Any student of India’s ancient intellectual traditions knows how they valued debate and questioning. Indeed, they often turned it into a preferred mode of teaching. The Upanishads delight in dialectics, as the dialogues of Yama with Nachiketas, Yajñavalkya with Janaka and Gargi, or Uddalaka Aruni with his son Shvetaketu illustrate. Ashtavakra, son of Kahoda, defeats Vandin in a debate to avenge his father’s earlier defeat. Buddhist scholarship depends largely on the art of discussion, as does Charaka’s fundamental text of Ayurveda.
The Mahabharata’s Yakshaprashna, Yudhishthira’s dialogue with his own father, Dharma, disguised as a demon, easily outdoes our shallow quizzes.
“Through all these exercises in demonisation, which share an ever-predictable pattern, what comes out is a deep sense of insecurity — perhaps a subconscious realisation that politically inflected ideologies have run their course. It is not Right or Left that India’s intellectual life needs, but a revival of the ancient spirit of free inquiry and confident engagement. Meantime, we must be prepared for more pseudo-debates of the kingly kind.”
Do read this very perceptive article from Padma Shri Michel Danino!
http://www.pragyata.com/mag/death-of-debate-411
Aparna Krishnan Rahul Banerjee, why the term 'modernity' indicating a return to the age of reasoning, could do with some revising !
Manage
Rahul Banerjee This speaks of the tradition of debate which existed in ancient times and vanished in medieval times and since modernity talks of reviving this argumentative tradition it does not need to be revised. Looks as if you have linked the article without reading it properly!!!
Manage
Aparna Krishnan I read it properly, thanks. In these 'modern' times there is the greatest erosion of rooted engagement, of serious scholarship, of understandings of the past and of a sensible rooted path to the future. A few are seeking answers, but they are the exceptions. Overall I do not see these times as wise, or rational, or thinking, compared to past times. Or this generation as wiser or more rational than its predecessors.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan I speak of this country, and its losing its roots and directions. My comment is not a 'global' comment.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee Modernity has nothing to do with what most people in the modern era are doing. You can be critical of the modern era but can't find fault with modernity. In fact even in the ancient era very few were engaged in debates as most people were superstitious. Juxtaposing eras is a false dichotomy. The divide is between being rational or irrational.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan " In fact even in the ancient era very few were engaged in debates as most people were superstitious." These beliefs are the essence of a contempt for the past, for the traditional, and finally for ourselves. Which also leades to seeking paradigms in the west. Which foreign seeking for meanings finally destroys the indentity and self confidence of a civilization.
Luckily that has not happenned because the people are deeply rooted in their religion, and practices and processes, and despite an Educated india that has lost its moorings, they protect the essential Indianness. Jatis have also played a critical role in saving our being. Our traditions, our skills, our gods, our diversities are saved in a thousand close knit communities which sustain these and themselves.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee Its not contempt for the past but a statement of fact that most people are superstitious at any time in history whether ancient, medieval or modern!!
Manage
Neha Srivastava · Friends with Aravindan Neelakandan
“ In Broken Hegemonies, Reiner describes modernity as a project grounded in an inward turn toward self-consciousness as the primary referent for all knowledge. He calls self-consciousness “the modern hegemon,” and describes how it conditions our relationship to the world and ourselves. I began to see how, when we approach the ancients—ancient Greeks, for example—or other civilizations, we automatically subject them to our prejudices as moderns, as Europeans and as post-Enlightenment.”
“And then I realized that the supersessionism inherent to modernity itself underwrites the Indologists’ arrogance. The Indologists really believe it is their mission—as Europeans—to teach Indians to receive their own texts correctly and “critically.” There is now a narrative about history as a progression from the darkness of religious belief to the light of reason. Europe, having exited religious superstition first, has a privileged status. Other cultures must look to it for guidance, as they are—allegedly—on the same path. Husserl can now declare that “the spiritual telos of European Man [includes] the particular telos [sic] of individual nations.” Notice the provincialism, the reduction of other cultures to one’s own. Notice the negation and subsumption of ancient cultures. Everything they thought is only preliminary. And finally, notice the disparity instituted. Europeans are mündig (mature), whereas non-Europeans are unmündig, and hence candidates for (Um)erziehung ((re)education). I wish us to hear this word with all the disciplinary force inherent in it. At stake is an Umerziehung, rather than an Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (in the spirit of Lutheran theology and its specific Menschenbild). “
http://socialresearchmatters.org/against-occidentalism-a.../
Manage
Neha Srivastava · Friends with Aravindan Neelakandan
So yes, the entire modernity meme is a rehash of Protestant theology declaring that everything modern is somehow superior because “progress” is somehow chronologically linear even though it defies all logic.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee That is a subjective definition of modernity by one person. Essentially modernity initially was not a looking into oneself as claimed, but looking at the world objectively free of irrational received wisdom. The critical tradition of thinking which had been suppressed was revived. That this later degenerated into looking contemptuously at tradition regardless of its rational quality has nothing to do with modernity but is a rehash of the old irrational mindset!!
Manage
Neha Srivastava · Friends with Aravindan Neelakandan
Rahul Banerjee
- Did you skip the numerous citations Prof used?
- Also a subjective abstract construct can only have subjective definitions.
- Who defines which wisdom is “irrational” when rationality itself is a concept defined by pre-modern, and according to your world view, rather irrational people?
- Such supposed modernity staying true to its Protestant Theological origins has only suppressed free inquiry. So anything that is not accepted by self-ordained priests of modernity is labeled heretical & blasphemous thereby achieving its goal of declaring itself superior by shutting down all other opinions.
- And no, it never “degenerated” into looking at tradition contemptuously. This contempt is built into its very nature as I pointed out in even the definition you used.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee The definition I used says that received wisdom has to be tested for facts and rationality and there is no scope for contempt in it. This is independent of the protestants reformation going back to Copernicus. I will read the article you have cited and come back with a more detailed response later.
Manage
Neha Srivastava · Friends with Aravindan Neelakandan
Rahul Banerjee This is the third definition that you’ve used and unfortunately this one is a copy of the Nyaya Vaishaishika philosophy devised by the ignorant Indians a lot many centuries before the first modernist decided to teach us philosophy.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee This is the only definition of modernity that I have used because I have not defined modernity earlier in this thread having just mentioned modernity in my first comment and said that it speaks of reviving the argumentative tradition that was there in ancient times both in the west and the east. Aparna Krishnan tagged me in this post because we had earlier had a debate on another thread on my wall where I had specifically mentioned this definition of modernity where I had clearly said that Modernity as initiated by Copernicus has nothing to do with the later degeneration that modern development has led to. I had clearly stated there that this definition of modernity applies to the philosophy of the Vedas, Buddha and various other Indian philosophical schools also and so there is no quarrel between us at all!!!
Coming to the interview that you have linked above the author is basically critiquing the european indologists and their reading of the vedas (he does not give citations but just quotes Reiner and mentions some other scholars on the western indological tradition) . However, he is not the first one to do so. Sri Aurobindo was the first person to question the european translation of the Vedas over a century ago. Sanskrit is a rich language and each word has many meanings and the sentences also can be read in a different sequencing of the words than that which exists in the texts. Consequently Sri Aurobindo gave a different translation which gives a very high rational philosophical meaning of the Vedas. The author does not mention Sri Aurobindo's work even once!!! Instead he busies himself critiquing philosophers like Hegel and Heidegger who count for nothing because their thinking is not modern in the sense of sticking to facts and reason which began with Copernicus ( the western philosophical and protestant theological tradition following on the reformation transgresses this basic principle of modernity). In fact even Marx who critiqued Hegel falls short of being factual and reasonable and according to my definition of modernity can be said to be anti-modern!!! Similarly modern industrial development to goes against modernity even if this sounds astounding!! Here is the original logic that I gave on my wall for saying this - "modernity is basically a rejection of received wisdom if it does not stand to reason and fact and so is an objective paradigm. socialism on the other hand is based on a normative assumption that there should be equality in the ownership and control of the means of production and so is a subjective paradigm. thus remaining firmly rooted in modernity it is possible to argue that given the depletion of non-renewable and renewable resources and increasing pollution, the technologies that are less destructive of nature should be used. however, it is not possible to offer any objective reason or factual evidence in support of equality in the ownership and control of the means of production or for doing away with centralisation which increases inequality of control over the means of production in both capitalist and socialist societies. the question then arises as to which kind of technologies are less destructive of nature. these are invariably those that are more equally controlled in decentralised social systems than those that are unequally controlled in centralised systems. thus instead of becoming post modern and celebrating difference, which is a subjective shift that cannot be supported by reason or fact, one can pursue the logic of modernity and say that to save nature and so ourselves from destruction we should opt for egalitarian and decentralised systems."
So instead of wasting time on these western philosophers it would be better if you and Aparna Krishnan read "The secret of the veda" written by Sri Aurobindo. After reading this seminal text one reaches a level where one can easily say that western philosophy can't match eastern philosophy in grandeur and reasonableness.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan I would suggest learning Sanskrit and studying the texts with a teacher well versed in the vedas and in Sanskrit. Many erudite scholars are there if one seeks. An English commentary is an English commentary, Aurobindos or Radhakrishnans.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee Now you have begun distrusting Sri Aurobindo!!
Manage
Neha Srivastava · Friends with Aravindan Neelakandan
So let me get this straight. Every modernist is not a modernist according to you because you decide to re-define modernity even though its a well-defined philosophy.
Next your only definition of “modernity” is actually plagiarized from Nyaya Vaishaishika, but you insist on calling NV as Modernity because accepting that what you think is modernity is actually an Indian school of thought invented centuries before “moderns” would be too tacky & non-western?
And as for the interview, notice Prof Vishwa Adluri encourages an “innocent” reading of the texts while respecting them (not necessarily a traditional reading) as opposed to “critical reading” that Indologists do. Anyone who has read Aurobindo will tell you that if anything his mystical reading itself is proof of how much respect and love he had for those texts. So Sri Aurobindo is case in point FOR Prof. Adluri & not against. Sri Aurobindo would be mortified to hear that he was just compared to hateful bigots who hide behind the mask of Indology just now.
Manage
Neha Srivastava · Friends with Aravindan Neelakandan
PS: I have read the Secret of the Vedas. Now let me recommend that you read Nay Science by Prof Adluri and then we can discuss your flawed hypothesis that Aurobindo’s work is opposite of what Prof is recommending.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan Yes, modernity is defined differently, and variously. "Modernity is a term of art used in the humanities and social sciences to designate both a historical period (the modern era), as well as the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in post-medieval Europe and have developed since, in various ways and at various times, around the world. While it includes a wide range of interrelated historical processes and cultural phenomena (from fashion to modern warfare), it can also refer to the subjective or existential experience of the conditions they produce, and their ongoing impact on human culture, institutions, and politics (Berman 2010, 15–36).
As a historical category, modernity refers to a period marked by a questioning or rejection of tradition; ...
It also encompasses the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in attitudes associated with secularisation and post-industrial life (Berman 2010, 15–36).." - Wiki.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee Neha you make inferences that are unwarranted. I did not say anywhere that my definition of modernity is my own and original and I am free to redefine modernity to restrict it to the method of scientific enquiry initiated by copernicus to separate it from the trash that western philosophy has converted it into. I choose to value this scientific modernity because it has helped me to both trash western philosophical modernity and break free of Indian karmkandi brahminism.
Secondly, I did not say that the critical tradition in the ancient times, whether in India or elsewhere, is modernity. In fact the philosophy of the Vedas is eternal and remains unmatched in elegance by any later philosophy. It is also the first cogently constructed philosophy preceding all others in the world. I just said that modernity reverted in the modern era to this critical tradition of the ancients which had been suppressed in the medieval times by the church in the west and the karmkandi brahmins in India. A critical worldview is an open minded questioning one and not necessarily one that sets out to arbitrarily reject tradition.
I did not say anywhere that Sri Aurobindo is an indologist or that adluri is opposed to him. I just said that adluri should have mentioned Sri Aurobindo's interpretation of the Vedas as it was the first well reasoned criticism of the hash that the European indologists had made of the Vedas.
Finally, the Vedas are so magnificent that the idiocy of the european indologists can't besmirch them and so one shouldn't waste one's time reacting to this idiocy!!! Since unlike adluri I have not read the hash thrown up by these indologists I dont need to exorcise their bullshit from my system like him!!! Indeed if he had read Sri Aurobindo then he wouldn't have wasted his time writing nayscience and instead busied himself with the Vedic search for knowledge!!!
Manage
Aparna Krishnan Neha, I also feel that to engage with the western philosophers on our traditions and philosophies is not worthwhile. Our mandate is to restore its pride in our people, and our battlefield is here. Common people are rooted, but the educated are almost universally deracinated. The attack by the modern educated on all our practices is so pervasive, that we have our hands full. That was my first feeling when I went thro' the interview.
Years in the village has showed me how deep the roots of our traditions are, and how beautifully complete the system is where the village stories and songs (in our place based on the Mahabharata, maybe in other places based on the Ramayana or other texts) are a reflection of deepest vedantic concepts. Concepts that people try to live by, terming it dharma. That is our base, and that is where we need to build up from.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan Rahul Banerjee, who/what are the karmakandi brahmins ?
Manage
Rahul Banerjee Let that remain a mystery for the time being
😊
Manage
Aparna Krishnan If one respects vedas, one also has to value the community that preserves the vedas.
There is more to vedas than the texts. The mantras are based on intonation, which are preserved only in the live practice.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee I have all respect for people's practice but that doesn't mean that i cant subject them to factual and rational tests.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan "this critical tradition of the ancients which had been suppressed in the medieval times by the church in the west and the karmkandi brahmins in India. "
The karmakandi brahmins preserved the traditions. There would have been some perversions there as in any system. Those perversions have to be called out, and not karmakandi brahminism. Otherwise it is just part of a mindless brahmin baiting, and name calling.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee Show me one karmkandi brahmin who follows the vedic philosophy. These guys had completely subverted the vedic philisophy and foisted an oppressive, irrational system of religion on the people. I havent called anyone names, since they are karmkandi brahmins.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan If the tradition of vedic mantras has stayed alive down the centuries, that is the proof that there have been sincere practitioners.This typecasting of brahmins as oppressive and irrational is the rather mindless prattle one keeps hearing in certian qu...See more
Manage
Rahul Banerjee The vast majority of brahmins including you and i dont even know sanskrit let alone be able to understand the complicated texts of the vedas. Just chanting them isnt enough. Brahmins as a group have been oppressive crooks and they continue to be so.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan Well, I started some serious learning late in life. Modern education uproots one from many traditions that one should have protected, from the mantras to weaving. That is a pity.
Chanting correctly is an inportant part. My daughter has been learning chanting. She understands because she has also been learning Sanskrit. But another child learning with her is just learning the intonations. To dismiss upholding of any tradition of value is mindless.
Sweeping accusations are also mindless. And pointless. OK for marching with placards. But not for meaningful search for answers for a country in civilizational crisis. In a crisis of loss of roots, pride in the roots, confidence in oneself.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee I did not say that chanting is mindless but that it isnt enough. I am not making any sweeping accusation. There is enough evidence to prove that brahminism has severely distorted the high principles of vedanta.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan The 'high principles of vedanta' are reached thro' steps. Those who have immersed in vedanta do not question idol worship or rituals, understanding those as essential steps for people to a higher level. It is those who have thrown out the baby and the bathwater (and their own roots) who go on marches against brahmins, against idols, against ishta devata. Against the rooted faiths of simple people which includes rituals beginning from lighting the sandhya deepam, praying, and deeper truths of asteya and aparigraha which are passed down and dwelled on thro' stories from the Mahabharata and Ramayana and Puranas. Brahmins have traditionally had the role of keeping alive many practices and learnings. They were to use their learnings for societal good, and to live on Bhiksha. That learning not lead to arrogance. That many have chosen to completely deviate into a self serving life, often in greener pastures elsewhere, actually leaves them ex-communicated, but they do not realize that !
I would question those performing rituals, without a matching nishkama karma yoga, but not the rituals and mantras themselves. Or those brahmins who kept these alive down vast centuries or more.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan "The interpretation of signs into European languages could not have been a one-way process. The native interlocutors were themselves interpreting the facts in order to conform to the expectations of the interrogators. The analysis that emerged was thus ba.scd on many false premises. Nevertheless, in the post-colonial era the native elites, now properly literate only in the European languages, have embraced this analysis. This is a fascinating illustration of how representations can alter reality. This prefigures the change in the self-image in the West by the images fostered by television and the media.
As example consider the Brahmin caste. Books by Indologists routinely translate this into priest. But in reality priests have a relatively low status in India. To give an extreme example, the Mahabrahmin priests, who supcrvi.se funeral services, have been "treated much like untouchables." The reality of status is highly paradoxical; the brahmin is respected if he renounces his expected function. The reality runs counter to the claims of generations of Indologists." - Kak
Unless details are undertood, nuances seen, all this the brahmin bashing is simply reactiveness and postureing. Of the karmkandis, or the vedantists.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan "Although jatis may pay lip service to the Brahmin as an intermediary to the gods when it comes to ritual, each caste considers itself to be the highest. If the Brahmins were to be accepted as the highest caste then other castes would have no hesitation in giving
their daughters to the Brahmins. But in reality they do not. The Rajputs consider the Brahmins to be otherworldly, or plain beggars; the traders consider the Brahmins to be impractical; and so on. In classical Sanskrit plays, the fool is always a Brahmin. In other words, each different community has internalized a different outlook on life but these outlooks cannot be placed in any hierarchical ordering. The internalized images of the other must, by its very nature, be a gross simplification and it will never conform exactly to reality."
https://www.unz.org/Pub/MankindQuarterly-1993q3-00117
Manage
Aparna Krishnan And so the urgent imperitive to, from the building blocks, recover our own paradigm. From the vocabulary, from the axioms, to the theories. Living on borrowed vocabularies and theories is what has led to our deracination whereby We the English Educated and They are People exist as two completely different civilizations. In religion, in culture, in faith and in everything that makes for the substata of a people. Even if we dress in sarees or veshtis, and speak Tamil or Telugu or Oriya.
Those who wish to make common cause with the people, have little option but to drop all their western learnings, and seek afresh learnings of this land. It is not hard thankfully, one simple has to return to the people in humility. In humility to learn, and not in missionary zeal to 'save them'. The People are rooted and they have our wisdom safe in their keeping still.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan To asuume that the modern times, where industrilization took over, and started the road to overconsumption, destruction and certian apocalypse, was a more rational time than earlier times, needs a certian mindset. A certian worldview where 'conquest of nature', yes it has biblical undertones where man is the pinnacle of creation, is seen as the greatest acheivement. A mindset which saw allopathic science as superior to ayurvedic science. A mindset which embedded its thinking in its very definition where Modernity was defines as a return to rationality from Darker Times.
Definitions and axioms have immense power, and they need to be faced, questioned and overturned. As we seek to recover our own understandings.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee Its a waste of time tilting at windmills created by yourself!! you dont like modernity just get on with whatever you like!!!
Manage
Aparna Krishnan Many of us dont care for modern times and we are getting on with what we can, thanks.
The points here are
1. the choice of words to define certian concepts, and the fact that the the choice is indicative of deeper biases. For instance, if urban was used to mean a return to rationality, then that choice of word would indicate a belief that rural/tribal spaces were less than rational.
2. The need to create rooted vocabularies based on ones local trajectory. To recreate our narattives based on our histories, our inheritances, our identities.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee Still obsessed with wrong interpretation of terminology. Modern and modernity are not the same thing but that doesn't seem to penetrate your brain despite several clarifications.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan You are not getting the point. Your point was understood in the earlier thread.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan The point is that modernity is a sad choice of a word to indicate return to rationality, and indicative of several biases against non-modern times in the mind of the coiner (and users !) of the word.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee There were no biases initially. The biases that did creep in later were themselves a travesty of modernity, especially those in western philosophy and modern technology.
Manage
Any student of India’s ancient intellectual traditions knows how they valued debate and questioning. Indeed, they often turned it into a preferred mode of teaching. The Upanishads delight in dialectics, as the dialogues of Yama with Nachiketas, Yajñavalkya with Janaka and Gargi, or Uddalaka Aruni with his son Shvetaketu illustrate. Ashtavakra, son of Kahoda, defeats Vandin in a debate to avenge his father’s earlier defeat. Buddhist scholarship depends largely on the art of discussion, as does Charaka’s fundamental text of Ayurveda.
The Mahabharata’s Yakshaprashna, Yudhishthira’s dialogue with his own father, Dharma, disguised as a demon, easily outdoes our shallow quizzes.
“Through all these exercises in demonisation, which share an ever-predictable pattern, what comes out is a deep sense of insecurity — perhaps a subconscious realisation that politically inflected ideologies have run their course. It is not Right or Left that India’s intellectual life needs, but a revival of the ancient spirit of free inquiry and confident engagement. Meantime, we must be prepared for more pseudo-debates of the kingly kind.”
Do read this very perceptive article from Padma Shri Michel Danino!
http://www.pragyata.com/mag/death-of-debate-411
Aparna Krishnan Rahul Banerjee, why the term 'modernity' indicating a return to the age of reasoning, could do with some revising !
Manage
Rahul Banerjee This speaks of the tradition of debate which existed in ancient times and vanished in medieval times and since modernity talks of reviving this argumentative tradition it does not need to be revised. Looks as if you have linked the article without reading it properly!!!
Manage
Aparna Krishnan I read it properly, thanks. In these 'modern' times there is the greatest erosion of rooted engagement, of serious scholarship, of understandings of the past and of a sensible rooted path to the future. A few are seeking answers, but they are the exceptions. Overall I do not see these times as wise, or rational, or thinking, compared to past times. Or this generation as wiser or more rational than its predecessors.
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Aparna Krishnan I speak of this country, and its losing its roots and directions. My comment is not a 'global' comment.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee Modernity has nothing to do with what most people in the modern era are doing. You can be critical of the modern era but can't find fault with modernity. In fact even in the ancient era very few were engaged in debates as most people were superstitious. Juxtaposing eras is a false dichotomy. The divide is between being rational or irrational.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan " In fact even in the ancient era very few were engaged in debates as most people were superstitious." These beliefs are the essence of a contempt for the past, for the traditional, and finally for ourselves. Which also leades to seeking paradigms in the west. Which foreign seeking for meanings finally destroys the indentity and self confidence of a civilization.
Luckily that has not happenned because the people are deeply rooted in their religion, and practices and processes, and despite an Educated india that has lost its moorings, they protect the essential Indianness. Jatis have also played a critical role in saving our being. Our traditions, our skills, our gods, our diversities are saved in a thousand close knit communities which sustain these and themselves.
ManageLuckily that has not happenned because the people are deeply rooted in their religion, and practices and processes, and despite an Educated india that has lost its moorings, they protect the essential Indianness. Jatis have also played a critical role in saving our being. Our traditions, our skills, our gods, our diversities are saved in a thousand close knit communities which sustain these and themselves.
Rahul Banerjee Its not contempt for the past but a statement of fact that most people are superstitious at any time in history whether ancient, medieval or modern!!
Manage
Neha Srivastava · Friends with Aravindan Neelakandan
Manage
“ In Broken Hegemonies, Reiner describes modernity as a project grounded in an inward turn toward self-consciousness as the primary referent for all knowledge. He calls self-consciousness “the modern hegemon,” and describes how it conditions our relationship to the world and ourselves. I began to see how, when we approach the ancients—ancient Greeks, for example—or other civilizations, we automatically subject them to our prejudices as moderns, as Europeans and as post-Enlightenment.”
“And then I realized that the supersessionism inherent to modernity itself underwrites the Indologists’ arrogance. The Indologists really believe it is their mission—as Europeans—to teach Indians to receive their own texts correctly and “critically.” There is now a narrative about history as a progression from the darkness of religious belief to the light of reason. Europe, having exited religious superstition first, has a privileged status. Other cultures must look to it for guidance, as they are—allegedly—on the same path. Husserl can now declare that “the spiritual telos of European Man [includes] the particular telos [sic] of individual nations.” Notice the provincialism, the reduction of other cultures to one’s own. Notice the negation and subsumption of ancient cultures. Everything they thought is only preliminary. And finally, notice the disparity instituted. Europeans are mündig (mature), whereas non-Europeans are unmündig, and hence candidates for (Um)erziehung ((re)education). I wish us to hear this word with all the disciplinary force inherent in it. At stake is an Umerziehung, rather than an Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (in the spirit of Lutheran theology and its specific Menschenbild). “
http://socialresearchmatters.org/against-occidentalism-a.../
“And then I realized that the supersessionism inherent to modernity itself underwrites the Indologists’ arrogance. The Indologists really believe it is their mission—as Europeans—to teach Indians to receive their own texts correctly and “critically.” There is now a narrative about history as a progression from the darkness of religious belief to the light of reason. Europe, having exited religious superstition first, has a privileged status. Other cultures must look to it for guidance, as they are—allegedly—on the same path. Husserl can now declare that “the spiritual telos of European Man [includes] the particular telos [sic] of individual nations.” Notice the provincialism, the reduction of other cultures to one’s own. Notice the negation and subsumption of ancient cultures. Everything they thought is only preliminary. And finally, notice the disparity instituted. Europeans are mündig (mature), whereas non-Europeans are unmündig, and hence candidates for (Um)erziehung ((re)education). I wish us to hear this word with all the disciplinary force inherent in it. At stake is an Umerziehung, rather than an Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (in the spirit of Lutheran theology and its specific Menschenbild). “
http://socialresearchmatters.org/against-occidentalism-a.../
Neha Srivastava · Friends with Aravindan Neelakandan
Manage
So yes, the entire modernity meme is a rehash of Protestant theology declaring that everything modern is somehow superior because “progress” is somehow chronologically linear even though it defies all logic.
Rahul Banerjee That is a subjective definition of modernity by one person. Essentially modernity initially was not a looking into oneself as claimed, but looking at the world objectively free of irrational received wisdom. The critical tradition of thinking which had been suppressed was revived. That this later degenerated into looking contemptuously at tradition regardless of its rational quality has nothing to do with modernity but is a rehash of the old irrational mindset!!
Manage
Neha Srivastava · Friends with Aravindan Neelakandan
Manage
Rahul Banerjee
- Did you skip the numerous citations Prof used?
- Also a subjective abstract construct can only have subjective definitions.
- Who defines which wisdom is “irrational” when rationality itself is a concept defined by pre-modern, and according to your world view, rather irrational people?
- Such supposed modernity staying true to its Protestant Theological origins has only suppressed free inquiry. So anything that is not accepted by self-ordained priests of modernity is labeled heretical & blasphemous thereby achieving its goal of declaring itself superior by shutting down all other opinions.
- And no, it never “degenerated” into looking at tradition contemptuously. This contempt is built into its very nature as I pointed out in even the definition you used.
- Did you skip the numerous citations Prof used?
- Also a subjective abstract construct can only have subjective definitions.
- Who defines which wisdom is “irrational” when rationality itself is a concept defined by pre-modern, and according to your world view, rather irrational people?
- Such supposed modernity staying true to its Protestant Theological origins has only suppressed free inquiry. So anything that is not accepted by self-ordained priests of modernity is labeled heretical & blasphemous thereby achieving its goal of declaring itself superior by shutting down all other opinions.
- And no, it never “degenerated” into looking at tradition contemptuously. This contempt is built into its very nature as I pointed out in even the definition you used.
Rahul Banerjee The definition I used says that received wisdom has to be tested for facts and rationality and there is no scope for contempt in it. This is independent of the protestants reformation going back to Copernicus. I will read the article you have cited and come back with a more detailed response later.
Manage
Neha Srivastava · Friends with Aravindan Neelakandan
Manage
Rahul Banerjee This is the third definition that you’ve used and unfortunately this one is a copy of the Nyaya Vaishaishika philosophy devised by the ignorant Indians a lot many centuries before the first modernist decided to teach us philosophy.
Rahul Banerjee This is the only definition of modernity that I have used because I have not defined modernity earlier in this thread having just mentioned modernity in my first comment and said that it speaks of reviving the argumentative tradition that was there in ancient times both in the west and the east. Aparna Krishnan tagged me in this post because we had earlier had a debate on another thread on my wall where I had specifically mentioned this definition of modernity where I had clearly said that Modernity as initiated by Copernicus has nothing to do with the later degeneration that modern development has led to. I had clearly stated there that this definition of modernity applies to the philosophy of the Vedas, Buddha and various other Indian philosophical schools also and so there is no quarrel between us at all!!!
Coming to the interview that you have linked above the author is basically critiquing the european indologists and their reading of the vedas (he does not give citations but just quotes Reiner and mentions some other scholars on the western indological tradition) . However, he is not the first one to do so. Sri Aurobindo was the first person to question the european translation of the Vedas over a century ago. Sanskrit is a rich language and each word has many meanings and the sentences also can be read in a different sequencing of the words than that which exists in the texts. Consequently Sri Aurobindo gave a different translation which gives a very high rational philosophical meaning of the Vedas. The author does not mention Sri Aurobindo's work even once!!! Instead he busies himself critiquing philosophers like Hegel and Heidegger who count for nothing because their thinking is not modern in the sense of sticking to facts and reason which began with Copernicus ( the western philosophical and protestant theological tradition following on the reformation transgresses this basic principle of modernity). In fact even Marx who critiqued Hegel falls short of being factual and reasonable and according to my definition of modernity can be said to be anti-modern!!! Similarly modern industrial development to goes against modernity even if this sounds astounding!! Here is the original logic that I gave on my wall for saying this - "modernity is basically a rejection of received wisdom if it does not stand to reason and fact and so is an objective paradigm. socialism on the other hand is based on a normative assumption that there should be equality in the ownership and control of the means of production and so is a subjective paradigm. thus remaining firmly rooted in modernity it is possible to argue that given the depletion of non-renewable and renewable resources and increasing pollution, the technologies that are less destructive of nature should be used. however, it is not possible to offer any objective reason or factual evidence in support of equality in the ownership and control of the means of production or for doing away with centralisation which increases inequality of control over the means of production in both capitalist and socialist societies. the question then arises as to which kind of technologies are less destructive of nature. these are invariably those that are more equally controlled in decentralised social systems than those that are unequally controlled in centralised systems. thus instead of becoming post modern and celebrating difference, which is a subjective shift that cannot be supported by reason or fact, one can pursue the logic of modernity and say that to save nature and so ourselves from destruction we should opt for egalitarian and decentralised systems."
So instead of wasting time on these western philosophers it would be better if you and Aparna Krishnan read "The secret of the veda" written by Sri Aurobindo. After reading this seminal text one reaches a level where one can easily say that western philosophy can't match eastern philosophy in grandeur and reasonableness.
ManageComing to the interview that you have linked above the author is basically critiquing the european indologists and their reading of the vedas (he does not give citations but just quotes Reiner and mentions some other scholars on the western indological tradition) . However, he is not the first one to do so. Sri Aurobindo was the first person to question the european translation of the Vedas over a century ago. Sanskrit is a rich language and each word has many meanings and the sentences also can be read in a different sequencing of the words than that which exists in the texts. Consequently Sri Aurobindo gave a different translation which gives a very high rational philosophical meaning of the Vedas. The author does not mention Sri Aurobindo's work even once!!! Instead he busies himself critiquing philosophers like Hegel and Heidegger who count for nothing because their thinking is not modern in the sense of sticking to facts and reason which began with Copernicus ( the western philosophical and protestant theological tradition following on the reformation transgresses this basic principle of modernity). In fact even Marx who critiqued Hegel falls short of being factual and reasonable and according to my definition of modernity can be said to be anti-modern!!! Similarly modern industrial development to goes against modernity even if this sounds astounding!! Here is the original logic that I gave on my wall for saying this - "modernity is basically a rejection of received wisdom if it does not stand to reason and fact and so is an objective paradigm. socialism on the other hand is based on a normative assumption that there should be equality in the ownership and control of the means of production and so is a subjective paradigm. thus remaining firmly rooted in modernity it is possible to argue that given the depletion of non-renewable and renewable resources and increasing pollution, the technologies that are less destructive of nature should be used. however, it is not possible to offer any objective reason or factual evidence in support of equality in the ownership and control of the means of production or for doing away with centralisation which increases inequality of control over the means of production in both capitalist and socialist societies. the question then arises as to which kind of technologies are less destructive of nature. these are invariably those that are more equally controlled in decentralised social systems than those that are unequally controlled in centralised systems. thus instead of becoming post modern and celebrating difference, which is a subjective shift that cannot be supported by reason or fact, one can pursue the logic of modernity and say that to save nature and so ourselves from destruction we should opt for egalitarian and decentralised systems."
So instead of wasting time on these western philosophers it would be better if you and Aparna Krishnan read "The secret of the veda" written by Sri Aurobindo. After reading this seminal text one reaches a level where one can easily say that western philosophy can't match eastern philosophy in grandeur and reasonableness.
Aparna Krishnan I would suggest learning Sanskrit and studying the texts with a teacher well versed in the vedas and in Sanskrit. Many erudite scholars are there if one seeks. An English commentary is an English commentary, Aurobindos or Radhakrishnans.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee Now you have begun distrusting Sri Aurobindo!!
Manage
Neha Srivastava · Friends with Aravindan Neelakandan
Manage
So let me get this straight. Every modernist is not a modernist according to you because you decide to re-define modernity even though its a well-defined philosophy.
Next your only definition of “modernity” is actually plagiarized from Nyaya Vaishaishika, but you insist on calling NV as Modernity because accepting that what you think is modernity is actually an Indian school of thought invented centuries before “moderns” would be too tacky & non-western?
And as for the interview, notice Prof Vishwa Adluri encourages an “innocent” reading of the texts while respecting them (not necessarily a traditional reading) as opposed to “critical reading” that Indologists do. Anyone who has read Aurobindo will tell you that if anything his mystical reading itself is proof of how much respect and love he had for those texts. So Sri Aurobindo is case in point FOR Prof. Adluri & not against. Sri Aurobindo would be mortified to hear that he was just compared to hateful bigots who hide behind the mask of Indology just now.
Next your only definition of “modernity” is actually plagiarized from Nyaya Vaishaishika, but you insist on calling NV as Modernity because accepting that what you think is modernity is actually an Indian school of thought invented centuries before “moderns” would be too tacky & non-western?
And as for the interview, notice Prof Vishwa Adluri encourages an “innocent” reading of the texts while respecting them (not necessarily a traditional reading) as opposed to “critical reading” that Indologists do. Anyone who has read Aurobindo will tell you that if anything his mystical reading itself is proof of how much respect and love he had for those texts. So Sri Aurobindo is case in point FOR Prof. Adluri & not against. Sri Aurobindo would be mortified to hear that he was just compared to hateful bigots who hide behind the mask of Indology just now.
Neha Srivastava · Friends with Aravindan Neelakandan
Manage
PS: I have read the Secret of the Vedas. Now let me recommend that you read Nay Science by Prof Adluri and then we can discuss your flawed hypothesis that Aurobindo’s work is opposite of what Prof is recommending.
Aparna Krishnan Yes, modernity is defined differently, and variously. "Modernity is a term of art used in the humanities and social sciences to designate both a historical period (the modern era), as well as the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in post-medieval Europe and have developed since, in various ways and at various times, around the world. While it includes a wide range of interrelated historical processes and cultural phenomena (from fashion to modern warfare), it can also refer to the subjective or existential experience of the conditions they produce, and their ongoing impact on human culture, institutions, and politics (Berman 2010, 15–36).
As a historical category, modernity refers to a period marked by a questioning or rejection of tradition; ...
It also encompasses the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in attitudes associated with secularisation and post-industrial life (Berman 2010, 15–36).." - Wiki.
ManageAs a historical category, modernity refers to a period marked by a questioning or rejection of tradition; ...
It also encompasses the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in attitudes associated with secularisation and post-industrial life (Berman 2010, 15–36).." - Wiki.
Rahul Banerjee Neha you make inferences that are unwarranted. I did not say anywhere that my definition of modernity is my own and original and I am free to redefine modernity to restrict it to the method of scientific enquiry initiated by copernicus to separate it from the trash that western philosophy has converted it into. I choose to value this scientific modernity because it has helped me to both trash western philosophical modernity and break free of Indian karmkandi brahminism.
Secondly, I did not say that the critical tradition in the ancient times, whether in India or elsewhere, is modernity. In fact the philosophy of the Vedas is eternal and remains unmatched in elegance by any later philosophy. It is also the first cogently constructed philosophy preceding all others in the world. I just said that modernity reverted in the modern era to this critical tradition of the ancients which had been suppressed in the medieval times by the church in the west and the karmkandi brahmins in India. A critical worldview is an open minded questioning one and not necessarily one that sets out to arbitrarily reject tradition.
I did not say anywhere that Sri Aurobindo is an indologist or that adluri is opposed to him. I just said that adluri should have mentioned Sri Aurobindo's interpretation of the Vedas as it was the first well reasoned criticism of the hash that the European indologists had made of the Vedas.
Finally, the Vedas are so magnificent that the idiocy of the european indologists can't besmirch them and so one shouldn't waste one's time reacting to this idiocy!!! Since unlike adluri I have not read the hash thrown up by these indologists I dont need to exorcise their bullshit from my system like him!!! Indeed if he had read Sri Aurobindo then he wouldn't have wasted his time writing nayscience and instead busied himself with the Vedic search for knowledge!!!
ManageSecondly, I did not say that the critical tradition in the ancient times, whether in India or elsewhere, is modernity. In fact the philosophy of the Vedas is eternal and remains unmatched in elegance by any later philosophy. It is also the first cogently constructed philosophy preceding all others in the world. I just said that modernity reverted in the modern era to this critical tradition of the ancients which had been suppressed in the medieval times by the church in the west and the karmkandi brahmins in India. A critical worldview is an open minded questioning one and not necessarily one that sets out to arbitrarily reject tradition.
I did not say anywhere that Sri Aurobindo is an indologist or that adluri is opposed to him. I just said that adluri should have mentioned Sri Aurobindo's interpretation of the Vedas as it was the first well reasoned criticism of the hash that the European indologists had made of the Vedas.
Finally, the Vedas are so magnificent that the idiocy of the european indologists can't besmirch them and so one shouldn't waste one's time reacting to this idiocy!!! Since unlike adluri I have not read the hash thrown up by these indologists I dont need to exorcise their bullshit from my system like him!!! Indeed if he had read Sri Aurobindo then he wouldn't have wasted his time writing nayscience and instead busied himself with the Vedic search for knowledge!!!
Aparna Krishnan Neha, I also feel that to engage with the western philosophers on our traditions and philosophies is not worthwhile. Our mandate is to restore its pride in our people, and our battlefield is here. Common people are rooted, but the educated are almost universally deracinated. The attack by the modern educated on all our practices is so pervasive, that we have our hands full. That was my first feeling when I went thro' the interview.
Years in the village has showed me how deep the roots of our traditions are, and how beautifully complete the system is where the village stories and songs (in our place based on the Mahabharata, maybe in other places based on the Ramayana or other texts) are a reflection of deepest vedantic concepts. Concepts that people try to live by, terming it dharma. That is our base, and that is where we need to build up from.
ManageYears in the village has showed me how deep the roots of our traditions are, and how beautifully complete the system is where the village stories and songs (in our place based on the Mahabharata, maybe in other places based on the Ramayana or other texts) are a reflection of deepest vedantic concepts. Concepts that people try to live by, terming it dharma. That is our base, and that is where we need to build up from.
Aparna Krishnan Rahul Banerjee, who/what are the karmakandi brahmins ?
Manage
Rahul Banerjee Let that remain a mystery for the time being😊
Manage😊
Aparna Krishnan If one respects vedas, one also has to value the community that preserves the vedas.
There is more to vedas than the texts. The mantras are based on intonation, which are preserved only in the live practice.
ManageThere is more to vedas than the texts. The mantras are based on intonation, which are preserved only in the live practice.
Rahul Banerjee I have all respect for people's practice but that doesn't mean that i cant subject them to factual and rational tests.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan "this critical tradition of the ancients which had been suppressed in the medieval times by the church in the west and the karmkandi brahmins in India. "
The karmakandi brahmins preserved the traditions. There would have been some perversions there as in any system. Those perversions have to be called out, and not karmakandi brahminism. Otherwise it is just part of a mindless brahmin baiting, and name calling.
ManageThe karmakandi brahmins preserved the traditions. There would have been some perversions there as in any system. Those perversions have to be called out, and not karmakandi brahminism. Otherwise it is just part of a mindless brahmin baiting, and name calling.
Rahul Banerjee Show me one karmkandi brahmin who follows the vedic philosophy. These guys had completely subverted the vedic philisophy and foisted an oppressive, irrational system of religion on the people. I havent called anyone names, since they are karmkandi brahmins.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan If the tradition of vedic mantras has stayed alive down the centuries, that is the proof that there have been sincere practitioners.This typecasting of brahmins as oppressive and irrational is the rather mindless prattle one keeps hearing in certian qu...See more
Manage
Rahul Banerjee The vast majority of brahmins including you and i dont even know sanskrit let alone be able to understand the complicated texts of the vedas. Just chanting them isnt enough. Brahmins as a group have been oppressive crooks and they continue to be so.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan Well, I started some serious learning late in life. Modern education uproots one from many traditions that one should have protected, from the mantras to weaving. That is a pity.
Chanting correctly is an inportant part. My daughter has been learning chanting. She understands because she has also been learning Sanskrit. But another child learning with her is just learning the intonations. To dismiss upholding of any tradition of value is mindless.
Sweeping accusations are also mindless. And pointless. OK for marching with placards. But not for meaningful search for answers for a country in civilizational crisis. In a crisis of loss of roots, pride in the roots, confidence in oneself.
ManageChanting correctly is an inportant part. My daughter has been learning chanting. She understands because she has also been learning Sanskrit. But another child learning with her is just learning the intonations. To dismiss upholding of any tradition of value is mindless.
Sweeping accusations are also mindless. And pointless. OK for marching with placards. But not for meaningful search for answers for a country in civilizational crisis. In a crisis of loss of roots, pride in the roots, confidence in oneself.
Rahul Banerjee I did not say that chanting is mindless but that it isnt enough. I am not making any sweeping accusation. There is enough evidence to prove that brahminism has severely distorted the high principles of vedanta.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan The 'high principles of vedanta' are reached thro' steps. Those who have immersed in vedanta do not question idol worship or rituals, understanding those as essential steps for people to a higher level. It is those who have thrown out the baby and the bathwater (and their own roots) who go on marches against brahmins, against idols, against ishta devata. Against the rooted faiths of simple people which includes rituals beginning from lighting the sandhya deepam, praying, and deeper truths of asteya and aparigraha which are passed down and dwelled on thro' stories from the Mahabharata and Ramayana and Puranas. Brahmins have traditionally had the role of keeping alive many practices and learnings. They were to use their learnings for societal good, and to live on Bhiksha. That learning not lead to arrogance. That many have chosen to completely deviate into a self serving life, often in greener pastures elsewhere, actually leaves them ex-communicated, but they do not realize that !
I would question those performing rituals, without a matching nishkama karma yoga, but not the rituals and mantras themselves. Or those brahmins who kept these alive down vast centuries or more.
ManageI would question those performing rituals, without a matching nishkama karma yoga, but not the rituals and mantras themselves. Or those brahmins who kept these alive down vast centuries or more.
Aparna Krishnan "The interpretation of signs into European languages could not have been a one-way process. The native interlocutors were themselves interpreting the facts in order to conform to the expectations of the interrogators. The analysis that emerged was thus ba.scd on many false premises. Nevertheless, in the post-colonial era the native elites, now properly literate only in the European languages, have embraced this analysis. This is a fascinating illustration of how representations can alter reality. This prefigures the change in the self-image in the West by the images fostered by television and the media.
As example consider the Brahmin caste. Books by Indologists routinely translate this into priest. But in reality priests have a relatively low status in India. To give an extreme example, the Mahabrahmin priests, who supcrvi.se funeral services, have been "treated much like untouchables." The reality of status is highly paradoxical; the brahmin is respected if he renounces his expected function. The reality runs counter to the claims of generations of Indologists." - Kak
Unless details are undertood, nuances seen, all this the brahmin bashing is simply reactiveness and postureing. Of the karmkandis, or the vedantists.
ManageAs example consider the Brahmin caste. Books by Indologists routinely translate this into priest. But in reality priests have a relatively low status in India. To give an extreme example, the Mahabrahmin priests, who supcrvi.se funeral services, have been "treated much like untouchables." The reality of status is highly paradoxical; the brahmin is respected if he renounces his expected function. The reality runs counter to the claims of generations of Indologists." - Kak
Unless details are undertood, nuances seen, all this the brahmin bashing is simply reactiveness and postureing. Of the karmkandis, or the vedantists.
Aparna Krishnan "Although jatis may pay lip service to the Brahmin as an intermediary to the gods when it comes to ritual, each caste considers itself to be the highest. If the Brahmins were to be accepted as the highest caste then other castes would have no hesitation in giving
their daughters to the Brahmins. But in reality they do not. The Rajputs consider the Brahmins to be otherworldly, or plain beggars; the traders consider the Brahmins to be impractical; and so on. In classical Sanskrit plays, the fool is always a Brahmin. In other words, each different community has internalized a different outlook on life but these outlooks cannot be placed in any hierarchical ordering. The internalized images of the other must, by its very nature, be a gross simplification and it will never conform exactly to reality."
https://www.unz.org/Pub/MankindQuarterly-1993q3-00117
Managetheir daughters to the Brahmins. But in reality they do not. The Rajputs consider the Brahmins to be otherworldly, or plain beggars; the traders consider the Brahmins to be impractical; and so on. In classical Sanskrit plays, the fool is always a Brahmin. In other words, each different community has internalized a different outlook on life but these outlooks cannot be placed in any hierarchical ordering. The internalized images of the other must, by its very nature, be a gross simplification and it will never conform exactly to reality."
https://www.unz.org/Pub/MankindQuarterly-1993q3-00117
Aparna Krishnan And so the urgent imperitive to, from the building blocks, recover our own paradigm. From the vocabulary, from the axioms, to the theories. Living on borrowed vocabularies and theories is what has led to our deracination whereby We the English Educated and They are People exist as two completely different civilizations. In religion, in culture, in faith and in everything that makes for the substata of a people. Even if we dress in sarees or veshtis, and speak Tamil or Telugu or Oriya.
Those who wish to make common cause with the people, have little option but to drop all their western learnings, and seek afresh learnings of this land. It is not hard thankfully, one simple has to return to the people in humility. In humility to learn, and not in missionary zeal to 'save them'. The People are rooted and they have our wisdom safe in their keeping still.
ManageThose who wish to make common cause with the people, have little option but to drop all their western learnings, and seek afresh learnings of this land. It is not hard thankfully, one simple has to return to the people in humility. In humility to learn, and not in missionary zeal to 'save them'. The People are rooted and they have our wisdom safe in their keeping still.
Aparna Krishnan To asuume that the modern times, where industrilization took over, and started the road to overconsumption, destruction and certian apocalypse, was a more rational time than earlier times, needs a certian mindset. A certian worldview where 'conquest of nature', yes it has biblical undertones where man is the pinnacle of creation, is seen as the greatest acheivement. A mindset which saw allopathic science as superior to ayurvedic science. A mindset which embedded its thinking in its very definition where Modernity was defines as a return to rationality from Darker Times.
Definitions and axioms have immense power, and they need to be faced, questioned and overturned. As we seek to recover our own understandings.
ManageDefinitions and axioms have immense power, and they need to be faced, questioned and overturned. As we seek to recover our own understandings.
Rahul Banerjee Its a waste of time tilting at windmills created by yourself!! you dont like modernity just get on with whatever you like!!!
Manage
Aparna Krishnan Many of us dont care for modern times and we are getting on with what we can, thanks.
The points here are
1. the choice of words to define certian concepts, and the fact that the the choice is indicative of deeper biases. For instance, if urban was used to mean a return to rationality, then that choice of word would indicate a belief that rural/tribal spaces were less than rational.
2. The need to create rooted vocabularies based on ones local trajectory. To recreate our narattives based on our histories, our inheritances, our identities.
ManageThe points here are
1. the choice of words to define certian concepts, and the fact that the the choice is indicative of deeper biases. For instance, if urban was used to mean a return to rationality, then that choice of word would indicate a belief that rural/tribal spaces were less than rational.
2. The need to create rooted vocabularies based on ones local trajectory. To recreate our narattives based on our histories, our inheritances, our identities.
Rahul Banerjee Still obsessed with wrong interpretation of terminology. Modern and modernity are not the same thing but that doesn't seem to penetrate your brain despite several clarifications.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan You are not getting the point. Your point was understood in the earlier thread.
Manage
Aparna Krishnan The point is that modernity is a sad choice of a word to indicate return to rationality, and indicative of several biases against non-modern times in the mind of the coiner (and users !) of the word.
Manage
Rahul Banerjee There were no biases initially. The biases that did creep in later were themselves a travesty of modernity, especially those in western philosophy and modern technology.
ManageDeath of Debate
The Indian tradition of debate which upheld the spirit of free inquiry seems to have been lost in today's public discourse.
Any student of India’s ancient intellectual traditions knows how they valued debate and questioning. Indeed, they often turned it into a preferred mode of teaching. The Upanishads delight in dialectics, as the dialogues of Yama with Nachiketas, Yajñavalkya with Janaka and Gargi, or Uddalaka Aruni with his son Shvetaketu illustrate. Ashtavakra, son of Kahoda, defeats Vandin in a debate to avenge his father’s earlier defeat. Buddhist scholarship depends largely on the art of discussion, as does Charaka’s fundamental text of Ayurveda.
The Mahabharata’s Yakshaprashna, Yudhishthira’s dialogue with his own father, Dharma, disguised as a demon, easily outdoes our shallow quizzes. Hsuan tsang testifies that students wishing to enter the famed Nalanda University were confronted with probing “discussions” intended to filter out unworthy candidates. Shankaracharya engaged hindu and buddhist scholars alike in philosophical debates lasting many days. The whole tradition exudes a sense of intellectual self-confidence, an invitation to challenge and a freedom to dissent; let us also recall, since this is easily forgotten, that India’s intellectual tradition knew no Giordano Bruno or Galileo.
But there are two kinds of debates. The Indo-Greek king Milinda (Menander) once invited a Buddhist monk, Nagasena, to a debate. Nagasena boldly answered that he would accept only if the king debated as a scholar, not as a king. Pressed to explain, he said that a scholar does not get angry even if defeated by another scholar, while anyone daring to disagree with the king will only invite punishment on himself; a king’s debate is thus no debate at all, only power play.
For some time, modern India’s intellectual life has been drifting towards the second kind. I am not referring to the shouting matches which, on our TV channels, glory in the name of “debate”, but to more serious issues of an academic nature, which have often spilled over into the public arena.
Issues at the root of Indian civilisation and identity have expectedly attracted the most heated controversies. And so, inevitably, we begin with the “Aryan debate”, as it has been called, for instance by the US historian Thomas R Trautmann in his eponymous edited volume of 2005. He rightly notes in his introduction,
“Unflattering labels such as ‘hindu nationalist’ and ‘Marxist fundamentalist’, or ‘pseudo-secularist’ and ‘so-called champions of Hindutva’, are thrown about. These labels are often used as if they were proofs that the arguments of the writer’s opponent are not true.”
In other words, we have no real debate, and all Trautmann could do was to juxtapose papers from opposing camps. Laurie Patton, in an introduction to another valuable volume published the same year (The Indo-Aryan Controversy, edited by Edwin Bryant and herself), laments that there has been “very little conversation between the opponents, [but] great opportunity for creating straw men on both sides.” Their book, at least, included papers by a few scholars on both sides who did critique each other courteously and in a scholarly fashion, in a refreshing departure of the haughty dismissal that remains the dominant note.
One disturbing aspect of the acrimonious exchanges has been the notion that those who reject the theory of an Aryan paradigm are perforce pro-Hindutva activists or their western supporters. Endlessly relayed by a controversy-hungry media, it has concealed the fact that the staunchest opponents of the theory have often been respected mainstream western academics. The British anthropologist Edmund Leach, the US bioanthropologist Kenneth AR Kennedy, the French archaeologist Jean-Paul Demoule, the US archaeologist Jim Shaffer, the Canadian historian Klaus Klostermaier, the Greek Sanskritist Nicholas Kazanas, the Italian linguist Angela Marcantonio, the Estonian biologist Toomas Kivisild, among others, have challenged the Aryan scenario in its Indian or Eurasian ramifications.
However, none of the Indian historians still promoting it (from a “hard” version of an aggressive invasion to a “softer” one of a peaceful migration of small numbers) ever discusses these distinguished objectors; were they to do so, the convenient media-friendly story that communal-minded fanatics alone contest the dominant view would be unmaintainable.
The same principle applies to the issue of the Sarasvati river, which has been back in the news of late. Here, the intellectual dishonesty is worse, since it conceals from a chronically ill-informed public that the lost vedic river was identified with the now dry Ghaggar-Hakra of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Cholistan, not by a few “nativist bigots”, as an ignorant and abusive columnist recently put it, but by generations of European Indologists, geographers and geologists from the mid-19th century! Alexander Cunningham, founder of the Archaeological Survey of India, was among the many who, in the 19th century, published maps displaying the Sarasvati as a tributary to the Ghaggar, while the British archaeologist and explorer Marc Aurel Stein, who identified the first Harappan sites along the river’s dry bed, published his findings in a 1942 report entitled 'A Survey of Ancient Sites' along the ‘Lost’ Sarasvati River. In recent years, this identification has been accepted by most archaeologists of the Harappan civilisation. None of this is ever discussed by the river’s detractors, who have successfully created the myth that its identification is the work, again, of right-wing chauvinists.
For obvious reasons, the controversy that has surrounded the Ayodhya issue has been far bitterer. Archaeologists and epigraphists who maintained that there was clear evidence of a large temple-like building beneath the Babri Masjid were demonised, as were scholars who patiently marshalled historical, cultural and epigraphic evidence leading to the same conclusion. What mattered, once again, was not dispassionate scholarship and civilised debate, but winning the media war.
The US-based scholar and author, Rajiv Malhotra, the author of a few provocative books that have challenged west-centrism and western prejudices in South Asia studies, was attacked by academics led by Richard Fox Young on the grounds of plagiarism. It turned out that barring a couple of instances that were clearly editorial slips, Malhotra had carefully referenced all his quotations. However, rather than challenge Malhotra to a debate, his critics went on urging his publisher to withdraw his books. Their language was one of intimidation, not intellectual engagement.
Almost on a daily basis, the press has been using the Indian Council of Historical Research as a favourite target for dart practice. Its chairman and members have been charged with mediocrity and an eagerness to rewrite Indian history on the basis of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. That the accusers have never cited a single project adopted by ICHR to that effect went unnoticed; what mattered was to get the allegations relayed from columnist to academic and back again, in almost identical phrases. Also, no call for an objective assessment of ICHR’s less-than-immaculate performance under previous regimes has been heard. “Slander on and on,” says a French proverb, “some of it will stick in the end.” Our intelligentsia has become a past master at this art, which involves cherry-picking, selective quoting, misquoting, wilful ignorance of basic facts and passing the baton of calumny until the vaguest of allegations become the hardest of facts.
Amalgamation is another time-tested technique: such as the murders of intellectuals such as Narendra Dabholkar and MM Kalburgi, gently slide on to the RSS’s supposed admiration of Hitler and the renaming of Aurangzeb Marg, and draw the inevitable conclusion that India is now ominously under a regime “that has ambitions of becoming a fascist power”. That is what Teesta Setalvad, Irfan Habib and others did and stated at a recent Sahmat press conference. I condemn the above-mentioned two murders and do hope the culprits will be caught; but I do find it strange that the murder of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati, who was by all accounts a revered figure, did not arouse the slightest hint of revulsion in our intelligentsia. Besides, the point is lost that if Dabholkar and Kalburgi challenged traditional thinking and attitudes, they were actually well within hindu intellectual traditions, which never feared such dissent and did not use violence to suppress it — compare with the brutal manner in which communist and fascist regimes alike have dealt with dissent.
As regards tinkering with the autonomy of educational and cultural institutions, which many such activists complain about, I agree that a national debate on the issue is certainly called for, but it will also need to go back to the origins of the practice — that is, in the early 1970s, when the then education minister Nurul Hasan, a medieval historian of Marxist leanings, began a systematic “reddification” of those very institutions, which saw the eviction, sidelining and victimisation of numerous sound scholars. I do not recall US-based academics protesting at the time. I stand in favour of true autonomy, but an autonomy founded on real intellectual freedom and excellence, not on convenient political leanings.
Through all these exercises in demonisation, which share an ever-predictable pattern, what comes out is a deep sense of insecurity — perhaps a subconscious realisation that politically inflected ideologies have run their course. It is not Right or Left that India’s intellectual life needs, but a revival of the ancient spirit of free inquiry and confident engagement. Meantime, we must be prepared for more pseudo-debates of the kingly kind.
The Indian tradition of debate which upheld the spirit of free inquiry seems to have been lost in today's public discourse.
Any student of India’s ancient intellectual traditions knows how they valued debate and questioning. Indeed, they often turned it into a preferred mode of teaching. The Upanishads delight in dialectics, as the dialogues of Yama with Nachiketas, Yajñavalkya with Janaka and Gargi, or Uddalaka Aruni with his son Shvetaketu illustrate. Ashtavakra, son of Kahoda, defeats Vandin in a debate to avenge his father’s earlier defeat. Buddhist scholarship depends largely on the art of discussion, as does Charaka’s fundamental text of Ayurveda.
The Mahabharata’s Yakshaprashna, Yudhishthira’s dialogue with his own father, Dharma, disguised as a demon, easily outdoes our shallow quizzes. Hsuan tsang testifies that students wishing to enter the famed Nalanda University were confronted with probing “discussions” intended to filter out unworthy candidates. Shankaracharya engaged hindu and buddhist scholars alike in philosophical debates lasting many days. The whole tradition exudes a sense of intellectual self-confidence, an invitation to challenge and a freedom to dissent; let us also recall, since this is easily forgotten, that India’s intellectual tradition knew no Giordano Bruno or Galileo.
But there are two kinds of debates. The Indo-Greek king Milinda (Menander) once invited a Buddhist monk, Nagasena, to a debate. Nagasena boldly answered that he would accept only if the king debated as a scholar, not as a king. Pressed to explain, he said that a scholar does not get angry even if defeated by another scholar, while anyone daring to disagree with the king will only invite punishment on himself; a king’s debate is thus no debate at all, only power play.
For some time, modern India’s intellectual life has been drifting towards the second kind. I am not referring to the shouting matches which, on our TV channels, glory in the name of “debate”, but to more serious issues of an academic nature, which have often spilled over into the public arena.
Issues at the root of Indian civilisation and identity have expectedly attracted the most heated controversies. And so, inevitably, we begin with the “Aryan debate”, as it has been called, for instance by the US historian Thomas R Trautmann in his eponymous edited volume of 2005. He rightly notes in his introduction,
“Unflattering labels such as ‘hindu nationalist’ and ‘Marxist fundamentalist’, or ‘pseudo-secularist’ and ‘so-called champions of Hindutva’, are thrown about. These labels are often used as if they were proofs that the arguments of the writer’s opponent are not true.”
In other words, we have no real debate, and all Trautmann could do was to juxtapose papers from opposing camps. Laurie Patton, in an introduction to another valuable volume published the same year (The Indo-Aryan Controversy, edited by Edwin Bryant and herself), laments that there has been “very little conversation between the opponents, [but] great opportunity for creating straw men on both sides.” Their book, at least, included papers by a few scholars on both sides who did critique each other courteously and in a scholarly fashion, in a refreshing departure of the haughty dismissal that remains the dominant note.
One disturbing aspect of the acrimonious exchanges has been the notion that those who reject the theory of an Aryan paradigm are perforce pro-Hindutva activists or their western supporters. Endlessly relayed by a controversy-hungry media, it has concealed the fact that the staunchest opponents of the theory have often been respected mainstream western academics. The British anthropologist Edmund Leach, the US bioanthropologist Kenneth AR Kennedy, the French archaeologist Jean-Paul Demoule, the US archaeologist Jim Shaffer, the Canadian historian Klaus Klostermaier, the Greek Sanskritist Nicholas Kazanas, the Italian linguist Angela Marcantonio, the Estonian biologist Toomas Kivisild, among others, have challenged the Aryan scenario in its Indian or Eurasian ramifications.
However, none of the Indian historians still promoting it (from a “hard” version of an aggressive invasion to a “softer” one of a peaceful migration of small numbers) ever discusses these distinguished objectors; were they to do so, the convenient media-friendly story that communal-minded fanatics alone contest the dominant view would be unmaintainable.
The same principle applies to the issue of the Sarasvati river, which has been back in the news of late. Here, the intellectual dishonesty is worse, since it conceals from a chronically ill-informed public that the lost vedic river was identified with the now dry Ghaggar-Hakra of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Cholistan, not by a few “nativist bigots”, as an ignorant and abusive columnist recently put it, but by generations of European Indologists, geographers and geologists from the mid-19th century! Alexander Cunningham, founder of the Archaeological Survey of India, was among the many who, in the 19th century, published maps displaying the Sarasvati as a tributary to the Ghaggar, while the British archaeologist and explorer Marc Aurel Stein, who identified the first Harappan sites along the river’s dry bed, published his findings in a 1942 report entitled 'A Survey of Ancient Sites' along the ‘Lost’ Sarasvati River. In recent years, this identification has been accepted by most archaeologists of the Harappan civilisation. None of this is ever discussed by the river’s detractors, who have successfully created the myth that its identification is the work, again, of right-wing chauvinists.
For obvious reasons, the controversy that has surrounded the Ayodhya issue has been far bitterer. Archaeologists and epigraphists who maintained that there was clear evidence of a large temple-like building beneath the Babri Masjid were demonised, as were scholars who patiently marshalled historical, cultural and epigraphic evidence leading to the same conclusion. What mattered, once again, was not dispassionate scholarship and civilised debate, but winning the media war.
The US-based scholar and author, Rajiv Malhotra, the author of a few provocative books that have challenged west-centrism and western prejudices in South Asia studies, was attacked by academics led by Richard Fox Young on the grounds of plagiarism. It turned out that barring a couple of instances that were clearly editorial slips, Malhotra had carefully referenced all his quotations. However, rather than challenge Malhotra to a debate, his critics went on urging his publisher to withdraw his books. Their language was one of intimidation, not intellectual engagement.
Almost on a daily basis, the press has been using the Indian Council of Historical Research as a favourite target for dart practice. Its chairman and members have been charged with mediocrity and an eagerness to rewrite Indian history on the basis of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. That the accusers have never cited a single project adopted by ICHR to that effect went unnoticed; what mattered was to get the allegations relayed from columnist to academic and back again, in almost identical phrases. Also, no call for an objective assessment of ICHR’s less-than-immaculate performance under previous regimes has been heard. “Slander on and on,” says a French proverb, “some of it will stick in the end.” Our intelligentsia has become a past master at this art, which involves cherry-picking, selective quoting, misquoting, wilful ignorance of basic facts and passing the baton of calumny until the vaguest of allegations become the hardest of facts.
Amalgamation is another time-tested technique: such as the murders of intellectuals such as Narendra Dabholkar and MM Kalburgi, gently slide on to the RSS’s supposed admiration of Hitler and the renaming of Aurangzeb Marg, and draw the inevitable conclusion that India is now ominously under a regime “that has ambitions of becoming a fascist power”. That is what Teesta Setalvad, Irfan Habib and others did and stated at a recent Sahmat press conference. I condemn the above-mentioned two murders and do hope the culprits will be caught; but I do find it strange that the murder of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati, who was by all accounts a revered figure, did not arouse the slightest hint of revulsion in our intelligentsia. Besides, the point is lost that if Dabholkar and Kalburgi challenged traditional thinking and attitudes, they were actually well within hindu intellectual traditions, which never feared such dissent and did not use violence to suppress it — compare with the brutal manner in which communist and fascist regimes alike have dealt with dissent.
As regards tinkering with the autonomy of educational and cultural institutions, which many such activists complain about, I agree that a national debate on the issue is certainly called for, but it will also need to go back to the origins of the practice — that is, in the early 1970s, when the then education minister Nurul Hasan, a medieval historian of Marxist leanings, began a systematic “reddification” of those very institutions, which saw the eviction, sidelining and victimisation of numerous sound scholars. I do not recall US-based academics protesting at the time. I stand in favour of true autonomy, but an autonomy founded on real intellectual freedom and excellence, not on convenient political leanings.
Through all these exercises in demonisation, which share an ever-predictable pattern, what comes out is a deep sense of insecurity — perhaps a subconscious realisation that politically inflected ideologies have run their course. It is not Right or Left that India’s intellectual life needs, but a revival of the ancient spirit of free inquiry and confident engagement. Meantime, we must be prepared for more pseudo-debates of the kingly kind.
