| Understanding
India : The other side of fear and loathing
By ASHOK PATNAIK |
"Reason
is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination
is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately
and as a whole. Reason respects the differences, and imagination
the similitudes of things. Reason is to the imagination as
the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as
shadow to the substance."
Percy
Bysshe Shelley
in The Defence of Poetry (1821)
 Veteran
finance journalist David Gardner makes disturbing assessment
on the contemporary India in his article entitled : "Fear
and loathing in India" (The Spectator, London, 19 May
2001--http://www.spectator.co.uk./article.php3?table=old&
section=back&issue=2001-05-19&id=698). Before I could
proceed further, two things which have explicitly emerged
at the end of his contribution, need to be expounded to those
readers who are earnest about India.
First,
journalists of Gardner's ilk become instant authorities on
Indian subjects and churn out judgmental pieces without adequately
comprehending the inside out of the social and political conditions
of a nation. Second, this is more cardinal than the earlier
one, it is sad but true that they do not have a bent of inquisitiveness
to learn more or employ extra hours in the preliminary investigation
for a wider quest on the subject matter, instead they conveniently
fall back on quotes to suit their purposes. But India as a
nation is far too big a subject for such frippery.
Worse
still, this fundamental lacking is not the offshoot of ignorance
but what appears to me as some arriere-pensee. At the same
time it does not, however, mean that articles appearing in
the West are sub-standard and frumpish. On the contrary they
are avidly consumed by all serious-minded Indians and at times
surpass even the best of writings from India. This is no mean
achievement on the part of the Western scholars, who, of course,
are totally suffused with enthusiasm rather than mere interest.
Writing on a subject, which is not theirs, necessitates considerable
amount of observation and a high degree of discipline. Lamentably,
what has become commonly associated with the contemporary
journalists, is the lackadaisical attitude of treating subjects.
But let me also put a word of caution, if I am authorized
to use that word, to all western journalists writing on India
that an honest appraisal of their works can only come from
India as we have, according to The Economist, 50 million "intelligent"
English speaking public. For which they need not turn into
alchemists in order to metamorphose every base into gold.
It is best left to them to analyze any particular situation
but doing so they better not adopt easy methods because then
no one would take them serious. At least their predecessors
understood this delicate line of distinction very well.
 The
reason of their being impishness followed by our overventuresome
is something, which I read long ago and I shall cite it without
any hesitation. No one has detected the malady more aptly
than Nirad C. Chaudhuri, arguably one of the greatest scholars
of the last century. He wrote succinctly: "If their short
stay in the country can be regarded as an advantage for freshness
of perception and freedom from set notions, it is also a handicap
in the way of gaining insight into the models of Indian thinking
and behaviour whose patterns are wholly different from anything
in the West (italics mine)." This perceptive observation
was made in his introductory chapter, "The world's knowledge
of India since 1947" to his scholarly work The Continent
of Circe (Chatto & Windus, London, 1965).
As for
my disagreement, I had set down my views in print which appeared
in The Statesman (16 November 2000) in the form of a rejoinder
to Willaim Radice's fortnighly column. I wrote: "Whatever
comprehension they had or have in essence is due to the English
works available in translation." And I went on : "But
then these are not clones; at best they fall under the classification
of crossbreeds."
To the
habitual readers of The Spectator, and the British intellectual
class, Chaudhuri of course, represented a true Victorian specimen
till the end came to him in 1999. Some of his selective articles,
which appeared in The Spectator and other journals were compiled
by his eldest son professor Dhurva N. Chaudhuri and brought
out in the form of a book entitled, Why I Mourn for England
(Mitra & Ghosh, 1998). The Statesman got it reviewed by
me and carried it as a lead piece in its literary page under
the title "Civilisation Angst" (13 September 1999).
No wonder in 1987 (November) the London Observer carried 4248
word article on him by Ian Jack and the caption ran characteristically
as: "The World's Last Englishman".
The reason
why I wrote those few lines on Chaudhuri, is to show that
I am not mentioning somebody to consolidate my stand but one
of the intellectual stalwarts of the twentieth century, whose
works on India are indispensable to all those who are serious
about its past and the present.
So much
so, Gardner's offering has many anomalies but I shall restrict
myself to a major one : that is his remarks on the revival
of Sanskrit, was not only injudicious but seemed very stupid.
The other blemishes accompanying it are only the resultants
of his incomprehension the subject matter in its totality.
Gardener
did not provide any single reason for his denunciation on
the revival of Sanskrit in India. In one stroke he associated
Sanskrit with RSS and India's illiteracy. He writes: "Sanskrit
-- the ancient language of the Vedas, Hinduism sacred texts,
and of the dominant Brahmin caste from which the RSS draws
its leadership -- compulsory in primary schools. No bigger
deal than enforcing Latin, one might think, except that it
will add another barrier to education, another social filter
for the lower castes..."
That
such an supercilious assessment could have only written by
a person whose basic comprehension on the subject is not only
incomplete but to put in Alexander Pope's description "...
dangerous".
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