Do we understand the "Other"?
One can come up with all sorts of 'grand theories', unfashionable as they may be in today's academia, in response to this question. So, for example, one can invoke the authority of the long-forgotten Hegel (poor Him!) and say that 'dialectalism' is of the very essence of human existence. That is, we define ourselves in opposition to the Other. In this sense, we almost need the Other for our own self-understanding. Robinson Crusoe, for example, on his remote island was a no-body until he met his Man Friday. Things can, and have, of course, take a more ominous turn than this rather benign example can suggest. For centuries the colonial powers of Europe defined themselves in opposition to the Orient that they 'constructed', pinned down onto a drawing board, sliced up into precise rectangles, and carved in accordance with their imperialistic designs. The process, by the way, has not come to an end even today, and perhaps, unless once accepts Hegel's word that this 'dialectalism' will come to a 'totalising' Conclusion within human history, this process will perhaps never end."Orientalism", that is, the conglomeration of 'European'/'Western' discourses through which the 'East' was reified as a malleable object that can be dissected in the manner that a dead frog is sliced up under a microscope has been going for a long time, and continues even today through the 'Western' association of the 'essence of India' with the Taj Mahal, the Himalayas, Swami Vivekananda, 'spiritualism', meditation, the Royal Bengal Tiger, yoga and so on.
What is equally surprising, however, is the fact that so many so-called 'modernised Asians' have decided to pay back the "Orientalists" the same compliment of reifying entire civilisations. It is repeated ad nauseam in texts stemming from various parts of Asia that the 'East' is 'spiritual' and that the 'West' is "inherently morally bankrupt" and "materialistic". This pattern of reverse type-casting can perhaps be called 'Occidentalism', in which the 'Orient' decides to freeze the 'West' into a set of fixed characteristics (in truth, associated only with a certain historical time-slice) that are believed to be the quintessence of 'Western civilisation.'Thus a process of 'dialectalism' is set up between two gigantic entities one called the 'West' and the other the 'East'. This can be truly called a 'ballet of bloodless categories' for what is thereby forgotten is that neither the 'West' nor the 'East' is a monolithic entity; both of them are, in fact, deeply fragmented from within, and both of them have, so to speak, their repressed intimate strangers, their back-yard unspoken voices. To begin with the case of the 'East', a standard stereotype is that 'Eastern' civilisations value the Society over the Individual. And indeed, there is more than a grain of truth in this observation; 'human rights' as pertraining to the individual never really existed in many classical 'Eastern' societies. And yet, as some Indologists and sociologists have pointed out, many of the crucial socio-religious changes in classical India were actually initiated by people who stood outside the traditional fourfold scheme of caste-and-station (varnasrama). Similarly, in China the social ethic of Confucianism struggled side by side with the 'anarchist' tendencies of the Taoists; indeed, it is said that one reason why classical Buddhism never set its feet firmly on Chinese soil was the implicit 'individualism' that goes with Buddhist thought. On the other hand, 'Western' societies for all their vaunted individualism have suffered chronically from bouts of collectivist thought, for instance under the Nazis, the Fascists and the Communists. One has to read through contemporary press reports to see the 'West' routinely appealing to the collectivity of its citizens against the perceived threat of the post-colonial 'East'. The metaphor of the 'barbarian at the Gates' is of ancient Roman military history, and is as much alive in the current world as it was during the time of Emperors Valerian and Decius, and all other Roman generals who struggled against the Vandals, the Franks, and the Ostrogoths. For all that the association of the 'West' with 'Individualism' is worth, most 'Westerners' would still rather regard themselves (pace 'post-modernity'!) as a part of the 'American/European' collectivity, and not as a 'solitary atom flitting about in a meaningless sea of anonymity'.
To say, therefore, that people quarrel because some are from the 'East' and others are from the 'West' is simply to indulge oneself in dangerous rhetoric. If this were to be taken as a literal truth, it would imply that no European has ever managed to understand anything of the classical religious-philosophical-political 'Eastern' texts, and also that 'Easterners' should give up once and for all their love of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Gibbon, Keats, Shelley, Gauss, Comte, Heisenberg and so on. Just two counter-examples to mess up this (allegedly) clear picture. Firstly, for all the accusations of 'Orientalism' that have been levelled at (some) European Indological scholars, I remain convinced that some of the most solid scholarship in the domains of Sanskrit literature has actually been produced by these (German/French/Dutch) scholars who spent their entire life-times toiling away in remote dusty libraries. Secondly, a student of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, once remarked that the greatest interpreter of her mentor's thought was actually an Indian philosopher, J. L. Mohanty. To be sure, these are two random examples, but such examples can be easily multiplied by anyone who has devoted some time and careful thought to the various dimensions of the Europe-India encounter over the last two hundred years. To paint an entire body of careful and steady scholarship with the black brush of 'Orientalism' is misguided and irresponsible (and this in spite of, I repeat, all the alleged vices of 'Orientalist' scholars).
In short, I have put forward some considerations to challenge the wide-spread assumption that two monolithics entities, one called the 'East' and the other called the 'West', are locked together in a mortal combat until the 'end of times'. It is ironical that some 'Western' people who believe in the above statement actually happen to be those who have made a quite patient study of 'Eastern' civilisations (otherwise, how would they have even known what it means to be 'Eastern', and how 'Eastern-ness' contrasts with 'Western-ness'?), and many 'Eastern' people who swear by it have actually been educated in 'secular' institutions with strong 'Western' influences (otherwise, where would they have picked up the vocabulary of 'modernity/post-modernity', made trite through repetition, that they are armed to the teeth with?). It is almost as if their own socio-cultural backgrounds were a living disproof of what they otherwise claim to profess!Let me conclude with one specific example to illustrate the above points. The RSS-BJP combine in Indian politics is fond of taunting (Indian) Marxists as the 'children of Karl Marx', and (Indian) secularists as the 'children of the European Jawaharlal Nehru'. Two replies in this context would perhaps be pertinent :(1) Perhaps so, but in that case members of the RSS-BJP combine are the 'children of John Mill'. John Mill, to refresh your memories, was the writer of a very influential history of India which was read by aspiring British candidates to the Indian Civil Services throughout the colonial era. Among the many 'Orientalist myths' that Mill propagated (and bequeathed to his intellectual descendants) through that book was this one : Hindus are intrinsically passive, Muslims are inherently aggressive, and their respective 'world-views' are so radically opposed that it is impossible for Hindus and Muslims to live together. Therefore, when members of the RSS-BJP combine repeat that Hindus are in danger within their own nation because of their 'submissive' nature, and are in the threat of being overpowered by the 'militaristic' Muslims, they are simply being excellent children of an imperialist called John Mill whose views they should have consigned by now to the safety of eternal oblivion. Instead of the oft-repeated claim that the 'secularised' Indians are holding onto their 'colonial heritage', it would seem that it is, in fact, members of the RSS-BJP combine who are still suffering from a debilitating case of 'colonial hang-over.'(2) Perhaps so, but 'so what'? Is it being implied that there is a logically necessary connection between these two statements : (i) 'A world-view/proposition/statement, ABC, has originated in the 'West'' and (ii) 'ABC must therefore be false'? Underlying much of the rhetoric of the RSS-BJP is the belief (which is usually not argued for) that the mere fact that a belief is 'Western' is necessary, sufficient and conclusive reason for rejecting it. That sounds strange to me, for I seriously doubt that an Australian woman would claim that she refuses accept the law of (universal!) gravitation merely because it was established by a (male!) Englishman in the 17th century, a Mongolian that he refuses to accept Einstein's theories merely because he was a German Jew, a Chinese that he would not obey Chairman Mao merely because Mao follows the teachings of a European called Marx, a Jamaican that she would not read Shakespeare's Macbeth merely because that play is set within a specific historical context, and so on and on.
The basic point, then, is this : what we are really interested in here is the validity of truth-claims that people make, and not, to put it bluntly, what their personal food-habits, favourite football club, or cultural idiosyncracies are like.If 'Marxism' and 'European secularism' cannot be applied to the Indian context without appropriate 'translation' (and this is what, incidentally, I myself believe), let us accept this and see to what extent such 'translations' are possible. To throw them to the dustbin of discarded views merely because Marx happened to be born in Europe and merely because Nehru was educated in Cambridge (and, for that matter, merely because 'Hinduism' originated in India) is to make nonsense of the importance and the necessity of the hard and painstaking labour of justifying claims that are conflicting and, often, mutually opposed to one another.In short, even in these two cases, 'Marxism' and 'European secularism' are not world-views which cannot be transplanted onto Indian soil. (Once again, of course, in the process one must pay due care to the specificities of the Indian socio-cultural-religious-economic contexts.) To say that they are intrinsically opposed to the 'essence of India' is already to have committed the fallacy of reifying entire civilisations, and to have accepted, on the authority of John Mill, that there is something so 'essentially' distinctive of 'India' that we must believe that 'India' is a static pristine entity whose (socio-cultural) boundaries are fixed, once and for all.
One can come up with all sorts of 'grand theories', unfashionable as they may be in today's academia, in response to this question. So, for example, one can invoke the authority of the long-forgotten Hegel (poor Him!) and say that 'dialectalism' is of the very essence of human existence. That is, we define ourselves in opposition to the Other. In this sense, we almost need the Other for our own self-understanding. Robinson Crusoe, for example, on his remote island was a no-body until he met his Man Friday. Things can, and have, of course, take a more ominous turn than this rather benign example can suggest. For centuries the colonial powers of Europe defined themselves in opposition to the Orient that they 'constructed', pinned down onto a drawing board, sliced up into precise rectangles, and carved in accordance with their imperialistic designs. The process, by the way, has not come to an end even today, and perhaps, unless once accepts Hegel's word that this 'dialectalism' will come to a 'totalising' Conclusion within human history, this process will perhaps never end."Orientalism", that is, the conglomeration of 'European'/'Western' discourses through which the 'East' was reified as a malleable object that can be dissected in the manner that a dead frog is sliced up under a microscope has been going for a long time, and continues even today through the 'Western' association of the 'essence of India' with the Taj Mahal, the Himalayas, Swami Vivekananda, 'spiritualism', meditation, the Royal Bengal Tiger, yoga and so on.
What is equally surprising, however, is the fact that so many so-called 'modernised Asians' have decided to pay back the "Orientalists" the same compliment of reifying entire civilisations. It is repeated ad nauseam in texts stemming from various parts of Asia that the 'East' is 'spiritual' and that the 'West' is "inherently morally bankrupt" and "materialistic". This pattern of reverse type-casting can perhaps be called 'Occidentalism', in which the 'Orient' decides to freeze the 'West' into a set of fixed characteristics (in truth, associated only with a certain historical time-slice) that are believed to be the quintessence of 'Western civilisation.'Thus a process of 'dialectalism' is set up between two gigantic entities one called the 'West' and the other the 'East'. This can be truly called a 'ballet of bloodless categories' for what is thereby forgotten is that neither the 'West' nor the 'East' is a monolithic entity; both of them are, in fact, deeply fragmented from within, and both of them have, so to speak, their repressed intimate strangers, their back-yard unspoken voices. To begin with the case of the 'East', a standard stereotype is that 'Eastern' civilisations value the Society over the Individual. And indeed, there is more than a grain of truth in this observation; 'human rights' as pertraining to the individual never really existed in many classical 'Eastern' societies. And yet, as some Indologists and sociologists have pointed out, many of the crucial socio-religious changes in classical India were actually initiated by people who stood outside the traditional fourfold scheme of caste-and-station (varnasrama). Similarly, in China the social ethic of Confucianism struggled side by side with the 'anarchist' tendencies of the Taoists; indeed, it is said that one reason why classical Buddhism never set its feet firmly on Chinese soil was the implicit 'individualism' that goes with Buddhist thought. On the other hand, 'Western' societies for all their vaunted individualism have suffered chronically from bouts of collectivist thought, for instance under the Nazis, the Fascists and the Communists. One has to read through contemporary press reports to see the 'West' routinely appealing to the collectivity of its citizens against the perceived threat of the post-colonial 'East'. The metaphor of the 'barbarian at the Gates' is of ancient Roman military history, and is as much alive in the current world as it was during the time of Emperors Valerian and Decius, and all other Roman generals who struggled against the Vandals, the Franks, and the Ostrogoths. For all that the association of the 'West' with 'Individualism' is worth, most 'Westerners' would still rather regard themselves (pace 'post-modernity'!) as a part of the 'American/European' collectivity, and not as a 'solitary atom flitting about in a meaningless sea of anonymity'.
To say, therefore, that people quarrel because some are from the 'East' and others are from the 'West' is simply to indulge oneself in dangerous rhetoric. If this were to be taken as a literal truth, it would imply that no European has ever managed to understand anything of the classical religious-philosophical-political 'Eastern' texts, and also that 'Easterners' should give up once and for all their love of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Gibbon, Keats, Shelley, Gauss, Comte, Heisenberg and so on. Just two counter-examples to mess up this (allegedly) clear picture. Firstly, for all the accusations of 'Orientalism' that have been levelled at (some) European Indological scholars, I remain convinced that some of the most solid scholarship in the domains of Sanskrit literature has actually been produced by these (German/French/Dutch) scholars who spent their entire life-times toiling away in remote dusty libraries. Secondly, a student of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, once remarked that the greatest interpreter of her mentor's thought was actually an Indian philosopher, J. L. Mohanty. To be sure, these are two random examples, but such examples can be easily multiplied by anyone who has devoted some time and careful thought to the various dimensions of the Europe-India encounter over the last two hundred years. To paint an entire body of careful and steady scholarship with the black brush of 'Orientalism' is misguided and irresponsible (and this in spite of, I repeat, all the alleged vices of 'Orientalist' scholars).
In short, I have put forward some considerations to challenge the wide-spread assumption that two monolithics entities, one called the 'East' and the other called the 'West', are locked together in a mortal combat until the 'end of times'. It is ironical that some 'Western' people who believe in the above statement actually happen to be those who have made a quite patient study of 'Eastern' civilisations (otherwise, how would they have even known what it means to be 'Eastern', and how 'Eastern-ness' contrasts with 'Western-ness'?), and many 'Eastern' people who swear by it have actually been educated in 'secular' institutions with strong 'Western' influences (otherwise, where would they have picked up the vocabulary of 'modernity/post-modernity', made trite through repetition, that they are armed to the teeth with?). It is almost as if their own socio-cultural backgrounds were a living disproof of what they otherwise claim to profess!Let me conclude with one specific example to illustrate the above points. The RSS-BJP combine in Indian politics is fond of taunting (Indian) Marxists as the 'children of Karl Marx', and (Indian) secularists as the 'children of the European Jawaharlal Nehru'. Two replies in this context would perhaps be pertinent :(1) Perhaps so, but in that case members of the RSS-BJP combine are the 'children of John Mill'. John Mill, to refresh your memories, was the writer of a very influential history of India which was read by aspiring British candidates to the Indian Civil Services throughout the colonial era. Among the many 'Orientalist myths' that Mill propagated (and bequeathed to his intellectual descendants) through that book was this one : Hindus are intrinsically passive, Muslims are inherently aggressive, and their respective 'world-views' are so radically opposed that it is impossible for Hindus and Muslims to live together. Therefore, when members of the RSS-BJP combine repeat that Hindus are in danger within their own nation because of their 'submissive' nature, and are in the threat of being overpowered by the 'militaristic' Muslims, they are simply being excellent children of an imperialist called John Mill whose views they should have consigned by now to the safety of eternal oblivion. Instead of the oft-repeated claim that the 'secularised' Indians are holding onto their 'colonial heritage', it would seem that it is, in fact, members of the RSS-BJP combine who are still suffering from a debilitating case of 'colonial hang-over.'(2) Perhaps so, but 'so what'? Is it being implied that there is a logically necessary connection between these two statements : (i) 'A world-view/proposition/statement, ABC, has originated in the 'West'' and (ii) 'ABC must therefore be false'? Underlying much of the rhetoric of the RSS-BJP is the belief (which is usually not argued for) that the mere fact that a belief is 'Western' is necessary, sufficient and conclusive reason for rejecting it. That sounds strange to me, for I seriously doubt that an Australian woman would claim that she refuses accept the law of (universal!) gravitation merely because it was established by a (male!) Englishman in the 17th century, a Mongolian that he refuses to accept Einstein's theories merely because he was a German Jew, a Chinese that he would not obey Chairman Mao merely because Mao follows the teachings of a European called Marx, a Jamaican that she would not read Shakespeare's Macbeth merely because that play is set within a specific historical context, and so on and on.
The basic point, then, is this : what we are really interested in here is the validity of truth-claims that people make, and not, to put it bluntly, what their personal food-habits, favourite football club, or cultural idiosyncracies are like.If 'Marxism' and 'European secularism' cannot be applied to the Indian context without appropriate 'translation' (and this is what, incidentally, I myself believe), let us accept this and see to what extent such 'translations' are possible. To throw them to the dustbin of discarded views merely because Marx happened to be born in Europe and merely because Nehru was educated in Cambridge (and, for that matter, merely because 'Hinduism' originated in India) is to make nonsense of the importance and the necessity of the hard and painstaking labour of justifying claims that are conflicting and, often, mutually opposed to one another.In short, even in these two cases, 'Marxism' and 'European secularism' are not world-views which cannot be transplanted onto Indian soil. (Once again, of course, in the process one must pay due care to the specificities of the Indian socio-cultural-religious-economic contexts.) To say that they are intrinsically opposed to the 'essence of India' is already to have committed the fallacy of reifying entire civilisations, and to have accepted, on the authority of John Mill, that there is something so 'essentially' distinctive of 'India' that we must believe that 'India' is a static pristine entity whose (socio-cultural) boundaries are fixed, once and for all.
posted by The Transparent Ironist @ 9:00 am
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