Indians have to take Indology back from Westerners, says Francois Gautier

Bengaluru: Indology is still in the hands of Westerners and it is time Indians take it back and rewrite history, said well-known Indologist, journalist and historian Francois Gautier.

At his session, The Sad State of Indology Today, at the Bangalore Literature Festival, Mr Gautier said that the major problem is that Westerners study the country with negativity and always keep a distance from it. “Westerners never speak about positive aspects of India.”

He said, “Indians are not proud to be Indians. If a Frenchman is brought up to be proud of Jeanne d’Arc, Indians have a bunch of them to be proud of, like Rani Jhansi, Chennamma, Rani Velu Nachiyar. If the British are proud of Shakespeare, Indians have Kalidasa who is one the greatest poets ever.”

He demanded that school curriculum in India has to be totally revised as it is just making ‘clones’, which do not have any roots of India’s culture and are manufactured to be exported.

“The country’s history is still taught as it was devised by Western scholars, which promotes blind theories. Indians have to take Indology back from the Westerners,” he said