Thanks Prof. Birgit Kellner for providing the SAI link for the paper by Prof. Pollock.

 

I read the paper. There indeed seems to be a misunderstanding on the part of those who found this paper to be demeaning the knowledge of the South Asian or Indian or Sanskrit authors.

 

The whole paper is a narrative account of the developments in American universities with regard to study of Sanskrit, how the departments in the form of Area Studies departments, in this case, the departments of South Asian Studies affected was discussed with a tone of dissatisfaction about how the whole thing went about, mixed with a style of wit and humour at times. There in fact is a sense of respect for the knowledge generated by South Asians in the paper. For many Indian university academicians, the narrative of developments and the lamentation about those developments, sounds familiar as there  are similar disciplinary reorganizations and establishing new centeres and departments keep happening in India that lead to the detriment of certain earlier focuses and incomplete projects.

 

Though Prof. Pollock just mentioned and did not elaborate much on that, there is a clue in this paper, to what could be the source of the impression of antipathy of American academicians like Prof. Pollock towards the texts and the people that are their subject matter. It is the new trend (or paradigm, can we say) of de-exoticization (or, though he did not use the word, deromanticization) of the view towards the subject matter. 

 

I shall post separately on the details of this possible source of misunderstanding.

 

Nagaraj

 

 

             
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