Dear colleagues,

A small correction to Hans' email with useful reminder of Chakrabarti's book Colonial Indology: it was published in 1997, not 1997.

I suspect the paradox may be explained as an instance of the condescension frequently displayed by scholars who position themselves in 'social sciences', as do many archaeologists, vis-à-vis scholars of Sanskrit in one or another the philological traditions that make up 'Indology'. I have the feeling that a hierarchy of sciences, with philolologists dangling at the bottom, is perhaps even more explicitly present in India than it is among scholars in the west, and the fact that Sanskrit studies in India don't generally attract the most talented students doesn't help. I have myself been accused by another well-known Indian historian of 'not being a historian'.
     From Chakrabarti's point of view, I suppose, the horse of the "racist theory" is already dead and no beating done by Sanskrit scholars is really needed to kill it again. It's certainly no coincidence that the Indological subdisciplines that Chakrabarti seems to care about most, epigraphy and palaeography, are those with which a historical archaeologist such as himself has most affinity. Texts less easily exploitable for historical purposes, such as those of the Vedic corpus, seem to interest him less.

Best wishes,

Arlo Griffiths
École française d'Extrême-Orient


Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2015 10:06:36 +0530
From: jknutson@hawaii.edu
To: hhhock@illinois.edu
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Article about the politics surrounding indology at the IHRC
CC: indology@list.indology.info

Interesting. I didn't know that. So if I understand correctly, DC doesn't think the speakers of OIA came from outside? I understand if he considers the way the whole 'Aryan invasion/migration' was characterized to have been racist. But to go the next step and say that no migration ever happened is silly. But this is precisely what Bharadvaj believes he is going to prove. So if DC and Bharadvaj have the same view, where is the disagreement? I am confused again. Best,J  

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 1:27 AM, Hock, Hans Henrich <hhhock@illinois.edu> wrote:
Dear All,

If we had access to more of the context in which Dilip Chakrabarti is reported to have made his comments, we might perhaps be able to have a better idea of what he was referring to.

What may be of some relevance is that in his Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the ancient Indian past (1977), Dilip Chakrabarti expressly claims that the idea that the “Aryans” came from outside India is a “racist myth” (p. 158). He gives an extensive catalogue of western attempts at defining the “Aryans” and their Vedic opponents in racial terms. His major specific argument against the outside origin is the well-known one that there is no  skeletal evidence for the arrival of a new population into South Asia during the entire 2nd millennium BC. He notes that there later, known incursions likewise have left no skeletal traces and explains this fact as follows ‘Looked at from this point of view, the invasions, which are considered foreign invasions in the study of Indian history all originated precisely in this interaction area [between the Oxus and the Indus].  Geopolitically, these invasions, inclusive of the Muslim invasions right up to the invasion of Nadir Shah …, can hardly be called entirely alien in the subcontinental context.’  (1977: 225) What he fails to address that, if the “Aryans”, i.e. speakers of Indo-Aryan, came from the outside they would have had to come by the same route …

Best wishes,

Hans Henrich Hock

On 8 Jun 2015, at 12:26, Jesse Knutson <jknutson@hawaii.edu> wrote:

I think Dilip Chakrabarty is actually thinking about racism from a totally different angle. What is racist is the notion that 'aryans'--the speakers of Old Indo-Aryan, or what have you--originated within the subcontinent, and that they predate and include the Indus Valley Civilization. Bharadvaj clearly wants to demonstrate that the composers of the Vedas were indigenous, and of an antiquity greater than the Indus Valley Civilization. This is racist on many levels. 1. There is a cultural chauvinism that anything good must originate in the womb of Bharata Mātā 2. Bharadvaj wants to say that the Indus Valley Civilization emerged from the Vedic culture, when in fact the IVC was a highly developed civilization, of greater antiquity than the Veda, which did not speak an Indo-Aryan or Indo-European language. To attribute the IVC cultural achievements to the speakers of Vedic is extremely racist and chauvinistic.

On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 8:02 PM, Simon Brodbeck <BrodbeckSP@cardiff.ac.uk> wrote:

Dear Howard,

 

I think that regardless of any etymological link, we need to apply a semantic distinction between the Sanskrit word arya and the English word Aryan. When the former is translated, it tends to come out as “noble” or something like that (e.g. in truths 1 to 4 of that ilk), rather than as “Aryan”. Under the latter, the OED reads as follows (“arya” has no entry):

 

A. adj.

 1.

a.       Applied by some to the great division or family of languages, which includes Sanskrit, Zend, Persian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic, with their modern representatives; also called Indo-European, Indo-Germanic, and sometimes Japhetic; by others restricted to the Asiatic portion of these. absol., the original Aryan or Arian language.

b.      spec. Of or pertaining to the ancient Aryan people.

2. Under the Nazi régime (1933–45) applied to the inhabitants of Germany of non-Jewish extraction.

 

B. n.

1. A member of the Aryan family; one belonging to, or descended from, the ancient people who spoke the parent Aryan language.

2. spec. under the Nazi régime (cf. sense A. 2).

 

I think Chakrabarti is probably thinking in terms of meanings A1b and B1. But I can’t speak for him.

 

All the best,

Simon Brodbeck

Cardiff University

 

 

 

From: INDOLOGY [mailto:indology-bounces@list.indology.info] On Behalf Of Howard Resnick
Sent: 08 June 2015 15:10
To: Geoffrey Samuel
Cc: Dominik Wujastyk; Indology List
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Article about the politics surrounding indology at the IHRC

 

As we know, Arya is a Vedic term. In the Telegraph article, Bharadwaj states that he wants to research the notion of Aryan migration. Bharadwaj does not state that he takes ‘Aryan’ as a racial, rather than a cultural, term. So please help me here. Where is the racism?

 

Thanks,

Howard

 

 

On Jun 8, 2015, at 5:04 PM, Geoffrey Samuel <SamuelG@cardiff.ac.uk> wrote:

 

If you read Dilip Chakrabarti's comment as quoted in the Telegraph article, what he was actually saying was that the concept of Aryans was 'racist and historically puerile' and that research on it was therefore a waste of resources in comparison with other possible uses - he specifically referred to training more palaeographers and epigraphists, 'who will soon be an extinct class of scholars in the country'.

 

That seems a reasonable and defensible position.

 

Geoffrey

From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@list.indology.info> on behalf of Howard Resnick <hr@ivs.edu>
Sent: 08 June 2015 09:12
To: Dominik Wujastyk
Cc: Indology List
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Article about the politics surrounding indology at the IHRC

 

"Dilip K. Chakrabarti, emeritus professor of South Asian archaeology with Cambridge University and a member of the council and its research project committee, said the proposal was "racist and historically puerile”.

 

How racist?

 

h.r.

 

 

On Jun 8, 2015, at 11:00 AM, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk@gmail.com> wrote:

 

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Assistant Professor of Sanskrit and Bengali, Department of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
452A Spalding

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