The Groan: Loss of Scholarship and High Drama in "South Asian" Studies -- Part II
Yvette C. Rosser

Continued from The Groan: Loss of Scholarship and High Drama in "South Asian" Studies– Part I

I strove in my messages to promote an alternative, less essentialized and exoticized view of Indian Studies. I also at times sent in messages that were somewhat provocative, intentionally presenting two sides of controversial issues. Since there was a lot of resistance on RISA to certain topics, at times I would send in reports I found of interest, curious as to their reception. Ultimately, it was unnecessary for me to induce examples of anti-Hindu and anti-Indian attitudes -- they were the norm.

I will draw directly from numerous email messages sent from well-respected scholars, tenured big names in the field, with many publications to their fame. Among many flippant and critical emails that were sent in through the months during which I was a member of the group, there came in the summer of 2002, a torrent of messages from scholars warning their colleagues on the RISA list that the organizers and participants at two recent conferences, WAVES (World Association of Vedic Studies) and the Indic Colloquium, sponsored by the Infinity Foundation, were promoting racist, triumphal, dangerously nationalistic views of India and the Vedas -- perhaps even leading to the murder of minorities.

It was argued by several professors that the study of Hinduism was being hijacked by Hindus. Well over a dozen messages of this type were submitted, though there were several scholars who dared to say that the WAVES conference had been a positive experience. Those brave scholars were condemned for cavorting with Hindu fundamentalists and were effectively silenced. When I finally waded in, after reading such hate mail for several weeks, it didn't take me long to be expelled from the list due to my efforts to point out the blatant and mutually agreed upon bias about this topic. These emails, which are part of the on-going 'RISA-LILA' are discussed in this essay. I will move through the collection of anti-Hindu RISA threads chronologically, beginning from when I first joined this esteemed group of specialists of Religions in South Asia. However, the files of RISA are public and as far back as its inception, there have been flurries of anti-Indian attitudes.

When I joined RISA-l early in 2001 there was a fascinating debate about the mistranslations and exoticism found in Kali's Child, a sensationalist homoerotic biography of the life of the Indian saint Ramakrishna written by Jeffrey Kripal. I rarely contributed any comments, but read over the digests with interest. Additionally, there were announcements of conferences and calls for papers passed along by colleagues. Most messages were asking for help with translations of certain Sanskrit or Brajbhasha verses or about malaria prevention medication. There were useful discussions about which translations of the Gita were the best to use in Introduction to Hinduism classes, and requests for suggestions about articles and films -- the usual sorts of discussions typical on such scholarly e-groups. Quite an interesting and prolonged thread ensued when one scholar, Linda Hess wrote in and asked for information “about the darker side of [Krishna's] play -- its anarchic, amoral character?” She asked her colleagues on RISA, “Has anyone written about the dark side of lila, or what lila has to do, if anything with human behavior?” This was a very popular thread, titled “Lila”, which then continued under another equally popular thread titled, “Sexuality in Hinduism”. According to the vast number of suggested bibliographic references, much has obviously been written concerning erotic deviance and homosexuality in Hinduism. There were literally dozens of contributions to the threads about sexual deviance and erotic symbolism in Hinduism.

Then came the shocking experience of September 11 and RISA as with many cultural and intellectual e-groups, was silent for a few days. When the email traffic again picked up, after a few heartbreaking stabs at expressing disbelief and sorrow, RISA-l soon became a resource for web pages to help understand Islam and there were numerous messages about how to more effectively teach about Islam and how to prevent xenophobia. There were several noble submissions particularly concerning the angst felt by professors about the duty of scholars in such a crisis. There was even a push to organize a petition to ask President Bush not to bomb Afghanistan into the stone age. This was, as far as I had noticed in over six months of membership, the first discussion of Islam on the RISA list, though as the title of the e-group implies, it is dedicated to the Religions in South Asia of which Islam is an integral part.

Along with tips about how to help students understand Islam, as so many talking heads on the television were saying in the aftermath of 9/11, the RISA list sought to understand why “Islam means peace”. There were no messages critical of fundamentalist Jihadi Islam and the issue was treated with kid gloves. One perceptive scholar asked why, if RISA was so eager to criticize fundamentalists in other contexts, have there been no critical analyses of the Islamic militants who perpetrated the worst terrorist act in history? No one responded to that comment.

A week or two later, when details of 9/11 were finally aired, the discussion ensued in the form of an argument about the guilt of America. There was a debate about whether because of our often inconsistent foreign policy, Americans were, so to speak, asking for it. There was a great difference of opinion on this and the topic got rather heated and the moderator put an end to it. Besides this, there were amazingly few messages about September 11th, just a dozen or so, and those mainly focused on trying to understand Islam and helping students not to hate Muslims -- offering resources to mitigate xenophobia. Most had links to web pages with positive discussions of Islam.

But as a few weeks passed, peppered among these rather muted responses to the tragedy of 9/11, another thread appeared in mid-October titled “Hindu Militants Vandalize Taj”. Over the course of several days there were at least thirteen messages contributed to that thread. On this scholarly list that deals with Religions in South Asia there were more messages condemning and deploring the supposed hooliganism of rowdies somehow associated with the BJP at a celebration at the Taj Mahal, than there were messages critical of Islamic militants who murdered thousands of civilians on 9/11.

The more that I followed the RISA-list the more it seemed as if it should be called RISA-LILA. Both of these topics -- graffiti on the Taj Mahal and the collapse of the twin WTC towers -- drifted off the RISA radar screen. The apologists, sympathetic philosophers sought to understand and explain why eighteen Islamic militants would fly airplanes full of people into buildings, killing thousands. These few emails were laced together with a discussion thread condemning the crowd of rowdies at the Taj Mahal. who it turned out did not vandalize the building and just participated in a little rambunctious behavior. Most noticeable was the disparity in the responses to these two greatly different events. RISA scholars found plenty of time and emotion to criticize 'Hindu Militants' who supposedly vandalized the Taj. But they did not care or dare to look into the implications of 9/11 with the same critical eye. A little urine on the Taj surely is not as serious as the events of 9/11, but it got more bandwidth on RISA-l.

After the elections in Bangladesh and the violent repercussions suffered by the Hindu minority, I ventured to send a post to the group, including an urgent message from the HRCB (Human Rights Commission Bangladesh) with their URL. I also forwarded a request for a petition to protest the atrocities. I assumed that, considering RISA-l's penchant for organizing petitions, and their concern about the plight of distressed peoples in South Asia, this topic would immediately be taken up very seriously. My initial post on the ethnic cleansing that was taking place in Bangladesh was sent in on October 11, only a week after the Bangladeshi elections. No one responded. Shortly thereafter, I forwarded another message from the HRCB, begging the international community to bring this carnage of the Hindu and Christian minorities in Bangladesh to the attention of the world. Still not a peep from RISA members. Their concern about Hindus did not seem to awaken when thousands were being systematically raped and tortured, and driven from their homes by government sponsored gangs in Bangladesh. Ironically, there was plenty of outrage on RISA when a few Hindu teenagers pee-peed on the steps of the Taj Mahal.

By now, after only a few months of membership I was beginning to wonder about the purpose of the RISA-list. It seemed to be a place to share lurid and negative details about sordid little verses dug from some obscure Hindu sources and reinterpreted through a paradigmatic mishmash of post-meta-theoretical homoerotic-hermeneutics. I had remained a passive member lurking on the RISA-list, quietly enduring the occasional splat of emails that as far as I could see hit way off the mark and mocked what was the subject of study, turning the Hindu into the absurd other. Because of the particular slant on RISA, I wondered how they would respond to a controversial issue such as the selection of V.S. Naipaul as the Nobel Prize winner.

When Naipaul won, I took the opportunity to write a detailed email about some of the more notoriously contentious aspects of his work, especially in the context of 9/11. I intentionally fill the message with controversies, in hopes of starting a thread about some of the issues that seemed to have been avoided through the last month. My message about Naipaul's prize was posted to RISA on October 11. There was never a reply, no response, no one commented. I reproduce that email message below. I found it strange that the controversies I raised did not warrant a reply from scholars busy defending Islamic terrorists who blew up large buildings and condemning Hindu rowdies who did a little eve-teasing in Agra.

Subject: Naipaul wins Nobel Prize in Literature

I was quite amazed when I heard early this morning that V.S. Naipaul had won the Nobel Prize in Literature. My first thought was that in the context of '9/11', Naipaul's work is very, very controversial. The Nobel Prize, especially the Literature and the Peace Prizes, though awarded for merit, always seem to be colored by some kind of political implications. Even when His Holiness the Dalai Lama won, I could not help but see it as a slap in the face of the People's Republic of China, who was courting the West, generating huge financial investments.... But the Nobel Committee, in that milieu, held up China's Tibetan atrocities for the world to see. In that way, I think that V.S. Naipaul's Nobel prize is also situated within a geo-political message of great contemporary concern, especially post 9/11. Much like it was a controversial moment to give the Peace Prize to His Holiness the Dalai Lama just when China was trying to show a "liberal" face to the world, so Naipaul's prize may also be intended to send a message to the world in the fall of 2001.

Naipaul has involved himself willingly in many of India's recent controversies. He alienated any of his potential readership among the Indian Left when he came out in support of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992; and he supported the nuclear tests in 1998.

An Area of Darkness written in 1964 after his first trip to his father's ancestral land was more an expression of his delusion when he found in India only dirt and disease. In India: A Wounded Civilization, 1977, he wrote about India as a land of Hindus who had been injured by not only British colonialism but also by Islamic conquests, which he called India's "dark ages". Many travels and many years later, Naipaul's book India: A Million Mutinies Now, 1990, brought him back to India. He admitted that his earlier treatments of India, had been colored by the "neurosis" of a "fearful traveler" who saw "only the surface of things". His positive treatments of Hindu Revivalism and India's spiritual and intellectual regeneration, was alarming to some readers. When he was accused of being too optimistic about modern India, and losing his earlier bitter critique, he replied, "That assumes, 'Here is India being the same old India, and it's the writer who has changed. India itself has gone along on its own messy way, in sloth and ignorance, and the writer now adores sloth and ignorance...' It's not like that. The world changes."

Though critics were negative about his praise of Hindu culture -- his loss of his earlier biting critiques of India, the reactions to his books about Islamic fundamentalism criticized him for being too harsh on his subjects. Among the Believers, 1981, and Beyond Belief, 1998, are accounts of his travels through non-Arabic Muslim countries. A New York Times reviewer thought that Among the Believers was a "vitriolic tour [that] evinces an inherent antipathy to the religion of Islam so naked and severe that a book taking a comparable view of Christianity or Judaism would have been hard put to find a publisher in the United States". Edward Said says of Beyond Belief that it is an "intellectual catastrophe. He thinks Islam is the worst disaster that ever happened to India, and the book reveals a pathology. It's hard to believe any rational person would attack an entire culture on that scale."

The question is, at this point in history, given the "War on Terrorism", why did the Nobel Committee award Mr. Naipaul the Literature Prize, considering his controversial stand on the sensitive issue of Islamic fundamentalism? Fascinating.

I see the political implications of the Nobel Committee's choice as two fold. First in the context of Naipaul's treatment of Islam. I can't but speculate that the Nobel Committee must have taken his work on Islam into consideration... bringing his critiques to a broader audience at this time reveals an underlying imperative to deconstruct some aspects of fundamentalist Islam. What many have called his anti-Muslim bias, makes his selection all the more surprising. Secondly, I see it in terms of India, and his positive treatment of Hindu-Revivalism and the sympathy he has for indigenization of historiography, or as the announcement from the Nobel Committee stated, his ability "to see the presence of suppressed histories." His recent treatments of India highlight the "collapse of the old colonial ruling culture" and he advocates the imperative that India must throw off vestiges of exploitation, whether it is economic and political colonialism or religious or cultural imperialism. So, given that India is often side-lined diplomatically, especially since 9/11 with the USA's re-embracement of Pakistan, and in light of the fact that any decisions made by the ruling BJP government are automatically criticized by most Western commentators and academics as being saffron (a.k.a. "fascist"!), Naipaul's position vis-à-vis India and particularly Hindu Revivalism are also very controversial.

Though I left the door wide open for the possibility of an interesting discussion, no one, not one scholar on the RISA list responded. I suppose that might have something to do with that politically correct groan I heard some months later, described above, at a lecture given by Wendy Doniger. That groan, which was obviously imbibed by those students from these same scholars of South Asian Studies who had nothing to say about Naipaul's controversial Nobel prize.

In general, I was too busy to regularly read RISA, which I received in the digest form. At times I glanced at the topics, but usually just saved the messages in a mailbox. Then in January 2002, about a year after I had joined the group, a discussion came up about “Historical instances of Hindu Muslim cooperation” which I followed closely and found of interest for my own research. After some time, I submitted the following contribution. And, as before, no one, not one member of the RISA list responded to my comments, though my suggestions for a reevaluation of Muslims in India, is sorely in need of attention. RISA members didn't pay a lot of attention to the Religions in South Asia other than the sensational aspects of Hinduism.

Date: January 12, 2002
Subject: Historical instances of Hindu Muslim cooperation

With all the media hungama and rhetorical tamasha over fundamentalists and Al-Qaeda jihadis, it is important to stress that the vast majority of Indian Muslims are far more liberal and progressive than they are given credit for. I would venture to say, more liberal than their Pakistani counterparts. Unfortunately, their voices are seldom heard.

Without a doubt, there are tens of millions of Indian Muslims who do not subscribe to the warped fundamentalist tirades of the likes of Shahi Imam Bukhari, crying from the steps of the Jama Masjid in the Spring of 2000, that he is a Talibani... when he supported the destruction of ancient statues of Buddha in Bamiyan. Or in 1999, during the "war-like situation in Kargil" he, the Shahi Imam from Delhi, India, said that he was a Pakistani.... that he could not pray for the success of India's jawans (soldiers) because they were fighting the Ummah. Yet, horribly, he and his ilk, are the mouthpiece of Indian Muslims as represented in the Western media and front-page news in Indian dailies. There is scant room for liberal Muslim voices when the anti-nationalists have monopolized the public address systems of the mosques in the major cities.

The reality is that crores of Indian Muslims love their country and would never dream of supporting Pakistan or Osama bin Laden -- and they are sick and tired and embarrassed by the likes of Syed Bukhari. Perhaps India should use some Hajj funds and send the Shahi Imam to someplace like Northern Sudan, where he will feel more at home and be unable to use his pulpit to blacken the faces of his co-religionists in India. You may have seen the televised insult he gave to Shabana Azmi to whom he refused to speak, calling her a nauchwali (a dancing girl).

I would predict that the results of a demographic study of Indian Muslims in 2002 might be surprising to those inclined to suspect them of fundamentalist tendencies and lack of nationalism. Such data validating the patriotism of Indian Muslims could lessen communal tensions, and, most importantly, would embolden Indian Muslims to stand up to the fundamentalists who have grabbed the limelight.

I would venture to say that most Indian Muslims support Article 144 (Uniform Civil Code) so that all Indian citizens could live under the same laws. If given a chance, most Indian Muslims -- not the fundamentalists, but the majority of Indian Muslims -- would in all likelihood like to distance themselves from a history that destroyed the temples and symbols of Indian civilization. Just as Americans are critical of their ancestors who enslaved millions of Africans for hundreds of year, likewise, there are innumerable Indian Muslims who are eager to approach the contemporary history and culture of India from a radically different perspective than is usually expected. Modern Muslims in India are fully capable of embracing a sophisticated view of the past, without the misguided religious compulsion to glamorize temple desecration, or the imperatives of a politically correct Marxist teleology, and other such predetermined paradigms.

It is a shame that the voices of progressive Indian Muslims are not heard in India or internationally. In both academic and media treatments here in the USA, what we get are the sensationalist messages of Shahabuddin and Imam Bukhari -- as if they were representative of the majority of Indian Muslims! These anti-national tirades are then translated through the juxtaposed rhetoric of anti-Sangh Parivar jargon, creating the academically in vogue battle of competing fundamentalisms -- popular with many scholars and media outlets.

I've spent considerable time in Pakistan, and I can tell you that most educated Pakistanis fear the militant Mullahs and the Jihadi groups and abhor their debilitating impact on society and on Pakistan's standing in the world community. This is just what General Musharaff said today in his televised speech to the nation which was carried live on CNN.

Mullah jokes have been common for years in the cities of Pakistan, but in Lahore and Karachi, bitter laughter offers small reprieve from the gender-biased dogmatic rhetoric that revels in a culture of fatwas, hudood and blasphemy laws. The self-appointed sectarian clerics that depreciate diplomacy and advocate violence, together with the unemployed, well armed young men pouring out of the madrassa schools, hunting heretics and kafirs in the neighborhood and abroad are scary indeed.

Liberal-minded and forward thinking Pakistanis were very alarmed about the 'Talibanization of the nation'. I was told time and again that the "CIA created the Taliban Frankenstein in Pakistan's backyard, then walked away, leaving the monster behind." I received an email from a dear friend of mine in Larkana district of Sindh last October after the bombing had begun in Afghanistan. He is an agnostic and a staunch Sindhi Nationalist. He asked me why the western media, such as CNN and BBC, "didn't report about the anti-Taliban rallies that have been going on in rural Sindh." Sindhis are not fundamentalists; they are its victims. He was also one of millions of Pakistanis who hoped that America's war on terrorism would close down the militant madrassas in Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore, turn off the thousands of fonts of fundamentalism all over Pakistan pouring out thousands of dogmatic jihadis.

The majority of scholars and intellectuals with whom I have spoken to in Pakistan were scared of the fundamentalists, frightened by the possibility of a violent uprising of the half-million strong, gun-toting, madrassa trained, fundamentalist Deobandi, militant Wahabbis. Scared that on the dark, lonely road to the future, the Taliban will go bump in the night. This threat was more frightening and imminent than an American could have fathomed until the horrible events of September 11th brought it home; brought home a problem that India has faced for decades. Now, even General Musharaff is arresting these rogues -- Musharaff who has repeatedly drawn a distinction between terrorists and those fighting for freedom in Indian-held-Kashmir. I just hope he can finally realize that his beloved freedom fighters, the jihadis funded by Pakistan and sent into Kashmir, share an agenda with those who are fomenting sectarian strife in the cities of Pakistan.

Of course, as we all know all too well, there are many other Pakistanis who vociferously and violently call for a "Taliban-type system", inspired by the politicized sermons of the Mullah elites preaching hatred from their Friday pulpits. These zealots are willing to die to re-Islamize the nation, which is ironically, already very, very overtly Islamic. The fundamentalist perspective is especially prevalent among the poor, whose only access to education may be in a crowded madrassa where they learn that Sunni Islam is poised to take over the world of kafirs and apostates. These economically and culturally deprived young men have been taught that a Taliban-like system could overcome their poverty, their powerlessness and despair. Caught between conspiracies, corruption, and the Holy Quran, they see no alternative.

I strongly believe that Indian Muslims are, in general, as liberal as my progressive Pakistani friends. This would be a good time to survey Islamic communities in India to ascertain if my assumption is correct.

My comments went unanswered. It seemed to me after a year's membership on this scholarly list, that the esteemed professionals who specialize in the study of Religions in South Asia were mostly interested in delving into some of the more prurient aspects of certain Sanskritic texts, and above all, were very vocal when it came to condemning Hindutva and anything associated with the BJP. However, there was little interest in Islam, except to discuss it sympathetically after 9/11. There was very little interest in discussing Islam in India but perhaps silence about this issue was to be expected from a discipline where Hindu nationalists are inevitably railed and derided in American universities that conversely since 9/11 have worked to shield Islam from negative scrutiny.

The tale of a scholarly discussion group would seem to be far too boring for the topic of an essay, and in general that is the case.

Occasionally, Professor Michael Witzel from the Sanskrit Department at Harvard would post announcements on RISA about essays he had written: rebuttals in response to articles by N.S. Rajaram and/or David Frawley. Witzel informed RISA members, with what might be called gleeful descriptions of various historiography battles that were playing out in other internet discussion groups and in the popular media in India, especially in Frontline, published by The Hindu. These messages were amusingly familiar to those who were aware of the debates initiated by Michael Witzel on other e-groups and in the popular media in India. But on RISA Witzel proudly announced these heroic battles waged on the internet against Hindu fundamentalists. As I scanned RISA emails week after week, the anti-Hindu bias was so ubiquitous and so common that it was seemingly invisible to the scholars who projected it. And these are the scholars who teach the subject of Hinduism to our youth. They control the academic portals to India available in the West.

Somewhat concerned, if not bored by the pervasive lack of engagement with interesting topics, in mid-January I sent in a message about a new archaeological discovery in the Gulf of Cambay. Though controversial, I hadn't realized that it would create quite the maelstrom that ensued. Since there had been no responses to my controversial post about Naipaul nor to my effort to initiate a discussion about liberal Islam in India, much less my appeal for the Human Rights Commission in Bangladesh, I figured that one more semi-controversial email from me would be ignored as well.

For multiple reasons, this message about archaeology, perhaps because it came too close to some preciously held prejudices, set off an internet bomb blast, or rather bombast, on the RISA-l. My comments about historiography initiated a series of emails that got me temporarily expelled from the list along with another scholar who supposedly attacked me, though I didn't perceive it as an attack. My email brought down the wrath of numerous illustrious scholars, though my earlier not so innocently worded emails stimulated only silence. This message, about the Gulf of Cambay discovery was far less controversial than my post about Naipaul or about the patriotism of Muslims in India, to which not one RISA scholar cared to respond. But, my message about the discovery of this ancient urban site at the Gulf of Cambay, and my comments about historiography turned me into a despicable outsider, not worthy of association with the esteemed body of RISA scholars. Here is the letter that created the firestorm that caused me to be temporarily suspended from the RISA-list.

Date: January 17, 2002
Subject: 9,500 year old urban site in Gulf of Cambay

Excavations in the Gulf of Cambay and the politicization of historiography: A remarkable discovery off the coast of Gujarat in the Gulf of Cambay has revealed the existence of a 9,500-year-old submerged port city that pushes back the commonly held theories about urbanization by 4,000 years. This remarkable underwater find, combined with the numerous 'Harappan style' archeological sites along the course of a large river that dried up around 1800 BC, have brought into question many commonly held theories about the history and culture of the Indian Subcontinent.

The Sarasvati River is described in the Rg Veda as the place where the Rishis composed the hymns... a mighty river running through the homeland of the Vedic Aryans. In recent history, Indians thought that the Sarasvati River was a mythical 'underground' river that ran somewhere in the Doab and crossed under the Ganga and Yamana at Prayag. Some scholars claim that the Sarasvati River is in fact, a stream that runs through Kabul which the Aryans passed on their way to Septa-Sindhu. However, as is now well known, Landstat photography revealed the bed of a huge river, which ran from the Himalayas to the sea. This evidence combined with the work of archeologists who have unearthed numerous 'Indus Valley' related sites in the region and now the discovery of a port city that may date from 7,500 B.C. indicate that our previous theories about the 'Indus Valley Civilization' or 'Harappan Civilization' are set to be turned upside down. As George Santayana said, "History is always written wrong and always needs to be rewritten." Here is a short news report in The Times of India about this remarkable underwater find:

City older than Mohenjodaro unearthed

Reuters [Wednesday, January 16, 2002]

NEW DELHI: Indian scientists have made an archaeological find dating back to 7500 B.C. suggesting the world's oldest cities came up about 4,000 years earlier than is currently believed, a top government official said on Wednesday.

The scientists found pieces of wood, remains of pots, fossil bones and what appeared like construction material just off the coast of Surat. Science and Technology Minister Murli Manohar Joshi told a news conference:

"Some of these artefacts recovered by the NIOT (National Institute of Ocean Technology) from the site such as the log of wood date back to 7500 B.C. which is indicative of a very ancient culture in the present Gulf of Cambay, that got submerged subsequently," Joshi said.

Current belief is that the first cities appeared around 3500 BC in the valley of Sumer, where Iraq now stands, a statement issued by the government said.

"We can safely say from the antiquities and the acoustic images of the geometric structures that there was human activity in the region more than 9,500 years ago (7500 B.C.)," S.N. Rajguru, an independent archaeologist, said.

The findings, if confirmed, will dislodge the Harappan Civilisation dating back to 2500 B.C. as India's oldest civilisation.

When theories are dislodged, those who devised, described, and propagated them, may feel defensive and work to discredit the new discoveries that are challenging the long cherished constructs upon which they have based their life's scholarly work. In that context, archeology in India has come under criticism by Leftist and anti-Hindu Revivalist groups who claim that, "Archeology in India has been saffronized". Many scholars are particularly annoyed about 'saffron archeology' especially when excavations dig up examples of enduring and culturally specific symbols of Hinduism or 'Indic Culture' unearthed at far-flung sites across the subcontinent --lending credence to the ancientness, cultural continuity and orientation of the nationalist historians. Many influential scholars consider the 'Ancientness Theory' to be a manipulation of the past by Hindu Nationalists. These scholars hold that claims to ancientness are based on a colonially constructed myth of a 'Glorious Golden Age of Ancient India'. They vociferously shun this perspective as a manifestation of majoritarian communal historiography.

For instance, in this BBC article about the circa 7,500 B.C. sea port discovered in the Gulf of Cambay, the critics of the "Ancientness Theory" politicize the remarkable find by calling into question the motives of the research project as an attempt to validate the Hindu Nationalists' perspective that Indian (read Hindu/ Sanskritic/ Vedic) culture is far older than the commonly ascribed date of 1800 BC, originally theorized by philologists in 19th century Europe.

Indian civilisation '9,000 years old'

[In the article, the final paragraph reads:]

Critics say the minister, who has been in the eye of a storm recently for attempts to Hinduise school history textbooks, may well be presenting these archaeological discoveries as proof of India's glorious and ancient past. But others say only further scientific studies can tell whether such a claim can be made at all.

In the summer of 2000, a group of "Leftist" (a.k.a. 'Progressive') Indian scholars held a press conference and issued a statement recommending that there should be a ban on archeological excavations that could cause communal tensions (or, indeed, could be used to validate perspectives of the Hindu Nationalists). Among those who signed this document were: Prof. K.N. Panikkar, Prof. Romila Thapar, Prof. K.M. Shirmali, Prof. Harbans Mukhia from JNU and Prof. Irfan Habib from Aligarh Muslim University and several other Indian academics who have, since the politicized historical pamphleteering that accompanied the Ram Janma Bhumi/Babri Masjid controversy in the late eighties, never missed an opportunity to condemn the motives of scholars who do not share their views of historiography, such as their former colleague, the renowned 'Father of Indian Archeology', Mr. B.B. Lal, or the prolific and brilliant Ashis Nandy, both of whom have been saffron-balled. (A strange flip to McCarthy era black-balling tactics, but here employed by Marxists against those with alternative perspectives on hot topics such as the Aryan Migration Theory, Secularism in India, etc.)

Does anyone else on this Religions in South Asia (RISA) list find this fear of archeological discoveries odd? Considering that the group of famous Indian scholars who made this suggestion includes eminent historians whose perspectives are highly regarded in Western academia, do you think academicians in the West are also hesitant to consider new data, from archeology or other disciplines, for fear of proving that Indian civilization is far older than Aryan Invasionists/ Migrationists believe?

Just curious...

Thanks.

Yvette Claire Rosser
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
The University of Texas at Austin

Also see these articles on the Gulf of Cambay discovery:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/170102/detnat06.asp
http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2002011701200600.htm

This message was the end of my RISA innocence so to speak and I was blasted, that is, bombasted off the bandwidth of this scholarly discussion group dedicated to the study of religions in South Asia. A dubious dedication, based on the hate mail I received in response to the above interesting if provocative message. On RISA there seems to be little room for research into new and exciting topics -- if those topics push the academic envelop just a little too far for comfort. Saffron-phobia has created a blind spot in the turbulent field of Religions of India, of which RISA represents the eye of the storm.

To be continued…