Defence against “Hinduphobia”

Review of Rajiv Malhotra: Academic Hinduphobia, Voice of India, Delhi 2016, 426 pp.; in Pragyata, 5 July 2016.

 

Rajiv Malhotra is the belated Hindu answer to decades of the systematic blackening of Hinduism in academe and the media. This is to be distinguished from the negative attitude to Hinduism among ignorant Westerners settling for the “caste, cows and curry” stereotype, and from the anti-Hindu bias among secularists in India. Against the latter phenomenon, Hindu polemicists have long been up in arms, eventhough they have also been put at a disadvantage by the monopoly of their enemies in the opinion-making sphere. But for challenging the American India-watching establishment, a combination of skills was necessary which Malhotra has only gradually developed and which few others can equal.

In the present book, Academic Hinduphobia (Voice of India, Delhi 2016, 426 pp.), he documents some of his past battles against Hinduphobia  in academe, i.e. the ideological enmity against Hinduism. We leave undecided for now whether that anti-Hindu attitude stems from fear towards an intrinsically better competitor (as many Hindus flatter themselves to think), from contempt for the substandard performance of those Hindus they have met in polemical forums, or from hatred against phenomena in their own past which they now think to recognize in Hinduism (“racism = untouchability”, “feudal inborn inequality = caste”).

In this war, American academe is linked with foreign policy interests and the Christian missionary apparatus, and they reinforce one another. Hindus have a formidable enemy in front of them, more wily and resourceful than they have ever experienced before. That is why a new knowledge of the specific laws of this particular battlefield is called for.

 

Demonolization

Rajiv Malhotra correctly lays his finger on the links between Christian traditions and present-day Leftist techniques to undermine India. Many Hindus think that Western equals Christian, but this is wrong in two ways: not all Christians are Western, and not all Westerners are Christian. Yet, secular and leftist Westerners are nonetheless heirs to Christian strategies and modes of thinking. Thus, many of the Christian Saints have a narrative of martyrdom, and usually it is that which made them Saints. The early Church deliberately spread or concocted martyrdom stories, for it empirically found these successful in swaying people towards accepting the Christian message.

Today, this tradition is being continued in secularized form: “Western human rights activists, and non-Westerners trained and funded by them, go around the world creating new categories of ‘victims’ that can be used in divide-and-conquer strategies against other cultures. In India’s case, the largest funding of this type goes to middlemen who can deliver narratives about ‘abused’ Dalits and native (especially Hindu) women.” (p.219)

Here, Malhotra prepares the ground for his Breaking India thesis, where different forces unite with a common goal: to deconstruct India’s majority culture and fragment the country. At the same time, he sketches the psychology of the Hindu-haters, explaining why they have such a good conscience in lambasting Hinduism and trying to destroy it. They like to see themselves as the oppressed underdogs, or in this case as champions of the oppressed, in spite of their privileged social position and their senior position vis-à-vis the born Hindus who come to earn PhDs under their guidance.

Among those confronted here are Sarah Caldwell, David Gordon White, Deepak Sarma, Robert Zydenbos and Shankar Vedantam. Note the names of some Hindu-born sepoys. The term “sepoy” for Hindus trying to curry favour with their white superiors needs a be nuanced a little bit. In colonial days, it was black and white: Britons trying to perpetuate and legitimize their domination, and Indian underlings trying to prosper as much as possible in the British system. Today, American Indologists are also partly influenced (esp. in their furious hatred of Hindutva) by Indian secularist opinion, but then this has in turn been oriented in an anti-Hindu sense precisely by the earlier cultural anglicization of the elites during colonial times. Anyway, in the present context, it is indeed Americans leading the dance and Indians trying to keep up.

Principally, Malhotra focuses on different episodes in the one controversy that made him a household name in Indology circles: exposing Wendy Doniger’s brand of roundabout and candid-sounding anti-Hindu polemic. By his much-publicized example, he has galvanized many Hindus into actively mapping the battlefield and even coming out to do battle themselves against the mighty and intolerant Hindu-watching establishment. There is no longer an excuse for the all-too-common Hindu attitude of smug laziness hiding behind the spiritual-sounding explanation that, instead of our own effort, the law of karma will take care of everything.

The book is a pleasant read, because the described characters are variegated and the events on the ground are swiftly advancing all while the ideas are being developed. For understanding the entirety of its message, I can only advise you to read it, it is really worth your time. Here I will limit myself to a searchlight on a few passages.

 

Wendy’s psycho-analytic free-for-all

One of the faces of academic “Hinduphobia” is the flippant eroticizing discourse about Hindu civilization developed by Chicago University’s Prof. Wendy Doniger, continued by her erstwhile Ph.D. students and eagerly taken over by prominent media like the Washington Post. Here, Malhotra first of all amply documents the reality and seriousness of the problem. Imagine: a number of professors who are not at all qualified as psycho-analysts and would be punishable if they applied their diagnosis to a living human being, feel entitled to psycho-analyse a Guru like Ramakrishna or a God like Ganesha.

Thus, Jeffrey Kripal’s thesis about Ramakrishna (Kali’s Child) is, according to a quoted Bengali critic, marred by “faulty translations”, “wilful distortion and manipulation of sources”, “remarkable ignorance of Bengali culture”, “misrepresentations” and a simply defective knowledge of both Sanskrit and Bengali. (p.101) He has, like too many academics, the tendency to “first suspect, then assume, then present as a fact” his own desired scenario, i.c. “that Ramakrishna was sexually abused as a child”. (p.105) A closer look at his errors could make the reader embarrassed in Kripal’s place, e.g. mistranslating “lap” as “genitals”, “head” as “phallus”, “touching softly” as “sodomy” etc. Kripal’s whole scenario of Ramakrishna as a defiler of boys is not onlu unsubstantiated, it provides not only a peep into Kripal’s own morbid mind; it is also, in this age of cultural hypersensitivity, a brutal violation of Hindu and Bengali feelings. If it were an unpleasant truth, it had a right to get said in spite of what the concerned commnities would think, but even then, a more circumspect mode of expression and more interaction with the community directly affected, would have been called for. But when it comes to Hindus, riding roughshod over them is still the done thing.   

Similarly, Paul Courtright develops his thesis about Ganesha’s broken tusk being a limp phallus, and of Ganesha being the first god with an Oedipus complex, on the basis of what is clearly a defective knowledge about the elephant god. The lore surrounding Ganesha is vast, and does not always live up to Courtright’s stereotype of a sweets-addicted diabetic. He has some stories in Hindu literature to his credit where his phallus is not exactly limp. Indeed, I myself am the lucky owner of a Ganesha bronze where he is doing it with a Dakini.

Wendy Doniger herself is now best known for the numerous errors in his book The Hindus, an Alternative History, diagnosed in detail by Vishal Agarwal. Known among laymen as a Sanskritist, her shoddy translations of Sanskrit classics have been criticized by colleagues like Michael Witzel, not exactly a friend of the Hindus. In a normal academic setting, with word and counter-word, where the peer review would have included first-hand practitioners of the tradition concerned, Doniger’s or Kripal’s or Courtright’s gross errors would never have passed muster. It is only because the dice have been loaded against Hinduism that these hilarious distortions are possible. It is therefore a very necessary and very reasonable struggle that Malhotra has taken up.

 

 

The RISA list

When I wrote my book The Argumentative Hindu (2012), I seriously wondered whether to include my exchanges with the RISA (Religion In South Asia) list about the dishonourable way listmaster Deepak Sarma and the rest of the gang overruled list rules in order to banish me, and how many prominent Indologists actively or passively supported their tricks. I didn’t consider my own story that important, but finally I decided to do it, just for the sake of history. Future as well as present students of the conflicting worldviews in India and among India-watchers in the West are or will be interested in a detailed illustration of how mean and how pompous the anti-Hindu crowd can be in defending their power position.

Here we get a detailed report on a much more important RISA debate that took place in 2003, and as it turns out, it was indeed worth making this information available. A lot of anecdotal data become known here, useful one day for the occasional biographer, such as the intereseting tidbit dat Anant Rambachan, with whom Malhotra crossed swords in his book Indra’s Net, was an ally back then (p.210). More fundamentally, and affecting the whole Hindu-American community, we note Paul Coutright’s turn-around to a sudden willingness for dialogue with the Hindus about his erstwhile thesis (p.211). The reason that mattered most in the prevailing Zeitgeist, was that “American Hinduism is a minority religion in America (…) that deserves the same treatment that is already being given to other American minority religions – such as Native American, Buddhist or Islamic – by the Academy. The subaltern studies depiction of Hinduism as being the dominant religion of India must, therefore, be questioned in the American context.” (p.213)

On the other hand, in all sobriety I must also note how, in spite of that hopeful event, very little has changed. Recent incidents, some concerning Malhotra himself, confirm that the exclusion of people because of their opinion, the systematic haughtiness because of institutional rank (“Malhotra is not even an academic”, a sophomoric attitude unbecoming of anyone experienced with how progress in research is made, and by whom), the intellectually contemptible use of “guilt by association”, are all still in evidence in Western Indologist forums. He notes an improvement in the general mood as a result of the debate: “For the first time in RISA’s history, to the best of my knowledge, the diaspora voices are not being branded as saffronists, Hindutva fanatics, fascists, chauvinists, dowry extortionists, Muslim killers, nun rapists, Dalit abusers, etc. One has to wait and see whether this is temporary or permanent.” (p.215)

So far, the impression prevails that the mood has not changed much. We saw this in 2015, when Malhotra was accused of plagiarism. A detailed look at the case exonerated him and actually made the whole controversy rather ludicrous, yet otherwise moderate voices on the Indology and the Indo-Eurasian Research lists (I can’t speak for the RISA list, but it contains the same people) all ganged up against him. They acted very indignant over something that, even if it were true, would only be a trifle, immaterial to the debate at hand. It is this persistence of the same anti-Hindu attitudes that makes this book more than a historical document: it teaches Hindus what to expect today if they challenge the Indological establishment.

In 2003, one factor was perhaps that a BJP government ruled in Delhi and, in spite of its so-called “saffronization” of the history textbooks, refuted in practice all the apprehensions about “Hindu fascist” rule which the same Indologists had uttered in the 1990s. Remember, they had predicted a “Muslim Holocaust” if ever the BJP would come to power (and have never had to bear the consequences of their grossly wrong prediction in the field of their supposed expertise). Even ivory-tower academics had to be aware of that feedback from reality. Then again, this consideration ought to prevail even now, with Narendra Modi opening many doors internationally and not at all living up to the hate-image which many India-watchers had sworn by in the preceding years. Yet, “Hinduphobia” is still with us.

 

 

Phobia

The major flaw in this book is its title. I object to political terms ending in -phobia, normally a medical term meaning “irrational fear”, as in arachnophobia, the “irrational fear of spiders”. As far as I know, the first term in this category of political terms borrowed from the medical register, was homophobia, the “irrational fear of homosexuals”. First of all, the word was wrongly constructed. Literally, it means “fear of the same”, i.e. “fear of the same sex”, whereas men criticizing homosexuality are not usually afraid of men. In fact the words targets people who disapprove of homosexuality, nomatter what their rational or emotional motive. The term or connotation “sexuality” is missing (you might try “homophilophobia”), and the tareted “disapproval” is not the same thing as the stated “fear”, nor as the intended “hate”. Still, the neologism won through thanks to the bourgeoisie’s sheepish acceptance ot it.

Next came Islamophobia, literally “irrational fear of Islam”, intended to mean “hatred of Islam”, and in effect targeting “disapproval of Islam”, “Islam criticism”. This term was first launched in the 1990s by the Runnymede Trust, a British Quango dedicated to fighting racism. It was taken over by many governments and media, and especially promoted by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. It is an intensely mendacious term trying to criminalize the normal exercise of the power of discrimination. The targeted critics of Islam need neither fear nor hate Islam, their attitude may rather be likened to that of a teacher using his red pencil to cross out a mistake in a pupil’s homework. But again, a mighty promotion by powerful actors made the word gain household status.

On this model, the term Hinduphobia was coined. At bottom, we have to reject this term as much as we rejected the use of psychiatry against dissident  viewpoints in the Soviet Union.

On the other hand, an irrational anti-Hinduism is a reality. It is precisely through comparison with Islam that this becomes glaring. Whenever a group of people gets killed in the name of Islam, immediately the politicians concerned and the media assure us that this terror “has nothing to do with Islam”. In the case of Hinduism, it is just the reverse. Of any merit of Hinduism, it is immediately assumed that “it has nothing to do with Hinduism”, whereas every problem in India is automatically blamed on Hinduism, from poverty (“the Hindu rate of growth”) to rape.

Thus, it is verifiable that books may be written about “Jain mathematics”, but when Hindus do mathematics, it will be called “Indian mathematics” or “the Kerala school of mathematics”. Congress politician Mani Shankar Aiyar once praised India’s inherent pluralism, enumerated its well-attested hospitality to refugee groups, and then attributed all this not to Hinduism, but to “something in the air here”.  In missionary propaganda and in the secularist media, it is always emphasized that “tribals are not Hindus”; except when they take revenge on Christians or Muslims, because then the media report on “Hindu rioters”.    

This obsessive negativity towards Hinduism needs to be named and shamed. Now that the bourgeoisie has interiorized terms like Homophobia and Islamophobia, it is clear that the neologism Hinduphobia belongs to a language register they will understand. Once heightened scruples prevail and linguistic hygiene is restored, all three terms may be be discarded together. But until then, the use of Hinduphobia in counter-attack mode is a wise compromise with the prevailing opinion climate.

 

 

Rajiv Malhotra: Academic Hinduphobia, Voice of India, Delhi 2016, 426 pp.

 

Read more!

George Thompson as a case study in racist Invasionism

On the internet discussion list of the Religion in South Asia (RISA) chapter of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), September 2011 saw a debate on racial concepts in Vedic India. The thread’s header was: “Why is Krishna blue?” My participation in it was probably a factor in my subsequent sudden and unexplained expulsion from the list. This expulsion frees me from the commitment to secrecy about what is being said and done on the list. So now, we can give a little overview of that debate.

Early on, Prof. George Thompson put his cards on the table: “I've been telling students for 25 years that Krishna is blue because he is a non-Vedic tribal god.” (8 Sep.)

A UK-based Indian Professor was not so sure: “Well, the non-Vedic nature of the god might not ensure the colour! Indeed Krsna (but perhaps Visnu too) is identified with Mayon - the dark one - in Cankam Tamil, and it is not clear which way the influence went. But on the other hand, another colour-coded non-Vedic Tamil god is Seyyon - the red one - who came to be called Subrahmanya...”

Thompson replies: “Well, the color is ensured by the etymology of the word 'krsna'. As for Visnu, he is of course an early Vedic god, though not yet a prominent one in the RV, and there is no mention of Visnu's color in early Vedic, as far as I know.” (8 Sep.)

To a Chicago-based Professor who is not convinced that the dark colour of Krishna’s idols refers to historical skin colour, Thompson replies: “It is clear that Krsna is a black god. There is no shame in that. And there is no shame in the view that he was a tribal god. Or an aboriginal one. Where is there lack of respect in the suggestion that Krsna was originally a non-Vedic tribal god? I think that Krsna is more interesting than his white Vedic colleagues.” (9 Sep)

The professor from Chicago did not take this veiled imputation of anti-aboriginal racism lying down: “You seem to entirely misconstrue my meaning. As I took some minor pains to suggest, my issue was with evidence, not conclusion. I have no trouble with black. Black is beautiful, as they used to say. Nor, were it remotely possible to establish that Krishna was ‘originally’ a ‘tribal god’ or ‘aboriginal god’, would there be any shame for him or his devotees.

“My concern is not with theological shame, but with what might be called methodological shame (or its lack). Empirically speaking, of course, (that is, de facto) you are entirely correct that ‘there is no shame in the view that he was a tribal god’. On the other hand, de jure, I think there ought to be rather more shame in the community of scholars who study Indian religions (and this goes for the vast majority of references in historical works to Indian ‘tribes’ or ‘aborigines’).

“Whether or not one is a ‘tribal god’ (whatever that might be -- and I think this is not at all clear, however people might bandy the concept about) is (ideally) normatively neutral. However, making claims about tribal this and tribal that based on fragments of ambiguous evidence, half-formed ideas about what the native communities of India might have been in the historical periods under discussion, and a healthy dose of lazy historical fantasy (in respectable circles, this is called ‘historical retrodiction’ or ‘synthesis’), should be a matter of some shame indeed.”

“There is some little evidence for communities one might call ‘aboriginal’ or ‘tribal’ in India in the ancient period. However, most of it either requires serious interpretative caution (being, after all, literary representations of marginal communities that bear marked connotations in mainstream discourses) or contradicts the typical Indological fantasy of what characterizes ‘aboriginal, tribal’ societies and religions.”

So, this Professor imputes to Prof. Thompson an eagerness to bandy “racism” about, as well as the methodologically sloppy readiness to assume “tribal” origins. I am not the only one to suspect that George Thompson is a race hustler. A Professor from Buffalo NY dedramatizes the race issue in the Hindu context:

“I recall, many years ago, H. Daniel Smith, the Sanskrit scholar who had by then turned his focus to Hindu poster art, telling a class that the reason that Kali was represented in poster art as blue rather than black was because they couldn't use that much black in early chromolithography -- I don't recall exactly why; perhaps it seeped into neighboring colors? And the technical limitations of the poster art changed the way many people visualized Kali (as blue as well as black). Perhaps something similar is the case with Krishna?” (9 Sep.)

Thompson to the Chicago professor, 9 Sep.:

“I suppose that I have misunderstood your original post, because in fact I do agree that there is little evidence -- either positive or negative – for any claim about Krsna's origins. When we are dealing with texts that are at least 2000 years old (and in my case at least 3000), we are all, in my view, in the dark ages. I probably am more aware of this than most list members because I spend most of my time on the Rgveda. One of my little projects is to translate the cycle of hymns attributed to the rsi Diirghatamas, so I know a lot about darkness, intentional, riddling darkness.

“Color symbolism is an interesting matter but it does not lead us to the light of history. By the way, my reference to white Vedic gods was facetious (I was vaguely alluding to our White Aryan Brotherhood friends). I don't think that any of us is ‘white’. ‘Whiteness’ is a racist concept, in my view. I will close by pointing out that the Vedic clans were not only not white; they were tribal, intensely macho, and virulently xenophobic. I've been reading Jarrod Whitaker's new book Strong Arms and Drinking Strength: Masculinity, Violence and the Body in Ancient India (I've been asked to review it). He points out that nowhere in the RV is nrmna, 'manliness,' ever ascribed to any indigenous peoples (p. 53).”

Nobody in his right mind was referring to “our White Aryan Brotherhood friends”, except for George Thompson. It is only he who links the Indo-Aryans with the unrelated White Aryan Brotherhood. He wrote back on 10 September:

“[The Chicago professor] and I have gotten clearance from Deepak to continue this discussion for a bit longer. Several misunderstandings have been cleared up.

“In the introduction to my Gita translation, I claimed, on the basis of my reading of the text alone, that the doctrine that Krsna as an avatar of Visnu was not yet a settled doctrine in the Gita. Somewhat later after making this assertion, I was asked to review Angelika Malinar's book The Bhagavadgiitaa: Doctrines and Contexts published in 2007 (which is the year in which I had finished my Gita book), and she made the case for this claim at much greater length than I did, and she persuasively argued that her very learned view, and my not very learned but intuitive view, represented the current consensus.

“So, I think that it is fair to say that there was initially significant resistance to the idea that Krsna was an avater of Visnu. In most of the text of the MBh, Krsna is usually considered a mere mortal King of the Vrsnis. While the term vrsni is a good old Vedic word, it isn't used to refer to a particular tribe. The clan of the Vrsnis do not appear on the scene until epic [MBh] Sanskrit. Since I am a Vedicist most of all, I claim no expertise on the ethnography of this Vrsni clan. It might be worthwhile to pursue this, though. It may help us to learn something historically significant about Krsna's origins. But I'll leave this for those who would know more than I do.

“Through this sort of ethnographical research we may be able to get some historical insights into the origins of Krsna. In any case, I think that this kind of approach may prove to be more fruitful than color symbolism.”

A very Christian Professor intervened on 9 September under the header: The Indo-European Immigrants' Self Consciousness:

“Sisters and brothers, A recent mention of Jarrod Whitaker's new book reminded me of something that I have been meaning to ask the list. I know from Ed Bryant's The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture, that the evidence that the Indo-Europeans characterized the indigenes in South Asia as ‘snub nosed’ is exceedingly thin. This prompts a more basic question: Assuming that the Indo-Europeans migrated into South Asia, but assuming that it was not a catastrophic invasion, that it was a movement over several centuries, etc., is there solid evidence in early Vedic literature that the migrating Indo-Europeans thought of themselves as a separate people? That they spoke a different language. Or had a different religion and mythology. Or that they were somehow ethnically distinct (if not with longer noses, than with lighter skin, or is even that too much a product of modern racism). That the immigrants labeled themselves ‘Aryans’ and the indigenes were labeled ‘Dasyus’ or ‘Dasas’, of something of the sort. Is the evidence good for this?”

Another Professor added on 11 september under the same header: The Indo-European Immigrants' Self Consciousness:

“In all of our excitement to discuss why Krishna is blue (from the serious to the silly), I fear this excellent question posed by [the Christian Professor] may have gotten lost in the barrage of emails. I am very interested in this topic as well, and would also appreciate some insight from our Vedic scholars.”

That’s when, 11 september, I intervened under this same header: The Indo-European Immigrants' Self Consciousness:

“Dear listfolk,

“The debate over whether there ever was an Aryan invasion has raged (and I mean raged) for two decades, and if there had been such evidence for the Vedic people seeing themselves as invaders and others as natives, it would have been plastered all over the affected discussion forums including this one. So no, there is no such evidence.

“Françoise Bader in her textbook of Indo-European linguistics tries to derive ‘Arya’ (the self-reference term of both Iranians and Vedic Indo-Aryans) from ‘alia’, related to Latin/English ‘alien’, in the sense of ‘the foreigners, the invaders’. But even among the Aryan Invasion believers, she never found many takers for this rather oxymoronic explanation of a self-referential term as meaning ‘the others’.

“In the Rg-Veda, the terms ‘Dasa’ and ‘Dasyu’, which are also known in ethnic meanings in Iranian languages, refer without any doubt to Iranians, i.e. fellow Indo-Europeans, whiter than or at least as white as the Vedic people. Not to Mundas or Dravidians. The Rg-Vedic Battle of the Ten Kings and Varshagira Battle (the first on the Ravi banks in West Panjab, the second beyond the Bolan Pass in southern Afghanistan, after the westward expansion rendered possible by Vedic kind Sudas's victory in the first battle), were very definitely between Iranians and Vedic Indo-Aryans. The second of these battles is also alluded to in the younger Avesta, where the same battle leaders are mentioned: Rjashva/Arjasp and Somaka/Humayaka on the Indian side, Vishtaspa/Ishtashva on the Iranian side. RV 1:122:13 mentions Ishtâshva, the Sanskrit form of Iranian 'Vishtâspa', well-known as Zarathustra's royal patron: 'What can Ishtâshva, Ishtarashmi or any other princes do against those who enjoy the protection (of Mitra and Varuna)?' Thus the interpretation of Sayana and SK Hodiwala, as reported by Shrikant Talageri, The Rigveda, a Historical Analysis, p.215-221, and also followed, at least in the names given, by HH Wilson and KF Geldner in their RV translations. It is a rare treat in studies of ancient literature when a single event is reported in two independent sources, which moreover represent the two opposing parties in the event.

“[Dear Chistian Professor], your question for evidence is an eminently good one. When people say, for example, that Krishna, though described as belonging to one of the Vedic ‘five nations’, is called ‘black because he was a non-Aryan indigenous tribal leader’, it is indeed right and necessary to ask them for their evidence.

“Kind regards,

“Dr. Koenraad Elst, non-affiliated Orientalist”

This argumentation of mine contains one non-essential mistake, viz. the Vârshâgira Battle took place on the eastern, Indian side of the Bolan pass, not on the Western, Afghan side. But it was a battle between Vedic Indians and Avestan Iranians. Terms like Dâsa, Dasyu and Asura are well-attested in Iranian but nowhere attested  in “tribal” languages.

Nonetheless, George Thompson replied on 12 september, now under the header: The Indo-European Immigrants' Self Consciousness. He clearly was very angry for my accusing him of building a far-reaching thesis on no evidence at all:

“Dear List,

“We have had this argument with Mr Elst many, many times already, and I am not going to waste much time on running in circles with him again. He is a virulent Hindutvavadin. Frankly, I don't think that he has earned a place on this list.

“Bader's etymology for the term ‘arya’ is in fact widely accepted by competent linguists. Actually, it isn't her etymology. It is much older than she is. It has been common knowledge for several generations. Elst is not a competent linguist.

“Let me point out also another mistake that Elst makes, along with [yet another Professor]. No Indo-Europeans ever invaded India. Indo-Europeans, by the third millennium, had already fragmented into a dozen or more distinct linguistic families. Indo-Europeans weren't a race! They were a group of linguistic families, speakers of various related languages! This is linguistics 101, my friends! I can't believe that I have to give this lecture yet again on a scholarly list!

“The clans that migrated into India some 3000 plus years ago were Vedic clans, who had very close ties to the Iranian clans that migrated westward into Iran at about the same time that the Vedic clans were approaching the Indian subcontinent. They fought constantly with their Iranian cousins, just as they fought constantly with the indigenous clans of India when they finally reached the Panjab.

“Look, we have significant evidence, linguistic evidence, that clearly demonstrates that the Vedic tribes did in fact migrate into India over the course of many centuries. We have good linguistic evidence that Indra fought against tribes who had no eth[n]ic ties whatsoever with Indo-Iranian tribes (see Kuiper's list of terms that have no cognates either in IE or in Indo-Iranian). These would have to have been tribes indigenous to India.

“Elst continues to think that early Iranian and early Vedic clans thought in terms of their ‘whiteness’ Well, what evidence is there for that? Elst, in my view, clearly operates from a racist ideology. Look again at him.

“If you all want to explore the scholarly dark ages: this is where to look.

He is not competent to talk about Avestan. I am.”

Well, well. In a context where the difference between a and â, between arya and ârya, gets confused by the occasional non-use of the â, it seems that George Thompson hasn’t understood the import of Françoise Bader’s use of arya. Unlike Paul Thieme and other “competent linguists” who are “older than she is”, and who interpreted ârya as a derivative of arya, “other” , viz. as “inclined towards the other, hospitable, altruistic”, Bader interprets ârya as a synonym of arya, viz. as “the other, the stranger” through the semantic conduit “coming from another country = ârya”. (Langues Indo-Européennes, p.66) There is no evidence for this at all, except that it falls in line with the Aryan Invasion Theory; but even all the other AIT champions never thought of it, until George Thompson gave his support to it.

Then we have the champion of the racial interpretation of ancient Vedic terms slamming the open non-racial door: “Indo-Europeans weren't a race! They were a group of linguistic families, speakers of various related languages! This is linguistics 101, my friends! I can't believe that I have to give this lecture yet again on a scholarly list!” Most members even of the RISA list were perfectly aware of the non-racial import of the Rg-Veda, it is only George Thompson who opened the debate by saying in so many words that for 25 years he has been teaching that Krishna’s imputed racial traits are significant for his ethnic background.

What is simply unacceptable is that the avowed racist George Thompson, once he feels the anti-racist mood on the RISA-list, accuses me of all people of racism. Ever since my first writing on the Aryan Invasion Theory, the book Indigenous Indians in 1993, I have consistently lambasted the 19^th-century racial interpretation of Vedic terms. George Thompson, by contrast, has espoused that interpretation all along.

It remains a fact that Iranian refers a hundred times in  a self-referential or at least partially Iranian sense to the terms which the Vedas use to name their enemies. None of the tribal languages, not even the Dravidian languages, do so. They also do not have the so-called deshi (vernacular but not attested in Sanskrit) words for Hindi plant names, which are non-existent in the non-Indian Indo-European languages only because it is no use retaining a word for a (in Europe) non-existent plant. All the Kuipers of this world cannot change that.

As a parting shot, Thompson gives this along: “If you all want to explore the scholarly dark ages: this is where to look.” Just the opposite: in the Middle Ages, scholarship reputedly went by authority, which is George Thompson’s method, and the Aryan Invasion method. After the Enlightenment, the scholarly method required evidence, which is my method.

Meanwhile, the list master implored me at once to let it all pass. On 12 September, he sent me a message under the all too clear header: “pls do not respond to that RISA msg”:

“Dear Koenraad:

            "Out of the best interest of the RISA-L listserve, please do not respond to that msg, acrimonious as it was. You are, of course, more than welcome respond off list.

"yours, Deepak, RISA-L admin”

I complied, but must say I have not been rewarded. Though I didn’t react at all, I was shown the door somewhat later. By contrast, I have no information that the offending list member, George Thompson, was reprimanded in any meaningful way. He didn’t apologize on- or off-list. So now, at least, I am at liberty to divulge what happened.

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US academics for and against censorship

The internet discussion list of the Religion In South Asia (RISA) section of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) invites to its membership all scholars with a terminal degree related to the field of religion in South Asia and who are dues-paying AAR members. For several years, I was an active participant in the RISA conversation. I was merely tolerated, though, for the dominant circle there tended to dislike my position, deemed too pro-Hindu. And even that toleration came to an end shortly after the AAR meeting of November 2011.

In an attempt to comprehend listmaster Deepak Sarma’s lie that I had violated list rules, an allegation which he failed to specify both to me and to an enquiry by Prof. Francis Clooney s.j., I venture to link it to two incidents on the RISA list in the preceding months. One is an incident with prof. George Thompson, the other was an incident on the notion of interreligious dialogue, where my critics violated list rules but which will form the material for separate posts. For now, we will discuss the contradiction between the RISA scholars’ defence of freedom of speech elsewhere and their approval of censorship on their own platform.

Quite a few RISA (Religion in South Asia) scholars are inveterate enemies of freedom of speech. When I spoke on the Aryan Invasion Theory in Prof. Andrew Sihler’s Department at the University of Wisconsin in 1996, Biju Mathew and Vijay Prashad of the Forum Of Inqilabi (= Revolutionary) Leftists distributed a leaflet demanding that I be denied a platform to speak at American Universities. This leaflet was subsequently condoned explicitly by Prof. Michael Witzel (7-2-2003) and Prof. Robert Zydenbos (10-2-2003) on the secretive Scholarly Services list. So we know where the enemies of liberty are.

Fortunately, some scholars are also in favour of freedom of speech. Or to put that more precisely, the very same scholars are in favour of or against freedom of speech depending on whether it is one of their friends or one of their enemies whose right to freedom of speech is being challenged. We don’t know exactly which ones are for freedom of speech in general and which ones want to limit freedom of speech to their friends, but we know that a lot of them want to safeguard the freedom of speech of the late A.K. Ramanujan.

Not that his freedom is really threatened by censorship, i.e. by a state’s intervention to have his books or articles censored. What happened is that his publisher, the private company Oxford University Press, refused to republish his essay Three Hundred Ramayanas in 2011. The Delhi University refused to include this essay among its mandatory reading. Immediately an online petition was started to protest against this act of “censorship”. I signed it too, because of course I don’t believe in hampering the spread of ideas, not even when it has the lofty goal of preventing the spread of a fundamentally flawed perception of the Ramayana. Hindus had better learn to hold their own in the marketplace of ideas; clamouring for censorship is a weakness bid. But that shouldn’t foster any illusions about the rightness of A.K. Ramanujan’s thesis, nor about the motives of the Professors who suddenly discovered the value of his freedom of speech.


Meanwhile, an act of censorship at RISA

On 27 November 2011, shortly after my return from the annual session of the American Academy of Religion (of which RISA is a subsection), I sent to listmaster Dr. Deepak Sarma the following mail: “Dear Deepak, “could you please change my RISA address from […] to koenraadelst@hotmail.com “Thanks, “KE”

This was because my old address did not match my RISA address anymore, so that for every intervention I had to trouble the listmaster to give me access. It was just a technical matter.

But much to my surprise, this is the reply I got on 28 November: “Subject: your RISA-L membership status

“Dr. Elst:

“The RISA-L Advisory Committee has decided not to renew your membership to RISA-L. The decision was made based on both the eligibility criteria as well as the list rules (http://www.montclair.edu/RISA/r-instruct.html). It was determined that you are not eligible and have violated list rules. Yours, Deepak”

I asked Deepak for the coordinates of the members of this mysterious “advisory committee”, not mentioned on the RISA instructions, so that I could contact them, but he didn’t reply.

So, cut off from the list archives and its addresses, I sent a mail to three scholars whose addresses I did have and who just made themselves remarkable by opposing the act of censorship in Delhi to A.K. Ramanujan’s disadvantage. It went like this:
  

“To: jkirk@spro.net, grimesj@msu.edu, lionda@stanford.edu “Subject: Fw: your RISA-L membership status."

“Dear Professors,

“During the AAR annual conference of 2006 in Washington DC, I attended a ‘debate’ on the Danish Mohammed cartoons, then the target of both a campaign of violence and another campaign in favour of censorship. Not a single one of the six or so panelists took a stand for unfettered freedom of expression as guaranteed in the US Constitution's First Amendment. Each one started out with: ‘Of course freedom of expression is important, BUT...’ Since the organizers must have known the invited panelists and their positions in the matter, it seemed to be AAR policy to support certain higher values against the secular value of freedom of expression. In question time too, not one of the religion scholars in the audience challenged this consensus. I concluded that freedom of expression doesn't count for much in the guild of religion scholars, not even in the Land of the Free.

“Consequently, I was pleasantly surprised to see how last week, a clear stand for freedom of expression and opposing the ‘non-governmental censorship’ exercised by OUP-India against AK Ramanujan's essay Three Hundred Ramayanas was taken by you three on the RISA list. And by some others, but their posts are no longer in my inbox and I don't have access to the list archive for reasons discussed below, so I cannot address them here. But three voices for freedom should be enough to defeat the dark forces of censorship.

“Not every stand for freedom and against suppression of speech by state authority or by non-governmental agencies is equally demanding. Thus, it is easier to stand up against censorship exercised by a foreign body in distant Oxford and Delhi than against censorship exercised by a body of which one is a prominent and esteemed member oneself. And it is far more attractive to show solidarity with a censored author whose opinions one shares than with one whose positions one opposes. Yet, the latter instance is the true test of what side one is on in the struggle between liberty and oppression. Stalin and Hitler were all for the freedom of expression of those whose opinions they shared. What distinguishes democrats from those dictators is that they grant freedom to all without discrimination by status or opinion.

“Today, I am appealing to you to take a stand against censorship exercised by your own RISA list against someone whose opinions you may very well disapprove of, viz. myself.

“Shortly after returning home from the AAR conference in San Francisco, where I had read a paper on the Buddha's social conservatism (and another one on Buddhism's martial roots at the DANAM conference), to considerable acclaim, I found an e-mail in my inbox from the RISA listmaster, Prof. Deepak Sharma. After he had been conspicuously avoiding me at the conference as if held back by a troubled conscience, I considered it possible that he was at last sending me his apologies for his less than impartisan handling of several recent attacks against my person on the list. Instead, what I found was the following:

"From: Deepak Sarma to Dr. Elst:

"The RISA-L Advisory Committee has decided not to renew your membership to RISA-L. The decision was made based on both the eligibility criteria as well as the list rules (http://www.montclair.edu/RISA/r-instruct.html). It was determined that you are not eligible and have violated list rules. Yours, Deepak"

“From someone who hasn't even issued a mere reprimand against gross violations of list rules when these were targeted against Hindu list members or myself, this sudden concern for list rules seemed disingenuous. The step of excluding someone without first taking less extreme steps is also strange. Having served in a number of organizations myself, I was also surprised that there still exist organizations where such a step can be taken behind someone's back without even giving him a hearing. Finally, the stated reasons are obviously false. I satisfy the eligibility criteria just as much as (or even more than) the day when I was admitted to the list, being an AAR member with wide experience of teaching and research in the field of South-Asian religion and with a related terminal academic degree (actually three of them). And no, I have not violated list rules, on the contrary.

“When a list member, while stating his firm belief in the racialist interpretation of the ethnic data in the Rg-Veda and of the scriptural descriptions of Krishna, recently launched against me the grossest personal attack in the history of the list (if you know of a worse instance, I'd like to hear it, and also what punishment was administered to the offender), Deepak shot off a hurried request to me not to reply to it. Though my expectation that he would do the right thing and publicly reprimand the offender was in vain, I assured him that I would not make matters worse by reacting. Possibly that was poor judgment of mine, but it served the cause of relative peace on the list and a constructive atmosphere, already damaged badly enough by the offender. But now my cooperative attitude is rewarded with a consilium abeundi. It seems that this mysterious "advisory committee" cares less about the good atmosphere on the list than about ideological conformity.

“Fortunately, having witnessed your commitment to the cause of academic freedom and freedom of expression, I can be confident that at least one of you will take an initiative to remedy this injustice. I am looking forward to it.

“Yours sincerely, Dr. Koenraad Elst”

I received no reply to this mail. Since there is nothing that Gunga Dins like Deepak Sarma admire more than White Missionary Professors, I decided finally to ask Harvard Professor Francis Clooney S.J. for help. He asked Deepak for an explanation of his behavior, but all he got for a reply was the same mendacious affirmation that I had trespassed against list rules. The reality was that list rules had only been trespassed against when addressing me. But clearly, pressures on the listmaster from those conformists who wanted me out was stronger.


The Huffington Post debate on the censorship by Deepak Sarma

Under the title “Censoring Ramanujan's Essay On Ramayana: Intolerant Hindus And Confusing Texts”, Deepak Sarma pontificated in Huffington Post (30-11-2011) on freedom of speech in Hinduism. He argued that his mentor, Mâdhva, had nothing against adverse comments, which he qualified as Mohashâstra, “Deluded scripture”, and freely answered them. Among those who replied was Vishal Agarwal:

“But you can hardly expect Sarmas and Donigers to support lifting of these other bans, or the large scale censoring of History in India by 'secularist' historians in West Bengal, Kerala and so on. Their hatred is reserved for Hindus and Hinduism. The sarcasm in Sarma's email shows his pettiness. If he is serious and honest about free speech, he should reinstate dissenting scholars in the RISA-L list that he manages.”

My own reply was this (2-12):

“The ‘intolerant Hindus’ of your title may not be coterminous with the entire Hindu society, but they certainly include your esteemed self, Deepak. Your own record of partisan censorship as listmaster on the RISA-list is well-known to all insiders. In your case, the aim is not to humour any Hindu constituency but to please your American paymasters. And these tend to support your censorship, of course, because academics have ideological agendas too, and are more attached to those than to the First Amendment principle of freedom of expression. Approval of censorship exists also among those who, along with yourself and myself, have signed the petition against OUP's censoring Ramanujan. For many of them this is not a matter of principle, of standing up for freedom of expression. Instead, they are using Ramanujan as a tool in their own crusade against Hinduism in general (e.g. the Christian missionary lobby, a palpable presence in US Indology) or against specific schools of thought within Hinduism. The proof of being on the side of freedom of expression is defending it even and especially in the case of those you disagree with. As Rosa Luxemburg put it, ‘freedom is always the freedom of those who hold dissenting views’. You have failed that test.”

Deepak Sarma tried to justify his act of censorship as follows (4-12):

"In this connection, the rules for debate in the academic realm differ significantly from other realms, such as this virtual one. There are, for example, rules about evidence, and about how evidence is presented. If a participant violates these rules then s/he may be excluded from further conversations. In this sense, in the academic world, there is an intolerance of those who do not follow the rules for debate. These rules of rhetoric are themselves debatable. Lest there be an infinite regress of sorts (that is, how do we argue about how we argue?) they ought to be upheld stipulatively.”

But by the time I sent in my reply (5-12), Deepak Sarma’s allies at the Huffington Post had got into their usual act and censored it, i.e. it was not published. Still, here it is:

“Because most readers don't have access to the RISA list where Deepak exercises his censorship, he expects to get away with misrepresenting his own record there. His contentious interventions had nothing to do with ‘rules about evidence’ but with ideological conformity. Nobody has ever been muzzled or excluded there for being loose with evidence, nor for violating general rules of conduct (such as calling dissenting fellow list members ‘the scum of the earth’), as long as the offender belonged to the right ideological camp, i.e. the anti-Hindu side. And some contributions have been suppressed precisely because they did contain evidence, but of the ideologically unwelcome kind. However, we must welcome Deepak's honest admission that his own conduct is an instance of ‘intolerance’.

“That he adds an improvised justification for his intolerance of free debate, merely follows the pattern heard after every act of censorship. Hitler and Stalin were never short of reasons to deny freedom of speech to dissenters and other spoilsports of their utopian schemes. After the violent reactions to the Danish Mohammed cartoons, the leading American editorialists and all members of an American Academy of Religion panel discussing the incident came up with a variation on: "Of course freedom of expression is dear to us, BUT..." No ifs and buts on such a fundamental principle, please.

“In this case, it is particularly misplaced for Deepak to invoke academic standards as justifying censorship. In the most conspicuous recent incidents involving book-banning and Hinduism, the impression of a hot-headed Hindu opposition against objective scholarship has been created in the media, when the objection against the contentious publications was precisely that they were unobjective and academically sub-standard. Courtright's Freudian claims about Ganesha betray gross ignorance about Ganesha's many literary appearances in roles different from the stereotype on which he bases his theory. Wendy Doniger's book is not malicious, as Hindu critics have alleged, but it is flippant and full of inaccuracies, apparently because the author just doesn't take her subject seriously. As Vishal has briefly argued here, Ramanujan's essay too is substandard because its central claim simply conflicts with the data. But that is no reason to ban it, of course. Demands for censorship allow partisan writers to deflect attention from the contents of their publications and to pose as martyrs. They allow the Deepak Sarmas of this world to misrepresent the debate as one between scholarship and fanaticism, when in fact it is one between partisan writing and proper scholarship. Instead of clamouring for censorship, Hindus should publish and publicize well-prepared rebuttals. Open debate, as Deepak has correctly affirmed, is the Hindu way.”

A certain Sandalwood reminded us of some Hindu American Foundation remarks on the previous RISA debate:

"In the early moments of the RISA debate, an earnest minority of scholars courageously posted opinions that compelled their fellow intellectuals to understand the dimensions of the debate beyond the clear damage to the Hindu psyche — they realized the need to begin a meta analysis of what Dr. Courtright had elicited. Behold the audacity of Antonio de Nicolas, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at SUNY-Stony Brook (Stony Brook, New York, U.S.A), who resolutely declared, ‘A scholar who does not know how to present other cultures by their own criteria should not be allowed to teach those cultures. His freedom of speech is not guaranteed by his ignorance.’ Perhaps, most disturbing was the failure of the moderator of the RISA listserv, Deepak Sarma (Lecturer of Religious Studies at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A.), to prevent such outrages while censuring Dr. de Nicolas for voicing his support for Hindu sensibilities."

In Vishal Agarwal’s posts on 2 to 5 December was also this comment on Deepak Sarma’s censorship:

“Deepak,

“In your articles, you have continuously harped on the diversity of Hinduism as if your critics do not celebrate the same. What you and your ilk do not understand is the fact that in most courses, the student population has zero or very little background in Hindu traditions. It makes zero pedagogical sense to start these classes on the note – ‘OK, you have taken a class on Hinduism. But let me tell you that Hinduism does not exist. It is just a modern construct. And its internal diversity makes it impossible to be even classified as a religion.’ The sentences within quotes are repeated ad-nauseum to us Hindus, nay, parroted by ignorant people posing as scholars. They reflect merely a lack of imagination or a lack of academic brilliance or a lack of above average intelligence - and are just a toeing of the party-line you and your ilk.

“The reader of these forums will recall that you have ridiculed the Sunday schools for teaching a fake version of Hinduism that is make believe because it does not capture a diversity. Now, I actually help run a Sunday school with 260 kids, and have taught in various other Sunday schools (in addition to teaching in elementary, middle and high schools, or addressing interfaith adult forums all over) for over six years. Perhaps, I have done like 250 or more lectures on Hinduism and India. We teach the Ramayana to grade II-III students. (contd...)

“Those who defend the prescription of his essay at DU should show their respect for the same in RISA-L, where dissenting scholars are summarily expelled without a chance to defend themselves. The archives are similarly hidden from public view, so much for open-mindedness.

“If you want to celebrate diversity, first practice what you preach on the RISA-L that you manage! Instead of protecting the old boys' club brigade, treat dissenters fairly. (…) Get out of your own Hinduphobia that has resulted in your congitive dissonance. Instead of relying upon leftist and Hinduphobic tropes of Indologists, use your own prajna.”

A certain Rao123 wrote in (3-12):

“It is good that Prof. Sarma has begun to write for the Huffington Post, and now that he is willing to share his thoughts about matters Hindu and Hinduism he should have the courage of his convictions to respond to readers who have challenged both his command over the Shâstras as well as his ability to think critically through modern political, social, and religious issues confronting India. That he has not bothered to respond to the comments by Mr. Vishal Agarwal and Dr. Koenraad Elst while taking the time to respond to some little asides shows that he has neither the courage of his convictions nor is he the expert that he claims to be. (…) With all his parroting about a single stanza from Madhwacharya, I wonder if Prof. Sarma is not snared by the paradox of that parroting: he is steadfastly refusing to engage Prof. Elst and Mr. Agarwal, and by doing so he is not doing what Madhwa did -- engage the critics and the ‘moha-shastra-vadins’!”

Deepak Sarma’s reputation for exercising censorship on behalf of the anti-Hindu brigade is well-established. I was at first warned about him but refused to believe my US-based contacts. I should have known better, and now I do.

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