Dear Dr. John Nemec,
I believe the correct version of that proverb is, "No good deed goes unpunished". After Dr. Adheesh Sathaye's abject retraction of the apology he unequivocally owed to Dr. Kaushal Panwar, if not to me, I have to say it's pretty tough to find him guilty of good deeds -- except perhaps making sure that everyone got caste-appropriate snacks between sessions, as one member of the BVP so appreciatively pointed out.
Had Dr. Sathaye sincerely wanted to get his house in order, he could have taken a complete audio recording of the event from me, or a complete video recording of it from the students of his UBC colleague Dr. Sarika Bose, daughter of Dr. Mandakranta Bose, moderator of the ill-fated panel on caste and gender.
As for the unidentified person ("a fellow with a tripod") present who was recording the whole thing, he represented Dalit and Ambedkarite groups spread all across Vancouver and British Columbia. As I have said repeatedly, if Sanskritists, Brahmins and Hindus were to get their heads out of the sand, they would realise that there is a wider world out there, and that they are accountable for their chauvinistic views to all manner of non-Brahmin and non-Hindu communities who constitute the bulk of the Indian population and the Indian diaspora.
Just a day or two ago, Dr. Panwar was awarded the Dalit Asmita Samman in New Delhi. I wonder what Dr. Sathaye gets from placating the non-hooligans who so "politely" shouted at us and so "patiently" awaited their turn to call her "harijan", against her vociferous objections. I must admit, despite long years of friendship, at this point his moral and intellectual motivations elude me entirely.
In the past I have asked Sheldon Pollock why he isn't a member of IASS and the Indology List, and why he doesn't attend the WSC or the meetings of the AAR and the AOS. Similarly I have asked Carnatic vocalist TM Krishna why he doesn't sing in the December Margazhi music season in Chennai (he stopped after 2014). Isn't it better to engage with those who are harming the discipline, art or practice that you love, of which you are the virtuoso, from the inside, in the thick of it, right on the discursive Kurukshetra, so to speak?
But after Dr. Sathaye's latest statement, I finally get it, I understand these wrenching decisions that sometimes have to made. As Dr. Roland Steiner indicated with the case of the German body that pulled out of the IASS in 2016, and as Professor Kapstein presciently worded it, this ship is going down.
Good luck to all colleagues on the Indology and the BVP lists. In the end, I suppose it's a question of what one can live with. The mountain is certainly hard to move, though climate change may yet achieve what human effort could not...
AV.
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Ananya Vajpeyi Fellow and Associate ProfessorCentre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Civil Lines
New Delhi 110054