NEW HARVARD PROFESSOR APPOINTMENT ON INDIA STUDIES

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>Fwd: NEW HARVARD PROFESSOR APPOINTMENT ON INDIA STUDIES

>Sun, 05 Nov 2000 08:08:10 EST

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>>"Rajiv Malhotra" <Rajiv.malhotra

>><Rajiv.malhotra

>>NEW HARVARD PROFESSOR APPOINTMENT ON INDIA STUDIES

>>Sat, 4 Nov 2000 16:15:05 -0500

>>

>>http://www.infinityfoundation.com/ECITschoolingframeset.htm.

>>

>>The first Infinity Foundation Visiting Professor at Harvard University on

>>the Study of India's Heritage has just been appointed. Please see details

>>at

>>the link above. We would appreciate your forwarding this announcement and

>>link to your lists and also publishing it where possible. It deserves

>>maximum exposure especially among the Indian community.

>>

>>This is a development of great importance to balance the portrayal of

>>India

>>and its civilization in American education.

>>

>>

>>Dr. Arvind Sharma's Appointment

>>as the Infinity Foundation Visiting

>>Professor at Harvard University

>>

>>

>>The Infinity Foundation

>>53 White Oak Drive

>>Princeton, NJ 08540

>>Phone: 609-683-8161 Fax: 609-252-0480

>>www.infinityfoundation.com

>>Announcement:

>>New Visiting Position in Indic Studies at Harvard

>>The Infinity Foundation, based in Princeton, New Jersey, is pleased to

>>announce the establishment of a visiting position in Indic Studies at

>>Harvard University, in its Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies for

>>the

>>appointment of the Infinity Foundation Visiting Professor of Indic

>>Studies.

>>It has subsequently been decided that the appointee will teach courses on

>>(1) Common Misconceptions in the Study of Indic Civilization and (2)

>>Contributions of Indic Traditions to World Civilization. The first

>>appointee

>>to the position is Professor Arvind Sharma.

>>Arvind Sharma (B.A. Allahabad, 1958; M.A. Syracuse, 1970; M.T.S. Harvard

>>Divinity School, 1974; Ph.D. Harvard University, 1978) is a former I.A.S.

>>officer, who also trained as an economist for a while. He currently holds

>>the Birks Chair in Comparative Religion in the Faculty of Religious

>>Studies

>>at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He taught earlier in Australia,

>>at

>>the University of Queensland in Brisbane, and the University of Sydney and

>>moved to McGill in 1987. He has published extensively in the fields of

>>Hindu

>>Studies and Comparative Religion. His latest book: Classical Hindu

>>Thought:

>>An Introduction, was published by the Oxford University Press in India

>>earlier this year.

>>The course on Common Misconceptions in the Study of Indic Civilization

>>will

>>be offered by him in the spring term (Jan-June 2001). It will take A. L.

>>Basham's widely used book The Wonder That Was India (along with Renou's

>>L'Inde Classique and Bechert's Einfuehrung in die Indologie), as

>>representing some of the more recent summaries of modern scholarship in

>>the

>>presentation of Indic civilization and pose the post-colonial question:

>>How

>>successful has modern scholarship been in accurately and adequately

>>re-presenting ancient Indic civilization?

>>Rationale for the Course Entitled:

>>Common (Mis-) Conceptions in the Study of Indic Civilization

>>The contemporary global reality is marked by the presence of different

>>civilizations in different parts of the globe, as exemplified by the

>>Japanese and Chinese civilization in the East, the Islamic in the

>>Middle-East and elsewhere, the Western in Europe, North America, Australia

>>and New Zealand, and so on. The Indic civilization belongs to this club as

>>well.

>>One salient fact, however, distinguishes the Indic civilization from

>>these.

>>The present self-understanding of each major civilization is based, by and

>>large, on the work of scholars who belonged to these civilizations, but

>>such

>>self-understanding as the Indic civilization possesses today is the work,

>>to

>>a much larger degree, not of its own scholars but the result of the work

>>of

>>Western scholars. This fact sets Indic civilization apart from other

>>civilizations.

>>If the self-understanding of one civilization is thus mediated through

>>another tradition, then the question naturally arises: to what extent does

>>the work of the scholars belonging to another civilization correctly

>>reflect

>>the assumptions of the civilization they are writing about? For instance,

>>non-Muslims writing about Islam may not accept the Qur'an as the word of

>>God, which is a foundational Islamic belief. To the extent they do not do

>>so, their presentation of the civilization, of which it is a central text,

>>will reflect their own views about Islamic civilization, rather than the

>>civilization's own view about itself. If, therefore, future members of

>>Islamic civilization relied on the work of non-Muslims for their own

>>understanding of Islamic civilization, their self-understanding of their

>>own

>>civilization will have deviated from what it would have been had it not

>>been

>>mediated in this manner.

>>So a unique question now arises in the case of Indic civilization in a way

>>it does not arise to that extent in the context of other civilizations: to

>>what extent has its foundational self-understanding been affected by the

>>intellectual intervention of another civilization? If such a civilization

>>wants to form a concept of its true identity, then there is no escaping

>>this

>>question.

>>The purpose of this course is to carry out such an exercise and to

>>determine

>>where and when the Western presentation of Indic civilization does not

>>seem

>>to conform to the civilization's own understanding of itself based on its

>>own sources and resources. There is no assumption here that Western

>>scholarship in general necessarily misrepresents Indic civilization; there

>>is the assumption however that this could have happened in some and even

>>many cases. If it has, then the purpose of the course is to identify where

>>this has happened and to try to figure out why it might have happened. For

>>it is only at the end of such an exercise that members of the Indic

>>civilization can place due confidence in the scholarly representation of

>>their identity.

>>Texts:

>>A. L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India

>>L. Renou, L'Inde Classique

>>H. Bechert, Einfuehrung in die Indologie

>>

>>

>>

>>

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