Bad ideas are like barnacles. They have a tendency to hold on. In Hindu Studies, there has been this tendency to think that every opinion is created equal. This is an understandable intellectual response to the organizational nature of Hinduism. If there is no organization that can serve as an 'Authority' (as, for example, the Catholic Church for Catholicism), then surely, all opinions must be equal. (Ed Note: Of course, they are not). My thesis, as part of this series of posts, is that Hinduism is different from other religions in that it does not possess a hierarchical structure but rather has a network structure. This is the reason for the mistaken intellectual response that you often see.
The same sort of mistake, oddly enough, also happens in India Studies, but it may be a bit more involved to state why. The reason is incentives. Professors have no incentive to point out mistakes in the work of others. Tenure decisions are not made based on how much you help other academics correct their analysis. It is much better to execute a policy of 'live and let live' wherein nobody finds fault with anybody else. This strategy is a Nash equilibrium. And not surprisingly, that is exactly what professors do.
Unfortunately for these professors, they are many of us who know that not all opinions are indeed created equal. An academic paper is much more likely to convince if it has the backing of sound mathematical statistics and solid numbers. The non-mathematical approach to academe continues to be popular, but it is unfortunately a recipe for disaster. What we have in place of actual intellectual analysis is a perfect storm of confusion. In the case of Hinduism, billions of people with billions of ideas about their faith, all of them somehow treated as correct. In the case of India Studies, hundreds of academics with conflicting ideas about India, all of them somehow consistent. I suppose anything else would be considered 'privileging' according to the so-called Theories of Power fancied by the Marxists.
The same sort of mistake, oddly enough, also happens in India Studies, but it may be a bit more involved to state why. The reason is incentives. Professors have no incentive to point out mistakes in the work of others. Tenure decisions are not made based on how much you help other academics correct their analysis. It is much better to execute a policy of 'live and let live' wherein nobody finds fault with anybody else. This strategy is a Nash equilibrium. And not surprisingly, that is exactly what professors do.
Unfortunately for these professors, they are many of us who know that not all opinions are indeed created equal. An academic paper is much more likely to convince if it has the backing of sound mathematical statistics and solid numbers. The non-mathematical approach to academe continues to be popular, but it is unfortunately a recipe for disaster. What we have in place of actual intellectual analysis is a perfect storm of confusion. In the case of Hinduism, billions of people with billions of ideas about their faith, all of them somehow treated as correct. In the case of India Studies, hundreds of academics with conflicting ideas about India, all of them somehow consistent. I suppose anything else would be considered 'privileging' according to the so-called Theories of Power fancied by the Marxists.
Below is an example of this sort of a mess. The article I had linked to before by Paul Brass clearly suffers from this same sort of a non-mathematical analysis problem. The author argues that secularism in India is somehow different from that in other countries. To a social scientist, this is an inconsistent, even bizarre, position. Why is it be different? Why should it be different? Why are the social scientific methodologies that are already providing excellent insights on the economics and political economy of India invalid? The answer is straightforward : they are not.
