Eleanor Zelliot

I wasted Thursday in a daze. I hadn't gotten drunk or anything but for some reason I woke up around noon, and felt dizzy and tired until about 1:30AM. Needless to say, I really needed any available time to work on my final papers, so I stayed up until 3:30 writing and woke up at noon again today.

In that context there was nothing to shake me awake like a one-on-one talk with Eleanor Zelliot, the dean of international Ambedkar studies. (Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar is the guy who was born an impoverished Untouchable in rural India, secured an American education, authored the Indian Constitution, reformed the Hindu Code, and converted over three million Untouchables to Buddhism. Yet he plays second fiddle to Gandhiji.) I had scheduled this meeting with Prof. Zelliot because I wanted to know more about the current state of Ambedkar Buddhism for long term graduate study. But she was rather confused, because she thought I had called her over for something related to my thesis-- which is on State Shinto, a subject she knows nothing about. Nonetheless I had a great conversation. I learned about Mayawati, the TBMSG's successful Pali program, that Babasaheb did not burn the full Manusmriti but only the anti-shudra sections, and that there is no such thing as Hindu studies in India, a fact which astounds me. Apparently they are worried that academic study of Hinduism will lead to more right wing stuff than currently exists. But in fact academic study in America has created such comprehensive refutations of Hindutva as Was Hinduism Invented? and The Hindus: An Alternative History, while banning the practice in India must have been the direct cause of all the false professors of the sort parodied here.

Anyway, I've got to go before I get seriously distracted from finals again.