You and your colleagues at the BVP deserve to be acknowledged for taking very seriously the discussion on caste and gender in Sanskrit Studies initiated in Vancouver last summer. It's heartening that you identified and invited women scholars, from different parts of India and belonging to diverse social backgrounds, to share their experiences and learning with a predominantly male field. 

I would urge you to go further and also acknowledge that not all women and not all people outside of the traditionally sanctioned Brahmin community have found Sanskrit institutions and discourse to be egalitarian and inclusive, even in today's context. I do hope you can find it possible, given the process of self-examination and self-criticism you must have undertaken, to go back and hear what Dr. Kaushal Panwar was narrating, and to understand the struggles that lie behind what she and so many others have gone through in the present and in the past.

Eventually I would like to see a rapprochement between Dr. Panwar and the members of the audience who so rudely interrupted and attacked her (and the rest of us on the panel) at the WSC. I would expect a retraction of the use of terminology and nomenclature that is deemed offensive to the self-respect of social groups that have long faced discrimination, exclusion and violence in the arena of knowledge and education. 

This is the real goal of telling ALL the stories of Sanskrit that are circulating out there, every one of which has its reality and its relevance, even though they may be difficult to reconcile sometimes with one another, given the massive and deep contradictions in our society. Without mutual respect and the ability to empathise with one another's different experiences, we cannot live together.  

I look forward to a continuing dialogue.

With good wishes, 

Ananya Vajpeyi.