Scholars and Prophets

Roland Lardinois is a sociologist, Research Fellow (HDR) at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), member of the Centre d’Etudes de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (UMR 8564) at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Since November 2009 he has joined the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi.

PART I - GENESIS OF A LEARNED MILIEU 1. The conquest of scholarly legitimacy 2. Orientalism and prophetic discourse 3. The struggle for institutional autonomy. PART II - SCHOLARS AND PROPHETS 4. The field of production of discourses on India 5. Scholarly practice 6. Prophetic Logic 7. Study of Hinduism as a disciplinary issue. PART III - SOCIAL SCIENCE AND INDIGENOUS SCIENCE 8. Louis Dumont and the Brahmanical science 9. Louis Dumont and the cunning of reason 10. The avatars of scholarship on India. Conclusion: Sociology put to the test of India