During my undergrad at Cornell, I learnt the basics of Nyāya from a proponent of "The Death of Sanskrit" theory.

According to him, the Bhagavad Gita was a manual of casteist morality, which advocated the annihilation of one's clan if required by one's caste-based duties.

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The same department offered a course on the philosophy of war, exploring the "just war theory" in Western Theology.

For an impressionable mind, the contrast between a tradition supposedly justifying reckless violence and a systematic philosophy of war was striking.

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This led me to investigate the Indian tradition for a theory of just war.

To my surprise, I found not just a large body of original material in the Mahabharata and Smriti texts but also extensive scholarship ranging from Ramanuja and Madhusūdana Sarasvatī to P. V. Kane.

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I submitted a paper in the class on "the concept of the Just War in the Gita."

When challenged for not providing any "academic" (read western) citations, I replied that I knew Sanskrit and relied on my own translations of the originals, for which I deserved extra credit!

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