Talk:Gautam Premnath

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Sachi Anjunkar


Gautam Premnath is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley[1] as of April 2024. According to his university profile, he focuses on the influential body of work produced by contemporary Indian writers working in English, highlighting their often tense relationship with received narratives of Indian nationalism, and showing how their positions and attitudes invoke ideologies of authorship generated in Indian diasporic writing.

He has published no books, papers, or research pertaining to Hindus, Hinduism, the Indus Civilization, caste or the Ancient India.

On November 5, 2017, he misrepresented himself as an "independent scholar" when signing the letter submitted by the South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) to the California State Board of Education[2] where he:

  • Misrepresented scholarship stating "Mythological terms substitute for historical ones for example the 'Indus Valley Civilization' (a fact-based geographic term) appears to be replaced with a religiously-motivated and ideologically charged term 'Indus-Saraswati/Sarasvati Civilization'. The Saraswati is a mythical river"[3][4][5]
  • Implied that Christians and Muslims existed in Ancient India, prior to the founding of these religions

In 2016, he signed a letter supporting SAFG letter where he misrepresented himself as being an "independent scholar"[6][7] addressed to the State Board of Education, California Department of Education, dated May 17, 2016. They stated:

  1. "There is no established connection between Hinduism and the Indus Civilization."
  2. "It is inappropriate to remove mention of the connection of caste to Hinduism."


In 2006, he signed a letter addressed to the California Department of Education, expressing his concern about the representation of Hinduism and Ancient India in Grade 6 Social Studies textbooks despite having no publications relating to the topics being covered. He stated:

"The idea that Sanatana Dharma is a basic belief of Hinduism ignores both changes in the historical usage of the term to connote an array of notions and ritual practices, and its tendency since the late nineteenth century, to be associated with Hindu Nationalist groups in whose usage it has become a monolith and acquired a narrow and exclusively Sanskritic connotation. Such groups have since the time of the founding of the first Hindutva organization in 1925 been associated with violence and destruction. "[8]

In this letter, he misrepresents the academic "state of the art." making most of his stances suspect. Specifically, he positions the "Aryan migration theory" as the most accurate at this point in time and misrepresenting academic research by ignoring 13+ papers that challenge that position[9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21].

In the letter, he

  • Delinks Hinduism and Ancient India as because they claim that Hinduism emerged in the 19th century [22]. Finally, they decide to refine well known ancient Hindu texts such as the Aṣṭādhyāyī and Tolkāppiyam as "non-Hindu" to justify their position[23].
  • Delinks Sanskrit, the language of many ancient Hindu texts with Hindu Dharma[24] and argue falsely that Hindu women are treated as impure and unfit ignoring the richness of the traditions and respect always provided to women and described in detail across a wide body of texts[25].
  • Attributes well understood Hindu concepts like ahiṃsā to Buddhism and Jainism[26]

Publications related to India[edit]

  1. Premnath, Gautam. "The New Empire’s Old Clothes: Re-dressing Gandhi in the Age of Globalization." Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 2007, pp. 77-93.
  2. Premnath, Gautam. "Postcolonial Criticism and the Archive of ‘Global Literature’." Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 41, no. 3, 2006, pp. 23-41.
  3. Premnath, Gautam. "Diasporic Detours: Mapping the Routes of Global Capital in The Mistress of Spices." Literature Interpretation Theory, vol. 17, no. 3-4, 2006, pp. 307-322.
  4. Premnath, Gautam. "Hindu Modernity and the Politics of Reform: Reading Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay's Anandamath." South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 29, no. 3, 2006, pp. 533-549.

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Gautam Premnath University Profile accessed 19 April, 2024
  2. ↑ 2017 South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) Letter to the California State Board of Education
  3. ↑ Chakrabarti, Dilip, and Sukhdev Saini. The Problem of the Sarasvati River and Notes on the Archaeological Geography of Haryana and Indian Punjab. Aryan Books International, 2009.
  4. ↑ Danino, Michel. The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati. Penguin Books, 2010.
  5. ↑ McIntosh, Jane R. A Peaceful Realm: The Rise and Fall of the Indus Civilization. Westview Press, 2002, p. 24. ​where she stated "Suddenly it became apparent that the “Indus” Civilization was a misnomer—although the Indus had played a major role in the development of the civilization, the “lost Saraswati” River, judging by the density of settlement along its banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity. Many people today refer to this early state as the “Indus-Saraswati Civilization” and continuing references to the “Indus Civilization” should be an abbreviation in which the “Saraswati” is implied. There are some fifty sites known along the Indus whereas the Saraswati has almost 1,000. This is misleading figure because erosion and alluviation has between them destroyed or deeply buried the greater part of settlements in the Indus Valley itself, but there can be no doubt that the Saraswati system did yield a high proportion of the Indus people’s agricultural produce"
  6. ↑ 5-17 Prof. S. Shankar et al support letter
  7. ↑ 5-17 Kamala Visweswaran South Asian Faculty Group
  8. ↑ 11-18 Kamala Visweswaran CBE Final Report
  9. ↑ Bryant, Edwin. The Quest for the Origins of the Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan, Migration Debate. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  10. ↑ Elst, Koenraad. Indigenous Indians: Agastya to Ambedkar. New Delhi: Voice of India, 1993.
  11. ↑ Feuerstein, Georg, Subhash Kak, and David Frawley. In Search for the Cradle of Civilization. Wheaton: Quest Books, 2001.
  12. ↑ Frawley, David. Gods, Sages, and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization. New Delhi: Motilal Banarasi Dass, 1993.
  13. ↑ Frawley, David. The Rig Veda and the History of India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2001.
  14. ↑ Lal, B. B. How Deep are the Roots of Indian Civilization? Archaeology Answers. New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2009.
  15. ↑ Lal, B. B. “Aryan Invasion of India: Perpetuation of a Myth.” In The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History, edited by Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton, 50–74. New York: Routledge, 2005.
  16. ↑ Shaffer, J. G., and Diane A. Litchenstein. “South-Asian Archeology and the Myth of Indo-Aryan Invasions.” In The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History, edited by Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton, 75–104. New York: Routledge, 2005.
  17. ↑ Talageri, Shrikant. The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis. Rev. ed. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2004.
  18. ↑ Talageri, Shrikant. The AryanInvasion Theory: A Re-appraisal. Rev. ed. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2006.
  19. ↑ Possehl, Gregory L. The Indus Civilization. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2002
  20. ↑ Robb, Peter, ed. The Concept of Race in South Asia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.
  21. ↑ Trautmann, Thomas R. The Aryan Debate. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.
  22. ↑ "Problems in Identifying Hinduism with Ancient India: Hinduism is a plural tradition" ... "whereas most of the traditions that went into the making of what we know as Hinduism today emerged in the centuries immediately before and after the onset of the Common Era (C.E.). “Hinduism” does not even emerge as a term of reference until the colonial period in the 19th century... "
  23. ↑ of “Ancient India” with Hinduism means that other texts, which are not strictly about “Hinduism”, but important to South Asia’s intellectual heritage, such as the Sanskrit grammar by Panini or the Tolkappiyam of classical Tamil, are completely sidelined.
  24. ↑ "Problems identifying Ancient India with Sanskrit: Dual classical traditions"
  25. ↑ Sanskritic Hindu laws describe women as impure and unfit for scholarship, as lacking judgment and capability, of being the carriers of caste purity, as being entitled to lesser property and inheritance than men, etc. we recommend that they be given more information both of the strictures against women’s participation in public and religious life
  26. ↑ While the Upanishads make mention of the notion of ahimsa, it does not become important to Hinduism until after Buddhism and Jainism make it central to their conception of life. In other words, there was no prior ‘Hindu’ support for ahimsa; it is only when Hinduism became more like the Hinduism we know today that it took over ahimsa from Jainism and Buddhism
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