“I increasingly see “Indology” as a Western (ie Christendom’s) defense against the impact of Indian thought which was being felt in late 18th-early 19th c.” - Edward Butler.
Context
- The purpose of this list is to note the reasons why Hindus must engage with Western Indology with great caution.
- AIDS tells us that a compromised immune system can be a fatal liability.
General references
- See revulsion sections below.
- Perspective from non-Indian hindu-s - USA15.
- 2015 petition listing many problems hindus have with Indological discourse here.
- Anti-hindu academics list here.
Summaries
Vishva Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee 2019
- Source for the below here.
Indology failed not from the perspective of Indian tradition, which has continued largely unaffected. Neither did it fail from the perspective of Sanskrit, which produced a wealth of literature, which anyone today can read and which will exist long after the last Indologist.
Indology failed from the perspective of the claims it itself asserted: science, university discipline, humanities, European tradition, and history.
- (1) Indology is not a science; neither did Indologists have any clue of what “science” is.
- (3) Indology failed to contribute to the humanities, especially if we regard the cultivation of aesthetic sensibility, broad-mindedness, openness to other cultures, humility, ethics, etc. as the goal of humanities education.
- (4) Most Indologists are ignorant of broad movements in European intellectual history and philosophy; they keep telling themselves they are important and European, but this posture only works in front of Indians.
- (5) Indologists are ignorant of their own history: for all that they propagate the idea of Indology as a “historical-critical” discipline, they failed to engage in either historical self-reflection or self-critique. Ultimately, this is the real reason Indology failed as evinced by the rapid closure of departments.
- (2) No one at German universities recognizes Indology; despite belaboring the parallel with classical philology, Indologists are figures of ridicule to classicists.
Machine to presume authority on hinduism
- From SW15: " It is not so much Malhotra, the scholar, who is worrisome to them as Malhotra, the strategist. Among the Hindus, he appears to be the first who has approached the Western academy as a knowledge-producing ‘industry.’ At least this is what I have gathered from his speeches and writings. Just like any company which builds and markets a product, the Western academy is in the business of generating and selling certain narratives. The knowledge of other cultures is collected as “raw data” from its native informants who subsequently do not play much of a role in its interpretation. This data is then subjected to hermeneutical processes based entirely on Western theories. The end result undergoes critical review processes and is packaged with notes, cross-references, bibliographies, the whole she-bang, to produce a ‘representation’ which is then admitted as authoritative knowledge on the particular subject both in the West and tragically in the host country as well."
- One must ask oneself how much one’s welfare coincides with theirs.
Disparagement of Hindu accomplishments
- Examples from history of mathematics resulting in dismissal, derision: rAma_pi_16, rAma15.
Pending investigations
- Role in Narendra Modi US visa denial.
- Political science professor Dr. Sumit Ganguly was prominently involved