[INDOLOGY @ ] Teaching Classical Indian texts in India

[Guest guest]

Joperry2 wrote:

>

> It may be useful to note some simple facts about what is actually

> happening amidst all the complaints about what is supposedly going on in

> Indian universities, including mostly those like JNU which insist on a

> secular perspective-- not accepting any religious ideas, e.g., about Higher

> Powers and such, that WE ALL supposedly can acknowledge and bow down too.

 

How does the establishment of an Indology Centre become anti secular and

promotive of "Higher Power and such,..."

 

Any univ faculty shall be appointed by due process of univ law not

by the commands of any Govt. I hope JPO picked up some rudimentary

info about the selection process, it is entirely managed by the

univs and there existing faculty and their nominees. Hence,

any appointments even in the Sanskrit department (yet to be made

and so far needlessly postponed) will be made according to the

bias of the present JNU profs.

 

 

> (Sorry, Bharat, et al., but not everyone can for all sorts of reasons, from

> believing in quite another Supreme Being--Xians & Muslims, etc.-- to

> believing in none, Buddhists and atheists, agnostics and secularists...).

 

So , JOP rehashes the standard Marxist argument given around in

India that Sanskrit and ALL Indian heritage in Indic

languages/performing arts is Hindu Smriti tradition.

Whose practising reductionism here ? Who is promoting phobia ?

 

JOP through his own words has reconfirmed what the misguided JNU

profs projected that Indology and Indic Studies is obscurantist.

 

Why are all these nonHindu Europeans studying Indology?

Why did Renaissance Europe study classical Greek and Latin?

 

 

> Here is a para from a speech at a conference on Decolonizing English Studies,

> recently held in the North Gujarat University at Patan: Makarand Paranjape

> sings praises of Kapil Kapoor, an organizer of the conference; both are JNU

> profs in the lit and lang Dept.and both are committed traditionalists,

> unabashedly Hindu in crucial (and to me politically dangerous) ways.

 

In my report on the JNU's rejection of Indology, I had not mentioned

names

because, I wanted this to be a non-personal, non-political issue.

But JOP has named two professors, KK+ MK, as if the whole of

Academic Council of JNU acted as it did because they were opposed to

these two persons and not the academic merit of the course introduction.

 

By the way the item was introduced on the agenda by the consent of VC,

Asis Datta

and introduced to the Council by HarbansMukhia the well known leftist.

 

But that is irrelevant, it is not the allegation of a supposed hidden

agenda,

it is the worth of casue that counts,or at least should, for academics.

 

 

What is JOP trying to prove by naming MK and KK ?

 

As a student at DU since 64 and then as a faculty member for 28 yrs,

who has also lived and watched scene in Dehi,

I can flood this list with all the names that were profs and who use to

indoctrinate impressionable students even at late hours in their hostel

rooms and then sent them to join the Naxalbari movement and get killed,

who cringed and begged in the corridors of power, waiting with folded

hands on Indira Gandhi, her ministers Nurul Hasan, PV Narasimha Rao

and so many others, to get their names on the education

cotrolling bodies and commissions,

to get fellowships and grants from Councils funded by GOI, and much

more,

BUT neither would that benefit anyone on this list, nor would that be

a dispassionate analysis of the Socialist India and its educational

framework. We have to understand that it is travail of socialism and

the

officialdom created by it that has created the biggest obstruction

against change whether economic, institutional, parliamentary or

educational.

Besides, I have greater respect for many of my Marxosts colleages

than to demonise every argument of theirs in a public forum

on grounds of idealogy as I do see many things worthwhile in Marxism

itself.

 

 

 

> << Professor Kapoor has introduced into the curriculum of English Studies in

> India certain texts which are very crucial to changing the direction of our

> thinking. He has introduced courses on three seminal texts of Classical

> Indian thought: Bhartrihari's Vakyapadiya, Panini's Asthadhyayi, and

> Bharata's Natyashastra. He has also introduced other key texts from both the

> aesthetic and the philosophical traditions, such as Dhvanyaloka or

> Kathopanishad into the syllabus of an M.A. English programme. Now as far as I

> know this is not been done by anybody else, anywhere else in India, or for

> that matter, in the world.

 

Now what is wrong with the introduction of these texts.

Nearly all BA MA courses in all literatures of Indian languages

teach partially ot fully Plato and Aristotle on Poetics.

Why this outcry against Indian texts?

 

It is the Fullbrighters among English Departments, the Am Lit experts

mostly

who have resisted the teaching of Indian poetics in English Departments

and consistently tried to reduce even the western classical texts.

Hind students should study Aristotle but those ding English lit

should not read any Sanskrit text !

 

> What is more, he has done this in a place such as

> J.N.U., which, as you know, is the bastion, in fact, almost the monopoly of a

> certain ideology.>>

 

Is that not a common knowldege? The pluralism mouthing anglophones with

Marxist

convictions have not allowed sanskrit to be taught at in JNU till date,

as they

declare it as a Hindu language.

 

 

> The whole of Paranjape's talk is available by request to him at the address

> above, or to me at joperry2 I'll quote a bit more in closing, that

> also contradicts some prejudices mouthed on this supposedly scholarly forum.

 

Please give us some gems, perhaps they shall be like the above,

exposing your prejudice and nothing else.

 

 

>

> << The third thing is the establishment of a Centre of Sanskrit Studies at

> J.N.U. Let me remind you that it took thirty years since the inception of

> this university to have such a centre. We have programmes and courses in a

> dozen other languages, including Arabic, Persian, Spanish, French, German,

> and Russian, but not Sanskrit. It is Professor Kapoor who took the

> initiative to establish this Centre, that too from a very selfless motive.

> Neither is he going to teach there himself nor head it, nor benefit from it

> personally in any way, and yet he worked nearly single-handedly, in the teeth

> of opposition and indifference, to raise the funds and to lobby the UGC and

> the Ministry to ensure that the Centre was sanctioned. The unique thing about

> it is that it is completely independent with it own building. It is not under

> the aegis of any of the Schools that we have. It is also not a Centre merely

> for the study and dissemination of the Sanskrit language, of Sanskrit

> Studies, a broader category of research, which implies an inclusive

> civilizational orientation, not just a linguistic one. And this is his third

> great contribution.>>

 

And is it not? JOP obviously stuck in 1830, or is he trying to revive

it.

 

>

> Final comment by JOP: As an American, twice Fulbrighter in India (plus 8 ?

> more research tours there) I have had occasion to attack in print both Prof.

> Kapil Kapoor and my very good friend and co-worker Makarand Paranjape for the

> susceptibility of their "Hindu civilizational" perspective to giving aid to

> the narrowing exclusionary political agenda of Hindutva AND to global

> capitalism-cum- consumerism, which accompanies, supports and is supported by

> Hindutva aims for achieving global (universal? gods-given?) importance for

> the Indian nation-state. Nevertheless, I recognize that the curricular

> changes Kapoor and Paranjape seek are crucial for the preservation and

> development of what is distinctive about Indian civilization today-- its

> extraordinary diversity, its complex and varied ancient and more recent

> traditions, some of which are indeed viable in contemporary life for certain

> individuals (but, please, not all of us....!)

 

The Hindutva of these two professors may well a figment of JPO's

imagination or even if these are by convictions so,

was JNU Academic Council rejecting Indology because of these two.

 

JOP gives the impression (sitting in Paris, obviously

misinformed of Delhi scene inspite o f eight visits spent in the

company of monophonic Indian anglophones and English Departments)

 

 

JOP is promugating a phobia against Indian heritage by diversionary

tactics.

 

 

by the way are there as many complaints against Sanskrit by the

Russions,

those who really lived Marxist system

 

Bharat Gupt

Associate Professor, Delhi University,

PO Box 8518, Ashok Vihar, Delhi 110052 INDIA.

mobile:9810077914

home phones 91+11+724 1490, fax/TEL 741-5658,

email: bharatgupt

homepage: http://personal.vsnl.com/bharatgupt

[Guest guest]

Bharat, someone should indeed take the task of researching and

writing the detailed account of post-independence Marxist control

over India's education system, including the Naxalite recruitment

that went on and the servile attitude towards politicians on the part

of so-called objective scholars to get favors. (I was at St.

Stephen's College at that time, and it was at the heart of this

activity.)

 

This should uncover the links with foreign funding of NGOs - how neo-

colonialization went on in exchange for grants, scholarships, foreign

junkets, prestige of name dropping - and still does.

 

By the time the Soviets collapsed, the British Raj had become the

British-Soviet Raj, a system of colonialism-socialism with run by

brown faces.

 

Enrique Dussel's brilliant book, 'Inventing the America's' is a must

reading for anyone wanting to have a serious understanding of this

mentality of the west, as he traces how it got started in the

conquest of the Americas (incorrectly called the discovery of

America), then perfected in the slavery of Africans, and finally

achieved its most sophisticated stage in the plunder of India.

 

That these emperors have no clothes must be a great Bollywood theme

some day.

 

Luckily, now there are many post-Marxists, such as Madhu Kishwar and

Ashis Nandy, who have no qualms about exposing this ferangi

pathology. That there are too many social ills is undeniable. But to

account for them based entirely on the indigenous traditions, without

examining the impact of so many layers of invasions (including the

post-independence Soviet Raj via the 'intellectual' regime), is what

Madhu has called throwing the baby out with the bath water.

[Guest guest]

rajiv.malhotra wrote:

>

> Bharat, someone should indeed take the task of researching and

> writing the detailed account of post-independence Marxist control

> over India's education system, including the Naxalite recruitment

> that went on and the servile attitude towards politicians on the part

> of so-called objective scholars to get favors.

 

I think it will take some time to begin, but it shall happen.

 

The departments of education and sciology in India are still managed by

people who are miserably monophonic. They cannot handle the sources

from diverse Indian languages to cover an all india ground reality

picture. If they are to work through English only they will

produce very little other than a rehash of present day coutcry

agaist Macaulaysim and little of analysis based on evidence.

 

The PL180 educational had a deep impact on till the rural level.

To study that you need to go to the district / moffussil and gram/

level

 

 

> I was at St.

> Stephen's College at that time, and it was at the heart of this

> activity.)

 

So was I (1964=69) and saw a some brilliant boys die.

 

 

>

> This should uncover the links with foreign funding of NGOs - how neo-

> colonialization went on in exchange for grants, scholarships, foreign

> junkets, prestige of name dropping - and still does.

 

Attempts in this direction have already raised the ire of English press

and offialdom which is a big beneficiary of these sources.

'The easiest is to dub every such move as HIndutva.

 

There is no taker for an article like, "Is Hindutvaphobia is a plea for

Staus Quo"

 

The situation is a bit similar to 1900-10 when every move for

things indian was dubbed as anti-british terrorism, when

even great visionaries like Aurobindo had to retire.

Now as the Oppressor is within , the task is harder.

 

 

 

> Luckily, now there are many post-Marxists, such as Madhu Kishwar and

> Ashis Nandy, who have no qualms about exposing this ferangi

> pathology.

 

"Many" ? I wish it was so. And those few that are have yet get

together

together to make a movement.

 

svasti

sahnaa bhavatu

 

Bharat Gupt

Associate Professor, Delhi University,

PO Box 8518, Ashok Vihar, Delhi 110052 INDIA.

mobile:9810077914

home phones 91+11+724 1490, fax/TEL 741-5658,

email: bharatgupt

homepage: http://personal.vsnl.com/bharatgupt