Three Hundred Ramayanas?

It's been a tough couple of months for university presses.  First there was the revival of the controversy over Yale University Press' The King Never Smiles.  The translator (who was living in the United States at the time he published the translation) pled guilty to charges of defaming the Royal Family of Thailand.

Now comes news of the controversy over whether Oxford University Press' India division will stop selling A.K. Ramanujan's collected essays, which includes his controversial article, "Three Hundred Ramayanas."  This apparently grew out of a decision at the University of Dehli to remove the essay as assigned reading from an undergraduate history class.  I think I'm on safe ground saying that but for the controversy I would never have heard of this article or Professor Ramanujan, who spent much of his career at the University of Chicago.  In fact, I'm still rather unclear on why the controversy over his essay.  However, through the magic of books.google, here is a copy of most of the essay, which appeared in Paula Richman's 1991 book Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, published by the University of California Press.  (And here is a link for those coming from urls with access to Cal Press' ebooks.)

OUP's response is that:

OUP is aware of the recent debate regarding the removal of an essay by A.K. Ramanujan ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation' from an undergraduate reading list at the University of Delhi. ... We would welcome a dialogue with Professor Pollock or his colleagues on any matters concerning scholarly freedom, which is of central importance to Oxford University Press.

This will, of course, bring more attention to Ramanujan's scholarship.  Here is a link to barnes and noble's page for The Collected Essays of A.K. Rananujan (2004 paperback edition), though it is listed as unavailable.  Amazon's only copy is a used one for $230.

Next up on the list of presses to be attacked by the censors?  I'm guessing the University of California Press for Oberlin Religion Professor Paula Richman's,  Many Rāmāyaṇas.  Copies of Many Ramayans are still widely available and for reasonable prices.  Barnes and Noble, for instance, has new copies in stock for $25 and links to used copies for about $16.  Amazon has copies in stock as well.

Update:  I'm actually now a little unclear on what, if anything, OUP India has done regarding Rananujan's Collected Essays, because it's listed as available for immediate purchasing on their website.

Comments

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

The "controversy" is an artifact of the dangerous shenanigans and nefarious activities practiced and propagated by Hindutva nationalist ideologues in India. It is equivalent or at least analogous to the sort of things practiced by the "Texas Taliban" (as Brian Leiter uses the term). There should be no "debate" here, for there's nothing to debate, as religious nationalists are simply trying to squelch contemporary scholarship that critically examines smrti literature in the the "Hindu" tradition. Assuming the veracity of your account, the OUP's India division and the University of Delhi should be ashamed of themselves for such egregious acts of institutional and moral cowardice. By the way, scholars in "Indic Studies," Asian Studies, Religious Studies, etc. are quite familiar with Ramanujan's scholarship, which is well-respected and frequently cited.

[Alfred Brophy]

Thanks for this, Patrick. I get that Ramanujan was a huge figure in his field; I was making the point that the attempt to censor his work increases dramatically the people who read it.