Sick with “identity”

 

On 14 November 2012, Prof. Deepak Sarma posted an article on Huffington Post, titled “White Hindu converts: mimicry or mockery?” In that blog, he defines Hindus in America as an ethnic group animated by a memory of the colonized condition. It should, he argues, mistrust attempts by white Americans to convert to their religion. These whites only mimic “their imaginary (and often Orientalist) archetypal ‘Hindu’ in order to reverse-assimilate, to deny their colonial histories, to (futilely) color their lives, and, paradoxically, to be marginalized”.

Before we can begin discussing this thesis, we note that one word already stands out: “Orientalist”. Indeed, Sarma is one of those Hindus who take Edward Said’s theory of “Orientalism” seriously, even to the point of making their own whole work a footnote to Said’s magnum opus. But Said’s influential book has been refuted as both riddled with factual errors and being in essence a grand conspiracy theory. It is plainly shameful for an academic to be seen in Said’s company and to use the neutral term “Orientalism” in Said’s pejorative sense. But for a Muslim, at least, it is a form of championing his own cause: he merely quotes a Dhimmi (a self-humiliating “tolerated” non-Muslim, for that is what the Palestinian Christian Said was), a defender of Islamic interests, who found a new way of overruling all the scientific research that Western scholars (a.k.a. Orientalists) had done on Islam. But for a Hindu, it is sheer buffoonery to treat Said as a scholarly authority. It seems that Sarma never grew up to doubt the pious lies he was taught in school.

 

Colonialism

Now, to come to Sarma’s own thesis: we find that he does not mention the contents of Hindu tradition, eventhough therein lies the only interest that Hinduism has for its converts. Most white converts by far don’t care to join Hindu society as such, and know little about mundane Hindu reality. They only know their guru, maybe his ashram in India, and some pretty ancient Hindu scriptures. That is their limited view of Hinduism, and that is what some convert to it. In this, most of them have no consciousness at all about colonial history, known to our generation only through the history books. It is simply not true that they do it because they want to “identify with the subaltern group and can transform from the oppressor to the oppressed, from the colonizer to the colonized”. Oppression is not what people think about when they think of India, which has been independent for as long as 95% of the Indians can remember. Thus, if India suffers from widespread corruption, it was not inflicted by or inherited from the British, but is the doing of its own citizens, and everybody knows it. In his university’s ivory tower, Sarma may obsess over long-gone colonialism, but most people don’t.

Moreover, while for British youngsters colonial India is a dim reality they once heard of from their grandparents, for Americans it was never a reality at all, unless you mean that they opposed it. Like the Indians, the Americans saw themselves as having acquired their freedom from British colonialism. It was American journalists who gave a global platform to Mahatma Gandhi and cheered for his struggle against colonialism. I will not go into the complex situation of the continental Europeans, who were no party to India’s colonization but took it for granted (and of whose countries some gave independence to their colonies under American pressure), or to the Irish, who took part in the British conquest of India all while their own homeland was in a colonized condition for far longer than India. At any rate, it is bad history to identify American whites with colonialism. It may have escaped the racially-obsessed Prof. Sarma’s attention, but there were white anti-colonialists too.

 

Tribal conversions

The professor is badly informed when he claims: “Surely such an imagined transformation is only available to those who are privileged in the first place.” Can only “privileged” whites make a conversion across Christian/Dharmic boundaries? Not at all: a majority of Indian Christians consist of people from an underprivileged Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe background. That is the comparison which this subject calls for: if there are American “whites” (in fact, blacks too) who convert to Hinduism, there are many more Hindus (or whatever you want to call them; let us say “Indian religionists”) who have converted to Christianity. And against the hurdles which Deepak Sarma wants to throw in the way of Western would-be converts to Hinduism, brown converts are courted by and welcomed with open arms into Christianity. In fact, he need not even go back to his homeland to see this phenomenon: in America itself, many second-generation Hindus are eagerly converted by Evangelical Christians. Some of the most successful politicians of Indian descent are in this case.   

Indeed, we see a strange alliance emerge. While American Christians have no option but to tolerate the conversion of some of their members to Hinduism, they do try to prevent this development. Indeed, after the seeming elopement of the children of Christian parents with Hindu gurus (or with Japanese Zen Buddhism, or with secular Leftism) in the 60s and 70s, the American Churches devised strategies to keep or to win back their flock, strategies which have been copied in other Christian countries. Now, they get the objective support of a born Brahmin who tries to limit entry to Hinduism to native Hindus, or at least to non-white people.

This is in fact a new form of an old phenomenon: Brahmins trying to limit the entry to Hinduism. A number of times, Hindu rulers have tried to reconvert populations that had gone over to Islam under duress or social pressure, but Brahmins prevented them. I am not in favour of the game of blaming the Brahmin caste, but here they really have committed an error which Deepak Sarma is now repeating.

 

Expansive Hinduism

Hinduism, as Sarma’s aged colleague Prof. Arvind Sharma has shown, was a missionary religion for very long. Indeed, this is how Vedic tradition spread from the Northwest of the Subcontinent: tribes in South and East India collectively joined, embraced the Hindu epics, employed Brahmin priests whom they welcomed and allowed to settle, and generally added Hindu culture to their own tribal culture, which largely survived in Hindu form.  A difference with Christianity was that it did not require its newcomers to abjure any past religion. Most of the tribe’s ancestral tradition persisted under the aegis of Hinduism.

Another difference was that it was mostly tribes as a whole that joined Hinduism, while Christianity converted individuals. Sometimes these were followed by their families or communities, sometimes not. Sometimes this conversion split communities down the middle and pitted converts against non-converts – the very reason Mahatma Gandhi and many other Hindus have given to oppose conversions. Differences of “identity” were taken for granted, tribal life in the forests of Andhra was very different from the Vedic cattle-raisers’ life on the plains of Haryana or the urban life in the West-Panjabi town of Harappa; but Hinduism took all those differences along in its capacious bosom, just as it can give a place to white citizens of Los Angeles along with sun-tanned whites of Jammu or the dark brown natives of Chennai.

A third difference is that ancestral religions were followed as a matter of tradition, because people had learned it from their parents and the elders of the tribe, whereas many (though not all) conversions to Christianity took place because the converts were convinced of the truth of their newfound belief system. In the case of Indian tribes adopting Vedicism/Brahminism, this same consideration may have played a role for a certain elite though not for the masses, but in the case of Christianity it is really typical. It is ironic that a religion of which the core doctrines (e.g. mortality as a consequence of primeval sin; Jesus as son of God; his resurrection; its power to free man from sin and from mortality) are demonstrably untrue, put such an emphasis on its truth claim. This may be explained by the cultural milieu in which it came into being, the Hellenistic emphasis on truth claims, but that circumstance does not yet make the beliefs true. However, many people were convinced they were, and therefore converted.

Most Western converts to Hinduism follow the Christian model of conversion at least in this second and third respects. They convert as individuals, not collectively (though when you look at life in Ashrams, they end up intermarrying far more with each other than with native Hindus, thus forming a separate caste of Western Hindus); and they become Hindu because they believe the core doctrines of Hinduism are true. Prof. Sarma’s considerations of colonialism, identity or privilege don’t figure in this process at all.

 

Campus dogmas

American universities are deeply sick with a hyperfocus on sociological issues, most of all on “identity”. Last month I attended the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion, a forum which ought to focus on higher issues transcending the mundane problems of communal “identity”. But instead, the majority of papers dealt, explicitly or implicitly, with these question of identity. At least I met one (non-academic) Hindu scholar who soberly remarked that identity is just there, that it is a coincidental starting-point from which you embark on more engaging projects such as religion. But in Deepak Sarma we have an academic who, instead of playing the game while at work but laughing at it when at home, takes the new dogma seriously. He really believes in the salvific power of “identity”. He really thinks of himself as “colonized”, though he has never lived through the colonial period in his homeland, nor in America. By contrast, the question of the truth of Hinduism does not enter his mind (or at least his article) at all, even when it is all-important to the people he lambasts, the white converts.

Sarma does have a point where he observes that some Western converts “claim to be more ‘authentic’ than Diaspora Hindus”. Yes, and this is even more remarkable when you realize that most converts don’t know of the many inter-Hindu discussions where Hindus complain about their (or each other’s) decadence. Hindu society in India and even more in America does have its problems, and converts are free from that particular history. Indeed, they often totally ignorant of it. Thus, many of them are totally innocent of how Hinduism in its homeland is besieged by certain movements, including the Hindu-born secularists, and how the Hindus they meet are to various extents trying to live up to the standards set by their enemies (e.g. those Hindus who try to prove to the Christian missionaries, but firstly to each other, that Hinduism is monotheistic). They only know the ideal Hinduism laid down in ancient books such as the Upanishads or the Yoga Sutra, and judge the native Hindus they meet by this yardstick.

They should not do this, they should keep in mind a fundamental humility and willingness to learn. Whatever the situation of these diasporic Hindus, and whatever the compromises with modern society they have had to make, both in their homeland and in their country of settlement, they have lived the really existing Hinduism all their lives, and converts could learn a few things from them. But the Western converts’ attitude is understandable (not justifiable) when you compare it with the Western Communists of yore who met people from the countries where the really existing Communism was in power: they were disappointed at the corruption in the Soviet Union, the conformism of the Chinese, or the backwardness of North Korea. This reality fell short of the Communism of their dreams, or rather, the Communism of the textbooks. They wanted the Communism as it should have been, and now they want the Hinduism of the textbooks, as it should have been. Of course most real Hindus don’t live up to the standards of a Yajnavalkya or a Patanjali; but converts of whatever colour are inspired by Yajnavalkya or Patanjali and want to be like them, not like Deepak Sarma.

 

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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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