[Y-Indology] Focus and Openness

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In a message dated 5/4/01 10:18:28 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

rajiv.malhotra writes:

 

> 2. Your reading into Blaut's (unrelated) paper is also fallacious: he is not

> calling you a racist. Perhaps, you self-identify yourself with the

> attributes he describes, but then it is your own superimposition and not

> his.

> 3. On top of all these conflations, you then conclude that I call you a

> racist. How did you arrive at that?

>

> RM

>

 

Come now. Let's not be disingenuous. The point of your ref. to Blaut was to

imply that Indologists need to examine their motives, in short to examine

their latent cultural racism.

 

Well, in my case, I have done so. I identify with absolutely nothing in

Blaut's characteriization of cultural racists. Several times you have been

asked to make your deconstruction more specific. You continue to avoid doing

so.

 

My response to your posts was intended to be specific, i.e., personal. The

implication, latent but clearly present in your early posts, that as an

Indologist I am by nature a cultural racist is utterly false, utterly

unjustified, and utterly offensive. Why? Because, as you yourself admit,

you do not know me.

 

I'm glad that we agree about that.

 

If you know of specific evidence of cultural racism on this list, among

members of this list, then it would be beneficial to us all to be specific

about it, to name names, to point to specific words or actions -- instead of

making blanket accusations about an entire group of people, and then

retracting them when challenged by one of them. to produce evidence of this

racism.

 

I detest cultural racism as much as you do, and that is why I react

vehemently when someone suggests, even obliquely, that I am a cultural

racist.

 

I hope that you can understand my point of view now.

 

GT