Elisa, you ask two questions on which let me share my perspective, but before that let me clarify that there is no strī-sūdra etc angle in what I wrote. Kabir, whose line I had used, was himself a great sūdra saint. The scope of sentiment was- the knowledge (not just mantras) + https://twitter.com/elisa_freschi/status/1362377923169255427

is traditionally guarded from being unscrupulously shared with all and sundry. In the traditional world it is the “practicing insiders” who receive the authority to the texts and the “license to operate” as a scholar and a teacher, in addition to the responsibility of adding to+

it and passing it along to the next generation. Now the interesting thing is that the knowledge (+ texts) is honestly shared with the “other party”, (pūrvapaksha) that may be engaging in arguing against one’s tradition or POV- if honest, even they are considered worthy of +

exchanging knowledge/texts with, their differing POV not withstanding.

To that, I might add today’s Hindus are no different from say Hellenistic world when it was a living civilization.

Recall how the final Pontifex Maximus of Hellenic dharma, Emperor Julian the Philosopher+

had ordered an expulsion of atheists (=Christians) from the scholarships of Greek knowledge. It is exactly for the same reason that the traditional Hindus also don’t share the knowledge or scholarship with “outsiders”.

But here in case of the relationship of western scholars +

with the academic indology with the traditional inheritors of Hindu knowledge, we have an entirely different dimension too: the ulterior motives and the dynamics of colonizer-colonized through which the discipline of Indology is conceived.

Not much has fundamentally changed+

+in the mindset and frameworks of western Indologists in studying India despite decades of post colonial dynamic change.

Now you ask whether someone who is a practicing Hindu has more “right” and “knowledge” to the text than a not-practicing scholar of the west (or even+

of India for that matter)?

Answer has to be somewhat what Julian thought. For Hindus as much as the ancient Greeks, philosophy and other such fields of knowledge are actually an integral to practicing dharana. It is a living limb of the practice. For us navyanyāya or yoga+

+are not some intellectual quibble (alone), but the very tools and means and methods of practice. Philosophy, just as any philosopher of Ancient Greek would think is about living a practice, not some hair splitting in a class room (alone). Then therefore, yes a practicing Hindu+

+would always have more right and duty to it’s philosophy and other means of knowledge than a non-practicing outsider who has no “inner” insights or “skin in the game” but merely a curiosity (which is appreciated but is secondary to practice)

That leads to the second question+

+ of whether it is rather preferable to let the ancient texts rot away and be eaten by worms than be studied by non-practicing scholars.

In reality this is not a new question at all, and many in the Hindu tradition have clearly talked about it.

First of all, knowledge (vid)+

+ is truly eternal and uncreated. It is never dead. Forgotten or lost temporally, yes, but forever, no.

Don’t we have so many legends of how the knowledge is lost and regained?

Don’t get me wrong- the texts must be preserved, studied, revived- that’s our duty, but let’s not+

delude ourselves in arrogantly thinking the knowledge will be lost forever unless western indology rescued the texts and their studies.

No, first of all there is no dearth of practicing native scholars independent of any Indiana Jones, for preserving and promoting that+

knowledge. So that emotion that unless western Indologists do something knowledge is lost is perhaps misplaced.

Secondly and lastly, indeed it is better to be lost for now than digested and misused. Since, its loss wouldn’t be forever, it would be regained as long as the +

civilization that created it lives. If it was discovered once, the knowledge can be discovered again.

Indeed if choice comes to these two, I prefer any day for us to lose the texts and knowledge to bookworms than to the Indologists who are hostile to the living civilization. /