| I am conscious
of the fact that the subject is big and my treatment of it is sketchy. I am, for example,
not discussing at all the tie-up of Marxists in Indian universities with Marxists in
European and American universities, how the two stand together and by each other, how the
Indian Marxists have found hospitality in Western universities, and so on. What I am pointing out is that simply because a don comes from India
does not mean that he or she is providing an accurate or sensitive account of Hinduism or
the history of India. In fact, India scholarship often tends to be very second-hand, and
Indian scholars, in the absence of a perspective of their own, tend to be imitative. I
must say that the most Westernized, anti-religious, materialistic intellectuals I have
ever met were in India, not in the West, and they were often teachers in universities. |
