Recent MCLI news I recd.: Sheldon Pollock (& others) out - effected by Oversight
K S Kannan
During the last week of January, 2024, we the undersigned were all summarily dismissed from the Editorial
Board of the Murty Classical Library of India by the chair of its Oversight Board, Prof. Parimal Patil of
Harvard University, without cause, explanation, or documentation.
Pollock, was forced to resign, also with no reason given, two years before his planned retirement. Prof. Patil
determined that no successor would be appointed. We repeatedly expressed concern not only about that
decision and its likely effect on the series, but about the lack of transparency in decision-making, in the
acquisition and approval of new projects, and in the issuing of contracts; and about the opaque and
uncollegial management style of Prof. Patil and Harvard University Press.
unclear, and communication with Prof. Patil effectively stopped, we worked tirelessly with translators on their
book manuscripts. Now we learn that in the view of Prof. Patil, we alone were responsible for the
“breakdown of trust,” and–incredibly–that we are perceived to have “lost confidence in the mission of
MCLI.” These accusations we utterly reject.
contract, in Apabhramsha, Bangla, Hindi (Brajbhasha and Avadhi), Kannada, Pali, Panjabi, Persian, Sanskrit,
Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Who is to undertake this work in the future and what is to become of the
translations currently being edited? There has been no further communication from the Board or the Press; in
particular, there has been no notion of the future direction of the Library or of the status of works already
under contract.
authority over all appointments to the Editorial and Oversight Boards. In light of this, and because we are
concerned about the fate of the Library, on February 14th, 2024, we wrote to the Provost’s office at Harvard
University to ask that they conduct an external review of these developments and the future of the series.
Prof. Whitney Cox (University of Chicago),
Prof. Maria Heim (Amherst College),
Prof. Rajeev Kinra (Northwestern University),
Prof. Francesca Orsini (SOAS, University of London),
Prof. Archana Venkatesan (University of California, Davis).
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Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj Chair Professor (Retd.), IIT-Madras.
Member, Expert Committee for Review of Criticism of Indian Knowledge Traditions, Central Sanskrit University (under MoE, GoI), Ganganath Jha Campus, Prayagraj.
Adjunct Faculty, Dept of Heritage Science and Technology, IIT Hyderabad.
Member, Academic Council, Veda Vijnana Shodha Samsthana.
Academic Director, Swadeshi Indology.
Nominated Member, IIAS, Shimla.
Former Director, Karnataka Samskrit
University, Bangalore.
Former Head, Dept. of Sanskrit, The
National Colleges, Bangalore.
Nagaraj Paturi
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Nagaraj Paturi
Professor Patil, while refraining from responding to the statement, said that the process of rebuilding the editorial board was underway with two new additions – Indian poet and art critic Ranjit Hoskote and renowned translator Mini Krishnan.
“In the coming months we plan to add more editors to the board. We are deeply committed to the MCLI books under contract and to providing MCLI translators with the level of editorial support that they need and deserve,” he said in an email to The Wire.
Krishnan is a Chennai-based editor while Hoskote is an internationally renowned art curator and poet from Mumbai. He was in the news a few months ago when his criticism of Hindutva and Zionism and an earlier call for the boycott of Israel prompted the German government to threaten withdrawal of financial support from the ‘Documenta’ art event unless it ended its association with him.
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https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/people/parimal-patil
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Against a Hindu God (Columbia 2009) is a book-length work on Buddhist epistemology and the philosophy of language and mind that supports it. Its textual focus is the work of a Buddhist philosopher named Ratnakīrti and his critique of Nyāya inferential arguments for the existence of God. Buddhist Philosophy of Language in India (Columbia 2010), which I co-authored with my colleague Lawrence J. McCrea, is a study of Jñānaśrīmitra’s Monograph on Exclusion, a text in which he develops and defends the famous Buddhist theory of Apoha.
Jñānaśrīmitra and his student Ratnakīrti lived and worked at the monastic and educational complex of Vikramaśīla during the final phase of Buddhism in India. Philosophy at Vikramaśīla continues to fascinate me. At present, I am working on late Buddhist debates on the possibility of contentless consciousness, the metaphysics of relational properties, mereology, and an inference-rule called antarvyāpti.
K S Kannan
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