More than a decade ago, in an interview with Inlaks Scholarship committee, the chair, who was supposed to be one of the top scientists in India working on Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, very arrogantly challenged me if I answered his question correctly obviously what he thought to be correct he would guarantee me the scholarship. Why do Italians study Sanskrit? Very boring indeed. Unfortunately, this is not what he was looking forward to. As I look back, with a certain amount of conviction, I can say that he wanted me to talk about Orientalism.
Perhaps he wanted me to quote Colonial Orientalists and explain to him how they feminized the Orient. To come back to our topic, the chair of the committee also sounded quite anti-fascist to me. As I left the interview room he said to me that I should not have been wearing a tie since I studied Sanskrit. How is a man who is supposed to study something traditional, supposed to be wearing a modern dress, he must have thought. Perhaps what he was studying was supposed to be modern enough and what I was studying was labelled as more traditional.
Moreover, it was in itself interesting that my interview panel constituted of lawyers, industrialists, general academics and scientists, but not a single specialist in social sciences or humanities, or if not asking for anything more, but an Indologist. The only problem, according to me, I said, was that the former existed a bit earlier than the latter.
A little difference of almost nine-hundred years is not too much. However, I did say I could try a reverse method.
After spending so many years in Indology I think I do identify with the feeling of the committee chair. On the one hand he wanted to support someone like me who was doing classical studies, more importantly focusing on Sanskrit that in itself was not very usual.
