SV: [Y-Indology] India loving Indologists

[Guest guest]

Lars

 

I have not settled in Scotland. I 'work' in Scotland because I was

given a 'job' here. Jobs are more plentiful in Scotland compared to

India as the wealth of India was looted by Europeans for centuries

and brought here. I am just taking a little of it back home, and I am

working for it, unlike the colonialists.

 

As for my seeing the westerners as monkeys or guinea-pigs, I am not

the person to ask, as I study Physics, not westerners. But my friends

who work in biology dont love their guineapigs, at least they haven't

told me so.

 

I would have liked to talk more about the point of discussion instead

of defending myself against a personal comment

 

Regards

 

Satish

 

 

> So, there are many interesting approaches to research problems. But

in your

> interpretation of other people's interests, did you ever consider

the

> psychological function of "projection"? Is this how you see

Westernerns, as

> a bunch of monkeys or gunea-pigs, and have you settled in Scotland

to feed

> off the animals?

>

[Guest guest]

As I see it, there are at least four different planes on which there is serious

disagreemen/antagonism between (one group of) <Western Indologists> and one

group of <Hindu Indologists>.

 

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

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

solved to the satisfaction of all those who are committed to the scientific

methodology only by the gathering and rational interpretation of more and more

archeological data, linguistic correlations, cultural similarities, etc. It

appears that 19th centry theories have been discarded by the vast majority, and

a new paradigm seems to be still in the making for some, has been definitely

made for many others.

 

(b) Construction/discovery of colonial Indian history: Three alien groups have

played havoc, and also contributed matters of significance to India: Islamic

invaders, and Christian missionaries, the British. The question is how much of

their impacts was positive, and how much of it was negative? The older view was

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

that it was just the opposite. I doubt if a consensus will ever be reached on

this, except perhaps among the members of the groups involved, although here

there are quite a few Western scholars agree (indeed who have contributed

solidly) to the general assessment that the negatives far outweighed the

positive. It is especially here that Euro-centric views need to be examined and

appropriately corrected.

 

© Matters of social concern. LM Fosse said: <Another matter is that many

Westerners, probably including Indologists, are concerned with the idea of

social justice, and in this respect are critical of Hinduism, or perhaps

rather the upper castes' version of Hinduism upper caste politics.> This is

where the antagonism becomes most severe. No society likes to be lectured to on

its faults and inadequacies by outsiders. There are (as there always have been)

many enlightened Hindu thinkers, very aware of social injustices in their

society. They have condemned these, and worked hard towards eliminating them.

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.

 

(d) Finally there are questions related to belief-systems and sacred books.

This is a very touchy topic in any religious context. Scholars (Eastern or

Western, Southern or Northern) who interpret Holy Books of any tradition with

cold-blooded analytical erudition are sure to be criticized and condemned (in

some cases exterminated) by the more orthodox members of a group. In this

context the distinction between Exo and Endo is extremely important.

 

My own suspicion/prediction is that all this acrimony will end only when modern

India regains her economic, technological, and military strength. This will

most likely happen within the next few decades. It will happen, thanks to the

labors and expertise of Indians who acquire modern (often called Western)

scientific, mathematical, and technical knowledge and apply them.

Specialists/interpreters of vedANGa jyotiSa, the five siddhAntas, or

nyAya-vaiSeSika and the like are contributing significantly to our

understanding of ancient Hindu wisdom and insights, but in so far as they

embrace the post-modernist thesis that (modern) science is a construct of the

imperialistic racist West, while trying to show that quantum mechanics and

nuclear physics are implicit in ancient Hindu writings, their reflections may

not contribute much to India's becoming a world power.

 

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.

 

V. V. Raman

May 4, 2001