--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
wrote:
>
> It was obviously written by persons who have great knowledge and
> love for their own culture;
Well I have to say that I've yet to see anything
even remotely resembling "great knowledge", of
anything, ever coming from Mayuresh Kelkar or
Srinivasan Kalyanaraman, much less of their own
culture, about the history of which they seem
to have very little factual information. In fact
I truly have to wonder to what degree it is that
jealousy motivates their great hatred for those
Western scholars who are so much better informed
about their culture than they themselves are?
If it's not on the internet, then neither "Dr."
Kalyanaraman nor Kelkar is likely to have read
it, and both have proudly admitted more than once
that they have no knowledge of linguistics and
moreover despise it, so then how much time should
we waste debating such individuals?
Most on this list may not know, but I spent years
on "Dr." Kalyanaraman's own list debating both
him and his student Mayuresh about linguistics,
including the 'daughter-in-law' word and what
McWhorter _actually_ said about it (Mayuresh has
the habit of constantly, I would almost say
"methodically" misrepresenting the actual position
of his sources), after which even a moderately
intelligent person would realize that he was in
error. I must add that during much of my time with
that list I had also to endure the most vile abuse
from list members, including Mayuresh himself who
made the most obscene comments about my mother,
all with Kalyanaraman's full knowledge and blessing.
Piotr too spent much time and effort trying to
illuminate that list, but all to no avail, as "Dr."
Kalyanaraman and Kelkar have no interest whatsoever
in the truth, but are no more than propagandists for
the Hindu equivalent of Christian creationism. They
even uphold and cite creationist "scholars" such as
Nicholas Kazanas and David Frawley (a.k.a. "Vamadeva
Shastry", also a fortune teller and internet peddler
of quack cures). Kalyanaraman himself has repeatedly
insisted that a species of horse that went extinct
ten thousand years ago is still living in India today,
and that agriculture was practiced in India during
the last ice age. How are such claims any different
from those of the Christian creationists who insist
that man and the dinosaurs walked the Earth at the
same time?
> and I cannot fault anyone for this in any way.
So then you wouldn't expect to be faulted, Pat, if
you were to claim that the Anglo-American culture
of the U.S. was the oldest in the world, and the
source of all advanced culture everywhere, or that
English was the original language of the Earth from
which all others sprang? Personally I wouldn't accept
a claim of "great love for [your] own culture" as
an excuse for such public masturbation. Personally
I place love of the truth far above love of country
or nation, for the latter which in fact I have no
love at all, as such things aren't proper objects
of love.
Surely too, "love" tends to get in the way of one's
objectivity, though I think that the true motivation
here isn't love, but hate.
Kalyanaraman banned me from his list, and others as
well, for no more than telling truths that he found
unflattering to his own personal and idiosyncratic
view of Hinduism. Given that, and the policy stated
on this list's homepage "to discourage crank scholar-
ship", I don't see why Kelkar's and his nonsense need
be tolerated.
Would this list tolerate a fundamentalist Christian
repeatedly posting that man and the dinosaurs walked
the Earth at the same time? If we don't tolerate
domestic lunacy, then why should we tolerate that
imported from Asia? Personally I'm not interested
in reading nonsense of that sort.
In any case, let list members at least be aware of
just what sort of bottomless pit it is that they're
trying to fill when they attempt to correct Kelkar
and his ideological fellows.
David