Dear Dr. Zydenbos,

Tricks of memory are not a joke, nor are they fringe psychology. We all, every day, are subject to the recreation of our memories based in part on our emotional state, the shifting representation of self that we have reconstructed at that moment, etc. Malhotra is no different in this.  He was engaged in writing a number of books simultaneously, while educating himself in areas of study that take scholars decades to master. It’s essentially an impossible task, except in the journalistic way that one interviews experts, reads secondary literature, and tries to frame the work within larger and broader cultural contexts.  You characterize Malhotra as a “pamphleteer,” thus assigning him to the lowest rank of journalism, but still you make my point by understanding that he does not pretend to be a scholar. Example: John McPhee is not a geologist, yet he managed to write lucidly about a geologist and his area of study for the New Yorker, within a period of a couple of years.  With the New Yorker’s fact checkers doing their job I doubt that he plagiarized, but absent that crucial (and extremely difficult) function I think he might well have.  And even so, there are likely to be mistakes that only a geologist would notice. Malhotra’s task was far larger (apparently he had only himself to check facts) and I cannot imagine his doing it without misprision of others’ ideas and likely resort to overuse of their words. Clearly his own writings are filled with errors of fact and interpretation. I gave up writing to him several years ago because he never seemed able to listen to my criticisms.

You  found an embarrassing  little blurb I wrote four years ago for Malhotra, at a time when I thought he was doing cultural work similar to my own: comparing Western individualism and nationalism (a la Liah Greenfeld) to Indian understandings of an interpenetrating and interactional self (I was thinking of my own earlier work, available on academia.edu, and Fred Smith’s analysis of avis and pravis = “possession”).  I got carried away I see, and the blurb is one-sided in a way that I hope my current posts are not.  Still, it is rather insulting to suggest, as you do, that my past job teaching East/West psychology at CIIS makes me financially indebted to Malhotra, since he has given that institution money! Surely you jest, Dr. Zydenbos? In fact, I taught there long before the donation and never knew, prior to the link presented by you, that it had happened at all. 

My point, which  I am afraid the tone of your response exemplifies, is that Malhotra has brought out the “plague” in us.  Malhotra has little respect, that is true, but I do not sense in your post much respect for me, Koneraad Elst or—horrors—Malhotra himself.  The Times of India piece presents a balanced view of this mutual vilification, and is right in suggesting that some of the comments on the RISA and Indology lists have become intemperate.  I hope I have not been insulting here, and will not be dismissed as another crank.  What we have in the Malhotra episode is something deeply important but hardly new, a typical case of cultural cross purposes. In comparing Malhotra to Aurobindo,  Gandhi, etc., I do not suggest that his intellectual or spiritual value equals theirs, but only note that they all belong within a late- or post-colonial cultural scenario where feeling misunderstood, angry, and combative are not only natural but inevitable. Even justified, as the lovely lecture by Shashi Tharoor cited a couple of days ago shows.  I wish that we could equal Tharoor’s lightness of tone, and agree fully with others here who point to Malhotra as the proximate author of the ill will that seems to dominate the discussion. On the other hand, I have to agree with Malhotra that there is a case to be made for questioning Western categories of understanding India, and suggesting that they may contain an unconscious or tacit aggression and will to dominate the Other (let us not forget Nietzsche, wir philologen!). It is a shame that he has been unable to make the case without low blows or stupid faux pas that undermine his credibility in the world he is trying to critique.  Scholars should not respond on that level either.  As a couple of people have noted, what is needed here is contextualization of Malhotra’s speech acts within the post-colonial debate without presumption that this enormously vexed question has a generally agreed answer that allows us to dismiss Malhotra and his circle.

Respectfully,

Al Collins, Ph.D., Ph.D.