Thanks for your messages Ram and Professor Kapstein. You are right that whether it is the Indology list, the World Sanskrit Conference, the International Association of Sanskrit Studies or indeed even other related bodies like the AAS, the AAR, the AHA or the AAA, these are all professional and disciplinary bodies, organizations, forums or occasions. These are meant to showcase and share scholarly research, and address issues connected with academia, such as research, publication, pedagogy and so on.
Increasingly these spaces are becoming hijacked for nationalist propaganda, expressions of patriotism (and its opposite, xenophobia), and assertions of religious identity and piety. It is for us scholars and academic professionals to protect our institutions and associations from individuals and groups seeking to impose nationalist agendas on our disciplines and our work.
We can either stay in and keep our organizations running according to professional standards or, like the German group mentioned earlier, opt out. But allowing political propagandists and ideologues of neo-nationalist and religious fundamentalist persuasions to infiltrate, vitiate and disrupt our proceedings is not an option.
The WSC and IASS must respond in a timely and responsible fashion to what happened to us at the public forum on caste and gender in Sanskrit Studies on July 10, 2018 at UBC, Vancouver.
Ananya Vajpeyi.
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Sent on the fly, please excuse typos.