Modern Frames and Premodern Themes in Indian Philosophy
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Modern Frames and Premodern Themes in Indian Philosophy

Border, Self and the Other

A. Raghuramaraju

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Modern Frames and Premodern Themes in Indian Philosophy

Border, Self and the Other

A. Raghuramaraju

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About This Book

This book presents a fascinating examination of modern Indian philosophical thought from the margins. It considers the subject from two perspectives – how it has been understood beyond India and how Indian thinkers have treated Western ideas in the context of Indian society. The book discusses the concepts of the self, the other and the border that underline various debates on modernity. In this framework, it proposes the notion of the other as an enabler in taking cue from the lives of Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. It focusses on the nature and compulsions of the colonised self, and its response to the body of unfamiliar and sometimes oppressive ideas. The study traces these themes with allusion to the works of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon and Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya and the Bhagavad Gita. The author exposes the limitations in existing theories of self, the incompatibility between the slavery of self and svaraj in ideas, how the premodern village intersects modern city and democracy, the radical challenges that confront society with its accumulated social evils, inequality, hierarchy and the need for reform and non-violence.

This engaging work will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Indian philosophy, social and political philosophy, Indian political theory, postcolonialism and South Asian studies.

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Year
2017
ISBN
9781351797214

Part I

Self and other

1 Slavery of the spirit and svaraj in Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya

This chapter examines the nature of the colonised self whose spirit is enslaved, as discussed in ‘Svaraj in Ideas’ by Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya. There are several gaps, inconsistencies and claims in the scholarship on this important essay. The first section will undertake to organise these in a systematic manner, to make them available for close philosophical scrutiny. The next section will examine the concept of svaraj and scrutinise the relation between the incompatible concepts, namely, slavery and svaraj, and the last section will show the asymmetry between his claim for svaraj that his recommending in his other writing Indian solution to Western problems.

I

‘Svaraj in Ideas’ is an influential and popular talk delivered by Bhattacharyya to the students of Hooghly College, Hooghly, where he was the principal during 1928–1930 (Ghosh 1984: 513; Bagchi 1992: 194), and was later published in The Visva-Bharati Quarterly, vol. 20, 1954, pp. 103–14 (Shah et al. 1984: 383).1 This influential essay was not included in Studies in Philosophy, a volume that claims to collect ‘all the published and only a few of the unpublished philosophical writings of Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya’ (Gopinath Bhattacharyya 1983: vii). In this context, Gopinath Bhattacharyya, the editor of this collection, admits that there ‘remains over an immense mass of manuscripts which will, perhaps, remain unpublished for all the time to come’ (1983: vii). ‘Svaraj in Ideas’, though published, was not included in these volumes. This collection was first published as a two-volume work in 1958 by Progressive Publisher, Calcutta. It was later reprinted as a single volume by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, in 1983, and a revised and enlarged edition was again brought out by the same publisher in 2008.
However, this essay has attracted more attention than Bhattacharyya’s other works, including his philosophical work Subject as Freedom, which he wrote at the Indian Institute of Philosophy, Amalner. Interestingly, and perhaps intriguingly, the Krishna Chandra Memorial Volume edited by S. K. Moitra, G. R. Malkani, T. R. V. Murti and Kalidas Bhattacharyya, and published by the Indian Institute of Philosophy, Amalner (1958), and the ‘Special Issue on the Philosophy of K. C. Bhattacharyya’ published by the Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1992, did not have any papers that discussed this essay.
The first major interest in this essay can be seen in a special issue of the Indian Philosophical Quarterly, 1984. K. J. Shah, Ramchandra Gandhi, S. S. Deshpande and Probal Dasgupta formed the special number editorial committee. This issue had several critical essays and commentaries by scholars belonging to different allied disciplines. It also reprinted this essay with a slightly different spelling, ‘Svaraj in Ideas’. While some of the essays in the special issue of the Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research (1992) referred to the Krishna Chandra Memorial Volume (1958), the 1992 publication did not refer to the special issue of Indian Philosophical Quarterly (1984). I am not claiming that both these volumes covered all other works of Bhattacharyya, except ‘Svaraj in Ideas’. In fact, one of the essays in the memorial volume, ‘The Principle of Modern Kant-Interpretations’ by Jitendranath Mohanty (1958), while discussing many writers and philosophers on Kant, did not even once refer to Bhattacharyya’s paper ‘The Concept of Philosophy’, which presents a clear critique of Kant by creating a distinction between two forms of knowledge: knowledge through thinking and through non-thinking. I will discuss this paper later in the book. To return to the main point, the reason for overlooking this essay, be it an unintended lapse or one with an underlying reason, due to the prevalence of colonialism or the priorities of the discipline of philosophy or its biases, is an open question that needs to be further researched.
Notwithstanding the exclusion of this essay, there is an interesting relation between its title and that of another famous work, Hind Swaraj, by M. K. Gandhi. Both bear the word svaraj in their titles. There is more to this commonality. Both Gandhi and Bhattacharyya were greatly influenced by Jainism, which is often thought of as a heterodox school of Indian philosophy along with Buddhism and Carvaka.
Despite the similarities, those like A. K. Saran criticise the comparison between these two works referred by the editors of the special volume (1984: 519). While Saran claims Gandhi’s work to be more revolutionary than Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, he maintains that ‘Bhattacharyya’s discourse is not revolutionary in the right sense of the term – not even in the currently common usage of the term’ (1984: 519). Rather, asserts Saran, it is ‘flawed in certain fundamental aspects’ (1984: 519). Unfortunately, he does not substantiate his claim in this short piece. J. P. S. Oberoi makes a similar claim regarding the comparisons between Gandhi and Bhattacharyya’s work. He says that ‘Svaraj in Ideas’ should not be ‘compared with the radical critique of Hind Svaraj by Gandhiji’ (1984: 523). Unlike Saran, he does give reasons for his claim. According to him, Bhattacharyya’s arguments are likely to appeal to the ‘modernist and the fundamentalist alike’. In contrast, claims Saran, Gandhi was the ‘enemy’ of both modernists and fundamentalists. Raghavendra Rao, too, echoes the same sentiment when he claims that Gandhi’s Hind Svaraj goes ‘far beyond’ to the ‘substantial committed positions’, whereas Bhattacharyya’s essay moves within the academic circles (1984: 533).2
‘Svaraj in Ideas’, claims Mohini Mullick, sets a ‘norm’; it creates ‘a norm for action’, and in the present case, ‘the act of thinking’. It is a norm that clearly advocates the need to take a resolution to ‘think in our own concepts everywhere’ (1984: 541). In the same volume, Dharmendra Goel alleges that Bhattacharyya ‘has not fully worked out all the implications’ in this paper and that this leads to some ‘uncomfortable consequences’ (1984: 423). Rajendra Prasad asserts that Bhattacharyya ‘left vague and unexplained almost all of his key-concepts’ (1984: 490). While endorsing the strength of Bhattacharyya’s intention, Ashok Kelkar points out the real danger of misreading Bhattacharyya by the ‘tired’ and ‘lethargic mind’ (1984: 550). Unlike other contributors, who equated colonialism or the West as enslaving the Indian self, Rajini Kothari identifies modernity as performing this task. Like Kelkar, he too is cautions that svaraj must be ‘transformed and institutionalised in the framework of an external order’. This external order should prove to be ‘meaningful to the diverse people of the world’. Unless this is done, there is a possible danger of lapsing into ‘fanaticism that usually accompanies such religious upsurges, usually arising from outward looking religious traditions (including Visva Hindu movement)’ (1984: 568). While accepting the normative dimension of this concept, as rightly pointed out by Mullick, the next section sets the limitations surrounding this concept and critically scrutinises the relation between slavery and svaraj. In this context, it critically evaluates this norm and the Section III will show the asymmetry in Bhattacharyya.

II

There is a complex relation between slavery and svaraj. The two concepts are incompatible with each other. A close reading of this paper reveals that Bhattacharyya does not offer any philosophical explanation when dealing with the relation between these two incompatible concepts. I should also clarify that I do not contend that incompatible concepts cannot ever be used together; I only argue that there is a need to explain the relation between them.
In order to explain the relation between these two incompatible concepts, let me bring into the discussion two kinds of combinations: (1) Freedom, then Slavery, and then overcoming Slavery to reach Svaraj; and (2) Slavery, and then Svaraj. A, not A, then A; and not A, and then A. Bhattacharyya’s position is closer to one rather than two. If A is prior to not A, the argument reads differently from the situation when not A is prior to A. We need to be careful in recognising this logic; otherwise, we may unwittingly begin to assume certain things that are not there in the text. For instance, there is a difference between losing freedom and regaining it and gaining freedom without having lost it. I lost my money, and then I got it back is different from I gained knowledge without having lost it earlier. In the latter example, I did not lose to gain, whereas in the former I regained that which I had lost.
So, the situation of the self in India during colonialism is similar to that described by Rousseau in his famous statement that ‘Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains’ (1952: 3). Hence, leaving aside the political content, one sees that, according to the passage, it is the free man who lost freedom. Rousseau does not say when and how man lost his freedom, but makes the claim nevertheless without giving any evidence, leaving the argument hanging in the air. One, how man is born free, two, how and when remains unjustified; thus, how and why man lost freedom remains unexplained.3 He leaves the assertion that man was born free without justification, and further does not say when and how he lost his freedom. These are important concerns that invite us to question the logic underlying the famous statement about man being born free but yet being in chains. That is, when was man born free and how did he loose his freedom?
In one of his brilliant passages, Rousseau takes on Aristotle, who claimed that slavery was natural hence should be maintained, by saying that Aristotle was right, but that he had taken the effect for the cause. Rousseau says of Aristotle:
Aristotle, before any of them, had said that men are by no means equal naturally, but that some are born for slavery, and others for domination.
Aristotle was right; but he took the effect for the cause.
(1952: 5)
The underlying idea behind Rousseau’s critique of Aristotle is the use of two different logics that are in operation. It is this underlying logic that attracts my attention, along with the political radicalism of modernity. That is, while Aristotle is using the position of IE (Inequality) to IE, Rousseau on the contrary alleges that IE that is sought to be maintained was not IE in the beginning but a manufactured IE from E (equality). This much is clear and acceptable; however, two key issues remain unresolved: first, how E became IE, and second, whether there was a state when there was E. My claim can be said to have been admitted by Rousseau himself, when he says immediately after claiming that man is born free but everywhere he is in chains, and then going on to further say that one thinks himself the master of others, but still remains a greater slave than they (I shall come to the second a little later). I quote:
How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.
(1952: 3).
Here, though Rousseau himself admits what I am pointing out, my objection is his clear avoidance of the historical and anthropological explanations which call for presenting the state of nature as pre-societal. Rather, he takes recourse to legitimising it, which is the political task. Here, the normative project of Rousseau does not rest on a factual claim. That is, while Aristotle’s idea of nature is fabricated, Rousseau’s politically correct state of nature hangs in the air (I have, in my 2013 work, discussed other problems with this idea).
The ingenuity and success of Rousseau lies in the way he mesmerises his readers with political content, leading them without their being able to scrutinise these structural aspects crucial to the statement. Similar to the logic of Rousseau, Bhattacharyya assumes with brief hints here and there the pre-slavery state of the self that is in slavery. Both Rousseau and Bhattacharyya use a particular version of causation in making their political claims. Both use asatkarya vada version of causality, according to which the effect is different from the cause. This is in contrast to another, in fact, the contrasting version of causality, that is, satkaryavada. This version of causality argues that there is invariance between cause and effect. The effect is already there in the cause. Both are offering not the instance of freedom to freedom or slavery to slavery. They build their arguments on the basis of the idea of a move away from freedom and towards slavery.
However, there is a close relation between Rousseau and Bhattacharyya, for unlike the former, the latter’s pre-slave self is located in history. So, Bhattacharyya does not face the problems surrounding Rousseau. Bhattacharyya claims that people in India now admit:
… what was not sufficiently recognised in the earlier days of our western education – that we had an indigenous culture of high degree of development, the comparative value of which cannot be said to have been yet sufficiently appraised.
(1984: 384)
So, a high degree of developed indigenous culture existed earlier in India. He, however, half-heartedly concedes two problems with the pre-slavery state at two different places in the paper. First, when he refers to ‘unthinking conservatism’ (1984: 386), and later in the paper, where he says:
We condemn the caste system of our country, but we ignore the fact that we who have received Western education constitute a caste more exclusive and intolerant than any of the traditional castes.
(1984: 393)
In the later part of the paper, he gives a justification for his focussing on the destructive impact of Western ideas on the Indian mind and for not highlighting the evils within Indian society, when he says:
The other danger of national conceit and the unthinking glorification of everything in our culture and depreciation of everything in other cultures appears to me, in our circumstances, to require less stressing. Not that it is less serious abstractly considered, but as a matter of fact our educated men suffer more from over-diffidence than from over-confidence, more from ‘rootless’ universalism than from our clinging particularism.
(1984: 391)
Here, it may be noted that this account of the history of the pre-slavery state may be differently interpreted. That is, it is not clear whether Bhattacharyya will reject the caste system independently of those who condemn it in the context of accepting Western ideals. Notwithstanding this unanswered question, it may be noted that Bhattacharyya’s pre-slavish state is historical and not a mere postulation like Rousseau.
Explaining various aspects of the nature of the slavery of the spirit, Bhattacharyya distinguishes slavery in the political sphere from slavery in the realm of ideas. The slavery in the political sphere is ‘tangible’ and effects the ‘outer life’ and operates at a ‘conscious’ level (1984: 383). Since this form of slavery operates at a conscious plane, one can ‘resist it’ or can ‘bear it as a necessary evil and to keep free in spirit’ (1984: 383). In contrast, explains Bhattacharyya, cultural subjection is ‘unconscious in character’ and is subtler in nature, and has ‘more serious consequences’ as it is not ordinarily felt (1984: 383). Distinguishing cultural slavery or subjection from assimilation, he admits that the latter ‘need not be evil, may be positively necessary for healthy progress, it does not mean lapse of freedom’ (1984: 383). The cultural subjection, according to Bhattacharyya, takes place when ‘one’s traditional cast of ideas and sentiments is superseded without comparison or competition by a new cast representing an alien culture which possess one like a ghost’ (1984: 383). Drawing a distinction between assimilation and slavery or subjection, he does accept at one point the former ‘after a full and open-ended struggle had been allowed to develop between it and their indigenous culture’ (1984: 384). But such a struggle, however, did not take place. Elaborating the consequences of the cultural subjection, he says:
Under the present system we generally receive western culture in the first instance and then we sometimes try to peer into our ancient culture as a curiosity and with the attitude of foreign oriental scholars and yet we say that this ancient culture of ours is no curiosity.
(1984: 384)
Let us pay attention to the underlying sequence. First, there was a state of pre-slavery, a state with a high degree of developed indigenous culture. Then, outside Western ideas got imposed leading to the slavery of spirit. So, we moved from A to not A, while the outside subjugated the inside, thus becoming the agent of oppression. In this context, Bhattacharyya does concede something interesting, when he admits:
Many of our educated men do not know and do not care to know this indigenous nature of ours. When they seek to know, they do not feel, as they ought to feel, that they are discovering their own self.
(1984: 384)
That is, there was a state of pre-slavery, then slavery of ideas was imposed from outside. When our educated men begin to see our own culture, but from that state...

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