Some months ago, I wrote to you hoping that by today, 1 July, the international pandemic situation would have improved, and we would see a clear way forward for the World Sanskrit Conference planned for 2022.

Sadly, this is not the case, and if anything, conditions have deteriorated. Many of us have lost relatives, friends and colleagues, or have endured the virus ourselves. We share the pain of friends all over the world, especially those in India, who have suffered such grievous loss and illness.

Our committee met earlier this month to canvass alternatives for the WSC. The best professional advice suggested that the Australian border will not open again until mid-2022 at the earliest. This rules out our planned date of January 2022.

We discussed at length the possibility of running the WSC online. Considering the broad spread of scholars across the Americas, Europe, South Asia and East Asia/Oceania, it might theoretically be possible to accommodate two adjacent regions, or three at a stretch, but not four. In the final analysis, running a truly world-wide conference such as ours online is impractical.

We feel we have no alternative other than to postpone the WSC again. As approved by our parent body, the International Association for Sanskrit Studies, our conference will now be held Mon-Fri 9-13 January 2023.

We are booked into the Australian National University's world-class conference facilities, and are looking forward to hosting a truly outstanding and highly memorable World Sanskrit Conference.

Over 600 scholars have already submitted abstracts. Scholars will be welcome to retain their current submission, emend and update their abstract, or to withdraw and submit a fresh proposal. We will shortly be publishing a new timetable for the resubmission, vetting and acceptance. 

All this will require additional effort from our sixty or so hardworking section coordinators.  I thank you all in advance for your continued endurance and professionalism. It will also require much more work from our wonderful secretariat staff from Kaigi Conferences who have worked with us without remuneration for three years already.  Special thanks to Tricia, Angela and Sophie.

Yours sincerely,

McComas Taylor
on behalf of the Australian Organising Committee, WSC