  But
this is not the appropriate language to use in a methodologically sound
contemporary discussion about ethnicity or community.  The nearest term I
can think of to what we mean is "nation" and "nationalist".  This seems an
uncontroversial way of expressing the difference between, say, Moroccans
and Icelanders, or Germans and Indians.  As Philipp said, it's a matter of
passports.  In most places in the world, including the Americas, Europe and
India, there has been so much movement of populations, accompanied by
cultural and linguistic entanglement over many centuries, that it is
impossible to be essentialist even about the national groupings, as has
often been pointed out.  What is absolutely certain is that none of these
groupings, cultural, linguistic or national, has anything to do with race.

Best,
Dr Dominik


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