Dear colleagues,

As far as I understand, the most grievous offense attributed by Dr. Truschke to the Indology governing committee is that Dominik Wujastyk recently asked a list member who had congratulated her for one of her posts (on a matter related to women in indology) not to send such thanks to all members in future because this takes up too much space (as all such messages have to be stored even if they contain no information of a specifically indological nature?). Given the tone and content of some of the latest remarks in this thread, however, I feel that we might do well to keep in mind 1, that whatever happened with the French History of Science list, Dr. Truschke is NOT the victim of violent, unmoderated misogynistic attacks posted on Indology; 2, that although the power of the Indology committee has been compared in another recent post to that of the American Senate, the Indology committee has virtually no power; and 3, that surely, we all have many more serious and urgent battles to fight for women's rights (including in the field of indology) than this chastising of a powerless committee for comprising three male members against two female ones. As for those of us who think that there are no battles too small to be fought, they can at least agree that as past and present discussions have shown, the Indology list hasn't been ignoring issues of gender inequality and bias; that the Indology committee hasn't been censuring debates on these topics; and that if Dominik Wujastyk's decision to ask a list member not to post thanks to the entire list in future was debatable (he has written that he regrets it), this hardly makes him a misogynist, all the more since he claims to have sent in the past similar messages with respect to other posts that did not bear on gender equality, and since we owe him a forum where women and men alike have been able to freely exchange on all kinds of matters related to indological scholarship (including gender bias) for many years. Adding a female member to the committee would have the pleasant advantage of satisfying everybody's sense of symmetry, and it is probably the best way to quickly end this controversy; I remain in doubt, however, as to whether this would constitute in any way a significant progress in the struggle against gender bias and sexism. Let us keep our eyes on the frontlines. 

With best wishes to all,

Isabelle

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