New Delhi: Five editorial board members of the Murty Classical Library of India — founded by Rohan Murty, the son of Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy — have alleged that they were dismissed with no cause, explanation or documentation by the chair of its oversight board, Professor Parimal Patil of Harvard University.
A post on Facebook by one of them, University of Chicago professor Whitney Cox, said they had been “summarily dismissed” by Patil in the last week of January.
The other academics were Rajeev Kinra from Northwestern University, Maria Heim from Amherst College, Francesca Orsini from SOAS, University of London and Archana Venkatesan from the University of California, Davis.
ThePrint has reached out to Patil, Cox and Kinra via email for comment. This report will be updated if and when responses are received.
The Murty Classical Library was founded by Rohan Murty, who is also the the founder of technology company Soroco and a former junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. The books are published by Harvard University Press.
“The library has been without a general editor since 2022 after the founding general editor Prof. Sheldon Pollock was forced to resign, also with no reason given, two years before his planned retirement. Prof. Patil determined no successor would be appointed,” added the statement by the five academics.
Pollock has in the past faced controversy with 132 intellectuals from India demanding his dismissal in 2016 for his condemnation of government action against students of Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2016. A few scholars have also alleged that Pollock was “Hinduphobic”.
The library focusses on translating into English Indian classics written in a variety of languages including Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Persian, Pali and Sanskrit, according to its website.
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The five academics still appeared as members of the editorial board on their website at the time of publishing this article. Their names had not been removed or added under the “Former Editorial Board Members” section on the website.
The five professors alleged that communication with Patil effectively stopped in the past eighteen months. During this period, the “roles and the responsibilities” of the members became unclear even as more books were being translated and readied for publication, according to their statement.
“We repeatedly expressed our concern not only about that decision (lack of appointment of a successor General Editor) and its likely effect on the series, but also about the lack of transparency in decision making, in the acquisition and approval of new projects,” added the statement.
The five authors further said they were together responsible for the translation and publication of 43 books from various languages.
“…because we are concerned about the fate of the library, on February 14th, 2024, we wrote to the Provost’s office at Harvard University to ask that they conduct an external review of these developments and the future of the series,” the academics wrote.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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