V. V. Raman
Rochester Institute of Technology
The
field of inquiry and commentary which has come to be known as
Indologyhad its origins, like Sinology, Egyptology, and other such
disciplines, in theexploratory, intrusive, and scholarly interests of
European colonialism,missionary zeal, and Enlightenment. Many centuries
earlier, Islamicexpansionism had shown a similar enthusiasm for
understanding, interpreting,translating, and critiquing the literature,
philosophy, and traditions of otherpeoples.
Aside from genuine
intellectual curiosity, there were at least two othermotivations for the
Western pursuit of Indology. One was the need to have aclear
understanding of the history and culture of the people the
colonialistswanted to (had to) govern.
The otherwas to use that
knowledge to persuade Hindus that theirs was a religion which,with all
its inner light, needed to be replaced by a better religion,
namely,Christianity. This is why not only independent scholars, but
alsogovernment-affiliated thinkers and missionaries took interest in
Indology.
For almost two centuries, as a result of the efforts of
Western scholars,with ever increasing collaboration with Hindu academics
and religious thinkers,Indology has been flourishing and evolving.
Thanks to the untiring dedicationof such people, much of ancient Hindu
history has been reconstructed. Thanks toa number of Western
archaeologists the even more ancient Indic civilizationswere unearthed.
The rich treasures of Sanskrit as well as Tamil and othervernacular
literatures have been translated, commented upon, and propagated tothe
world by the exertions of Western scholars and linguists. Herein lies
theglory of Western Indological scholarship.
However, the
colonizing and Christianizing motivations of early Indologistsare, in
retrospect, offensive to Neo-Hindus today. More regrettably, in theview
of some, many Indian minds have been transformed to the Western mode
ofthinking and analyzing historical and spiritual matters. This is
drasticallydifferent from traditional modes. As a result, a deep chasm
has arisen not onlybetween English-educated Indian scholars who think
like their Westerncolleagues and their non-English speaking compatriots
whose approach toreligion and tradition are untouched by modern ways,
but also between anawakened body of modern Indians who have recognized
the self-serving Euro-centricinterpretations, unintentional
mis-portrayals, and intentional distortions ofIndia's rich culture,
ancient traditions, and complex religions. All this isthe gore of
Western Indological scholarship.
The happy collaboration between
Western and Indian scholars has thus beensubject to some serious
assaults. A number of post-modern Hindu thinkers havebeen seeing in much
of Indology, past and present, many culture-insensitive andracially
motivated factors with more hidden agenda than had been surmised
thusfar. A new movement has already taken its initial steps whose goal
is toexpose, condemn, and keep away what is considered to be
cold-bloodedscholarship with a hidden-agenda with little reverence or
sensitivity for theliving religion that is Hinduism. In this new vision,
which incidentally, has anumber of Western scholars among its
protagonists, a great many supposedlysympathetic Indologists are, in
fact, wolves in sheep's skin.
...
When Scholarship Matters:The Indo-Aryan Origins Debate
Edwin Bryant Rutgers University
Everyone
in the field of South Asian studies by now knows about, and islikely
exasperated by, the debate over the origins of the
Vedic-speakingIndo-Aryans. We have all, I think, heard something of the
voices that haveemerged, primarily from Indian archaeologists and
historians, as well as fromthe Hindu diaspora, challenging the idea of
an external origin for thislanguage and cultural group, and claiming an
Indigenous origin for the Vedicculture (a view I have termed the
'Indigenist' position). Fueled by suspicionof the racist and elitist
biases of colonial Indology, and, according to itsdetractors, by the
imperatives of Hindu nationalism, this view provokes endlessdiscussions,
as anyone with the patience to follow the Indo-Aryan migrationdebates
on the Indology nets and other conferences in the West can attest.
Thesedebates all-too-often degenerate into emotional name-calling, as
accusations of'neo-colonial chauvinism' from one side, and assertions of
'Hindu nationalisticdogma' from the other, inevitably start to be
bandied about, while thescholarly value of the discussions rapidly
evaporates.
Most western Indologists, on the whole, have remained
unconvinced by thelimited exposure they have had with the all-too-often
selective quality of theIndigenist arguments they encounter, which they
view as indicative of anationalism that seeks authenticity in
unscholarly interpretations of historyand pre-history, and some scholars
are becoming exasperated by the polemicalrehashing of the racist
genesis of western Indology. While the debate is viewedby most western
Indologists as, at best, peripheral to serious scholarship and,at worst,
as an annoying—and, in the present-day Indian context,
politicallydangerous—disturbance, it is ferociously contested in India,
where it issituated in much more of a mainstream academic context.
The
Indigenist stress on the continuity of Indian history, and the
genericuse of the term 'Vedic culture', with its ahistorical and
monolithic overtonesand troublesome implications for minority cultures,
is the feature of the'Indigenist' position, that is most troubling to
opponents of this view. Theconcerns of those who fear the ideological
corollaries underpinning suchinterpretations are by now well-known: if
the Vedic Indo-Aryans are interpretedas being indigenous to India, then
the 'Vedic Civilization' and all thatdeveloped from it can be construed
as 'truly Indian' and all subsequentcultural groups known to have
immigrated into India can be depicted as'Others'. Indigenism,
consequently, is generically stereotyped as a discoursepromoting
communal tension.
...
Defamation and Diaspora Hindus:
Notes on Internet Discussions
VasudhaNarayanan
University of Florida
Should
there be a lakshman rekha, a line self-imposed or otherwise,
thatscholars should not cross? If so, who should draw the line and who
should moveit?
My task today is to talk about "defamation" on the
internet. Thereis some ambiguity attached to the term in the context of
today's discussion: wedeal with the alleged defamation of Hinduism on
the one hand, and defamation ofscholars on list serves and web pages on
the other. I will spend most of mytime today outlining a list of issues
that concern some Hindus about listserves where most of the discussants
are non-Hindu. I will focus primarily onRISA-L and, to a lesser extent,
on Indology. In this enterprise, I would liketo acknowledge the help of a
former Indian/Hindu student from the University of Florida who took
some advanced levelreading courses on Vedanta, specifically the Sri
Vaishnava tradition, with me.He would like to be identified as "a recent
resident in the US, anengineer by profession but very much interested
in scholarly Hindustudies." He sent me a long document with specific
problematic issues inRISA-L, and it seemed to reaffirm the tenor of many
internet discussionscriticizing western scholarship. However, he does
say that this critical reportdoes not mean that he holds the "RISA
scholars in contempt per se;"and says that this is only an anthology on
what he considers to be the"bad aspects."
Many moons ago, when
western scholars studied and wrote about Hinduism,Hindus had little
control over what was said and how information wasinterpreted and
disseminated. The audience for the articles and books was
alsoEuro-American scholars. Obviously that has changed now—we all know
that thereare Indo-American, Hindu scholars in the academy, and second
generation Hindusin our classrooms. More important to our discussion
today, there are manyHindus who are reading and listening in on academic
discussions. While in thepast, there had been groups of Hindus rather
bemused and occasionally evenflattered at the attention that American or
European scholars seemed to lavishon their texts and rituals, now there
are some in the United States who arewary and angered at the way in
which they perceive Hinduism is being portrayedin classrooms and more
particularly at the AAR. It is, of course, hard to getnumbers in this
quest and I certainly do not want to generalize about how"Hindus" feel
about so called "western" scholarship. Justspeaking from my anecdotal
experience, most Hindus are not aware of a greatdeal of "western"
scholarship and have not made an attempt to knowmore about it.
Panch (Five) Asymmetries in theDialog of Civilizations:
A Hindu View
Rajiv Malhotra
The Infinity Foundation
(excerpted earlier in this post)
Toward Context Sensitivity
Ann Grodzins Gold
Syracuse University
I
accepted Jack's invitation to join this session with an emotion I can
onlydescribe as dread. Prior to his email, I had firmly decided not to
go to Denver, and indeed hadalready become involved in organizing a
session for AAA (it makes for a killerNovember to do both I can tell
you). A couple of weeks ago, when I thought Ihad better organize my
thoughts, I looked for the AAR file on my computer anddiscovered I had
named the folder, last spring, "Denver01misery". Ihave to say that—in
the wake of September 11 and its aftermath of ongoingviolence—last
spring's dread and misery have seemed to me nothing if not petty,and
even unworthy of further consideration. However, Laurie's email, with
thebold dictionary definitions of "defamation," somewhat re-kindled
bothemotions.
I do not wish to squander my remaining
nine-and-a-half minutes rehearsingthe sorrows of last winter, but it
isn't possible to ignore them completelybecause that is why we are here.
Luckily, I had been reading Saurabh Dube'sstill unpublished book
manuscript
Stitches on Time. Saurabh was aparticipant in the "Who
Speaks for Hinduism?" session a few yearsback—a session to which
today's might seem a kind of less mellow, or moremelancholy, sequel. For
some editorial reason I don't understand, hiscontribution was not
included in the
JAAR volume that emerged from thatsession, but will be part of his new book which he has given me permission tocite.
Dube
argues that at the heart of the "Who speaks" forum was theanxiety of
Western scholars, "under threat from vociferous critiques of
apostcolonial provenance" and thus fearing that they would be denied
theright to speak. He writes quite evocatively, even poetically,
of"anxieties and aggressions produced within everyday encounters
andquotidian confrontations in academic arenas . . . "—experiences many
of usshare, whatever our religious or ethnic identities. Dube does find
somepotential value in dealing with all of this, a challenge to think
through"the ambiguities and ambivalences, contradictions and challenges,
and predicamentsand possibilities at the heart of the current cultural
politics of identitiesand the contemporary political cultures of
scholarship."
But he also questions the
terms in which the
challenge wasformulated. Reasonably enough, he observes, "Many speak
about Hinduism.Some speak around Hinduism. For a few it is perhaps
possible to speak fromwithin Hinduism(s). But speaking
for Hinduism? . . . . " Theimplication is; how can that be?
So,
the primary lesson I take from Dube is the foolishness of imagining
orreifying a singular entity over which any of us should indulge in
tug-of-war. Iknow this has been said before, more than once, but it
seems to get just asregularly forgotten.
Dube is not at all
sanguine about the prospects of finding what he calls a"talking cure" to
these problems. Yet, if the ready alternative tothe talking cure in
today's mental health world is a pill, we in academia havenot yet
synthesized a quick chemistry of equilibrium. Thus we find
ourselveshere, trying once again for a talking cure, in a case that
could seem stillmore hopeless.
Rather than embracing hopelessness,
I will suggest that if there is a cureit lies in two related practices:
1) sharing or diffusing any and all claims toauthority among all
concerned; and 2) remaining sensitive to contexts—bothpoints to which I
shall return. But first I do need to explain a little aboutmy own close
encounter with Rajiv Malhotra and the Infinity Foundation, whichwas one
major impetus for Jack's organizing this session.
I don't want to
speak in terms of defamation but of pain. Both parties tothis encounter
were wounded, I believe, in their deepest sense of self. Both,moreover,
felt self-righteous to the bone. In terms of understanding whatactually
took place at last year's AAR, bothparties' memories could not be more
totally at odds. Were we in the same roomat the same time?
Interestingly
enough, my paper—the one Rajiv found objectionable—was aboutthe
workings of memory. And our divergent interpretations of the memory
panelgo to support this paper's major point. Its opening sentences were
these:
Various readings have characterized memory, from one
perspective or another,as a "brightly lit theater of the world"; a
"mirror of the darkabyss of the mind" (both cited in Hutton 1993); the
breaking waves of theocean (Halbwachs 1992); lava that "melts away the
earth" from thedead and makes them live again (old Jewish lady cited in
Myerhof 1992);"not only a spring, flowing from the well of the past, but
also a tomb,whose contents climb like withered ivy to the mind" (Langer
1991: 69);"a roadway full of potholes, badly in need of repair, worked
on day andnight by revisionist crews" (Kirmayer 1996).
I think as
we look at the disparate interpretations from Rajiv and from me asto
what took place in my paper and the session, we can see just such
processes:the revisionist crews are hard at work, the waves of the ocean
are shaping theshore.
To speak from my viewpoint then, briefly:
In my paper about memory I tookexamples from an oral history project
I've been working on, collaborativelywith an Indian co-author, since
1993. These examples were of memories gatheredin interviews with women
and men from a leatherworking community, a few of whomrecollected abuse
by some members of the Kshatriya community, about fifty yearsback,
although often in veiled terms.
The word Hinduism appeared exactly
once in the paper, in the phrase:"devotional expressions within
Hinduism" from the bottom of theritual hierarchy—with a reference to
well-known poets such as Raidas andChokhamela. I argued that, as these
poet-saints had done before them,disempowered persons in the twentieth
century might find in Hinduism's mythicand devotional expressions
sources of and mediums for strength and resistance.
To Rajiv, just
by mentioning disempowered persons residing in India, I wasdefaming
Hinduism. He had come to the AAR tolearn the ways that American
academics dealt with what he prized and held mostdear. What he saw and
heard in my talk, which used slides, was not what Ithought I was
showing: old women, looking back from a happier time in
thenineteen-nineties to recollect some of the sufferings of their
youths, underthe rule of kings and colonizers. Rather, he saw defamation
at work, and theexperience upset him so much he left the session before
it was over. For Rajiv,images of leather workers, and their critiques
of the behaviors of a fewabusive land owners in a small kingdom sixty
years ago, were assaults on hisexistence as a Hindu in America.
He
subsequently published an account of his anger on his web site and in
anewsletter, referring to my paper as an example of "typical
Hindubashing."
Now, I felt assaulted. To me, the words
"Hindu-bashing" burn sobadly I can neither write nor speak them without a
shudder in my gut. I felt asif my twenty years of appreciation for and
participation in Indian culture, andmy whole self, professional and
human, had been assaulted (of course this isthe crux of Euro-American
postcolonial anxiety to which Dube points; this isnot hitting close to
home, this is home).
In his published account, Rajiv wrote about the AARmeetings in general:
What
would shock most Hindus attending this [AAR]for the first time would be
the nature of portrayal of Hinduism in Americaneducation. It is nothing
like what you would find at a temple, ashram or Hindugathering. Rather,
it is mainly an arms-length 'objective' view typicallydominated by
graphic details of the social ills of Hindu society—caste, women'sabuse,
poverty, pollution, superstitions, animal worship, animal sacrifice
andthe like. This material permeates college teaching about Hinduism and
India in a bigway, and in many instances also secondary schools.
Notice
two things in Rajiv's published report that are crucial to mymessage.
One is the statement that goings-on at the AARare "nothing like what you
would find at a temple, ashram or Hindugathering." The other is the
immediate leap from AARto college teaching. The issue of context is very
important in both thesestatements.
Is this an impasse beyond
healing? Frankly, I felt initially that it was—myimpulse was to
withdraw. "Why should I deal with this? I'll go to theanthropology
meetings."
However, nothing is ever that easy. For one thing, I
have always been myselfdeeply concerned with false impressions of
Hinduism prevalent in the US; as Iteach it at the introductory level
almost every year, I have to counteractthese perspectives in my courses.
So I find myself in considerable sympathywith my so-called "defamer"
(who responded with prompt and kindconsideration to my impassioned
protest, immediately removing my name from hispublications and assuring
me that it was nothing personal, and I had simplybeen in the wrong place
at the wrong time). Once again, context is all.
A.K. Ramanujan,
as everyone here of my generation probably knows, wrote awonderful
essay, published in 1990 but widely circulated and cited muchearlier,
titled "Is there an Indian way of thinking?" I wish I couldread you the
whole thing! For the question is phrased in multiple fashions
withmultiple answers and subtle nuances that simply refuse summarizing.
In it Ramansuggests that if there is any characteristic pattern of
Indian thought, it is"context-sensitivity." He finds commonalities of
context-sensitivityin his father who was both a mathematician and an
astrologer, in Sanskritgrammar, in Tamil aesthetic theory, and in the
Laws of Manu—which prescribe(this just happens to be the example
Ramanujan selected) a smaller fine for aKshatriya who
defames a Brahmin than for a merchant (hmmm).
As
the Infinity Foundation seeks to showcase the many contributions of
Indiccivilization to the world, I would hope that this subtle one
ofcontext-sensitivity might be included not only as subject but as
practice. (Inmany ways it seems to me to anticipate recent important
philosophical argumentssuch as Donna Haraway's about "situated
knowledge.")
The AAR is, I believe, a context, anacademic forum,
where we should be able to present our current
research—theoreticallyframed—to a limited audience of scholars. If, when
presenting work here, wemake no claims to be speaking "for Hinduism" we
should be taken atour word. There are many other contexts in which we
behave differently. Forexample, I teach almost every year, Religion 285,
a basic introduction toHinduism. In that class I am acutely sensitive
to my position as aEuro-American outsider, in front of an audience that
always includes Hindus aswell as Christians, Jews, and occasional
Muslims and Buddhists. I am acutely
and perpetually alert to the
possibilities for mis-representation, to the concerns of insiders, and to
the prejudices of outsiders. I do not talk ofuntouchable women in that
introductory course. I teach the Upanishads,Valmiki's Ramayana, the
Gita, Kabir and the Virashaivite poets in Ramanujan'sbeautiful
translations.
This teaching has been a learning experience for me
since I first steppedinto the classroom—fall 1985, Cornell, as a new
visiting assistant professor ina class called "Perspectives on South
Asian Culture." I planned touse a lot of films, and the first one I
showed I had thought quite exemplary inits clear illustration of ritual
action: "Hindu Sacraments ofChildhood."
This film features South
Indian Brahmins in the city of Madras, urban elites, performing
elaboraterituals for infants and children that are right out of fourth
centuryGriyasutra texts.
In my class, a young Punjabi, non
Brahmin, raised his hand the minute thefilm was over, and declared in no
uncertain terms, "nobody in India doesrituals like this any more . . . "
As
a novice teacher, I couldn't help but be deflated; my authority had
beenchallenged, and by an insider! I tried to explain that such rituals
mightindeed be rarely performed, or not at all where he was from, but
that someBrahmins in South India were evidently still doing them; or at
least they were,when the film was made . . .. I expect I sounded rattled
and defensive and abit lame. One problem of course is with the false
claims of the title "
HinduSacraments of Childhood." This has to
be contextualized as South IndianBrahmins, who care about ritual, in the
nineteen sixties, demonstrating theirvalued cultural performances for
an American Sanskritist and his film crew. Ilearned later from Dan
Smith, the film maker, that the whole thing was staged,as no polluting,
barbaric foreigner would have been allowed to be present atthe real
rituals . . ..
This does not mean that with appropriate
contextualization we could notstill gather some knowledge of life cycle
rituals from these documentaries(though now dated in style as well as
content).
The larger lesson I have carried through another fifteen
years of teachingis always to talk about multiplicity, and context; and
always to offer to shareauthority with students, especially Indian
students, in a fashion they cantrust.
Luckily Indiagave us the
fable of the blind man and the elephant, and I bring this up in myfirst
class. I tell the students of South Asian descent that rural Rajasthan
ismy piece of the elephant, while theirs may be urban Bombay,or New
Jersey(and I must credit and thank Joyce Flueckiger for helping me
arrive at my ownstrategies by telling me hers).
Over the years, I
have significantly altered my syllabus content as a directresponse to
objections and suggestions from Hindu students; I no longer showvideos
with animal sacrifice; I no longer try to deal with Ayodhya in atwo-week
unit at the end—not on the grounds that such conflicts should behidden,
but that two weeks are not enough in an introductory course to
produceanything but confusion—which was clear enough to me from the
Euro-Americanresponse papers. I don't feel as if I am succumbing to
censorship in thesenegotiations, but rather sharing authority and being
sensitive not only tostudent identity issues, but to the context of an
introductory course; acontext that I would insist is quite different
from that of the AAR—which isindeed neither a "temple, ashram or Hindu
gathering," nor a collegeclassroom....
Toward a Gandhian Pragmatics of Scholarly Collaboration
Laurie Patton
Emory University
Kala Acharya
K. J. Somaiya Bharatiya Sanskriti Peetham
Laurie Patton:
This
paper comes as a joint, practical effort of two scholars ofHinduism—one
Hindu and Indian and the other non-Hindu and white. We
have"represented" each other in our written work and in our
lecturesabout "the other." It is, in part, a narrative of the
corrections,fumblings, and exhilarations between Hindu and non-Hindu
scholarly endeavors.It is also a set of narratives which are informed by
certain Gandhianprinciples, and premised on a model of mutual need,
mutual correction, andloyal oppositions. The Hindu and the non-Hindu
need each other's scholarshipbecause they most profitably are engaged in
a process of mutual correction andcompanionship.
We begin by
simply drawing your attention to the principles laid down byGandhi in
his civil disobedience campaign. In your handout we have translatedthis
into a scholarly version which you see underneath the original
principles.We view these not as anything we practice successfully—not by
any stretch ofthe imagination! Rather we view them as our own
impossible ideals.
Nor do we even necessarily view them as Gandhi
did, a set of principles bywhich to live unwaveringly. Rather, we take
the view that Johannes Fabian doesin his recent article, "Remembering
the Other: Knowledge and Recognitionin the Exploration of Central
Africa" (
Critical Inquiry 26: 1999).In this work he scrutinizes
the moments of meeting between two cultures inethnographic narratives:
moments where the power balance is momentarilyrighted—between field
assistant and anthropologist, between explorer andexplored, colonizer
and colonized. These are moments of recognition of need, orof mutual
survival.
We assume that, contrary to the scathing critiques which
corrode ourrelationships in the past years, these moments of
recognition between Hindu andnon-Hindu occur every day; these moments
are part of each of our scholarlyrepertoires, and that these moments,
not the acrimony, are the basic facts ofevery day scholarly life. These
are moments of freedom, in which a"Hindu" scholar can momentarily agree
with a so-called"Western" point of view, and a "Western" scholar
canmomentarily agree with a so-called "Hindu" point of view, withoutfear
of being attacked and branded forever. We argue that these moment
shouldbe foregrounded as much as, if not more than, the critique which
pitchesnon-Hindu against Hindu, Indian against white, in an increasingly
vituperativeand unproductive battle in which neither side is weighed
evenly. We are on verymuch the same side here. We all want more Hindus
to be involved in the study ofHinduism. We all want our Hindu students
to be brave enough to choose SouthAsian studies and not medical school
as the path of least resistance.
We assume that these moments of
recognition are also results ofconflict—inevitable and intense, between
Hindu and non-Hindu scholars. They aremomentary conflicts because the
larger project of lokasamgraha, the comingtogether of the world, is for
most of us far more important than any givendisagreement. Moreover, the
mutual correction that both sides submit to, doesnot assume that either
side is always more powerful. Rather, the power balanceis constantly
shifting; hence the need for constant mutual correction within alifelong
companionship. There will be the power of the one who can afford
tovisit a country vs the one who cannot afford the plane ticket; there
will bethe power of the funder vs. the relatively controlled position of
the funded;the power of the one who has better library resources vs.
the one who cannotgather the basic texts necessary for research. At one
time, the anthropologistwill be at a loss, unable to decode the ritual
without the help of a teacher;at another, the foundation money will be
able to dictate the terms of theintellectual project. At another, the
moment will come when a pandit will saythat the Western edition of a
text is good for his work; and a scholar mightsay that the brilliance of
Hinduism that she fell in love with is vibrant andrecognizable in many
forms, including those forms she had previously beensuspicious of. These
are all moments when power must be recognized andrealigned, just as in
Fabian locates these tiny encounters as moments ofcultural change. Both
Hindu and non-Hindu are all momentary satyagrahis in thestruggle for a
truthful and flexible relationship between the Hindu traditionand its
scholars....
(Message over 64k, truncated.)
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