Appropriation of texts and traditions
- Johannes Bronkhorst: “There are no ancient texts that “belong” in any essential sense to the tradition that identifies with it. The Mahabharata “belongs” as little to modern Hindus as the Bible “belongs” to modern Christians. Historical scholarship cannot be steered by modern groups that have appropriated the texts they are studying.”
- The abrahamist scaffolding may be nearly impossible to completely overcome. Example: Mark Dyzchowski (TW1)
The charge of native neglect
- Aka White-man’s burden to “save” Indian/ hindu studies.
- Plenty of Indians agree that the claim that “Value of knowledge by Indians is zero or close to zero.” is false. The life of every practicing hindu still places high value on knowledge of traditional hindu knowledge (including performance arts, ritual, music, stories, philosophies).
- Sanskrit revitalization is an example of a major grassroots movement in this direction.
- There are plenty of people who attain privately mastery of shAstra and kAvya solely due to their love of those topics and a strong desire to put what they see into practice, not to show how smart they are. These are nourished within private circles centered around local masters in the topic (R Ganesh and his fellow avadhAnin-s jump to mind as an example). This is how it ought to be, and it is healthy. A far cry from the academic knowledge industry. A supposed scholar of kAvya who cannot and has not composed a kAvya is a fraud. Not worth a cent, let alone millions of dollars.
- It is a continuation of “white man’s burden” that many Indologits wants to provide the opposite impression (that Indians commonly think that the value of such knowledge is close to zero).
- What these aliens consider “vitally important” (often for the purpose of their livelihood, though hypocritically masked in terms of grander purposes) is not necessarily that important to hindus.
- If Indian government and education system does not value such knowledge, it is precisely because of the value system that Sheldon represents - where “secularism” (a post-christian christian virtue which is meaningless and even poisonous for pagans) and “study without practice” (the dry end of the dry-scholar/ practitioner/practitioner-scholar spectrum) reign supreme.
- While Indian education system has its problems, there are quite a few Sanskrit universities and institutions, where traditional knowledge systems are still studied.