It is a great quandary for those working in this field as to how to take this field forward. Is going forward a must? Must knowledge grow for its own sake, an automatic, mindless activity or is there sufficient rationale for it?
In another world-wide forum, of which I am a Member, and that purposes to redifine constantly the worldwide contours of the knowledge about the past; it is held, often by academics of the affluent countries that research or advanced research the world-over (except in the developed world that is) is but a replication of the paradigms already advanced by academics of developed universities. In that appropriate forum, I have already lambasted this spurious and condescending notion that no academic worth his/her salt could possibly advance such a thesis in their proper senses. Yet views contrary to mine do exist and are being published as a free and open debate in a forthcoming issue of the Journal ARCHAEOLOGIES. So much for the merits of free speech.
Thus it is a complex issue for those of us who are working in ancient Indian History, whether we should at all be following, less so thinking about the newer (developed) paradigms of postmodernism, postcoloniality and post-processualism.
