Jaithirth Rao in The Indian Express:
“Professor Sheldon Pollock has just announced scholarships for Dalit students who wish to study Sanskrit at Columbia University. This is indeed welcome news. The tragedy is that this initiative is not being undertaken in India, the home of Sanskrit as well as Dalits.
“It is revealing to note what Professor Saroja Bhate of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune has to say: “I congratulate Professor Pollock for doing this. This is exactly what I would have done and would do in future if I have the resources.”
“The question we need to ask is why Professor Bhate does not have the resources. We spend crores and crores casually on conferences, commissions and committees of which we have lost count, but there is no money in Pune for pursuing Sanskrit studies or encouraging Dalits.
“The irony is aggravated when one knows that the current vice chancellor of Pune University, Dr Narendra Jadhav, is himself a Dalit and a Sanskrit scholar….
“What has gone wrong that we have “out-sourced” all knowledge creation, not just in aeronautics or molecular biology but even in Sanskrit and Telugu studies to foreign institutions? If this continues, we can forget any hope of becoming a prosperous country in the foreseeable future. It is not sufficient if our IITs and IIMs teach well to students who are of a high calibre simply by self-selection. They need to produce seminal research. They need to create original knowledge which is a pre-requisite for any progress that we aspire for.”
Read the full article: Area of Darkness
Tags: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Churumuri, Columbia University, Dalits, Narendra Jadhav, Sans Serif, Saroja Bhate, Sheldon Pollock
16 November 2009 at 1:35 pm
There goes another bundle of money wasted! You question where our resources are going…the answer is simply that our resourcs are wasted in creating a new quota every other day and then spending crores on getting this new quota system to “work”. Actual outcome is those who want to make money from the scheme will do so and get away. Society will keep wondering why”Dalits/OBCs/SCs/STs” are “not improving” and the new politicians will make another reservation to appease the vote banks. The cycle continues!
Its so much more sensible to just introduce scholarships, for say Sanskrit in this context, and spend our resources in offering a greater number of scholarships than making it for exclusice groups! Cos we then wate resources in mechanisms to ensure as to whether or not the applicants are indeed from the special group!
Reservations/specialised quotas as salvations indeed!
16 November 2009 at 5:33 pm
Learning Sanskrit or any other language…nobody prevents any one in doing so. Learning deeply requires sustained effeorts. Whether it is Sanskrit or English or any language including the candidates mother tongue…no, not at al… they just manage to get a Post Graduate Degree..There is no use in blaming somebody for our ills. There are plenty of scholarships, fellowships and facilities in the Indian Universites itself…some they register for Ph D under guide , gets the fellowship , just waits for the stipulated period and vanishes..not even submitting the final report…neither the guide bothers about it. Five years stay in the university campus, getting all the facilities, and ultimately doing nothing. UGC has taken note of it. This applies to humanities and languages more.
16 November 2009 at 6:02 pm
but what is so special about the specific scholarship? dont we have reservation quotas which do the same thing?
16 November 2009 at 7:34 pm
dr. jadhav is a monetary economist. he has not published in sanskrit studies or in sanskrit.
17 November 2009 at 10:32 am
I think that the fellowship is called Ambedkar Sanskrit Fellowship. Ambedkar advocated Sanskrit as a (the) national language for India. His teachers in school refused to teach him Sanskrit, but he learnt Sanskrit later. Somehow, it seems appropriate. Ambedkar University in Lucknow seems to offer Ph.D. studies in Sanskrit:
http://www.indiastudycenter.com/univ/states/up/Dr-Bhim-Rao-Ambedkar-University/courses/Research-Doctoral-Courses/PhD-Sanskrit.asp
22 November 2009 at 3:56 am
Good catch Mysore Peshva. Dr Jadhav is indeed an economist. Jerry probably outsourced this article and writer linked up economics to sanskrit because one old sanskrit book is Kautilya’s “Arthashastra”