[INDOLOGY] Ashok Aklujkar passed away

[Robert Zydenbos]

That is the kind of news which one wishes is just not true.

I owe Ashok a great deal, in more than one way. I would like to put on 
record that, for instance, while I was living in India during the first 
days of public access to the internet, he was the first person who wrote 
me an email. My first email message from anyone. He also urged me to 
join internet fora and explained what the Indology List is. This turned 
out to be a blessing.

He was a caring father and a gracious host, but in our online circle he 
will of course be remembered foremost as an amazing and productive 
scholar in more than one branch of our studies. Perhaps the climax of 
his career was the World Sanskrit Conference in Vancouver, 2018, which 
tacitly everybody understood to be his big party.

His fight to protect classical Indian studies at his university in 
Vancouver was not always so easy, but he was determined to let the 
academic study of Indian culture in his adopted Canada grow and prosper. 
When he sat beside me as we were awarded the honorary title of 
vidyāsāgara at the World Sanskrit Conference in Bangalore, 1997, he was 
a bit disappointed that I was announced as a scholar from the 
Netherlands (he turned to me and asked sadly "Canada?…", perhaps because 
the USA had one title awardee more than Canada did. I, the bi-national, 
said we should perhaps be generously Canadian and let Europe have one 
too, out of respect to my teachers. He thought that was a good 
argument).

I am sure that we have many anecdotes about Ashok: about his learning, 
his love for Sanskrit, his kind helpfulness. I hope that those stories 
will be told to others, so that he will continue to be an inspiring 
person, even in his sad absence.

गतायुपण्डितमित्रस्य सद्गतिर्भवतु।

Robert Zydenbos

Pada 2026-10-28 03:27, Madhav Deshpande via INDOLOGY menulis:

> I just now read a message from Shrikant Bahulkar that Ashok Aklujkar 
> passed away today. I knew from Vidyut Aklujkar that Ashok had a hip 
> replacement surgery and he was in hospital taking somewhat longer time 
> to recover. But I did not expect to hear this sad news. I also received 
> a message from Vidyut just a minute ago. I knew Ashok from my 
> highschool days in Pune. He was four-five years ahead of me. Later we 
> became very close friends for a lifetime. A very big loss to the field 
> of Sanskrit studies. May he rest in peace.
> 
> Madhav M. Deshpande
> Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics
> University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
> Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies
> Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, 
> India
> 
> [Residence: Campbell, California, USA]

-- 

Prof. Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos / ಪ್ರೊ. ಡಾ. ರೊಬೆರ್ತ್ ಜೆಯ್ದೆನ್ಬೊಸ್ (retd.)
Institute of Indology and Tibetology
Department of Asian Studies
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (University of Munich - LMU)
Germany
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