This is a discussion on the erroneous interpretation of Sri Ram as a woman-absuser. This post provides samples of the type of shoddy, misrepresentative, and superficial work of Hinduism and its epics that is being done in US academia.
October 2013
Anshu starts the discussion by sharing an article: "The Sita Syndrome"
Archana Bhatt (2013). The Sita syndrome (pdf link): Examining the communicative aspects of domestic violence from a South Asian perspective...
I wanted to write a letter to the editor or a journal article explaining that this phenomenon is prevalent worldwide, regardless of race or religion. I can do a literature review for Gender Based Violence, but need some help to justify Shri. Ram's actions..."
Rajiv shares a Huffington Post link: "The following is a typical superficial article by a Hindu in interfaith:
A prominent Hindu rep supported this "Sita sings the blues" when I first got to know her in the 1990s, taking a western feminist stand. Then we had some arguments. I think she later regretted encouraging this interpretation but by then it had taken root and gone mainstream. Today this interpretation of Ram = woman abuser is very standard in academic and other intellectual circles."
Anshu shares a couple of links and comments:
" UChicago link 1, link 2.
Not only that, GOI also "gifted" $1.5 million to burn. But, when it comes to fund "real" scholars or research, they never have enough money.
What to say about Ministary of Culture, Hinduism is not even in their ("secular") mission statement..."
This discussion is continued in another thread. This is largely about whether the Uttara Kanda of Ramayana was or was not a part of the original, Valmiki's Ramayana.
Param adds:
" Uttara Kanda is certainly not a part of Valmiki's epic; for instance it distorts the characters of Rama, Lakshmana and Sita; the Shambuka story is also fake.
... Also, what some critics call Sita's "agni-pareeksha" is really Sita's Agni-pravesha". Rama NEVER suspected Sita's chastity, and Sita knew it..."
Krishnamurthy responds
"while Shambhuka episode is a patent interpolation, being not in
consonance with the Valmikian philosophy, Uttarakanda cannot be severed
from Ramayana, since the biography of any character should stretch from
the entrance of that character to his exit; as otherwise it will be
incomplete. Further, it is wrong to say that the said kanda is in
derogation of the Characters of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana; though there
are good many misinterpretations by the Commentators; which lead the lay
readers astray.."
[more discussion truncated, read the original thread in the forum for complete details]
Showing posts with label Feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Feminism. Show all posts
RMF Summary: Week of December 12 - 18, 2011
December 12
December 13
December 14
Rajiv response:
"Rajiv comment: Actually, I loved the conversation with Mark because it brings out so many ideas in the book right from the mouth of a very explicit member and follower of the Anglican Church. (He had read the book very closely and we had held another private discussion on it prior to this recorded one.)
The important point is that he wants very badly to avoid differences and show sameness (like most Indians and westerners across the spectrum); but because he is so honest and I am so persistent in raising philosophical issues, the end
result is that the three differences listed in my email come out very explicitly.
Regarding the Togadia remark, please wait till another video comes up, the one from my TV interview with the JNU professor of Political Science. That explains the difference between the civilization and the modern politics. One can support the former without the latter - as I wish to do."
December 14
Venkat shares:
"This links provides details on Catholic attempts to get into the
general and cultual media in order to bring Jesus to Hindus
excerpts:
2. Kalabhavan
Fr Abel CMI, a bright start from the Carmelite Missionaries was probably the first in India to venture into the ara of cultural media and liturgical music. Gradually with a fine blending of the electronic and the rich cultural arts of the Kerala, his Kalabhavan made inroads into Kerala's cultual and cinema fields with several of his stars scaling the media industry/
Inspired by Kalabhavan's unprecedented success, a number of other centres all over India have also taken to cultual an dfolk media to proclaim the Word of God as well as to develop these cultural forms...."
December 15
....Maximizing Dharma: Krsna's Consequentialism in the Mahabharata
Praxis, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2011
http://www.praxisjp.org/
JOSEPH DOWD UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE
Abstract The Mahabharata, an Indian epic poem, describes a legendary war between two sides of a royal family. The epic's plot involves numerous moral dilemmas that have intrigued and perplexed scholars of Indian literature. Many of these dilemmas revolve around a character named Krsna. Krsna is a divine incarnation and a self-proclaimed upholder of dharma, a system of social and religious duties central to Hindu ethics. Yet, during the war, Krsna repeatedly encourages his allies to use tactics that violate dharma. In this paper, I try to make
sense of Krsna's actions by analyzing them in terms of categories from Western moral philosophy. I show that Krsna seems to embrace an ethical approach called consequentialism, but that his version of consequentialism differs from Western
theories of consequentialism by seeing adherence to dharma as an intrinsic good..."
Ravi responds:
".....A quick read of this paper shows the usual prejudiced usage of western frameworks & attempts to fit sanskrit categories into them. This seems highly reductive, like using Newtonian physics, with it's linearity, to model the subatomic & astronomical worlds, which are too non-linear to be captured by this simplistic theories. The author skirts over the ideas of saamaanya dharma vs vishesha dharma (while completely ignoring the crucial "apaddharma"), but doesn't do much justice to the concepts, preferring to stick to "enlightenment" categories of "consequentialism", "deontological ethics" etc which are too immature to capture the complexity of the human/divine activities in ordinary life, let alone the Mahabharata.
Also, though he uses B K Matilal as a reference, he does not engage any of Matilal's erudite understanding of Dharma here, since that would undermine the case he is making. If anyone wants more detail on this, I can email some papers by Matilal's student J Ganeri which discusses the "moral delimmas in the MB" to some degree of satisfaction missing in this paper.
As a closing point, here is the excerpt from the "Being Different" book":
The word 'dharma' has multiple meanings depending on the context in which it is used. Monier-Williams's A Concise Sanskrit-English Dictionary lists several, including: conduct, duty, right, justice, virtue, morality, religion, religious merit, good work according to a right or rule, etc.54 Many others have been suggested, such as law or 'torah' (in the Judaic sense), 'logos' (Greek), 'way' (Christian) and even 'tao' (Chinese). None of these is entirely accurate, and none conveys the full force of the term in Sanskrit. Dharma has the Sanskrit root dhri, which means 'that which upholds' or 'that without which nothing can stand' or 'that which maintains the stability and harmony of the universe'. Dharma encompasses the natural, innate behaviour of things, duty, law, ethics, virtue, etc. For example, the laws of physics describe current human understanding of the dharma of physical systems. Every entity in the cosmos has its particular dharma – from the electron, which has the dharma to move in a certain manner, to the clouds, galaxies, plants, insects, and of course, man. Dharma has no equivalent in the Western lexicon. Colonialists endeavoured to map Indian traditions onto Christianity so as to be able to locate, categorize, understand and govern their subjects, yet the notion of dharma has remained elusive..."
Koenraad Elst responds:
"It's from a decent university, it doesn't claim to be prestigious, just to be professional and *good*. ...And if at all it really were "marginal", so what?
... I remember the Hindu nationalist student organization ABVP inviting people like Khushwant Singh, who holds them in contempt but never turns down an opportunity to speak his mind, to belittle his enemies and to pocket a fat speaking fee. The rest of mankind is bad enough, but nobody outdoes the Hindus in being status-conscious.
Indian Marxists have always known this and built up their own people, deliberately giving them posts and prestige (e.g. having them receive a prize in Moscow and then advertising hiom in India as "internationally acclaimed") and everything that bedazzles the semi-literate. The next thing would then be that the RSS invites him rather than any fellow Hindu because he has prestige, the prestige which their enemies have conferred on him. Instead of building up their own pantheon of big names.
>Two things are evident: (1) translations of Mahabharat by Westerners is used as source and is analyzed using Western moral philosophy,<
Unlike the many who treat Western philosophy as universal, this author explicitates that his approach is from Western philosophy, implying that their are legitimate non-Western philosophies too. ...The translation is not the point
here, the same data about Krishna's conduct are just as evident in the popular translations by Rajagopalachari and RK Narayan."
ArjunShakti adds:
"That reminds of the time lord bagri had funded a series of talks on Hinduism at SOAS hosted by william dalrymple with Wendy Doniger as the star guest.It was even advertised on the National Hindu Students forums website."
December 15
bluecupid wrote:
I'm the person who wrote that email to Rajiv. Since that time I completed watching more of his videos and came to understand that what he thus far described as "U-turn" does not really apply to me in that I have not turned at all away from the Dharmic lineage I am a part of. Moreover, those he sites as having done "u-turns" have not lived extensively in India and their contact with India was/is extremely limited and confined only to theory. If I am correct, their "u-turns" are in connection with theories/philosophies/religions.
My situation is different. I found myself living in India and practicing my religion amongst indigenous practicioners who brought their Indian (often village) cultural conditionings (samskaras) with them into the religion, mixed them, and passed off their cultural conditionings as part of the religion, and in turn expected foreign (non-Indian) practicioners to adopt those cultural conditionings right alongside practicing the sadhana.
No thankyou!
.... Of course when ex-patting to any country there is a certain level of cultural assimilation that is required, and most non-Indians who ex-pat to India for religious reasons go above and beyond that level in their desperate attempts to
fit in and be accepted. But there is a point at which "enough is enough" - that point for me is when the surrounding cultural ethos is at odds with my own internally developed sense of ethics, morality, fairness and commonsense.
Rajiv's response:
... In my UTurn Theory book (forthcoming), I distinguish among 3 types of guru movements depending on how much demand they place on their western followers. ISKCON is an example that integrates culture/lifestyle with dharma very deeply. Other movements separate culture from dharma, but still preserve the unity of dharma and you cannot take bits and pieces here and there. Then there is the third variety I call the buffet or flea market, where you learn some breathing
technique from one place, and another nice story some place else, and try to mix your own ad hoc cocktail including history-centrism of Judeo-Christianity.
My guess would be that the lady named bluecupid went into the first type of group, and found it too stuffy, so she left it.
I wonder if she is now practicing the second or third kind. If she is conscious and secure as a practitioner of dharma, then it would be difficult to mix that with original sin, only one life to live, one incarnation of God as his son, sacrifice and redemption - at least in the version that is standard in the
Church. In this case, she has not uturned from dharma.
On the other hand, if she has gone into the third variety, reintegrating a few things she learned from dharma back into her Judeo-Christian identity, then I would call it a uturn.
bluecupid follows up:
"....In short - I reject the idea that in order to practice "dharma" I have to live like a medieval Indian bahu. I am not Indian, I am not living during the medieval era, and I sure as heck ain't nobody's bahu!
I've heard complaints that old colonialist literature referred to Indians as "children". Well, it's now almost 2012 and it seems Indians themselves are more than happy to keep each other living as children with no help from colonialists.
If I have to give up many of my cultural conditionings in order to practice dharma properly, then Indians do too."
Rajiv's response:
"... We got that point in your first post loud and clear. There are clearly some deep scars from the horrific experience you
had in UP, and this is often a cause for rejection. But you seem to have extrapolated this into a hate for Indians. Were you someone's "bahu" in India? Did they ill-treat you?"
Venkata.. comments:
"... There is a huge reservoir of mind and intellect available in Hindu brahmacharis and sannyasis who have high educational background. They are currently largely engaged only in reinforcing their learning of the Shastras or in teaching them. It is from this reservoir that some individuals should be
encouraged and persuaded to undertake rigorous academic studies in comparative religion, philosophy, metaphysics and the like. ..."
bluecupid's response to Venkata..:
"Most Indian brahmacharies and sannyasis are mired in an old world mindset. They may know how to rattle off Upanishadic slokas by rote memorization, which by the way doesn't take any intellectual nuance or analystical skills, but they are clueless as to the issues in the wider world around them. Their approach to everything is from their old world....
You can learn the siddhant of their particular school of thought from them, but not much else. Its a narrow, rigid world. ...
The narrow and rigid world inhabited by these brahmacharies and sannyasis prevents them from truly experiencing the wider world and getting a "pulse" on the people.
Just see - the natural ally to Hindus in the West are the Yoga and New Age circles. How many Indians do you see in Western yoga classes or at New Age centers or a Tantra workshop? Nada. Well, everyone once in a while one or 2,
if the guest speaker is an Indian.
Closed. Rigid. Domesticated."
Kundan responds:
December 13
December 14
Rajiv response:
"Rajiv comment: Actually, I loved the conversation with Mark because it brings out so many ideas in the book right from the mouth of a very explicit member and follower of the Anglican Church. (He had read the book very closely and we had held another private discussion on it prior to this recorded one.)
The important point is that he wants very badly to avoid differences and show sameness (like most Indians and westerners across the spectrum); but because he is so honest and I am so persistent in raising philosophical issues, the end
result is that the three differences listed in my email come out very explicitly.
Regarding the Togadia remark, please wait till another video comes up, the one from my TV interview with the JNU professor of Political Science. That explains the difference between the civilization and the modern politics. One can support the former without the latter - as I wish to do."
December 14
Venkat shares:
"This links provides details on Catholic attempts to get into the
general and cultual media in order to bring Jesus to Hindus
excerpts:
2. Kalabhavan
Fr Abel CMI, a bright start from the Carmelite Missionaries was probably the first in India to venture into the ara of cultural media and liturgical music. Gradually with a fine blending of the electronic and the rich cultural arts of the Kerala, his Kalabhavan made inroads into Kerala's cultual and cinema fields with several of his stars scaling the media industry/
Inspired by Kalabhavan's unprecedented success, a number of other centres all over India have also taken to cultual an dfolk media to proclaim the Word of God as well as to develop these cultural forms...."
December 15
Praxis, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2011
http://www.praxisjp.org/
JOSEPH DOWD UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE
Abstract The Mahabharata, an Indian epic poem, describes a legendary war between two sides of a royal family. The epic's plot involves numerous moral dilemmas that have intrigued and perplexed scholars of Indian literature. Many of these dilemmas revolve around a character named Krsna. Krsna is a divine incarnation and a self-proclaimed upholder of dharma, a system of social and religious duties central to Hindu ethics. Yet, during the war, Krsna repeatedly encourages his allies to use tactics that violate dharma. In this paper, I try to make
sense of Krsna's actions by analyzing them in terms of categories from Western moral philosophy. I show that Krsna seems to embrace an ethical approach called consequentialism, but that his version of consequentialism differs from Western
theories of consequentialism by seeing adherence to dharma as an intrinsic good..."
Ravi responds:
".....A quick read of this paper shows the usual prejudiced usage of western frameworks & attempts to fit sanskrit categories into them. This seems highly reductive, like using Newtonian physics, with it's linearity, to model the subatomic & astronomical worlds, which are too non-linear to be captured by this simplistic theories. The author skirts over the ideas of saamaanya dharma vs vishesha dharma (while completely ignoring the crucial "apaddharma"), but doesn't do much justice to the concepts, preferring to stick to "enlightenment" categories of "consequentialism", "deontological ethics" etc which are too immature to capture the complexity of the human/divine activities in ordinary life, let alone the Mahabharata.
Also, though he uses B K Matilal as a reference, he does not engage any of Matilal's erudite understanding of Dharma here, since that would undermine the case he is making. If anyone wants more detail on this, I can email some papers by Matilal's student J Ganeri which discusses the "moral delimmas in the MB" to some degree of satisfaction missing in this paper.
As a closing point, here is the excerpt from the "Being Different" book":
The word 'dharma' has multiple meanings depending on the context in which it is used. Monier-Williams's A Concise Sanskrit-English Dictionary lists several, including: conduct, duty, right, justice, virtue, morality, religion, religious merit, good work according to a right or rule, etc.54 Many others have been suggested, such as law or 'torah' (in the Judaic sense), 'logos' (Greek), 'way' (Christian) and even 'tao' (Chinese). None of these is entirely accurate, and none conveys the full force of the term in Sanskrit. Dharma has the Sanskrit root dhri, which means 'that which upholds' or 'that without which nothing can stand' or 'that which maintains the stability and harmony of the universe'. Dharma encompasses the natural, innate behaviour of things, duty, law, ethics, virtue, etc. For example, the laws of physics describe current human understanding of the dharma of physical systems. Every entity in the cosmos has its particular dharma – from the electron, which has the dharma to move in a certain manner, to the clouds, galaxies, plants, insects, and of course, man. Dharma has no equivalent in the Western lexicon. Colonialists endeavoured to map Indian traditions onto Christianity so as to be able to locate, categorize, understand and govern their subjects, yet the notion of dharma has remained elusive..."
Koenraad Elst responds:
"It's from a decent university, it doesn't claim to be prestigious, just to be professional and *good*. ...And if at all it really were "marginal", so what?
... I remember the Hindu nationalist student organization ABVP inviting people like Khushwant Singh, who holds them in contempt but never turns down an opportunity to speak his mind, to belittle his enemies and to pocket a fat speaking fee. The rest of mankind is bad enough, but nobody outdoes the Hindus in being status-conscious.
Indian Marxists have always known this and built up their own people, deliberately giving them posts and prestige (e.g. having them receive a prize in Moscow and then advertising hiom in India as "internationally acclaimed") and everything that bedazzles the semi-literate. The next thing would then be that the RSS invites him rather than any fellow Hindu because he has prestige, the prestige which their enemies have conferred on him. Instead of building up their own pantheon of big names.
>Two things are evident: (1) translations of Mahabharat by Westerners is used as source and is analyzed using Western moral philosophy,<
Unlike the many who treat Western philosophy as universal, this author explicitates that his approach is from Western philosophy, implying that their are legitimate non-Western philosophies too. ...The translation is not the point
here, the same data about Krishna's conduct are just as evident in the popular translations by Rajagopalachari and RK Narayan."
ArjunShakti adds:
"That reminds of the time lord bagri had funded a series of talks on Hinduism at SOAS hosted by william dalrymple with Wendy Doniger as the star guest.It was even advertised on the National Hindu Students forums website."
December 15
bluecupid wrote:
I'm the person who wrote that email to Rajiv. Since that time I completed watching more of his videos and came to understand that what he thus far described as "U-turn" does not really apply to me in that I have not turned at all away from the Dharmic lineage I am a part of. Moreover, those he sites as having done "u-turns" have not lived extensively in India and their contact with India was/is extremely limited and confined only to theory. If I am correct, their "u-turns" are in connection with theories/philosophies/religions.
My situation is different. I found myself living in India and practicing my religion amongst indigenous practicioners who brought their Indian (often village) cultural conditionings (samskaras) with them into the religion, mixed them, and passed off their cultural conditionings as part of the religion, and in turn expected foreign (non-Indian) practicioners to adopt those cultural conditionings right alongside practicing the sadhana.
No thankyou!
.... Of course when ex-patting to any country there is a certain level of cultural assimilation that is required, and most non-Indians who ex-pat to India for religious reasons go above and beyond that level in their desperate attempts to
fit in and be accepted. But there is a point at which "enough is enough" - that point for me is when the surrounding cultural ethos is at odds with my own internally developed sense of ethics, morality, fairness and commonsense.
Rajiv's response:
... In my UTurn Theory book (forthcoming), I distinguish among 3 types of guru movements depending on how much demand they place on their western followers. ISKCON is an example that integrates culture/lifestyle with dharma very deeply. Other movements separate culture from dharma, but still preserve the unity of dharma and you cannot take bits and pieces here and there. Then there is the third variety I call the buffet or flea market, where you learn some breathing
technique from one place, and another nice story some place else, and try to mix your own ad hoc cocktail including history-centrism of Judeo-Christianity.
My guess would be that the lady named bluecupid went into the first type of group, and found it too stuffy, so she left it.
I wonder if she is now practicing the second or third kind. If she is conscious and secure as a practitioner of dharma, then it would be difficult to mix that with original sin, only one life to live, one incarnation of God as his son, sacrifice and redemption - at least in the version that is standard in the
Church. In this case, she has not uturned from dharma.
On the other hand, if she has gone into the third variety, reintegrating a few things she learned from dharma back into her Judeo-Christian identity, then I would call it a uturn.
bluecupid follows up:
"....In short - I reject the idea that in order to practice "dharma" I have to live like a medieval Indian bahu. I am not Indian, I am not living during the medieval era, and I sure as heck ain't nobody's bahu!
I've heard complaints that old colonialist literature referred to Indians as "children". Well, it's now almost 2012 and it seems Indians themselves are more than happy to keep each other living as children with no help from colonialists.
If I have to give up many of my cultural conditionings in order to practice dharma properly, then Indians do too."
Rajiv's response:
"... We got that point in your first post loud and clear. There are clearly some deep scars from the horrific experience you
had in UP, and this is often a cause for rejection. But you seem to have extrapolated this into a hate for Indians. Were you someone's "bahu" in India? Did they ill-treat you?"
Venkata.. comments:
"... There is a huge reservoir of mind and intellect available in Hindu brahmacharis and sannyasis who have high educational background. They are currently largely engaged only in reinforcing their learning of the Shastras or in teaching them. It is from this reservoir that some individuals should be
encouraged and persuaded to undertake rigorous academic studies in comparative religion, philosophy, metaphysics and the like. ..."
bluecupid's response to Venkata..:
"Most Indian brahmacharies and sannyasis are mired in an old world mindset. They may know how to rattle off Upanishadic slokas by rote memorization, which by the way doesn't take any intellectual nuance or analystical skills, but they are clueless as to the issues in the wider world around them. Their approach to everything is from their old world....
You can learn the siddhant of their particular school of thought from them, but not much else. Its a narrow, rigid world. ...
The narrow and rigid world inhabited by these brahmacharies and sannyasis prevents them from truly experiencing the wider world and getting a "pulse" on the people.
Just see - the natural ally to Hindus in the West are the Yoga and New Age circles. How many Indians do you see in Western yoga classes or at New Age centers or a Tantra workshop? Nada. Well, everyone once in a while one or 2,
if the guest speaker is an Indian.
Closed. Rigid. Domesticated."
Kundan responds:
Kundan: I
understand that you are not addressing the issues from the Judeo-Christian perspective
and therefore we will focus on the cultural aspects only, though I must add
that it is increasingly difficult to separate culture from religio-spiritual
roots. It is as difficult to separate the Indian culture and traditions from
its Vedantic-Buddhist roots as it to separate the western culture from its
Judeo-Christian roots. As a multi-pronged approach to analyzing the situation
here, I feel that as we put the culture of UP to scrutiny over here, we also
put your framework of analysis to some critical analysis. No one is free from
his/her culture over here. If the local Bhaktas are not, even you are not. Having
said the above let me take up your other points.
Kundan: I see scathing judgments on your part on the culture of UP which you qualify in terms of silly and backward. As a professor of cultural psychology, this is where I see that your critical analysis of your own framework and your paradigm has not happened. When your cultural paradigm comes in operation, it does as a mainstream one, modern one and most civilized one against which everything else needs to be evaluated. I understand that you went to India looking for spirituality but how is your paradigm different from the colonial ones of the British—you are speaking in the same tongue as them? The customs are silly and UP culture is backward....
Kundan: I see scathing judgments on your part on the culture of UP which you qualify in terms of silly and backward. As a professor of cultural psychology, this is where I see that your critical analysis of your own framework and your paradigm has not happened. When your cultural paradigm comes in operation, it does as a mainstream one, modern one and most civilized one against which everything else needs to be evaluated. I understand that you went to India looking for spirituality but how is your paradigm different from the colonial ones of the British—you are speaking in the same tongue as them? The customs are silly and UP culture is backward....
India
has a cosmology that is distinct from that of the west. I am not talking about
the spiritual texts of the tradition that you may have studied but did you
spend time in understanding the cosmology of India.
Did you spend time understanding the history of India?
Did you spend time in understanding the colonial impact on India
that happened for about 1000 years? In this short post of yours, it does not
seem so—because the post, in my opinion, is vitriolic. Understanding does not
lead to vitriol but compassion and lack of judgment.
Kundan: I do not
think that you understand the Indian family system—you do not understand the underlying
cosmology of Indian family system, for you have judged but you have not
understood. The Indian family system is based on the cultural value of
interconnectedness, both of which are extensively explained in Vedantic
principles and Buddhist principles. The Buddhists call this as the principle of
“Pratitya samutpada” or “dependent co-origination.” Because things are
interconnected and no entity exists in itself or in isolation, the Indian
family system does not operate on the principle of “rights.” It operates on the
principle of “duties” which we also call as dharma. Since things are
interconnected, traditionally we did not have nuclear families but extended
families. ...
It will be the greatest mistake of an individual to
understand traditional family system from the perspective of “rights.” The
Indian family system operates on the principle of “duties” and “responsibilities”—incidentally
both the terms in the western world have negative connotations. It is in the
proper performance of everyone’s duties or dharma that everyone else’s rights
get accounted for and taken care of. The problems that we see in India
today is because India
has lost touch with its cosmological roots and colonization has a large and
important role to play in such a situation. Because Indian traditions are not
taught in universities, the westernized Indians are as far away as possible
from their roots and rural Indians do not largely understand why they practice
what they practice.
Living in an extended family which is based on the principle
of respect for elders and a sacrificing love for younger ones is not living in
a medieval era. It is practicing a different system of family from the one
practiced in the west. Your linearity of time and social change cannot and should
not become the standard of the evolution or change of my society (this is
colonial and necessarily and essentially violent).
I do not say that everything is hunky dory as far
as women
in UP are concerned but a western brand of feminism cannot and should
not be
the scale on which UP’s society needs to be evaluated whether it is
medieval or
ancient. Western feminism and individualism go hand in hand. You not
only have
a different cosmology but also had a ruthless and egocentric patriarchy,
against which western feminism
rebelled and rightly so. But does India
need a western brand of feminism is a question which we Indians need to
ask and
reflect upon? And as we reflect of the above question, we first need to
take
into account that Indian women have enjoyed great privileges and great
status
in the society in the past. Yes, things changed for the worse for them
in
troubled and colonial times but when we discuss their position in the
society
today, it needs to be in consonance with our dharmic and essential
values. By
aping the west, we will not go far. As Krishna in the
Gita says about individual’s dharma that practicing one’s own swadharma
is much
better that the dharma of others even if it is considered inferior to
that of
someone else, Indian feminism needs to be in consonance with the dharma
or the
essential nature of India
and not of the west, which has its own nature and cosmology and rightful
place in the scheme of civilizations. You have taken your western brand
of feminism and evaluated
the Indian women, and as I said it is essentially colonial and deeply
problematic.
In line of the above, you would also want to
critically
examine the following: “Face it. When you live in India you live in
several
centuries at once.” If one critically examines your sentence in the
above, one
needs to ask: whose centuries are we talking about? The one that have
been
defined by the west? When we talk about ancient, medieval, and modern,
whose
history of progress are we talking about? The answer is that of the
west! It is again colonial and essentially violent to superimpose
on Indian history the history of western progress. For if we really look
at the
situation closely, we had our golden era when the west was encountering
dark
ages.
Westerns are in for a shock in India
not because Gurus have projected India
as such but because of their own romantic projections. They want to find in India
what they find lacking in the west. They conveniently forget what they are
looking for in India
has been plundered, ransacked, and decimated by their forefathers. Instead of
blaming their own ancestry for the state of affairs there, they find it
convenient to blame the victims. As a feminist you must be familiar with this
discourse: blaming the rape victims for the rape that has occurred on them. Many
of the present day westerners looking for peace and salvation in India
end up doing exactly what their forefathers have done: violently hitting at the
culture as they seek the spiritual wealth.
Spiritual progress happens through self-inquiry. In this
short post of yours, I find your gaze projected outwards and not inwards. I
truly hope that you will not get defensive in this dialogue and give a serious
thought to the many things said above.
Kundan: You are again bringing your cultural standards in the above. The mainstream American culture is based on individuality and independence. The Indian culture is based on interconnectedness and relatedness. In order for Indians to be adults, we do not need to leave home by the time we are 18. We do not need to separate from everybody else to become adults. Indians become adults by practicing their dharma towards their grandparents, parents, elders, uncles and aunts, siblings, children, nieces, and nephews. There is no need to be judgmental here, for the Indians also can bring their cultural standards and not have very nice things to say—but that does not take things far in terms of peace, harmony, and mutual respect. Instead of having one western scale of human development, we can have many legitimate human development scales...
Kundan: You are again bringing your cultural standards in the above. The mainstream American culture is based on individuality and independence. The Indian culture is based on interconnectedness and relatedness. In order for Indians to be adults, we do not need to leave home by the time we are 18. We do not need to separate from everybody else to become adults. Indians become adults by practicing their dharma towards their grandparents, parents, elders, uncles and aunts, siblings, children, nieces, and nephews. There is no need to be judgmental here, for the Indians also can bring their cultural standards and not have very nice things to say—but that does not take things far in terms of peace, harmony, and mutual respect. Instead of having one western scale of human development, we can have many legitimate human development scales...
...In order to practice the dharma, a
better way is to understand the Indian ways from within rather than expect the Indians
to relinquish their cultural ways. Many of us Indians who are living in the
west, who also have a dharmic practice, have spent a long time to understand
the west from within and in doing so we have enlarged our self and our identity.
We have made our being supple and flexible just as the One Self is supple and
flexible to have become the many in the world. Many of us Indians are able to
understand the western ways and Indian ways equally well but let me tell you
that we have also burned the midnight
oil, by the grace of the divine, to have come to such a state. Also, the
process required excruciating self introspection. From a spiritual standpoint,
let me also add that ego hates it to go within and look deeply inside. It more
often than not tries to find fault outside.
.... Your expectations from the sanyasins and brahmacharis are interesting to say
the least. As I have pointed out in the above passages, it is quite clear that
you have not done the work to understand the cosmological underpinnings of traditional
Indian culture but you expect the sanyasins and brahmacharis (who are lodged in
their own world and have not even come out from there) to know all the nuances
of the global and post-modern world. May I ask you what gives you this sense of
entitlement? On a separate but related note, postmodern is most recent for the
west. But all the central tenets of postmodernism has been most beautifully
discussed in India for about thousand years in the philosophy of the various
schools of Mahayana Buddhism, beginning with the one founded by Nagarjuna. The
translation of Buddhist scriptures in the west in the enlightenment era has had
a lot to do with your postmodern movement.
Kundan: I agree
with the above. They need to do a lot of work but also do the people from the
west if they want to go there not as colonial plunderers looking for spiritual
gold but as people who are genuinely interested in creating bridges and a
better world. A better world is not built by imposing one’s standards on others
but by recognizing differences and understanding those differences from within.
The erstwhile colonized nations already know from their experience that the
former paradigm does not work. Having
said the above, I am really looking forward to reading Rajiv ji’s book, “Being
Different” for it feels to me that these are some of the issue that he is
discussing in this book.
... The allies, in my understanding, need to do a lot of work, particularly when they have such hatred and judgment as mentioned in the closing remarks."
... The allies, in my understanding, need to do a lot of work, particularly when they have such hatred and judgment as mentioned in the closing remarks."
Ganesh comments:
"For me Bluecupid108 seems to fit Sri Rajiv Malhotra's description of someone who is trying to find some sort of uniformity in the chaos that Indians are absolutely comfortable living in. Again this chaos, as Sri Malhotra said is within the person who is trying to understand a particular culture of India, in this case that of UP. As Malhotra said, a person knows what an open source is but to be in one and gel in it is an all together another ball game. Welcome to the free world called Indian cosmos where all your karma karya no matter which path you (gnana, bhakti, dhyana etc.) eventually forces you to self-introspect on the issues your ego keeps throwing within you from time to time.
Rajiv's response:
Rajiv's response:
This is a very astute observation.
Bluecupid makes some important and valid points. But I feel she fits my description in chapter 4 of the book, titled "Order and Chaos". The fear of chaos runs deep in the western psyche. The chapter quotes surveys by American scholars on what Americans feel about India. The "land of chaos", "teeming masses", "anthills", "foul smells", etc. - these are some of the common ideas and anxieties that are expressed.
The chapter then reverses the gaze to locate this anxiety in the westerner's biblical unconscious (even those who claim to have left it behind) as well as the Aristotelian Law of Excluded Middle.
My talk at YPO Chennai (available at the web site under "videos" explains this point in simple terms. "
Bluecupid makes some important and valid points. But I feel she fits my description in chapter 4 of the book, titled "Order and Chaos". The fear of chaos runs deep in the western psyche. The chapter quotes surveys by American scholars on what Americans feel about India. The "land of chaos", "teeming masses", "anthills", "foul smells", etc. - these are some of the common ideas and anxieties that are expressed.
The chapter then reverses the gaze to locate this anxiety in the westerner's biblical unconscious (even those who claim to have left it behind) as well as the Aristotelian Law of Excluded Middle.
My talk at YPO Chennai (available at the web site under "videos" explains this point in simple terms. "
sb asks:
"a. Is the characterization of Indian society as "pre-feminist" totally correct (as if there are no other dimensions) ?
b. Why do we have to swallow as gospel truth that Indian culture, in it's ideal development, will have to travel the curve from "pre-feminist" to "post-modern" in the western sense of the terms, as if there are no alternative models.
If Judeo-Christian paradigm forces one to look at Dharmic traditions in a certain way, so does this author's Western Feminist outlook. I believe the lines between Dharma and cultural samskaras aren't as bold and defining as she says.
In many cases, they are intertwined, the latter often as a support to the former. Her hard distinguishing between them helps her to do the "pick-and-choose" that other U-turners do with regard to more core Dharma issues."
Rajiv's response:
b. Why do we have to swallow as gospel truth that Indian culture, in it's ideal development, will have to travel the curve from "pre-feminist" to "post-modern" in the western sense of the terms, as if there are no alternative models.
If Judeo-Christian paradigm forces one to look at Dharmic traditions in a certain way, so does this author's Western Feminist outlook. I believe the lines between Dharma and cultural samskaras aren't as bold and defining as she says.
In many cases, they are intertwined, the latter often as a support to the former. Her hard distinguishing between them helps her to do the "pick-and-choose" that other U-turners do with regard to more core Dharma issues."
Rajiv's response:
I agree with the above point - this is what I call Western
Universalism, and this is what the book debunks."
Universalism, and this is what the book debunks."
December 15
December 15
December 15
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