Dominik Wujastyk wrote [in response to Artur Karp]:

> “Do we need to talk to them?” you ask. I don't think so, either.
> Not because there isn't an issue here. But because we're
> unqualified. [...]

But we are far more qualified to talk back than they are to talk about us.

It seems that most persons on this list are engaged in the study of classical Sanskrit texts, ancient Indian history and other fine things. One crucial point of the Malhotra plagiarism issue, which affects us directly, seems to elude some of the readers. For that reason, it may be useful to point out what is happening here from a not entirely classicist perspective –

Mr Malhotra is neither a traditionalist nor a conservative. What he is promoting is a political fantasy about the Indian nation that was concocted mainly in the first half of the twentieth century. (H.-J. Klimkeit’s 1981 book Der politische Hinduismus gives a step-by-step overview of this development.) This was a time when some people also in certain Western nations created new fantasies about themselves: about their origins, their greatness, how they were wronged by other nations and needed revenge, etc.

Now comes that crucial point. It is a matter of intellectual integrity and the search for academically defensible truth on the one hand vs. propagandistic falsehood on the other – and how Malhotra fits us in. What Mr Malhotra does in his pamphleteering is evidence (was this still necessary?) that he respects neither our work nor any of us. People such as he want to silence or shout down academic researchers in India and abroad if and when the findings of scholarly and scientific research contradict the fantasy.

Mr Malhotra writes plainly abusively about scholars of Indian culture (with whose views other scholars may disagree: that is a different matter and is a valid part of the academic process) and disregards scholarly standards, whether ‘Indian’ or ‘non-Indian’, whatever he claims. If he plagiarizes (i.e., steals) something from one of our colleagues (regardless of who, or where that person is) and tinkers with it to make it fit his political program, it seems clear that he needs academia for his program and will also attempt to corrupt it if that suits his purpose.

Mr Malhotra shouts that Indians must take back the study of Indian culture? What nonsense. Real traditional studies were never taken away from them. Or did all the pāṭhaśālās, the gurukulas, the Sanskrit Colleges disappear? And I know of a fact that what is taught in Indian universities is not (and cannot be) a mindless copy of what is taught in Western universities. No: we must take back our own work, in a most concrete way, and fight plagiarism, distortion and deliberate misrepresentation.

So it is not only about steya, the wrong of stealing something from Nicholson and others. It is also about satya. If we take our work and ourselves seriously, we have no choice but to condemn such doings of Mr Malhotra in very clear terms.

This also goes for Dr. Elst, who earlier supported the now notorious forger-tinkerer N.S. Rajaram (dear Koenraad: you ought to know better by now and not support such causes).

Probably Malhotra will again call me an “especially nasty anti-Hindu person” (http://beingdifferentforum.blogspot.de/2014_11_01_archive.html). To criticize him apparently means that you’re “anti-Hindu” (and nasty). I see no other possible explanation. And the gods know that he is misrepresenting me too.

RZ

P.S. Sorry, but Dr. Collins’ defending Malhotra looks like a rather bad joke: “cryptomnesia” expressing itself in rather lengthy literally copied, but also tinkered, passages? Is that supposed to be psychology? And stylizing him as a “public intellectual”, comparing him to Sri Aurobindo, Tagore and Sudhir Kakar – no, plainly no, irrespective of how friendly the California Institute of Integral Studies and Malhotra’s Infinity Foundation are or how much or little money flowed:

http://beingdifferentbook.com/reviews/reviewer-al-collins-ph-d-former-core-faculty-california-institute-of-integral-studies/

http://peoplesdemocracy.in/2014/0706_pd/hindu-nationalism-united-states-report-nonprofit-groups-released