baluonrisalila
Balu on RISA LILA
#84, Part 1
Deservedly, Rajiv’s article has appalled the readers: horror, indignation, anger and bewilderment at the RISA *lila*. However, after expressing the initial indignation, one has to get down to the serious business of initiating a more thorough discussion. E-boards are not the best places for a focussed discussion, I know: people have a tendency to respond to fragments of the posts, or to those parts that incite or interest them the most, so that the ‘discussion’ tends to lead a life of its own. But with some understanding, some amount of good will and some patience, I am sure, we can keep the discussion focussed.
I want to raise three issues: (a) how to analyse what Rajiv portrays; (b) depending on that, what an adequate response consists of. Before we do either (this is one of the things I have discovered through my own research during the last two decades), we need to be clear about (c) how we *should not* a nalyse the situation that Rajiv has sketched. Given that all three (in their general form) have been my obsessions, I have been reflecting on them deeply, seriously and systematically for some time now. I would like to share some of the results of this reflection with you. This will be a multi-part post: depending on the *kind* of responses elicited by the first part of the mail, I will decide whether to go ahead or desist. In this first part, I will take a (rather slow) run up to tackling the third issue first. And even here, I look at RISA *lila* as an exemplification of a more general issue or as an _expression of a much broader tendency.
Perhaps, it is best to begin in an autobiographical mode. I came to (continental) Europe some 25 years ago, naively thinking that ‘cultural difference’ is something that ‘cosmopolitan’ Indians would not experience: after all, I had studied Natural Sciences in India; knew English rather well; was more familiar with the British and European history than I was with that of India (I once had plans to join the IAS by doing exams on these subjects); felt right at home with the western philosophy … It took me about 4 years of living in Europe, without relating to any Indian (or even Asian) community because I did not want to land up in an emotional and social ghetto, to realise that I was wrong: ‘cultural differences’ were no fictitious invention of anthropologists; it involved more than being a vegetarian or being barefoot at home when the weather was not too cold. This realisation was instrumental in shaping my research project: what makes the Indian culture different from that of the West? (I never felt anything other than an Indian amongst the Europeans.)
I began to research this issue with some vague hunches and intuitions as my reference points: there was no literature to guide me in my endeavour. Of course, the first fields I went into were Indology and Anthropology. Pretty soon I discovered that neither was of any use. Not only did they f ail to provide me with any insights, but they also succeeded in merely enraging me: the kind of rage you feel when you read the analyses of Wendy Doniger or Kripal. Indology is full of ‘insights’ like those you have read in Rajiv’s article. What has varied over time is the intellectual jargon that clothes these ‘analyses’. Going deeper into the history of these disciplines (with respect to India) drove home some lessons very deeply: in both form and content, there was pretty little to differentiate between the Christian missionary reports of the 18th to 20th centuries and the Indological tracts. And that between a Herder and a Goethe on the one hand (the German Romantics who ‘praised’ India while being derogatory about it at the same time) and a James Mill and an Abbé Dubois on the other, there was not much of a space to draw a dividing line. Researching further, I discovered that these ‘Indological truths’ were enshrined in the ‘modern’ social sciences: whether you read along with a Max Weber on ‘ The Religions of India’ or thought along with a Karl Marx on the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ or even disagreed with the omnipresent ‘Oriental Despotism’ of a Karl Wittfogel. Modern psychoanalysis of India, beginning with Carstair’s ‘The Twice Born’ through ‘The Oceanic Feeling’ of Mussaief-Masson (another Indologist using psychoanalysis to understand Indian religions), had already told our tale: Indian culture was ‘narcissistic’ (in the sense of ‘secondary narcissism’) and thus pathological in nature.
My initial reactions to these discoveries parallel the response of many a post on this e-board: horror, rage and a conviction that ‘racism’ is inherent in these writings. Pretty soon, this conviction about ‘racism’ of European authors gave way to doubts: Is it possible to convict all European authors of racism? Are we to assume that, in the last 400 years or so, all writers who wrote on India were racists? If yes, how to understand the powerful impact these writers and their theories have had on the Indian authors and Indian social sciences? If no, why did they say pretty similar things? Is one to say that the ‘respected’ Indian social scientists are no better than brown sahibs? Is Indian social science merely a disguised variant of Indology? So on and so forth.
Today, many of us are familiar with Edward Said and his book ‘Orientalism’. In his wake, many buzz-words like ‘essentialism’, ‘Eurocentrism’ (though interesting, Blaut is not theoretically well-equipped), ‘Orientalist discourse’, the ‘us-them dichotomy’ etc. whiz around. I would be the last to detract from the merits of Said’s book: he was one of the earliest writers to have drawn attention to the systematic nature of the western way of talking about the Orient. Despite this, the concept ‘Orientalism’ is totally inadequate to analyse the situation underlying RISA lila. Surely, the question is: *Why is the West Orientalist?* Said’s plea ends up denying any possibility of understanding cultural differences or indeed why O rientalism came into being, or what sustains it. To say, as the ‘post-colonials’ do, that the relation between ‘power/knowledge’ answers this question is to make a mystique of the dyad of Foucault as though it ‘explains’ anything. If this buzzword does anything at all, it helps us ‘explain’ why the ‘post-colonials’ earn a good living in the States: they talk the talk of their employees, and walk the walk of their patrons. (This is not to deny that there are genuine and committed people among them, or even to deny that they want to address themselves to genuine and urgent issues. It is only to draw attention to the phenomenon of ‘post-colonialism’.)
What I am saying is that one should not think that Rajiv paints a ‘racist’, or ‘orientalist’ or a ‘eurocentric’ picture. These words obfuscate the deeper issue, one which is more insidious than any of the above three. It might or might not be the case that Wendy and her children are ‘racist’; ditto about their ‘eurocentrism’ or ‘orientalism’. But when you realise that they are not saying anything that has not been said in the last three hundred years (despite their fancy jargon), the question becomes: *why does the western culture systematically portray India in these terms?* To say that western culture is, in toto, racist or ‘eurocentric’ is to say pretty little: even assuming, counterfactually, that the western culture is all these things (and that all the westerners are ‘racist’, etc), why do these attitudes persist, reproduce themselves and infect the Indians?
There is a weightier reason not to tread this path. In fact, it has been a typical characteristic of western writings on other cultures (including India) to characterise the latter using terms that are only appropriate to describe individual psychologies: X culture is stupid, degenerate, and irrational; Y culture is childish, immature, intuitive, feminine, etc. To simply repeat these mantras after them is to achieve very little understanding.
Rajiv says repeatedly that these writings ‘deny agency to the Indian subjects’. I am familiar with this phrase through ‘post-colonial’ writings. This too is a mantra; like many of them, without having the desired effect. And why is that? It might appear to make sense if we merely restrict ourselves to Wendy and her children’s analyses of Ganesha, Shiva or Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. However, it looses all plausibility when we realise that, for instance, social sciences use one and the same ‘epistemology’ to analyse both the west and India and that despite this, their claims about India reproduce the ‘Indological truths.’ (Those who do not believe me are invited to dip, for example, into those multiple theories of ‘the Indian Caste System’: from the sociobiological theories of a Van den Berghe - a sociologist - through the social choice theories of an Olson jr. - an economist-cum-political scientist. Even a book that wants to criticise the writings that ‘deny agency’ to the Indians, ‘Castes of Mind’ of Nicholas Dirks, ends up doing nothing else than ‘deny agency to the Indians’.) Quite clearly, ‘the problem’ cannot be solved by ‘discovering’ some or another pet epistemology (like Ronald Inden does, in appealing to Collingwood).
In a way, you could say, we need to do to the west what it has done to us, namely, study it anthropologically. But how to go about doing this and not simply reproduce what generations of thinkers (from the west) have already said about the West? It is amusing to use Freud to analyse their Freudian analyses of Indian religions; or use Patanjali’s Chakras to typify their personalities. But at the end of the day, we are still left with the task of studying and understanding why the western culture talks about us the way it does.
In other words, it would be a *conceptual blunder* to look either at Wendy or her children as exponents of racism, eurocentrism or even Orientalism alone. (They might be any or all the three. But that does not really matter.) We need to realise that they are doing two things simultaneously: *drawing upon the existing social sciences and also contributing to their further ‘development’.*
I hope to explain the significance of the last sentence in one of my next mails. For the present, let me just say this: our problems do not either begin or end in religious studies or Indology. They are deeper. Much, much deeper. To tackle RISA lila as a separate phenomenon, i.e., to focus either on Wendy or her *parampara* alone, would be to compound tragedy with conceptual blunder. Not only that. It would prevent us from understanding RISA lila for what it is: *a phenomenon that is typical of the western culture*.
#116, P 2.
Thanks for the reply. May I, in response, make some comments?
(1) You are absolutely right about the observations regarding spreading awareness and setting strategic goals, and about the way movements develop. From what little I know of you, which is pretty little I am afraid, you appear to be a person with enormous capabilities: apart from the evident intellectual acuity, you seem to be gifted with strategic insights and abilities, a tremendous organisational talent and a long-term perspective. Consequently, I can only applaud you: not from the sidelines though, but from the middle of the field itself. You are quite clearly someone who can *pull*, if I may use this metaphor despite its connotations, the *ratha* (chariot); I am willing to *push* the same from behind. It is, therefore, an immense personal pleasure for me to respond to your efforts. As you say, ‘let the light shine bright and clear’.
(2) A slightly longer comment on what you call ‘westology’, th e reverse of Indology. I will simply pen some thoughts down. We need not enter into a dialogue about these issues on this thread: it might *sidetrack* the discussion; besides, you can always write a separate column on ‘westology’, to which one can respond. Nevertheless, some observations for you to keep in mind for the column on ‘westology’, if and when you write it.
2.1. When I started formulating my initial project some 17 years ago, I too thought along (probably) similar lines. However, as I got my teeth into the project and started working it out, it became pretty obvious that it was doomed to *fail*. The inherent logic of such an enterprise forces one, as it were, to build *alternate* theories to the existing, ‘western’ theories. Instead of explaining this statement in the abstract, let me take a concrete example to illustrate what I mean.
2.2. In the University of Chicago, there is a certain Richard Shweder. He practices ‘Cultural Psychology’, and is (was?) professor of ‘Human Development’. He is rather well-known for his ‘cross-cultural’ studies: he and his students have published many works comparing psychological developments across the two cultures that India and America are. (In fact, he received a medal from the American Association of the Advancement of Science, if I remember properly, for one of his articles: ‘Does the concept of the Person vary cross-culturally?’ This was a study about the concept of ‘self’ in the USA and Orissa, India.) A few years ago, he published a study on the nature of *moral development* and the growth of moral awareness cross-culturally: again, India and the USA were the two compared cultures.
2.3. To study this, Shweder and his co-workers developed a questionnaire supposed to test the presence of several moral notions among their subjects. (This article is called “Culture and Moral Development’, by Richard Shweder, Manamohan Mahapatra and Joan G. Miller. A convenient reprint is to be found in “Cultural Psychology: Essays on Com parative Human Development, Eds., James Stigler, Richard Shweder and Gibert Herdt, Cambridge University Press, 1990, Pp.130-204. I will cite from this work.) The interviewees are both children and adults. From the list of the cases that Shweder uses, here are the first five - in order of *perceived* ‘seriousness of breach’, as judged by Hindu Brahman eight-to ten-year-olds:
1. The day after his father’s death, the eldest son had a haircut and ate chicken.
2. One of your family members eats beef regularly.
3. One of your family members eats a dog regularly for dinner.
4. A widow in your community eats fish two or three times a week.
5. Six months after the death of her husband, the widow wore jewellery and bright-colored clothes (Ibid. p.165).
It is important to note that, in India, while there was a consensus between the children and the adults regarding the first two cases (p.184), there was a lack of consensus only among children regarding the last three cases. Keeping in mind that they are ordered in terms of the ‘perceived seriousness of the breach’, we further come across (ibid., P.165):
8. After defecation (making a bowel movement) a woman did not change her clothes before cooking.
13. In a family, a twenty-five-year-old son addresses his father by his first name.
And, as the fifteenth, “a poor man went to the hospital after being seriously hurt in an accident. At the hospital they refused to treat him because he could not afford to pay (ibid).”
2.4. We can, I suppose, grant the truth of these statements. We can grant too that many Indians (both children and adults) would probably consider such actions not just as *paap* but as *mahapaap*. If not ‘sins’, they are at least some kind of ‘ethical transgressions’ and not mere breaches of social etiquette. As the sequence of questions in the interview makes it clear, the respondents were asked to motivate (or clarify) their stance. A fragment from such interviews, applied to a hypothetical Bra hmin adult should make the point clear.
“1. Is the widow’s behavior wrong? (Yes, Widows should not eat fish ¼)
How serious is the violation? (A very serious violation¼)
Is it a sin? (Yes. It’s a “great” sin.) ¼ ” (p.168)
Let us consider a similar fragment from a hypothetical American adult.
“1. Is the widow’s behavior wrong? (No. She can eat fish if she wants to.)
How serious is the violation? (It’s not a violation.)
Is it a sin? (No.)” ¼ (ibid.)
2.5. If Shweder is *right* in identifying our *paap* either as ‘sin’ or as ‘immoral’, one conclusion is inescapable: we Indians must be absolute cretins really. I mean, we seem to think that what the widow eats, what she wears, etc. are *ethically* more important than whether a poor man gets treated in a hospital or not. *However did our culture manage to survive for a couple of thousand years, when it is governed by such idiotic ‘norms’?*
As though to rub salt in the wound, Shweder assures us that the situation is r eally not all that pathetic. In fact, he says, one could actually provide ‘reasoned defence of family life and social practice’, albeit in the form of an “ideal” argument structure. How does it look? “The body is a temple with a spirit dwelling in it. Therefore the sanctity of the temple must be preserved. Therefore impure things must be kept out of and away from the body (p. 198).” It is important to note that this ‘reasoned’ defence occurs only to Shweder’s mind: no child ‘argues’ the way Shweder does.
3. During the colonial period, we were described as *immoral* people. This is one end of the spectrum. At the other end, we have ‘liberals’ like Shweder, who make us into a bunch of moral *cretins*. So, it appears, we have two choices: either we are immoral or we are moral idiots. Not much of a choice, is it?
4. Why does this situation come about? This is not a *translation* problem (‘how should we translate *paap* into English?’), but an empirical and theoretical problem: *what is it about the western ethical tradition that makes the Indian culture either immoral or morally senile?*
5. To answer this question, we *need* to develop a theory of ethics, which does two things *simultaneously*: (a) show how and why there is an *ethical domain* in the Indian culture and in what ways it differs from the Western ethical domain; and (b) what are the *constraints* on the western ethical tradition that it is *forced* to describe us the way it has.
6. This means, Rajiv, such a theory of ethics will be a direct *competitor* to the Western thinking on ethics. That is to say, our ‘westology’ will not remain a mere ‘westology’ but will be forced to provide an *alternative* and *competing* way of looking at the ethical phenomenon itself.
7. This is what I discovered when I started working my project out. My theory of religion *is* an alternate to the current theories of religion: it shows not merely that the western intellectuals are *wrong* but also explains why they had to be *necessarily* wrong. Idem for my current work in ethics.
8. It is here that one experiences the humiliation of *racism*. It is almost inconceivable to the western intellectuals, at least this has been my experience, that an Indian could stand up and *prove* that three hundred years of western scholarship has been wrong. You are never forgiven for this insult; I mean, it is simply not on. If you reproduce the ‘post-colonial’ verbiage, you will be rewarded with a professorship in Columbia, Chicago or California. But, beware, if you say, let us compete on *equal terms* scientifically; may the best theory carry the day; and that happens to be your theory!
#127, P 2
In the previous post, I drew attention to the fact that Wendy and her children draw from the existing social sciences, while contributing at the same time to their further ‘development’. In this post, I will elaborate what this statement means, what it implies, and what it says about the ‘western culture’. Let me see how far I can go in this post with respect to the objective without being inordinately long. However, it is only fair that I warn you beforehand: I will only be able to isolate an important thread; within the confines of this post, I cannot *prove* my claims. (To those interested in ‘proofs’, I refer them to my book.)
1. Not many would challenge the claim that Christianity has been highly influential in the development of the western culture. We need to take this statement utterly seriously. It means that many things we ‘take for granted’, whether in the West or in India, come from the influence that Christianity has exerted.
I claim that Christianity expands in two ways. (This is not just typical of Christianity but of all religions. I will talk only of Christianity because I want to talk about the western culture.) Both of these have been present ever since the inception of Christianity and have mutually reinforced each other. The first is familiar to all of us: *direct conversion.* People from other cultures and ‘religions’ are explicitly converted to Christianity and thus the community of Christian believers grows. This is the ‘surface’ or explicit expansion of Christianity. In India, both in the colonial and modern times, this has been a theme of intense controversy but, according to me, not of very great consequence *when compared to the second way Christianity also expands*.
2. Funnily enough, the second way in which Christianity expands is *also* familiar to us: the process *secularisation*. I claim that Christianity ‘secularises’ itself in the form of, as it were, ‘dechristianised Christainity’. What this word means is: typically Christian doc trines spread wide and deep (beyond the confines of the community of Christian believers) in the society dressed up in ‘secular’ (that is, not in recognisably ‘Christian’) clothes. We need a very small bit of Western history here in order to understand this point better.
2.1. Usually, the ‘enlightenment period’, which is identified as ‘the Age of Reason’, is alleged to be the apotheosis (or the ‘high point’) of the process of ‘secularisation’. What people normally mean by ‘secularisation’ here is the following: the enlightenment thinkers are supposed to have successfully ‘fought’ against the dominance that religion (i.e. Christianity) had until then exercised over social, political, and economic life. From then on, so goes the standard text book story, human kind began to look to ‘reason’ instead of, say, the Church in all matters social, civic, political etc. The spirit of scientific thinking, which dominated that age, has continued to gain ascendancy. As heirs to this period, which put a definitive end to all forms of ‘irrational’ subservience, we are proud citizens of the modern day world. We are against all forms of despotism and we are believers in democracy; we believe in the role of reason in social life; we recognise the value of human rights; and we should understand that ‘religion’ is not a matter for state intervention, but a ‘private’ and personal affair of the individual in question. This, as I say, is the standard text book story.
2.2. The problem with this story is simply this: the enlightenment thinkers have built their formidable reputation (as opponents of ‘all organised religion’ or even ‘religion’ tout court) by *selling* ideas from *Protestant Christianity* as though they were ‘neutral’ and ‘rational’. Take for example the claim that ‘religion’ is not a matter for state intervention and that it is a ‘private’ affair of the individual in question. (Indian ‘secularists’ agitatedly jump and down to ‘defend’ this idea.) Who thought, do you think, that ‘religi on’ was *not* a ‘private’ affair? The Catholic Church, of course. Even to this day, it believes that you *should* believe what the Church says, and that because the Church mediates between Man and God, what you believe in (as a Christian) is decided by the Catholic Church. The Protestants fought a battle with the Catholics on *theological* grounds: they argued that ‘being a Christian believer’ (or what the Christian believes in) is matter between the Maker (i.e. God) and the Individual. It was *God* (i.e. the Christian God), who judged man; and men *could not* judge each other in matters of Christian faith. The Church, they argued, could not mediate between Man and God (according to their interpretation of the Bible); the Catholic Church argued that men could not, using only their reasoning and interpretative abilities, interpret the Word of God (i.e. the Bible). To think so is to be seduced by the Devil, and the only guarantee against the seduction by the Devil and eternal damnation was the Church itself and its interpretation of the Bible. (There is a famous doctrine of the Catholic Church, which says, ‘Extra ecclesiam nulla salus’: there is no salvation - i.e. being saved from the clutches of the Devil - outside the Church.) To cut the long story short, the Protestants won this theological battle. The enlightenment thinkers repeated this Protestant story, and this has become our ‘secularism’.
2.3. The same story applies with respect to what is enshrined in the UN charter. The doctrine of Human Rights (as we know them today) arose in the Middle Ages, when the Franciscans and the Dominicans fought each other. (Both are religious orders within the Catholic Church.) All theories of human rights we know today were elaborated in this struggle that continued nearly for two hundred years. They were *theological* debates, to understand which one needs to understand Christian theology. (Just take my word for it for now.) When John Locke (a British philosopher) started talking about ‘Natural Rights’ in the 18th century, he was simply regurgitating a theological debate within Christianity.
2.4. I am not merely making the point that these ideas had their origin in religious contexts. My point is much more than that: I claim that *we cannot accept these theories without, at the same time, accepting Christian theology as true.* What the western thinkers have done over the centuries (the Enlightenment period is the best known for being the ‘high point’ of this process) is to *dress up* Christian theological ideas (I am blurring the distinction between the divisions within Christianity) in a secular mantle. Not just this or that isolated idea, but theological theories themselves.
2.5. I am not in the least suggesting that this is some kind of a *conspiracy*. I am merely explicating what I mean when I say that Christianity spreads also through the process of *secularisation*. What has been secularised are whole sets of ideas about Man and Society which I call ‘Biblical themes ’. They are Biblical themes because to accept them is to accept the truth of the Bible. Most of our so-called ‘social sciences’ *assume* the truth of these Biblical themes.
2.6. I know this sounds *unbelievable*; but I have started to prove them. I have already shown, for example, that the so-called religious studies presuppose the truth of Christian theology. That is why, when they study the so-called ‘religions’ from other cultures, their results do not fundamentally differ from a theological treatment of the same religions. In the book I am now writing on ethics, I am able to show the same: the so-called secular ethics are ‘secularisations’ of Christian ethics. That is why, according to the modern ‘secular’ ethics, we are either ‘immoral’ or ‘moral cretins’. According to the Christianity, only the ‘true’ religion can provide a foundation for ethical behaviour: the Heathens and the Pagans, because they worship the Devil, are either immoral or intellectually weak. Even in psychology, the n otion of the development of ‘person’ (or ‘self’) is a non-trivial secularisation of the Christian notion of ‘soul’. So I can go on, but I will not. Instead of convincing you, such a list might end up generating disbelief.
3. To begin to appreciate the *plausibility* (if not the truth) of my claim, ask yourselves the following question: why are the so-called ‘social sciences’ different from the natural sciences? I mean to say, why have the social sciences not developed the way natural sciences have? There must have been many geniuses in the social sciences; the mathematical and logical sophistication in some of the social sciences is simply mind-bending; we have computers and we can simulate almost any thing. Comparatively speaking, it is not as though the social sciences are starved of funding or personnel. Despite all this, the social sciences are not progressing. Why is this? (When you have, say, a problem in a love-relationship, you do not open a text book on psychology; you look for a w ise friend or an understanding uncle.) There are many answers provided in the history of philosophy and many of you may have your own ‘favourite’ explanation. Here is my answer: you cannot build a scientific theory based on theological assumptions. What you will get then is *not* a scientific theory, but an embroidering of theology. I put to you that this is what has happened. Most of our so-called social sciences are not ‘sciences’ in any sense of the term: they are merely bad Christian theologies.
4. If this is true, it also helps us understand why both ‘conversion’ and the notion of ‘secularism’ jars Indian sensibilities. Somehow or the other, Nehruvian ‘secularism’ always connotes a denigration of Indian traditions; if you look at the debates in the EPW and SEMINAR and journals like that, one thing is very clear: none of the participants really understands what ‘secularism’ means. In India, ‘secularism’ is counter posed to ‘communalism’; whereas ‘the secular’, in European languages, has only one contrast: ‘the sacred’. Now, of course, I do not want to make much out of this; but I thought that it would be interesting to draw your attention to this interesting fact.
5. To summarize what I have said so far. Christianity spreads in two ways: through conversion and through secularisation. The modern day social sciences embody the assumptions of Christian theology, albeit in a ‘secularised’ form. That is why when Wendy and her children draw upon the resources of the existing social sciences, they are drawing upon Christian theology. In this Christian theology, we are worshippers of the Devil. Our gods are demons (followers of the devil). As such, amongst other things, they are perverts: sexually, morally and intellectually. The worshippers of the Devil (which is what we are) are also perverts: why otherwise would we follow the Devil or his minions? Even if Wendy and her children *oppose* a straightforward Christian understanding openly (because of their *genuine* conviction), t heir *conclusions* are no different from the simplistic story I have just sketched. How can they be driven to embrace Christian theology, even when they either openly reject it or when they know nothing of it? This will be one of the questions I will take up in my future posts, assuming that people remain interested.
6. This is the insidious process I talked about in my previous mail: the process of secularisation of Christian ideas. I have not been able to do justice to the richness of this process: an inevitable price one pays for condensing complex analyses into short posts. Let the ‘simplistic’ presentation not lead you to think that the ideas I am proposing are ‘simplistic’. They are not.
7. Why do we, the Indian intellectuals, not see this secularisation straight away? Why is the process of secularisation not visible to the western intellectuals? These are some of the obvious questions I will tackle in my subsequent posts.
#229, P 3.
To Rajiv Malhotra and all Other Seekers (Part III)
In order to keep the discussion tightly focussed and to best serve the interests of this thread, I will not be touching upon (or answering) several issues raised either in my earlier posts, or by the readers. *I promise, however, to return to them at the appropriate time*. I had begun my earlier mail with the intention of tackling three points with respect to the picture that Rajiv sketches: (a) how *not to* analyse; (b) how to analyse; (c) what should we be doing? To briefly recapitulate what I have so far done. Regarding (a), I suggested that what Wendy and her children do should not be seen purely as an orientalist, or a Eurocentric or a racist exercise. In my previous post, regarding (b) I suggested that there is a deeper process at work here, which I called ‘secularisation’ of Christian theology. In this post, I will complete this part of the argument by trying to (partially) answer one question: why is this process not ‘visible’ to the Western intellectuals? In my next post, which I hope to compose before the weekend, I will focus on (c), i.e. what should we be doing?
In a way, the answer can be provided in a single sentence: the research questions and the research framework of many-a-social science were set up *explicitly * by Christian theologians using the resources of Christian theology. (I am using ‘theology’ as a general term here.) Both the questions and answers have retained their intelligibility, even though the ‘explicit’ theology has faded *into the background*. A theological question does not cease to be theological just because the one who answers it does not know much about theology. The very fact that such questions *make sense at all* (and do not appear nonsensical) is the *proof* of the fact that the questioner remains within the ambit of a religious framework. (If you have no clue about Physics, the question ‘when does some stellar object become a quasar?’ will not ma ke much sense. To answer it, if you can answer it at all, you need to draw upon the resources of theories in Physics.) However, this single sentence answer fails to capture the complexity and diversity of the process. Therefore, let me just *illustrate* what this process really means, or has meant. (I will be taking random examples, and of different *kinds* just to *indicate* the depth of the process. If one intends doing more than this, one will have to write umpteen books!)
1. Consider, to begin with, the very notion ‘the west’ or ‘the western culture’. During the first 800 years (after the year 300 C.E. - ‘Common Era’, which replaces AD that meant the year of the Lord, Anno Domini), it was ‘Eastern Christianity’ (i.e. the Christianity of the Byzantine Empire with its centre in Constantinople) that dominated the Christian communities. The Church in Rome was merely one of the churches within Christianity. The ‘evangelization’ of Europe really begins in earnest after 900 C.E. This was a pro cess launched by the Church in Rome, and it occurred in areas to ‘the west’ of Rome. For this reason, this Christianity came to be called ‘Western Christianity’ and the emergence of this Christendom to the west of Rome is the emergence of ‘the West’.
2. Consider these two famous research questions about the ‘transition’ in history (of both the ‘leftist’ and the ‘rightist’ variety): when and how did transition from ‘slavery’ to ‘feudalism’ occur in Europe? This issue was discussed by theologians and theological historians for a long time in the following form: how did Christianity put an end to the Pagan Rome? The historians discussed precisely this issue, and in this form, till the end of the eighteenth century as well. The division they made between ‘epochs’ (a word coined by a French Christian Priest called Bossuet during the 18th century) was the one between pre-Christian (pagan) Rome and the post-Christian Rome. The very same issue, with the *very same* division has now become a ‘scient ific’ question in the guise of: how did feudalism put paid to slavery? The same can be said about another transition question that bothers Marxist historians: how did feudalism (an ‘epoch’ of social production) give way to Capitalism in ‘the West’? Do you know what this question is a complex translation of? ‘Why did the Protestant reformation against the Catholic Church gain foothold?’
3. Consider the emergence of the Legal System in the western culture. Its origin does not lie in the Roman Law but in the Church. The theologians of the Roman Catholic Church *turned* to the Roman jurists in their attempts to build a legal structure for the Church. (This is called the famous ‘Gregorian reformation’ of the Catholic Church.) Thus a complex system of laws and *their justifications* (including terms that are fundamental to the modern jurisprudence) arose, called ‘The Canon Law’. The ‘Civil Law’ (using this as a general term) was built by *the theologians* by modelling it after the Canon Law. Till the 18th century, ‘the faculty of law’ was a part of the ‘faculty of theology’ in the western universities and taught *only by theologians.* To this day, in many universities in Europe this theological heritage is still maintained in the way the law faculties are called: ‘Rechtenfaculteit’ (‘Rechten’ is the plural of ‘Das Recht’), referring to the two laws - the canon law and civil law.
4. Consider too, for example, one of the notions fundamental to Modern Jurisprudence: ‘will’. There have been umpteen discussions about this notion in Philosophy, Law, Psychology, etc. Clearly, or so we think, human beings have a will and exercise it as well. What is the origin of this picture of human beings? Till 300 B.C.E. this notion was ‘absent’ in what we call the western culture today. Neither the Greek thinkers (like Plato or Aristotle), nor the Roman jurists (who wrote their law digests) had such a notion or such a picture of human beings. The first person to struggle with this notion and write tra cts about it was Saint Augustine, one of the most influential Fathers of the Christian Church. Why did the Christians find this notion important? Because, they think, the universe exemplifies the Will of God and human beings should subordinate themselves to this Will. That is to say, the human will must subordinate itself to the divine will. What is human ‘will’ then? What does this subordination consist of? These and many similar questions arose *within* the ambit of Christian theology, presupposing a Christian picture of Man. (A picture that was neither Greek nor Roman, and is definitely not Indian.) Yet, how many of us do not practice Law, read and write about human will and even assume *as an empirical fact* that it is in the nature of being human that we have will? (This is no *fact*, but a Christian theological picture of man.)
5. Take, as another kind of an example, the issue of ‘freedom’. This issue is a central one in Philosophy, in moral theories, in political theories (about Stat e and society), in legal theories, and psychological theories, etc. If you were to blandly state this issue in a single sentence: it is a good thing that people are ‘free’ and that every one ‘ought’ to be ‘free’. In ethical theories, for instance, a moral action is an action of choice, made freely without coercion. In fact, in the absence of ‘freedom’ morality is not possible. Let me just draw a contrast between this way of thinking (which appears to be true on the basis of ‘universal consent’) and our ideas about ‘karma’ and ‘rebirth’. (You need not assume the ‘truth’ of *punarjanma* in order to follow my point.) If the fruits of one’s action do not track (very strictly) the agent across several lives, the idea of both ‘Karma’ and ‘rebirth’ become senseless. Somehow or the other, these notions are parts of our (i.e. Indian) understanding of morality. That means to say, if there was no binding and strict *determinism*, ethics is impossible. Here, then, the contrast: according to the western culture , moral action is impossible if it is not ‘free’; according to us, without strict determinism, moral action is impossible. Yet, how many of us do not act as though ‘freedom’ is a ‘self-explanatory’ concept? Do you know what the origins (it has multiple theological loci) of this problem are? God created Man and gave him the ‘freedom’ to choose between God and the Devil. (In secularised terms, between ‘good’ and ‘evil’.) The possibility of ‘salvation’ (i.e. of being ‘saved’ from the clutches of the Devil) depended on this ‘free choice’. Therefore, theological issues arose: What then does ‘human freedom’ mean? Why did God give ‘freedom’ to man? Are we ‘condemned’ to be ‘free’? etc. etc. Our *svatantra* does not mean ‘freedom’ as its contrast term *paratantra* indicates. Our ‘gods’ are *sarva tantra svatantara*, i.e. beings for whom all *tantras* are their ‘own’ (sva). What exactly are we doing then, when we discuss about a ‘free society’, ‘freedom’ of individuals, etc, etc?
6. Instead of carry ing on in this vein let me round off in a different way. Fundamental to Christianity is its belief that there ‘ought’ to be scriptural sanction for actions in the world. In other words, this religion makes one seek scriptural foundations for one’s actions (whether for ‘sacred’ ones like ‘worshipping’ or to ‘secular’ ones like the attitude one should take regarding ‘strangers’ ). The scripture is one kind of ‘revelation’ of God’s will; the Nature also reveals God’s Will. One studies both in order to find out what God Wills so that one may become a part of God’s purposes (for human kind) on earth. The Church, as a social organism, confronted many social and political problems during its history. Whether it was a revolt of the peasants, or a fight with the monarchs about the nature of political authority, these phenomena were conceptualised as problems within theology. That is to say, both the way the Church formulated the problem and its responses were founded on the scriptures (and the writings of t he church fathers). The problem of state and society, the limits of political power, etc. were actual issues that the Church confronted. The way it formulated these issues and the kind of answers it sought, etc. were theological in nature. These very same questions and answers (and the underlying framework) have been taken over by the so-called social sciences. So, when they further go on along this track, all they are doing is further embroider Christian theology. No matter what they *think* they are doing, they *are not doing science*. Even when they speak of things that become totally *nonsensical*, if and when *explicit theology* is left out, they continue to talk as though it makes sense.
For an example of this sort, take the notion of ‘polytheism’ that anthropology of religion, practitioners of ‘religious studies’, sociologists, etc. use. This notion is *contradictio in teminis*, that is to say, it is internally contradictory. ‘Polytheism’ refers to a doctrine that countenances multip le ‘gods’. What does it mean to speak of multiple ‘gods’? It is to say that there is more than one ‘God’. (There must be at least two). However, who or what is ‘God’ that there may be more than one? If, in order to answer this question, one refers to the meaning of this word, unsurprisingly it turns out, the dictionary meaning is also the meaning of Christian religion. Amongst other things, ‘God’ is the creator of the universe. If this is what God means, there cannot be more than one ‘God’. (How can one make sense of the statement that there are multiple ‘creators’, when ‘God’ refers to that being which created the Universe?) How, then, can one speak of ‘polytheism’? Only if one *assumes* that there is one ‘God’ and some several other creatures who are *other* than this ‘God’ and yet claim the status of ‘godhood’. The claim of such creatures *must* be false: because the very definition of ‘God’ attributes this status to only one entity. Or, there must be one ‘true’ God, and many ‘false’ gods, who a re different from and other than the True One. This is precisely what Christian theology says: there is but one ‘true’ God, and there are many ‘false’ gods (the Devil and his minions). A ‘Polytheist’, then, worships these multiple ‘gods’ (and not the True One). That is to say, a polytheist is a ‘heathen’ who worships the devil. This is what Christianity said of the Roman religions, the Greek religions, the Indian ‘religions’, etc. How is it possible that ‘scientific’ studies take over the word ‘polytheism’ and blithely use it without *recognising* that it is senseless to do so without assuming the *truth* of Christian theology?
7. What I am saying, in other words, is that the western intellectuals are blind to secularised theology, because that is all they know. This is their tool, and they have no other. Only when we develop *alternate* manners of theorising about Man and Society will they too be able to see the theological nature of their thinking. Until such stage, all they can do is to ridicule the suggestion that they are merely embroidering theology.
8. The process of secularisation of Christianity is complex, rich and varied. In each of the domains I have researched, the form of secularisation of theology has been different. The routes travelled have been varied: but the results have been the same. But this should not transform my suggestion into a mantra. We need to plot out the rich and varied contours of the process of secularising of Christianity. When we do so, we will truly be initiating a revolution in human thinking: at last, one can begin to speak in terms of the *sciences* of the social. Until such stage, all we have are bad Christian theologies *masquerading* as ‘social sciences’.
9. I sincerely hope that this post does not sidetrack the discussion. In my next, and for the time being the last post on these matters, I will take up the issue of what we should be doing. I want to thank you all for reading these long posts with patience, taking the troubl e to reply to them both publicly and privately.
#284, Part 4:
Rajiv and All Other Seekers (Part IV)
Thus far we have seen that the western representations of India do not so much express the perfidious intentions (or subconscious desires) of the writers as much as the secularised Christian theology that guides research. If this is true, there arise other questions that beg clarification: what, then, could we say about the *Indian* writings in Indology, sociology, etc? Are the Indian writers too not influenced, whether directly or indirectly, by the very same ‘theories’ that incorporate the secularised Christian theology? If they are, surely, there will be but a thin dividing line between the Indian representations of India and the western ones. If they are not, how could *they* be impervious to and unaffected by secularised Christian theories, while their western colleagues are? Despite the *enormous* importance of this theme, I shall leave it aside for now: as indicated in my previous post, other occasions are going to present themselves where such reflections will be in their place.
In explaining the obliviousness of western thinkers to their acceptance of secularised theology, I suggested that only when we present *alternate* ways of describing the world could they gain insight to the theological nature of their endeavour. If this diagnosis stands up to scrutiny, our task is also clear: start working towards the goal of building such theories. In the last two decades, I have come to the realisation that there is far *more* to this task than is apparent at first sight. My ideas on this matter have evolved not only by studying histories and sociologies of science (about how theories grow, get propagated and get accepted) but also by appreciating the complexity of the task while trying to carry it out. In this mail, I want to share some of my thoughts on this subject.
1. Let me begin by picking up an obvious question: Why should we be bothered to carry this task out (and all that it entails) at all? Of course, no one is or can ever be *compelled* to carry this task out. Yet, there is a partial answer that can go some way in meeting the *real concern* behind this problem. *Because of reasons of space*, let me make talk about Indian culture as an entity and about its experiments to provide some semblance of an answer.
2. Imagine, if you will, that Indian culture is an entity and that all Indians are its members. Imagine too that one day, it realised that it was not sure any more about the nature of the world it inhabited: What should it be doing? What is its place? How should it adapt? What does adaptation consist of? The only way it can ever find answers to these questions is through experimentation: trying out this or that strategy, growing new things as and when needed. Only its members can help of help; they are the ones to experiment with. Let us agree not to ask further questions about how this culture came to this realisation and that we do not dispute about dating this even t: India’s independence from the British. Thus, this entity, the Indian culture, takes to *massive experimentation* telescoping, in this process, events of many decades elsewhere into a single decade (and sometimes even less) in its history. Let us chronicle these experiments.
First, it takes to ‘socialism’: ‘Nehruvian’ socialism, the socialism of Lohia, the socialist attempts of the communist parties of India. Just as these experiments take-off, this culture starts exploring *their limits* even before a new generation is born: the Naxalites and the ML movement in Bengal impact India’s youth in different parts of India and both socialisms (of Lohia and of Nehru) begin to crack under the pressure of events even as, in the late 60’s, people elsewhere in the world begin to discover ‘student power’. Many activist youth groups emerge in different parts of India, born outside the existing left, but already radicalised. Just as these groups appeared to run out of steam, the Indian culture paused, and as though considering, plunges into another massive experimentation: ‘Dalit’ movement, ‘secessionist’ movements, which pits not the bourgeoisies against the proletariat but groups against each other. Even as these impact the culture, through ‘reservation policies’ and contraction of the living space for some of India’s children, a new experimentation begins: it is time for *ratha yatra* and Babri Masjid. This experimentation still continues and as it does, this entity launches yet another with no parallels in human history: the Indian culture sends two or more millions of its members to America. This is no exodus, much less of an exile, even if these members insist on speaking of the ‘Diaspora’.
3. What has Indian culture found out through all these experiments? Some of India’s children still continue with these experiments; some have ceased doing so. This means either some answers are no answers at all or at best, partial ones. Is India ‘socialist’? Or is she the proletariat? Or, perha ps, the landless peasant? Is she the ‘Dalit’, or merely the ‘woman’? Has she always been a Sikh, a Tamil or a Marathi, and never a single entity? Is she a ‘Hindu’, a Muslim or merely ‘secular’?
India, it appears, has been interrogating herself through all these experiments: who is she? This is no third-rate ‘identity politics’ of the post-colonials taught in Chicago or Columbia, but the strivings of a culture. We, her children, express this striving as well. Whatever our individual motives, whatever our individual biographies, today, on this thread, we too are asking the same question: what is it to be an Indian?
4. Much like her, we cannot reject the past: without it, we are not who we are any more. Nor could we turn our back to the present: that is where we have to live. Our cultural past must be made to talk in the language of the present: that, I have discovered, is the task for the future. At this moment, however, we need to become aware that we are asking this question and tha t the answer *matters* to each one of us. That is why we should be bothered about carrying out the task I spoke of.
What is involved in accomplishing this task? Here too the answer is simple: *a collective effort*. What does such an effort entail? Not being a strategist like either Rajiv or Arjun Bhagat, I can only share the results of my reflections on my experience in pursuing this task for nearly two decades now.
5. The first step, quite obviously, calls for spreading awareness about the nature of western representations of India. This entails that we find (a) *people* willing not only to challenge the western ‘scholars’, where and when they give talks in public forums about India etc. but also (b) *speakers* from the Indian community in the US, who try actively to *supplant* these ‘scholars’.
This requires that such speakers are continuously fed with literature of two sorts: (a) a debunking kind; and (b) the sort which provides new and novel conceptualisations of many as pects of the Indian culture itself.
This suggests that a serious and systematic research must be undertaken by many different people on many different themes. My knowledge of the intellectual scene tells me that there are very few such people. So, one has to look at *recruiting* younger, gifted people into doing research.
For this to happen, we need three things: (a) an intellectual visibility and respectability for this kind of research so that fine, younger minds are attracted: (b) a reward system that makes it worthwhile for them to pursue such a research for a decade at least; (c) a *training* in not only doing such research, but also help in publishing them in highly visible journals so that they can then go on to populate chairs in the academia.
6. Parallel to doing all these, there is also the mammoth task of planting these seeds in the Indian soil itself. In order to appreciate the complexity of this task, we need to have some answers I raised in the first paragraph. Let us, therefore, leave this aspect of the enterprise out of this post for the moment.
7. If these things are to happen at all, it is obvious that we need an *organisation*. Only such an entity can formulate such long term plans, translate them into viable strategies, and pursue them systematically.
8. Can this be done? I personally believe so. Even on this thread, based purely on the evidence of their interventions, we have the kind of brains we need: people who can strategise; those can build organisations: those who can raise finances; those who can go straight to the heart of a problem and represent it in simple terms; based on little material, those who anticipate and formulate central questions for enquiry; and, above all, an interested and concerned audience. (For each of these, I can cite the posts and give reasons why I think so. For the latter, you need merely see the hits on this web-page. But that would be overkill, I think.)
9. Should some under you feel the s ame way I do, I would like to make a proposal. Let some of us try and meet sometime next year. (Preferably during either the spring or the summer holidays.) We need no agency, no organisation to sponsor such an event. Each of us should be able to meet our travel and accommodation on our own: it can take place either here in Europe or there in the US. Let us meet for a day or three for an intense brain-storming session, so that when we leave each one of us knows our responsibility. An organisation will be successful only when many, many people with different talents and interests work on the same thing at many different levels. I am willing to put time, energy, and effort in participating in such a venture.
10. India, today, is at a cross-road: she has been in many such cross-roads in the past, and she will be in many more in the future. Neither is relevant to us, because we can make a *difference* only to this one. We have the persons. We have the brains. We have the talents. We have the en ergy. We have the money. We have the instruments, the knowledge and the abilities. We have the capacity to create the know-how as we work on the project. What more do we need?
*Satya* said in his post (# 192) that he makes bold to announce the birth of an Indian renaissance. I believe he is right in more ways than one. I think our culture is going to see a renaissance. Such a renaissance will be of importance not just to us, Indians, but to the entire humankind. Because it is going to lay the real foundations for the sciences of the social and thus give a surprising answer to the question, ‘what is to be an Indian?’ This process is going to take place: sooner, if we can accelerate the pace; later, if we do nothing about it. In the latter case, that event may not happen in your lifetime or mine; but happen it shall. Of this, I am utterly convinced. It is this conviction that has kept me going all these years; it is the same conviction that has made me want to reach out to those of you who have followed this discussion.