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(A stark and anguished assessment of the state of affairs as regards thestudy of classical literatures in India.)**************************************************THE HINDUOnline edition of India's National Newspaper

Thursday, Nov 27, 2008The real classical languages debateSheldon PollockA Sanskrit proverb tells us that it is far easier to tear down a house thanit is to build it. The great edifice of Indian classical language study and

literary scholarship has been nearly torn down. Is it possible, at this latehour, to build it up again?I have been observing with extreme bemusement the debate over the classicalstatus of Indian languages, since the issue was first raised in these pages

in 2006 in the case of Kannada. Yes of course, it is dangerous to introduceinvidious distinctions among languages, and yes of course, the scholarshipupon which these distinctions are founded is often empirically thin and

theoretically weak. But with respect to the core problem of the debate, I amreminded of what the great poet Bhartrhari said: One should not wait untilthe house is burning to dig a well (sandipte bhavane tu kupakhananam

pratyudyamah kidrsah). And the house of Indian classical language study isnot only burning, it lies almost in ashes.Who cares if language X, Y, or Z is given "classical" status if there is noone who can read it? And if the award of classical status is a means to

ensure serious scholarship, then there are a dozen or more languages inIndia — indeed, the entire pre-modern literary past — that is in desperateneed of this recognition.At the time of Independence, and for some two millennia before that, India

was graced by the presence of scholars whose historical and philologicalexpertise made them the peer of any in the world. They produced editions andliterary and historical studies of texts in Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and

Telugu — and in Apabhramsha, Assamese, Bangla, Brajbhasha, Gujarati,Marathi, Oriya, Persian, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Urdu — that we still use today.In fact, in many cases their works have not been replaced. This is not

because they are irreplaceable — it is in the nature of scholarship thatlater knowledge should supersede earlier. They have not been replacedbecause there is no one to replace them.Two generations of Indian students have been lost to the study of classical

Indian languages and literatures, in part due to powerful economic forces nodoubt, but in part due to sheer neglect. The situation is dire. Let me offera few anecdotes. A great university in the United States with a long

commitment to classical Indian studies sought for years to hire a professorof Telugu literature. Not one scholar could be found who commanded thetradition from Nannaya to the present; the one professor of Telugu

literature in the U.S. who does have these skills will soon retire, and whenhe does, classical Telugu studies will retire with him. The same can be saidof many other languages, such as Bangla, where the number of scholars who

can actually read not just Tagore, but Vaishnav pads or the greatseventeenth century biography of Caitanya, the Caitanyacaritamrta, are fewand far between.For several years I studied classical Kannada with T.V. Venkatachala Sastry

of Mysore, a splendid representative of the kind of historically deeplearning I have mentioned. During all my time in Karnataka I did notencounter a single young scholar who had command over the great texts of

classical Kannada — Pampa, Ranna, Ponna — to say nothing of readingknowledgeably in the extraordinary inscriptional treasure house that isKarnataka.Today, in neither of the two great universities in the capital city of

India, is anyone conducting research on classical Hindi literature, thegreat works of Keshavdas and his successors. Imagine — and this is an exactparallel — if there were no one in Paris in 2008 producing scholarship on

the works of Corneille, Racine, and Molière. Not coincidentally, a vastnumber of Brajbhasha texts lie mouldering in archives, unedited to this day.This is even truer of Indo-Persian literature. Large quantities of

manuscripts, including divans of some of the great court poets of MughalIndia, remain unpublished and unread. When I ask knowledgeable friends aboutthe state of the field, I hear them speak of great scholars in their 80s –

and almost no one younger.Two year ago, I attend a large conference in Udaipur on the present stateand future prospects of the humanities in India. I asked the more than onehundred delegates there, some of the best literary scholars in the country,

how many of them actually train their students to read literary texts in anIndian language. Three people raised their hand, all Sanskrit teachers.Nine years ago, H.C. Bhayani, the great scholar of Apabhramsha, passed away.

With his death, so far as I am able to judge, the field of Apabhramshastudies itself died in India. To my eyes, the situation with Apabhramsha issymptomatic of a vast cultural ecocide that is underway in this country. And

not just language knowledge is disappearing but all the skills associatedwith it, such as the capacity to read non-modern scripts, from Brahmi toModi to Shikhasta.To be sure, I have not systematically canvassed every university in India,

and there are undoubtedly some exceptions to the trend I am sketching. Butby no means do I think it even remotely an exaggeration to suggest thatwithin two generations, the Indian literary past – one of the most luminous

contributions ever made to human civilisation – may be virtually unreadableto the people of India.There is another Sanskrit proverb that tells us it is far easier to teardown a house than to build it up (asakto ham grharambhe sakto ham

grhabhanjane). The great edifice of Indian literary scholarship has nearlybeen torn down. Is it possible, at this late hour, to build it up again?India has shown itself capable of achieving pre-eminence in anything it sets

its mind to. Consider the Indian Institutes of Management, of Science, andof Technology. Universities and companies and organisations around the worldcompete for the graduates of the IIMs, IISs, IITs. Why should India not

commit itself to build the same kind of institute to serve the needs of itsculture — not just dance and art and music, but its literary culture? Whyshould it not build an Indian Institute of the Humanities devoted not just

to revivifying the study of the classical languages, but to producingworld-class scholarship, as a demonstration of what is possible, a model foruniversities to follow, and a source of new scholars to staff those

universities? It is not too late. The reward of success would beincalculable; the cost of failure would be catastrophic.(Sheldon Pollock is Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies,Columbia University, New York, Editor of the Clay Sanskrit Library, and

author of, among other books, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men.)