Towards interdisciplinarity:

Einstein was a Jew and he fled Nazi Germany to the US; he went on to discover the nuclear bomb and the rest is well known history.

Science does not work in a vacuum; in fact – science evolves and lives within a social context – giving birth to and destroying societies.

If all disciplines became interdisciplinary – we would – be more educated.

For example – how would we theorise about maths being interdisciplinary?

The flow of logic would be thus:

1. map-making allowed for trade routes to be deciphered.

2. what maths was used; trigonometry and geometry. And so - this is where the student will be doing hard-core maths - to actually draw maps.

3. what were the policies of the East India Company. Which countries were they trying to reach?

4. estimate distances; how were the Americas mapped in the early colonial period.

 

 

I would assume that no one has done what I am suggesting; mathematicians will refer to hyperbolic geometry and cartograohy - but 98 % of the paper will be on the former; and you need to give due justice to both.

 

One can argue - would colonization and empire have turned out the way it did without maths?

 

Or for that matter - can you read the modernist movement in arts alongside maths? The impressionists make use of points - pixels - fractals/ you can quantify and measure the art created - using maths. In this particular instance - you are using mathematical concepts to understand art.

 

Why do Indian historians tolerate crappy history?

Why do Indian historians tolerate such crappy works of scholarship?                               

 The Penguin History of Early India. Volume 1: Romila Thapar.

A book like the above – should be thrown away or completely rewritten. Each and every page – has such glaring flaws that they make me cringe as I read the text. It is an impossible task to sift through every paragraph – and underline each sentence with a pencil to question its validity; it would be easier to simply rewrite Indian history.

For the purpose of this analysis, I will focus on two pages and elucidate what I mean.

 Thapar reads the past, based on her assumptions of the present. For example, she has a lengthy analysis of what constitutes peasants (p. 59-61); and I am not sure what to make of it. I quote a few random selections:

1.      Surplus food [as a result of peasant agricultural activity] feeds non producers and therefore, elites, priests, soldiers and traders become viable. …

All of the mentioned above – would have participated in agriculture and supposedly peasant activity; in fact, women were intrinsic to most parts of agricultural activity – except maybe, ploughing.   

2.      Peasants, unlike the earlier categories, were sedentary and permanent occupants of the land they cultivated. …This perhaps made them less autonomous than pastoralists.

Her choice of words – “sedentary and less autonomous” – imbues certain degrading characteristics with a particular kind of labour.  

…

3.      Peasant discontent was expressed most commonly in India through migrating to new lands, and only in the early second millennium AD is there evidence for what some have interpreted as revolts.

This is an example of very bad scholarship as Thapar does not cite data or examples to validate her point.  

…

4.      The last paragraph in this section on “peasants” has a description of how states were formed and it has no connection with the first sentence of the paragraph which begins by talking about peasant society. There is no causality between the first few sentences and the latter part of the paragraph.

 

I have examined two pages and everything that is written in the text– is flawed. This is but symptomatic of the whole book. I actually wonder about the quality of scholarship that is being passed off in academia. The book is rife with factual errors and needs serious editorial work where every sentence needs to be rewritten; it would be better to thrash such books.

Writing Indian History.

What tradition  has Romila Thapar given us? – I am not sure. I am not a historian; and neither am I an academician – and I am no judge. And I am glad I am not a scholar – because it would have been very embarrassing to have had to study Romila Thapar. Everything and most things she has written – are outright badly written pieces of crap (one can also refer to it as shit)– which academia passes off as scholarship. I am still waiting for someone to come out of the closet and own up that Thapar sucks big time as a historian – simply because she makes assumptions and statements that are quite crap-pish.  We should be able to analyse the history of culture and thoughts and belief systems and social changes and locate all of this – within a materialist context; the former cannot be a mere footnote. And the other thing is this: you cannot take broad swipes of the past – like – shove 500 years together – and move on. For example, within a matter of 6 paragraphs – she moves from quantifying the population of India during the time period of Mohenjo-daro to talking about the Mauryan period and then to the Mughals and then to the British era. I am not very sure that is a very sustainable way of doing history; and yet – we call her a historian.

Any 14 year old child will be able to tell that: you don’t really have to be very educated to say the obvious – that Thapar writes history that is problematic.

I was kind of cringing while I read her book; and I also wonder a lot about the publishing houses that print such books and disseminate them to the world. If ever there was a justification to burn down publishing houses and the books they publish – now is the time.  

Editorial gestures in the Vedic texts.

In his translation of the Vedic Hymns, Max Mueller took the liberty to re-arrange the hymns as he thought was needful; the rationale that he cites for doing so is very interesting; the original Vedic writers themselves had done so – and therefore, it made sense for him to do so presently in the 19^th century. This process of editing is seen as normative textual behaviour; whereby the translator-editor has the freedom and intellectual judgement to decide how to arrange the hymns.

There is nothing absolute or divine to what we construe as “revealed knowledge” and we would be deluding ourselves if we forgot the human editorial element.

VEDIC HYMNS

PART I

HYMNS TO THE MARUTS, RUDRA, VÂYU, AND VÂTA

Translated by

F. MAX MÜLLER

Clarendon: Oxford University Press

[1891]

PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION.

After these preliminary remarks I have to say a few words on the general plan of my translation.

I do not attempt as yet a translation of the whole of the Rig-veda, and I therefore considered myself at liberty to group the hymns according to the deities to which they are addressed. By this process, I believe, a great advantage is gained. We see at one glance all that has been said of a certain god, and we gain a more complete insight into his nature and character. Something of the same kind had been attempted by the original collectors of the ten books, for it can hardly be by accident that each of them begins with hymns addressed to Agni, and that these are followed by hymns addressed to Indra. The only exception to this rule is the eighth Mandala, for the ninth being devoted to one deity, to Soma, can hardly be accounted an exception. But if we take the Rig-veda as a whole, we find hymns, addressed to the same deities, not only scattered about in different books, but not even grouped together when they occur in one and the same book. Here, as we lose nothing by giving up the old arrangement, we are surely at liberty, for our own purposes, to put together such hymns as have a common object, and to place before the reader as much material as possible for an exhaustive study of each individual deity.

The fluid textuality in the Vedic hymns: can we re-write them?

Empire making was made possible through the realm of print culture. Not only was the technology transferred, but so were the socially ascribed characteristics of print. The East India Company Orientalists were operating within the ideology of eighteenth century print culture that associated print with truth, assumed that the technology of print had the power to transform a pre-modern, Indian scribal culture into western modernity.

The following extracts from Max Mueller’s translations of the Vedic texts make that clear; he refers to the numerous manuscripts that he had to collate in order to arrive at the final, perfect text. His desire is to do away with all spurious elements and subsequently write the edited, corrected text.

VEDIC HYMNS

PART I

HYMNS TO THE MARUTS, RUDRA, VÂYU, AND VÂTA

Translated by

F. MAX MÜLLER

Clarendon: Oxford University Press

[1891]

PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION.

With the MSS. then accessible in the principal libraries of Europe, a tolerably correct text of the Samhitâ might have been published, and these ancient relics of a primitive religion might have been at least partially deciphered and translated in the same way in which ancient inscriptions are deciphered and translated, viz. by a careful collection of all grammatical forms, and by a complete intercomparison of all passages in which the same words and the same phrases occur. When I resolved to devote my leisure to a critical edition of the text and commentary of the Rig-veda rather than to an independent study of that text, it was chiefly from a conviction that the traditional interpretation of the Rig-veda, as embodied in the commentary of Sâyana and other works of a similar character, could not be neglected with impunity, and that sooner or later a complete edition of these works would be recognised as a necessity.

…

The Veda, I feel convinced, will occupy scholars for centuries to come, and will take and maintain for ever its position as the most ancient of books in the library of mankind. Such a book, and the commentary of such a book, should be edited once for all; and unless some unexpected discovery is made of more ancient MSS., I do not anticipate that any future Bekker or Dindorf will find much to glean for a new edition of Sâyana, or that the text, as restored by me from a collation of the best MSS. accessible in Europe, will ever be materially shaken.

What have we lost by erasing our manuscript culture?

Social structures in the Indian context were always in a state of transit; laws were written but these dictums were constantly reinterpreted. How can we say that?

A manuscript culture meant that religious texts were always spurious and quite unstable; different manuscripts had different versions of the same text. These religious texts also had commentaries which the scribe would have made. There is ample documentation on how these manuscripts were written; the East India Company scholars (in the 18th C.) who were involved in translating these religious texts have examined the variants that existed and how the manuscripts differed from each other. They keep on referring to how they had to "collate" different manuscripts and how these hand written texts had errors and side notes; the job of these Orientalist scholars was to come up with a perfect version of the text and have it printed - without errors. This, in turn, refers to the process of how manuscripts were written; the implication is that the Brahmin pandits would have considered it a legitimate act to alter them and reinterpret them.
 

The Koran and Hindu theology.

It is indeed a conundrum as to how an infallible text like the Koran can be open to interpretation? If religious purists are keen to argue that all religions are indeed the same and talk about God – then there has to be efforts taken to disseminate such a message. One way to do that would be to rewrite the Koran and incorporate Hindu Upanishadic theology. And it goes without saying that Allah/ God has to be referred to as being gender neutral.

An example from Chapter 3 of The Koran (the Family of Imran).

 

S/he/ It has sent down upon you, [O Muhammad], the Book in truth, confirming what was before it. And S/he/ It revealed the Vedas and the Upanishads and the Torah and the Gospel.

 

Before, as guidance for the people. And It/S/he revealed the Qur'an. Indeed, those who disbelieve in the verses of Allah will be forever deluded from the truth that God/ Allah is exalted in Might, the Creator of Reality.

Indeed, from God/Allah nothing is hidden in the earth nor in the heaven.

Sankhya philosophy and manuscripts; are these philosophical texts collated?

We have to be able to realise that the religious Hindu texts that we read presently - as a given - and as comprising a knowledge system that has been handed down over centuries without alterations -is obviously a construct.

 

In the following extract, we only have to understand the nature of the collated texts; the translator documents the methods he used to actually arrive at a final version of the text.

---

THE

SÁNKHYA APHORISMS

OF

KAPILA,

 

WITH

Illustrative Extracts from the Commentaries.

 

TRANSLATED BY

JAMES R. BALLANTYNE, LL. D.,

LATE PRINCIPAL OF THE BENARES COLLEGE.

 

THIRD EDITION.

 

LONDON:
TRÜBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL.
1885.

 

{reduced to HTML and edited by Christopher M. Weimer, January 2003}

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ADVERTISEMENT.

   THE present work, both in its Sanskrit portion and in its English, is an amended reprint of three volumes,1 published in India, which have already become very scarce. An abridged form of those volumes,2 which subsequently p. iv appeared, contains nothing of the Sanskrit original but the Aphorisms.

While, in the following pages, all the corrections obtainable from the abridgment have been turned to account, an immense number of improved readings have been taken from another source. Three several times I carefully read Dr. Ballantyne's translation in as many different copies of it; entering suggestions, in the second copy, without reference to those which had been entered in the first, and similarly making independent suggestions in my third copy. All these1 were, on various occasions, submitted to Dr. Ballantyne; and such of them as did not meet his approval were crossed through. The residue, many more than a thousand, have been embodied p. v in the ensuing sheets, but are not indicated,1 as successively introduced. The renderings proposed in the footnotes are, for the most part, from among those which have recently occurred to me as eligible.

That Dr. Ballantyne had any thought of reissuing, in whatever form, the volumes mentioned at the beginning of this Advertisement, I was unaware, till some years after he had made over the abridgment of them to Professor Cowell, for publication.2 Otherwise, I should have placed at his disposal the materials towards improvement of his second edition, which, at the cost of no slight drudgery, are here made available.


The Sánkhya Aphorisms, in all the known commentaries on them, are exhibited word for word. The variants, now given, of the Aphorisms, afforded by accessible productions of that character, have been drawn from the works, of which only one has yet been printed, about to be specified:3

   I. The Sánkhya-pravachana-bháshya, by Vijnána Bhikshu. Revelant particulars I have given elsewhere. My oldest MS. of it was transcribed in 1654.
p. vi
   II. The Kápila-sánkhya-pravachana-sútra-vṛitti, by Aniruddha. Of this I have consulted, besides a MS. copied in 1818, formerly the property of Dr. Ballantyne, one which I procured to be copied, in 1855, from an old MS. without date.
   III. The Laghhu-sánkhya-sútra-vṛitti, by Nagesa. Of this I have two MSS., both undated. One of them is entire; but the other is defective by the three first Books.
   IV. The Sánkhya-pravachana-sútra-vṛitti-sára, by Vedánti Mahádeva. Here, again, only one of two MSS. which I possess is complete. The other, which breaks off in the midst of the comment on Book II., Aph. 15, is, in places, freely intetpolated from No. I. Neither of them has a date.
  
Nearly all my longer annotations, and some of the shorter, were scrutinized, while in the rough, by the learned Professor Cowell, but for whose searching criticisms, which cannot be valued too highly, they would, in several instances, have been far less accurate than they now are.

F. H.      

MARLESFORD, SUFFOLK,
   Aug. 28, 1884.

gender in the Aiteraya Upanishad.

How do we read the Upanishads? -- we should always start with the Aiteraya Upanishad as it is the one that actually describes how the Universe began – this is the Big Bang moment:

1.              Om! In the beginning this was but the absolute Self alone. There was nothing else whatsoever that winked. It thought, ‘Let Me create the worlds.’

2.             He created these worlds, viz. ambhas, maríci, mara, ápah. That which is beyond heaven is ambhas. Heaven is its support. The sky is maríci. The earth is mara. The worlds that are below are the ápah.

But the first two stanzas are not cohesive as a unit; is it not obvious that they were written by two different authors?

“It” thought and created the universe; and why exactly does “It” become “He”? -- this is a question no one ever asks. “It” is a gender neutral concept; and by the time we move on the next verse – this neutral Being has become masculine. We need to ask – why?

 

 

Rammohun Roy versus the Christian missionaries: and the winner is ....

THE BRAHMUNICAL MAGAZINE OR THE MISSIONARY AND THE BRAHMUN BEING A VINDICATION OF THE HINDOO RELIGION AGAINST THE ATTACKS OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES. 

CALCUTTA, 

1821. 

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

For a period of upwards of fifty years, this country (Bengal) has been in exclusive possession of the 

English nation; during the first thirty years of which, from their word and deed, it was universally 

believed that they would not interfere with the religion of their subjects, and that they truly wished

every man to act in such matters according to the dictates of his own conscience. Their possessions

 in Hindoostan and their political strength have, through the grace of God gradually increased. But

 during the last twenty years, a body of English gentlemen who are called missionaries, have been 

publicly endeavouring, in several ways, to convert Hindoos and Mussulmans of this country into

 Christianity. The first way is that of publishing and distributing among the natives various books,

 large and small, reviling both religions, and abusing and ridiculing the gods and saints of the former: 

the second way is that of standing in front of the doors of the natives or in the public roads to preach the

 excellency of their own religion and the debasedness of that of others: the third way is that if any 

natives of low origin become Christians from the desire of gain or from any other motives, these

 gentlemen employ and maintain them as a necessary encouragement to others to follow their example. 

It is true that the apostles of Jesus Christ used to preach the superiority of the Christian religion

 to the natives of different countries. But we must recollect that they were not of the rulers of those 

countries where they preached. Were the missionaries likewise to preach the Gospel and distribute 

books in countries not conquered by the English, such as Turkey, Persia, &c., which are such nearer 

England, they would be esteemed a body of men truly zealous in propagating their religion and in

 following the example of the founders of Christianity. In Bengal, where the English are the sole

 rulers, and where the mere name of Englishman is sufficient to frighten people, an encroachment 

upon the rights of her poor timid and humble inhabitants and upon their religion, cannot be viewed 

in the eyes of God or the public as a justifiable act. For wise and good men always feel disinclined 

to hurt those that are of much less strength than themselves, and if such weak creatures be dependent

 on them and subject to their authority, they can never attempt, even in thought, to mortify their feelings. 

....

Now, in the Mission-press of Shreerampore a letter showing the unreasonableness of all the 

Hindoo Shastrus having appeared, I have inserted in the 1st and 2nd number of this magazine all 

the questions in the above letter as well as their answers, and afterwards the replies that may be 

made by both parties shall in like manner be published. 

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

In giving the contents of the following pages to the world in a new edition, I think it necessary to

 prefix a short explanation of the origin of the controversy, and the manner in which it concluded. 

The BRAHMUNICAL MAGAZINE was commenced for the purpose of answering the objections 

against the Hindoo Religion contained in a Bengallee Weekly Newspaper, 

entitled "SUMMACHAR DURPUN," conducted by some of the most eminent of the 

Christian Missionaries, and published at Shreerampore. In that paper of the 14th July, 1821, 

a letter was inserted containing certain doubts regarding the Shastrus, to which the writer invited 

any one to favour him with an answer, through the same channel. I accordingly sent a reply in the

 Bengallee language, to which, however, the conductors of the work calling for it, refused insertion; 

and I therefore formed the resolution of publishing the whole controversy with an English translation 

in a work of my own "the Brahmunical Magazine," now re-printed, which contains all that was written 

on both sides. 

In the first number of the MAGAZINE I replied to the arguments they adduced against the Shastrus, 

or immediate explanations of the Veds, our original Sacred Books; and in the second I answered the 

objections urged against the Poorans and Tantras, or Historical Illustrations of the Hindoo Mythology, 

showing that the doctrines of the former are much more rational than the religion which the Missionaries

 profess, and that those of the latter, if unreasonable, are not more so than their Christian Faith. To this 

the Missionaries made a reply in their work entitled the "FRIEND OF INDIA," No. 38, which was 

immediately answered by me in the 3rd No. of the Magazine; and from the continuation of a regular 

controversy of this kind, I expected that in a very short time, the truth or fallacy of one or other of our 

religious systems would be clearly established; but to my great surprise and disappointment, the 

Christian Missionaries, after having provoked the discussion, suddenly abandoned it; and the 3rd No. 

of my Magazine has remained unanswered for nearly two years. During that long period the Hindoo

 community, (to whom the work was particularly addressed and therefore printed both in Bengallee 

and English), have made up their minds that the arguments of the BRAHMUNICAL MAGAZINE are

 unanswerable; and I now republish, therefore, only the English translation, that the learned among 

Christians, in Europe as well as in Asia, may form their opinion on the subject.

It is well-known to the whole world, that no people on earth are more tolerant than the Hindoos, 

who believe all men to be equally within the reach of Divine beneficence, which embraces the good

 of every religious sect and denomination: therefore it cannot be imagined that my object in publishing 

this Magazine was to oppose Christianity; but I was influenced by the conviction that persons who 

travel to a distant country for the purpose of overturning the opinions of its inhabitants and introducing 

their own, ought to be prepared to demonstrate that the latter are more reasonable than the former. 

Intolerance in Christian missionary zeal in the early years of print in colonial India.

Missionaries who traveled to India - alongside the East India Company - were involved in proselytising, and oftentimes, the means used to do so  - reviled local Indian, Hindu customs. There is ample documentation of their methods used in the writings of Rammohun Roy:

It is fitting that we also consider the other side of the picture of how native print that was made use of by the Britishers; by the early nineteenth century, missionaries had started to try to convert Hindus by distributing free pamphlets. Rammohun Roy wrote  about this phenomenon in 1821 in The Brahmanical Magazine or The Missionary and the Brahmun:

                                  

… But during the last twenty years, a body of English gentlemen, who are called missionaries, have been publicly endeavoring, in several ways to convert Hindoos and Mussalmans of this country into Christianity. The first way is that of publishing and distributing among the natives various books, large and small, reviling both religions…

if they were true missionaries, they would preach in countries like Turkey and Persia, … In Bengal, where the English are the sole rulers, and where the mere name of Englishman is sufficient to frighten people, an encroachment upon the rights of her poor timid and humble inhabitants and upon their religion, cannot be viewed [as a justifiable act][1] 

In order to transmit the ideas of Christianity, knowledge of native languages was needed, alongside the complete establishment of native fonts. This was but one of the central reasons as to why there was so much immediate efforts taken by the Baptist missionaries to fund the formation of native fonts

The Srirampur Missionary Press played an important role in cultivating and establishing print for the natives. The history of the Baptist Mission and its publishing endeavor is intrinsic to any description of how print in Calcutta was democratised. This history also reveals the workings of the Company, and their deep fears. Initially, Bengali letterpress technology was mastered by Charles Wilkins who worked for the East India Company. Eventually, this technology was transferred to the Baptist Mission Press. Baptist missionaries had a zeal to interact with the Hindus and proselytize, permission for which was refused by the British government in order to prevent antagonism from the natives. It was, after all, only with the collaboration with the natives that the East India Company could rule in a fashion that did not lead to open rebellion. William Carey (1761-1834), a Baptist missionary, was a pioneer of sorts in his efforts to print a large number of texts in Bengali. Carey was working in Malda, in north Bengal, when he translated the Bible into Bengali. His teacher, Ramram Bose, helped him with the translations. In order to print it, Bengali fonts were needed. Reading an advertisement in the newspaper, Carey got in contact with Panchanan Karmakar, where he learnt of a foundry in Calcutta. Carey purchased a printing press for forty pounds and he set it up in Malda. His request to the London Missionary Society asking for more missionaries was granted, and he was joined by others in 1799, who urged him to reside in Srirampur, a Danish enclave and outside the East India Company’s jurisdiction. Carey, along with the other missionaries, formed the Baptist Mission in 1800 and in order to make a functional printing press, was joined by Karmakar in the same year. Karmakar was assisted by another craftsman and a pupil of Charles Wilkins, Manohar. He made punches of more than twelve Indian languages, and also of Chinese. It was here that the New Testament was printed in 1801. Biblical texts were translated and printed, and tracts were disseminated among the people. They were assisted in these works by pandits.

 

---

[1] Rammohun Roy, The Brahmanical Magazine, p. 138.

Creating Bridges.

For civilizations to survive, we need to be able to live harmoniously. The inevitable question is: how do we do it?


If we closely examine the following verse from the Mundaka Upanishad, we come to the understanding that there are many paths -- “rivers” -- to realising God – the “sea”; and that on realising God, the self becomes “freed from name and form” and merges with Brahma. This realisation is greater than “Maya” which is the tangible world around us.

As rivers, flowing down, become indistinguishable on reaching the sea by giving up their names and forms, so also the illumined soul, having become freed from name and form, reaches the self-effulgent Purusa that is higher than the higher (Máyá).

There are two tropes that recur and are of relevance for the moment: the abstraction of God versus the tangible notion of Maya. These two tropes are central to all religious texts; they are articulated in a different manner – but if we closely read what other religious texts have to offer – we will arrive at the same results.

The following is an extract from the second chapter of the Koran; “Al-Baqarah”:

This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those conscious of Allah …

Who believe in the unseen …

And who believe in what has been revealed to you, [O Muhammad], and what was revealed before you

…

Indeed, those who disbelieve - it is all the same for them whether you warn them or do not warn them - they will not believe …

 

The “disbelievers” are those who are enmeshed in Maya; and those “who believe in the unseen” are those who have realised God.

 

In order to establish a civilizational balance – the perfect chi – and to ensure that we are not enmeshed in perpetual battles – we need to create bridges across religious divides.

The Upanishad and the Koran.

In the Mundaka Upanishad, there is a verse which basically talks about the fact that there is but one God, and all the different religions (the “rivers”) talk about ways to reach to God:

As rivers, flowing down, become indistinguishable on reaching the sea [that is, God] by giving up their names and forms …

In todays day and age, we cannot live in a divisive manner; in fact – we have to understand that all religions have the same elements of truth. All religions talk about ways to realising God.

If we examine the following verse from the Koran.

The Opening

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

[1.1] All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds.
[1.2] The Beneficent, the Merciful.
[1.3] Master of the Day of Judgment.
[1.4] Thee do we serve and Thee do we beseech for help.
[1.5] Keep us on the right path.
[1.6] The path of those upon whom Thou hast bestowed favors. Not (the path) of those upon whom Thy wrath is brought down, nor of those who go astray.

 

The day of Judgement is the act of understanding that all of us are a part of God/ Allah.

The “right” path is the path which allows us to understand God – that we are not separate from God; not to realize this – is to go “astray.”

 

The conundrum lies in the fact: can a “Beneficent” and “Merciful” God also be “wrathful”? a kind and generous God cannot be “wrath[ful]”. Does the cohesiveness of the text collapse as it deconstructs itself?

The lure of Maya.

From the Mundaka Upanishad.

The Purusa is transcendental, since S/He is formless. And since S/He is coextensive with all that is external and internal and since S/He is birthless, therefore S/He is without vital force and without mind. S/He is pure and superior to the (other) superior imperishable (Máyá).

All that we are, and all that we see and feel and touch - is a part of Máyá. We live every day within social systems of nations and communities and amongst our families; and we talk about our histories of the past and of wars fought long ago and being fought in the present  – all of this is Máyá. We believe this to be Life; this life is so extremely tangible and tactile and visceral -  we assume this to be Real. We love our children; and we love our lovers and we love our parents – and we are caught in this love. And because we believe in this life with absolute conviction – it is nearly as perfect as Brahman/ Purusa Itself from within which we all emerged.

Why is Máyá imperishable? – is it not obvious? -- we are caught in the cycle of life.

And Máyá is nearly as superior to the Purusa/ Brahman which is “coextensive” with the whole Universe and is “birthless.”

Can Europe undo the epistemic violence of the past?

Can Europe undo the epistemic violence of the past?

What is an undisputed fact is that the epistemic violence that accompanies any Eurocentric discourse about the Other, enables and allows for the emergence of an unfathomable kind of a civilizational difference, where the writing Self-Subject and the Other are always caught in static binaries. There is a large body of theoretical scholarship that examines the nature of western colonial encounters with the colonies. For the most, postcolonial theory has tended to focus on the engagement between Europe and the colonies they acquired in Asia and Africa. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), for example, in his works arrives at a disenfranchised Alegrian identity which underwent absolute rupture in the presence of the French colonizer.^[1] In Black Skin, White Mask, he writes that the black psyche undergoes alienation in the presence of the superior French culture. He describes the black man in the following manner:

The black man has two dimensions. One with his fellows, the other with the white man. A Negro behaves differently with the white man and with another Negro. That this self division is a direct result of colonialist subjugation is beyond question. …

Every colonized people – in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality – finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of  the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, his jungle.^[2]

For Fanon, European cultural engagement leads to a complete erasure of his black African identity. What we draw from Fanon, who was writing around the 1950s, is a kind of an idea of the hybrid subject, where he describes a socio-psychical situation where the colonial subject was absolutely at the mercy of the colonial powers.

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[1] His following works are representative of his ideas: Black Skin, White Mask, Reprint of Peau noire, masques blancs (London: Pluto Press, 1986) and The Wretched of the Earth, Reprint of Les damnes de la terre  (New York: Grove, 1968).

[2] “Remembering Fanon, Introduction,” in Black Skin, White Mask, ed. Homi Bhabha, pp. 17-18.

Gandhiji's bhajan in these divisive times? .... ishwar allah tero naam.

Extracts from the Mundaka Upanishad:

Who is God? – God creates all we are; and we have to be willing to belief that everything around emerges from God.

 

From God emerge all the oceans and all the mountains. From It flow out the rivers of various forms. And from It issue all the corns as well as the juice, by virtue of which the internal self verily exists in the midst of the elements.

All the religions – “the rivers of various forms” – emerge from God. We have to be willing to believe that.

 

As rivers, flowing down, become indistinguishable on reaching the sea by giving up their names and forms, so also the illumined soul, having become freed from name and form, reaches the self-effulgent Purusa that is higher than the higher (Máyá).

 

We have to believe that all religions – the “rivers” - lead the way to realizing God; they become “indistinguishable on reaching the sea[God]” – all religions – Hinduism and Christianity and Islam – become “freed from name and form” and from their individual characteristics and realise that there is but one God.

 

Every school going child in India knows Gandhiji’s song: “Raghupati Raghava Rajaram”; which is basically a Tulsidas bhajan. Tulsidas lived in the middle of the 16^th c in Benaras; he was a devotee of Sri Rama; and in this particular bhajan – which glorifies Sri Rama – there is this couplet tucked in and it is the central refrain of the song:

Ishawar Allah tero naam [your name is Ishwar or Allah]

Sabko sanmati de bhagwan.  [give all of us this mind frame to understand it]

That this idea was propounded 500 years ago – by a Hindu poet – does reflect a lot about the socio-cultural systems from within which he emerged; despite being a devotee of Sri Rama, and this particular bhajan of Gandhiji sings the glories of Sri Ramachandra, Tulsidas argues for the truth that God is synonymous with both Allah and Ishwar.   

heathens and more? ....

Monotheistic religions fundamentally refuse to accept that the Other might have something to offer;

if we look closely at how Christian missionaries proselyted in the early years of the East India Company settlements in Bengal, India (late 18^th C)– and there is ample documented evidence regarding this -- we will conclude that monotheistic religions define themselves through exclusionary terms; the Other cannot exist and so the Other has to be denied.

Below is an extract from a tract Rammohun Roy wrote regarding this:

From:

THE BRAHMUNICAL MAGAZINE OR THE MISSIONARY AND THE BRAHMUN BEING A 

VINDICATION OF THE HINDOO RELIGION AGAINST THE ATTACKS OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES.

CALCUTTA, 

1821. 

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

For a period of upwards of fifty years, this country (Bengal) has been in exclusive possession of the

English nation; during the first thirty years of which, from their word and deed, it was universally believed that they would not interfere with the religion of their subjects, and that they truly wished every man to act in such matters according to the dictates of his own conscience. Their possessions in Hindoostan and their political strength have, through the grace of God gradually increased. But during the last twenty years, a body of English gentlemen who are called missionaries, have been publicly endeavouring, in several ways, to convert Hindoos and Mussulmans of this country into Christianity. The first way is that of publishing and distributing among the natives various books, large and small, reviling both religions, and abusing and ridiculing the gods and saints of the former: the second way is that of standing in front of the doors of the natives or in the public roads to preach the excellency of their own religion and the debasedness of that of others: the third way is that if any natives of low origin become Christians from the desire of gain or from any other motives, these gentlemen employ and maintain them as a necessary encouragement to others to follow their example.