Uploaded December 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Re-orienting Orientalism: A Webinar by Dr Peter Scharf, President, The Sanskrit Library
The study of India took place in Europe and America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under the term Orientalism, `the study of the East' which sets the East, the Orient, as opposed to the West, the Occident. Scholars in the discipline of Orientalism and in the fields that have replaced the directionally biased term with neutral ones, such as Indology and South Asian Studies in contemporary scholarship, have been accused of being outsiders who bear attitudes that subjugate Indian knowledge and culture to European knowledge and culture. Conversely, recent scholarship that purports to represent Indian knowledge from the inside has been accused of chauvinism and religious fundamentalism. The present investigation demonstrates that much recent scholarship that purports to be liberated from Orientalist attitudes, in fact, is guilty of insidious Orientalism that subjugates Indian knowledge to theoretical cultural anthropology by devaluing any investigation that is not set within that limited theoretical framework. Although cultural anthropologists engaged in subaltern studies claim to be rescuing India from Orientalism, they undermine Indian knowledge to a new extreme by drawing scholarship away from substantial issues to the theoretical framework of cultural anthropology. Those who purport to represent Indian knowledge from the inside are likewise unknowingly co-opted into this new Orientalism by allowing the themes of their research to be determined by the cultural anthropological framework. The recent dominant scholarship of arguing that certain scientific conclusions ought to be dismissed because the scientists who argued for them were orientalists on the one hand or were Hindu fundamentalists on the other all reveals itself, regardless of which way it claims to be socio-political banter devoid of any scientific value. Irrespective of the motives of the scholars, scientific conclusions should be established or dismissed on the grounds of fundamental research, incontrovertible data, and persuasive arguments, not based on accusations of purported bias.
#EpicIndiaJourney #TechInnovationTalks #EcoFriendlyLiving
Re-orienting Orientalism: A Webinar by Dr Peter Scharf, President, The Sanskrit Library
The study of India took place in Europe and America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under the term Orientalism, `the study of the East' which sets the East, the Orient, as opposed to the West, the Occident. Scholars in the discipline of Orientalism and in the fields that have replaced the directionally biased term with neutral ones, such as Indology and South Asian Studies in contemporary scholarship, have been accused of being outsiders who bear attitudes that subjugate Indian knowledge and culture to European knowledge and culture. Conversely, recent scholarship that purports to represent Indian knowledge from the inside has been accused of chauvinism and religious fundamentalism. The present investigation demonstrates that much recent scholarship that purports to be liberated from Orientalist attitudes, in fact, is guilty of insidious Orientalism that subjugates Indian knowledge to theoretical cultural anthropology by devaluing any investigation that is not set within that limited theoretical framework. Although cultural anthropologists engaged in subaltern studies claim to be rescuing India from Orientalism, they undermine Indian knowledge to a new extreme by drawing scholarship away from substantial issues to the theoretical framework of cultural anthropology. Those who purport to represent Indian knowledge from the inside are likewise unknowingly co-opted into this new Orientalism by allowing the themes of their research to be determined by the cultural anthropological framework. The recent dominant scholarship of arguing that certain scientific conclusions ought to be dismissed because the scientists who argued for them were orientalists on the one hand or were Hindu fundamentalists on the other all reveals itself, regardless of which way it claims to be socio-political banter devoid of any scientific value. Irrespective of the motives of the scholars, scientific conclusions should be established or dismissed on the grounds of fundamental research, incontrovertible data, and persuasive arguments, not based on accusations of purported bias.
#EpicIndiaJourney #TechInnovationTalks #EcoFriendlyLiving
