[Another excellent article on Wendy Doniger,
the negative type of Western research she represents, the colonial hangover
Indian intellectuals suffer from apart from the economic interests behind this
exercise of deconstructing Indian culture. – Bireshwar Choudhury]
INDIA FACTS
THE FINAL WORD / Posted by Anirban Ganguly / 23 February, 2014
Those who are at the forefront of
expressing their disgust and anguish at the act of withdrawing Wendy
Doniger’s snigger of a book on the Hindus are a very distinct and
peculiar type. They are a type which, because they have been the
beneficiaries of the munificence of the “outsiders” can hardly ever come round
to accept that the “insiders” may one day speak and talk back at “outsiders”
who had hitherto been the sole arbiter and definer of their image. It
was, most certainly, one of these types who must have peer-reviewed Doniger’s
stuff on behalf of her publishers – surprisingly that act and
actor has so far managed to avoid being discovered and discussed. This
type has modeled itself “on its departed counterpart” and has always viewed
“any emphasis on the ‘glories of ancient India’ as an act of Hindu
Fundamentalism.”[1]
Veteran archaeologist and historian, Professor D.K.
Chakrabarti of the University of Cambridge in his masterly
study of colonial Indology, quite succinctly describes such a type which began
to thrive post-independence as the “ebb of nationalism died down.” The Indian
historian, notes Chakrabarti, “became increasingly concerned with the large
number of grants, scholarships, fellowships and even occasional jobs
to be won in the Western universities, there was a scramble for new
respectability to be gained by toeing the Western line of thinking about
India and Indian history.”[2]
In such an atmosphere and scramble, there could thus
be no question of working to loosen the “stranglehold of Western Indology” nor
of scrutinizing its implications for India. The only sure
and certain way to academic and material success was by
adopting this attitude of non-challenge and non-questioning. So
dictatorial and closed has been this type, that whenever they perceived some
rumbling against the “premises of Western indology”, rumblings
which arose from people who were insiders but with “no control of major
national historical organizations”, they summarily dismissed these as
“fundamentalists of some kind, mere dhotiwalas of no intellectual
consequence.”[3]
The Natives
strike back
This same sneer was evident when one
saw these types talk about the Shiksha Bachao Andolan and its
democratic protests against the portrayal of Hindus done by an outsider to the
tradition. Couched in sophisticated words and expressions made
purportedly in favour of the freedom of expression and of
interpretation was a venomous feeling which brooks no opposition, resistance or
talking back to the external interpretation of India. One of the
grandsons of the Mahatma, an otherwise erudite and reticent gentleman scholar and former bureaucrat, has recently expressed such an indignation and sneer at the attitude of talking
back, of questioning and expressing dissent.
A sense of racial superiority towards Indians and
their tradition has almost always been the hallmark of Western Indologists or
Western interpreters of Indian civilization. R.C.Majumdar pointed at this tendency saying that Europeans “would
hardly be in a position to write the history of India, so long as they do not
cast aside the assumptions of racial superiority and cease to
regard Indians as an inferior race.”[4]
This sense of superiority indigenised after the colonial masters
departed and manifested itself through perpetually negative portrayals of
Hindus and their traditions. Such an indigenised negative portrayal was
also in line with the continuing negativities on India in the Western academia
and together it became a formidable generator of “alternate” histories of
India. These alternate readings, in course of time, became the
mainstream by sidelining the actual alternate readings of Hindus, their
manners and their customs.
In his latest study on the philosophical unity of
Hinduism, Rajiv Malhotra, for instance, describes this tendency, in
the American – Western context, of controlling and of distorting the reading
and description of India. He terms this as a “form of cultural and
civilisational imperialism which takes the spiritual traditions of a people and
distorts and dilutes them so as to appeal to the imperial palate.”[5] The
attempt has always been to portray the “other” traditions as either overtly
otherworldly or irrational, weird, perpetuating voodoo-like cults and systems
that required interpreting, debunking or rationalizing – the manifestations of
the sense of the “mission civilisatrice.” Malhotra points out how:
The Indian source gets depicted in one of the two
extreme ways: on the one hand, it is abusive of women, hopelessly backward,
ridden with weird notions of caste, dowry, sati etc., and ruled by some very
strange-looking half animal gods; on the other, it is full of romantic
otherworldly ‘mystical wisdom’ that has great potential but lacks
‘rationality’, which the West must supply.[6]
In addition to this, the entire exercise of evolving a
false alternate reading of India has a deeper motive for dominance which works
out through a strengthening of the “control” of depiction, as Malhotra
argues, “…the act of bolstering one’s own coherence, while aggressively
undermining the coherence of others, is…central to the fight for world
dominance.”[7]
Reading Indian
History
In a discussion on Indian history and
historians, Ram Swarup has drawn a parallel between these
Indian intellectual baggage-carriers of the West and the “Hindu munshis” historians
of the Mughal court who ingratiatingly added colour to the deeds of their
patrons while whitewashing or side-stepping their gory acts. Describing this
section, Ram Swarup cites H.M. Elliot’s preface to the
latter’s “The History of India, as told by its Own Historians”:
These deficiencies are more to be lamented, where, as
sometimes happens, a Hindu is the author. From one of that nation we might have
expected to have learnt what were the feelings, hopes, faiths, fears, and
yearnings, of his subject race; but, unfortunately, he rarely writes unless
according to order or dictation, and every phrase is studiously and servilely
turned to flatter the vanity of an imperious Muhammadan patron. There is
nothing to betray his religion or his nation, except, perhaps, a certain stiffness
and affectation of style, which show how ill the foreign garb befits him. With
him, a Hindú is “an infidel,” and a Muhammadan “one of the true faith,’ and of
the holy saints of the calendar, he writes with all the fervour of a bigot.
With him, when Hindús are killed, “their souls are despatched to hell,” and
when a Muhammadan suffers the same fate, “he drinks the cup of martyrdom.” He
is so far wedded to the set phrases and inflated language of his conquerors,
that he speaks of “the light of Islám shedding its refulgence on the world,” of
“the blessed Muharram,” and of “the illustrious Book.” He usually opens with a
“Bismillah,” and the ordinary profession of faith in the unity of the Godhead,
followed by laudations of the holy prophet, his disciples and descendants, and
indulges in all the most devout and orthodox attestations of Muhammadans. One
of the Hindú authors here noticed, speaks of standing in his old age, “at the
head of his bier and on the brink of his grave,” though he must have been fully
aware that, before long, his remains would be burnt, and his ashes cast into
the Ganges.[8]
But what struck Elliot even more, as Ram
Swarup narrates, was this continuing denial even “after the tyrant
was no more and the falsification of history through terror was no longer
necessary”.[9] Elliot
found that “there is not one of this slavish crew who treats the history of
his native country subjectively, or presents us with the thoughts, emotions,
and raptures which a long oppressed race might be supposed to give vent to,
when freed from the tyranny of its former masters, and allowed to express
itself in the natural language of the heart, without constraint and without
adulation.”[10] In
the present day the trend continues with a blending of these types showing a
“remarkable continuity.” “This tribe of Hindu munshis or
“slavish crew” of Elliot” writes Ram Swarup:
Have a long life and show a remarkable continuity.
Instead of diminishing, their number has multiplied with time. Today, they
dominate the universities, the media and the country’s political thinking. They
were reinforced by another set of historians – those who carry the British
tradition. One very important thing in common with them is that they continue
to look at India through the eyes of Muslims and British rulers even long after
their rule has ceased.[11]
Any historian or scholar, who, wading against the tide
had as much as the temerity to question the established reading was sidelined,
labeled as an obscurantist and was academically boycotted. The fate of
R.C.Majumdar and his seminal three volume study of the freedom movement in
India continue to remain a glaring example of this academic apartheid. Just
because Majumdar refused to toe the official Congress line of glorifying
certain leaders’ contribution to the movement while ignoring others, just
because he refused to examine the Indian freedom struggle through the lenses of
dialectical-materialism, his work was ignored and suppressed. The alternate
reading was not allowed to emerge – this trend continues to this day when
academic attempts to talk back are silenced through a silent boycott at various
levels – of publishing, of reviews, of promotion and dissemination.
Those who have expressed a problem with this talking
back by the “insiders” deliberately choose to suppress some other realities. The
fact that Doniger refused to engage with Indian academics over her “Hindus” has
not been discussed. Is it a fact that despite being present at the
annual conference of Association of Asian Studies (AAS) held in 2011 at Hawaii,
Doniger “declined an advanced written invitation from Dr. Madan Lal Goel of
the University of West Florida to participate in a Roundtable Panel on her
book, citing prior commitments and busy schedule.” Is it also a fact that
when Delhi University Associate Professor and a scholar of Indian
civilisation, Dr. Bharat Gupt had an opportunity to speak with
Doniger during a reception hosted by the American Institute of Indian Studies
(AIIS). She again declined his invitation to attend the Panel, with the comment
“I have moved beyond The Hindus.”[12] If Doniger and
her ilk refuse to engage in debate with some, among the “others” who have
genuinely asked for a dialogue, isn’t it a problem with her and her
intellectual progeny – a problem which is perhaps the manifestation of a deep
rooted uncertainty with one’s own scholarship and one’s ability to defend one’s
intellectual positions and interpretations?
Past Indian
Masters show the way
How many, for example, among those who have found the
book withdrawal an atrocious way to handle the matter have heard or even read
the masterly rejoinder, “Interpreting Ramakrishna: Kali’s Child Revisited”
given by Swami Tyagananda and Pravrajika Vajraparana to Jeffrey
Kripal’s Kali’s Child? It is because the other master exposé of
Doniger’s scholarship, “Invading the Sacred” gave space to this work in
its discussion that its contribution remains recorded. The attitude has always
been to see the Indian scholar as the “native” devoid of skillful scholarship
and capacities for interpretation and fit to remain a silent consenting
conveyor of the “outsiders” positions on India. Those who accept this role of
conveyorship are the ones who are feted and felicitated!
The other reality that is ignored by this type is the
fact that most of our opinion leaders in the past, leaders in the realm of
thought, doughtily joined issues with all negative portrayals of India. Swami
Vivekananda constantly debated and argued in order to expose the
missionary reading and position on India. It is a wide and fascinating study to
see how Vivekananda, ceaselessly exposed the missionaries, their designs and
their falsehoods when it came to interpreting Indian traditions and systems. The
Swami did not desist from publicly taking them on and from ridiculing them for
their ignorance wherever required. Yet even then, because he attacked
and exposed the missionary depiction of India, Vivekananda was
castigated as being anti-Christian. His accusers at home and abroad
refused to accept that a native monk could talk and make theological points on
the same level and often at a level higher than the Westerner. It is
interesting to note Vivekananda’s own words:
It is not true that I am against any religion. It is
equally untrue that I am hostile to the Christian missionaries in India. But I
protest against certain of their methods of raising money in America. What is
meant by those pictures in the school – books for children where the Hindu
mother is painted as throwing her children to the crocodiles in the Ganga? The
mother is black, but the baby is painted white, to arouse more sympathy and get
more money. What is meant by those pictures which paint a man burning his wife
at a stake with his own hands, so that she may become a ghost and torment the
husband’s enemy? What is meant by the pictures of huge cars crushing over human
beings? The other day a book was published for children in this country, where
one of these gentlemen tells a narrative of his visit to Calcutta. He says he
saw a car running over fanatics in the streets of Calcutta. I have heard one of
these gentlemen preach in Memphis that in every village of India there is a
pond full of the bones of little babies. What have the Hindus done to these
disciples of Christ that every Christian child is taught to call the Hindus
“vile”, and “wretches”, and the most horrible devils on earth? Part of the
Sunday School education for children here consists in teaching them to hate
everybody who is not a Christian, and the Hindus especially, so that, from
their very childhood they may subscribe their pennies to the missions. If not
for truth’s sake, for the sake of the morality of their own children, the
Christian missionaries ought not to allow such things going on…[13]
Sri Aurobindo,
taking on that half-baked critic of Indian culture William Archer (1856-1924)
who had depicted and interpreted Hindus and Hinduism in much the same manner
as Doniger and her academic progenies have done today, wrote
an entire defence of Indian culture in which he severely attacked Archer’s
depiction. Terming Archer’s book on India as “journalistic pugilism’ Sri
Aurobindo pointed out that what Archer had done was to:
…collect together in his mind all the unfavourable
comments he had read about India, eke them out with casual impressions of his
own and advance this unwholesome and unsubstantial compound as his original
production, although his one genuine and native contribution is the cheery
cocksureness of his secondhand opinions. The book is a journalistic fake, not
an honest critical production.”[14]
Such has always been the broad contours of motivated
Western scholarship on India and
the designs and methods of their spokespersons here. Our nationalist
stalwarts, seeing through such works, did not back-out from an aggressive
engagement with the critics of Hinduism. Amidst their pressing and
manifold activities and struggles they rarely failed to rise up to defend Hinduism
in a vigorously aggressive manner, especially against irrational and motivated
Western scholarship.
It is true, as some have averred on behalf of Doniger,
that there is a struggle ahead. But this struggle is of the Hindus
speaking up for themselves and not the other way. This is the actual
struggle because the odds arrayed against such a speaking-up are formidable.
The method therefore must be a different one, not one based simply on an
attitude of passive defence but sustaining itself on a more active approach,
as Sri Aurobindo once put it “defence by itself in the
modern struggle can only end in defeat, and, if battle there must be, the only
sound strategy is a vigorous aggression based on a strong, living and mobile
defence; for by that aggressive force alone can the defence itself be effective.”[15]
It such a defence that needs to be evolved and created
– that is the real challenge and yet perhaps in that alone lies the only way to
triumph.
See more at:
[1]
D.K. Chakrabarti, Colonial Indology:
Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal,
1997, p.2.
[5] Rajiv
Malhotra, Indra’s Net: Defending Hinduism’s Philosophical Unity,
New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2014, p.267.
[8] H.M.Elliot,
(John Dowson ed.), History of India as told by Its Own Historians (The
Muhammadan Period), vol.1, London: Trubner & Co., 1867, pp.xxi-xxii also
cited in Ram Swarup, “Historians versus History” in Sita Ram Goel, ed., Hindu
Temples: What Happened to Them?, New Delhi: Voice of India, 1st rpt.,
2009, pp.282-283.
[12] Note by Professor Bharat Gupt,
“Questioning Wendy Doniger on Hinduism in Hawaii at Annual Conference of
Association of Asian Studies (AAS), March 31-April 3, 2011.”
[13] The
Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda,
vol.4, Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, (Mayavati Memorial Edition), pp.344-345.
[14] Sri
Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India & Other Essays on Indian
Culture, Puducherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1997, p.99.
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