[INDOLOGY @ ] Is 'firangi/ferangi' a racist term?

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, "Rajiv Malhotra" <rajiv.malhotra@a...> wrote:

> SOMEONE WROTE: "Ferangi comes from the word for Franks, the Crusaders whom

> Firangi is an adjective. It describes a kind of 'meme-plex' (as postulated

> by Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore), or what the desi hermeneutics

might

> call a bundle of sanskaras playing out as the attitude of the privileged

> foreign. Gandhi returned to India a firangi, but after his discover India

> journey became a desi, whereas Nehru never really made that

transformation.

> On the other hand, I personally know many white desis. There are more

brown

> skin firangis in India that white ones, and also several ethnic Indian

> firangis in western academics and English language media.

 

The fact that you see whites becoming desi shows it is with whites that

the term firangi has racial connotations.

 

If you see a Chinese ot a Japanese in India would they be called firangi? I

doubt. Most probably they will be called Cheen, even if they are in western

business suit as they many times are. If somebody learns judo , will he be

called going 'firangi'?

 

How about Africans in India? Would they be called firagis? Most probably,

the population calls them 'kaliya'.

 

My conclusion is that firanagi is an ethnicon for europeans/ whites

generally. By going 'firangi' as , applied to Indians, probably people mean

they have become westernized in their outlook or mores.

 

V.C.Vijayaraghavan

[Guest guest]

Given the defensive reactions to a popular term such as firangi, it is clear

that the 'informants' being studied need to popularize their vernacular.

This process is a sort of dis-intermediation in which some scholars might

feel threatened as their value-added is questioned. But it is inevitable for

many reasons, including the new technology that is breaking down one-way

hierarchical channels of idea flow. Symmetrical dialog will replace the

scholar-informant asymmetry that started as part of the colonial agenda. A

learning curve is inevitable, and there is nothing wrong with that.

 

Someone wrote: "Said was accepted and respected because he played by the

fundamental rules of academic studies." But the rules of these controlled

games are themselves on the table for critique. For instance, consider the

language that the 'Other' gets mapped into, and the violence that this

forced mapping does in many instances. A few agenda makers appoint the

gatekeepers of academic studies. By the way, far better than Said and more

relevant to Indology is the work by Ronald Inden, especially his book

'Imaging India'.

 

Regarding the remark that today such criticism by the 'Other' is not

demonized, I disagree. Criticism of this kind has been allowed in a

controlled environment and not unfettered or without risk of being

blackballed. You can get the AAR 2000 tapes on a session called 'Coming out

as a Hindu or Buddhist' and hear testimonies by 7 courageous scholars. Too

often, there is name calling with impunity - neo-BJP, Hindutva, fascist,

nationalist, radical, fundamentalist, to name a few. It seems that all

opponents get homogenized as a straw man constructed for bashing, that the

opponent is not given a choice to self-identify, and that there are too few

categories available into which the opponent gets forced to fit. This is

practiced by each side reacting to the other and is a sad state of affairs

today. Bi-polar choices seldom do justice to the richness of the issues.

 

Then there is demonizing of the Other's ideas, images, and practices -

another complex story.

 

RM