Making a rightful case for Sheldon Pollock

By Girish Karnad

I first met Sheldon Pollock during the Festival of India back in 1982. He had been working on Sanskrit texts even then. The man has spent decades of his life on studying and translating Indian texts, and the quality of his scholarship cannot be doubted.I do not know if the 132 petitioners who want him to be removed (as editor of the Murty Classical Library of India project) have even read his work called `The Language of Gods in the World of Men.' It describes the rise of Sanskrit before it withdrew in the face of regional languages in the 17th century. It is a brilliant book and anyone who has read it will not question Pollock. It is the kind of scholarship that Indian scholars need to be doing. But who is capable of doing that kind of work today?
Here is a man who convinced an American billionaire ( John Clay) to start a library for the preservation of classical Indian literature in the 1990s, long before (Rohan) Murty came into the picture.

I had written a foreword for the translation of Uttararamacarita (Rama's Last Act) for the Clay Sanskrit Library. I know how careful Pollock is. In any case, it was Pollock who sought the Murtys out for starting the MCLI, like a continuation to Clay's library. MCLI has been his brainchild all along.

These 132 people who have crawled out of the woodwork have no credentials whatsoever. If they think they can question his scholarship because of his opinion on what is happening at Jawaharlal Nehru University, they are wrong.

Academicians not giving a fellow academician his right to voice an opinion is a clear sign of intolerance. They are bringing up a paper Pollock had written in 1985. If he wrote that paper in 1985, what were they doing all these years? They are out against him simply because of his stand on the JNU controversy. Coming to those talking about `Make in India', why were they not doing that all these years? Why now? These people do not do anything. Pollock has translated Sanskrit texts all his life, so it should not matter which part of the world he comes from. These people are just mean-minded.

Who are they to teach Murtys about `Make in India'? MCLI is constituted with their money and they can get scholars from anywhere they want. They have got translators who are the best at what they do. Everyone knows that most of the work on ancient Indian texts have been done by foreign scholars. Scholarship in India is poor. Unfortunately, our universities have become homes for political infighting. The kind of scholarship where people dedicate years of their life to a language seems long gone out of India.

So, I do not think there is a single `Make in India' scholar with Pollock's ability.That man lived in Mysuru to study Kannada and write about Kavirajamarga.How many of our home-grown scholars do that? People in universities here only seem to vie for political gains.

Incidentally, this is what is happening in JNU today. I am for the JNU students. The vice-chancellor got the police in the campus, which was an irresponsible thing to do. The way our Bar Council behaved is enough to make us hang our heads in shame. And these 132 petitioners also fall in the same category.