INDIAN STUDIES

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The impending departure of the entire teaching staff in modern Indian government and history (i.e. Professor and Mrs. Rudolph) is disheartening not only because it means the loss to Harvard of two excellent young teachers and scholars but also because it demonstrates the sorry state of Indian studies here.

Harvard now looks forward to a rather Spartan menu of courses dealing with India: Social Sciences 116 (a half course introduction to the Civilization of India) and Anthropology 140ab (a course to be given the year after next on Significant Aspects of the Social Organization of India. Sanskrit and Pali (neither of which is spoken) are the two language offerings in the area. There are two courses devoting a few weeks to Indian art: Fine Arts 13 and Humanities 120. This all adds up to one full undergraduate course (to be given the year after next) entirely devoted to Indian civilization within the last millenium.

The inadequacy of these courses must be obvious to anyone at all familiar with the age, importance, and richness of Indian civilization. But aside from the wonder-that-was-India arguments for Indian studies and aside from the arguments about India's present importance in world affairs, there is another crucial reason for studying modern India. One of the major interests of people working in the social sciences is modernization and economic development. India presents us with a tremendous example of a rational attempt to achieve modernization and to achieve it in a non-totalitarian setting.

I have heard two basic excuses for this neglect of Indian studies. The first is that Harvard should not embark on an Indian studies program unless it can do it properly and on a continuing basis ... Since the amount of Indian studies going on at present in this country is not exactly overwhelming, Harvard will itself have to assist in the necessary training. Add to this the fact that many people are already interested in India, and one sees the rather obvious necessity for some intermediate program until a center, can be established. This might consist of at least a couple of faculty members working on modern Indian history and government and also some special effort to obtain visiting lecturers on the region.

The second excuse one hears is that no university, even Harvard, can be a repository for universal knowledge and that there is no reason to complain about a weakness in a particular field. It seems, however, that if Harvard can manage to be a repository for the intellectual History of Armenia, Fifth through Tenth Centuries (Armenia 166), it ought to be able to find one small niche for the Indian subcontinent. Daniel H. Saks '96