Adluri & Bagchee vs Eli Franco

Vishwa Adluri & Joydeep Bagchee published a paper last year titled- Cry Hindutva:How Rhetoric Trumps Intellect in South Asian Studies. It makes shocking reading.

(Professor) Georg Thompson called us ‘Hindu fundamentalists’ and Joydeep a ‘hindutva racist’. (Professor) Harry Falk asserted, ‘they want to be taken as authorities, because they are Indians’. Needless to say, no criteria exist for determining when someone’s work can be construed as supporting Hindutva. The important thing is the denunciation. We are fast entering a new era of McCarthyism. In any other situation, the spectacle of white men calling Indians racist would be preposterous, but when it comes to defending their privilege no accusation and no slander is beneath them.

Thompson and Falk are elderly German pedants who, naturally, resented Adluri & Bagchee's attack on German Indology. I think they should simply say 'German Indology is German. It has nothing to do with India. A German Professor should be allowed to say 'Lord Krishna was a Smurf' if that's what he thinks is philologically justified. Indians should not be allowed to make fun of us. They are very nasty and racist and have probably been egged on by Jews like Sheldon Pollock.'

This is a perfectly reasonable view. German Indology is German and funny precisely for that reason.

Bagchee works for something called the Hindu University of America which does not appear to be accredited- i.e. it may not be a complete waste of time. But Bagchee has a PhD from the New School on Heidegger and is a lecturer at the Free University of Berlin. Adluri is an Associate Professor at Hunter College. Neither looks or sounds 'Hindutva'. They feel the ad hominem attacks on them-

raises an urgent issue that tests the very principles of open discourse and intellectual freedom in academia: the use of‘nationalism’ and ‘Hindutva’ to poison discourse and exclude critical voices from debate.We understand the danger nationalism poses. We recognise that religious fundamentalism harbours tremendous potential for violence. Exclusivist conceptions of deity, intolerance for alternative lifestyles, and the imposition of universal norms,whether divinely inspired or secularly legitimated, threaten pluralistic societies everywhere. But Hindutva is too serious an issue to reduce it to name calling. When used indiscriminately, it loses its diagnostic value. It becomes a slur instead of a serious topic deserving of academic attention.

I don't see what 'danger' nationalism poses. It was the antidote to Imperialism which did pose a danger. The First World War was a clash between Emperors some of whom were closely related by blood- too closely because that blood was infected with haemophilia. Europe's transition to the peaceful co-existence of Nation States was a difficult and painful business. But in other parts of the globe, Empires transitioned relatively painlessly into sovereign National States with little contestation at the margins. In that light, India is a success story. Its Nationalism- previously represented by the Indian National Congress and now represented by the Bharatiya Janata Party- is benign and concerned with 'last mile delivery' of basic entitlements. Currently, the big problem to be tackled in 'One Nation, One Ration Card'- i.e entitlements have to be made portable because India has a lot of internal migrants. Nationalism must displace Regionalism and Casteism so as to enable collective provision of a 'safety net' and vital public services to an increasingly geographically mobile population. Nations serve an economic function. They strive to turn into 'incentive compatible' Welfare States which can co-exist peacefully by engaging in a virtuous circle of trade and development.

Religious fundamentalism is not necessarily a bad thing. Arguably, certain Muslim countries with military juntas made a mistake in suppressing the 'bazaari' middle class as it sought to use Religion as a countervailing moral center to a corrupt and sclerotic State. It was hoped that the 'bazaari' middle class would speed up Economic Development by encouraging thrift, enterprise, philanthropy, and by combating social evils like addiction, honor killing, child marriage etc.

Germany has political parties with the word 'Christian' in their title. But, such parties have been good for Germany. Why should the same not be true of Islamic Parties or Buddhist or Hindu Parties? It is a fact that Governance in India has improved thanks to the BJP. But, in Kerala, a meritocratic cadre-based Communist party is also doing well as is a meritocratic Muslim League. What matters is not ideology but Governance- at least in a poor country like India. But then a rational Christian or Hindu living in the Gulf or in Saudi Arabia would support the Muslim Rulers of those countries precisely because their Religious zeal gives them legitimacy and they use their legitimacy to promote the Economic development of their territory.

Pluralistic societies are threatened by the same things that threaten any sort of Society- viz. external threats & internal unrest caused by structural unemployment, entitlement collapse, or bad mechanism design. What matters is whether the Rule of Law can be maintained by timely interventions which receive broad based support. This is a matter of 'Law & Economics'. Ideology is irrelevant.

Adluri & Bagchee quote the following Email in a footnote

Robert Zydenbos, email to INDOLOGIE list, 29. Feb. 2016: ‘In fundamentalist circles one tries, quite “politically correctly”, to convince people that modern Western academic research of India is the continuation of a (neo-)colonial, [and] ultimately racist project.Ultimately, it is not really the beloved Americans who are to blame […] but their wicked European relatives, who were colonisers, conduct “German Indology”, etc. The opposite is true: such complaints are expressions of the worst Brahmanhood. Just as Brahmans in ancient antiquity claimed sole right to vedadhyapana so also these Neo-Brahmans claim sole right to interpret Indian history and culture in all its facets everywhere in the world. […] Employing similar politically correct posturing, a group of such Indians ensured that a “white” may not teach yoga at Carleton University in Ottawa, because, allegedly, this is to injure ethnic and religious sentiments. Who the real racists are is quite clear'

 Is it true that a 'White person' was banned from teaching Yoga at Carleton University by militant Hindus? No. According to a local newspaper

'Jen Scharf said she's been teaching a free yoga class for the university's Centre for Students with Disabilities, which is run by the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa, for the last seven years.
Jen Scharf says she focuses on the physical benefits of yoga and doesn't play up the spiritual side of it, which she says some instructors can be guilty of.
When she checked back in with the centre in September, she said she was told by them the class wouldn't be happening because some students and volunteers were uncomfortable with the "cultural issues" involved.
"I guess it was this cultural appropriation issue because yoga originally comes from India," she said on Sunday. "I told them, 'Why don't we just change the name of the course?' It's simple enough, just call it mindful stretching.… We're not going through the finer points of scripture. We're talking about basic physical awareness and how to stretch so that you feel good.
"That went back and forth… The higher-ups at the student federation got involved, finally we got an email routed through the student federation basically saying they couldn't get a French name and nobody wants to do it, so we're going to cancel it for now.

So, the only 'racism' involved in this had to do with 'getting a French name'. As a matter of fact, White people do give free Yoga classes at the University. Hindus are cool with it because they like White people- which is why they keep queuing up to get to sunny sunny Canada.

Zydenbos lived in South India for many years. He must have studied Jainism with Jain Upadhyays some of whom were Brahmins. The fact is a hereditary Brahman caste exists in Shramanic religions. Of course, the superiority of the Monks and Nuns is never questioned but for routine matters it is useful to have hereditary temple servants and instructors and so forth.  There is nothing sinister about this. Yet Zydenbos equates Adluri & Bagchee with 'Neo-Brahmans' who are rendering poor German Indologists 'untouchable' and refusing to allow them access to clean drinking water. As a result of this pitiless persecution, millions of German Savants have died of cholera.

Adluri & Bagchee mention a charge of plagiarism against Eli Franco

 When Eli Franco, professor of Indology at Leipzig University, was found to have plagiarised, Professor Mayer reactivated the Hindutva charge—what else?—to take the edge off the criticism. After raising an utterly quixotic defence of Franco’s plagiarism: ‘If those whom he is said to have plagiarised, Klaus Mylius, Manfred Taube, and Alexander von Rospatt, have no argument with Eli Franco, then neither should anyone else. There can be no further discussion of the matter, it dies there’, he continued:

So, if I copy stuff off you as you copy stuff of your pal, none of us are guilty of copying. Good to know.

‘Internet hate-mongering and bullying, and the telling of lies on an industrial scale, have been widely commented on in the international press as dangerous features of contemporary Indian life,

Just as plagiarism has been widely commented as a feature of German academo-bureaucratic life but what has this to do with two Academics with American degrees? Neither are 'Hindu fundamentalists'. They are anti-Nazis.

linked with the resurgence of Hindu fundamentalism and Hindu fascism. I have not followed this particular controversy at all, but it looks to me that maybe this accusation must be seen in that light’.

In other words, because I don't know what I am talking about those Indians are probably really horrible people who bully me on the internet and make fun of the size of my genitals.

But this was neither ‘internet hate-mongering’ nor ‘bullying’; it was a demonstrated case of academic wrongdoing, reported to the university authorities, who saw fit to take down Franco’s plagiarised article, previously featured on the institute’s homepage  Does Mayer mean to accuse the university ombudsman of Leipzig University of Hindutva? Or is the accusation reserved merely for us—for whistle-blowing and on account of our skin colour? And where does it end? Should Indian students or scholars not call out on sexual harassment by faculty for fear of being called Hindutva? Lest there be any doubt, what is at stake here is neither Hindutva nor the objectivity and impartiality of scholarship but naked self-interest: the defence of the entrenched privilege of an elite minority.

Franco, who is Jewish, appears to be white-washing Nazi Indologists which, naturally, Bagchee & Adluri resent. He attacked their book 'The Nay Science' and so they got even by convicting him of plagiarism. But the guy isn't a deep thinker. Consider the following-

' we should first ask who those German Indologists are, a question which the authors never bother to address. In fact, German Indology is nothing more than a fuzzy con-struct (see Hanneder, 2011). German Indologists cannot simply be defined as German nationals working in the field of Indology, because Lassen, for instance, one of the main villains figuring in this book, was a Norwegian who established his academic career in Bonn, at a time when it was governed by Prussia (would that make him a Prussian Indologist?). Should we regard German nationals who spent most of their working lives in Great Britain, as for instance Max Muller, as German Indologists? Or should one say rather that German Indologists are scholars of Indology employed at institutions located within the borders of the Ger-man state? But since there was no German state before national unification in 1871, to which political borders should we confine German Indology? 

Franco was born in Israel. But, surely, he must know something of German history? Germany was defined as the German speaking portions of the Holy Roman Empire prior to 1806. After that there was a Napoleonic Confederation which was replaced by the German Confederation of 1815 which lasted till 1866. However, in 1848, an attempt was made to create a liberal Federal state for German speaking people. The Prussian led North German Confederation was the successor state to the German Confederation which the Treaty of Vienna recognised as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire. Following the defeat of Napoleon III, the 'German Empire' became the successor state to the Confederation. Thus, contra Franco, there was in Law and Diplomacy an ancient and distinctly German realm, though, no doubt, its margins were contested. Franco is pretending that, prior to 1871, German people would have been puzzled by the expression 'Germany'. They would deny that belonged to any such entity.

The fact is 'German Indology' like 'German Literature' means something done in the German language mainly by Germans. Lassen may have been born in Norway but he settled in Bonn. This makes him a German of Norwegian origin. He wasn't Prussian, unless he took Prussian citizenship. Max Mueller took British citizenship. He was a British Indologist of German extraction and education.

The fact is, the Law clearly distinguishes who was or wasn't a German Indologist. Someone doing Indology in the German language while domiciled in Germany, or someone of German origin doing missionary or other work in India or elsewhere with the intention of returning to Germany was a German Indologist. Mueller wasn't a German Indologist because he chose to become British. Lassen, may not have acquired German citizenship but counts as German because he was domiciled there and refused to accept appointments elsewhere.

Franco asks 'do we want to include scholars living in the Habsburg Empire? But that would include almost all of Eastern Europe!'

Wow! Franco thinks 'almost all of Eastern Europe was ruled by the Hapsburgs! Has he never heard of the Tzar of Russia? Does he not know that Romania was Turkish till 1877? How ignorant is he?

Or should we say that Indologists writing in the German language are German Indologists?

No. But we may say they practiced 'German Indology' if they wrote exclusively in German for a mainly German audience.

However, this would include not only Swiss, (modern) Austrian and Czech scholars, but also Dutch and Scandinavian, and even some Hungarian, Russian, Lithuanian, Polish and Ukrainian scholars, depending on their time of life.

Either they practiced 'Swiss' or 'Ukrainian' Indology or, if no such thing existed, they participated in some degree in 'German Indology' though they may neither have been German nor Indologists.

Franco has a peculiar theory of semantics. On the one hand he claims to understand what the word 'Indology' refers to, on the other hand he denies it has any meaning.

So much for German

Franco having discovered that Germany did not exist prior to 1871 even though all contemporary Diplomats recognized a direct line of succession from the Holy Roman Empire to the German Empire.

what about Indology?

India exists. Indology is the study of stuff to do with India.

It is obvious that the authors use of the termis a bit anachronistic and even more erroneous.

No it isn't. These guys are from India. They know it exists. They also know that a lot of people in India study stuff to do with India. That's Indology.

The term Indologie and its English counter-part Indology seems to have been coined in the last quarter of the nineteenth century; theword does not appear in the volume of the Grimm dictionary of 1876, and its earliest source in the OED dates from 1882.

So what? Even if Franco thinks there was no Germany prior to 1872, he must admit that Germany exists now. Similarly even if the word Indology was first used a century ago, it does not mean that the thing it referred to did not previously exist.

The term only came into wider use in Germany after World War II. Prior to that, during the period treated in this book, the terms Sanskrit-Philologie and Indische Philologie  were far more common.

But Indology is shorter than Indian Philology. Thus we may prefer it for utilitarian reasons.

It is not by accident that the best and most renowned history of the discipline, by Ernst Windisch, which the authors blissfully ignore, is titled Geschichte der Sanskrit-Philologie und Indischen Altertumskunde (1917).

Windisch wrote a history of Sanskrit Philology and Indian Antiquities. Thus, it was no accident that he titled his book in that way. But a librarian might shelf the book under Indology. Why? Because it concerns the study of something Indian.

As far as I can see, none of the scholars discussed in the book actually held a chair of  Indologie or was employed at a department or institute of  Indologie.

But, just as the German Confederation was the official successor state of the Holy Roman Empire, so too might Indology be considered the natural successor to Sanskrit Philology & the study of Indian antiquities.

Franco himself mentions Lassen who was the Professor of Old Indian language and literature at the University of Bonn for many years. This counts as a chair in Indology though, no doubt, that word was not yet in vogue.

The term became more prevalent after the war precisely in order to emphasise that the study of (mainly pre-modern) South Asia was (and had been) broader in scope than mere Sanskrit philology. But no matter whether one uses Sanskrit-Philology or Indology or Study of Indian Antiquity the discipline under discussion never largely defined itself in terms of a specific method (the historical-critical method or the text-historical method). This is a pure fabrication on the part of the authors.

Franco himself uses a 'historical critical method' to prove that Germany did not exist, Indology did not exist, the Hapsburgs ruled most of Eastern Europe and that Adluri and Bagchee are fabricators rather than good little plagiarists of the type that Germany is so proud of.

Assuming that German Indology can nevertheless be understood as a meaningful and appropriate term, what about the method ? It is obvious that the method described by the authors simply refers to textual stratification aimed at retrieving an earlier, if possible original,form of a given work.

No. The authors charge German Indologists with doing this in a particularly stupid way so as to uphold a Racialist notion of 'Noble Aryans' enslaving darker skinned, snub-nosed, aborigines.

As such, it was already practised by the Alexandrine scholars as early as the third century BCE and was already applied to the Old Testament by Origen, if not before.

Does Franco think Origen's Hexapla was helpful to his own people? Did Christian interpretation of the Old Testament involve living peacefully with Jews? Why does Franco mention this? In his hurry to acquit his German comrades of having fostered a Racist creed, he forgets the fate of his own people at their hands.

Franco, clearly, is a deeply silly man.

In its modern form it was practised in Europe after the Renaissance not only by Germans but also by French, Italian, British, American, Russian, Japanese and to the authors chagrin even some Indian scholars who were infected by the bug of  ‘German Indology'.

Something else which was practiced in Europe was the publication of vicious Anti-Semitic material. Adluri & Bagchee point out that German Scholarship was unique in formally accepting a Racist ideology and condoning crimes against humanity of a type which Franco of all people should deplore.

There is nothing particularly German about this method, except perhaps that when it comes to classical South Asian Studies in Europe there were more scholars writing in German than in any other language, and the output in this language was consequently larger. McGetchin counts47 professors of Sanskrit or Aryan studies that included Indology as a major component in Germany alone in 1903, not including those in other German-speaking countries or Scandinavian or Dutch scholars writing in German.

Does Franco read over what his facile pen dashes off? This guy first says there was no German Indology. Then he says there were plenty of professors of 'Aryan Studies'. Does he really not understand that the term 'Aryan' has a sinister sound for Jews? Is he seeking to controvert Adluri & Bagchee or is this a case of 'Stockholm Syndrome'? Is Franco appealing to the Intellectual equivalent of Mossad to come free him from his Nazi captors?

While the stratification of the Indian epic into earlier and later phases, the issue at the core of this book, is not a current concern of any particular German scholar, in the case of the Ramayana it is currently undergoing the most vigorous examination by, for instance, John Brockington, emeritus of the University of Edinburgh, and arguably the greatest living scholar on Indian epic literature.

This is silly. Indian epic literature is orally transmitted. Its greatest living scholars are found in India, not Edinburgh. Brockington is not a smart dude. He is a Professor of some shite nobody gives a toss about. He is wholly ignorant of Economics and Mechanism Design. Yet he writes a book called 'How the Brahmins won' based on pure paranoia. The fact is Religions have to solve a coordination problem in order to flourish. But you need to be smart to understand the game theory behind it. Ackerlof says in his Nobel speech that he got the idea for information asymmetry from his attempt to understand the caste system when he was in India.

The fact of the matter is, the Mahabharata is the only Iron Age epic which says the Just King must learn Statistical Game theory to overcome 'vishada'- mental depression. This is the dual of the Gita's 'vishada-yoga'. Smart Indians who keep up their ancestral study of Scriptures, just like Jews who keep up the study of their ancestral spiritual heritage, need to make money in STEM subjects. True, our Game theorists are useless but there's nothing stopping us reading Aumann on the Talmud for ourselves. The thing isn't rocket science. Well, it is if you are dimwit like Franco.

By his own confession, Franco's Indology consists in groping for an 'ur-text'. Yet, epic literature is always a highly functional pastiche which shades into the  baroque 'riti-granth' compositions of the clerisy. Since the clerisy, at least in poor agricultural countries, has an economic function, we need to understand what heuristics they used. This is useful. It involves 'Mechanism design' or 'reverse Game theory'. Improving Aumann signals improves correlated equilibria. Hindutva wants to do that because Hindus want a better and safer life. If minorities flourish, Hindus are better off. That's it. That's the whole story. Silly Western pedants teaching worthless shite should be left alone to maunder into senility. Franco is very bitter against Adluri & Bagchee for having disturbed the sleep of these soi disant savants.

Viewed as a whole, this is a sad book; and it is sad that many readers may be misled into thinking they are holding a scholarly book about
German Indology.’

Sad? Is Franco channeling his inner Trump?

in their hands. Actually,the book is simply a clumsy attempt to avenge an insult. One of the two authors, Vishwa Adluri, is a failed PhD student of the late German Indologist Michael Hahn, who Adluri promptly accused of standing in the tradition of Nazi scholarship (incidentally, it may be mentioned that Hahn, who died in 2014, was of Jewish extraction).

How come Hahn wasn't killed by the Nazis? He was born in North Germany in 1941 and seems to have had a normal upbringing.  The fact is his teacher's teacher had signed whatever was required by the Nazis. Adluri and Bagchee haven't invented the notion that Academia continued to harbor collaborators with the Third Reich. It was German youth who made this claim from the Sixties onward.

This explains, I think, the nasty and indignant tone that runs throughout the book, which may be seen as a personal vendetta against German Indology.

Alternatively, it may be that the authors had personal experience of a Nazi mindset amongst elderly pedants.

 It might also be worth mentioning that as a result of his complaint, Adluri was awarded a PhD in (German?) Indology from the University of Marburg without any German Indologist evaluating his work (see Hahn, 2011).

So the University of Marburg gave Adluri a PhD. This means his charge was vindicated by the concerned authorities.

Looking for the origins of German Indology, the authors proceed like the famous drunkard in reverse. The coin is under the streetlamp, but they go looking for it in the dark alleys of Protestantism and biblical philology.

 Franco does not know that Germany had no street lamps before the 1870's. It was a backward place. It did have Protestantism and biblical philology in the Eighteenth Century. That is where German scholarship originated.

The nature and origin of Indology were already clearly stated in A.W. Schlegel's founding essay, Uber den gegenwartigen Zustand der Indischen Philologie which marks the beginning of German Indology
as an academic discipline:

If the study of Indian literature is to thrive, the principles of classical philology have to be thoroughly applied to it, and that with the most scientific rigor

But the Brothers Schlegel were from a pious Protestant family. The younger brother converted to Catholicism. Their philosophical views reflect the Religious life of their Nation. It is not the case that German Indology suddenly emerged, like Athena, fully armoured, from the brain of Zeus, in 1819. Rather the Schlegels themselves had played a part in fostering a market for Indic literature.

Franco quotes Schlegel approvingly. Yet, it is a fact that if the study of a literature is to thrive, that literature must itself thrive. German literature itself took the path of Gervinus, not Lachmann. Classical philology has no 'principles' . It has a Structural Causal Model- a foolish one. There is merely useful work of a lexicographic sort or mindless lucubrations unconnected to reality. It is foolish to seek 'scientific rigor' in literary studies. German Indology was barren save in so far as it widened German literary horizons. But purely imaginative works could do a better job in that regard than pedantry. Canetti's Prof. Kien is Germany's own epitaph on its Orientalists.

This opinion was still wide-spread and taken for granted when I
first came to Germany in the early 1980s.

In other words, the opinion was wide-spread that Indian literature was a fossil which stupid people could do some donkey-work with. The point about the Schlegels was that they were smarter than average. Post War Indologists were stupider than average. They lived in a twilight home where the grumbled to each other about how the World was going to the dogs. Listen to Franco whine about it like a proper German-

It lasted as long as classical philology itself was able to maintain its prestige, until the repeated waves of neo-liberalism, secondary school and university reform, and the cultural turn in the humanities marginalised it, and with that Indology as well. In other words, German Indology’ is not,at its core, a nay science; rather,
German Indologists wanted to accomplish for India what their fellow philologists had accomplished for Ancient Greece and Rome

Which was what? Has Greece been transformed into the foremost intellectual center of the world? No. It produces cretins like Varoufakis. The Greek economy has been fucked over by some of the most highly credentialized academics ever to lead a country.  What about Rome? Is Latin flourishing there? BoJo it is true can turn a decent epigram. But what about Berlusconi? Did topless models on his TV channels recite Virgil? Of course they did! Thanks must go to German Philology for such signal triumphs against Neo-liberalism. How dare the 'Humanities' take a 'cultural turn'! Paideia must be wholly philistine.  Kultur is Verboten! Get back into your cage.! Don't you know you are the subject of a very rigorous scientific study?

and presumably,some of them still have this aim. Looking back at what they have accomplished over the last 200 years, they have not done such a poor job. The great French Indologist Sylvain Levi famously said that 'India has no history'.

You should hear what India said about that cheese-eating surrender monkey. The French don't regard Levi as great. Nor do the Indians. Why? He did nothing useful for either country. Colonialism wasn't a good idea for France. They prospered once they got shot of their colonies and stopped listening to retarded Orientalists.

 By this, he did not mean of course, as he was often misinterpreted as saying, that things always remain the same in India, but rather that premodern India was not in possession of its own history. It created neither a historiography (though one might insist on a few exceptions), nor archives, nor archeology, nor other means to preserve and remember its own history. Consider how much the most learned Indian intellectuals, the pandits, acaryas, etc., knew around the year 1800 about Indian history and civilisation, and how much we know now. The difference is due to Indology, obviously not only German although the German contribution has been decisive.

This is nonsense. No country is 'in possession of its own history'. It either has a tradition of historiography or it does not. Hindu India had its own regional historiographical schools and the British certainly did help knit these together to lay a foundation for, not 'scientific philology' which is merely guesswork, but the use of new technology to illumine the past.

At one time, philologists may have had some use to the historian. But those times are long gone. Only Scientific advances bring about advances in historiography. British people now know a lot more about their past because of scientific archaeology and things like DNA tracing.  But, History is pretty useless and changes nothing. Still, in a prosperous country, a first degree in History might reconcile you to a life-time of drudgery in a Solicitor's office or a Civil Servant's cubicle.

The Bhagavadgıta itself is a good example. It was largely unknown in India in the nineteenth century except in Vedanta circles,

Which were present wherever Hinduism existed. Similarly, German was unknown in Germany except in German speaking circles. No doubt, this cretin thinks Persian speaking Muslims who read Fayzi's or Dara Shikoh's translation of the Gita were all actually part of 'Vedanta circles'.

and its current popularity is rightly considered to be a case of the pizza effect (pizza became popular in Italy only after and as a result of becoming popular abroad);

This notion was popularized by an Austrian born Hindu Monk. It simply isn't true. Neapolitan emigrants popularized pizzas. Others emulated their success. This is an economic process which can be easily modelled. Franco thinks that a country like India which had low emigration and low geographical mobility was similar to Italy where there was high emigration and geographical mobility. He believes that Vaishnavas did not know the Gita- in which case they did not know the Mahabharata. What did they know? Nothing. They were waiting for some nice 'pizza effect' such that German Indology would create Hinduism and then some non-existent migrants would bring it back to India.

it was barely known even in Vaishnava circles (imagine the Hare Krishnas without the Gıta!).

Yet there were centuries old translations of it in every dialect including Gujerati

Gandhi, for instance, who contributed greatly to its current popularity and the image of its sanctity first heard about it when he was in England, and first read it in an English translation.

 This is untrue. Gandhi says “I felt ashamed, as I had read the divine poem neither in Sanskrit nor in Gujarati”. In other words, he knew his education was lacking. Still, his father had been virtually illiterate and had done well in life. Gandhi could always get a priest to chant the Gita to him and explain its meaning. Religion was a service industry.

It should be remembered that the Bhagvad Gita is the dual of the Vyadha Gita. It deals with the dharma of the agent, not the principal. However, an ethical principal must learn Statistical Game theory. This is also what contemporary Economics teaches. The 'economia' required of us as principals is very different from the 'akreibia' of the agent who must 'follow orders'.

The Gita's Occasionalism means that it sits well with Islamic Occasionalism but also with that of Liebniz etc. But Occasionalism is a convenient creed for an agent not a principal.

So what is the 'nay science in all of the above?

Franco, the 'nay science' is your talking bollocks about
1) Germany not having existed though you then admit it did exist
2) Indology not having existed though you then admit it did exist
3) talking nonsense about 'pizza effects' which is meant to prove
4) Hindus weren't Hindus till the West told them how to be Hindus
5) Pretending a bunch of senile pedants helped Greek or Latin or Sanskrit or any other dead or dying language. As the Israelis have shown, the way to preserve a language is to use it creatively and scientifically and commercially. Robert Aumann shows Game theory in the Talmud. Israel is the model for India to emulate. Those guys do actual research. They don't spend all their time apple-polishing or whining about neo-liberalism or the European invention of Judaism and Zionism and so forth.

Surprisingly, the authors fail to make it entirely clear what exactly the title of their book refers to. If I understand them correctly, they use the label to characterise a lack of respect for the traditional and/or indigenous way(s) of reading Sanskrit texts. This would include both the indigenous panditya readings as well as personally committed religious and political readings, like Gandhi's reading of the Gıta, which the authors specifically endorse. In other words, anything goes when one instrumentalises the text, that is, anything except a careful and critical scholarly reading of it.

Where are these 'careful and critical' scholarly readings? I have never encountered anything which wasn't stupid and prejudiced and committed to an incompossible structural causal model of the world.

This tendency has become more pronounced with the post-colonial turn, which endorses defensive, indigenist readings of such texts.

Does Franco not endorse 'defensive, indigenist' readings of indigenous texts which had an explicitly defensive purpose? What does he think of the Jewish Scripture? How does he feel about the existence of the State of Israel?

I am not sure whether the authors realise that what they recommend amounts to an open invitation for reading and using a text like the Gıta as a justification of the abominable concepts and practices of caste distinction, Hindu nationalism, Brahmin supremacy, Right-wing militarism and fascism, to mention but a few possibilities.

But this 'open invitation' has always existed in the Gita just as the Old Testament is an 'open invitation' to the notion that the Jews have a right to Israel. Franco was born in Israel. He moved to Germany in the Eighties. Who knows? Maybe he will be forced to move again.

Perhaps Franco believes that 'scientific' philology should propagate a 'Noble lie'. Hindus never existed. India is not a Hindu nation. Brahmins were considered an inferior and servile people. Militarism and Fascism were not elements in the Indian National Congress's make up- as witness the Congress Seva Dal and its black-shirts and brown-shirts. Govind Vallabh Pant never said 'Italy has its Il Duce. Germany has its Fuehrer. India has its Mahatma'.  Bose and Nambiar never recruited Indians for the Waffen S.A. Nehru didn't make Nambiar Ambassador to Bonn. Savitri Devi's husband's astrological services weren't in high demand among Congress bigwigs. I did not personally drive Paul Hacker out of Bonn by shitting all over the place. Well, that last may not be true. But it is my one contribution to German Indology. Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato.

Under such circumstances, we as German and other Indologists may gladly accept the epithet 'nay science' for our discipline;

Good. So you have no quarrel with Adluri and Bagchee. You admit everything they say. You just feel you are propounding the right 'Noble Lie' with respect to Indology. But nobody in India listens to you. Nor does anyone in Germany. You can carry on pretending you know about Tibetan Buddhism but nobody else gives a toss about what you get up to.

we gladly say 'no’ to this promotion of ignorance, shallow-ness, arbitrariness, prejudice and eccentricity by the authors, and say ‘yes’ to

promoting your own ignorance, shallowness, arbitrariness, prejudice and nonsense about 'pizza effects' which, for some reason, you think represents

serious,methodically sound and sober scholarship free of allegedly ‘traditional’and political constraints by Hindutva ideology and the like.

The problem here is that Hindutva is a real thing. It is the ideology of the ruling party of a nuclear power with 1.3 billion people. We approve of Hindutva because it breaks down barriers of caste and region so as to allow merit to rise to the top. Modi's Prime Ministership has been a revelation. Never before has a person of quite humble origin risen so high and performed so well. Previously, there was a type of 'Brahman arrogance'. But which Brahmin would prefer 'janeo-dhari' Rahul, the Saivite Brahmin- who also now appears to be a Brahmacharya like Yogi Adityanath- to Modi?

Western Indologists may be able to make a small living carping at what is happening in India. But they can't change anything there. Why not? They are not fluent in Indian languages. Furthermore, when they write English, they reveal themselves to be fools who believe in 'pizza effects' and who think Hinduism was manufactured in Europe and then exported to India.

Adluri and Bagchee have vindicated themselves not by what they wrote but by the stupidity of the reaction of the establishment they attacked.