Movements killed academic and institutions

On last Saturday I visited IIC, Delhi and happen to get some of the copies of The Occasional Papers published by the IIC. What was interesting to me was a very brief paper by Professor Noboru Karashima on Reading Manuscripts of South India in which he has collected inscriptions/manuscripts of Tamil society in 13 and 14^th century.

In an interview with The Hindu newspaper what he has said about many relevant issues like Dravidian Movement in South India, f the Archaeological Survey of India, etc…

From his interview:

• I would also like to make the point that while the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu was historically very important and socially progressive, especially their view that the caste system needed to be changed, it unfortunately had an anti-intellectual tendency. The situation was something like what took place in China during the Cultural Revolution, a movement that may have been historically necessary to some extent, but did great damage to academics.

• I think they suffer even more, and I don't know why. I think not enough attention is being paid to them. The Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India used to be an archaeologist. But for an interim period of several years, IAS officers took the place of the DG and they did not have any knowledge of archaeology itself. A similar thing happened in the State departments of archaeology too. Of epigraphy IAS officers did not know anything, and as a consequence the Epigraphical Office has suffered.