INDIA WAS NEVER A NATION?
MAY 26, 2022
The editorial (Our politicians should stop deriding India abroad) on 26th May raised an important point which many Indian politicians are guilty of when travelling abroad. Their petty internal anger makes them paint the country in unfavourable colours causing immense damage. As a specific point, ill-informed Indians follow the line of scholars used to the modern definition of a nation-state and declare that we were ‘never a nation’. The idea that India is somehow the creation of the West has a significant and continuing intellectual history. The resistance to ideas of India’s unity embeds in post-colonial thinking too unfortunately. Standard western theories (Hobsbawm, Gellener, Anderson) trace the origins of nations in institutional, economic, and technological transformations. Apparently, the democratic state and its elite ‘create’ nations through a cultural homogenization by invoking symbols and ‘inventing’ traditions (national anthem and a national language). Industrialization through a homogenizing educational policy; ‘print media’ by uniting people into an ‘imagined political community’ are some other mechanisms for creating nations.
Taking this line forward, our own scholars at JNU believe that India is incoherent, fragmented, and marked by foundational differences. Other dangerous indigenous narratives include branding as ‘right-wing’ (hence bad) any objections to love for other countries; attachment to the land of India as troubling; Kerala as not ‘really’ belonging to India; and ‘Tamil nationalism’ as resting on linguistic pride and official antipathy for Hinduism (though 88% of Tamil Nadu called themselves Hindus in the 2011 census); India as an oppressor occupying Kashmir illegally; and so on.
These scholarships only enlighten us on the emergence of modern ‘governmentality’ to attain greater efficacy but not nations and nationalism, says scholar Saumya Dey. The Greeks, English, and the French were an ancient ‘felt community’ much before printing presses, democracy, or industrialization. ‘Nation’ does not do justice to India’s expression of oneness. India is an ancient ‘felt community’ because it does not emerge through deliberate cultural or linguistic systematization. It functions and forms through a sense of belonging to the land disseminated through symbols. This process manifests itself as ‘culture’ working autonomous of the state. Thus, people could belong to the same set of meanings and land, despite differences in languages, by perceiving the same symbols (swastika, the lotus, the Devatas of temples, the tirthas, Sanskrit language, and so on) as a great unity. Indians, denizens of Bharata, have been a ‘felt community’ for thousands of years exactly like this.
Bharatvarsha clearly exists in the oldest scriptures as the land south of Himalayas and north of the oceans. India was Sapta Sindhu, the land of seven rivers in olden times. The name appears in Zend Avesta too. The Greeks called the land India or Indika, which also derives from the word Sindhu. India was Sindhu Sthana which later became Hindustan. Mahabharata, Ramayana, Vishnu Purana describes ‘Bharata’ Varsha with deep clarity in the various travels of its characters across the land. Ramayana and Mahabharata in fact became the major tools for integration. The references to the great epics are all over the country and even places like Indonesia where local traditions link in some way to the two great epics. A united India based on multiple traditions, rituals, mythology, and customs existed for thousands of years. A dense network of holy places and temples created a ‘sacred geography’ of the country and a strong tradition of pilgrimages in the country. The 12 Jyotirlingas, the 52 Shakti Mahapithas, and the 26 Upapithas spread over India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan became the defining point to draw the boundaries of the country.
There was perhaps no political unity in the European definition of nation though there was early political unity like the Mauryan Empire covering most of India. However, a united geo-cultural India existed for thousands of years about which we should all be rightfully proud of. One should directly reject the terrible narrative that the British ‘united’ us. That we were never a nation was a colonial construct (carried forward by post-colonial scholars) to break our country. What emerged as freedom in 1947 was simply the expression of an ancient ‘felt community’ and not an elitist or colonial construction.
RITUALS AND SCIENTIFIC TEMPER: THE WORRY OF SHARAD PAWAR
MAY 29, 2023
Sharad Pawar, commenting on the rituals at the inauguration of the new parliament building, said that India was going backward, clashing with the Nehruvian ‘scientific temper’ so essential for constructing a modern new India. This is an important example of the gross ignorance of our political, academic, and constitutional thinkers about both the nature of Indian traditions and Indian history. Fundamentally, India is a land of traditions, not religions. As the strong hypothesis of Balagangadhara says, only Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are ‘religions’ in the definitional sense. Religions have a strong basis in their doctrines and their truth values. The fascination with ‘true’ or ‘false’ and the ‘why’ question has, as its consequences, religious wars, the importance of conversion, ‘tolerance to the other’ as a solution for harmony, atheism, and science, amongst other things. The science and atheism that grow in such religious cultures typically clash with their religious institutions.
Traditional lands (like India or the Greco-Romans of the past) have ‘rituals’ as their basis, and their focus is on the ‘how’ question, and their solution for harmony is an ‘indifference’ to the differences. The construction of various ‘religions’ in the Abrahamic mould of the various traditions of Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism) has been the single most destructive and important contribution of the colonials. Unfortunately, our dominant ideology-driven academia and naive politicians in post-independent India did not question this narrative. Traditions having the ‘how’ or ‘performative abilities’ as their basis equally develop a scientific temper. Only the framework is different. The clash of religion with science is a straight western import, transferring the clashes of the church with its scientists to Indian traditions, where it is an almost unknown phenomenon.
For those who believe that India was primitive before the colonials came, the slightest reading of the works of Dharampal would bring enough light to dispel their ignorance. India had highly developed mathematics, astronomy, architecture, metallurgy, agriculture, and engineering, apart from the arts, before the colonials came. The colonials had an initial sense of awe and wonder, but later it was one of their important requirements to project a primitive civilization to justify their “civilising mission”. Indians still continue to believe that story.
The solution to harmony in India was to convert the religions that came from alien worlds into traditions. Reversing this process, we are converting our traditions into religions, which is responsible for much of the mess today. We are transitioning from an indifference to an intolerance characterised by traditions and religions, respectively, in their pure forms.
Marrying someone from my own ‘jati’ is not discrimination against the rest of the world. It is simply narrowing the search domain for the desired results. Conducting rituals in one format is never discriminatory against all the other traditions (or religions) of the land. This is a fundamental thing that modern social scientists thriving on western literature and our political thinkers should understand when they hold forth on topics such as discrimination and oppression.
THE DANGERS OF AI- THE INDIAN APPROACH TO MACHINES
MARCH 22, 2023
AI isn’t close to becoming insentient’ by Nir Eisikovits (THI 22nd March) is a brilliant article on the ethical issues involving the latest innovations in technology. He warns humans of the danger of anthropomorphizing machines and believing that they can one day take over the human world. Many scientists in the belief of the philosophy that there can only be progress with regards to scientific developments agree to this position. Ordinary humans are scared of such alarms.
However, if one looks at Indian Darshanas, there can be some hope and solace. Western materialism and science is of the overriding view that consciousness and sentience is secondary to matter. Starting with the atoms, matter organizes itself in higher orders of complexity (molecules, inanimate matter and then finally animate matter). The development of sentience and consciousness is a logical outcome of such a progress of complexity and it is only a matter of time. Machines asking the question, ‘Who am I’ are just around the corner. The corner might be a few thousand years from now but it will come.
Indian philosophies are very clear on its stand (a few western philosophers too but maintaining a contradictory deep relevance to science) that Consciousness (with a capital C) is a primary entity and stands separate to matter. Mind and matter belong to another set and are two sides of the same coin. The human brain, a manifestation of matter, does its functions when ‘electrified’ by the primary entity called Consciousness (also called Self or Brahman in Advaita Vedanta). In such a stand, machines can never develop the sentience and consciousness which the west is so scared of.
Machines might become the smartest with the progress of technology and might surpass the capacities of the human brain in terms of what it can achieve. However, they will always fall short of the primary qualities of Consciousness as per Indian philosophies- ‘Existence, Awareness, and Bliss’ (I know I exist, I am aware of myself, and I have a potential for maximal bliss). Machines will never have these according to Indian philosophy though their potential to help human brains might appear limitless. Importantly, the ethical issues which plagues the western world regarding the ‘progress of science’ distinctly fails to create an impression in Indian philosophies. Dangers exist in the external world which may even lead to extinction of the species and the world but the purpose of life is entirely in a different direction turned inwards towards the Self.
LANGUAGE, RACE, TAMIL, DRAVIDIANISM, AND THE UNITY OF INDIA
JAN 7, 2023
‘Language is the life of a race,’ declares Stalinji, the CM of Tamil Nadu at a literary festival. Sociologists, geneticists, and scientists the world over have condemned race as a concept to the dustbins. If we want any semblance of unity in the country and the world, politicians and intellectuals of all hues, including those in the media, should simply drop the use of the word race. The Dravidian movement, initiated by EV Ramaswamy Naicker (Periyar), is singularly responsible for the most divisive narratives in India based on some wrong notions of race and the dubious Aryan Invasion Theory which turns most North Indians and Brahmins into descendants of the invading Aryans and Tamils as the indigenous Dravidians. Their political usage pits a “Dravidian culture and race” against the separate so-called “Aryan” culture.
Archaeology, epigraphy (study of inscriptions), numismatics (study of coins), literature (the Sangam literature) clearly shows that culturally the people of the South and the North were indeed one. The coins and the rich Sangam literature (300 BCE to 300 CE) show not only extensive references to Vedic sacrifices but a complete absence of any mention of a great clash between Aryans and Dravidians. Vedic and Puranic themes inextricably weave into the most ancient culture of the Tamil land known to us. Today, as is usual of most languages, Tamil language has assimilated and uses between 20-40% of the commonly used vocabulary from Sanskrit.
Surprisingly, there are no references to the word “Dravida” in Tolkappiyam- the oldest surviving work on Tamil grammar. The first use in Tamil is in the 18th century. In the Vedic-Puranic-Itihaasic literature, “Arya” denoted a noble person and “Dravida” was in a purely geographical sense. As one scholar shows, “Dravida” is not of Tamil origin at all because Tamil grammar neither provides for a word beginning with a sonant (hence cannot begin with d) nor with a half-syllable. The word has most likely Prakrit or Sanskrit roots.
Without conflict, there was every sign of a deep cultural interaction between North and South. In reverse, the genius of Tamil land has contributed extensively by way of temple architecture, music, dance, and literature to the North and other South Asian countries too. “Dravidian” has a meaning either in the old geographical sense or in the modern linguistic sense; racial and cultural meanings are unscientific and irrational and are simply a manifestation of a divisive colonial mindset. In the Dravidian accomplishments developing to its own genius there was never a loss of the central Indian spirit and culture. As one people, we are prouder of Tamil language and culture than the Tamilians themselves.
THE NEGATIVE PERCEPTIONS OF MARRIAGE
NOVEMBER 11, 2022
The small news piece on director Atlee who had positive things to say about marriage which made him into a ‘man from a boy’ was heartening. For the contemporary generation, the perception of marriage is becoming extremely negative. They are preferring to remain alone or are coming out of marriages at differences which to a generation back seem trivial. Either there is a fear or a disrespect towards the institution of marriage as a building block for a healthy society. The alarming trend against marriage is visible in western countries. In the USA, paradoxically with increasing welfare policies where the state takes the role of a father, nearly 45% of children in Black communities are born out of marriage to a single mother. Typically, in western countries, one cannot ask the name of the father in a newborn unit. This is one of the first explicit instructions for fresh doctors from India. Thankfully, the situation is not so bad in India. However, in the urban sphere and amongst the educated, questioning marriage and its need to have children seem to be on the rise. There might be endless debates on the need for marriage but statistically it is clear that both in males and females born of single mothers in the US, the social and civil problems like drug addiction, unemployment, violence is higher. So, the news item was nice and it would be appreciative if some of our celebrities make more positive statements about marriage. This generation tends to look at them more as role models than their ‘old generation’ parents!
SCIENTIFIC TEMPER AND INDIANS- DO WE REALLY LACK IT?
AUGUST 24, 2021
Madabhushi Sridhar has written a thought-provoking article on scientific temper as a fundamental duty (THI 24th August 2021). For Nehru, the west held all solutions for Indian problems. His obsession with the future made him reject the Indian past. His seven principles of a new India based on modernity: national unity, parliamentary democracy, industrialisation, socialism, scientific temper, secularism, and non-alignment, gained a supreme moral authority. Not questioning it has stunted the growth of political philosophy in India, says economist Bhikhu Parekh. Scientific temper desired the dogmatic, mystical, speculative, uncritical, inward-looking India to become a strong society like Europe by fostering rational and empirical reasoning, developing science and technology, and rejecting faith. Nehru and those following him held the Orientalist view strongly that science and technology was primitive in ancient India and one of the reasons for its colonisations.
As Dr Balagangadhara explains in his comparative studies on cultures how religion is the root structural model for Western culture. Religion, encouraged always by the ‘why’ question, searches for underlying explanations to connect unrelated and related phenomena to each other. Thus, the scientific attitude is contiguous with a religious attitude. This is the reason the natural sciences emerged in religious cultures. Further, when the ever-expanding sciences start threatening the limits of knowledge of religious doctrines, there is an obvious antipathy. The hostility of the Church to scientific theories is a consequence of this clash. Christianity ended up treating the scientific theories as rivals. In contrast, Indian culture (with innumerable traditions) structures on ‘rituals’ where the dominant question is ‘how’ or the performative ability. This also produces knowledge and science but in a different manner. The most obvious difference is the almost unknown ‘clash’ between the sacred and the secular in Indian culture.
The five groups of texts – Vedas, Upavedas, Vedangas, Puranas, and Darsanas with their thousands of texts laid the foundation for the knowledge and the wisdom of our heritage. These covered the concrete and the abstract, the secular and the spiritual. David Pingree estimates that India has at least 30 million surviving ancient manuscripts in Indian libraries, repositories, and private collections. They deal with a huge array of topics: philosophies, systems of yoga, grammar, language, logic, debate, poetics, aesthetics, cosmology, mythology, ethics, literature of all genres from poetry to historical tradition, performing and non-performing arts, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, chemistry, metallurgy, botany, zoology, geology, medical systems, governance, administration, water management, town planning, civil engineering, ship making, agriculture, polity, martial arts, games, brainteasers, omens, ghosts, accounting, and many more. The production was colossal and in almost every regional language. No student of India enters college internalising this kind of information about India unfortunately.
Western science emerged and thrived (and still does) on a strong idea that man is the peak of creation and the purpose of nature is to serve humans. These are ideas antithetical to Indian traditional values. Knowledge and science grow but it is more in harmony with the rest of creation and nature. The West, obsessed with order and chaos, hence produced philosophers, theologians, and scientists trying to make theories breaking away from practical life. The other type of culture (Indian or Asian) had invested its intellectual energies in creating, sustaining, and continuously modifying a social or practical order. Practical actions, like rituals, became sophisticated patterns of interaction.
The two cultures met in an unfortunate set of circumstances. The Asians were willing to learn and the West thought it could only teach, says Balagangadhara. Later Indian intellectuals and politicians with a heavy ‘colonial consciousness’, go on implying that somehow Indians do not have a scientific temper which they need to inculcate as a ‘national duty’. It is only a profound ignorance of what Indian culture is all about and what Indian scientific achievements in the past have truly been. Our influential academia in the post-independent India infested with a single ideology of the ‘exploiter and exploited’ have in fact inflicted far more damage to the Indian intellect than the combined Islamic and colonial rule of hundreds of years.
COLONIAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEMS- INDIAN AND WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
OCTOBER 21, 2021
‘I feel, therefore, I am alive’ by Mohan Kanda (THI, 20th October 2021) gives an interesting philosophical view of the world and the process of perception but it is strictly a materialistic or ‘scientific’ view which has caused deep troubles to the western philosophical world to date since the beginning of the 20th century. Indian thinkers and philosophers had a far more understanding of the process of perception which they covered in their treatises almost a thousand years back. It is the most unfortunate debacle of our education systems after independence, a continuation of the colonial legacy, that they ignored teaching the growing generations the richness, depth, antiquity, and sophistication of Indian philosophy.
Western philosophers have been either ignorant of Indian thought or perhaps thought that the East had nothing to contribute to philosophical thought. The separation of theology and philosophy did not happen in Europe itself until the Reformation. When we accuse Indian philosophy of being ‘religion,’ it is an application of a post-Reformation prejudice (religion- a matter of faith; philosophy- for self-reflection or critique and nothing about God, the soul, and the universe). Hegel, the German philosopher originated this prejudice and largely fashioned the Western image of India. The standard themes were: India only developed an abstract Absolute; it lacks a historical sense; it does not know of concrete individuality; and so on. Once Hegel sent Indian philosophy to departments of Religion and Indology, Philosophy never reclaimed it.
The Indian philosophical system classifies into orthodox or non-orthodox depending on whether they accept the Vedas or not respectively. The orthodox systems include the six systems called Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisesika, Mimansa, and Vedanta. The non-orthodox systems are Charvakism (materialism), Buddhism, and Jainism. Philosophy was never a dry intellectual exercise in Indian traditions but has a ‘soteriological’ power-the power of intense individual transformation from ignorance and bondage to freedom and wisdom. There is never a sacrifice to reason and experience, but what distinguishes Indian philosophy is that there is no extreme reverence to science.
When it comes to perceiving objects in the external world, the standard Western paradigm is that light falls on an object first. This reflected light enters the eyes, falls on to the retina from where neural impulses travel via the nerves to a region of the brain. Here, the image gets a reconstruction, and the person ‘sees’ the object. The same sequence is true for all the other senses too. This is the ‘stimulus-response theory of perception,’ a stimulus of some sort evoking a response inside our brains through an intermediate causal chain. Of course, there is a little difficulty in explaining how an internal image inside the brain projects to the outside world.
Hence, in effect, what we perceive in the external world are not as they really exist, but how the interpretation occurs in our brains depending on our endowed senses. It is an indirect form of reality. In Kantian philosophy, the original unknown is the ‘noumenon’ and the known constructed reality is the ‘phenomenon’. This forms the basis of both philosophy and neuroscience. However, this is incoherent in explaining the ontological status or reality of the world. If there is an unknown ‘noumenon’ and a representative ‘phenomenon’, then every object in the causal chain from the external world to the perceiver, including the intervening medium (even the brain) is unknowable.
Very briefly, in contrast, Indian philosophy for thousands of years has been clear on its stand of a ‘Natural Realism’ or ‘Direct Realism’. All the systems with some minor variations propound an active theory of perception where the perceiver is central in the scheme of things. The perceiver goes out and reaches the object in the world. This is the ‘contact-theory of perception’ of Indian philosophy. Contact with the object by the perceiver gives direct information of the world as it exists. Hence, the external world as seen or heard is an actual world in its reality and not a construction. Perception is never a valid source of knowledge in western traditions but it is the most important source of knowledge in Indian traditions.
In the Indian tradition, the cognizer (purusha) and the cognized (prakriti) belong to two distinct categories with essential characteristics of sentience or consciousness (chaitanya) and inertness (jadatva) respectively. Perception, an inside to outside process, is thus a composite process in which the self, the mind, and the sense organs together participate to establish a contact with the object. Western philosophy stays subservient to science and ties itself in knots in trying to explain the reality status of the objects in the world. Proving Indian thought from western perspective and the other way around too remains difficult due to the incommensurability problem, but Indian philosophy seems to give far better explanations of reality and the world than western philosophy. If only our education systems could teach this too.
RANDOM MUSINGS 