'Is putting silicon in one's breasts better than
(studying) the Gita?'
A P Kamath
The editors of a conservative newspaper at the elite Duke University have alleged that that they were physically threatened for their objection to make the study of Hindi a major at the liberal school. But several South Asian students said their allegation is a continuing effort by cultural conservatives to oppose multicultural studies at major American universities.
One Indian student, who accused the conservatives of Nazi-like propaganda, feared that even if Hindi were made a major, the area of South Asian study was not going to gain.
"We so strongly believe in the utility and necessity of South Asian study that we do not support Hindi becoming a major. We fear it will bring an unmerited sense of complacency to administrators and students that they are
making headway towards improving the sorry state of South
Asian studies at Duke," Neil Hattangadi wrote to the editor of the Duke's
student paper.
"Simply adding the option to major in Hindi, without
permanently improving
course offerings and faculty scholarship in Hindi, Sanskrit
and Hinduism,
will do nothing for the University except give it an
artificial means of
distinguishing itself from peer institutions," he said.
The campus police confirmed that one of the editors told
police officers that
after his letter appeared, three Indian students confronted
him in his room,
called him a racist, and threatened him with violence. Sergeant Thessie L
Mitchell, of the Duke police, said that police officers had identified the
three students who allegedly confronted Berin Szoka two weeks ago but that no
charges had been filed, pending further investigation. No names were released.
The complaints have made news in several publications including the Chronicle
of Higher Education.
Jay Strader and Szoka, editors at the conservative The Duke
Review, argued in their letters to the editor of Duke's daily student
newspaper, The Chronicle, that Hindi major is unwarranted, not only because
the Hindi classes already being offered are not in high demand, but also
because subjects in Western civilization would be more useful to students.
"The values of the West -- the power of reason, the sanctity
of individual
rights and the unfettered pursuit of happiness -- are
superior to the values
of a primitive, impoverished country like India," Szoka
wrote in The
Chronicle. "Those who truly wish to enjoy the 'richness' of
Indian culture
would do better to learn English than Hindi."
Strader, managing editor of The Duke Review, suggested
in his letter a
major in statistics instead of Hindi. Hindi, he wrote, "is a
language spoken
in a Third World country overwrought by disease and poverty,
while
[statistics] is a science of proven, inestimable value in
all branches of
industry and science."
To Neil Hattangadi, an engineering student, the letters
"remind us of Nazi
propaganda, as they contain right-wing bigotry being
preached under the
pretense of rational thought."
Hattangadi continued: "We are not amused as much as we are
disappointed that
we attend the same school as people who pride themselves in
their use of
logic and then correlate an academic discipline's worth with
its application
to industry and a civilization's cultural merit with its
material success."
"Being rational does not mean being closed-minded. The
authors are naïve in
believing that they have incorporated all the parameters
necessary to
determine the importance of fields of study. The value of
courses at Duke cannot simply be judged by their ability to provide students
with a set of job
skills.
"South Asian studies play an integral part in this
development of the
complete human being. It is another lapse in logic that
being poor, by
conventional 'Western' indicators, translates to being poor
in values or traditions; this is evidenced by the wealth of culture the
British received from India, the 'Crown Jewel' of its Empire. Though we would
not emulate some
of India's policies that have mismanaged resources, the
country has much to
teach us about living a fulfilled existence that is a
necessary complement to
Western thought."
Hattangadi's letter quoted Max Mueller, "a German language
scholar who was
very much a part of "Western civilization," recognized this
point: 'If I were
asked under what sky the human mind... has most deeply
pondered over the
greatest problems of life, and has found solutions to some
of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato
and Kant, I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what
literature we who have
been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks
and Romans... may
draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make
our inner life more
perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more
truly human a
life... again I should point to India.' "
Michele Lamprakos, a visiting assistant professor at the
Department of Art and Art History, called one of the letters "a frightening
piece."
Condemning Szoka's arguments, Lamprakos argued that Szoka
himself is testimony to the need for non-Western studies: in his ignorance of
non-Western cultures, and of the dark side of "reason" in Western
history.
Roberto Gonzalez, an officer of the Literature and Cultural
Studies Society,
Spectrum and Mi Gente, blasted Szoka's use of William Henry III, author of
In Defense of
Elitism, "Some ideas are better than
others.... Some
cultures, though we dare not say it, are more accomplished
than others and
therefore more worthy of study."
Szoka agrees with Henry III, Gonzalez pointed out: "It is
scarcely the same thing to put a man on the moon as to put a bone in your
nose."
"Is that most 20th-century Western of occurrences, the Holocaust, also
superior to putting a bone in one's nose?" Gonzalez asked.
"Or, is putting silicon in one's breasts better than the sacred Hindu text,
the Bhagavad Gita? Szoka imagines a grand evaluation whereby the
pluses and
minuses of each culture are tallied; the losers would be
unworthy of our
study and attention. (Perhaps Szoka would find them worthy
of our
colonization?) Such a calculation would, I repeat, be
executed from a
particular cultural point of view. Some Indians would
chalk-up British
colonialism as a minus; others, a plus. My point is not
novel: All cultures
have pluses and minuses. We should endeavor to engage them
in order to
enlarge our perspectives. Doing so would require knowing
languages other than
English and reading books other than In Defense of Elitism
and The Virtue
of Selfishness."
RELATED REPORT:
The letters which started the debate
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