The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Repression of Religious Studies
Wendy Doniger
20 April 2016
In 2015, Harvard University Press began to publish the Murty Classical
Library of India, a series of editions and translations of texts in a
wide range of Indian languages, under the direction of Sheldon Pollock,
professor of South Asian studies at Columbia University. In February,
2016, 132 academics in India petitioned to have Pollock removed as
general editor. They were raising their voices not as subject experts —
many were scientists or doctors lacking competence to judge humanistic
scholarship — but as Hindus. Why did Hindus in India care what a
publisher in Massachusetts was doing? Because Hindus in America cared,
and they had sent word to India to raise the alarm there, too.
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