COLONIALISM DID NOT DIE - IT ONLY REINVENTED ITSELF *** Jai Maharaj posts
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
May 7, 2009...8:54 pm
Colonialism did not die: It only reinvented itself
Rajiv Malhotra's brilliant analysis of neo-colonialism and how
various tricks are used by Westerners to ensure that Hindu minds
remain in a cage even today.
The Axis of Neocolonialism
By Rajiv Malhotra
"In the modern planetary situation, Eastern and Western
'cultures' can no longer meet one another as equal partners. They
meet in a westernized world, under conditions shaped by western ways
of thinking." -- W. Halbfass[1]
This essay argues that intellectual svaraj (self-rule) is as
fundamental to the long term success of a civilization as is svaraj
in the political and financial areas. Therefore, it is important to
ask: whose way of representing knowledge will be in control? It is
the representation system that defines the metaphors and terminology,
interprets what they mean in various situations, influences what
issues are selected to focus on, and, most importantly, grants
privileges by determining who is to control this marketplace of
ideas.
As an implicit body of standards, a representation system
disguises a meta-ideology -- the substratum of contexts on which
specific ideologies emerge and interact. It includes the language
used and the unstated frames of reference, and acts as the subliminal
filter through which positions are constructed and their fate
negotiated.
A people without their own representation system, in a worst
case scenario, get reduced to being intellectual consumers looking up
to the dominant culture. In the best case scenario, they could become
intellectual producers, but only within the representation system as
defined and controlled by the dominant culture, such as has happened
recently with many Indian writers in English.
Ashis Nandy summarizes how this mental colonialism was brought
about:
"This colonialism colonises minds in addition to bodies and it
releases forces within colonized societies to alter their cultural
priorities once and for all.... Particularly, once the British rulers
and the exposed sections of Indians internalized the colonial role
definitions....the battle for the minds of men was to a great extent
won by the Raj."[2]
The repetitious use of a given representation system eventually
leads to a widely accepted set of "essences," as stated by Friedreich
Nietzsche:
"The reputation, name, and appearance, the usual measure and
weight of a thing, what it counts for -- originally almost always
wrong and arbitrary -- grows from generation unto generation, merely
because people believe in it, until it gradually grows to be a part
of the thing and turns into its very body. What at first was
appearance becomes in the end, almost invariably, the essence and is
effective as such."
Therefore, control over the representation of knowledge is
analogous to control over the operating system of computers:
representation systems are to competing ideas what operating systems
are to computer applications. Control over this platform, especially
its invisible standards and rules, is of strategic consequence.
The structure of the essay is as follows: (1) Explaining the
origins of neocolonialism. (2) Showing that many Indians are
themselves perpetuating neocolonialism today. (3) Linking this with
Western control from above the glass ceiling.
PART 1: The Origins of Neocolonialism
Part 1 explains the origins and causes of neocolonialism in
India today, resulting from the abandonment of its rich classical
tradition, and replacement by knowledge representation systems
imposed by the colonizers. Let us understand how the West got to
control today's knowledge representation systems.
The hallmark of a good education in an American liberal arts
college is based on what is called the "Western Classics." A study of
Western Civilization starts with the study of ancient Greek and
Semitic thought, before moving on to Classical Roman, modern
European, and finally, American thought. Such an intellectual
foundation is deemed important for one to be considered a well
educated person in the humanities, regardless of one's religious
beliefs (or lack thereof), and regardless of one's specific academic
major. By way of illustration only, the following is what one liberal
arts college advertises very proudly about its Classics program.
Classics and Classical Civilization at a Typical American
Liberal Arts College[3]:
"From the Constitution of the United States, to the framework of
modern law, to the vocabulary and ideas of everyday speech and
writing, the classics exert a pervasive influence. The power of
Greece and Rome extends into virtually every aspect of our modern
lives. Western traditions of philosophy, science, religion, art, and,
above all, literature draw their origins from the intellectual
curiosity and colorful imagination of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
The Department of Classics provides a window into the life, times,
and ideas of the founders of western society.
Students of Greek learn the language of Homer and the idioms of
Aristotle and Plato, while Latin classes learn to argue in the words
of Cicero and Julius Caesar. The debt we owe to the Greeks and Romans
is so large and multi-faceted that the study of classics is
interdisciplinary by nature. For example, the classics curriculum
includes courses offered by the Departments of Philosophy, Art,
Religion, Government, and Science and Technology. Yet, all of these
courses form part of a coherent whole for classics majors and minors.
Students of the classics reap all the benefits of a liberal arts
education, and at the same time, maintain a focus in their studies.
"The Department of Classics is thriving on a resurgence of
interest in classical languages and culture..... Students can choose
to gain an overview of long periods of classical history, or study
shorter periods in great detail.... In class, we apply various
modern, even pioneering, theoretical approaches drawn from the
disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and literary criticism.
Between the department's offerings on language, literature, history,
and culture, and the courses offered by other departments on, for
example, ancient philosophy, classical art and architecture, and
classical political thoughts, students choose from an extensive array
of courses.
"The Department of Classics offers majors and minors in two
programs: one in classics, which concentrates on language and
literature in Greek, Latin, or both, and one in classical
civilization that encompasses all the facets of classical culture.
Many students in both programs have taken advantage of the
opportunity to study in Greece and Italy through programs especially
designed for American students. In Athens, the cradle of Western
democracy, and the birthplace of Greek tragedy and Plato's academy,
students can further their studies while familiarizing themselves
with the Acropolis and Agora. In Rome, they can continue to pursue
the ideals of a classical education while breathing the air that the
Roman emperors inhaled, and walking the streets that for centuries
saw triumphs over distant peoples. In recent years, our joint major
in Classics/Classical Civilization-English has become popular, and we
have just added another joint major in Classical Civilization-
Anthropology.
"The department strives to emulate the intellectual curiosity of
the Greeks and Romans. Our activities extend beyond the classroom to
various social, yet educational, events. We have enjoyed showing
movies and videos related to the classics from time to time.
"We bring prominent experts from the U.S. and abroad to share new
perspectives on topics of the ancient world.... We are proud to have
state-of-the-art computer support for our students. By tapping a few
keys, they can call up any Greek or Latin text, and search through
the entire cannon of classical authors in the original or in
translation. Furthermore we have book-marked numerous sites of
classical interest on the Internet. All of this in a room graced by
reproductions of classical statues, vases, and paintings!
"It is the department's goal to foster keen intellectual
curiosity and sound principles of analysis and problem-solving in all
our students, by providing academic stimuli and allowing our students
to harness the power of the imagination just like the great thinkers,
politicians, artists and writers of Greece and Rome. Not
surprisingly, graduates of the [Classics] major are pursuing
successful careers in law, medicine, teaching, academia, government,
art, management, and other fields. The study of the classics trains
the mind for much more than the translation of texts and the analysis
of a culture. The study of classics also prepares you to meet life
with the confidence of Achilles and the self-reliance of Odysseus."
I find similar deep respect and dignity for the Western Classics
at Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, University of Chicago, Yale, Oxford,
Paris, and virtually every top Western university. The benefit is not
only intended for those specializing in the Western Classics. The
Western Classics are in the core curriculum of many colleges,
regardless of specialization.
Marginalization of Indian Classics in India's Higher Education
It is important to carefully read the above rationale for the
Western Classics program, so as to appreciate why this is deemed so
relevant today in Western technologically advanced secular
democracies, such as the United States.
Compare this to the tragic state of Indian Classics in India's
own higher education. The equivalent to the Greek Classics would be
India's Vedas, Puranas and other Sanskrit, Pali and Tamil texts. In a
comparable education system, students would learn about Pannini,
Patanjali, Buddha, Nagarjuna, Dharmakirti, Bharthrhari, Shankara,
Abhinavgupta, Bharata Muni, Gangesh, Kalidasa, Aryabhata and dozens
of other great classical thinkers produced by India.
Unfortunately, in the name of progress, modernity, and political
correctness, Indian Classics have been virtually banished from
India's higher education -- a continuation of the policy on Indian
education started by the famous Lord Macaulay over 150 years ago..
While India supplies information technology, biotechnology, corporate
management, medical and other professionals to the most prestigious
organizations of the world[4], it is unable to supply world-class
scholars in the disciplines of its own traditions.
The reason is that the nexus of Indology studies remains in
Western universities, almost as though decolonization had never
happened. The top rated academic journals and conferences on Indology
and India related fields are in the West, run largely by Western
scholars, and funded by Western private, church and governmental
interests. The best research libraries in the Indian Classics are in
the West. Religious Studies is the hottest academic field in the
humanities in the US, and is growing at a very fast rate, but is non-
existent as a discipline in Indian universities.
Therefore, to get an internationally competitive PhD in Sanskrit,
Indian Classics, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Jainism Studies, with the
highest rigor in methods and theory, such that one may get an
academic job in this specialty in a leading international university,
a student is forced to go to a US, UK or German university.
Hence, one cannot find qualified experts of Indian religions in
India, in order to debate Western scholars. The few Indian scholars
within the Western academy who are educated in the Indian Classics,
are either below the glass ceiling, or else are politically cautious
given the risks to their career ambitions.
Furthermore, the marginalization of India's heritage in its
education system, particularly in the English medium system that
produces most of the leaders of modern Indian society, has resulted
in the leaders of industry, civil service, media and education
becoming a culturally lost generation. The result is today's self-
alienated, cynical youth prevalent in many places, especially in
elite positions[5].
The justification given for the study of Greek Classics in the
West is not that they are considered 100% "true" today (whatever that
might mean), or that better thought has not superceded them. Rather,
the purpose is to understand the history of the Western mind, so that
students may lay a sound and strong foundation for their thinking in
order to move this civilization further into the future. The Western
Classics provide the Western intellectual with the resources to be a
serious thinker for today.
It is also about the identity of Westerners and their culture.
Great emphasis is placed on the integrity of an old "Western
Civilization" traced back to Greece (although the massive inputs
received from non-Western sources are carefully suppressed -- see
Part 3). This (re)construction of Western Civilization is an ongoing
project, and is considered very critical for the survival and
prosperity of what is known as the "West".
One should apply this logic to Classical Indian thought and see
parallel benefits for India's renaissance. Unfortunately, a great
disservice has been done to Indian Classics by equating them with
religion. Arguably, the most comprehensive and challenging knowledge
representation systems available outside the West are contained in
the Indian Classics. The sheer magnitude of India's Classics is over
one hundred times as large as that of the Greek Classics. For a brief
glimpse into some of the potentials based on the recovery of Indian
Classics, see the web site for an academic Colloquium on this very
subject[6].
Yet, whatever little is taught about Indian Classics tends to
suffer from its ghetto like positioning as "South Asian," whereas
Greek thought is positioned as being "universal." The dominant
(European) culture, into which Greek thought became assimilated,
claims to own the logos (the rational principle that governs and
develops the universe), while non-Western peoples' indigenous ideas
are mythos and exotica. Greek Classics are taught in mainstream
academia and are not relegated to a particular ethnicity or "area" of
the world. Indian Classics, on the other hand, are considered
relevant mainly as a way to understand what is unique (i.e. peculiar)
about Indian ethnicity.
Furthermore, Greek thought is referenced as being of Greek
origin, whereas, when Indian ideas are appropriated, their Indian
origin is erased over time: real knowledge is implied to come only
from Western sources; all others must wait till they get legitimized
by being claimed as Western. This is because the knowledge
representation system is under Western control, and hence they are
the final arbiters of "what" belongs "where." Only when something
falls under Western control does it become legitimate.
Indic Traditions in the Western Academia
Interestingly, Western academia hires many Indian scholars in the
departments of English Literature, History, Philosophy, Sociology,
and Political Science, amongst other humanities. However, while the
Western audiences think of them as spokespersons for Indic
Traditions, the vast majority of them are unwilling and unqualified
to explain Indian Classics seriously. But their Western hosts and
colleagues are usually unaware of this shortcoming in most Indian
scholars. For this deficiency to become public about an Indian
scholar is tantamount to a minor scandal, because they derive much of
their clout based on the false perception that they are
representatives of Indic thought.
To cover up their ignorance, many elitist Indians resort to a
combination of Eurocentric and Marxist rhetoric about Indian
civilization -- the caste, cows and curry theory of India. They quote
Orientalist accounts of India and even base their own scholarship as
extensions and derivatives of colonial writings superimposed with
Marxism. On the one hand, postcolonial studies are at the very heart
of their specialization and career paths. But on the other hand, they
are only trained in using Eurocentric hermeneutics and methods.
Hence, they can deconstruct Eurocentrism with Western methods, but
are completely inept at applying Indic categories and perspectives.
They cannot replace the Eurocentric representation model with
anything indigenous from India. Postcolonial studies often end up as
Orientalism by the neocolonized.
Contrast this with Arab scholars, such as Edward Said and Abu-
Lughod, who have led the deconstruction of Eurocentrism, not only
generically but also specifically on behalf of Islamic and Arab
civilizations. Consequently, it is now becoming fashionable to
replace Eurocentric history textbooks with accounts centered around
the Middle East, going back to the Middle Ages. Likewise, Nell
Painter is amongst the leading critics of Eurocentrism on behalf of
Africans. Enrique Dussel is amongst many prominent Latin Americans
attacking Eurocentric models.
However, in the case of a specifically Indic deconstruction of
Eurocentrism, some of the finest academic challenge is often being
delivered by Westerners, such has Ronald Inden and Nicholas Dirks.
Many Indian scholars who are entrenched in the Western academe of
humanities seem reluctant to risk their loyalty ratings, and in many
cases, are simply too ignorant of their own heritage and invested in
attacking this heritage.
While pockets of such Indic challenges to Eurocentrism do exist,
they are not empowered to revolutionize the fields of religion,
history, sociology, anthropology, women's studies, Asian Studies,
literature and art. They occasionally get their symbolic 'day in
court,' but it is usually not the center court, where it really
matters[7].
Indian Secularism, American Secularism
One serious misunderstanding amongst this milieu of elitist
Indians has been their confused interpretation of secularism. The USA
is a good nation with which to compare India in matters of
secularism. It does not define secularism as alienation from its
traditions. Even though tracing back American civilization to the
Greeks is a big stretch, this link and continuity is emphasized.
Certainly, the Judeo-Christian foundation of Americanism is made loud
and clear. Recently, there is a new movement to rediscover the Native
American heritage as being part of the New Americanism. On the other
hand, secularism in India has come to mean anti Indic Traditions,
especially anti-Hinduism.
To get certified that they are secular, many Indians line up to
prove how they hate Hinduism, or at least how distant they are from
what they perceive as a denigrated identity. The historian, Ronald
Inden explains the root cause of this disease:
"Nehru's India was supposed to be committed to 'secularism'. The
idea here in its weaker publicly reiterated form was that the
government would not interfere in 'personal' religious matters and
would create circumstances in which people of all religions could
live in harmony. The idea in its stronger, unofficiallv stated form
was that in order to modernize, India would have to set aside
centuries of traditional religious ignorance and superstition and
eventually eliminate Hinduism and Islam from people's lives
altogether. After Independence, governments implemented secularism
mostly by refusing to recognize the religious pasts of Indian
nationalism, whether Hindu or Muslim, and at the same time
(inconsistently) by retaining Muslim 'personal law'[8]."
This agenda, built on a false definition of secularism, has been
taken to such extremes that Sanskrit has been demonized, because it
is seen as part of the Evil Brahmin Conspiracy to oppress all the
victims of contemporary Indian society. Jawaharlal Nehru University,
one of India's elite institutions in the liberal arts, and the
seminary that produces many of these maladjusted intellectuals, has
fought hard to resist the establishment of a Sanskrit and Indian
Classics department, whereas it is proud of its faculty and
curriculum in a wide variety of European languages and
civilizations[9].
This is the result of sheer ignorance about the scope and value
of Sanskrit literature. Indologists believe that there are over 30
million distinct manuscripts in Sanskrit, mostly not cataloged, with
less than one percent ever translated into a non Indian language. The
vast majority of Sanskrit texts is not about "religion," and covers a
diverse territory of subjects -- medicine, botany, aesthetics,
fiction, jokes, sex, political thought, logic, mathematics, and so
forth.
Sanskrit was the language of scholarship for a period of several
millennia, in the same manner as English has become over the past
century. To demonize and suppress this language and its vast
literature, in the name of political correctness, is a tragedy
against all humanity. Yet this is precisely what has been done for 50
years after India's independence[10].
The Hegemony of Language
One result of all this has been that the colonial mistranslations
of Sanskrit words have now become accepted by the majority of Indians
educated in the English language, not only the scholars but also the
leaders of India's media, higher education, industry and
administrative services.
Indic Traditions now have the added burden to legitimize
themselves in terms defined by its former colonizers' culture, i.e.,
using a Eurocentric frame of reference. Nietzsche's prophecy quoted
in the opening section of this essay has come true. By controlling
their language, one can subjugate a people.
The richness of the meaning of a word is often very deeply
embedded in the cultural context, in the history of how that word
evolved over time, and in the wide contextual bandwidth of nuances
and implied meanings that accompany its usage. To understand all the
nuances of a word, then, is to understand the host culture. And to
understand a complex culture is to live it and be it. This is why
great harm is done when a foreign culture, especially a colonial one,
imposes its own simplistic translations of Sanskrit.
Even greater is the harm when the natives of a colonized culture
adopt these foreign translations -- a process that is often gradual
and subtle, and achieved with rewards of upward mobility offered by
the dominant culture.
When a word with contextually determined meanings is reduced to
merely one of its many meanings, it is like assigning a specific
constant value to an algebraic variable, and thereby eliminating its
usefulness as a variable. If someone translates "cuisine =
McDonalds," or "x = 5" when x is defined to be any real number
between 0 and 10, then the reduction is a violence to the thing being
represented.
Following are some examples of common reductions of Indic
culture, where the contextual meaning is lost, and a simple and fixed
meaning is imposed, so as to map it to the Eurocentric framework.
For openers, Ishwar is not God. Of course, both Hindus and
Christians believe in one Supreme Reality, but the conception of each
one is rather different. While Hindus celebrate the multiplicity of
conceptions (as internal pluralism), the Abrahamic religions demand
mono-conception (which they equate with monotheism). Ishvara has
countless forms in which he is manifested inside the cosmos affording
an individual access via his/her personal choice of form. But God is
said to get very pissed off at "graven images" of Him, according to
Abrahamic religions.
The Abrahamic Supreme Being is a male, angry and jealous God,
with pathological notions such as Eternal Damnation that drive people
into terrible obsessions in order to get "saved." The Abrahamic God
intervenes in history very rarely, and hence ends up privileging some
tribe or community exclusively over all others.
If "Ishvara = God" were to be valid, then it would have to be an
equality in both directions. Lets take the mapping "God � Ishvara."
This would mean that Jesus would be son of Ishvara. But Ishvara does
not have such a son, and in order to preserve the integrity of the
Indic narrative about Ishvara, we would have to say that Jesus is an
Avatara of Ishvara. However, this is unacceptable to the Church, as
it would mean the relativization of Jesus as one of many Avataras,
and hence, would remove the need for a Hindu to convert to
Christianity. Hindus would simply be able to say, "No, thank you. We
already have Jesus as an Avatar in our current system."
Furthermore, where would Mary, as Jesus' mother, and the Virgin
Birth be accommodated in the Indic narratives about Ishvara? Also,
God has an enemy (i.e. the Devil), requiring the mobilization of
humanity against him. Where would God's "other" be accommodated in
the Indic system? While God has an enemy on whom all evil gets
blamed, Ishvara includes both good and evil internally, and hence,
there is nobody external comparable to the Devil.
When Christians talk about these "equalities," they assume that
their Christian myth is sustained intact with the Indic narratives
being distorted to fit into the Christian frame of reference. But
this would do great violence to the worldview and integrity of Indic
Traditions, reducing them to an Indianized Christianity.
My point is not that a merger of Hindu and Christian worldviews
and myths is impossible[11]. In fact, I find such possibilities very
interesting and promising to pursue. However, I emphasize that this
cannot be a simplistic equation in the name of political correctness,
as is often the case. It has major ramifications to the relative
positioning of the faiths involved. This would have to be a large
project, with scholars from both sides working as peers -- a friendly
merger negotiation, and not a hostile takeover.
Similarly, devas are not gods, and devis are not goddesses. Also,
Agni deva is not fire, but is symbolized by it. Murtis are not idols.
Shiva is not destroyer, but more like transformer, moving beings
upwards in the evolution of consciousness. This is why Shiva is
conceptualized as the lord of dance, yoga, enlightenment, and
mysticism. This upward evolution entails "dissolution" of the falsely
constructed mental frame of reference (maya), and this dissolution is
quite different from everyday "destruction." Shiva's transformation
is a set of deconstruction processes similar to, but going further
than, postmodern deconstructions.
Atman is not soul, because of reincarnation and because of
atman's identity with Brahman (whereas soul does not reincarnate, and
"soul = God" is blasphemy in most Abrahamic religions'
interpretations). Moksha and nirvana are not Salvation, because the
latter is an escape from Eternal Damnation into Heaven, concepts that
are very Abrahamic.
Shakti is not energy, as energy is but one form of shakti. Akash
is not the same as space or sky. Rasa is another term with no Western
equivalent, and hence untranslatable except via a thick
description[12].
Lingam is not the same as phallus, and has a complex spectrum of
meanings. Tantra is not sex.
Prana is not breath. There are many levels of prana, including in
the unmanifest levels. Physical breath is a correlate of prana, and
hence a way to influence and regulate prana.
There is no Sanskrit word "Aryan" -- a noun referring to a race
or ethnicity. The Sanskrit word is "arya," which is an adjective
referring to a quality of nobility. What are popularly known as
Buddhism's Four Noble Truths are, in the Sanskrit version, called the
four arya truths. But this term does not refer to any race, as was
misinterpreted by 19th century German Indologists in order to
construct an ancient "Aryan" heritage for themselves. Surely there is
no race called "tennis champion" or "good singer" -- but if Wimbledon
were to become controlled by an ethnic group (to stretch the
imagination), then in the 30th century they might define themselves
as the Tennischamps race....you have a picture of what happened in
19th century German Indology.
Kshatriya and brahmin are job descriptions, representing duties
that roughly correspond to leadership in matters of state and
religion, respectively -- and hence serve as a built-in balance
between socio-political affairs and spiritual quest. The British
mistranslations of Sanskrit texts over-emphasized the other worldly
aspects, to glorify the world negation amongst the Hindus, and to
make it easy for Hindus to accept British rule. Therefore,
Orientalist constructions did not focus on the kshatriya dharma, as
that is very world engaging and affirming. The British construction
of "Brahminism" was to position themselves as masters in charge of
India's progress.
"Brahminism" is a pejorative name for Hinduism, similar to using
"Pope-ism" or "Bishopism" to refer to Christianity. It implies that
Hinduism is simply a belief made up by brahmins, with no legitimacy
of its own.
Brahman as the ultimate reality is often confused with a
different but similarly sounding word, brahmin, which is a job
description for a spiritual leader.
Varna is not caste, and in fact, the European term "caste" and
its modern Indian manifestation are not the same as the varna system.
People fail to differentiate between srutis (which are eternal
truths), and smritis (which are manmade constructions, such as the
Manusmriti that is often used to prosecute Hinduism). Smritis are,
therefore, entirely amendable. Srutis are not frozen canons either,
as there is no unique or final revelation, in contrast with the
Abrahamic revelations -- Sri Aurobindo claimed to bring us new srutis
in recent times, and so have many others. Therefore, neither category
of Indic scripture is frozen, contrary to common misperception.
Karma is not fatalism. On the contrary, it is the only
metaphysical system that gives an explanation of each individual's
unique predicaments at birth based entirely on the individual's own
free choices previously made. It extols free will and individual
responsibility.
Hinduism is not Hindutva, because the latter is a modern
political construction. Likewise, Indic Traditions are a superset of
Hinduism.
Itihasa is neither history nor myth in the Western sense. As
explained by Ranajit Guha, Puranetihasa is its own unique genre of
text with no western equivalent[13].
This reduction of Indic concepts is consistent with Western
tendencies to homogenize: Christianity asserts one path, one church,
one book, and one conception of the divine. Marxism struggles to
bring about a homogenous society as its Utopia. White Feminists
impose their idea of womanhood upon all other women[14].
Multinationals, in the long run, collapse commerce into fewer brands
and choices. Indic culture, on the other hand, did not view life as a
zero-sum game.
Besides individual words that are mistranslated, entire
Eurocentric models of thinking are superimposed in the study of Indic
culture, without critical inquiry as to whether they are applicable.
For example:
� Monotheism Vs. polytheism as lens: Monotheism and polytheism
are assumed to be mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories,
through which all religions are made to pass. Furthermore, monotheism
is falsely assumed to have started in Judaism, when, in fact,
Upanishads, much earlier than Judaism, already included monotheism
along with other ways to conceptualize the nature of ultimate
reality. Also, Abrahamic religions have strains of polytheism as
well, but this is downplayed.
� Only one religion allowed per person: A census of religious
beliefs in Japan showed that over 70% of the population believed in
more than one religion at the same time. However, given the
exclusivist nature of the three Abrahamic religions, it is simply
assumed by them that a person may have only one religion at a given
time. This exclusivism mentality with rigid boundaries was imposed
via the British censuses of India, and has remained a standard in
classifying Indians' spiritual beliefs. However, Indic Traditions
have a history of internal pluralism, similar to the Japanese
experience mentioned, and it is only recently that external threats
have created "boundaries" around India's religions. For nearly two
thousand years, for instance, Christians lived in the pluralist
milieu in India, because at that time, there was no hegemony or
expansionism from Church headquarters in the West to control
spiritual thought in India. This point illustrates that strictly
speaking, dharma is not religion.
� Linear theories of history: The arbitrary theory that all human
history has to fit the sequence: archaic � magical � mythical �
rational � ...., is one of the pillars of mainstream
Eurocentrism[15]. Events in Europe were seen to fit into this linear
"progress." Hence, this pattern got universalized into a "law of
history," and imposed upon all humanity. Eurocentric accounts of
world history are forced to fit into this grid, by hook or by crook,
and whatever does not fit is simply omitted or excused away. One
could equally and legitimately claim that this theory is the result
of backward projection by expansionist and conquering people, who
went about appropriating the physical, intellectual and spiritual
assets of others. The view from the colonized peoples would not
regard conquest as progress or as a measure of superiority.
� "West = progressive/superior," and "non-West =
backward/inferior": In the secular fields such as anthropology,
sociology, women's studies, etc. this view is sustained by carefully
selecting the issues to be studied, and by filtering the evidence
(a.k.a. fudging the facts), resulting in misrepresenting India's
social problems as being entirely indigenous and as the very essence
of Indic Traditions.
� Erasure of the positive aspects, while appropriating them at
the same time: It is almost sacrilegious in academe to include
classical India's positive contributions to world science,
technology, agriculture, medicine, linguistics, mathematics, city
building, social theory; to many aspects of Christianity[16], the
Industrial Revolution of Europe, modern psychology, new-age
movements, eco-feminism, and so forth. For, acknowledging these would
collapse the Eurocentric theories of the "miracle of European
Modernity."
This hegemony is sustained by asserting power over academics. For
instance, the overwhelming majority of academic scholars of Hinduism
are Judeo-Christians, whereas in the case of all other major world
religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism) the majority
of the scholars are from within the given religion. No civilization
can afford to give a facilities management contract to someone else
to manage its knowledge representation systems.
Meanwhile, the Hindutva movement, while claiming to lead the
revival of Hinduism, has been obsessed with the politics of building
one particular temple, while abandoning all the intellectual temples
to neocolonial forces. Its scholars tend to be mainly from the Hindu
orthodox scholastic traditions, with little capability to engage this
global age. Its few "modern" scholars have been too narrow, and
interested mainly in refuting the "Aryan" theories. Consequently, the
Hindutva's overall perspective is very limited and intellectually
shallow. It misfired in its attempt to bring Indian Classics into
higher education, because of its silly choice of astrology as door
opener. Blaming Muslims and Christians for all sorts of problems has
often diverted from pressing internal issues facing Hinduism. A
complete deconstruction of the ineptness of the "Hindu response" is
going to be the subject of a separate essay.
PART 2: The Brown (Mem)sahibs[17]
This part illustrates that many Indian anti-colonial thinkers are
themselves neocolonialists, for it is they who are propagating a
Eurocentric representation system of knowledge and discourse. In
particular, I discuss five categories of contemporary brown
(mem)sahibs: (1) historians; (2) writers of English Literature; (3)
South Asianized Indian American professors and journalists; (4)
NGOs[18]; and (5) India's post-independence rulers.
Eurocentrism and Indian History
My first category of neocolonial brown (mem)sahibs is Romila
Thapar and her dozens of former history students, who often guard the
India and/or Hindu bashing fortresses at many American university
departments, but who lack an education in Sanskrit and Indian
Classics. They compensate for this deficiency with an overdose of
Marxist and/or Eurocentric historiographies, often camouflaged as
Subaltern studies. Ronald Inden explains how postcolonial Indian
scholars have fallen into this trap:
"With the rise of identity politics, 'postcolonial' historians
have shifted away from imagining class and national unities in
India's past and have started pointing to diversities, but many of
these studies have a tendency to recuperate the older colonialist
imaginings of India. Representations of the systematic mistreatment
of women (patriarchy), the exploitation of the young (child labour),
domination by a parasitic Brahman caste of Aryan descent,
discrimination by castes (untouchability), and the triumphalism of an
atavistic Hinduism reiterate the earlier images of India as an
inherently and uniquely divided and oppressive place[19]."
These scholars hate being characterized as Eurocentrics, because
that would run counter to their status as anti-colonialists and pro-
Subaltern. Yet, they denigrate the sacred traditions of the very
subaltern people for whom they claim to speak.
Inden explains the colonial origins of the presuppositions of
India that are now commonly accepted by Indian scholars. His very
important book, from which the following passages are excerpted,
should be required reading for every student of India, in order to
understand the origins of today's neocolonialism:
"I wish to make possible studies of 'ancient' India that would
restore the agency that those [Eurocentric] histories have stripped
from its people and institutions. Scholars did this by imagining an
India kept eternally ancient by various Essences attributed to it,
most notably that of caste[20]."
"I will argue that Euro-American Selves and Indian Others have
not simply interacted as entities that remain fundamentally the same.
They have dialectically constituted one another. Once one realizes
the truth of this, he or she will begin to see that India has played
a part in the making of nineteenth and twentieth century Europe (and
America) much greater than the 'we' of scholarship, journalism, and
officialdom would normally wish to allow. The subcontinent was not
simply a source of colonial riches or a stage-setting in which
Western hunters could stalk tigers, the sons of British merchants and
aristocrats could make a financial killing, or the spiritualist find
his or her innermost soul (or its Buddhist absence). More than that,
India was (and to some extent still is) the object of thoughts and
acts with which this 'we' has constituted itself. European discourses
appear to separate their Self from the Indian Other -- the essence of
Western thought is practical reason, that of India a dreamy
imagination, or the essence of Western society is the free (but
selfish) individual, that of India an imprisoning (but all-providing)
caste system. But is this really so? To be sure, these discourses
create a strange, lop-sided complementarity between the Western Self
and its Indian Other. Yet the consequence of this process has been to
redefine ourselves. We have externalized exaggerated parts of
ourselves so that the equally exaggerated parts we retain can act out
the triumph of the one over the other in the Indian subcontinent. We
will be unhampered by an otherworldly imagination and unhindered by a
traditional, rural social structure because we have magically
translated them to India[21]."
"The effect of these wild fabrications of the nineteenth-century
European imagination was to give pre-eminence to caste, the type of
society epitomizing at once both constraint and excess, as opposed to
the freedom and moderation of Western civil society, and to the lone
renouncer rather than the individual-in-society. The result was not,
as scholars often claimed, to depict India 'as it was'. Indologists'
desires to elevate their West by denigrating this Indian Other were
not, however, fulfilled simply by turning it into the land of Hindu
castes and fakirs. Theirs was an imperial project that entailed the
wholesale intellectual deconstitution of Indian economic and
political institutions,....[22]"
"My main argument, then, is that the agency of Indians, the
capacity of Indians to make their world, has been displaced in those
knowledges on to other agents. The makers of these knowledges have,
in the first instance, displaced the agency of the Indians on to one
or more 'essences', and in the second instance on to themselves. The
essences that they have imagined have been caste, the Indian mind,
divine kingship, and the like. Although several generations of
scholars have characterized and valued these essences in a variety of
ways, they have for the most part considered them as somehow
inferior, at least in the sense of explaining why India 'lost out' to
the West. Since the civilization of India has been governed, they
assume, by these dubious essences from the moment of its origin, that
civilization's place in the world has been, so to speak,
predetermined from the beginning. Lacking the essences taken to be
characteristic of the West -- the individual, political freedom, and
science -- Indians did not even have the capacity on their own to
know these essences. They did not, so one would have to conclude,
have the capacity to act in the world with rationality. The European
scholars and their doubles, the colonial administrators and traders,
assumed for themselves the power to know these hidden essences of the
Other and to act upon them. They would act both for themselves and
for the Indians. Lest we think these practices affected only India,
we should consider that the West's image of itself as the epitome of
the modern has depended, for two hundred years, on these changing
portrayals of India as the embodiment of the ancient[23]."
While Black American scholars and Native American scholars have
made considerable progress in rewriting the portrayal of their people
for American textbooks[24], Indian historians remain too invested in
Marxist and Subalternist grand narratives of "Hindu oppression." In
this narrative, the Evil Brahmin plays the role of the elite
bourgeoisie, and the Dalits and women are mobilized to play as the
Oppressed Proletariat. Indian postcolonial thought has dislocated
itself from Indian Classics. Therefore, even when criticizing Western
hegemony, they are stuck with the use of Western theories.
Since the colonialists plays the Bad Guy, these scholars locate
pre-colonial "real India" in Mughal India. The 10th to 15th century
period of pre-Mughal Islamic plunder is quickly glossed over.
Anything prior to 10th century Islam is superficially treated, except
for what is assumed to have been brought into India by other generous
foreigners -- the so-called Aryans, the Greeks, and many others. The
self-serving meta-theory in which these historians are invested,
simply forbids the possibility of positive indigenous
developments[25].
Furthermore, for political correctness, and to keep their
"secular" ratings high, the well-documented genocides of Hindus are
suppressed. This is in sharp contrast with the way Black slavery,
Jewish holocaust and Native American genocide are mainstream topics
and emphasized in American school textbooks[26].
Instead of being suppressed as politically incorrect, a
dispassionate treatment of past atrocities would enable today's
Indians of all religions to distance themselves from historical
genocides, and to forge a common identity as Indians. After all, it
was the invading Muslims who plundered the native Indians, and the
Indian Muslims today are mainly descendents of the natives and not of
the invaders. For Indian Muslims, it would be far better to get
rooted in Indian civilization, which is eclectic and flexible enough
to include Islamic thought very hospitably, rather than identifying
themselves as part of a pan-Persian and/or pan-Arab diaspora. (In a
recent discussion with an Iranian scholar, I learnt that one of the
key reasons why Iran is Shiite Muslim rather than Sunni Muslim is
that Iranians refuse to Arabize their culture and identity. Recently,
many Iranian Islamic scholars have renewed their interest in
Zoroastrianism and pre-Islamic Iranian civilizations, which have a
family resemblance with Vedic civilization. While the Arabs erased
pre-Islamic knowledge systems as best as they could, the Iranians
have tried to preserve their pre-Islamic language and culture, and
have incorporated it into their reinterpretations of Islam. Indian
Muslims could revive a similar trend, started by Akbar and Dara
Shikoh, to fuse Islam with Indian Classics[27].)
While the focus by many scholars has been on the negative
stereotypes of Indic Traditions, they have failed to adequately treat
their many positive contributions, especially those that have been
appropriated by the West[28].
Another serious gap in Indian historiography is the lack of a
thorough history of Hinduism. This work would show that Hinduism was
developed and constructed over a considerable period of time, and has
not been frozen (as some "essences") in a lofty past. The importance
of this to present day Hinduism would be to challenge many Hindus
today who locate its perfection in some past era. This backward
revival, as opposed to forward construction, is the result of not
appreciating that Hinduism has had a long history of change,
progress, and development in response to circumstances. A philosophy
that has historically progressed can also have future progression,
whereas one that has remained fixed is locked in orthodoxy.
Since religion, especially Hinduism, has been explained away as
an obsolete need, not only do many historians fail to respect it and
to understand its basic tenets, but they rely on socio-political
theories according to which modernization would put an end to this
scourge of humanity. Therefore, most scholars have failed to
interpret the recent events in India and elsewhere in the world
concerning the enormous popularity of religions.
For instance, it is commonly said by them that: (a) the BJP came
to power; (b) this led to the TV Ramayana serial; (c) which, in turn,
led to the uprising of popular Hindu sentiments; and (d) this
culminated in the Ram Temple controversy at Ayodhya.
However, this chronology is false, made up to fit the theories.
The TV Ramayana actually occurred before the BJP came to power. This
TV serial's massive success was caused not by the BJP but by the
sentiments of Hindus, who had been suppressed for decades by a false
notion of secularism. This revival of Hinduism at the grass roots is
what led to the rise of the BJP.
For its part, the BJP took political advantage of the opportunity
created by this oppression of popular religion. (They frittered it
away on misguided causes, in my opinion, but that is another story.)
The BJP's rise to power was not the cause of the revival of Hindu
sentiments, but the result of it. I witnessed similar religious
revivals in Eastern Europe and ex-USSR, after the collapse of
communism.
Ranajit Guha's recent call to take the Indian Puranas seriously
as a way to excavate an indigenous sense of history, is courageous
and loud, and especially important since it comes from the very
founder of the Subaltern Movement[29]. Guha is a living legend
amongst "secular progressives," the description under which the
former Marxist thinkers of India now operate. He writes (and also
says in his talks) that India's itihas needs to be taken very
seriously to excavate its sense of indigenous history.
Guha explains how itihas is a unique genre of literature, that
cannot be called either Western style "history" or "myth." Rather
than being a history of mainly kings and armies, it is a repository
of culture at the grass roots. Nor is itihas a fixed set of
archetypal myths, because the audience participates in its unfolding
in the present context, interpreting and adapting it over time. One
hopes, given the bandwagon effect so important amongst Indian
historians, that Guha's U-Turn will also encourage a rethinking by
other Indian historians.
Historiography and Nation (Un)building
History writing has been used both to build nations and to
dismantle them.
China's government has championed and funded major programs
worldwide to promote a history of China that is constructed as being
self-contained and insular, with minimum outside influences
discussed. This account starts with Confucianism and Taoism as
original pillars of Chinese thought[30]. Even contemporary communist
ideology is depicted as a continuation of Confucianism and not
entirely as a recent foreign transplant into China.
Modern Germany and Japan are also prominent examples of nation
building based on constructing an integrated account of their own
civilization, history and identity. The European Union is a major new
project in the same direction. All these are examples of backward
projection by a contemporary sense of positive cohesiveness.
History has never been an objective reporting of a set of
empirical facts. It's a present day (re)conception and filtering of
data pertaining to the past, to build a narrative that is consistent
with the myths of the dominant culture.
The Saudis invest petrodollars heavily to promote a grand
positive narrative of the Arab people and their central place in the
destiny of humanity. In fact, the export of Wahhabi Islam is largely
a cultural export of Arabism, using religion as a means.
Scholarship is also used in the opposite manner. Imagine a
hypothetical scenario, just by way of analogy, in which the USA is
colonized by an alien civilization for several centuries. After
successfully draining out the massive material and intellectual
property, the colonizers finally leave, but a neocolonialism is
installed as their control device. Having become immensely wealthier
than their former colony, these aliens control the study of
Americanology, with a focus on deconstructing the nation's sense of
unity. They sponsor chairs, museums and textbook portrayals that
separate out various parts of American culture into conflicting
entities: Blacks are encouraged to fight Americanism in the same
manner as Dalits in India are being encouraged; women are encouraged
to follow the footsteps of their alien women; Mormonism is encouraged
as anti-Christian; American Muslims (who by them comprise a
significant portion of the US population) are not treated as being
Americans; and so forth.
This analogy is relevant because the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York has removed Indian art of the Mughal period and placed it
in a separate section called, "Islamic Art[31]." Museums in many
American cities have separated out Sikhism from the rest of India
into its own section for display, and have many cultural programs
focusing on it. It is quite fashionable in Asian Studies, Women's
Studies, and especially in South Asian Studies, to have separate
"Dalitism" scholarship. All this has become wrapped around serious
works on India as being mainly about caste, with all other items of
civilization being brought in from elsewhere.
The reality of India is that it is both these: an integration of
indigenous and assimilations from elsewhere. This process continues
till today. It is the same as with any other civilization. The
problem is that in the case of India the imported aspects are
exaggerated and the indigenous aspects are largely erased.
While each rich and powerful civilization emphasizes its
indigenous cohesiveness and continuity, and with scholarship under
control of those loyal to it, the reverse is the trend among the
economically weak civilizations such as India. In the case of Indian
civilization, the scholars' emphasis has been on how there might not
even be such a historical entity as India or Hinduism, and how its
civilization was entirely brought by foreigners into India.
This intellectual breakup of Indic Traditions into historical
layers of cultural imports, each with a nexus in some other part of
the world, is the intellectual equivalent of the political breakup of
India. That so many Indian have sold out to this project is certainly
noteworthy, and is a major untold story of our times. In the long
run, it is tempting for the West to assimilate this last remaining
non-Western knowledge system, and breaking it into digestible modules
facilitates this. However, the havoc that such a potential breakup
would unleash would also be of catastrophic global proportions[32].
Furthermore, the future positive harvests that this civilization is
capable of giving to the world would end.
By falsely portraying Indic traditions as anti-modern, the West
and its Indian sepoys[33] have forced many Indians into the false
dichotomy of tradition vs. progress. While the historical,
revelation-based Abrahamic religions demand belief in a canonized
dogma (placing religion and science in direct conflict), no such
dichotomy between Indian dharmas and science occurred. This is
because Indic Traditions accept an endless series of discoveries, and
not just one unique event, and because the classical Indian role
models are very often those of skeptics, free-spirited thinkers, and
intense debaters arguing against established ideologies. Given its
methodologies of discovering new knowledge, known as pramanas, dharma
is progressive, and requires change and reformation as part of its on
going process. It has become artificially frozen only in recent
centuries, and this needs to be unfrozen so that the indigenous
engine of progress and renaissance may resume.
For removal of doubt, I am against homogenized religion or
homogenized ideas of nation, because that would run counter to the
spirit and reality of dharma. Furthermore, I am against any
marginalization of minorities, including Dalits, Indian Muslims and
Christians. My contention is that just as Greek thought was
appropriated to construct diverse and progressive thinking in Europe,
and thereby bring about the Renaissance of Europe, it seems to be a
promising project to use Indian Classics as the foundation for a
universally applicable Indic worldview and renaissance.
The issues discussed in this essay have caused inner conflicts
and schisms in Thapar's Children, that are often written on their
faces. This is why their preprogrammed defense mechanisms
instinctively flare up -- shouting "fundamentalist," "nationalist,"
and so forth -- when they are merely questioned on the legitimacy of
their qualifications as scholars of India. Inadvertently, and often
with good intentions, they continue to feed what might be called
Gentooism Studies[34].
The influence of Thapar's Children in the Western world is
considerable. Almost every year, they fly their icon around the world
for speaking tours at prestigious campuses, where her cult-like
former students are well fed gatekeepers. They make sure that no
opposing voice is included on the panels -- hardly an academically
sound approach. At one of her talks last year, someone from the
audience had the courage to ask her whether she knew Sanskrit and
whether she had read the original texts, or whether she relied mainly
on European sources for her scholarship. Very angry at this
"rudeness," she dismissed the question by saying that she "only
answers questions from academically qualified persons." Clearly,
since she did not know the woman in the audience, Thapar had no way
of assuming that this person was not an academician, except for the
fact that only an outsider to the cult and its sphere of control
would dare ask such a question.
The American academe considers her and her former students as the
authorities on India. Any challenge to this hegemony of the brown
(mem)sahibs is met with fierce personal attacks.
'Brown Shame' in English Literature
Arundhati Roy, Rohinton Mistry (of Oprah fame), Bharati Mukerji,
and others of this new genre of English language Indian writers, are
my second category of neocolonial brown (mem)sahibs.
They rake in their money and awards spinning a reinforcement of
the caste, cows and curry meta-narratives of India. This is to be
contrasted with recent Bollywood blockbusters, such as Lagaan, that
have depicted the cross-cultural relationship from the Indian
perspective, and hence, catered to popular Indian audiences. These
writers, on the other hand, are not read by India's masses, whom they
pretend to represent. It is the Western reader, seeking to fortify
his/her Eurocentric myth of superiority, who endorses such work.
These authors serve as brown-skinned suppliers for the kind of
Orientalism previously done by whites such as Kipling. Their work is
widely prescribed in American colleges, as insightful approaches into
the complexity of exotic India, in a friendly fictionalized manner.
It is taken more seriously than it deserves to be, because the
publishers are falsely marketing these authors as the real voices of
India.
The triumphant myth of the West expands, and these authors get
amply rewarded for their contribution to the progressive march of
Western civilization. In effect, these are the intellectual
equivalents of the sepoys who policed the British Empire with great
loyalty and pride, and, in exchange, got rewarded by being upgraded
to a tier above the rest of the Indians whom they helped to
subjugate.
Noy Thrupkaew, an American feminist reviewer, takes Indian women
authors to task for supplying the stereotype of the "hard-bitten,
angst-ridden Asian-American protagonists who had ostentatious sex by
page 30." She continues: "But if Asian women weren't screwing, the
publishing world wanted them suffering (and maybe bravely triumphing
after they got themselves to the United States). The Asian historical
memoirs were based on a simple formula: Asia was hell; the United
States is a hell of a lot better. ....the Asian-hell-to-Western-
heaven motif leaves a U.S. reader in a nicely complacent spot:
reclining in a La-Z-Boy and thinking, 'Well, thank god for
America![35]'"
This has become a bandwagon on which many Indian women authors
want to hitch a ride to instant success. What used to be the White
Woman's Burden has, in many instances, been taken over as the Brown
Woman's Burden. But Thrupkaew is suspicious:
"Is this author exoticizing her ethnicity? Is she just feeding
the public more stereotypes of lotus-blossom ladies and guacamole-
hipped mamas? If she's inaccurate or exceptionally critical or dewy-
eyed in depicting the culture of her forebears, is it done in a way
that suits the general public's fixed ideas? If the answer to any of
these questions is 'yes,' then there's a problem."
While a few manage to climb to the top, the ultimate fate of most
of these authors is to remain below the glass ceiling, while their
white sisters smile from above. Thrupkaew points to the faddish
nature of the American reader, as she writes: "At its worst, South
Asian and South Asian-American writing is just like tasty Indian food
-- to be chewed, digested, and excreted without a lot of thought."
Yet this craving for legitimacy and honorary white status is too
attractive and irresistible for many. ("Western" is often a
politically correct equivalent of what was previously called
"white.")
Richard Crasta, a Christian from Mangalore, India, explains how
the neocolonial process is working here: "In its choice of the
Eastern writers it will patronize -- or not patronize -- Western
publishing is only following the traditional strategy of conquerors
towards a conquered race: unsex the men, 'liberate' the women, reward
and honor the eunuchs or race-traitors, thus letting them keep their
untamed brothers in check. If the conquered women and men don't get
along as a result, so much the better....[36]"
Many Indians have learnt to play the game, explains Crasta:
"[M]ilking the West has become a major Third World industry, art, or
con game -- one that we must master merely to survive. We are
practiced milkers, and we'll do almost anything, say almost anything,
act any degrading role that's called for -- all for a drop of the
gleaming, life-giving, white stuff.[37]"
But Crasta warns his fellow Indian writers of the dangers of
trying to cross the glass ceiling: "This Western carrot of acceptance
and riches is accompanied by a stick: Do not cross the boundaries.
Always remember your place....[T]he carrot and stick are so
discreetly transferred by Third World writers onto their internal
censor that they are often unconscious of their own self-
censorship.[38]"
The harm this is causing is very serious, says Crasta:
"Ethnic shame is the opposite of ethnic pride ... and it is a
sublime example of the success of colonialism in co-opting us in our
own subversion, and in our alienation from our culture and our earth,
and ultimately the extinction of our own culture.... Educated Indians
feel that they must apologize for every Indian who spits or shits by
the roadside, for India's official corruption, for the poor quality
of Indian manufactured goods, for our repeated defeats by foreign
conquerors, for our dirt and disease and poverty, now and forever.
Faced with such a burden, it is no wonder that some Indians succumb
to the temptation of simply denying their Indian origins....Why is
ethnic shame such a serious matter, and not just some personal
oddity? Because it contributes to our collusion with the forces that
tend to make us invisible in a foreign society.... But there are
other, more serious reasons for our shame, no doubt: the Western
media's and the American people's association of India with highly
negative images.... The India Haters Club is growing larger and
larger, and its largest contingent is probably the millions of
Indians for whom a few bitter experiences of betrayal have pushed
them over the edge into self-hatred: Yes, my skin is brown, but my
soul is white.[39]"
Most eminent Indian postcolonial and literary theorists, such as
Homi Bhabha, Gaytri Spivak and Dipesh Chakrabarty, lack formal
education in Indian Classics to help their work, even though
considerable classical Indian thought anticipated postmodernism and
takes those notions even deeper. Gerald Larson correctly assesses:
"The problem with subaltern theorizing is that it is
intellectually derivative from post-modernist and post-structuralist
western 'critical theory' and thereby runs the risk of being little
more than a kind of Neo-Orientalist theorizing.[40]"
This growing genre of uniquely Indian Eurocentrism is
simultaneously stupid and gifted, living paradoxically on an ivory
tower. These young English language writers are of a new breed, often
with revulsion to anything even remotely connected with Hinduism. As
typical Macaulayites, they see nothing in Hinduism except for
inequality between castes and burning of women. The paradox is that
they are also sharp and acute critics of the dominance of the whites,
colonialism, neocolonialism, corporate greed of America, etc. In
other words, they have memorized well the rhetoric of Marxism,
nowadays reinvented as "the leftist progressive circle." But they are
dislocated individuals from their souls and, like all loose canons,
present dangerous implications.
While masters at deconstructing everything pertaining to British
colonialism, what can these scholars replace it with? Answer: nothing
that is prior to the Muslim invasion of India. Since the British
period was cruel, and pre-Mughal India is dismissed as primitive
(except for Buddhism which got intellectually moved from India over
to East Asian Studies), what is seen as positive Indian culture is
Mughal centric! In these minds, India's worthwhile culture starts
only when the Muslims colonized it.
The reason is simple: they lack knowledge of Indian Classics, and
find it very embarrassing when this is pointed out to their white
cohorts, because American liberal education includes a solid
foundation in the Western Classics. Imagine telling an American
liberal arts college to get rid of the Greek Classics, because the
Greeks were primitive, pagan, and slave-owners.
This is the lie that these scholars live behind: the pretence
that they are authentic ambassadors and representatives of Indian
culture, when, in fact, they represent the West's successful mental
colonization of India. Hence, their neurosis and anger, when this
contradiction gets exposed.
Their fierce public fight against the dominant culture is a
reaction to their shadow side that is unable to become the dominant
culture. Hypothetically, if there were a FDA[41] approved gene
therapy to change phenotypes into "white," it is precisely this lot
who would make a beeline for this ethnicity-changing procedure.
The frustration from being denied white status often gets an
outlet via postcolonial studies. This is the syndrome that Richard
Crasta has called "impressing the whites." It is what Enrique Dussel,
Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, and many others explain as the process by
which the dominant culture appropriates a tier of intellectuals from
the colonized culture, to serve as proxies in intellectually ruling
over the masses. In exchange for this loyalty to the dominant
culture, these Uncle Toms receive a considerably enhanced position,
various rewards, and a sort of neo-white status.
It is to be remembered that 99% of all bullets fired and all
police atrocities committed during the British Empire were done by
Indian Sepoys under British command. Interestingly, the Chinese did
not make good sepoys, because they refused to sell out. The Blacks
had to be physically chained to enslave them. But Indians volunteered
with great pride.
Today, the Indian Sepoy archetype, found in the Western academe
and journalism, often does the dirty intellectual work. Their role on
behalf of the dominant culture is to supply the myth of the "other"
in a way that fits into the dominant culture's grand narrative of
itself. Rather than glorifying their success, the sooner their
readers start to publicly call their lie, the better.
(As an interesting side remark, Lalit Mansingh, India's
Ambassador to USA, gave his speech at a major Hindu event in English.
He can only give speeches in English[42].)
The "South Asian" Syndrome
SAJA (South Asian Journalists Association) has influenced the
movement to "South Asianize" young Indian Americans when they leave
home and enter American colleges. SAJA runs on a clever marketing
scheme: journalists from prestigious American media firms are brought
on to the advisory board to give SAJA legitimacy, in exchange for
enhancing their personal resumes as being "India experts." Annual
SAJA Awards, sponsored by corporations seeking to impress the Indian
diaspora, are given to create role models of young journalists, who
have often accomplished little other than championing the ideals of
SAJA -- Somini Sengupta is one recent example. This mechanism feeds
itself. The SAJA internet discussion lists are carefully censored to
filter out opposing views, even disallowing responses to direct
personal attacks.
Many Indian journalist (mem)sahibs also serve as chowkidars
(gatekeepers) for the West, as Crasta explains:
"Indeed, many of these immigrants are so terrified of voices that
may offend the Masters that they will themselves act as filtering
devices, as local policemen or toughs. Organizations like the Asia
Society, South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), and many ethnic
newspapers regularly act as cheerleaders for those Indians who have
impressed the whites, and as bouncers to keep their scruffy and
impolite brethren from disrupting the harmony: on one occasion even
trying to drop a 'trouble-making' Indian author from the program at
the Asia Society[43]."
SAJA is but a small node of a vast South Asian movement on
American campuses. The South Asian movement carefully hides the fact
that this term was invented by Henry Kissinger as part of the Cold
War foreign policy to contain the non-NATO world. The South Asian
Studies departments across the US have been funded ever since by
"Title VI Grants" from the US State Department, intended to
promulgate and promote a theory of that "area" in order to support US
foreign policy. Edward Said analyzed this and wrote that besides the
military, the Western powers also have "armies of scholars at work
politically, militarily, ideologically."
The following quote from a governmental report describes why the
US Department of Defense invests in the social sciences to understand
and reengineer the "others": "The Armed Forces are no longer engaged
solely in warfare.... For many countries throughout the world, we
need more knowledge about their beliefs, values, and motivations;
their political, religious, and economic organizations; and the
impact of various changes or innovations upon their socio-cultural
patterns. ..."[44]
The same report recommends specific kinds of social research and
reengineering, and one can find in this list many projects that are
being carried out in the US academe and via NGOs in India. Never has
the Indian media done an investigative report on why the US Defense
Department is to be served by Indian scholars in this manner:
"The following items are elements that merit consideration as
factors in research strategy for military agencies. Priority Research
Undertakings: (1) methods, theories and training in the social and
behavioral sciences in foreign countries. ...(2) programs that train
foreign social scientists. ...(3) social science research to be
conducted by independent indigenous scientists. ... (4) social
science tasks to be conducted by major U.S. graduate studies in
centers in foreign areas. ...(7) studies based in the U.S. that
exploit data collected by overseas investigators supported by non-
defense agencies. The development of data, resources and analytical
methods should be pressed so that data collected for special purposes
can be utilized for many additional purposes. ... (8) collaborate
with other programs in the U.S. and abroad that will provide
continuing access of Department of Defense personnel to academic and
intellectual resources of the 'free world.'"
Over 90% of the students who get sucked into the South Asian
movement on US campuses are Indians. On the other hand, most
Pakistanis are unabashed about their identity, and join Islamic
organizations. Even in the UK, where the Indian community is far
older than in the US, there is no South Asian movement on campuses.
Finally, nobody in India identifies himself/herself as being "South
Asian."
An American academic scholar, who publicly identifies himself as
a Hindu, complains about many of his cohorts in South Asian Studies:
"It is very sad that those who once supported free thinking and
spirituality now support political correctness and Marxism. I find
that the South Asianists on this campus, both westerners as well as
the Indians (who are almost exclusively from high caste, urban elite
families) and Pakistanis (also ALL from wealthy families) have, for
the most part, a real hatred of Hinduism specifically, and religion
in general. Because I am not ANTI-Hindu, which 'good' scholars here
are supposed to be these days, I was long ago labeled a
fundamentalist and relegated to the fringe. Whenever there is a
conference on South Asia, I am not invited. [But] it is okay because
I have a tenured position[45]."
Finally, Dinesh D'Souza, who recently wrote in praise of
colonialism, as being a great gift to the colonized people[46], is a
product of the South Asian movement.
NGOs as Foreign Proxies
Susantha Goonatilake, a Sri Lankan scholar, has completed a
comprehensive study of his country's NGOs and plans to publish his
findings in a major book soon. His conclusions stated to me may be
paraphrased as follows. Sri Lanka has been destroyed largely by the
foreign funded NGOs operating there. Local scholars do what the
sponsors demand, and hence serve as foreign proxies. This is remote-
controlled neocolonialism of sorts. Goonatilake says that the same
phenomenon has also happened to a fair extent in Bangladesh. But
India, he says, is simply too large and resilient to be taken over,
and has managed to survive despite all such activities.
It is this kind of NGO mentality that sends speakers to
International conferences and to foreign media, so as to
sensationalize and "expose" the internal social problems of India.
While many NGO staff members and scholars are immersed into the Hindu
and India phobia movement, there are also a large number who are
simply sucked into this out of sheer ignorance, or out of the
temptation for foreign travel and various grants as rewards. Many
NGOs are the fifth column of Stealth Eurocentrism.
While the agenda of neocolonialism is rarely visible in the grant
agreements, everyone experienced in this cottage industry knows what
reports are "correct" to produce, in order to keep the foreign funds
flowing. Those who resist "selling out" are weeded out by the
sponsors in a Darwinian game in which fitness is defined in terms of
anti Indic Traditions.
This explains why so many internal social problems of India get
internationalized with the help of Indians, even though the
international forums have no capability or track record in actually
resolving these issues. Where domestic mechanisms already exist to
resolve these matters, they are simply bypassed and their existence
is simply ignored. It is a pitiable sight to see these nouveau and
neo Westerners sign up as enthusiastic carriers of exotic gobar
(bullshit) on their stupid little heads, from one event to another.
Many of the problems mentioned in this essay would not be possible
without Indian NGOs aiding and abetting neocolonialism.
The "Sixth International Conference on Dowry, Bride-Burning and
Son-Preference" to be held in 2003, is one such example. Its
intellectual leadership comes from Western feminists[47]. The group's
first conference on the subject was held at Harvard University in
1995, where a "Six Point Program to Eradicate Dowry and Bride-Burning
in India" was adopted. This Program was further revised at their
subsequent conferences held at Harvard University and University of
London. While the sponsors and scholars gained publicity for
themselves, and continue to seek to "change mindset" on this issue,
they admit that they have made no impact on the ground reality of
this problem.
In sharp contrast with this are the many successful social reform
movements from within the Indic Traditions. Madhu Kishwar describes
in her talks how Western funded NGO feminists failed to make any dent
in reforming rural property ownership biases against women, but that
different movements run entirely using Indic principles and metaphors
were very successful. The Swadhyaya movement is another great example
of large scale reform, from within the culture, that is strengthening
the indigenous knowledge systems rather than strengthening
neocolonialism. There are also numerous successful examples of the
practical use of traditional knowledge systems in areas such as water
harvesting.
Colonial Style of Governance in India Today
Hinduism and Christianity each comprise over 80% of the
populations of India and USA, respectively. Therefore, it is
appropriate to compare the status of each of these in its respective
country, in relation to other minority religions. Following are some
comparisons that are seldom mentioned by scholars and journalists who
analyze India's religions:
� Continuing the British colonial practice, Hindu temples in
India today are under the trusteeship of civil servants appointed by
the Government of India, many of whom are not even Hindus[48].
Therefore, when I give a donation at Tirupati, one of the largest
Hindu temples in India, the money goes to the control of civil
servants of the government, who then decide how it gets spent.
However, the places of worship of all minority religions, such as
Islam and Christianity, are entirely run by the management appointed
by their respective members, with no governmental interference. By
way of comparison, American Christians would never accept comparable
discrimination against them. It is unthinkable that Churches in USA
could come under the control and supervision of Federally appointed
trustees, especially if non Christian religions would be exempted
from this, simply as a way to prove the leaders' "secularism."
� There is only one civil law in USA for all its citizens,
regardless of religion. There is no such thing as a separate Jewish
Law, or Catholic Law, or Mormon Law, or Protestant Law, or Muslim
Law, and so forth, to govern the public life of Americans. The very
thought of this is reprehensible to Americans. Yet, there is a
separate and distinct Muslim Personal Law in India. This has been
used by past politicians to grant religious minorities specific
provisions. For instance, Indian Muslims may have four wives under
Indian law, even in this 21st century -- and yet it is fashionable
for many intellectuals to defend this minority pampering law, rather
than condemning it on grounds of human rights.
� Imagine if the American affirmative action programs consisted
of a list of hundreds of minority groups -- including each named
Native American tribe, Blacks, Hispanics, Italians, Polish, Japanese,
Chinese, Arabs, Indian Americans, Russians, etc. -- with a percentage
of college admissions, jobs, etc. as quotas reserved for each group.
Imagine if these "groups" were categorized under British colonial
rule, when the colonialists conducted censuses using sociological
categories as per their biased understanding. Furthermore, imagine
that these federally enforced social divisions were to become the
basis for hundreds of political parties, each seeking votes from its
ethnic group, and promising to lobby on its behalf to improve its
"deal" with the State. Few Americans with whom I have discussed this
are willing to believe that India's affirmative action program is so
ridiculous as this scenario suggests, and yet it is precisely this
way. Rather than removing historical distinctions over a few
generations, by making affirmative action on individual need and
circumstances, this Indian "secular" approach has become the cause
for divisiveness in India. Caste is the result of political
structure, and, conversely, caste persists to fuel the political
opportunities it has created.
� "Faith Based Initiatives" is a recent US government program by
the Bush administration, under which Federal grants are given to
religious organizations in order to do social work. This has created
a major stir, on two accounts: whether the government should be
funding religious organizations at all; and to what extent it should
fund minority religions. However, a very similar program has
functioned in India very successfully ever since independence. Its
characteristics are newsworthy[49]: (a) The majority of funds given
under this program in India go to Christian and Muslim organizations,
even though they comprise a minority. (b) This quantity given to
minority religions has not declined, despite recent religious
politics. (c) Nobody has complained about this state of affairs, as
it is considered quite normal.
� Tens of billions of dollars worth of land in India is owned by
the Church, and in Mumbai, the Church is the second largest land
owner, the largest being the Indian military. Most of this land was
given under land grants by the British to the Church, and by
subsequent Indian governments. Such generosity to a minority religion
followed by only 2.5% of the Indian population has gone unreported.
Given the foreign controlled nexus of the various Churches, this is
tantamount to giving billions of dollars to subsidiaries of foreign
entities that are engaged in social re-engineering of Indian society.
The US government has never contemplated such generosity towards
minority religions, especially those controlled from overseas.
� Millions of India's laborers and entrepreneurs who use Indian
traditional knowledge systems are often deemed to be engaged in
criminal activities by the government. Many British laws, enacted to
de-industrialize India and to transfer manufacturing to Britain,
persist today. Madhu Kishwar has started to raise awareness about
this, by mediating and renegotiating the "ruler-ruled relations" in
specific sectors of India's economy. For instance, she has pointed
out in an educational video, that metallurgical process pioneered in
India centuries before the British learnt to make steel, and that had
made India the world's leading exporter of steel, remain criminalized
today. Similarly, traditional civil engineering, once the basis for
building India's massive city complexes, is now outlawed in India.
Government authorities constantly prosecute activities that are not
compliant with Western norms, and treat India's traditional style
workers as common criminals.
Each of the above is a colonial legacy that the government has
deepened even further. Indians have replaced British as the rulers of
the masses, as colonizers of their own people.
Sitharam, a journalist in a major local vernacular publication in
Bangalore, reflects on the ridiculous positions taken by many Indian
"intellectuals" in the name of secularism and political correctness:
"It is a great tragedy in this country that words like
Secularism, Sanatana Dharma, Social justice, uplifting of Dalits and
so on, which are to be the considered greatest goals and ideals in
any civil society,.... have become the playthings in the hands of
petty politicians and anti-nationals who want to divide people to
achieve self-gains even by throwing the society into unrest, and to
warm themselves by lighting the pyres. The irony is that those mostly
responsible for this state of affairs are the armchair
intellectuals... Because of the irrational behavior of these
intellectuals, it has now come to pass that anyone who wants to be
recognized as secular, should be a professed leftist, and interpret
society on a Minority-Majority basis or on Brahmin-Non Brahmin basis
or Forward-Dalit basis. He, therefore, has to interpret, without
using his critical faculties, any incident that occurs in the country
so as to demonstrate that he is a leftist, an anti-Brahmin and a pro-
Dalit. If not, he is at risk of being segregated and kept out of the
coveted community of 'Progressive intellectuals'. Now-a-days, to be
considered as a member of the progressive intellectual community, it
is not necessary as of yester years to be a scholar in Tarka, Vedanta
or Mimamsa, or even geography, history or science,... It would
suffice if he were committed to the above-mentioned policy...[50]"
This armchair intellectualism is often an exercise in juxtaposing
ill-defined or inapplicable words. One such word worth deconstructing
is "fundamentalist." I have tried to get a definition of
fundamentalism from armchair intellectuals, on the condition that we
must then apply it equally to all parties, to ascertain as to whether
a given party is fundamentalist or not. I have provided the following
background to help this exercise:
1. If a literalist interpretation of ancient texts makes one a
fundamentalist, as is the charge against those interpreting the Hindu
Puranas in this manner, then the majority of American Christians and
virtually all Muslims of the world, would have to declared as
fundamentalists, because they do consider the Bible and Koran,
respectively, in the literal sense.
2. If fundamentalism means believing that one's own faith is the
only true one, to the exclusion of all others, then, by definition,
faiths based on unique historical revelations -- the three Abrahamic
religions -- would be fundamentalist.
3. If "fundamentalism" is to mean an unwillingness to change,
based on open-minded inquiry, then it is the same as "orthodoxy" (as
contrasted with "liberalism"). In this case, most of the "Left" today
is fundamentalist, because they are not liberal in the pursuit of new
inquiry, and seem to thrive on repeating the liberal thoughts of
icons of bygone eras.
4. If imposing one's faith upon society at large is being
discussed, then I would consider a better term to be "religious
nationalism." Every Islamic State, which means virtually every Muslim
majority nation in the world, would qualify.
I have yet to receive a definition. It seems the term
"fundamentalist" is being used for anyone who challenges the
syndicated ideology of the incumbent group. Having said this, surely,
there are intolerant Hindus, literalist Hindus, chauvinist Hindus,
and so forth, as there are for any other ideology. But they cannot
all be lumped under one umbrella.
PART 3: The Glass Ceiling
My previous Sulekha column, titled, "The Asymmetric Dialog of
Civilizations," based on a talk presented at the American Academy of
Religion (2001) gives an overview of the role of the dominant
culture, from above the glass ceiling. in creating and sustaining
neocolonialism[51]. Therefore, I shall not replicate that information
here.
Inden is quoted in Part 2 above explaining that the West used the
"other," and especially India, to define and construct itself. This
happened both at physical and intellectual planes. The intellectual
appropriation continues to this day.
The U-Turn process is my model for describing this appropriation,
by which the West has been intellectually constructing itself, and it
consists of the following stages:
1. Student/disciple: In this stage, the Westerner is very loyal
to the Indic Traditions, and writes with the deepest respect. In many
instances, India has helped the person to "find" himself/herself.
2. Neutral/new age/perennial territory: In this stage, Indic
appropriations are repackaged as "original" claims by the scholar,
and/or assumed as generic thoughts found in all cultures. In many
instances, this is done in order to expand the market for the books,
tapes and seminars, by separating from the negative image of "caste,
cows and curry" traditions.
3. Hero's return to the original tradition: The scholar brings
the knowledge into Judaism or Christianity, so as enrich his/her own
tradition, once the ego takes over and this identity asserts itself.
Alternatively, the scholar repackages the material in secular
vernacular, such as "Western psychology" or "phenomenology" or
"scientific" framework. Now the sales mushroom, as the Western
audiences rub their hands in glee, congratulating themselves for
their culture's sophistication.
4. Denigrating the source: At this stage are those scholars who
specialize in trashing the source Indic Traditions.
5. Mobilizing the sepoys and becharis: I already defined sepoys
as Indians who become proxies for Western sponsors. Becharis are
women who overdo the "I have been abused" roles, so as to dramatize
#4. Part 2 of this essay focused on them.
European colonial writers saw India as the theater where their
European history was playing out, rather than viewing it from the
Indians' perspective. Likewise, may Judeo-Christian scholars use
Hinduism Studies for their personal spiritual journey to enrich their
native religion[52].
Not all stages take place in every case, and these stages might
not happen in this exact sequence every time. Often, one scholar ends
his/her career at a certain stage of this U-Turn process, and the
successors continue further along this process[53]. It is important
to note that Eurocentrism is most often unintentional and
unconscious, because the person is so immersed in the myths of
Westernism, that it is simply assumed to be the right thing to
do[54].
This U-Turn has served as a way to plunder with one hand and
denigrate the victim with the other. In earlier times, the Greeks
appropriated much of "their" civilization from Egyptians.
Christianity was built on Greek pagan ideas, but the pagans got
condemned.
Therefore, subverting India's Classics, while appropriating from
them via a series of U-Turning scholars, is an important process for
the sustenance of the myth of the West.
Some academic organizations, such as RISA (Religions In South
Asia), remain as bastions of blatant Eurocentrism. See my "Asymmetric
Dialog..." essay referenced above for details. Also, see my essay,
"Who Speaks for Hinduism?[55]" These scholars control classrooms as
forums, in which the students are often na�ve and are not given
viewpoints that challenge the scholars.
For instance, HCS (Hindu Christian Studies) was set up by
academic scholars specifically to have a dialog between these two
religions. But the discussions were centered mainly on Christian
perspectives of Hinduism, along the lines of the "caste, cows and
curry" themes. However, once a few Hindus tried to discuss
information on caste in Indian Christianity, social abuses in
Christian majority countries, etc., they were severely reprimanded by
Lance Nelson, the scholar in charge of HCS. When this did not
succeed, they threw out the Hindus, except for those who work under
the Christians' control, and even blocked public access to the
discussion archive[56].
Likewise, RISA membership is closed to practicing Hindus, to
Hindu pandits, gurus and swamis, even though it is the official
scholarly body about religions of South Asia[57].
Both HCS and RISA give various excuses for behaving like the
proverbial brahmins and treating the Hindus like shudras. For
instance, they claim: (1) Practicing Hindus are not qualified to know
about their own traditions[58]. (2) Most Hindus lack the critical
thinking and/or the right "style" of presentation skills to merit
entry amidst such lofty audiences. (3) It is for the Hindus' own
"good" to leave the controls with the Christians, so as to protect
the Hindus from the Marxists. And so forth.
These "restricted" (and sometimes "secret") societies use abusive
language against those Hindus who try to bypassing the hegemony. The
archive of these Hindu-bashing discussions is in the process of being
researched for a series of future articles. Since their intended
audience is not the well informed and self confident Hindu, they
often get very embarrassed, afraid and/or angry when such Hindus
discover their writings and start to read them publicly in front of
large Hindu audiences.
Hindus' loss of control over their own scholarship for centuries
led to the "freezing" of a very vibrant tradition. While Christianity
has progressed with constructive theologies (for instance, liberation
theology), Hinduism scholarship has been under the trusteeship mainly
of non-Hindus. Today, when Hindus re-interpret their texts to make
them current with the times, they are dismissed as quacks, when all
other major religions enjoy this privilege.
While literal Biblical interpretations are well respected, and
this literalism is the belief of roughly half of all American
Christians[59], when Hindus base their scholarship on literal
interpretations of Puranas, they are condemned as "fascists",
"fundamentalists", and so forth.
The academy does not encourage the use of Hindu categories to
deconstruct and criticize Christianity, in the same manner as
Christian hermeneutics are routinely used to deconstruct Hinduism.
It is simply expected of Hindus in the Western academic world to
acknowledge acceptance of their servile place and be thankful for it.
They are not entitled to the same rights to protest; nor is routine
respect accorded -- facts at variance with the rights and respect
extended to Muslims and other minority religions in USA on their
perseverance and demand. It is not surprising, therefore, that most
Indian American Hindus confine their religious expression inside the
walls of the 800 Hindu temples in North America, and "white Hindus"
often prefer to hide their practice behind the new-age cover.
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COMMENT:
May 8, 2009 at 5:00 pm
sanjay,
I am glad you put this up as a post. I have recommended this to be
the #1 reading for all Indian, Indian-Americans I come across to
understand the big picture. For the curious, the 1300+ comments that
followed when it was first published on Sulekha are also worth taking
a look.
http://rajivmalhotra.sulekha.com/blog/post/2002/07/the-axis-of-neocolonialism/comments.htm
VoP
http://victimofprejudice.blogspot.com/
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More at:
http://indianrealist.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/colonialism-did-not-die-it-only-reinvented-itself/
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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