“Talageri Is Not Published in “Peer-Reviewed Academic Journals””: Another Stale Meaningless Cliché

 

“Talageri Is Not Published in “Peer-Reviewed Academic Journals””:

Another Stale Meaningless Cliché

 

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

 As I have pointed out many times, I have written on every relevant issue concerning the AIT-OIT issue, not once but many times over, and I have decided to stop repeating myself again and again for people who are totally deaf or incurably illiterate. Unless some genuine new point is raised which requires an answer or detailed clarification from me (thought honestly, I do not see such a contingency arising), I have finished writing on the AIT-OIT issue. But it is true that something I have already written in detail may escape the attention of interested readers. Which is why I took the trouble of writing the previous article on the subject of my knowledge − or alleged lack of it − on the subject of linguistics, or specifically on the linguistic knowledge required in studying the AIT-OIT issue and the Rigvedic data, in order to list out my earlier articles on the subject. Let me add here another article that I missed out mentioning in my previous article:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-complete-linguistic-case-for-out-of.html

 

In this present article (basically meant, like my previous article on the subject of my knowledge of Sanskrit and linguistics, to list out my earlier articles relevant to the point), I will deal with:

A. “Peer Review”.

B. The OIT (or anti-AIT) Illiterates.

C. A Word on the Genetic Evidence. 

 

A. “Peer Review”

I am writing this article mainly to deal with another oft-repeated complaint against me: that my articles are not published in “peer-reviewed journals”.

This complaint shows an extreme degree of empty-headedness. That my articles are not published in “peer-reviewed journals” is not because I have prevented them from being so published or from being “reviewed” by anyone: but because all these journals are controlled and financed by vested interests who have a strong “academic” stake in the prevalence of the AIT paradigm. Expecting my articles to be published in these journals is tantamount to expecting that my opponents in this debate (or on this AIT-OIT issue) will themselves give publicity to research that they are trying their hardest to stonewall and to suppress, and assuming that their failure to do so reflects not on their integrity but on my scholarship. And as for critically reviewing my work, everyone who has (it is unfortunate that I have to put it in this way) “crossed swords” with me have retired licking their wounds. The lack of honesty and objectivity in others cannot be laid at my doors. It is not (as some may try to claim) that they do not want to give publicity to “unscholarly” writings and fear that they will be doing so by writing critiques of my work: none of these AIT enthusiasts hesitate to attack and criticize in detail any rubbish written by OIT proponents (or AIT opponents), or to expose wrong arguments made against the AIT. It is just that they like to pick easy targets, or attack straw men, and I am not an easy target and my evidence does not present them with any straw men to attack: so stonewalling is the only alternative.

Giving undue weightage, or rather giving full monopoly of authority, to “peer-reviewed journals” shows a certain kind of intellectual immaturity:

1. There is something medieval or intellectually primitive about giving a veto power to some “authority” for deciding whether a work is scholarly or not. In medieval Europe, this power vested in the Pope or the Catholic Church, which even had the power to ban or “proscribe” certain writings which went against the official doctrines or beliefs – even to the extent of sentencing the disapproved writer to imprisonment or the death sentence. Academic institutions and journals seem to have taken on that role today, and only the power to imprison or sentence to death is missing. Strangely, to half-baked modern minds, the diktats of the academic institutions and journals are as fully authoritative as the diktats of the Church were to half-baked medieval European minds. While imprisonments and death sentences are not possible in the modern day, more subtle but powerful psychological “peer”-pressures are equally effective: for just one example, see the effective “partial retraction” u-turn by Johanna Nichols detailed in my article (“The new western academic crusaders…”) below.

2. I have written plenty of articles on “peer reviews” in general, or in reply to fake “academic” critics and critiques of my work, or actually reviewing other articles on the subject:

On “peer-reviewed” articles in general:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/07/peer-reviewed-western-academic.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-new-western-academic-crusaders-and.html

Point-by-point replies to fake “academic” critics and critiques:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2021/09/michael-witzel-examination-of-his.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2017/07/hans-henrich-hock-scholar-lying-through.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-detailed-reply-to-joker-arnaud.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-reply-to-prof-narahari-achars.html

Positive (the first two) or critical reviews of academic or “academic” articles:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2016/05/two-papers-by-renowned-indologist.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/08/evidence-for-oit-beyond-mitanni.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/06/michael-witzel-perennial-compulsive-liar.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/02/goebbelsian-repetition-of-witzels-lies.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2017/06/stuhrmann-witzel-and-joke-that-is_24.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/12/nicholas-kazanas-and-myself-who.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2023/08/nikolai-suvorov-example-of-illiterate.html 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-use-of-astronomical-evidence-in.html

This does not include the articles already listed by me in my previous article, or other articles written by me in reply to twitter attacks.

 

B. The OIT (or anti-AIT) Illiterates

Is this kind of illiterate attitude restricted only to the “opposite side”. i.e. the AIT side? No, it is the attitude of all illiterate people, with pompous academic pretensions, who think that an article which says “2+2=5” published in an “academic journal” by a writer whose “scholarship” is given the stamp of approval by a university doctorate or another “academic journal” is more scholarly than an article which says “2+2=4” by a writer whose “scholarship” does not have this stamp. All pretentious “academic scholars”, whether nominally supporting the AIT or the OIT, are equally illiterate in issues of genuine research and study, and equally bursting with disdain for genuine research and with reverence for pompous establishmentarianism and officialese-filled discourse. A person who is outside this privileged circle will never get his article showing that “2+2=4” published in any self-declared “academic journal”, while a person who is already inside this privileged circle will always be able to get his article showing that “2+2=5” published in “academic journals” and repeatedly “peer-reviewed” and cited as academically sound.

I remember Sita Ram Goel telling me (when I was actually invited for a Seminar on Sanskrit organized by the HRD Ministry of the Government of India in April 2001), that these seminars, conferences and official journals are just so much bureaucratic claptrap, and that I should avoid them and simply concentrate on doing genuine research and study and putting my findings on written record. So, I never paid any attention to these things and simply concentrated on research, study and writing.

The absolute similarity of all pompous “scholars” in control of journals – regardless of “ideology” or “side” − was nevertheless confirmed for me in 2018, when I received this forwarded message on my mail on 17-8-2018 in an Indic discussion group (the only discussion group of which I was and remain a member):

Dear Esteemed Colleagues,

On behalf of Prof. Lavanya Vemsani, editor-in-chief, pleased to invite you all to send your papers for consideration for publication in the AJIS. Deadline: September 9, 2018.

Please check the Call for Papers for the Winter issue of American Journal of Indic Studies 

https://journals.library.unt.edu/index.php/indicstudies/about

Please register on the journal website included in the link above. Papers can be submitted directly on the journal website. 

Please do not hesitate to contact us if there are any additional questions. 

Thanks

Pankaj Jain

 

On being urged by certain people on the group to give an article, I wrote as follows, in a mail dated 27-8-2018, addressed to this Pankaj Jain and to the concerned person in the group who had forwarded this mail:

I have just yesterday completed my latest article "India's unique place in the World of Numbers and Numerals", which I intend to upload on my blogsite in a day or two (after some last-minute checking). I prefer to publish on my blogsite because I don't generally feel that the academic Truth has to be told only on official academic fora, passing through all kinds of bureaucratic formalities, etc. And I prefer the immediate or at least direct response and feedback I get on a blog, the pleasure of knowing people are actually reading the article, the ability to make corrections whenever necessary, and the freedom to write without editing and censorship of any kind. So I definitely want to publish the article on my blogsite in a day or two.

However, I was advised by a few scholars to whom I sent the article for their critical views, that this article is too important to be stuck only to the level of a blog. So, is it possible for the article to be included in your journal even after it is published on my blog? Please let me know. I am sending a pdf of the article for your appraisal.

 

This mail was forwarded by the concerned person in the group (who had forwarded the earlier mail):

Shrikantji,

I’m forwarding it to Dr. Lavanya Vemsaniji. She is the editor in chief of AJIS.

 

On the very same day (27-8-2018) within 12 hours, I received the following mail from Pankaj Jain, presumably after consulting with Dr. Lavanya Vemsani:

Thanks, sir, for considering our newly launched journal for your article. I have heard your name a lot but never got a chance to read your work yet...

For our journal, we have decided to accept articles only from scholars who have PhDs in Humanities or Social Sciences from an American, Indian, or other universities. Sorry for this inconvenience.

With best regards,

Pankaj Jain (with Prof. Lavanya Vemsani, editor-in-chief)

 

In short, “academic journals” only accept for publication, and “peer-review”, articles by people who have already received the stamp of approval from other “academic” institutions and journals. And this is not just academic journals headed and controlled by people who have already written or taken “sides” – i.e. the AIT “side” − in the AIT-OIT debate, but even by establishment-conscious “scholars” who are self-proclaimed opponents of the AIT (I have read some of the pedestrian stuff written by Lavanya Vemsani on the AIT-OIT issue. And, I am told, she still feigns total ignorance of my very existence, let alone of my work).

The reader can go through the article which I was willing to offer to these people, which was rejected by them, to see what these “academic journals” are all about:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2018/08/indias-unique-place-in-world-of-numbers_38.html

Time and again, I have observed the wisdom behind Sita Ram Goel’s advice on the subject of genuine academic research and scholarship as opposed to the stranglehold of establishmentarian “academics”. I genuinely feel nothing but contempt for people, critics or otherwise, who hold academic approval over scholarship, and degrees and “peer-reviewed” articles over facts, data and evidence.

 

C. A Word on the Genetic Evidence

A final word on those who talk about “genetic evidence” of an Aryan invasion of, India, or of an IE migration into India: these are clods who will never be able to understand the simple fact that any evidence (based on genetic or DNA factors) showing the arrival of certain genetic features into India from outside along with the people carrying those genetic features, are just that: evidence (based on genetic or DNA factors) showing the arrival of certain genetic features into India from outside along with the people carrying those genetic features.

They are in no way, by any stretch of the imagination, evidence of the arrival of Indo-European (“Aryan”) or any other languages into, or even out of, India. Genetic data merely shows the movement of certain genetic features (haplogroups, etc.) from one place to another, without in any way showing that certain languages also moved from one place to another along with the people carrying those genetic features. In most cases, the greater and more natural explanation is that people who moved into different regions and more likely adopted the language, religion and culture of the native people while retaining (and perhaps even spreading into sections of the original population which lived there before their arrival) their genetic features. Language does not enter into the genetic picture at all, and people who draw linguistic conclusions from genetic features are nothing but racist or extremely bigoted persons whose conclusions are nothing short of fraudulent.

I have already written a few articles on this, and will not waste any more time on this senseless subject:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2019/09/rakhigarhi-and-after.html

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2018/04/what-is-value-of-new-genomic-evidence.html

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2023/04/chapter-7-does-genetic-evidence-prove.html

 

Postscript: I forgot to mention above that I was (later to the above events) awarded a Doctorate, “Doctor of Literature (D.Lit) Honoris Causa”, by Indus University Ahmedabad on 18-1-2020. And some Indian academic journals have also published my articles, notably the paper presented by me at the 3-day ICHR National Conference on “Indian History: Emerging National Perspectives” at the IGNCA, 5-7-2018, has been (or is being published) in the journal of the ICHR along with other papers presented at the Conference.