Ponniyin Selvan:

You’d be surprised to know that 1/3rd of modern India (a fairly large portion) was not ruled by Brits directly, but by the kings/princes/Nizams/Nawabs etc..

No, I am not surprised by that collection of elementary facts about Indian colonial history in your comment. However, in your eagerness to parade a few well-known facts about that period, you managed to entirely miss the point of my comment.

It is exactly like you said, a patchwork of British ruled territories (called British India) and independent ‘native’ kingdoms

My counter-factual scenario envisaged the existence of truly independent states, with a ‘cultural’ sphere not dominated by the West (among directly or indirectly ruled Western states). There were no such states in the colonial period (as I pointed out in my earlier comment). You also hasten to add the same point (contradicting yourself in a single sentence, which is record of sorts).

though they are not entirely independent, foreign affairs/communications/defence were controlled by Brits while entire internal administration is left to the fancy of kings

This state of affairs is not commonly called independence, but I take it you’re a chela of Humpty-Dumpty in that words mean whatever you want them to mean.

Anyone would laugh if you say those “native” kingdoms allowed the Indian version of modernity to flourish.. You had this Nizam of Hyderabad who was the richest man in the world at that time (a.k.a Bill Gates of now) while his people were in the worst of poverty..

You have made an elementary mistake here, something you might have avoided if you had bothered to actually read my comment before posting. Remember, I was positing a counter-factual scenario, along the lines of ‘What if X, instead of Y, had happened?’ My comment did not revolve around the quality of governance in directly vs. indirectly British-ruled Indian states.

To expand on my argument, the seeds of pre-modernity in India in fact developed outside the ambit of the court (and before the development of substantial Western influence in Indian ‘culture’). Perhaps the earliest example was the development of Navya-Nyaya. So what the Nizam did or did not do is not directly relevant to my scenario–political developments can be influenced or caused by developments in non-political arenas.

Briefly, a necessary (though not sufficient) pre-requisite for a ‘modern’ outlook is the conscious acknowledgement that there is a ‘past’. For example, the very term Navya-Nyaya or New Logic (as opposed to the Old Logic) is suggestive of such a development. Further work in this area (by Sheldon Pollock, among many others) has shown that indeed such a spirit towards the past spread from Navya-Nyaya to other schools of thought in India.

The reason for the withering of these schools of thought in India is not clear. With the proviso that counter-factual speculation is risky, it is not unreasonable to speculate that such thought might have flowered in truly independent Indian states not dominated ‘culturally’ by the West. Such states would have been more conducive to the development of a distinctly Indian modernity.

Kumar

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I overlooked (or was not aware of) much of the stuff you mentioned.

Start with the the Naxalbari movement which began as a rural Marxist backed peasant uprising in northern Bengal. It soon permeated into active student politics and university life in West Bengal and to some extent Punjab and Andhra Pradesh. It was not limited to the class of people you refer to. Bengali students from all social strata were either involved or affected. Hundreds of young students, mostly boys and young men died. Strikes, bandhs, killings, gheraos, bus burnings and a lot of angst. Student politics all over India were influenced. Many among our teachers in schools and colleges had come of age during India’s freedom movement. They were idealistic and political. Their and vision of India and message to us did not gel with how the elected leaders of newly independet India behaved. The hypocrisy gap was huge and the disillusionment sharp. Loud and often violent discourse about fairness, authority etc. that was generated by the student movement was real and rules were changed to accommodate changing times. In states like West Bengal, unemployment was high. Labor unions were active all over India – often with the participation of student leaders.

In 1971 came the genocidal atrocities and subsequent liberation of Bangladesh, followed by a war with Pakistan. We were first hand witnesses to horrendous, government sponsored human rights transgressions in a neighboring nation whose politics spilled over into India across the borders. Soon after her valiant efforts in Bangladesh, Indira Gandhi declared the state of emergency and tried to position her younger son Sanjay as her heir. Editors, journalists, political rivals, intellectuals, student leaders and anyone that she saw as a threat to her hold on power, were thrown into jail. An uncanny air of fear pervaded India. Many rural folks were targeted for coerced sterilization in another gross example of the government’s high handed intrusion. Raw governmental power, political thuggishness and corruption for the first time came clearly to the surface in the post-independence Indian political scene. In 1977 the first multi party coalition government, Janata Party came to power ending Congress’ long reign in a show of public anger.

That is a whole lot of upheaval I am talking about in a mere decade’s time. Younger people were very politically aware. All this does not mean that we didn’ have fun. We played cricket, soccer, sat for hours in coffee houses talking of politics, enjoyed music and the movies. Apart from Satyajit Ray who wasn’t overtly political in his art until later, directors like Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal and M.S. Sathyu started making movies like Padatik, Ankur and Garam Hawa. Folk theater was vibrant. Literature reflected the sign of times.

No, it was nothing like what happened in China under Mao or in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge if that is the impression I gave you. Did most people go about their routine lives through all this? Sure. But that is not to say nothing was happening. Your parents must have experienced at least some of it. Ask them.

I wonder how much of this “dialogue” is actually a dialogue. Since the content of so many of these books is censored/controlled by what will appeal to the reading public, its hardly real dialogue. The discussion of the political causes of what’s happening seems to be ignored. The books instead contain apologies and quaint anecdotes about how great things were before the fundamentalists took over. That’s not really learning anything about the here and now. I felt so frustrated when I read “Reading Lolita in Tehran.” It was a great book but I felt like the author couldn’t decide whether to write on politics or on literature. Her views on literature were great but her political comments seemed a little half-hearted, she wanted to make a point but would inevitably start talking about how great pre-revolution Iran was.

Why then ARE the Asian writers churning out books to appeal to the western gatekeepers of the publishing houses?

Because that’s the only way to get published sometimes. Look, here’s a quote from an article entitled: “Wanted: Exotic Beauties to Pen Delicious Tales of Kitchen Squabbles and Sparkly Saris” by Noy Thrupkaew:

Just as being too politically ethnic can make one unpopular, not being culturally ethnic enough can also bump a writer from the in crowd. Aspiring authors attending November 2001′s South Asian Literary Festival held in Washington DC, told stories of dealings with editors who declined their manuscripts, asking why their work didn’t deal with traditional Indian life.

I imagine that this may be the predicament that Desi writers are in with regards to religion as well.

Who is responsible here for perpetuating the myths?

Here, I think it’s the gatekeepers. There are plenty of gifted writers who have Desi and religiously based names but explore life in its innumerable facets. Yet we don’t hear of them, because they aren’t published by big wigs and don’t get mass marketing. This isn’t confined only to Desi writers, but to Black, Latino, etc (“ethnic”) writers as well.

Anuja:

It is absolutely essential to speak of the history of Islam in a multifacted way when people are too quick to draw sweeping, inaccurate generalizations of Islam and Muslims…This climate is *dangerous*. It is essential that intellectuals step up to the task of debunking such crude notions identity and history.

I absolutely agree with you. This is why in my post #56 I wrote, “Because of ideological warfare and this political propaganda about the “clash of civilizations”, these writers feel somewhat impelled to address these issues, in which case it makes perfect sense”. What I am saying is that there are two implications of Desi writers pursuing this track. One, there is the common charge that is often levelled at Muslims (both suggested implicitly and explicitly) that their primary identity is Islam, and then the other identities (ie Indian, or Chechnen, and so on) are secondary. But this is not true, in my opinion. Yet when writers are recalling Islam over and over– even if to debunk and dispell popular beliefs– it simply confirms the stereotype that individuals are Muslim above everything else. I suppose this is a catch 22 situation. Two, the entire ideological framework is exactly what you have pointed out as well as a “clash of civilizations” schema as I have noted. Based on the knowledge that I have, I do not believe that the current problems are attributed to “Islam” or the “Muslim world”; rather, these problems are the products of politics (US foreign policy, etc). There are many non-Muslims who share similar political sentiments with Muslims (ie, Latin Americans, certain segments of European populations, and so on). But the publishing gatekeepers allow those writers who fit into this schema, and this displaces and diverts the general population’s attention to the REAL roots of current events: politics (geopolitics, occupation, economic and political neo-imperialism), not religion per se (not to say that there aren’t individuals/forces who utilize religion as a vehicle for political expression). People are led to believe that they need to “understand Islam”, that they need to “learn about Islam and the Muslim world”, that there needs to be a “dialogue between religions”, and then everything will be ok. No. It’s a matter of politics. People can understand Islam and dialogue as much as they want, but it’s not going to solve the problems that are afflicting the globe.

You said “That your parents and I, growing up in the sixties and seventies, the decades of upheaval and love”

Can I ask you a bit more about all this upheaval you refer to? Are you talking about India? My parents were born a few years before Independence (1943/1944), so probably they are somewhat older than yourself. Both parents English-medium educated professionals from urban backgrounds. They lived in India until 1972. But I have never heard anything about upheaval or breaking social taboos or protests, etc. nor do I think they (or any of their peers who I am aquanted with, which is a fairly large number) were involved in any of that. So, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the impression that what you are referring to was a phenomenon fairly limited in scope, and probably affecting a tiny portion of the most ‘liberated’, westernised, urbanised folk, of the highest economic strata, in only a handful of the absolute biggest of Indian cities. Please let me know if I am way off base with that assertion.

I know very well that many whites are prejudiced against minorities. I live in Texas. As are also some minorities against whites and each other. You speak of a possible terrorist strike in Canada. We have seen the aftermath of that in the US since 9/11. That is in fact my whole point of reference. Faced with the trouble that it has caused for Asians and middle easterns, I would have hoped for a joint front in repudiating this destructive behavior. It did not happen. The Asian community broke along religious lines – Muslims and the others. The debate too was along religious lines with community leaders at pains to explain what their respective religions REALLY mean. For me, all that was irrelevant. I had hoped for political discussions rooted in individual, civic and human rights. Why must I have to understand theology to decide that some things are just plain wrong? After the Gujarat earthquakes, Houston Indians raised large sums of money for relief. But after the communal violence in Gujarat when too many, especially poor Muslims were left destitute, no such effort took place. When a suggestion to that effect was made, it was met with stony silence.

No, I am not given to criticizing everything brown and looking up to any thing white. On my own blog, I devote very little energy to discussing south Asian matters. The main focus there is to express my extreme displeasure and considerable anger with the Bush administration and its increasingly divisive politics. Yes, much of that too exploits the racial, ethnic and religious fautl lines.

CDA: So you and I were making two different points. Your concern seems to be the literary efforts of south Asian writers. Mine was a more generalized one – that we do not need to evoke religion to communicate across cultural lines and to make persuasive literary statements. Why then ARE the Asian writers churning out books to appeal to the western gatekeepers of the publishing houses? Why are we as Asians flocking to see movies that exploit the very stereotypes of ourselves that we are trying to jettison? Who is responsible here for perpetuating the myths? By the way, I have read some great Muslim writers (not of recent vintage)in Bengali – no such dogged identification with Islam in their works. One particular writer Syed Mujtaba Ali is (was) a favorite writer of mine in any language. He held forth on subjects as diverse as the history of Afghanistan, rise of the Nazis in Germany, Tagore, the religious / linguistic history of south Asia with equal aplomb and not an iota of narrow, self serving communal commentary. You get my point. I am not a fan of the ever narrowing concentric circles of identity politics – be it Hindu, Muslim, Jewish or Christian.

Your last comment was quite beautiful. My parents are post-Independence children who came to Canada – as I like to think of it, they fell out of the hands of Gandhi into the lap of Trudeau’s Just Society. They were young, strong, and very idealistic. I do remember them being extremely upset if I picked up any sort of discriminatory or racist ideas. My first massive run in with my Dad was after I used the n-word at age five (not knowing what it meant). Their close friends were the young Pakistani couple across the street. My birthday parties were mini-UN meetings. You get the picture.

I don’t know if my generation, and younger, have the same source of idealism. The world right now is increasingly divisive on ethnic/tribal lines. I do not enjoy being asked repeatedly whether I am Muslim, as though I have to be nailed down before I’m approached. Nor do I enjoy the widespread assumption that my culture of origin is intrinsically unjust/oppressive/repressive. I’ve been friends with, dated, trusted, lived with white people all of my adult life. And I can tell you, very few of them don’t have prejudices against minorities. Occasionally, I worry about what will happen here if there is a terrorist strike. In short, it’s not all nicey-nice anymore, and people aren’t singing ‘Give Peace a Chance’ all over the world.

I know this isn’t the answer you wanted to hear. But it’s what I see happening.

But many times, their work tends to focus so much on Islamic identity and religion that I can’t help but sort of cry out in despair: “Can’t we speak about something else? Or approach things from another perspective?”

It is absolutely essential to speak of the history of Islam in a multifacted way when people are too quick to draw sweeping, inaccurate generalizations of Islam and Muslims. Most people find it more convenient to entertain essentialist notions of Muslims and Islam, than delving into the politics of the faith and separating strands of orthodox Islam from moderate/liberal Islam. It’s just easier to think of Muslims as ahistorial and unchanging -essentially Bedouin tribes raging their war against modernity. This climate is dangerous. It is essential that intellectuals step up to the task of debunking such crude notions identity and history.

And quite frankly, I donÂ’t really understand the frustration towards historians like Tariq Ali who clearly condemn Islamic fundamentalism while giving sound historical reasons for its development and presenting more liberal and open accounts of Islam. He’s not doing the latter at the expense of the former. If he was, he would be an apologist, but he’s clearly not.