The Battle for Sanskrit: Is Sanskrit Political or Sacred, Oppressive or Liberating, Dead or Alive?

by Rajiv Malhotra

Overview

There is a new awakening in India that is challenging the ongoing westernization of the discourse about India. The Battle for Sanskrit seeks to alert traditional scholars of Sanskrit and sanskriti - Indian civilization - concerning an important school of thought that has its base in the US and that has started to dominate the discourse on the cultural, social and political aspects of India. This academic field is called Indology or Sanskrit studies. From their analysis of Sanskrit texts, the scholars of this field are intervening in modern Indian society with the explicitly stated purpose of removing 'poisons' allegedly built into these texts. They hold that many Sanskrit texts are socially oppressive and serve as political weapons in the hands of the ruling elite; that the sacred aspects need to be refuted; and that Sanskrit has long been dead. The traditional Indian experts would outright reject or at least question these positions. The start of Rajiv Malhotra's feisty exploration of where the new thrust in Western Indology goes wrong, and his defence of what he considers the traditional, Indian approach, began with a project related to the Sringeri Sharada Peetham in Karnataka, one of the most sacred institutions for Hindus. There was, as he saw it, a serious risk of distortion of the teachings of the peetham, and of sanatana dharma more broadly. Whichever side of the fence one may be on, The Battle for Sanskrit offers a spirited debate marshalling new insights and research. It is a valuable addition to an important subject, and in a larger context, on two ways of looking. Is each view exclusive of the other, or can there be a bridge between them? Readers can judge for themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789351775393
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/10/2016
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	488
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

After studying physics and computer science, Rajiv Malhotra worked as a senior executive in the software and telecom industries before becoming a management consultant and then launching his own ventures in twenty countries. He took early retirement in the mid-1990s at the age of forty-four and established Infinity Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Princeton, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Story Behind the Book 1

Meeting with the US-based Sringeri leader and one of the major donors 9

Meeting with Sheldon Pollock 13

Trip to Sringeri Sharada Peetham 17

Who will control our traditions? 19

What is at stake? 21

Assault on Sanskrit goes mainstream 26

1 The Hijacking of Sanskrit and Sanskriti 29

Why this book matters? 29

Highlighting the disputes between the two intellectual camps 35

Where is the home team? 43

Offering my humble attempts 48

2 From European Orientalism to American Orientalism 50

Origins of Orientalism 51

The rise of European Orientalism 54

Sir William Jones, the European Orientalist 55

The American frontier 61

The rise of American Orientalism 68

Comparing European Orientalism and American Orientalism 74

Impact of American Orientalism on the study of Sanskrit 75

Introducing Sheldon Pollock: Pandit from America 78

Comparing two pioneering Orientalists: Sir William Jones and Sheldon Pollock 94

3 The Obsession with Secularizing Sanskrit 96

Inregral unity of Hindu metaphysics 98

Discarding the transcendent/sacred aspects of Sanskrit 102

Sidelining the oral tradition 105

Accusing yajnas of being linked to social hierarchy 113

Rejecting the shastras as Vedic dogma 114

Using Buddhism as a wedge for secularizing Sanskrit 125

Disconnecting kavya from Vedas and shastras 129

4 Sanskrit Considered a Source of Oppression 135

The crisis of Indology and a novel solution 135

Exposing Sanskrit's 'poisons' 144

Response: Debating varna 146

Blaming Sanskrit for European atrocities 167

Pollock's call to action to politicize Sanskrit studies 173

5 Ramayana Framed as Socially Irresponsible 179

Pollock's view of Ramayana as a project for propagating Vedic social oppression 179

The denization construct 182

The demonization construct 188

Sociological criticism of the Ramayana 189

Claiming Ramayana was popularized to demonize Muslims since the eleventh century 192

Ramayana considered secular 196

Claiming Valmiki Ramayana came after Buddhist influence 196

Summary: Ramayana interpreted as atrocity literature 197

Ramayana-based political action plan of intervening in Indian politics 199

6 Politicizing Indian Literature 202

A dramatic break from earlier Orientalism 204

Sacredness removed from rasa and kavya 206

The theory of the aestheticization of power 210

Kavya characterized as primarily political 217

7 Politicizing the History of Sanskrit and the Vernaculars 222

Overview of Pollock's account of history of how power shaped, languages 222

Introducing the 'Sanskrit Cosmopolis' and sidelining sanskriti 226

Grammar as a form of political power 234

The role of itihasas in spreading the Sanskrit cosmopolis 238

Summary of issues with the grammar-itihasa-power theory 241

The rise of the vernaculars 243

What led so many kings to vernacularize? 250

Claiming parallels between European and Indian vernacularization 253

8 The Sanskriti Web as an Alternative Hypothesis 256

Diglossia versus hyperglossia models 262

Approaches suggested by T.S. Satyanath 265

Integral unity, open architecture and sanskriti web 270

9 Declaring Sanskrit Dead and Sanskriti Non-existent 273

Agenda in declaring the death of Sanskrit 273

Claiming Sanskrit has been dead for many centuries 276

Claiming Hindu kings killed Sanskrit, and Muslim rulers tried to save it 280

Accusing other Indian languages of killing Sanskrit 286

Sparing British colonialism and Nehruvianism 286

Silence on the extraction and digestion of Sanskrit shastras into the West 293

Chamu Krishna Shastry responds on behalf of the tradition 294

Western academic critiques of Pollock 300

The history of attempts to 'kill' Sanskrit 304

Rejecting Indian civilization and Indian nation 307

10 Is Sheldon Pollock Too Big to Be Criticized? 314

Two goals 315

The academic ecosystem 317

The hegemonic discourse goes mainstream 327

Third-party echoes: Pollock's ideas go viral 337

The re-colonization of Indian minds 341

The Murty Classical Library of India 345

The rise of the American-English cosmopolis 348

Reversing the gaze: Interpreting Pollock using his own concepts 351

11 Conclusion: The Way Forward 356

The Sanskrit ecosystem must be revived in a holistic way 357

Non-translatable Sanskrit terms must enter the mainstream 358

Shastras must be seen as a platform for innovation 359

New itihasas and smritis must be written 360

'Sacred philology' must compete against political/liberation philology 362

The purva-paksha tradition must be revived 364

Well-qualified home team and institutions must be developed 372

Defining the hard work that is needed 373

Appendix A Pollock's Theory of Buddhist Undermining of the Vedas 381

Appendix B Ramayana Evidence Prior to the Turkish Invasion 392

Appendix C Pollock's Political Activism 397

Appendix D Acknowledgements 400

Appendix E Editorial Policies Adopted 403

Notes 405

Bibliography 455

Index 463