India loving Indologists

[Guest guest]

Prof. Raman

 

Perhaps the vast

> majority of Indologists are truly India/Hindu-respecting and

> India/Hindu-loving: or else they wouldn't be devoting their lives to the

study.

 

Perhaps the vast majority of Indologists are as India loving as a

vast majority of bio-medical scientists are monkey- or guineapig-

loving.

 

Satish

Satish K. Tiwary

University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh, UK

[Guest guest]

Esteemed Prof. Raman,

 

I think you have left out a fifth category of disagreement affecting not a

few members of these groups (and persons other than Indologists, like

myself): the political. There are many of "us," democrats in general sense,

who are deeply uneasy about the political tone of these other disagreements,

and what that portends for India and the West. Whether we, all of us, will

come to eventual agreement depends more on this than anything else.

 

You wrote:

 

>>>

> (a) Construction/discovery of ancient Indian history. Leaving aside the

related

> political/cultural implications, this problem can be (and hopefully will

be)

> solved . . . .

>>>

 

But the "political/cultural implications" are the most important part of the

these disagreements. Certainly, they furnish most of the heat.

 

>>>

> (b) Construction/discovery of colonial Indian history: . . . The older

view was

> that the positive impacts far outweighed the negative. The emerging view

is

> that it was just the opposite. . . . It is especially here that

Euro-centric views

> need to be examined and appropriately corrected.

>>>

 

And equally, perhaps, especially here that "Hindu-centric" or

"India-centric" views need to be examined and appropriately corrected. It

is always far easier to see the defect in the other person's views than the

defect in one's own, but the latter is more insidious, because one is blind

to it. An -exchange- of views might be mutually productive. I see far too

little appreciation among the group you call <Hindu Indologists> (and

like-minded persons critical of the West) of the fact that a Hindu-centric

bias is predictable and must be guarded against, and far too little

willingness to accept criticism as well as to dish it out.

 

Prof. Malhotra proposes to enlighten Westerners on this list to the fact

that they have unconscious and unperceived "Eurocentric" biases. On his own

list, he and others, I hear, are assembling a "book" to explain the origins

of Indian poverty, which the proposed outline unmistakably lays at the door

of "colonial aggression" and, perhaps, "globalization." If there is any

appreciation of the indigenous roots of Indian poverty, it is obscure. A

friendly but cynical Westerner in California sitting on his back porch (in

local dialect, deck) could question the objectivity of the enquiry, and

hence its utility.

 

>>>

> © Matters of social concern. . . . No society likes to be lectured to on

> its faults and inadequacies by outsiders. . . . But they regard is as an

affront

> when outsiders write books on these, come to

> preach to them, or when a foreign government holds hearings and passes

judgment

> on India's human rights violations. It is adding insult to injury when

India is

> threatened with trade sanctions because of misbehavior as judged by an

> economically stronger country. In fact, social evolution is occurring

within

> India too, as it occurred and is occurring in the West, but the causative

> factors must come from within.

>>>

 

Indeed, the causative factors -must- come from within, and, yes, rapid

social evolution is occurring in India. It is the direction of that

evolution that is of political concern to democrats. One cannot just brush

aside as insulting interference in Indian affairs the West's political and

social objections to or concerns about human rights and political freedom.

These principles are universal, absolutely fundamental to economic, social

and political progress (which India wishes to acquire for itself), and no

one and no nation who/which values his/its freedom can/should withhold

comment when the rights of others are denied or threatened. To whom else

may one legitimately shift the responsibility for determining what is right

action, what is "misbehavior," absent democratic process in which every

person is equal? Every citizen has that responsibility, as does each

nation. Failure to use for the general welfare such ability/power as one

has can be a form of "misbehavior" itself. Did the West act more improperly

when it left Bosnia to stew in its own juice and the Serbs committed

atrocities and ethnic cleansing, or did it act more improperly when it

intervened militarily? India does not hesitate to lecture others (and to do

more than lecture, as their neighbors know) about -their- misbehavior. It

goes with the territory when you have power. There is no avoiding

responsibility. One must do the best one can, as one sees it. So must

nations. India may not like it when it is on the receiving end, but then

the "West" doesn't alway like what "India" has to say to it, either. But

both sides have something important to say.

 

>>>

> But I do think there will come a time when Eurocentrism (a vestige of

Western

> colonialism) will become a thing of the past, and the rich and fascinating

> field of Indology will be explored by scholars from all around the world

in a

> spirit of enlightened and mutually respecting intellectual camaraderie

rather

> than in the high-tension atmosphere in which it is being conducted today.

> >>

 

I share your hopes for a day when both Euro-centric and Hindu- or

India-centric bias are left behind. But India, as well as the West, still

has some growing to do.

 

David