Beyond Indology

Recent decades have seen a growing genre in academia: the book or article that attempts to 'rethink' or 're-­evaluate' a particular field. This is part of a growing movement of re-evaluation within the university in general, mostly but not exclusively by those within the fields themselves. Much of this comes from a growing unease with the state of the disciplines as they react (or do not react) to broadening critique from literary theorists and philosophers. Talk about one's discipline, therefore, has become almost as common as talk in one's discipline. There are those who find this change a welcome one (including this writer), as well as those who find it a distracting complication. To the latter, the critique often appears as a jeremiad, that 're-invent' often means 're-pent', and the message is simply one that points to the sins of the fathers (there are no mothers in this lineage), merely enjoining us to avoid the mistakes of the past. In fact, however, that critique has little if anything to do with blame or guilt, of good versus bad, of bias versus unbiased, as these terms are commonly used.

There are at least two other reactions that I have observed. The first is one that simply points out the virtues of the fathers, and enjoins us to follow in their footsteps. We are told that it is, after all, the Indologist who discovered Ashoka, described the glories of the Gupta Age and, out of the infinite chaos of the Hindu past, put Indian history in order. Why gratuitously question these accomplishments? The second reaction is that the attention to Indology – the study of the ancient cultures of the Subcontinent – distracts from the 'real' work: Would one rather not make a contribution to the history of Ashoka's reign or edit some new text, rather than deal with the long line of minor, almost forgotten, characters that formed a discipline such as Indology? What is more interesting, the history of India or the history of Indology?