Misra, Bryant and Indigenous-Nationalist Conflation

In response to some comments on this list about Misra being suspect
of Hindu nationalist sympathies, I ran across these quotes in Edwin
Bryant's excellent new book.

"One must be cautious about contributing to a sort of Indological
McCarthyism whereby anyone reconsidering or challenging long-held
assumptions pertaining to the IndoAryans is instantly dubbed a
fundamentalist or nationalist or, more drastically, is accused of
contributing to Nazi agendas. There is a tendency in Western, and in
elements of Indian, academic circles to a priori stereotype everyone
reconsidering this aspect of Indian history in such ways….( He quotes
Parpola 1994, 58; Erdosy 1995b, x; R.S. Sharma 1993b)

Scholars such as Renfrew and Gamkrelidze and Ivanov can radically
challenge established Indo-European homeland theories in the West,
but the academic culture in India has developed to the point that
anyone attempting to even question established paradigms in early
South Asian history is in danger of being dubbed a Nazi…. It is
obviously unconducive to the pursuit of impartial scholarly research
that is making at least some effort to be objective." page 276

Misra quoted in Bryant on page 283: Misra replies to Hock: "Hock has
himself invented… the Sanskrit-origin hypothesis, with which he has
associated me… but my work shows no hint for such an assumption. I
have never claimed that Sanskrit was the original language, nor have
I said that Sanskrit was identical with proto Indo-European. I have
only presented additional evidence… that Sanksrit presents the oldest
literary evidence in the form of the Rigveda…. I do not understand
why Hock has paid less attention to the Uralic evidence, which covers
many pages of the book (Misra 1992, p. 16-34) and which is more
significant for the dates of Rigveda, from a linguistic point of
view…. On the other hand he has chosen a much less significant part
of the book viz. The peacock evidence… quoted by me as complementary
to my linguistic evidence."

Bryant continues: "As an aside, Misra, whom I have known for many
years, has nothing to do with Hindu right-wing attitudes and actually
happens to be very concerned that his views not be co-opted by
nationalist or agenda-driven discourses."