A Dialogue With The Indian Left

I would like to present some ideas, such as the following, that are part of my personal on-going thoughtprocess. Please note that I approach this out of my personal intellectual interest only, that I believe inmaking models and testing them as working hypotheses, and that I adopt the scientific and business philosophyof improving the models continually based on experience and better data. So there is nothing "final" inthese perspectives, and they are more like topics to trigger conversations:

1. Left/Right Categories

I start by asking why "left" and "right" often seem to be positioned as mutually exclusive andexhaustive categories in the case of India, and why various hybrids and entirely new frameworks are notappearing. Liberation Theology, as developed by Catholics in Latin America, is an example of a hybrid. Gandhi’suse of Hinduism combined with contemporary social ideas is an important lead in this direction. In the latestissue of the leftist publication, In These Times, there is an article titled, AMerry Marxy Christmas, about how several Marxists are going back to Christianity. . I have defined myselfas a "non-Hindutva Hindu," and selectively accept ideas from all "sides" depending on the issue, andchanged my mind often. Note that I am not demanding as precondition for dialogue that every leftist interlocutormust first prove that they are not interested in Stalinism or Maoism, that they disavow the totalitarianCommunist states, that they disavow the Communists’ use of History as a political tool, etc. However, I dowonder why syncretism is not being encouraged by the left as a way forward.

2. History-Centrism

In a recent essay Ihave posited that religious conflict stems from historical fixations rather than ahistorical spirituality.When historically unique claims become necessary conditions for a religion’s survival, it gets boxed in. Butthe Indic notion of the past is more pliable and less literal, and Hinduism (except for certaindenominations), Buddhism and Jainism do not DEPEND upon unique historical interventions by God, i.e. they arenot History-Centric in the sense defined in my essay. Therefore, to what extent have the Abrahamic notions ofGod’s unique interventions in History become implicit in the way "history" and "religion" are viewedby secularists today? My thesis suggests that some Hindutva forces seek to turn Hinduism into ahistory-centric religion along the lines of Abrahamic religions (with Ram = Jesus, and Ayodhya = Jerusalem ),when, in fact, it is not. Traditional boundaries between denominations and entire faiths in India were not sorigid or permanent, because they were not constrained by history. Is history-centrism the culprit behind manyconflicts? (BTW: I have not been interested in fights to build a temple in Ayodhya.)

3. Continuity/Discontinuity

Given the Abrahamic history-centrisms, change often consisted of destroying the old historical narrativeand replacing with a new one. This led to discontinuous "advancements" in the west. Is the category "progressive"limited to discontinuous change, or would you be willing to consider "progress" to include advances thatdo not erase traditions, but that renegotiate and adapt? Historically, Indians made many advances of this kindof adaptive progress from within. In other words, are pre-modern, modern and postmodern necessarilysequential, discontinuous and representative of "stages", or can there be other kinds of healthysocieties, including those where all three coexist in parallel? The reason I ask this is that many Indianleftists seem determined to demand a thorough destruction of the old and rebuilding of an imagined new oftenguided by a teleology, while essentializing Hindus as perpetrators for all the current problems.

On the other hand, when leftists held power for extended periods in certain countries and attempted erasingtheir past heritage, their success was thin. Once their own teleologically-driven mission ran out of steam,the Russian Orthodox Church, Chinese Buddhism and Taoism, etc. bounced back with a vengeance. What lessons isIndia's left learning from this? Was it useful to try to erase the past and to invent a new society? (Iexperienced first-hand the transitions of the former Soviet Block in the 1990s, because I spent considerableperiods of time there.)

Furthermore, India's rapid economic advancement today is coming from free international trade, and not fromany discontinuous "progress" thrust upon its people. Does this recent success not invalidate Marx’ viewthat colonialism was good for India’s modernization, given that we now see proof that free Indians use freetrade to modernize themselves much better and faster than under tutelage or hegemony? Is it time to formallyrevisit Marx’ perspectives on colonialism, especially since he had no hard data on India and relied solelyupon colonialist renditions of history? (This issue does not mean that I support globalization wholeheartedly,as my position on it is rather complex and still forming.)

4. Foreign Institutional Control

Indians have always been assimilating foreign influences and incorporating them into Indian culture, whileat the same time, also exporting Indian culture and thought. But one needs to distinguish between foreignindividuals and foreign institutions, as agents of change in India . Syrian Christians came as individuals andnot as official representatives of some Syrian king, and settled happily in Indian society without foreignallegiance. But Portuguese Christianity came centuries later as soldiers of Portugals rulers, in the samemanner as the conquistadors went to America to bring glory to Spain through conquest. The two kinds of foreigninfluence (individual/institutional) are entirely different, as the institutions can be vehicles to projectforeign power, but I am unsure if the left has appreciated this.

While being critical of commercial MNCs, the left has failed to see Religious Multinationals in the samelight – the Vatican ’s control over Indian Catholic Churches, the Saudi control over thousands of IndianMadrassas are examples of foreign institutional "influence" that have clear loyalty to foreign nexuses.(Yet there are also millions of Indian Christians and Muslims living happily in their faiths without beingunder the control of any foreign nexus.) Is the left’s criticism of commercial MNCs, without a comparablecriticism of non-commercial foreign MNCs, a contradiction made in the interest of realpolitik and leftists’institutional careers? In their critiques of foreign MNCs, one should include non-commercial MNCs, such asglobalized religions, Ford Foundation, various European foundations, etc., that use money and symbolic powerto drive Indians’ intellectual discourse top-down.

5. Revising History

I do not support amending history for political purposes. For instance, I consider both Aryanmigration-into-India and the opposite (migration out-of-India) to be too simplistic, and neither is provablewith existing data. Neither is central to my primary areas of interest. Nor am I concerned about establishingthe age of the Mahabharata, for instance. However, historiography is about researching for fresh data thatoften results in radical new rethinking.

Recent examples include:

(i) blacks have changed the way Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are depicted in American history;

(ii) Latin Americans have changed the depictions of Christopher Columbus and reinterpreted 1492 as "conquest"rather than "discovery;"

(iii) Scott Levi’s new book challenges the common view that the Silk Road and India’s trade withCentral Asia died in the 15th century, by showing that it was thriving until the 19th century;

(iv) Subalternists are revising the history of India’s underclass; and

(v) Gail Omvedt’s book is rewriting the history of Indian Buddhism. One can make a very long list of "revisions"supported by many mainstream History Departments around the world.

On the other hand, Western History contains many false philosophical reconstructions: Christianity wastruly a discontinuity against Platonic ideas, and the two remain mutually contradictory today, no matter howmuch the western thinkers would like to pretend otherwise. Pedagogic summaries of western traditions helpmaintain a myth of a smooth continuum of constant accretion of positive developments.

Hence, one must distinguish between rewriting history that is based on solid scholarship from rewritinghistory mainly to serve political goals. Are leftists willing to accept that there may well be legitimaterevisions of (Indian and non-Indian) history by non-leftists, in ways that contradict the "sequence ofhistory" mandated by leftist ideology, and that these could be based on solid non-politically drivenscholarship? Or are Indian leftists’ minds closed on history, in which case historiography should bereplaced by reading library books and applying the trendy "literary theories" received from western IvyLeagues? If history is simply to be treated as "text," should History Departments get folded into EnglishDepartments under the care of "theorists"

6. Elitism

Are the left’s criticisms of the elitist Brahmins’ control over Sanskrit (and hence over discourse andculture) also applicable to:

(a) the equivalent role of the elites well versed in Persian language during the Mughal period;

(b) the dependence of today’s Indian Muslims on what the elite Arabic-knowing ulema say about both sacredand mundane matters, with little local freedom or autonomy in matters of interpretation;

(c) the elitism in the Christian Churches in matters of interpretation;

(d) the hegemony of Russian language in the Soviet Union, despite the fact that Russians were a minority inmost states in the federation;

(e) the dominance of Mandarin in China, that is systematically erasing the ethnicity of Tibetans andMuslims in Xingjian province;

(f) the way Ivy League Literary Theory has today become the yard-stick to determine who gets certified andlicensed to speak with adhikara (authority) in prestigious secular circles; and

(g) the role of English language in general, including the way Call Centers are breeding a new kind ofelitism in India? I would like to meet Indian leftists who are seriously working against elitism that runsacross the board.

7. Indian Science

I do not approve that traditional Indian science should be labeled as "Vedic Science". Yet there isconsiderable unacknowledged history of Indian science based on physical hard evidence – in metallurgy, civilengineering, medicine, mathematics, etc. This history is not dependent on the texts of any religion. What isyour stand on Indian scientific history that was not religion based? Does it throw a hammer at the MarxistGrand Narrative, according to which traditional Indian society must be shown to be feudalistic andpre-scientific, so as to qualify India for the Communist revolution? In other words, what if Indian societysimply did not fit either Capitalist or Feudalist models – what would that do to the linear "progression"required by Communist theory? Is it to avoid this dilemma that Marxists have refused to consider thecompelling evidence of science and technology in traditional India – and thereby inadvertently strengthenedthe Eurocentrism prevailing in the history of science curricula?

8. Anti-India

What is the left’s concept on India as a nation state? Without compromising their ideals, are Indianleftists open to question their uncritical loyalty to western idioms and politics, and to their stancesagainst Indian nationhood? After all, one does not find them questioning the nationhood of any western nation,not even those in the making, such as Czech , Slovakia , Bosnia or Slovenia . Nor do they deploy "sub-nationalism"to challenge the concept of United States of Europe or of China . However, they appear to use such concepts asself-determination and the other more popular weapon of neo-imperialism i.e., ‘human rights,’ as tools tode-legitimize the state of India .

The newly released very patriotic movie, LOC Kargil, has many Indian Muslim actors and the dialogue was written by a prominent Indian Muslim. How does the Indian left explain its opposition to the Kargil warwhen Indian Muslim leaders supported it? I hope to discuss whether leftist ideals of social fairness are justas achievable in a unified strong India , instead of a fragmented and divided India which seems so attractiveto the Indian left. Does unilateral universalism (and/or breakup into sub-nations) on the part of Indiacontinue to make sense to Indian leftists, especially in the face of many powerful nations having trajectoriesto enhance their hegemonies and neo-colonialism?

9. Yoga

What do Indian leftists think of re-introducing yoga into Indian education (from where it remains banishedon the grounds of being "anti-secular"), considering that 18 million Americans spend an estimated $27billion annually to learn and practice yoga? I know many progressive desis who still consider yoga/meditationto be part of the Evil Brahmin Conspiracy to oppress the masses and to keep them poor through superstition.Yet, when I explain this "progressive" Indian view to my American friends, they cannot help laughing atthe absurdity of it. (Yoga Journal did a recent survey of Indian-American progressives’ attitudes on yoga.)

On the other hand, I understand the left’s dilemma that if yoga/meditation were legitimized in India’sintellectual circles and education, it would open the door for better awareness of the philosophy behind it,and ultimately, the appreciation of Sanskrit texts. I would like to know what leftists think of the compellingmainstream western scientific evidence of meditation’s benefits, and of the use of Indic epistemology bywestern neuro-phenomenologists and Christian theologians in developing what is popularly being called theEmerging Worldview. Are leftists remaining on the wrong side of science, health care and philosophical trends?

10. Indian Classics

A good liberal arts education in the west is usually built on a solid foundation of the Western Classics(combining Greek, Roman and Judeo-Christian), because these texts are said to equip a young mind not only tounderstand the past of his/her great civilization, but also as tools to be applied to deal with intellectualproblems of today. On the other hand, Indian leftists seem to continue the Macaulay trend of despising theIndian Classics.

It is true that certain stanzas of the Manusmriti and of many other texts contain ideas that run counter tocontemporary human rights. But, by that token, Socrates had slaves, and Plato wrote some horrible thingspromoting atrocities; and yet teachers simply ignore those specific portions without expelling the entireWestern Classics canon. John Stuart Mill, regarded as the founder of modern liberalism, worked his entire lifefor the British East India Company, helping them subvert human rights of the colonies. Hegel rationalizedgenocide against the Native Americans and slavery of the blacks.