- Caren Dreyer called for blacklisting shrI Kutumba Sastry because he signed the anti-Pollock petition (IN16)
- “Dear all, isnt it time for an alphabetical blacklist to be regularly updated in order not to invite the wrong persons financed by public funds “.
- Attacks on Rajiv Malhotra, who, despite some defective scholarship, has written books that attempted to spur hindu resistance and awareness towards foreign (academic/ evangelical/ political) subversion.
- 2015 attempt to spur withdrawal of Rajiv Malhotra’s books from the market due to overblown plagiarism charges (a few missing and mistaken attributions). [SW15]
- “he amply quoted him in so many words, though a few times, for the flow of the narrative, he merely rephrased the theses of this much-quoted author. By that standard, most papers contain plagiarism; but what passes unnoticed elsewhere becomes a scandal when done by a self-identifying Hindu. Yet, numerous Indologists started a holier-than-thou tirade against the “plagiarism”, a comical drama to watch. Malhotra then walked the extra mile writing Nicholson out of his narrative and quoting original sources instead (thereby incidentally showing the amount of plagiarism that Nicholson himself had committed, though no Indologist ever remarked on that). But this inconvenient development was given the silent treatment, and Truschke still presupposes that there ever was a substantive “plagiarism” case against Malhotra, and by extension against the whole “Hindu Right”. … By contrast, Malhotra, by personalizing his argument into specific dissections of the work of leading scholars such as Wendy Doniger, Sheldon Pollock or Anantanand Rambachan, has earned a session at the annual conference of the trend-setting American Academy of Religion. On Indological discussion forums, his input is frequently mentioned, though the academics mostly keep up their airs of pooh-poohing that interloper, in a bid to justify their ignoring his actual critique of their own work.” [KE16]
- Petition against the books was started by Jesse Knuston, a Sanskrit professor and collaborator with Sheldon Pollock [C15, N], with inputs from Richard Fox Young, (Christian seminary professor and collaborator with John Dayal) and Ananya Vajpeyi. The movement drew support from with ad-hominem attacks by Robert Goldman as well (BVP, IMG).
- 2015 attempt to spur withdrawal of Rajiv Malhotra’s books from the market due to overblown plagiarism charges (a few missing and mistaken attributions). [SW15]
- Attacks on Koenraad Elst
- 2012 expulsion of Koenraad Elst from the RISA mailing list KE12
- Condoning distribution of leaflets against him. (Prof. Michael Witzel (7-2-2003) and Prof. Robert Zydenbos (10-2-2003) on the secretive Scholarly Services list - KE12)
- In other threads (references to be added), Koenraad Elst has described the professional cost of his pro-hindu stance.
- “In the 90s I have worked a lot on Islamic history, I had studied Persian and made good use of it.. And incidentally, two of my MA diplomas include courses on historical method. … But I admit, he is far better at lobbying and belongs to a circuit that has very successfully blocked my access to the academy. When you have lost the battle on contents, at least you may win on the institutional front… Most of them (my papers) are (published in academic journals). But the question is typical for people who are status-conscious raher than knowledge-conscious. As you should know by now, the secularist camp has done all in its power to deny me academic employment or avenues of publication.” - In response to a certain Conrad Barwa who resorted to name-calling, and questioning his scholarly credentials.
- “A recent example. In 2014, I read a paper on the Rg-Vedic seer Vasishtha and his relative divinization in a panel on “divinization” at the European Conference for South Asia Studies in Zürich. My paper was enthusiastically received, also by the panel’s organizers when I sent in the final version for publication. First, they accepted it, but then, I received an embarrassed e-mail from the organizers stating that they could not include my paper, without any reason given. Upon my enquiring, the half-line reply said that it did not fit their project. In all its insignificance, this still managed to be a blatant lie, and their earlier acceptance confirmed that this could not have been the reason. But some higher up had warned them that I am to be treated as excluded, just like on many other occasions.” [PR]
- Stopping Subramanian Swamy
- Stopping Harvard courses in 2011 (BBC11), where a comparative religions professor Diana Eck was prominently involved.
Funding the journals and institutes
- Dharma Civilization Fund’s attempt in 2015 to fund UCI chairs to study Hindusim manned by “scholar practitioners” was thwarted. [DCF response 1, Inside Higher Ed, ]