The Cartel's Politics

For the on-going debate, please see the RHS bar under Also See

The companion article, The Cartel’s 'Theories', gave my response to one set of issues raised byVijay. Additionally, this article explains how institutional ideologies and capital empower the scholars’cartel politically, and how Indian scholars perform in compromising positions for the cartel.

It covers the following topics:

1) The US has replaced the British as the main funding source for India-related studies worldwide. This isnatural and to be expected of any superpower, given the following needs: (i) to understand various areas ofthe world for the development of policy and (ii) to have a standing army of scholars-activists ready fordeployment in a variety of ways. (See my columns: Americamust re-discover India and PreventingAmerica’s Nightmare

2) The Pew Trust’s power in academe is described; but Pew is merely one of many multi-billiondollar private foundations that control the funding and pulling of strings to popularize certain themes andtheories, as well as to influence the advancement of scholars indirectly through their proxies inside thesystem. Ford Foundation deserves a study by itself as to how it has influenced certain agendas overothers in India. I invite Vijay to collaborate for a study on who funds what, and also to develop a processfor scholars/activists to make transparent disclosures of all their grants and other affiliations.

3) These items then pave the way to address my main point here: that "resistance", "camps", andcriticism of various kinds amongst scholars are merely managed and controlled forms of opposition, andare ultimately not real but virtual.

4) Contrary to their claims, the South Asian Studies NRI scholars are not India’s intellectual home team,as they are neither qualified (in the siddhantas and categories of Indian thought) nor truly free.

5) Using the very recent concrete example of FOIL’s mobilization against me, I illustrate that many ofthese scholars are part of the Sepoy Army to defend the fortress.

I also explain that it is not enough for Vijay to claim to have dealt with an issue that I raise, simply bygiving some bibliographic reference to show that he already knew about it. This is not a TV game-show on whoknows more. As long as the issue remains in the real world, it is still an issue no matter how much might havebeen written on it. This and some relatively atypical counter-examples seem to be Vijay’s common way ofaddressing many issues.

In the fall of 2002, a young, outspoken academic scholar in South Asian Studies - a whistleblower of sorts- posted the following on the internet list of the politically powerful academic group known as RISA(Religions In South Asia). He is Christian Wedemeyer, Department of Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen,and he also moderates the Indology list on Yahoo. He dropped the following bombshell:

a) Many (perhaps most) of the leading lights of South Asian Studies in the US today were funded at least inpart by "National Defense Fellowships" (now FLAS) - money earmarked by the US Government in the frenzy ofpost-Sputnik paranoia, in order to train Americans to know the Others’ languages and so keep pace with theSoviet drive to world domination;

b) the American university system is now in practice (if not in theory) a branch of the governmentalintelligence services (cf. Sigmund Diamond's important work "Compromised Campus", New York, 1992). As Diamond notes (p. 53):"When former national security advisor McGeorge Bundy said that all university area studies programs were‘manned, directed, or stimulated by graduates of the OSS [Office of Strategic Services],’ he was writingmore than history; he was giving a prognosis of the future and making policy. There always had been andalways would be ‘a high measure of interpenetration between universities with area programs and theinformation-gathering agencies of the government of the United States.’"

c) related to b), leading lights of US South Asian Studies (and mentors to many current members of RISA)like Norman Brown were (and, likely, are) up to their ya-yas in CIA and State Department contacts and(presumably) funding; and

d) (As I noted in my MA thesis), "at the same time as all of the books and conferences such asIntroducing India in Liberal Education, whose rhetoric speaks of integrating Eastern contributions into thegreat liberal educative tradition of 'the World' (i.e. the West), the political ramifications of 'areastudies' were being encouraged and exploited. Interestingly, at this very conference, held in Chicago in 1957, at which these issues were being addressed,we see as attendees the names of 'Chadbourne Gilpatric, The Rockefeller Foundation,' 'William Marvel, Executive Associate, Carnegie Corporation of New York,' and 'Cloen O. Swayzee, The Ford Foundation' - all foundations implicated in connection with contemporaneous covert F.B.I. collaboration in Diamond'srecent study of the collaboration between the government intelligence agencies and American universities." (cf. "Orientalism is a Humanism: Materials and Methods for an History and Auto-critique of BuddhistStudies", Columbia, 1994).

Wedemeyer then challenged his academic colleagues to introspect honestly about whether they were, in fact,paid mercenaries:

"What does this mean for South Asian Studies (and "Religion In South Asia")? Are we merely toconclude that all these people (our colleagues and mentors, not to mention "we") are simply"bought and paid for"? Are we all guilty of a kind of ‘trahison des clercs’? Should we cautionourselves against accepting such money and thus giving "academic respectability" to the nefariousplans of the State Department, FBI, and CIA? I think (and I assume most would agree) that the situation ismore complex than this. We seem to trust that our colleagues and mentors can accept money from such sources,perhaps telling them what they want to hear (and sending their lesser-quality students to work as translatorsand code-breakers), yet continuing with their critical, objective scholarship (or something approximating thesame)."

The above post by Wedemeyer, was triggered by RISA’s attack against a conference in 2002 organized byTheInfinity Foundation, co-convened by Prof. Robert Thurman of Columbia University and me, which Wedemeyerand many other academic scholars participated in. 

In the same internet debate, another academic scholar named Judson Trapnell (who, unfortunately, has passedaway) wrote an honest admission of the academic scholars’ vulnerabilities in bringing personal biases totheir work:

"Given our training in contemporary hermeneutical theory, why do we have difficulty in accepting that we,and those institutions who fund us, bring assumptions to our work--assumptions that may seem suspect toothers? I am puzzled both by the claims to higher objectivity in Western academic research and by thecriticisms of others for not meeting up to our standards - i.e., in bringing political agendas to bear upon such research. Who among us does not bring them? To be humanis to have such agendas, to operate under certain beliefs. Inevitably we become defensive when someonedares to try to expose our assumptions. But once the emotions have cooled, it is our responsibility as scholars to consider carefully, evenprayerfully, whether there is some truth in what the other says. Then we may engage in a mutual revelation ofassumptions with our critic, rather than a heated and defensive attempt to condemn the other for having anagenda that differs from ours."

The excellent book by Diamond, "Compromised Campuses," (referenced by Wedemeyer above) usesrecently declassified government documents to show how Ivy Leagues (he focuses on Harvard and Yale) werebastions of CIA/FBI surveillance of scholars who were branded as trouble-makers, and, in particular, theauthor shows the role of Henry Kissinger as a government agent when he was at Harvard. It documents how thegovernment agencies and bureaus influenced academic selections by many covert means. This, according to thebook, was a widespread infiltration, and was with the full knowledge and cooperation of the universities’highest level authorities, including university presidents. The author also remarks that there is no reason tobelieve that things have changed today, because similar institutional strings, funding, agendas, and covertmeans remain intact.

In this regard, I quote (anonymously per request) from a private email that I received after ThePeer-Review Cartel article appeared, from an academic scholar in another Western country:

"The problem of the abuse of institutional academic power is not restricted to Indology. It is present inmuch of the social sciences, since academic debate has political implications and is explicitly influenced bythe dominant institutions of society. As a scholar in the fields of international relations and internationalpolitical economy, it is clear to me that six US-based journals control intellectual output in the fieldworldwide. They directly or indirectly promote ideas that support US foreign policy interests - once you cutthrough the crap! Any 'dissent' itself is in fact self-legitimating because the real secret of wieldingeffective power and successful domination is to sponsor and control a 'critique of the self' ; a Gramscian phenomenon, in effect. Much 'critique' of Hinduism and India is to show that Hinduism ismumbo-jumbo and backward, and India a potential danger to the world because of its reprehensibleBrahmin-dominated caste culture. Indian scholars, wishing to taste the joys of Western material comforts,cannot contest this, and once compromised, they cannot obviously admit that they are a whore while seeking toembrace purity and truth!

"A small number of white scholars have intimate ties with government agencies and conformity radiatesfrom this core, via funding and positions in high status institutions, though obviously they don't controleverything. Two of the world's leading anthropologists, working on India, report to the intelligence servicesin their own country and have intimate ties with the Church. They also have strong personal ties with some ofIndia's leading leftist scholars. Unfortunately, I can't be more specific..."

Another email was from a medical researcher complaining about her field. It shows how widespread anddeep-rooted these institutionalized prejudices run:

In a future article on this cartel issue, I shall describe my model to interpret the above e-mail’sreference to the way the system deliberately selects "stupid" items from the third-worlders, in order to"condescendingly patronize." I refer to this as the Ganga-Din Syndrome. There are many scriptsavailable in the Western Grand Narrative (WGN) for Indians to perform as deliberate-morons. The British actor,Peter Sellers, depicted such characters in some of his roles. Unfortunately, many Indians have becomeprogrammed to subliminally behave like morons in front of whites, as if they were enacting a script that wasbeing expected of them. I will claim in my future article that many Indian postcolonialist scholars are, infact, performing like Ganga-Dins in the Western Grand Narrative, because such roles come with carrots.

This is why I disagree with Homi Bhabha and others who characterize this behavior as "resistance," andI see it as a sellout. Much of what Bhabha calls "hybridity" is to glorify the sellout, by including ascript for it within the WGN that makes it seem "progressive".

I am glad that Vijay acknowledges that private mega-buck funding often compromises academic independence.

For example, Pew Trust is controlling the academic ("secular") Religious Studies discipline atnot just one Davos, but many. Its Protestant evangelical mission is very publicly stated as follows (Religionand the Public Square: Religious Grant Making at The Pew Charitable Trusts, by Luis E. Lugo):

Furthermore, Pew Trust controls the supply of survey research data on public attitudes about religion; itdominates in giving the grants for scholarships and post-docs in the "secular" academic study of religion;and it funds a variety of major programs at the top universities. It is also one of the top two fundingsources of the American Academy of Religion.

The Henry Luce Foundation also has a very solid Christian leaning, and Luce’s family was Christianevangelists. It is a similar private family endowment operating in this space. Since Mr. Luce is in his oldage, his successors and other appointed trustees have taken over, and are said to have Christianized itfurther. I was informed (unconfirmed) by a reliable person close to the situation that even his present wife(who is sympathetic to Buddhist causes) was turned down by the controlling Christian trustees when she wantedto give certain grants to Buddhism-related causes.

Too much of this is kind of political influence is unofficial, confidential or is simply never compiledsystematically for public scrutiny. It is very important to do a report on who funds what: I would be glad topool resources and information with anyone interested to inquire into every funding source pertaining toIndia-related studies. (Funding agencies are already required to file annual reports on who they fund whatamounts and for what purpose, and it would be a matter of compilation.)

In parallel, I would also recommend to Vijay that we propose a code of conduct for scholars and activiststo voluntarily disclose their funding sources and affiliations publicly, not because there is necessarilyanything wrong in every instance, but for the sake of transparency.

This disclosure is especially critical in the case of scholars with dual careers: one career is inside theacademy that serves to legitimize them, and the other un/semi-official career is in often some vague,undefined, unaccountable affiliations classified under a meaningless umbrella such as "peace activist".

There are considerable mechanisms in the career maze that scholars must learn to get through to advance.