NEW YORK, NEW YORK, March 22, 2017: HPI Note: “Jews and Hindus in Indology” is in continuation of the lengthy critique of German Indology presented in The Nay Science by Vishwa Adluir (professor of religion as Hunter College) and Joydeep Bagchee Freie Universitat Berline). In this paper available on academia.edu (source above), they explore the particular situation of Jewish scholars in an academic field dominated by German Protestants. Their conclusion of the 69-page paper reads:
“The analysis presented here lets us now appreciate the full scope of The Nay Science’s project. Our aim in this work was to ask four questions about Indology as it is currently practiced.
“The first was epistemological: how was German Indology a science? How did it generate certain, universally valid propositions? Here we showed that Indology did not correspond to any acceptable definition of science. Even though the Indologists claimed that their work was objective and scientific as compared with the allegedly arbitrary interpretations of native commentators, their work was not any more scientific. Rather, it was based on racial, anti-Semitic, and anti-Brahmanic principles.
“The second question we asked was ethical: how did the German Indologists address these problematic aspects of their history? Were they cognizant of them? Had they engaged in a self-critique? Had they corrected for the historical-critical method’s anti-Judaic bias? Once again, we found that, far from addressing these problems, the Indologists were obsessed with defending an institutional hegemony. They failed to acknowledge either their discipline’s involvement in Nazism or their share of responsibility in legitimating Aryanism.
“The third question we asked was pedagogic: how did German Indology contribute to pedagogy? What was its value to students? Here we showed that the discipline did not actually aim to make texts accessible and transparent. Indeed, it rejected philosophical interpretation as incommensurable with the “scientific” task. Although German Indologists claimed to be part of the humanities, their work favored an arcane, technical style, that restricted these texts to other disciplinary “initiates.” Their work set aside both ethics and pedagogy as beyond Indology’s ambit, and posited a fantastic objectivity instead.
“The fourth question we asked concerned German Indology’s public value: if the discipline contributed neither to science nor to ethics nor to pedagogy, what function did it serve? Why was it funded? Here we found that Indology’s main function consisted of oversight over the Brahmanic (read: priestly) tradition.German Indologists had failed to evolve a single positive justification for their discipline, other than offering a counterpoint to the tradition. Yet, although they claimed to be historically self-aware, they could not answer a simple question: in what way was their scholarship “critical”? Parasitic on the Indian tradition, using their corporate status to compel respect from the Indians, and yet incapable of dialoguing with them, the Indologists thus represent a failed chapter in German intellectual history. They survive merely on the strength of their institutional arrangements, that is, what Ringer terms “legality.”
“The present paper brought these points together and showed how, on the back of a supersessionist narrative of liberation from Brahmanism, the German Indologists actually constituted themselves as a new priesthood. Their example is instructive for anyone concerned with the university’s future direction.”