Some Important Points

First of all we would like to thank all signatories who supported this important endeavour. Below we are posting few observations. First some core points: 1. We agree that the IITB petitioners made a technical error by citing one Pollock quote erroneously. 2. However, it is important to evaluate the overall thesis contained in IITB petition, which is compelling. The core points are: a) Pollock's work has biases - For example, Pollock dismisses the sacred element from the tradition, regards "political philology" as the correct methodology to use, finds social abuses in the texts (against dalits, women, muslims) as the predominant quality, and calls his peers to expunge the Sanskrit tradition of its inbuilt oppressiveness. He is a very political animal, having initiated and participated in numerous political petitions against Hindus. A chief editor must be more neutral. The editorship of such a monumental work must be more diverse, and must represent the broad cross section of Indians. Standards and underlying assumptions to be used in the series must be transparently discussed up front. Such a massive ecosystem being built should be done in India, where it is more sustainable long term. No other major civilization outsources its study to foreign institutions in a similar manner. It is important not to set all this aside just for one technical error. Please read the petition closely point by point. Judge it by itself and please present your views. We know post 2 observations: 1. Response by Prof Ramasubramanian and Prof. Srinivas 2. Divya Jhingran’s views on Pollock’s understanding of Shastras Response by Prof Ramasubramanian and Prof. Srinivas From: Krishnamurthi Ramasubramanian Date: Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 8:29 AM Subject: Re: Against the petition against Prof. Pollock To: Dominik Wujastyk Cc: Mandyam D Srinivas Dear Prof. Wujastyk, Thank you for your mail concerning the petition calling for a reconstitution of the editorial board of the Murty Classical Library of India. I am grateful to you for your kind words of appreciation on the work of our group on the Indian tradition of Mathematics and Astronomy. At the outset let me clarify, as I have done elsewhere too, that I was not the prime mover behind this petition though I fully subscribe to it as a signatory. It was by error that the petition was uploaded in my name at change.org, an error which has been corrected subsequently. I also appreciate your kind gesture to enclose the mail that you had sent to the Indology Discussion Forum in response to some of the issues raised in the petition. I just arrived in New Zealand as a visiting Erskine Fellow in the Department of Mathematics, University of Canterbury, and it took sometime for me to settle here. I also had to give a couple of lectures, and hence the delay in responding to your posting in the Indology Forum. The following response is prepared by me in consultation with my colleague Prof. M .D. Srinivas (cc-ed). We would greatly appreciate, if you could post this response in the Indology Discussion Forum. Thanks much, and Best regards, -ram. -------------------- Response to Prof. Wujastyk's posting in Indology Discussion Forum -------------------- We are surprised that Prof. Wujastyk's response to our petition is totally silent on the main issue raised in the petition, which is that Prof. Pollock has been a prominent signatory of two statements which have strongly condemned the actions of the authorities of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the Government of India in taking constitutionally mandated legal actions against the anti-national slogans raised by an unauthorized assembly of protesters at the JNU on the 9th of February 2016. While castigating the actions of the democratically elected Government of India as an “authoritative menace”, these statements do not condemn the protesters who called for the dismemberment of India and abused the Supreme Court of India for “judical killing”. Clearly Prof. Pollock and others who were signatories to these statements have no respect for the unity and integrity of India which has been won after a long struggle of the Indian people against colonial rule. We are at a total loss as to how Prof. Wujastyk could miss this central issue which was the `"main context" of this petition calling upon the Murty Classical Library not to be mentored by academics who have an ideological and political bias that does not allow them even to respect the unity and integrity of India. In the following, we shall only briefly respond to Prof. Wujastyk's point that the petition has misconstrued the views of Prof. Pollock on “What South Asian Knowledge is Good For”. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ mesaas/faculty/directory/ pollock_pub/What%20is%20South% 20Asian%20Knowledge%20Good% 20for.pdf He has referred to the following passage cited in the earlier version of the petition from the 2012 Heidelberg lecture of Prof. Pollock: "Are there any decision makers, as they refer to themselves, at universities and foundations who would not agree that, in the cognitive sweepstakes of human history, Western knowledge has won and South Asian knowledge has lost? ...That, accordingly, the South Asian knowledge South Asians themselves have produced can no longer be held to have any significant consequences for the future of the human species?” Prof. Wujastyk would like us to believe that, Prof. Pollock is only presenting the above statement as a पूर्वपक्ष (purvapaksha). Sorry, if it were so, all the theses presented in पूर्वपक्ष have to be completely refuted beforepresenting the सिद्धान्त. Prof. Pollock has only begun with what he believes is a "statement of fact" that the leaders of Western academia are unanimous in their conviction that “Western knowledge has won and South Asian knowledge has lost” and that South Asian knowledge "has no significant consequences for the future of the human species". If this were to be a पूर्वपक्ष in Pollock's paper, the rest of the paper would have been devoted to the खण्डन (systematic refutation), of this पूर्वपक्ष in its entirety. Here, we do not even see Prof. Pollock expressing his deep shock or strong condemnation that such a Western supremacist view is prevalent in the exalted circles of Western academia. It is true that Prof. Pollock does concede (these are the examples that Prof. Wujastyk also cites) that there are some South Asian “forms of knowledge that may be thought of to possess a truth value for the contemporary world (the nature and nomenclature of nominal compounding or aesthetic response) or at least a truth value for some people in the contemporary world (the benefits of yogic asanas and pranayama)”. However it is Prof. Pollock's considered view that the “greater part of South Asian achievements and understandings” have “no claim whatever ... to any universal truth value in themselves, and precisely because they pertain to what are specifically South Asian modes of making sense of the world.” Prof. Pollock is indeed very forthright in expressing his opinion that he does not believe that “South Asian contribution is the most important ever made to world knowledge” and that “What the region does provide is a record of achievements of human consciousness” which “allows us to frame a strong hypotheses about the nature of that consciousness and the conditions of its transformation”. These need to be studied “in and of themselves” and not because they “enable us to live intelligently in the world." Clearly, Prof. Pollock sees little role for “Indian knowledge” qua “knowledge” in the contemporary world or for the future of human species. Its relevance is mainly as a historical expression of human consciousness which could help “us” (namely, the Western academia) to learn something about the nature of that consciousness. After arguing for such a thesis (सिद्धान्त), it is indeed ironical that Prof. Pollock makes a claim in the end of his talk that "our understanding of 'usefulness' and 'truth' [of South Asian knowledge] has grown substantially in the time since Marx and Weber". It was this thesis that was summarised in the petition by the statement that Prof. Pollock holds the view that “the shastras generated in India serve no contemporary purpose except for the study of how Indians express themselves.” It is indeed a fairly accurate summary of the thesis presented by Prof. Pollock in the Heidelberg lecture. As regards Prof. Pollock’s 1985 paper, we would also not go into details, except for drawing attention to the following pronouncement in the abstract of the paper: “The understanding of the relationship of Sastra (“theory”) to Prayoga (“practical activity”) in Sanskritic culture ...Theory is held always and necessarily to precede and govern practice; there is no dialectical interaction between them. “ Any scholar who has studied the standard texts of Indian sciences such as Jyotisha or Ayurveda would not fail to see how these texts advise the practitioner of their sciences to be acutely aware of the limitations of the theories expounded in the sastras which are only thought of as means (उपाय ). The Jyotisha texts emphasize the need for continuous examination (परीक्षा ) of the procedures taught through observations. The Ayurvedic texts, as Prof. Wujastyk is indeed well aware, go to the extent of declaring that “the entire world is a teacher of the intelligent” and that the “Sastra is a light which serves to illuminate. It is ones own intellect that perceives the correct course of action.” In his monumental work Narayaniyam, Narayana Bhattatiri succinctly summarizing an important section of Bhagavata observes: त्वत्कारुण्ये प्रवृत्ते कइव नहि गुरु: लोकवृत्तेपि भूमन् ? Prof. Pollock only betrays his deep prejudice against the Vedic culture when he concludes the abstract with another pronouncement that “... [In sastras,] progress can only be achieved by a regressive re-appropriation of the past The eternality of the Vedas, the sastra par excellence, is one presupposition or justification for this assessment of sastra. Its principal ideological effects are to naturalize and de-historicize cultural practices, two components in a larger discourse of power.” It is precisely scholarship of this genre that Mahatma Gandhi aptly characterised in his seminal work Hind Swaraj over a hundred years ago: "The English ... have a habit of writing history; they pretend to study the manners and customs of all peoples. God has given us a limited mental capacity, but they usurp the function of the Godhead.. They write about their own researches in most laudatory terms and hypnotise us into believing them. We, in our ignorance, then fall at their feet." We are not upset by Prof. Wujastyk's claim that “Prof. Ramasubramanian has misunderstood Prof. Pollock's views by 180 degrees”, though it is totally incorrect. But we are deeply dismayed by his insinuation that many of those who have signed this petition (most of them eminent Indian scholars) “have signed Prof. Ramasubramanian's petition, presumably without having read Prof. Pollock's work for themselves, or having failed to understand it.” As indicated by Gandhi, statements exhibiting such condescension borders almost on racial prejudice. K Ramasubramanian, Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay M D Srinivas Chairman, Center for Policy Studies, Chennai and Member ICHR .......................................................................................... .......................................................................................... 2. Divya Jhingran’s views on Pollock’s understanding of Shastras D​ear All, Here are some thought after reading Pollock's paper. If I understand him correctly, he is basically trying to say that Indian culture is stagnant because it relies heavily on ancient shastras imbued with divine authority that can never be challenged. I am willing to grant that Indian culture is stagnant, if not in a continuous state of degeneration. However, I would theorize that this is because we have neglected our shastras and not because we have relied upon them. As far as theories go, there is more evidence for the latter than for Pollock’s theory. In fact, his entire essay is peppered with evidence that goes against the grain of his own theory, a fact that he even acknowledges but ultimately neglects. A good theory must accord with the empirical evidence and must resonate with the people or culture it describes. I doubt most Hindus recognize themselves or their culture in Pollock’s description. As such, his entire essay lacks explanatory force and can resonate only with people of Pollock’s own ilk. In fact, Pollock himself appears to be an embodiment of all the elements he imputes upon Indian culture. For starters, he does not look around him for evidence but simply draws upon his pre-existing cultural biases and presents them in the form of a theory. Some of the specific biases of western culture that he imputes upon the Indians are the following: (i) that knowledge is textual; (ii) that values are normative; (iii) that authority (shastra) is some sort of truth that cannot be challenged; (iv) that theory precedes action; and (v) that there is a divine realm starkly different from the secular realm that humans must obey. These are, in fact, the defining prejudices of western civilization, but Pollock cannot see the forest for the trees. Instead he acts like he has discovered something about Indian culture which is in fact quite the opposite of what Pollock describes. Let’s look at his claim that Indians treat knowledge as if it is textual, implying that knowledge is something that can be put into words or contained in books. As evidence for this he cites numerous passages that assert the authority of the shastras. But this is rendered moot right off the bat because the vedas themselves assert that true knowledge cannot be obtained by relying on the vedas (or any other text). The clear implication is that knowledge can only poorly be put into words, or not at all. Pollock cites a passage from the Gita where Krishna emphatically asserts the importance of shastra. However, he conveniently overlooks the fact that Krishna’s closing words to Arjun were to do as he, Arjun, thinks best, after proper reflection, and not that he must open up his textbooks before he decides what to do. It is a common lament among most Hindus who live in the West that their parents did not teach them anything about “Hinduism”. This becomes a problem in western culture where you are expected to spout off exactly what your religious beliefs are. This is because in western culture such knowledge is contained in a book and can be described in words and formulated in terms of beliefs. This attitude is all pervasive in western culture, not just with respect to religion. In order to act correctly they believe they must know what the right thing to do is. Not so in Indian culture where action (karma) generates knowledge. Most Hindus cannot articulate the fundamentals of their culture; there are no common beliefs, and no common practices. Yet it is a culture that has thrived, spread, flourished and survived to this day. Obviously there’s some form of knowledge that has been passed along from generation to generation even though most of us cannot put it into words. Surely in his 30-year-long career Pollock must have discovered, just as the British did 200 years ago, that Indians, including the pundits, are mostly quite ignorant of their shastras? How, then, can he claim that Indians cannot act until they consult their shastras since all evidence points to the fact that they have not been consulting them? At the Kumbh mela I asked a couple of ordinary sadhus what books they relied upon. They looked at me with incomprehension as if I was totally clueless. They said that their lifestyle was mostly about keeping their parampara alive, looking out for each other, networking with others on the same path, and following some basic practices. None of them (the three people I spoke to) relied upon any Shastra and I’m guessing they would have told me if others in their akhada did. However, as Pollock notes, there is even a Shastra for proper sadhu behavior. So who’s reading these Shastras? Clearly it is the likes of Pollock and not the sadhus. Therefore, he is totally and completely wrong to claim that Indians believe that “the practice of all human activity depends on rules accessible to us in a textualized form.” The more accurate statement would be to say that human activity can be described in a textualized form. From here you cannot jump to the conclusion that Hindus believe that knowledge comes only from texts or shastras. In fact, that theory precedes action is closer to the western attitude and not an Indian one. Pollock's paper is riddled with holes and I meant to take down some other aspects of his accusations but this has become way too long already. He does not strike me as someone seriously looking to solve any problems. It’s a pity he has so much clout. Regards, Divya Jhingran