Wast @ India

Indian's became exposed to Western ideas for the first time as they studied in missionary schools to serve as clerks in the East India Company, the world's first corporation. Sanatan had to be suddenly defended against Western ideas, using western language & Western templates. Indian were ill- equipped to do so. So the Europeans started articulating it themselves on their terms for their benefit, judging it with their way of life. After the eighteenth century fascination with all things Indian, Orientalists spent the nineteenth century disparaging the new colony. Every time a local tried to explain the best of their faith, the Western pointed to the worst of Indian society: caste, the burning of widows, and idol worship. Indians became increasingly defensive & apologetic, as they had to constantly match Indian ways to Western benchmarks. Attempt were even made to redefine Hinduism and Christian terms, a Hindu Reformation, complete with an assembly hall where priests did not perform rituals, onlt gave sermons. Hindu goal - based 'missions' came into being, as did Hindu 'fundamentalists' determined to organise, standardize and senitize custom's and beliefs. This was when increasingly theifea of dharma started being equated with rules, ethics and morality, the Ramayana & the Mahabharata were written as Greek tragedies, and everything had a nationalistic forvour.

       Salvation for Indian thought came when Gandhi used non - violence and moral uprightness to challenge Western might. The non- violent doctrine of Jainism, the pacifism of Buddhism and the intellectual fervour of the Bhagwad Gita inspired him. That being said, Gandhi's writings and his quest for the truth, do show a leaning towards the objective rather than the subjective. Gandhi's Satyagraha was about compelling on moral & ethical grounds; it called for submitting to what he was convinced was the truth. This may have had something to do with the fact that he trained as a lawyer in London, and learnt of Gita & Buddha through the English translations of Orientalists such as Edwin, Arnold and Charles Wilkins.

When India secured political freedom, the founding fathers of the nation state, mostly educated in Europe, shied away from all things religious and mythological as the partition of India on religious grounds had made these volatile issues. The pursuit of secular, scientific and vocational goals meant that all things sanatan were sidelined.

        Most understanding of Indian thought today is drived from the work's of nineteenth century European Orientalist, twentieth century American academicians, and the writing of Indians that tend to be reactionary, defensive and apologetic. In other words, Indianness today is understood within the Western templates, with the Western lens and the Western gaze. These are so widespread that conclusions that emerge from them are assumed to be correct, as no one knows any better. Thus India, especially Hinduism, finds itself increasingly force- fitted into a Western religious framework complete with a definitive holy book(Bhagwad Gita), a trinity (Brahma, Vishnu & Shiva), a set of commandments (Manu Smriti), its own Latin (Sanskrit), a Protestant revolution (Buddhism v/s Hinduism), a heretical tradition (Tantra), a class struggle (Caste Hierarchy), a race theory (Aryans & Dravidians), a forgotten pre- history (The Indus valley cities), a disrupted Jerusalem- like geography (Ayodhya),  a authoritarian clergy who need to be overthrown (Brahmins), a pagan side that needs to be outgrown (Worship of Trees), and even a goal that need to be pursued (Liberation from Materialism). Any attempt to join the dots differently, and reveal a different pattern is met with fierce resistance and is dismissed as cultural chauvinism. This academic tsunami is only now withdrawing.

Words such 'gaze', 'code' & 'design' that are more suited to explaining the Indian way entered the English language only after the 1970's with the rise of postmodern studies and works of Foucault, Derrida, Barth's and Berger. These were not available to early writer's who sought to express Indian thoughts in Indian terms like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Vivekananda, Jyotibha Phule, Rabinder Nath Tagore, Servepalli, Radha Krishnan, C. Rajagopalachari & Iravati Karve. Only in recent times have a few Indian scholars started taking up the challenge to re- eveluate Indian ideas on Indian terms.

          Indian universities dare not touch mythology for fear of angering traditionalists and fundamentalists who still suffer from the colonial hangover of seeking literal, rational, historical and scientific interpretations for sacred stories, symbols and rituals. Western universities continue to approach Indian mythology with extreme. Western prejudice, without any empathy for its followers, angering many Indian's especially Hindus. As a result of this, an entire generation of Indians has been alienated from its vast mythic inheritance.

DP.  ...