Hindu Vivek Kendra
A RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE PROMOTION OF HINDUTVA
   
 
 
«« Back
Taking Back Hindu Studies

Taking Back Hindu Studies

Author: Shrinivas Tilak
Publication: www.sulekha.com
Date: January 6, 2004
URL: http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/articledesc.asp?cid=307085

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house"

Introduction

The present article is in response to recent writings by Rajiv Malhotra on RISA-L scholarship and Hinduism that appeared in Sulekha. It has been written in my capacity as a Hindu living in the diaspora as well as a member (albeit marginalized!) of RISA-L and is addressed to the readers and members of Sulekha as well as those Indians and other scholars, researchers and sympathizers of Hinduism who work with, alongside, and for disciplines that may come under the rubric of Hindu studies as part of the larger discipline of Indology. More particularly, it seeks to initiate a dialogue with the growing number of Hindus in the diaspora whose professional field of research is not Hinduism or Hindu Studies but who nevertheless have received training in the western academic setting and are familiar with disciplinary methodologies of humanities and social sciences.

The immediate context for this article has been the growing dissatisfaction on the part of Hindus in diaspora with the way Hindu deities such as Ganesha or Hindu religious leaders like Shri Ramakrishna have been depicted by North American scholars of Hinduism. This dissatisfaction has been voiced and reiterated in a number of articles and comments on them on the Sulekha website. Hindu community activists like Ms Mona Vijaykar have voiced their concern at gatherings such as the recently held DANAM conference in Atlanta, Georgia, where some RISAL-L members were also present. Others like Devendra Potnis (a graduate student at the Louisiana State University) have successfully generated petitions protesting misrepresentation of Hindu deities like Ganesha, which were signed by thousands.
 

Credo, Quia Occidentale[2]

Professor Albrecht Welzer is one of the few Western academics to acknowledge that scholars of Europe and North America have frequently been the source of misinterpretation of many key Hindu concepts. By way of illustration, he discusses the prevailing notion of varna in Indology and in academic literature dealing with India in general. Traditionally, varna means sounds of speech or language. In the nineteenth century, however, scholars like H.H. Wilson wrongly identified varna with 'a letter of the alphabet'. This misrepresentation was continued in the works of Th. Benfey, H.T. Colebrooke, Franz Bopp, and others. Though grammatically varna is derived from the social term denoting "class" (as attested in Panini 2:1.69; 5:2.132, 6:3.85), it nevertheless acquired the now commonly accepted (though incorrect) meaning of "colour" (Welzer 1994: 229-230). Following them, most modern Indic scholars (including K.V. Abhyankar, Balakrishna Ghosh and Ganganath Jha) rendered varna as letter in Sanskrit alphabet rather than sound.

Welzer raises the question: Why did Indic scholars acquiesce to and even imitate such mistakes committed by European Indologists, in spite of the fact that they could and should know better. The answer, according to Welzer, lies in part in India's colonization. He alludes to it in the Latin portion of the title of the article he wrote: "Credo, Quia Occidentale"; viz. a widespread overestimation of western culture and the blind belief that anything of western or European origin cannot but be superior to the corresponding element of Indic culture (see Welzer 1994: 232-234). The resulting "inferiority complex" has had a shattering and traumatic effect upon Indic scholarship and academic output. Unfortunately, this trend continues even in post-independent India and among Indians living in the diaspora today.

Extant scholarship on Hinduism in North America

Research was one dominant category and way in which the underlying code of imperialism and colonialism was both regulated and realized. It was regulated through the formal rules of individual scholarly disciplines and scientific paradigms, and the institutions and funding agencies (including the state) that supported and sustained them. Exegetical imperialism similarly was instituted in manifold ways of representation and ideological constructions of Hinduism as the 'Other' in scholarly and popular works, which helped to select and re-contextualize those constructions in such things as the media, official histories and school curricula. Ashis Nandy argues that the structures of colonialism contained precise codes and rules by which colonial encounters occurred and dissent was managed (Nandy 1983: 2- 3). Recent controversies involving scholars like Jeff Kripal and Paul Courtright and diasporic Hindus suggest that such encounters indeed continue even today without much change in the form and institutional mechanism set during the heyday of colonialism. Many Hindus in the diaspora feel that exegetical imperialism and colonialism continue to frame Hindu studies: whether in India or in diaspora[3]. As a discursive field of knowledge, Indology is one such idea and spirit with many forms of realization designed to subjugate the Indic/Hindu Other. Writing, theory and history are key sites in which western research in Indology and Hinduism has evolved. Modern academy claims theory as thoroughly western and constructs the rules by which the Hindu world has been theorized.

Their western or modern education precludes many Hindu scholars from writing or speaking from a 'real' and authentic Hindu or Indic position and perspective. Those who do dare to speak from a more traditional Hindu perspective are criticized for not making sense. Alternatively, their arguments are 'suitably translated' or reduced to some 'nativist' discourse by western (as well as by many westernized Hindu) academics. More often, they are dismissed as naive, contradictory and illogical. This positions today's Hindu in North America in a difficult space both in terms of his/her relations with the general Indic populations and within the western academy. For each Hindu scholar who does succeed in the academy, there remains a whole array of unresolved issues about the ways North American Hindus in general relate inside and outside of Hindu studies, inside and outside the academy, and between all those different spaces and worlds.

Taking back India's history

Historiography is a modernist project, which developed in concert with imperial beliefs about the Other. The discipline of history developed as a set of two interconnected ideas: (1) there is a universal history with fundamental characteristics and values which all human subjects and societies share; and (2) universal history is one large chronology or grand narrative. History is about developments over time; it charts the progress of human endeavour through time. The actual time events take place also makes them 'real' and 'factual'. In order to begin the chronology, a time of 'beginning' and 'discovery' has to be established.

Possession of chronology allows one to go backwards and explain how and why things happened in the past. Societies are believed to move forward through time in stages of developments much as an infant grows into a fully developed adult being. As societies develop, they become less primitive, more civilized, more rational, and their social structures become more complex and bureaucratic. History is similarly deemed to be about human moral development that moves in stages through the fulfilment of basic needs, the development of emotions, the intellect and culminating in morality. Just as the individual moves through these stages, so do societies. The story of history therefore can be told in a coherent narrative.[4]

A skilled historian can assemble all the facts in an ordered way so that they reveal to the reader the truth providing a very good idea of what really did happen in the past. History as a discipline is held to be innocent since the "facts" speak for themselves. A good historian simply marshals them and weaves them into a coherent, concise and cogent narrative. Once all the known facts are assembled, they tell their own story, without any need of a theoretical explanation or interpretation by the historian. History therefore is pure as a discipline, unsullied by ideology, interests, or agenda. All history has a definite beginning and there are clear criteria of determining when it begins: literacy, rationality, scientific spirit, social and political formations, etc (Smith 1999: 30-31).

In the context of Indology, the upshot of the above view and understanding of history is the argument that only a historian trained in historiography can write a "true" and accurate history of Hinduism, Hindu culture and society. The disciplines of history and anthropology, accordingly, were implicated from the beginning in the construction of totalizing master discourses to control the Indian as the "Other" and to deny the Indian's view of what happened and what the significance of historical 'facts' may be to the colonized[5]. "If history is written by the victor," argues Janet Abu-Lughod, "then it must, almost by definition, 'deform' the history of the others" (cited in Smith 1999: 67).

Research using western paradigms describes an approach, which assumes that western ideas about the most fundamental things are the only ideas possible to hold, certainly the only rational ideas, and the only ideas that can make sense of the world, of reality, of social life, and of human beings. This line of thinking has been carried over into Hindu studies and conveys a sense of innate superiority and a desire to overwhelm research in Hinduism spiritually, intellectually, socially and politically.

It is such research imbued with an `attitude' and a 'spirit', which assumes ownership of the Hindu and Indic world. It has established systems and forms of governance, which embed that attitude in institutional practices. These practices determine what counts as legitimate research and who count as legitimate researchers. In this enterprise, the objects of research do not have a voice and do not contribute to research, science or knowledge. An object (in this instance, Hinduism or Hindus) has no life force or spirit of its own, no humanity, 'it' cannot, therefore, make any active contribution. For all practical purposes, the "benevolent" impulse of modern Indology to represent Hindus and Hinduism effectively appropriates their voice, reducing them to the category of the subaltern.

True, this perspective was not deliberately insensitive. Perhaps the rules of practice did not allow such a thought to enter the scene (this comes across in one of Paul Courtright's messages posted on the RISA-L list). It nevertheless reaffirmed the West's view of itself as the centre of legitimate knowledge, the arbiter of what counts as knowledge and the source of all 'civilized' knowledge. It is generally praised as 'universal' knowledge, available to all and not really 'owned' by anyone: until non-western scholars make claims to it.

History is suitably revised whenever claims like the above are contested, so that the story of civilization continues to remain the story of the West. For this purpose, the Mediterranean world, the ancient near east and ancient Greek culture are conveniently appropriated as part of the story of the western civilization, western philosophy and western knowledge (Smith 1999: 62-63). More recently, this practice has also been extended to such elements as yoga from Indic civilization and culture. Rajiv Malhotra's "U Turn" thesis has convincingly demonstrated and documented its increasing prevalence.

The nexus between cultural ways of knowing, scientific discoveries, economic impulses and imperial power enabled the West to make ideological claims having a superior civilization. The idea of the 'West' became a reality when it was re-presented to the people of Africa, Asia and the Oceania through colonialism. Colonial education was used to create new indigenous elites to colonize indigenous disciplines of knowledge.

Contesting Western research and methodologies

Under colonialism, Indians had to reconcile with the western inspired studies and history of India. While a few struggled against the received version of India and Hinduism, most Indians complied with the dominant western view of Hinduism and its history. Hindus allowed the history of their religion to be told to them and, in the process, became alienated from it. They became outsiders as they heard and read a contrived version of their religion and its history. The system of education that the British introduced into India was directly implicated in this process of alienation from Hinduism.

The problem of creating and legitimising a genuine discipline of Hindu studies, therefore, represents a special battlefield. Hindu intellectuals and scholars must bear a major responsibility in this battle in a number of ways in the manner suggested by Franz Fanon, who has left us a revolutionary manifesto of decolonisation and the founding analysis of the effects of colonialism upon colonized peoples and their cultures. Following Fanon, one may identify three levels through which the westernised, diasporic Hindu intellectuals will have to make their journey 'back over the line'.

In the initial phase, such intellectuals and academics tend to be keen to prove to their western peers that they have been thoroughly assimilated into the western culture of knowledge. While most remain content to settle for status quo and spend all their academic life submerged in this milieu, a small minority of them begin to enter the second phase where they become restless and unsatisfied in their assimilation. There is now a restless desire to recognize and to find their academic and cultural roots and recover the fast receding connection with their own past.

In the third phase, these intellectuals begin to realign themselves with their own history, culture and tradition and actively seek to awaken their brethren by producing 'revolutionary' literature that is re-interpreted anew (Fanon 1966: 178-179). The growing interest at present for doing away with misrepresentation of Hinduism in the diaspora may be understood in this light. The challenge for many Hindu intellectuals and scholars is how to position themselves strategically as intellectuals (1) within the academy; (2) within India; and (3) within the western world where many of them actually work. Following Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one may argue that the major problem for Hindu scholars remains the problem of being taken seriously.

For me, the question 'Who should speak?' is less crucial than `Who will listen?' I will speak for myself as a Third World person is an important position for political mobilisation today. But the real demand is that, when I speak from that position, I should be listened to seriously; not with that kind of benevolent imperialism... (Chakravorty Spivak 1990: 59- 60).

Taking back Hindu history and Hindu studies

Coming to know India's past must become part of the critical pedagogy of decolonising Hindu studies. This must be accomplished by creating alternative history of Hinduism, which in turn would generate alternative pathways to knowledge about Hinduism. Is history of Hinduism in its modernist and western construction relevant and useful for Hindus of today? For most Hindus, the answer would seem to be self-evident because they assume that when 'the truth comes out,' a true account of Hinduism will be given. Wrong. How then to write a new history of Hinduism and India? Particularly when Aimé Césaire observed (in his Discourse on Colonialism) that the only history is white? How can the Hindu find his/her voice? Can the Hindu subaltern speak?

I think a beginning must be made by raising and debating issues for taking back Hindu history and studies. Toward that objective, it is possible to extrapolate from the urgent claims that Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak makes in "Can the Subaltern Speak" via the critical theory of Theodor Adorno[6]. Following her lead, Hindus in the diaspora and academics and students of Hinduism in India must begin by asking: Who does research in Hinduism? Who funds, defines and owns it? Whose interests does it serve? Who benefits from it? Who designs the research framework and questionnaire and frames its scope? Who carries it and writes it up? How are its results disseminated?

Hindu awakening in the diaspora

Taking back Hindu studies will require Hindus to revisit site by site the history of Hinduism that was constructed under colonial and western eyes. This in turn would require developing a theory and approach to engage with, understand and then act upon the received history of Hinduism. Rewriting history of Hinduism, reclaiming Hindu studies, giving testimony to distortion of India's past will have to be the basic strategies of decolonising Hindu studies.

It is unlikely that such an endeavour will be readily accepted and acknowledged on the international scene. But we must persist in this enterprise. Decolonisation need not mean a total rejection of all theory or research or western knowledge. Rather, it is implicated in focusing on concerns and worldviews about Hinduism as Hindus understand it and then framing it within the broader theory and research from the perspective of India and Indic culture in general.

Decoding the archive of the West

Michel Foucault uses the metaphor of archive to convey the sense by which the West draws upon a vast history of itself and multiple traditions of knowledge, which incorporate cultural views of reality, of space and time. Particular knowledges, philosophies and definitions of human nature form what Foucault has referred to as West's cultural archive. It is a veritable storehouse of histories, artefacts, ideas, texts and/or images that are classified, preserved and represented (1970). Foucault suggests that this archive reveals 'rules of practice' which the West and western scholars themselves do not necessarily ascribe to because it operates within the rules and conventions that are thoroughly internalised and therefore are taken for granted. It is using this archive or storehouse that western scholars retrieve, enunciate and represent knowledges of and from the Other (Smith 1999: 44).

In order to take back Hindu studies, it will be necessary for Hindu researchers to decode the West's archive and its rules of practice because theories about research are underpinned by (1) a cultural system of classification and representation, (2) the view about human nature, human morality and virtue, (3) conceptions of space and time, and (4) conceptions of race and gender. Hindu scholars will need to learn how ideas about these things are formulated in the West in order to determine what counts for real in the eyes of the West and western researchers. It is only after being confronted by the alternative or competing conceptions of other societies or cultures that the reality of the West-sponsored knowledge will become reified and may then come across as something not necessarily 'better' or reflecting 'higher orders' of thinking, etc.

The Hindu and Vedic conceptions of spiritual relationships to the triple cosmos, the social and material universe, to the landscape, to stones, rocks, insects and other things (seen and unseen) have generally been difficult arguments for western systems of knowledge to deal with or to accept. These arguments give at least a partial indication of the alternative or different worldviews and ways of coming to know and of being.

Hindu concepts of yoga and spirituality, which Christianity and western scholars of Hinduism first attempted to destroy, then to appropriate and then to claim, are therefore critical sites of resistance for Hindu scholars. The values, attitudes, concepts and language embedded in beliefs about spirituality represent, in many ways, the clearest contrast and mark of difference and Otherness between the Hindu and western worlds. To date, Hindu spirituality is one of the crucial aspects which the West could not decipher, understand and therefore could not control.

Ethical research protocols

The huge credibility problem the western research community faces today with respect to Hinduism must be addressed from within a Hindu agenda. It must be affirmed that the first beneficiaries of knowledge of Hinduism must be the direct indigenous descendants of that knowledge. Hinduism-centred research must be about bringing to the centre and fore privileging indigenous values, attitudes and practices rather than disguising them within Westernised labels.

Research activities on Hinduism in the West are mostly organized around the interests of like-minded scholars and Indologists. The development of particular research topics and research groups tends to occur organically within the boundaries of what is known as 'research culture' embedded in the values of academic life. Much research on Hinduism operates as closely formed and protected cliques that share common interest in methodologies of mutual interest. Thus, one often reads in the messages posted on RISA-L requests for leads or references concerning a Hinduism related topic of research "my" student has chosen.

Emic and etic of research on Hinduism

Many of the issues that may arise while doing research on Hinduism are addressed in the research literature in relation to both emic and etic dimensions of research. Most western research methodologies assume that the researcher is an outsider who nevertheless should be able to observe without being implicated in the scene. This stance originates in positivism and notions of objectivity and neutrality.

But a Hindu researcher must problematize the emic or insider model differently because the critical issue with emic research is the constant need for reflexivity. At a general level, emic researchers must devise ways to think and assess critically their thought processes, their relationships to research subjects, cultures and societies. They must safeguard against uncritical collection of their data and analysis. True, the same caution applies to etic research and researchers, but the major difference is that, as an insider, the Hindu researcher will have to live with the consequences of his/her research and its outcome on a day-to-day basis amongst and along with the subject of his/her research.

For this reason, as an emic researcher, a Hindu scholar will need to build clearer research-based support systems and relationships with his/her community. He/she will have to devise much clearer 'lines of relating' specific to the project and 'at arms length' from the regular lines of family and community networks. Spelling out the limitations of a project, the issues or things that are not addressed will also be important. The emic researcher must also devise a suitable model for closure and must possess the courage to say 'no' and stand up to peer pressure from insiders. Insider research has to be as ethical and respectful, as reflexive and critical, as outsider, etic research. It also needs to be modest and humble because the researcher may belong to his/her community as a member with a different set of roles and relationships that may be at odds with the demands of research in an etic setting (Smith 1999: 137-139).

Researched [Hindus] must become researchers

A major challenge for Hindu researchers is to retrieve sufficient space to convince the various fragmented but powerful research communities (western and Hindu/Indian in the diaspora or in India) of the need for greater Hindu involvement in research on Hinduism. Yet another challenge is to develop approaches and ways of carrying out research that takes into account, without being limited by, the legacies of previous western dominated research and the parameters of both previous and current approaches. Finally, Hindu researchers must devise a framework to structure assumptions, values, concepts, orientations and priorities for such research. When Hindus become the researchers and not remain mere research subjects or the researched, the activity and direction of research on Hinduism will be transformed. Questions will then be framed differently and priorities ranked differently, problems defined differently.

Hindus must begin by questioning the most fundamental belief behind western research on Hinduism: do all researchers have an inherent right to knowledge and truth of Hinduism? Research in itself is a very powerful intervention, even if carried out at a distance because it has traditionally benefited the researcher, the knowledge base of the researching community and the sponsoring agency. Researchers are in receipt of privileged information, which is usually interpreted within an overt theoretical framework. But it can also be interpreted in terms of a covert ideological framework. The researcher has the power to distort, to make invisible, to overlook, to exaggerate and to draw conclusions based not on factual data, but on assumptions, hidden value judgments and, often, downright misunderstandings. The researcher has the potential to extend knowledge or to perpetuate bias and ignorance (Smith 1999: 176).

Indigenising research on Hinduism

Can a non-Hindu researcher carry out research on Hinduism? The answer must be a qualified yes; but not on his/her own. He/she would need to devise a way to suitably position him/herself as a non-Hindu researcher. Research on Hinduism should involve 'mentorship' of responsible Hindu/Indic scholar/s who in turn must satisfy the rigour of research. Such research must be supervised by a Hindu/Indic researcher; not by a researcher who happens to be an Indologist. Indigenising research on Hinduism means drawing upon the body of knowledge and corresponding code of values that evolved over the millennia through the input of indigenous Hindu commentators and scholars.

Hindu indigenism is grounded in the alternative conceptions of worldview and value systems that locate individuals in sets of relationships with the environment and levels of beings and existence. Reframing research on Hinduism is about assuming larger control over the ways in which issues and problems pertaining to Hinduism are discussed and handled. The reframing of an issue is about making decisions; about its parameters; about what is in the foreground, what is in the background; and what complexities exist within that frame. It means resisting being boxed in and labelled according to alien categories that may not fit.

Paradigms of theory and research on Hinduism

A question will inevitably arise whether Hindu directed 'Research on Hinduism' is or can be its own paradigm. It would be unproductive to engage in a debate over this right now because it may set up comparisons with western research on Hinduism. Suffice it to say that given its incipient phase, `Hindu-directed research on Hinduism' will remain in the near future both less than and more than a paradigm. A beginning toward that direction may be made by undertaking research based on articles compiled in India through Hindu categories, edited by McKim Marriott (1990).

Creation of new parameters and methodologies of undertaking research on Hinduism should also be informed by modern critical theory, in particular by the notions of critique, resistance, struggle and emancipation. It can be situated advantageously within the framework of re-interpretation of the critical theory by the "Subaltern Studies Group" led by Ranjit Guha and others in India[7]. Thus, intrinsic to the proposed research on Hinduism will be analysis of existing power structures and inequalities surrounding current research on Hinduism that is presently dominated by western (and westernised Indian) scholars.

Research on Hinduism can draw upon critical theory for the purpose of exposing underlying assumptions that serve to conceal the power relations that exist within the institutions of learning about Hinduism in the West and the ways in which dominant groups construct concepts of 'common sense' and 'facts' to provide ad hoc justification for the maintenance of inequalities in research. 'Research on Hinduism' will likely remain a fledgling approach operating within the relatively smaller community of Hindu/Indic researchers, which in turn exists within a minority culture that continues to be represented within antagonistic colonial discourses.

Taking back Hindu studies: the practical dimension

The project of taking back Hindu studies in the diaspora will necessarily have a practical dimension because 'Hindu-directed research on Hinduism' must simultaneously be a joint social project weaving in and out of Indic and Vedic cultural beliefs and values as well as western ways of knowing and patterns of lifestyle. Research on Hinduism will be involved with sites and terrains that are also sites of contestations and struggle since western researchers have also claimed each of these sites as 'their' turf.

Approach to research on Hinduism must be based on the assumption that research that involves Indians and Hindus as individuals and as communities must make a positive difference for those who are researched. This does not mean an immediate or direct benefit. The point is that research has to be defined and designed with some ideas about likely short-term or longer-term benefits. Obvious as this may be, it must be remembered that, historically, Indians/Hindus have not seen the positive benefits of research on their culture, society or religions.

Research on Hinduism must incorporate processes such as networking and community consultations to assist in bringing into focus the research problems that are significant to Hindus in India and in diaspora. In practice, all such elements of research will have to be negotiated with individual communities. It means researchers will have to share their 'control' of research and seek to maximize the participation and the interest of Indians in general and of Hindus in particular. To stimulate research on Hinduism, it will be necessary to induct young Hindu researchers and students in projects in which they would be employed as the 'trainee' group researcher. Support systems and mentoring processes must be instituted in order to bring them in closer contact with senior Hindu researchers and to prepare them for work inside their own communities and within their own value systems and cultural practices.

Staging satyagraha for taking back Hindu studies

Leaders of the Hindu community in North America disagree with the claims of many RISA-L members and the faculty teaching Hinduism related courses in North American teaching institutions that there is no misrepresentation of Hindu values, norms, or practices in the courses on Hinduism taught by the members of RISA-L. Developing non-violent strategies based on the Gandhian principles of satyagraha, as proposed by Rajiv Malhotra, can therefore be introduced as a practical aspect of 'taking back' Hindu Studies. According to Gandhi, satyagraha is the ideal way of resolving conflicts, which usually involve a clash between both persons and underlying principles. Behind any struggle lies another clash, a deeper one: a confrontation between two views that are each to some measure true. Every conflict, to Gandhi, was on some level a fight between differing angles of vision illuminating the same truth.

In trying to find a suitable solution to a given conflict, one's initial temptation or response is to remove the adversary by force and settle the argument quickly. But while it may remove the person, forced victory leaves the underlying conflict between principles intact and simmering. It may erupt again as soon as the adversary has recouped his/her losses and mustered enough new strength. Common sense and pragmatism may recommend accommodation and compromise with the adversary, thereby allowing each side to win a little. This is often described as a "win- win" situation. For Gandhi, however, this stance overlooks the truth that each side loses a little as well[8].

Modern democratic spirit suggests the use of arbitration and law to determine and judge which side is right. This solution, however, may sacrifice the truth (or rather, the element or share of truth) in the losing side's position. According to Gandhi, satyagraha therefore would be a better way to fight injustice than any one or more of the above attempts because it consciously avoids the pitfalls in them and instead seeks a new position, which is more inclusive than the old ones and moves into it.

Ideally, therefore, the practical steps that diasporic Hindus will need to take in their struggle to remove misconceptions about Hinduism should be based on the Gandhian principles of satyagraha articulating (1) Negotiations over the differences with the adversary and attempts to resolve them, and (2) mobilization and proper training of supporters and volunteers to lead the struggle if negotiations fail.

Ideally, negotiations would involve the following sequence: recognize the truthful and untruthful elements in each side; put the truthful elements from each side together; form a new side and adopt it while struggling with your opponent; continue revising and refining the new position as the negotiations or fight continues; end the struggle only when both sides agree to occupy the same side.

satyagraha would involve creation of small groups of dedicated Hindu scholars to study and document instances of misrepresentation of Hindu values, practices, norms, etc. Other groups will be needed to intensify and coordinate such activities as letter writing, writing petitions and getting signatures and establishing dialogue with the teaching faculties at the scholarly and university levels.

The real adversary in this struggle is likely to be apathy, both on the part of Hindus in the diaspora and the average North American. Such apathy will have to be shattered through a dramatic demonstration of concern. This can be accomplished by creating and opening several fronts simultaneously: making an appeal to the general public in North America through articles in the newspapers and magazines; writing and producing leaflets advertising forthcoming courses on Hinduism to be offered at university departments across North America to attract attention of the average North American; organizing rallies; and opening alternative centres for teaching courses on Hinduism.

Experienced Hindu academics will have to be recruited to act as consultants to guide diasporic Hindus in the writing and circulation of petitions or for leading agitations against misrepresentation of Hinduism. Annual inventory of outlines of courses on Hinduism that are offered will have to be made and Hindu scholars invited to evaluate them and offer suggestions for improving teaching of Hinduism. Hindu scholars and community leaders will have to engage in ongoing dialogue with book publishers in India and abroad. The latter may be invited to send the manuscripts on Hinduism that they receive to a committee of Hindu academics and scholars for fair evaluation and assessment in order to avoid perpetuation of glaring misrepresentations or falsehoods concerning Hinduism.

According to the ideals of Gandhian satyagraha, if the above steps fail, then launching of non-cooperation movement will be necessary, which would include boycott, strike, peaceful disruption, blockade, and sit- in. If these steps fail to produce a settlement (i.e. fair and accurate representation of Hinduism and Hindus), then creation of a parallel entity to replace the opponent's facilities would be necessary. In the North American context, this would mean setting up of independent Hindu schools and universities along the pattern of Catholic schools and universities that have existed for centuries.

References

Chakravorty Spivak, Gayatri. 1990. The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues edited by S. Harasym, New York: Routeledge.

Elder, Joseph et al. Eds. 1998. India's Worlds and U. S. Scholars. New Delhi: Manohar and American Institute of Indian Studies.

Fanon, Franz. 1966. The Wretched of the Earth translated from the French by Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press Inc.

Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Tavistock Publications.

Guha, Ranjit et al. Eds. 1982-2000. Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian history and society.

Hanks, Craig J. 2002. Refiguring Critical Theory: Jurgen Habermas and the Possibilities of Political Change. Lanham: University Press of America.

Juergensmayer, Mark. 2002. Gandhi's Way: a handbook of conflict resolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Marriott, McKim. ed. 1990. India through Hindu categories. New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Morton, Stephen. 2003. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. London: Routledge.

Nandy, Ashis. 1983. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism, Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Dunedin: University of Otago Press.

Welzer, Albrecht. 1994. Credo, Quia Occidentale: A Note on Sanskrit varna and its Misinterpretation in Literature on Mamamsa and Vyakarana. In

Studies in Mamamsa: Dr Mandan Mishra Felicitation Volume edited by R.C. Dwivedi. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass.

Young, Robert. 1990. White Mythologies: Writing history and the West. London: Routledge.
 


Back                          Top

«« Back
 
 
 
  Search Articles
 
  Special Annoucements