Dear list,

I do not wish to belabor this point further, but Dr. Zydenbos has misunderstood it once again and so I assume it needs clarification. Otherwise, I agree with him that our business is at an end.

The main thrust of my argument has been that we need to contextualize Malhotra within a post-colonial discourse or psychological/cultural struggle that is far larger than the individual projects of one wealthy diasporic Indian. And also broader than the question of plagiarism. In comparing Malhotra's situation to that of Tagore, Aurobindo, et al, I mean only to suggest that all of these persons were struggling to extract an authentic Indian vision of life from its entrapment within a Christian/European perspective that radically misunderstood (even while at times idealizing) it. It is not controversial to note that Indology has at times been part of this misunderstanding. Malhotra's concepts of "digestion" of Indian ideas by the West, and the need to "reverse gaze" are not new to him, and have been explored by Indian intellectuals and artists since the beginning of the Bengali Renaissance. (They are in various ways also issues for other colonized cultures.) Perhaps Malhotra is only a twig on the tree where Aurobindo and Tagore are massive branches, but still it is the same organism to which they all belong.

Al Collins