[Reader-list] Correspondence following Romila Thapar Defence Campaign

[Harsh Kapoor]

FYI

Here is some correspondence that has followed in response to an SACW 
alert In Defence of Prof. Romila Thapar (the well known Indian 
Historian) sent on 29 April 2003:

- Letter received from a certain Brannon Parker, the initiator of the 
internet petition against the appointment of Romila Thapar to the 
Kluge Chair
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/responsetoBP.html#Letter%20recieved%20by%20SACW%20from%20the 
[also available on the Hindutva site at: 
http://www.hvk.org/articles/0503/0.html

and

- the response from South Asia Citizens Web to Brannon Parker
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/responsetoBP.html

am also posting these below

Harsh Kapoor
South Asia Citizens Web (SACW)
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex

N.B.:
For more information see:
Action Alert: In Defence of the Indian Historian Romila Thapar
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/IDRT300403.html


=========


LETTER RECIEVED BY SACW FROM THE INITIATOR OF THE PETITION AGAINST 
ROMILA THAPAR's APPOINTMENT TO THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

From: Vrin Parker <vrnparker at yahoo.com>

Dear SACW Members and Whom it Concerns,

Its truly amazing to see the accusations of slander and Hindu right 
wing fundamentalists conspiracy being applied to me.

I started this petition on my own. No one asked me to or even urged 
me to do it. I actually am amazed at how much credit is given to the 
Hindu activists.Fine people as individuals but in general, Hindus are 
very unispiring campaigners and activists.

I found out about the R Thapar appointment from a Hindu friend. It 
was his and the usual lack of an action plan that I see amongst 
Hindus that caused me to stand up and say," I don't have to accept 
this. I, for one, am doing something about it." That is the honest 
genesis of the petition.

The truth is, I am a white American who lived and studied in India 
and in the USA. After having been forced to learn a lot 
misinformation about India in American schools I became fed up. I 
proved to my teacher that it was innacurate info. Simple but false 
statements  like Kali yuga is named after the horrific Goddess Kali. 
Buddhism predates Hinduism. India was never a civilization because 
they didn't always have a unified state.

Her response was," You will be graded on what is in the books, so I 
would focus on that instead of worrying about what Hindus believe 
about their own culture." I began my own research and soon discovered 
that it was the Indians themselves, esp Romila Thapar, who are at the 
root of all the nonsense taught about Hindus in the West.(Of course 
thats my opinion and I have a right to it.)

As an American, I am very discouraged by the US Library of Congress 
using American resources and prestige to bolster the inaacuracies of 
Romila Thapar's research. I take great offense at being labelled by 
your group as a Hindu rightwing fundamentalist.

In fact, I am a private US citizen, practicing my constitutional 
rights of legally appealing to my elected representatives and other 
US government bodies involved in this issue.

By labelling me as a Hindu Right wing fundamentalist and accusing me 
of slandering Romila Thapar you have committed a libelous act.

http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/IDRT300403.html

I would like an apology and a retraction of your statements. I would 
also like to see you remove your libelous statements form the 
internet.

I am sorry if you don't agree with me or my actions against Thapar. 
That does not give you a right to attack my reputation.

The fact is you are acting fanatically and your reaction is very 
revealing. How many times have innocent people been demonized by your 
inapropriate name-calling? Is this type of situation the basis of all 
the anti-hindu reports going on in the world media? Are there people 
with a vested interest in denigrating Hinduism based on a need to 
create a more conducive atmosphere for conversion to Christianity? 
More converts, more money? Whats up?

What ever is going on you are definately out of line when publicly 
labelling a private US citizen. As an American, I value free speech 
and the right to dissent. By trying to demonize me and label me you 
are attempting to throttle my rights to dissent. If you don't agree 
with my opinion, as stated on the petition, than be honorable and 
democratic about it. Prove me wrong by using factual information.

Regardless of Romila Thapar's anti-Hindu bias or lack of it, I do not 
support her as a good use of our American resources. I need no reason 
to be against her except my constitutional right to freedom of 
speech. I expect a prompt response and clarification of your public 
and libelous statements against me.

Sincerely,
Brannon Parker


==========


Response to Brannon Parker's Message re the SACW Alert in Defence of 
Romila Thapar


Dear Brannon Parker,

Thank you very much for your email. We are grateful to you for 
offering us the rationale behind your web petition. Certainly we do 
not intend nor did we attempt to slander you personally. The website 
you saw was set up to argue against the main line of argument in the 
petition which we saw as congruent, indeed along the grain of, 
hindutva fundamentalism. You are not a Hindutva fundamentalist, that 
may be as you say, and if you took this from the website, then we are 
sorry for you. However, the web petition you initiated against the 
appointment of Prof. Romila Thapar to the Library of Congress, adopts 
a distinctly Hindutva fundamentalist position that has been 
rigorously criticized in many other places for describing India's 
past as being monocultural and being excusively 'Hindu'.

The assessment of the petition as organised by Hindutva 
fundamentalists does not just rest on where the petition originated. 
The calls for collection of signatures on web noticeboards of 
Hindutva circuits, coupled with the rabidly chauvinist sentiments 
expressed by many of the signatories, suggests that Hindu 
fundamentalist networks have been mobilized in support of the 
petition.

We are of course quite startled and dismayed by your frequent claims 
about "Hindus" being disorganized, etc. There is a tendency toward 
racism in these remarks that you may want to reconsider. Are all 
"Hindus" unable to act, being bad organizers, and what not.

Of course you have the freedom of speech, but neither you nor we have 
the right to toss accusations around without a scrupulous discussion 
of facts. Let us take the few that you offer in your email:

(1) Kaliyug.
You assert that a teacher mentioned that the idea of Kaliyug comes 
from Kali. Does Professor Thapar make this claim? We have not seen 
her make this statement.

(2) Origins of Hinduism.
You assert that a teacher told you that Hinduism comes after 
Buddhism. The verity of this claim depends on certain definitions. 
What do you mean by Hinduism? Is Hinduism always the same or does it 
also have a history? Certainly in the time of Ramanujan, drawing from 
Shankara, the various traditions that came before were radically 
transformed to begin the formation of what we know as Puranic 
Hinduism with the multiplicity of Gods, etc. This was around the 11th 
Century, when temple building emerges as an important aspect of Hindu 
practice. In the 19th Century, Dayananda Saraswati reacted to this 
form of Puranic Hinduism to refashion a practice he called Sanathana 
Dharma, a return to the Vedic Brahmanism of the ancient times. If you 
accord the Hindus the right to history, then it is arguable that 
Hinduism comes after Buddhism. D. D. Kosambi has a wonderful paper on 
the Bhagavada Gita that might be useful to you -- it shows how 
Buddhism impacted upon the text and how it was later added to the 
Mahabharata.

(3) India as a Civilization.
You assert that your teacher said that since there was no unified 
state there was no unified civilization. Again, I don't want to 
defend your teacher whose categories 'state' and 'civilization' are 
in need of analysis. You should of course know that the idea of an 
Indian civilization is not indigenous to the traditions of thought 
within India but it is a product of German Indology, drawing from 
Hegelian ideas of civilization. If you look at the Sanskrit corpus, 
there is no idea of a unity of civilization, only a vision of how to 
live in the cosmos. There is a European fallacy at work here: one 
that comes from Germany's own history of state formation out of the 
baronies, trying to forge a state to exercise the right of Germany to 
be a civilization. This problem does not appear in Indic texts, 
either in Sanskrit (for instance, the Arthashastra) nor in Persian 
(for instance, Ain-i-Akbari).

Professor Thapar is an esteemed historian with many publications that 
illuminate India rather than ridicule Indians in a racist manner for 
being disorganized, etc.

sincerely

Harsh Kapoor & others

On Behalf of The South Asia Citizens Web