Indology must change with the times
N.S. RAJARAM
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Recent developments suggest that academic courses may be in danger of becoming irrelevant
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WITHIN THE past year, the Sanskrit Department at Cambridge University and the Berlin Institute of Indology, two of the oldest and most prestigious Indology centres in the West, have shut their doors. The reason cited is lack of interest. At Cambridge, not a single student had enrolled this year for its Sanskrit or Hindi course. Other universities in Europe and America are facing similar problems.
Coming at a time when worldwide interest in India is the highest in memory, it points to structural problems in Indology and related fields such as Indo-European Studies. What is striking is the contrast between this gloomy academic scene and the outside world.
During my lecture tours in Europe, Australia and the United States, I found no lack of interest, especially among the youth. Only they are getting what they want from programmes outside academic departments, in cultural centres like the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, temples and short courses and seminars conducted by visiting lecturers (like this writer).
This means the demand is there, but academic departments are being bypassed. What has gone wrong with academic Indology, and what is to be done?
To understand the problem today it is necessary to visit its peculiar origins. Indology began with Sir William Jones' observation in 1784 that Sanskrit and European languages were related. Jones was a capable linguist but he was also responsible for interpreting Indian law and customs to his employers, the British East India Company. This dual role of Indologists as scholars as well as interpreters of India continued well into the 20th century.
Indologists' role as interpreters of India ended with independence in 1947, but many Indologists, especially in the West, failed to see it. They continued to get students from India, which seems to have lulled them into believing that it would be business as usual. But today, six decades later, Indian immigrants and persons of Indian origin occupy influential positions in business, industry and now the government in the U.S. and the U.K. They are now part of the establishment in their adopted lands. No one in the West today looks to Indology departments for advice on matters relating to India when they can get it from their next-door neighbour or an office colleague.
Scientific discoveries
This means the Indologists' position as interpreters of India to the West, and sometimes even to Indians, is gone for good. But this alone cannot explain why their Sanskrit and related programmes are also folding. To understand this we need to look further and recognise that new scientific discoveries are impacting Indology in ways that could not be imagined even 20 years ago.
This is nothing new. For more than 50 years, the foundation of Indology had been linguistics, particularly Sanskrit and Indo-European languages. Archaeological discoveries of the Harappan civilisation forced Indologists to take this hard data also into their discipline.
Today, there is a similar revolution in the offing, brought on by discoveries in natural history and population genetics based on DNA analysis. Natural history tells us that we need to take into account sea level changes at the end of the last Ice Age. This led to major developments in land based civilisations when coastal populations were forced to move to the interior. Genetics has also thrown up surprises like the close kinship between Indian and Southeast Asian populations as well as their flora and fauna.
These are exciting developments that scholars can ill afford to ignore. The questions though go beyond Indology. Sanskrit is the foundation of Indo-European Studies. If Sanskrit departments close, what will take its place? Will these departments now teach Icelandic, Old Norse or reconstructed Proto Indo-European? Can Indo-European Studies survive without Sanskrit? These are questions that Indologists must now face.
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