Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti Quotes

Chakrabarti (1997) is forcefully pronouncing in print what many Indian intellectuals will reveal in private conversations: We have no hesitation in asserting that the "Nigger Question" is in various forms still very much a part of the Indological scene. Right from patronizing comments on "Babu English" to wry remarks on Indian nationalism for refusing to accept the idea of Greek and other extraneous origins of some of the crucial traits of Indian culture, the Western Indological literature has been consistent in viewing the general Indian scholarship in the matter as an inferior product. . . . Some Indians' refusal to acknowledge the veracity of Aryan invasion of India is interpreted by Western Indologists as misdirected symp- toms of "north Indian nationalism." (114)

Chakrabarti (1997) is not at all reticent in stating: It is the interplay of race, language and culture which has provided the most strong plank of the understanding of ancient India by the Westerns and the Indians alike. This plank was laid down at the height of Western political hegemony over India, and the fact that this still has been left in its place speaks a volume for the post-1947 pattern of the reten- tion of Western dominance in various forms. . . . We believe that unless this major plank of colonial Indology is dismantled and taken out, it is unlikely that there will be a non- sectarian and multi-lineal perspective of the ancient Indian past which will try to under- stand the history of the subcontinent in its own terms. (53)

Thus, anti-Aryan invasionist scholarship, in its turn, is stereotyped as being subser- vient to secular, Marxist ideology. The most maligned figureheads are precisely those who have most publicly opposed the Indigenous Aryan position, particularly R. S. Sharma, "a 'Marxist' historian of Indian variety who became a pillar of the historical establishment in his country," and Romila Thapar, "another 'mainstream' historian who harangued us on the importance of looking at ancient Indian history and archaeology through the prism of anthropological and sociological ideas, without telling us if such exercises by themselves would lead to a better historical understanding of ancient In- dia" (Chakrabarti 1997, 164).

Chakrabarti (1997) has nothing but scorn for the Indian intellectual elites who "fail to see the need of going beyond the dimensions of colonial Indology, because these dimensions suit them fine and keep them in power" (213). In his view, "as the Indian historians became increasingly concerned with the large num- ber of grants, scholarships, fellowships and even occasional jobs to be won in Western universities, there was a scramble for new respectability to be gained by toeing the Western line of thinking about India and Indian history" (2). The result is that "institutions on the national level have to be 'captured' and filled up with stooges of various kinds," and "making the right kind of political noises is important for historians" (212). Accord- ingly, "after independence, when the Indian ruling class modeled itself on its departed counterpart, any emphasis on the 'glories of ancient India' came to be viewed as an act of Hindu fundamentalism" (2).19

If one goes through the archeological literature on Egypt and Mesopotamia, [especially] the areas where Western scholarship has been paramount since the beginning of archeological research in those areas, one notes that the contribution made by the native Egyptian and Iraqi archeologists is completely ignored in that literature. The Bronze Age past of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the intervening region are completely appropriated by the Western scholarship. Also, when Western archeologists write on Pakistani archeology, they seldom mention the contribution made by the Pakistani archeologists themselves. There are exceptions, but they are very rare. After Independence, the Archeological Survey of India pursued a policy of relative isolation, which enabled archeology as a subject to develop in the country and helped Indian archeologists to find their feet. The policy seems to be changing now. . . . There is a great deal of arrogance and sense of superiority in that segment of the first world archeology, which specializes in the third world. Unless this segment of the first world archeology changes its way and attitude, it should be treated with a great deal of caution in the third world.

After Independence . . . [Indians]—especially those from the ‘‘established’’ families—were no longer apprehensive of choosing History as an academic career . . . To join the mainstream, the historians could do a number of things: expound the ruling political philosophy of the day, develop the art of sycophancy to near- perfection or develop contacts with the elite in bureaucracy, army, politics and business. If one had already belonged to this elite by virtue of birth, so much the better. For the truly successful in this endeavor, the rewards were many, one of them being the easy availability of ‘foreign’ scholarships/fellowships, grants, etc. not merely for themselves but also for their protégés and the progeny. On the other hand, with the emergence of some specialist centers in the field of South Asian social sciences in the ‘foreign’ universities, there was no lack of people with different kinds of academic and not-so-academic interest in South Asian history in those places too, and the more clever and successful of them soon developed a tacit patron-client relationship with their Indian counterparts, at least in the major Indian universities and other centers of learning. In some cases, ‘institutes’ or ‘cultural centers’ of foreign agencies were set up in Indian metropolises themselves, drawing a large crowd of Indians in search of short-term grants or fellowships, invitations to conferences, or even plain free drinks.

The communists had a free run so far, their opponents being no match in the psychological warfare launched by the communists. These opponents have had the control of the ICHR uninterruptedly since 2014 but they have basically been unable to neutralize the communist lobby in Indian historical studies. They are not motivated enough and focused enough. They regrettably are not even professional enough to realize where the communists have to be hurt to their disadvantage.

In several Indian universities that I can think of – Delhi University, for instance -- students were positively discouraged to read those ‘nationalist’ writings

First, this hypothesis of a population movement from Iran and elsewhere to Peninsular India does not conform to the geographic framework suggested earlier in the present paper on the basis of documented political and economic records .... Second, almost all the suggested analogies are too general to be of any use in a valid and meaningful archaeological comparison .... Third, some of the analogies cited are positively misleading .... Fourth, the suggested West Asiatic analogies do not belong to any single cultural assemblage or even different assemblages of any specific period .... Finally, it should be pointed out that not a single demonstrably West Asiatic type fossil occurs in the cited Indian assemblages. . . . Moreover, the basic character of these Indian assemblages is very different from that of their supposedly parent [in Sankalia's hypothesis they are parent sites] West Asiatic sites, a difference which should be obvious to anybody who studies these assemblages without primarily looking for similarities.