Dear Prof. Elst,
I wondered, as I began reading your post, whether there were quotation marks missing from the sentence beginning, "After all, he had only quoted a Westerner...." Were you meaning to quote Malhotra, I asked myself, or were you speaking in your own voice? As I read on, I realized that you are speaking in your own voice. When I reached your second paragraph, "Established Western scholars who only talk to one another...", it became obvious to me that you are willing to speak judgementally and dismissively of a whole profession on the basis of a criterion that has something to do with geography, rather than intrinsic merit or careful, engaged and informed scholarship. It is also possible to read your statement as a specific insult to the other members of the INDOLOGY list, that you consider them "western scholars who only talk to one another." As you probably know, insulting members of this list, from within the list, is not a behaviour that is tolerated by the managing committee of the INDOLOGY forum.
I personally do not believe there is an east-west divide in intellectual ability or viewpoint. I do not believe in "The West" as a category of thought that has anything useful to offer, and certainly not as a method of categorization that has any intellectual reality or merit. It has been my observation through many decades of engagement in academic life that there is good and bad scholarship to be found in all parts of the world and at all times in history. Wouldn't it be lovely if it scholarly excellence were so easy to establish! If scholars could be judged as good or bad because of being "western," or "Jewish," or "Hindu" or "Black," "White," "female," or any other regional, racial or gender category. But it is not so. Whatever colour we are, whatever part of the world we live in, we all have to work very hard to understand difficult ideas, and to make judgements that demonstrate integrity and knowledge.
And this hard work involves much careful study, much discussion with friends and colleagues, the exposure of one's ideas to teachers, peer reviewers, and at conferences. Intellectual work consists of composition, exposition, and debate, said Sa-Skya Pandita in the thirteenth century. This is what it means to be a worthwhile academic. It is not a matter of winning or losing, of being more insulting than the next person. It is not a political contest. It is a matter of developing more subtlety, deeper insight, and a finer sensibility towards truth. Even someone whose ideas are shown to be wrong is a "winner," since we all strive for truth. Most important of all, intellectual life is not a matter of defending oneself. Good academics are very interested in ideas and knowledge; they are not much interested in personality and personal conflict, or in prestige or public perception.
You present yourself as having performed the lonely task of providing the members of this list with links to Malhotra's responses. But you err in thinking that the subset of members of this list who are interested in the accusations of plagiarism against Malhotra would not be following the debate in the media, just as you are. This list is not the be-all and end-all of indological debate. It is a forum where just some specialist questions are asked and answered. You are not personally called upon to promote a particular point of view in a debate that does not concern you, for the supposed good of others. You do not have the right or the responsibility to set the agenda for what others should be thinking about. The members of this list have quite as much experience as you in reading public media and in making up their own minds about what they think.
You, apparently Malhotra, and others have made at least two important category errors in your responses to this matter. First, at the heart of this discussion, it is not Malhotra that is the main topic. It is the plagiarism in his writings that is the issue. There's a difference. Malhotra has responded with mighty indignation as if he personally has been attacked, as if he is in a titanic struggle between The Indian Tradition and The West, and pointing out his plagiarism is a sly attack on India or Hinduism. This is theatrical nonsense. Malhotra seeks to redefine the terms of the discussion and place himself at the centre of things, perhaps because his goals are political not academic. He reduces the matter from an discussion about academic ethics to a cheap bar-room brawl between himself and Nicholson. The reality is, there are questions hanging over his academic writing, that appears by the criteria of the Princeton guidelines to contain plagiarized passages.
Second, it is not a war, a battle or a titanic inter-cultural struggle. We would all increase our understanding of the issue if we avoided military metaphors. They don't help; they rarely help. The second category error is to see this matter of plagiarism as a war, a contest or an east-west struggle. It is what it is, no more, no less. Professional groups develop practices that help them: climbers use ropes, sky-divers use parachutes. The academic profession has evolved behaviours that have been shown by centuries of experience to help in the search for right knowledge. Plagiarism does not help. It appears that Malhotra has committed plagiarism, according to the criteria accepted by the profession (the Princeton criteria, for example). What next? The author may do nothing, or he may correct his books, or he may try to prove that he has not plagiarized. Everything else is meaningless bluster.
Sincerely
Dominik Wujastyk