Just read a very insightful interview with Sanskrit Scholar and Columbia University professor Sheldon Pollock in India Abroad. Prof. Pollock is a keen follower of Indian culture as reflected not only in Sanskrit but in its ancient wisdom. I realize, upon reading this interview that a cross-cultural deep immersion is critical for us to understand the diversity of ideas that exist in the world. The connection of the past to the contemporary thought is a critical element that needs to be understood regardless of whether you are a revivalist or a secularist. Prof. Pollock says, “India for me has provided a very special arena in which to explore problems of human culture that have been of great interest to me. Such as literature, forms of thought, long-term literacy, ways of living together, mixed communities living together. There are deep values in Indian cultures, which I have been extremely impressed by, which I have tried to make better know to the world because I think they are values that the world could benefit from. …. Unlike the Chinese, the Indians, really made the project of living with difference an important part of their culture.” In his interview Prof. Pollock laments that the capacity to acknowledge, recognize and strive to live with cultural differences has been lost in India today. He believes that is a value that could be recovered. He terms the Ram Janmabhumi movement as use of history as a weapon and cautions people, that “If you do not understand history, you will be victims of those who us history as a weapon. If you have no access to languages, if you know nothing about your past, if you suffer from societal Alzheimer, how do you defend yourself against history used as a weapon?” he asks. Prof. Pollock wants us to replace quest for knowledge with quest for social hope with a challenge, “ How do you actually start a conversation that says hope is more important than knowledge?” He belies there is a way to balance conflicting ideas in such a way that we recognize the importance of each other’s freedom as a limit. That limit is where that person’s freedom being to encroach upon and deny another person’s freedom. I take away the core message from this interview, “Real scholarship trains students to grant that humanity on the other side. Because what you learn when you do real scholarship is to learn to listen to people from very different times and places…and you spend your life trying to understand them, to make sense of them, that’s the training for the new millennium.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 03:05:43 +0000
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