"The more usual “guilt by association” here is with the politics involved, viz. Hindu nationalism. That too has been thrown at Talageri, even by one of the top IE scholars, Hans Heinrich Hock. ...It therefore disappointed me that even Hock would fall back on this guilt by association with an Indian political current, viz. Hindu chauvinism. That he did injustice to Talageri by identifying him as a narrow-minded Hindu chauvinist, is not even the point. More unworthy of a real scholar is that this gives all the weight to an aspect of the matter that, even if it had been true, is irrelevant from a scholarly angle: someone can speak the truth all while having motives you disapprove of, just as someone with approved political convictions can propose a wrong theory. Scholarship is not about political likes and dislikes, but about truth claims, and in that respect, as we are about to see, Talageri has been defeating all his opponents. All the same, I thought this altercation between Hock and Talageri was a pity, as well as other acrimonious confrontations with Michael Witzel, Arnaud Fournet and Vaclav Blažek. I know the world where they come from, have met them in Indo-Europeanist or Vedicist settings, and very much sympathize with their scholarly outlook on IE. Yet, I cannot find fault with Talageri either where he points out their intellectual and (in their unfair attacks on him) human failings."