Dear colleagues,

With all due respect to the colleague who posted this announcement, I must express serious misgivings about the nature of the proposed "conference," so serious that I am uncomfortable with the Indology listserve being used to promote this event.

There is no delicate way to put it: the AAIS is a Hindutva ideological project with specious intellectual foundations that is not only hostile to the disciplines and work of many of the scholars on this list but that also aligns itself with a politics that encourages harassment and even violence against our colleagues in India.

The AAIS, per its website, states the reason for its existence thus: until now, "Western" disciplines like history, philology, philosophy, etcetera have been used to understand Indic material and are not sufficient for the task; therefore a new academic program is necessary that uses "Indic" knowledge systems to understand Indian material. This well-worn nativist argument ignores two important things: first, systems of knowledge like history, philology, philosophy, etcetera were practiced in South Asia during the precolonial period-- a fact that many scholars of this list demonstrate in their research-- and second, the fact that many scholars working in so-called "Western" disciplines (because whether we work in South Asian or other universities, we all have to work in existing departments) actually use South Asian knowledge systems in their study of texts, history, social phenomenon, and the like. The fact that many of us were trained in South Asian institutions by traditionally-trained scholars--or by non-Indian scholars well -steeped in things like nyaya, kavyasastra, itihasa, etc.--should tell one that we do, in fact, take South Asian knowledge systems seriously.  

The AAIS's charter and mission are, in fact, anti-intellectual and built on highly dubious arguments. Like several similar organizations that have sprung up over the last several years with the rise of Hindutva politics, it appropriates the language of postcolonial studies while totally rejecting both the theoretical and ethical imperatives of postcolonial studies. Postcolonial studies argues 1) that colonialism (and its epistemological violence) were carried out by European together with members of elite South Asian communities, 2) due to that epistemic rupture it is no longer possible to access some kind of "pure" indigenous knowledge or understanding, and 3) academics have a responsibility to listen to marginalized and formerly silenced voices of history (and the present).

In contrast, the AAIS poses such vague and theoretically problematic questions as "Would the academic presentation of the Indic civilization be different if it had been the work of scholars who did not use Western theories and categories?" and makes anti-historical assertions such as "The term “Indic” is a reference, not just to India as a modern contemporary country, but to the civilization that has been known internationally and historically by the river Indus. It refers to more than 5000 years of a continuous civilization whose kernel is a unique knowledge system which is beneficial to all humankind." The anti-historical, anti-intellectual, and nationalist implications of this should be clear.

Most worryingly, the AAIS appears to ignore the most fundamental tenets of postcolonial criticism: to constantly and self-reflexively locate oneself as a scholar in institutions and dynamics of power. Groups like the AAIS imply that the only power differential is between "Western" scholars and "Indian" natives; doing so requires eliding or ignoring the massive and complicated relationships of power in South Asian societies. In other words, in making the argument out to be between "we Indians" versus "non-Indians," the organizers elide the fact that South Asian knowledge systems, by and large as they come to us, were produced by elites that were oftentimes involved in marginalizing other groups.

This dynamic came out nowhere more vividly than on this list (and others) after the last WSC: those of the nativist Hindutva persuasion complained that allowing women who had suffered marginalization in the Sanskrit-learning community to speak about that marginalization was anti-Indian and part of a global conspiracy to malign the Indian nation. In this case, suppressing dissent within the Indian community in order to suggest that the conflict was between Indians and westerners took on the quite literal form of not allowing the marginalized women to speak.

Finally-- and I realize the seriousness of this claim-- the AAIS and similar organizations ally with a politics that has encouraged the marginalization, harassment, and even violence against our colleagues in India, including colleagues on this list. The AAIS website specifically singles out "Marxism" as one of the evils of "Western" scholarship; this is (and has been) used as a dogwhistle to attack any left-leaning (or even centrist) scholars working in India. A few of the AAIS board members themselves have repeated and amplified calls for rooting out "urban Naxals," a term that conflates left-leaning academics with Maoist rebels in India. We are all only too aware of the real danger this kind of politics poses for the lives and livelihoods of Indian colleagues.

I apologize for using the space of the listserve for a polemic; I am just tired of seeing the scholarly forum which Dominik and others have worked so hard to build used for a purpose that is directly hostile to the work of so many of us. The AAIS presents itself as a serious, progressive voice; I am afraid that it is anything but.