Dear Patricia, 

I've followed with alarm and dismay the series of posts on this list addressing your unhappy experiences at Nalanda. This mail is primarily to express unequivocal solidarity with you as a fellow academic, and to acknowledge the importance of bringing your story to the table to share with colleagues in different countries and contexts. 

It's really disappointing that despite the vigorous discussions we had last year around issues of gender (specifically at the World Sanskrit Conference), and despite the regrettable departure from this forum of eminent women scholars who are at the forefront of challenging the sexism, misogyny and straight up disrespect towards women that afflict all of our disciplines and institutions, individuals like Koenraad Elst are still able to post on Indology. Not only post, but as Matthew Kapstein correctly points out, post sans any kind of self-directed or externally imposed check on either the quantity or quality of what is being put out there for others to suffer. 

One would have hoped that neither common sense civility, nor the forum's rules of engagement would really encourage or allow this kind of lowering of our standards and wastage of our time, 700 people's time, as Dominik Wujastyk helpfully reminds us. To say nothing of how tiresome it is to go over the same ground again and again without registering any progress in the overall understanding of basic facts about sexual harassment, gender justice, and the non-negotiable need for us to make our exchanges egalitarian, equitable, respectful and meaningful for women and men alike. 

If Indology were to be more vigilant and proactive about its own standards and protocols, you and I would not need to use our spam filter as often as we do, alas. 

Yours,

Ananya Vajpeyi.