New Delhi: Five of the eight members of the Murty Classical Library of India’s (MCLI) editorial board were allegedly dismissed “without cause, explanation or documentation”, a public statement posted on X by historian Rajeev Kinra has revealed.
The statement, signed by all five members including Kinra, details the gradual breakdown of communication between the board members and the chair of its oversight board, Professor Parimal Patil who is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University.
MCLI, founded by Infosys founder Narayan Murty’s son Rohan, is noted for its contribution to translating Indian literary texts for the modern reader. Established in January 2015, it has been publishing classics of Indian literature in languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, other Indian languages, and Persian.
Targeted by Hindutva critics from its inception in 2015, the MCLI had settled down to a respectable publishing schedule until the ouster of its series editor Sheldon Pollock two years ago. Though turmoil within the remaining team has been suspected for some time, the statement – signed by Whitney Cox (University of Chicago), Maria Heim (Amherst College), Rajeev Kinra (Northwestern University), Francesca Orsini (SOAS, University of London), and Archana Venkatesan (University of California, Davis) – marks the first public evidence of internal dissonance.
In the statement, the former board members pointed out how the library has been without a general editor since 2022 after the founding general editor, Professor Sheldon Pollock, was “forced to resign, also with no reason given, two years before his planned retirement”.
The statement by the five MCLI members.
“Prof. Patil determined that no successor would be appointed. We repeatedly expressed concern not only about that decision and its likely effect on the series, but about the lack of transparency in decision-making, in the acquisition and approval of new projects, and in the issuing of contracts; and about the opaque and uncollegial management style of Prof. Patil and Harvard University Press,” the statement said.
“In the last eighteen months, even as the roles and responsibilities of the editorial board became increasingly unclear, and communication with Prof. Patil effectively stopped, we worked tirelessly with translators on their book manuscripts,” it added.
The academics also questioned the future of the translation work currently underway and said that there has been no communication from the board or the university press regarding the direction the library will take.
The statement said:
“Together we were responsible for editing and supervising the translation and publication of 43 books under contract, in Apabhramsha, Bangla, Hindi (Brajbhasha and Avadhi), Kannada, Pali, Panjabi, Persian, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Who is to undertake this work in the future and what is to become of the translations currently being edited?
“There has been no further communication from the Board or the Press; in particular, there has been no notion of the future direction of the Library or of the status of works already under contract.”
The academics also wrote to the Provost of Harvard University, the ultimate authority over all appointments to the editorial and oversight Boards, to conduct an external review of these developments and the future of the series.
Professor Patil, while refraining from responding to the statement, said that the process of rebuilding the editorial board was underway with two new additions – Indian poet and art critic Ranjit Hoskote and renowned translator Mini Krishnan.
“In the coming months we plan to add more editors to the board. We are deeply committed to the MCLI books under contract and to providing MCLI translators with the level of editorial support that they need and deserve,” he said in an email to The Wire.
Books published by the MCLI’s translators. Photo: Official Instagram account.
Krishnan is a Chennai-based editor while Hoskote is an internationally renowned art curator and poet from Mumbai. He was in the news a few months ago when his criticism of Hindutva and Zionism and an earlier call for the boycott of Israel prompted the German government to threaten withdrawal of financial support from the ‘Documenta’ art event unless it ended its association with him.
Past controversy
Pollock and his work done in association with the library came into focus in 2016 after a petition signed by Hindutva-influenced academics demanded his removal from the library’s editorship.
The petition said that Pollock “has deep antipathy towards many of the ideals and values cherished and practiced in our civilisation.” It said that for a project of this magnitude, we need a “team of scholars who not only have proven mastery in the relevant Indian languages but are also deeply rooted and steeped in the intellectual traditions of India.”
It may be noted that Pollock is a very renowned scholar and authority in his field. He is the Arvind Raghunathan Professor of South Asian studies at Columbia University. He also served as the William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Columbia, and before that as the George V. Bobrinskoy Distinguished Service Professor of Sanskrit and Indic Studies at the University of Chicago. Pollock also holds a Masters (1973) and PhD (1975) in Sanskrit and Indian Studies.
In addition to questioning Pollock’s credentials, the petition, largely dismissed as trivial by notable scholars and journalists, also objected to his support of the 2016 protests at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, saying that “he has shown disrespect for the integrity of India”.
Pollock was one of the several eminent signatories for a statement expressing “heartfelt solidarity” with JNU students who had been accused of carrying out “anti-national” activities on campus. The statement also condemned “the culture of authoritarian menace that the present government in India has generated”.
It’s pretty clear the petitioners haven’t read any of the Murty Library publications, or if they did, didn’t find anything to complain about, author and journalist Raghu Karnad had told the Business Standard in 2016.
“So, the petition is completely trivial on the matter of scholarship, which is what made me wonder about the petitioners themselves. Let’s just say I was amused but I wasn’t surprised,” he added.
Intellectuals had also accused the petitioners of quoting Pollock selectively and out of context, with some like Ramachandra Guha calling it “frivolous and motivated”, and Kancha Ilaiah terming it “brahmanical and un-intellectual”.
