. Pick out only two expressions from the extract that describe the early civilization of india
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Answer:
In the world of South Asian studies highly inflected with ideology and long-term political strategies, the word “civilisation” is rather out of date. It is still applied to dead civilisations, such as those of ancient Egypt or classical Greece or the Mayans; however, pseudo-liberal and postmodern intellectuals are wary of a living civilisation such as India’s: the term implies a disturbing macro-phenomenon, when the current academic trend is towards micro-studies that make it easy to send subtle or not-so-subtle messages: focus on one dark spot (often retaining only the data that will fit your predetermined conclusions), and the student or reader will be hypnotised into trusting that the whole must be as dark as the part.
A couple of years ago, I attended in an Indian institute a class given by a visiting European anthropologist, who was also an old India hand. At some point, she stated (as would any historian or archaeologist worth their salt) that there was so much more to understand about India and Indian society than caste. A surprised student raised her hand to ask how India could be understood if not through the prism of caste — a telling but painful admission of abysmal ignorance about her own country. And indeed, caste and gender are the two omnipresent prisms in India studies, whether ancient or modern. In this blinkered view nurtured by highly biased curricula and textbooks, there is indeed no room for a “civilisation”.