In the original Indian sense of the word, "pundit" (which is spelled pandit in India these days) refers to a priest specializing in religious rituals, who is typically hired for everything from coronations to weddings to funerals, and might be in charge of a temple (large temples have hundreds of pandits). Since Hinduism has a lot more very precisely-defined ritual elements than Christianity, pandits are generally more like practicing theologians in seminaries than like parish priests (the fact that most of the canon is in Sanskrit, some of it very archaic Sanskrit, makes pandits even more professorial).

That connotation appears to have carried over to the English sense of the word. When I hear the word in an English context, I think, "scholastic, erudite, polished, affiliated with a temple, completely sure of their own knowledge, socially-situated, knows the well-worn classical arguments by heart, can quote scripture chapter and verse." (with the appropriate canon for that particular talking head substituted for scripture, like political science classics for a political pundit, who will typically be installed in an appropriate temple like Harvard, and never loses his poise, is never at a loss for an answer, on TV, and is always ready with a Kissinger, Schelling or Hobbes quote to shut anyone up).

You can trust both pandits and pundits to trot out the received wisdom in the most polished, irrefutable way possible, with a lot of citing of impressive authorities. Intellectual intimidation is their game.

In other words, they are the opposite of thinkers in some ways; their skill lies in pre-empting productive thinking with canned arguments and foregone conclusions. What little thinking they do, they do behind the walls of an exclusive club (which may carry on its proceedings in an arcane language like Sanskrit or postmodernese that is incomprehensible to others) and reserve the right to judge themselves via internal consensus.

In India, the connotation of "thinker" goes with an archetype that is almost the diametric opposite: rishi, which corresponds roughly to the English "sage." A more accurate term would be "seer" but that is an uncommon English word these days. Rishi was a term applied to the original quasi-mythological seers who are supposed to have composed the Vedas. The archetypal rishi is a forest-dwelling, unsociable recluse, who only reluctantly accepts a few disciples, if any. Unlike the pandit, who historically might have been a royal court priest, the rishis disdained that life. If kings wanted their wisdom, they had to go to them in the forest. Rishis compose original stuff. Unlike pandits, who stick to Sanskrit, rishis typically discoursed in commoner languages, but could hold their own in Sanskrit as well (the Buddha is regarded as a rishi in that sense... he discoursed in Pali, rather than Sanskrit, and one reason Buddhism died out later in India is that the Sanskrit-speaking priesthood took over and moved away from Pali).

There are many famous stories in India about contests in which a wandering rishi debates a court pandit and defeats him. One famous one involves the rishi Ashtavakra and a famous pandit, Vandin, the court pandit of a mythological king from the Ramayana, Janaka.

Vandin was a Bill O'Reilly of sorts. He debated all comers and if they lost, they got thrown into the river to drown. Ashtavakra's father dies this way while he is in the womb, and due to the shock to his mother, he is born deformed ("ashtavakra" means "eight deformities"). The crippled kid grows up to be a great sage who ultimately defeats Vandin in debate (but rather kindly, does not have him drowned). He then goes on to lead Janaka to enlightenment, and this episode is the source of a classical philosophy treatise in Vedanta called the Ashtavakra Gita (which I really like; it is far more interesting than the better known Bhagavad Gita).

Please correct me if I got the gist wrong...

Anyway, long story short, in my book, pundits are not thinkers. Nearly the opposite. See Nietzsche's thoughts on scholars in 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' to get a more Western version of this same point...