[INDOLOGY] Thanks and next steps / Caste and Gender

[Ananya Vajpeyi]

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing (finally, I hope) to acknowledge the statements by Adheesh
Sathaye and Jay Soni, on behalf of the WSC and the IASS respectively,
clarifying that both bodies maintain a policy against harassment and
discrimination, and apologising for everything that went wrong at the
Public Forum on Caste and Gender in Sanskrit Studies on July 10, 2018.
Thank you both for doing the right thing.

These statements come as an excellent first step towards addressing a whole
range of simmering issues in Indology, Sanskrit and, I would argue, South
Asian History as well. It's encouraging that we have collectively entered
into a discussion about the lines we want to draw and the boundaries we
want to maintain between scholarship and academia on one side, and politics
and religion on the other.

Our colleges and universities, departments and associations, journals and
publishing houses, all across the world wherever India and South Asia are
subjects of study, stand to gain by this basic housekeeping that we have
begun to do here. I hope that the process of self-reflection, reasonable
thinking and open conversation has just begun, and will not end here.

Since a video of our session on Caste and Gender in Sanskrit Studies does
not appear to be online, I would like to state unequivocally that all three
participants -- Mandakranta Bose, Kaushal Panwar and I -- spoke primarily
about the texts we have worked on and the areas of our scholarly expertise,
and not (except incidentally) about our experiences as women or as members
of any religion, caste, community or ethnicity. By coincidence both Kaushal
and I have done our doctoral research on sudradharma and stridharma -- she
has published far more on this area than I have -- and we drew on our
respective (though related) work to make our initial remarks.

Further, Mandakranta spoke about Sita in the Ramayana and I spoke about my
ongoing project on an intellectual life of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who himself
was a scholar of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, and wrote critically on a
wide range of topics that are essentially Indological in their purview.
Additionally I also mentioned epic and Upanisadic characters I have been
revisiting (following Ambedkar), like Sambuka, Ekalavya, Sabari, Satyakama
and others, whose narratives call caste identities and social structures
into question.

A number of exchanges in a group called the Bharatiya Vidvat Parishad
insinuate that our forum was not academic, not scholarly and not legitimate
as a panel in the WSC. That we were there to speak autobiographically and
to defame Hindu society. These are utterly false representations and bogus
arguments. We did not speak in an autobiographical vein, and our criticisms
were not in the first instance about how we, personally and individually,
were treated in the course of our lives. We spoke critically about the
texts we have studied, the societies and cultures in which those texts are
embedded, in which they arose and circulate to date, and about the politics
of caste and gender in many parts of the Sanskrit tradition, in its
literature and its knowledge systems.

Rather than blaming the messenger, attacking us for looking at Sanskrit
with open eyes, and raising a hue and cry about how anti-Indian,
anti-Hindu, anti-Sanskrit etc. we supposedly are, fellow Sanskritists
(including members of the BVP) ought to be doing their own work of
philology, history, theory, hermeneutics, translation or whatever other
modalities of reading and interpretation with an equally sharp eye on the
objects of their analysis.

It's ridiculous to suggest that we "hate" Sanskrit / India / Hindu culture
and so on. Nobody spends their life poring over, learning and teaching
something that they hate. We are all, each and every one, in this because
we love what we do and we try to be good at it. We all care about our
texts, our teachers, our students, our colleagues and our institutions. We
are committed to knowledge and to whatever it is we believe knowledge
brings -- insight, truth, liberation, salvation, enlightenment, the greater
common good, progress, human flourishing, equality, fraternity, solidarity,
reason, succour -- all things worthy and valuable.

The fact that Indology in the past 5-10 years has been reduced to nothing
but glorified trolling and unapologetic xenophobia is something we have to
recognise and stop. The ill-fated forum at the WSC was just an instance of
a disciplinary malaise that has, alas, gone metastatic. It's time to stand
up to the trolls, bigots, misogynists and other rogue elements in our
midst; time to stand up for our colleagues who have borne the brunt of
harassment, intimidation, bullying and motivated misrepresentation. And to
stand by one another, as Jay and Adheesh are doing, when we find ourselves
facing hecklers and hooligans.

Thank you and best wishes,

Ananya Vajpeyi.

-- 

Ananya Vajpeyi
Fellow and Associate Professor
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Civil Lines
New Delhi 110054
INDIA


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