SV: [Y-Indology] India loving Indologists

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, Lars Martin Fosse <lmfosse@o...> wrote:

> satish.tiwary@e... skrev 4. mai 2001

>> But my friends who work in biology dont love their guineapigs,

> at least they haven't told me so.

 

> However, your suggestion that Westerners regard Indians in the

> same way that biologists regard guinea-pigs is quite hopeless.

 

I just finished reading "The ape and the sushi master" by de Waal.

He contrasts the attitudes of ethologists towards the animals

they study (one of love and identification) and of behaviorialist

who see them as fungible subjects (and, I may add, microbiologists

drug researchers etc, who may see them as convenient bundles of

cells). [This may extend even to mental constructs: I never

thought the remark to the effect that every integer was a

personal friend to Ramanujan as anything other than complementary.

A behaviorialist, it seems, would see it as an insult.]

 

This difference may extend to those who study other cultures.

Some work hard at getting into the shoes of the subjects,

others may simply see them as data sources without any further

value. Many who study India do love it. Others may see it simply as

grist to the mill of their general theories about

culture/religion/language etc. Yet others may simply be after

publications to add to their CV. [The last charge has been

also by informants, who, I would assume, should know.]

 

That brings me to a question I had asked in the original Indology

list, but to which I never got an answer: If an author exhibited/s

towards blacks or women the same attitude that Whitney had towards

"Hindus", would his books be used in a `first course'? Yet we find

Whitney's Sanskrit grammar used as the textbook for first courses

in Sanskrit (including here at The Ohio State University, as the

official name has it). How can this be justified?