[INDOLOGY] beyond Malhotra's books

Fri Aug 5 10:15:21 UTC 2016

Intellectually, Matthew is of course perfectly right, and puts this larger point succinctly.
The institutional situation is sadly more complicated. Traditionally trained scholars, both within and outside the Indian university system, are increasingly concerned that they can’t always tell what part of their research, pursued in the innocence of their traditional methods, family traditions, and intellectual concerns, might fall foul of various activists. But they are also pragmatically aware of two forces that are more difficult to work around. One is that, in a context where public funding has traditionally flowed only according to political calculations and not support of the humanities, even the occasional rhetoric of support for the cultures of Sanskritic scholarship seems appealing. The other is that, with the reality of public funding as remote as ever, any future support for their scholarship has to come from private sources. And one can see what that implies: they have to play a very careful game in which they must constantly negotiate with private donors (some traditional patrons, others from the new dispensation) in an oblique way over what is studied and how.
The real line of pressure in the collaboration between academics in the global West and traditional scholars (in both Indian universities and other institutions) is over the livelihood and future of the latter. I would urge those of us - the majority on this list - who are of the former category, to always keep in mind the depth and scope of the challenges faced by the latter, even when it occasionally appears as if ideology (rather than livelihood) is the sticking point. This is made trickier still by the tensions within India itself between those with a background in contemporary social sciences, whose everyday research is obviously under attack and those in Indological areas of scholarship who are constantly trying to find a way of working in the complex situation I outlined above. There is a great deal more misunderstanding and lack of cooperation than might help the common cause of scholarship in India, when social scientists have a deep distrust of the larger Sanskritic inheritance (for reasons we don’t need to go into here), and traditionally-trained scholars see their deeper horizons fundamentally questioned by a modernist presentism.
Best,
Ram

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad
Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy
Lancaster University
________________________________
From: INDOLOGY [indology-bounces at list.indology.info] on behalf of Jesse Knutson [jknutson at hawaii.edu]
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2016 10:42 AM
To: Greg Bailey
Cc: Dominik Wujastyk; Indology List
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] reviews of Malhotra's books

Indeed. Brilliant and succinct. I think this could be the perfect basis for a very powerful collective response to the Hindu nationalist attack on scholarship. Best,J

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 2:26 PM, Greg Bailey <Greg.Bailey at latrobe.edu.au<redir.aspx?REF=Tk8X7_y4IzxcXbZ5iVfGzqidj6V6xOz2kAXS5DFml0rd4HAOFr3TCAFtYWlsdG86R3JlZy5CYWlsZXlAbGF0cm9iZS5lZHUuYXU.>> wrote:
Dear Matthew,

Very well said. Right to the point.

Cheers,

Greg Bailey

On 5/08/16 6:53 PM, "INDOLOGY on behalf of Matthew Kapstein"
<indology-bounces at list.indology.info<redir.aspx?REF=6qrEpTJJg4x_hdfaEvnTbhoBK-fB_ZRAcnaaIIqEL1vd4HAOFr3TCAFtYWlsdG86aW5kb2xvZ3ktYm91bmNlc0BsaXN0LmluZG9sb2d5LmluZm8.> on behalf of mkapstei at uchicago.edu<redir.aspx?REF=FjfBjoNihYrKCg5yqq6g7Q_ToD4244UzRLBKcrl9rWPd4HAOFr3TCAFtYWlsdG86bWthcHN0ZWlAdWNoaWNhZ28uZWR1>>
wrote:

>Dear friends,
>
>I have not wanted to wade into this quagmire, but one aspect of the
>debate I find so pernicious
>that it requires some further comment.
>
>What we see emerging in some of these reviews and essays
>is an "us versus them" mentality that places the traditional
>scholar/adhik?r? on one
>side of the equation and the contemporary/Western scholar on the other.
>This is a complete travesty in
>the face of over two centuries of fruitful collaboration between
>traditionally educated Sanskrit experts and
>scholars formed in modern philology. Both sides have grown and been
>nurtured by their interactions with
>the other. For those whose wish to hold that traditionally formed
>scholars have lived in a sort of intellectual
>autarchy in which "outsiders" have nothing of value or interest to
>contribute, I suggest a close reading
>of the works of the likes of Bhandarkar, Ganganath Jha, V. Raghavan,
>Narendra Dev, etc., etc. etc. The
>examples may be multiplied almost without limit. Unfortunately, what
>seems to be occurring is not only
>an intellectually irresponsible disparagement of Euro-American
>scholarship, but perhaps even more
>troubling, a near complete amnesia with respect to the history of modern
>Indian scholarship in Sanskrit studies.
>
>
>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
461 Spalding

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