Prof Pollock doesn't complain about Iraq invasion, but protests happenings in JNU: Prof Ramakrishnan

"When the matter is lying in court, why is an American taking special interest in the matter? We are unhappy about Prof. Sheldon Pollock being inconsistent. He does not complain about the Patriot law and about the Iraq invasion, but protests about JNU and almost anything related to the current Indian goverment." said Ganesh Ramakrishnan, the professor at IIT Bombay's department of computer science and engineering who has set off a storm when he posted an online petition earlier this week asking Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murty and his son, Rohan Murty to remove Pollock as general editor of the Murty Classical Library, a series of books of translations of classical Indian literature.

Ramakrishnan was referring to Pollock's signature for a petition in mid-February to which 92 professors and intellectuals from abroad, including Naom Chomsky, Judith Butler, Mira Nair and Orhan Pamuk, who had condemned the police highhandedness inside the university saying it was evidence of the "present government's deeply authoritarian nature, intolerant of any dissent Indian".

Pollock has also been signatory to many recent petitions such as the one expressing concern against the "damage being done ...to the traditions of tolerance, and freedom of speech, belief and practices, for which India was long applauded".

Ramakrishnan's petition, endorsed by 132 academicians from universities across India, found ready support from columnist and feminist writer Madhu Kishwar, who told dna, "Why are we allowing Pollock to use his academic credentials to demonize India because we Indians have voted to power a government they don't like?

Ramakrishnan's charge is that Pollock's writings betray a"deep antipathy towards many of the ideals and values cherished and practiced in our civilization writings". Referring to a recent book, "The Battle for Sanskrit", by Rajiv Malhotra, a US-based independent scholar of Sanskrit and ancient Indian culture, the petition says that "the writings of Pollock are deeply flawed and misrepresent our cultural heritage".

Rohan Murty, who started the Murty Classical Library early last year to to commission and publish translations of some of the classics of ancient Indian literature, many of them in Sanskrit, has already rejected the demand to remove Pollock.

Ramakrishnan, however, says that his petition did not ask for Pollock to go. "But why must he lead the team? During our research we found that the team he has put together for the Murty Library is lopsided. Why are there no traditional Sanskrit scholars on the panel? We are concerned about the mindset that Pollock carries into the (MCLI) translations. It will be difficult for us to dissociate what he has written before unless he disowns the thesis he has built starting from 1985."

"How can he call Sanskrit a dead language?" asks Ramakrishna, who says he does not know Sanskrit himself and has not applied to the Murtys before posting his online petition.

Pollock is a well-known Sanskritist, having translated the Ramayana and written several books on the language, culture and philosophy of ancient India. He is a recipient of the President's Award for Sanskrit (2009), and the Padma Shri (2010). Last year, he was appointed general editor of The Murty Classical Library.

On Thursday, the Indian Writers Forum, a grouping of liberal writers and intellectuals such as K. Satchidanandan, Romila Thapar and Nayantara Sahgal, issued a counter-petition expressing worry and anger at the campaign by "some self-styled scholars and academics" to remove Pollock. "The academics in question seem to have misunderstood (or deliberately misrepresented) Pollock's criticism of Western Universities that ignore South Asian knowledge traditions as a criticism of South Asian traditions,"their petition said. It went on to question the petition's assumption that "those who are born in India are naturally endowed with an understanding of Indian knowledge systems and knowledge of Indian texts, and as if such knowledge cannot be acquired by someone who is not born here".