[INDOLOGY] The Repression of Religious Studies / Wendy Doniger, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. for 20 April 2016

[Nityanand Misra]

Another one-sided article on the same issue (*piṣṭapeṣaṇa*, to use a
Sanskrit word). In the discussion of protests against the book “The Hindus:
An Alternative History”, Doniger does not mention the book written in
response to her book by Vishal Agarwal. The book is available at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1505885590/.


Doniger says ‘many were scientists or doctors lacking competence to judge
humanistic scholarship’ but does not say that many were also exemplary
Sanskrit scholars in India. This is almost déjà vu of Ananya Vajapeyi’s
factually incorrect statement “almost none of the petition’s 132 principal
sponsors … are experts of Sanskrit, other classical languages, literature,
history or the humanities, or indeed scholars at all” in The Hindu not too
long ago. Are authors like Doniger and Vajapeyi not aware of Sanskrit
studies and Sanskrit scholars in India?


Dilip Chakrabarti (Cambridge) says in his praise for Rajiv Malhotra's *The
Battle for Sanskrit *that there is a “deplorable unwillingness among
Western scholars to take note of the viewpoints of an increasing number of
Indian professionals.” This can perhaps be explained by ‘humanistic
scholars’ not seeing ‘doctors’ and ‘scientists’ as equals; never mind the
fact that even a humanistic scholar like Doniger can make mistakes, e.g.
contrasting treatment of the Kākabhuṣuṇḍi in RCM with treatment of the
Jayanta in VR ignoring that the same treatment of Jayanta in in the RCM
also. But what explains the fact that these Sanskrit scholars in the West
are unaware of Sanskrit scholarship and Sanskrit scholars in India?



On 23 April 2016 at 03:10, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com> wrote:

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-- 
Nityānanda Miśra
http://nmisra.googlepages.com


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