Shimla Journal 2009

STUDIES IN
HUMANITIES AND
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Journal of the Inter-University Centre
for Humanities and Social Sciences
VOL. XVI, NUMBER 1& 2, 2009
Editor
MANAS RAY
INTER-UNIVERSITY CENTRE FOR HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDY
RASHTRAPATI NIVAS, SHIMLA
CONTENTS
Editorial 1
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Satyagrahi as Sthitpragnya:
Gandhijis Reading of The Gita
TRIDIP SUHRUD 9
Translating Gt 2.47 or
Inventing the National Motto
SIBAJI BANDYOPADHYAY 31
Gandhi: Non-violence and Pragmatism
GANGEYA MUKHERJI 95
Rahula Sankrityayans Journeys of the Self:
Nation, Culture, Identity
MAYA JOSHI 119
Entering the Universe of fire and light:
the life and philosophy of Pokar from Pokar Elayiram
KANCHANA NATARAJAN 147
Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Language:
A Non-Foundational Narration
ENAKSHI MITRA 165
Towards a Philosophy of Image
FRANSON MANJALI 201
SPECIAL ESSAY
Back to the Land of the Past
SUMANTA BANERJEE (translated by NIVEDITA SEN) 219
REVIEW ARTICLE
Between Determination and Responsiveness:
a third space in Foucault?
MANAS RAY 269
BOOK REVIEWS
Vinay Gidwani, Capital, Interrupted:
Agrarian Development and the
Politics of Work in India
PRIYA SANGAMESWARAN 281
Nonica Datta, Violence, Martyrdom and Partition:
A Daughters Testimony
SATISH C. AIKANT 288
Raziuddin Aquil and Partha Chatterjee:
History in the Vernacular
MOHINDER SINGH 293
Contributors 299
STUDIES IN
HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
Editor
MANAS RAY
Book Review Editor
GANGEYA MUKHERJI
Editorial Board
PETER RONALD DESOUZA
Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla
UMA CHAKRAVARTHI G.C. TRIPATHI
Anand Niketan, H.No. 4 National Fellow, IIAS
Dhaula Kuan, New Delhi
AKHTAR UL WASEY RAJEEV BHARGAVA
Zakir Hussain Institute of Islamic Studies CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road,
Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi New Delhi
SASHEEJ HEGDE TEJASWINI NIRANJANA
Head, Sociology Department Centre for Study of Culture and Society
Central University, Hyderabad Bangalore
PULAPRE BALAKRISHNAN HARSH SETH
A-4, Laxmi Apartments Seminar, New Delhi
P.O. Chalappuram, Kozikode
Editorial Coordinator: A.K. SHARMA
Assistant Editor and Production: DEBARSHI SEN
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TRIDIP SUHRUD
Satyagrahi as Sthitpragnya: Gandhijis Reading of The Gita
SIBAJI BANDYOPADHYAY
Translating Gt 2.47 or Inventing the National Motto
GANGEYA MUKHERJI
Gandhi: Non-violence and Pragmatism
MAYA JOSHI
Rahula Sankrityayans Journeys of the Self:
Nation, Culture, Identity
KANCHANA NATARAJAN
Entering the Universe of fire and light:
the life and philosophy of Pokar from Pokar Elayiram
ENAKSHI MITRA
Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Language:
A Non-Foundational Narration
FRANSON MANJALI
Towards a Philosophy of Image
SUMANTA BANERJEE (translated by Nivedita Sen)
Back to the Land of the Past
MANAS RAY
Between Determination and Responsiveness:
a third space in Foucault?
ISSN: 0972-1401
EDITORIAL
This issue of Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences carries a
distinction. As per ongoing talks, in all possibility Sage India
will take up the responsibility of publication and distribution
of the journal from the next issue onwards, when it will also
have a different look and format. As such, the present
number is both a swansong and a harbinger of the new. We
have put in our best efforts to commemorate what was by
offering a wide range of topics from a chosen set of
contributors. The collection genuinely represents some of
the very best of current scholarship in India. Regardless of
the large spectrum of interests, the themes at times overlap
but seldom do the viewpoints. In keeping with the mandate
of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, we believe that
Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences should be the platform
for disseminating scholarship engaged with the large
questions of human existence from a variety of perspectives.
All entries went through the refereeing process. The
following is a synoptic account of each article.
The collection begins with Tridip Suhruds deliberation
on M K Gandhis deep and abiding engagement with the
Gita, a spiritual guide-book for the philosopher-politician
and the ashram community. In its attempt to understand
the nature of this engagement, Suhruds short essay gives a
new spin to this well known understanding. The author
explores, in a mode of speculation, the embedded nature
of this ancient text in Gandhis life and experiments, and
the role this relationship played in shaping a community of
values. The essay also highlights Gandhis translation of the
Gita and his need to be a satyagrahi and a shitpargnya.
The second essay is also on the Gita but placed against a
more elaborate canvas. In this paper, Translating Gt 2.47
or Inventing the National Motto, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay
embarks on a truly ambitious project: a conceptual
2 EDITORIAL
cartography of the text by investigating the discursive turns
that occur in the modern reception of the Gt. In the
process, the paper attempts to outline the semantic
displacements at times fairly unobtrusive surrounding
certain base concepts intrinsic to pre-modern Indian
philosophical systems. To underscore the transmutations,
the article takes as its point of departure Gt 2.47, in
particular, the saying, karmay ev adhikras te m phaleu
kadcana, now generally reckoned as the quintessence of
the Gt.
The essay focuses on a multitude of English, Bengali
(and also Hindi) translations of the celebrated dialogue
between Krishna and Arjuna as well as on the profoundly
influential modern commentaries on the Gt, such as, those
by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Bal Gangadhar Tilak,
Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo. In order to activate the archive
thus construed, the essay contrasts the modern renderings
of 2.47 with its pre-modern readings starting from the one
offered by ankara. The cartographic adjustments in the
sphere of concepts initiated by the modern ideologues were
by no means purely academic in nature. Certain exigencies
mandated the alterations and the new significations were
politically mobilized. Translating Gt 2.47 is thus a study
in the politics of translation and the politics involved in
profiling Hinduism as a system of thought always-already
equipped with the capacity to absorb and assimilate any
progressive or developmental discourse that emanates
from the west. The wonder that so much could be done
with so little material, Gt 2.47, i.e., is what motivates this
detailed and nuanced excursus.
Is non-violence endowed with an intrinsic validity existent
only on its own set of conditions, or is it at the level of praxis
perpetually dependent on its other i.e., to whom it is
directed? Is the source of its validity intrinsic or will it forever
lie in a set of extraneous factors? In a bid to address such
complex and recurrent issues, Gangeya Mukherji in his
EDITORIAL 3
contribution goes to what can well be regarded as the very
crux of contemporary debates on ethics. His paper, Gandhi:
non-violence and pragmatism, tries to explore whether
these questions can be elucidated in the workability of
Gandhis advice to Jews to offer satyagraha against Nazi
persecution. While speculating on plausible scenarios
attendant on such non-violent resistance, the paper also
takes on board the complexity of the Jewish response (in
particular, Arendt) to Gandhi. Underlying Mukherjis
arguments is a nuanced dialogue on the ethical and universal
connotations of Gandhian philosophy, the eternal questions
of human responsibility and the pragmatism of non-violence.
Autobiography as a genre is a rich space for studying
constructions of identity, especially when its subjects are
public figures. Periods of political turmoil and social change,
such as the early 20th century in India, throw up several
narratives of the self that explore these issues with greater
urgency. Rahula Sankrityayan (1893-1963), a travel writer
in Hindi and a nationalist, who became a Buddhist monk
and eventually took to Marxism, is one such figure. Maya
Joshi in her essay, Rahula Sankrityayans Journeys of the
Self: Nation, Culture, Identity, discusses his voluminous
autobiography, Meri Jeevan Yatra and shows how the work
bears testimony to a life that negotiated an extraordinary
range of identities. Divides between public/private, native/
foreign, local/national are played out in ways that are
surprisingly complex and nuanced in his life-long quest for
self-discovery as a scholar, political activist and writer.
Religion, language and region are some of the fractious
terrains that he traverses in his life journey, combining a
growing sense of universalistic humanistic affiliation with a
stubbornly restrained sense of the local. His negotiation of
these markers of identity at once national, regional and
global is as illuminating about the emergent idea of India
in his time as it is instructive for the India of today. Along
with his somewhat eccentric treatise for travellers, Ghumakkar
4 EDITORIAL
Shastra, his autobiography frames his quest for identity in a
constantly evolving worldview. Even though projected in
terms of a teleological narrative of growth, Sankrityayans
texts hold multiple, often contesting, affiliations in an open-
ended creative tension.
Kanchana Natarajans paper continues with the
biographical thrust but operates on a different register. At a
broad level, it is an attempt to reconstruct a biography of
the alchemist Pokar, a mysterious and compelling figure in
the Tamil siddha tradition, based on a particular Tamil text,
Pokar Elayiram, also known as Pokar Saptakandam. The
immediate focus of the paper, however, is significantly
different as it tries to grapple with the problems of unveiling
a completely recalcitrant and frustratingly equivocal text.
Hence, the paper is more of a hermeneutical exercise, an
exploration of the difficulties in interpreting alchemical
siddha texts like Pokar Elayiram with the aim of reconstructing
the lives of siddhas.
The next two essays raise a number of philosophical
issues. One concerns the relation of language to reality and
the other of image to reality. For later Wittgenstein, language
cannot be based on a pre-linguistic foundation. Following
closely on the tracks of the philosopher, Enakshi Mitra argues
that none of the proposed foundations that are claimed to
relate language to reality verbal definitions, ostensive
techniques, mental images, intentional states is able to
sustain its assumed pre-interpretive character (Wittgenstein
On the Foundations of Language: A Non-Foundational
Narration). In a dense exegetical engagement with
Wittgenstein, Mitra shows that the hallowed pre-interpretive
reference taken to underlie the varying modes of
interpretations or descriptions is actually a grammatical
interplay, where what seems to be the pre-interpretive
simple in one game turns out to be an elaborately complex
construction in another. In the ultimate analysis, language
and behaviour forge a non-foundational blend that
EDITORIAL 5
internalizes and does not represent a supposedly extra-
linguistic reality.
Since the publication of Roland Barthes Camera Lucida
(1980), there has been a proliferation of philosophical
perspectives on the question of the image. In his essay,
Towards a Philosophy of Image, Franson Manjali discusses
how Barthes in this last work had convincingly detached the
photographic image from the existential and psychological
frame that Sartre attributed to it and thus led the way for
philosophical probing into the historical, ontological and
discursive contexts in which it was seen to be embedded.
This approach has proved fertile not only in the study of the
artistic image as such, but also on the more vexing questions
of technically produced images, such as those in film,
television and, more recently, the internet. In the last few
years, the question of the relationship between image and
violence has been the focus of serious philosophical
attention, especially since the simultaneous media
projections of the first Iraq war (1991), and the terrorist
attack on and destruction of the twin towers of the World
Trade Center in New York (2001). The paper examines a
variety of perspectives on image coming from contemporary
philosophers, particularly Marie-Jos Mondzain and Jean-Luc
Nancy.
The special essay of the collection, On arriving the land
of the past, is a highly imaginative memoir of Calcuttas
turbulent 1960s and early 1970s (Nivedita Sens translation
of Sumanta Banerjees Elem Atith Deshe, published in the
2006 Puja issue of Anustup, a prominent Bengali little
magazine). The narrative is a long arcade of faces where
the dead and the living have changed sites, yet everything
remains exactly as it was in that violent patch of the citys
history: dimly-lit streets in the depths of solemn nights,
unkempt parks, decaying faades, political comrades,
colleagues, pipe-smoking editors, reporters rooms, the red
roster lying on the long, unyielding table. The author
6 EDITORIAL
succeeds in giving time a tailspin and also retaining something
preciously static about that era, making the city now of the
living dead look more real than real, almost ghostly. Much
to Banerjees credit, the Calcutta of the memoir is ultimately
a city of gaiety corpse, hand bombs and tortures behind
the bars regardless reminding one of Hemingways Paris,
again a city of caffeine, alcohol, brawls and floating tar.
Remarkable also is the way the memoir ends. The
narrator returns home taking the last train. He has spent
the day in an underground gathering of his erstwhile
comrades long dead in police encounters or torture and
subsequently returned. As he comes out of Howrah Station
through the squatting, sleeping humanity, his attention is
drawn to two blind beggars. The author soon realizes his
mistake. The men are not beggars but Bhumaiya and Kesta
Gaud, the legendary revolutionaries of Andhra Pradesh, who
donated their eyes at the time of being hanged so that even
though they didnt get to see the arrival of revolution, their
eyes could. Today they are agitated; they thumb their sticks
and want to know who robbed them of their eyesight.
Bengal for that matter, India will take up the question
of blindness later.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
SATYAGRAHI AS STHITPRAGNYA:
GANDHIJIS READING OF THE GITA
Tridip Suhrud
I exercise my judgement about every scripture, including the Gita. I
cannot let a scriptural text supersede my reason. Whilst I believe that
the principal books are inspired...Nothing in them comes from God
directly...I cannot surrender my reason whilst I subscribe to Divine
revelation.
1
Gandhiji records the deep embarrassment with which he
admitted to his Theosophist friends in London that he had
read the Gita neither in Sanskrit nor in Gujarati. He said;
They talked to me about the Gita. They were reading Sir
Edwin Arnolds translation The Song Celestial and they
invited me to read the original with them. I felt ashamed, as
I had read the divine poem neither in Samskrit nor in
Gujarati.
2
These Theosophist friends induced him to read
the Gita. The poem struck him as one of priceless worth.
The verses 62 and 63 of the second discourse
If one
Ponders on objects of the sense, there springs
Attraction; from attraction grows desire,
Desire flames to fierce passion, passion breeds
Recklessness; then the memoryall betrayed
Lets noble purpose go, and saps the mind,
Till purpose, mind, and man are all undone.
3
made a deep impression and more than thirty years later
at the time of writing the Autobiography rang through his
10 TRIDIP SUHRUD
ears. It was perhaps not accidental that what captivated his
mind and soul were the two verses, which describe the
implications of allowing the senses and desires that the senses
give rise to and seek their fulfilment remain unchecked.
These verses claim that those-both individuals and Gandhiji
would argue civilisations- that make bodily welfare their
object and measure human worth in and through them are
certain to be ruined. The verses describe a state that is
opposed to that of brahmacharya. The year was 1888-89 and
Gandhiji was far from making brahmacharya, even in the
limited sense of chastity and celibacy, a central quest of his
life. But what awakened in young Gandhiji a religious quest
and longing that was to govern his entire life henceforth
was the message contained in these two verses, that the only
way to be in the world was to strive to reach the state of
brahmacharya.
This reading produced in Gandhiji a keen desire to read
Gujarati translations of the Gita and read as many translations
as he could lay his hands on. The Gita henceforth became
his lifelong companion, he rarely travelled without a copy
and it invariably went with him to prison both in South Africa
and India. The engagement was deep and continued to
deepen over the years. He translated the Gita as Anasakti
Yoga in Gujarati.
4
Before he attempted the translation
Gandhiji during his imprisonment in 1922 wrote a
lexicographic commentary that explained each term of the
Gita and its various meanings in the poem. This was
published only in 1936 as Gitapadarthkosha. During his
yearlong stay at the Satyagraha Ashram in Ahmedabad he
gave between February 24, 1926 and November 27, 1926
two hundred and eighteen discourses on the Gita. The
imprisonments in 1930 and 1932 provided another occasion
to discourse on the Gita, when he wrote a series of letters,
called Letters on The Gita to the inmates of the Satyagraha
Ashram, which were read out during the morning prayer.
He also composed a primer on the Gita, popularly called
SATYAGRAHI AS STHITPRAGNYA 11
Ram-Gita as it was composed for his son Ramdas Gandhi. By
all measures it was a remarkable engagement.
It was during the non-cooperation movement that this
engagement came to be recognised by his closest associates.
It was also for the first time that he used the idiom of the
Gita in his public speeches and writings for a mass movement.
He repeatedly argued that his ahimsa was derived from the
Gita and that non-cooperation was a duty enjoined on all by
the scripture. He said during a debate with the liberals led
by Sir Narayan Chandavarkar; I venture to submit that the
Bhagvad Gita is a gospel of non-cooperation between forces
of darkness and those of light.
5
He argued that Duryodhana
had good people on his side, as evil by itself cannot flourish
in the world. It can do so only if allied with some good. He
said; This was the principal underlying non-co-operation,
that evil system which the Government represents, and which
has endured only because of the support it receives from
good people, cannot survive if the support is withdrawn.
6
Gandhiji also had to counter the dominant interpretation
that the Gita sanctioned war in cause of justice. Gandhiji
maintained that the Gita was pre-eminently a description of
the duel that goes on in the heart between the powers of
light and darkness, and it enjoined on each one to do ones
duty even at the peril of ones life, while cultivating an
attitude of detachment to the fruits of ones actions. The
debate about scriptural injunctions to violence was old. It
dated back to 1909. The revolutionaries including Shyamji
Krishnavarma and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar had
challenged his interpretation of the Gita and the Ramayana
in a debate
7
, conducted in the shadow of Sir William Curzon-
Wyllies assassination
8
. Gandhiji was deeply perturbed by the
repeated invocation of the Gita to justify the acts of violence.
He felt that the sage Vyasa had erred in choosing the
metaphor of physical war to inculcate spiritual truth and
that he should have chosen another more effective
metaphor. Gandhiji felt that it was his duty to state that the
12 TRIDIP SUHRUD
divine sage had erred. He said; It was impertinent on my
part. But what should one seeking to serve truth do? What
one must do if one sees an error? It is not wrong to draw
attention, in all humility, to what one feels to be an error.
9
His interpretation that the Gita was a poem that enjoined
the duty of non-violence, led to criticism that he not only
distorted the meaning of the divine song but that he was a
Christian in disguise. He replied to the charge; My religion
is a matter solely between my Maker and myself. If I am a
Hindu, I cannot cease to be one even though I may be
disowned by the whole of Hindu population. I do, however
suggest that non-violence is the end of all religions.
10
This perturbed many. Swami Anand, who had induced
him to write the Autobiography also forcefully argued for a
need of Gandhijis own translation and interpretation. He
said; We shall be able to appreciate your meaning of the
message of the Gita, only when we are able to study a
translation of the whole text by yourself, with the addition
of such notes as you may deem unnecessary. I do not think it
is just on your part to deduce ahimsa etc. from stray verses.
11
The force of the remark stayed with Gandhiji for almost a
decade when he finally translated the Gita with his own
commentary.
Before we examine the ground from which this
engagement stems, it is necessary to examine the question
of Adhikar, authority or qualification. Gandhiji was deeply
aware of this question of authority. In 1920, during the non-
cooperation movement he established a University, which
then was called Gujarat Mahavidyalaya.
12
Gandhiji was
appointed its Chancellor for life. In his inaugural address as
a chancellor he raised the question of Adhikar, of authority.
I fulfilled a function of a rishi, if a Vaniks son can do it.
13
The question of authority was more acute in case of a
translation of the Gita. He was by his own admission a Vaniks
son, had very limited knowledge of Sanskrit and his Gujarati
was by his own admission in no way scholarly.
14
He had accepted the demand for his own translation
with some hesitation. He had prepared himself for the task
by preparing a lexicographic text and by addressing the
ashramites for two hundred and eighteen days. He addressed
the question of authority and the legitimacy of his act of
reading meanings into the text by a complex set of
arguments.
The first was a theological argument. He refused to
consider the Gita a divinely inspired scripture. He steadfastly
refused to believe in the historicity of the Mahabharat. More
significantly he did not consider the Krishna of the Gita as a
historical person. He did not say that the Krishna as adored
by the people never lived, but the Krishna of the Gita was an
incarnation, in a sense contrary to Hindu belief. Incarnation
for Gandhiji was an act of perfect and pure imagination. He
wrote; Krishna of the Gita is perfection and right knowledge
personified; but the picture is imaginary.
15
Krishna was
perfect imagination as Gandhiji could not reconcile with
him doing many of the acts that the various Krishna Charitra
attributed to him. Gandhiji rejected them in no uncertain
terms. I have no knowledge that the Krishna of the
Mahabharata ever lived. My Krishna has nothing to do with
any historical person. I would refuse to bow my head to the
Krishna who would kill because his pride is hurt, or the
Krishna whom non-Hindus portray as dissolute youth. I
believe in Krishna of my imagination as perfect incarnation,
spotless in every sense of the word, the inspirer of the Gita
and the inspirer of the lives of millions of human beings.
But if it was proved to me that the Mahabharata is a history
in the sense that the modern historical books are, that every
word of the Mahabharata is authentic and that Krishna of
the Mahabharata actually did some of the acts attributed to
him, even at the cost of being banished from the Hindu
fold, I should not hesitate to reject that Krishna as God
incarnate.
16
Thus Gita for him was a depiction of a spiritual struggle
14 TRIDIP SUHRUD
between the forces of darkness and light within the human
heart and Krishna dwelled in each human heart. Krishna as
imagined by Gandhiji represented Truth; he was the
conscience in each human being, he was the God of Truth,
the Satya Narayan. Thus conceived the Gita was subject to
reason. He could reject what was inconsistent with his deeply
felt convictions and attribute meanings to the poem. His
attitude to all scriptures was rooted in a similar ground. He
rejected the historical Christ, but was deeply moved by the
Christ of the Sermons on the Mount and the felt the passions
of Christ on the Cross. Similarly, he felt that the Buddha
had erred in making contemplation the only path of self-
realisation. He would have liked the Buddha to have given
equal importance to bodily labour as selfless service.
The scriptures according to him had to confirm to what
he described as first principles of moral conduct. Anything
that was inconsistent with the first principles of morality could
not have for him the authority of the Shastra. Shastra, he
said, are designed not to supersede, but to sustain the first
principles.
17
This opened up the scriptures to reason. A
Christian visitor asked him, Where do you find the seat of
authority? Pointing to his breast Gandhiji said; It lies here.
I exercise my judgement about every scripture. including
the Gita. I cannot let scriptural text supersede my reason.
Whilst I believe that the principal books are
inspired...Nothing in them comes from God directly...I
cannot surrender my reason whilst I subscribe to Divine
revelation.
18
But this was not said as a non-believer. Gandhiji claimed
that he had earned the authority to interpret the scriptures
by his faith and incessant striving to feel the presence of
God that is Truth, in every moment of wakefulness and even
sleep. This ever present sense of being in His midst that
gave Gandhiji his loving devotion to God, his humility and a
sense of the spirit of dharma, or rectitude and righteousness
within him, guiding his path.
The second ground stemmed from a literary argument.
He said; A poets meaning is limitless.
19
When a poet
composes his work in a moment of inspiration he does not
have a clear conception of all its possible implications. He
argued that the beauty of a great poem is that it is greater
than the poet. Gandhiji gave the example of the author of
the Gita. He argued that the Gita had given new meanings
to both philosophical reflections and social practices. He
cited the example of the idea of Sanyas or renunciation.
The Sanyas of the Gita would not tolerate complete cessation
of all activity. As he put it; The Sannyasa of the Gita is all
work and yet no work.
20
He argued that the author of the
Gita by extending the meaning of words taught us to do
that. Yet, this was not to be construed as a free licence; it was
not a pure hermeneutic exercise. The act of interpretation
required two other qualifications.
He wrote; The truth which the poet utters in a moment
of his inspiration, we do not often see him following in his
own life.
21
Gandhiji opened up a new ground. He claimed
that those wanting to interpret the Shastras must practise its
truth in their own life. The practice of truth required a deep
moral sense. He said; For understanding the meaning of
the Shastras, one must have a well-cultivated moral sensibility
and experience in the practice of their truths...Hence
anyone who offers to interpret the Shastras must have
observed the prescribed practice in his life...Those, however,
are devoid of this spirit and lack even faith, are not qualified
to explain the meaning of the Shastras. Learned men may
please themselves and draw seemingly profound meanings
from the Shastras, but what they offer is not the real sense
of these. Only those who have the experience in the practice
of their truths can explain the real meaning of the
Shastras.
22
This was his real point of departure with the
tradition of scholastic interpretation of the Shastras. He made
faith, a moral sense and incessant practice of the truths of
the Shastras central to the act of interpretation.
16 TRIDIP SUHRUD
It was on this claim of practice that he based his
translation and interpretation. He was aware, he said, in his
introduction of his translation of the many translations and
commentaries available of the sacred book. But no author
had hitherto made a claim of practice. He in fact described
the literary output in Gujarati as unclean and of
questionable character. It was unclean as it had not been a
result of an incessant striving for purity in thought and
conduct. He described the Gita as a spiritual reference
book for him and his companions. It was their attempt to
lead their lives in accordance with the teaching of the Gita.
He did not wish to suggest any disrespect for other
renderings, they had their own place; but he boldly declared;
But I am not aware of the claim made by the translators of
enforcing the meaning of the Gita in their own lives. At the
back of my reading there is the claim of an endeavour to
enforce the meaning in my own conduct for an unbroken
period of forty years. For this reason I do harbour the wish
that all Gujarati men and women wishing to shape their
conduct according to their own faith, should digest and
derive strength from the translation here presented.
23
Gandhiji was to use this claim that the truth of the
scriptures is revealed not through mere contemplation on
the meanings of the words but primarily through a steadfast
observance of the truth of contained therein most effectively
in his political debates with Lokmanya Tilak. Tilak was apart
from being the most important political leader of India in
the second decade of the 20
th
Century, he was the celebrated
commentator on the Gita. His Gitarahasya composed during
his six years of imprisonment at the Mandalay Prison in the
Andaman remains a seminal work till date.
From 15
th
to the 18
th
March 1918 Gandhiji observed a
fast. This was his first public fast after returning to India
from South Africa in 1915. The fast was intended at one
level to remind the mill-hands of their pledge. But through
the fast Gandhiji wanted to demonstrate the moral power
of suffering. For him the nation was predicated upon the
moral character of the people. People who did not have
faith in God, did not have the capacity to under go suffering
for the sake of truth could not constitute themselves as a
nation. Nation for him thus became a moral category. The
fast at one level was intended to awaken the morality that
lay dormant in his countrymen.
It was this great idea that he wished to share with the
countrymen through the fast. On March 17, 1918 he spoke
to the Ashramites, who were his closest associates and people
he had the greatest faith in. The occasion was one of the
most sacred rituals of the Ashram life- the Morning Prayer.
Like many other occasions he opened his heart before the
Ashramites. The prayer discourse he said; is indeed the
best occasion for me to unburden my soul to you. The
decision to fast, he said, was a grave one but behind it stood
a great idea. The fast was a means of conveying this beautiful
idea; an opportunity he could not miss. This beautiful idea
was the truth that he had gleaned from the ancient culture
of India, which even if mastered by a few he felt, would give
them the mastery over the world.
The fast according to him was not just aimed at the mill-
hands of Ahmedabad, the fast was an occasion for a dialogue
with the people of India through a conversation with two of
her finest leaders.
One of them was Tilak Maharaj, on whom according to
Gandhiji, whom millions are crazy, for whom millions of
our countrymen would lay down their lives.
24
The other
leader was Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, a man Gandhiji
described as possessing the holiest character.
25
The fast,
Gandhiji said was an attempt to converse with these two great
leaders and through them with the country.
Tilak Maharaj had written on the inner meaning of the
Gita. But, despite this he had not understood India and her
people. Gandhiji said; But I have always felt that he has not
understood the age-old spirit of India, has not understood
18 TRIDIP SUHRUD
her soul and that is the reason why the nation has come to
this pass.
26
At the root of this failure was Tilaks desire that
India should be like Europe. Gandhiji said that Tilak Maharaj
had undergone six years of internment to to display a
courage of the European variety.
27
He likened Tilak
Maharajs internment to the great men of Russia who were
wasting their whole lives in Siberia. Gandhiji was saddened
that our greatest treasure was expended to no purpose. He
felt that if Tilak Maharajs imprisonment had spiritual
promptings and spiritual motives its results would have been
far different.
It was this absence of spiritual motive that Gandhiji
wanted to convey to Tilak Maharaj. Gandhiji had written
and spoken about this to him with greatest of respect. But it
was not something that could be captured in some words,
though Gandhiji was certain that with his sharp intellect
Tilak Maharaj had understood Gandhijis criticism. Gandhiji
wanted to convey the true meaning of the soul of India and
of spiritual suffering to him. Gandhiji said; This is, however,
no matter to be explained orally or in writing. To give him
first-hand experience of it, I must furnish a living example.
Indirectly, I have spoken to him often enough but, should I
get an opportunity of providing a direct demonstration, I
should not miss it, and here is one.
28
Pandit Malaviya was of holy character was learned and
well informed on points of dharma. But, he too had failed
to understand spiritual basis of India. Gandhiji said of him,
he has not, it seems to me, properly understood the soul of
India in all its grandeur.
29
Gandhiji felt that Pandit Malaviya
with whom he was tied with bonds of affection and had for
that reason frequent wranglings with him might get very
angry with him and consider him swollen-headed for having
said so. But it had to be said because what he had said was
quite true. The fast was an opportunity to convince Pandit
Malaviya regarding the truth of India. I have this opportunity
to provide him, too, with a direct demonstration. I owe it to
both to show now what Indias soul is.
30
The second debate arose in 1920 during the non-co-
operation movement. Tilak despaired at Gandhijis insistence
on non-violence both as a strategy and as a moral frame. He
argued for a policy of shatham prati shathyam (wickedness to
the wicked). He wrote; Politics is a game of worldly people
and not of sadhus, and instead of the maxim Akodhen Jine
Krodha ( anger is vanquished by non-anger, compassion) as
preached by Buddha, I prefer to rely on the maxim of Shri
Krishna.
31
Gandhiji replied that he was diffident about
joining issues with Lokmanya Tilak on the question involving
the interpretation of religious work, but in some cases instinct
must rise superior to interpretation. He argued that there
was no conflict between the two authorities quoted by Tilak.
He wrote; The Buddhist text lays down an eternal principle.
The text from the Bhagavad Gita shows to me how the
principle of conquering hate by love, untruth by truth, can
and must be applied.
32
He contested the charge of Tilak
that politics was not for sadhus. He said that the Gita was a
guide essentially for the worldly and not the unworldly. He
charged Tilak with mental laziness, he said; With deference
to the Lokamanya, I venture to say that it betrays mental
laziness to think that the world is not for sadhus. The epitome
of all religions is to promote purushartha, and purushartha
is nothing but a desperate attempt to become sadhu, i.e., to
become a gentleman in every sense of the term.
33
In
conclusion he said that the true law was and will ever remain,
shatham prati satyam (Truth even unto the wicked).
He argued that, Only he can interpret the Gita who
tries to follow its teaching in practice and the correctness of
his interpretation will be in proportion to his success in living
according to its teaching.
34
Therefore, in order to understand the true meaning of
the Gita according to Gandhiji one has to understand what
does living according to the teaching entailed.
Ashram, or community of men of religion was essential
20 TRIDIP SUHRUD
to Gandhijis strivings in spiritual and political realms. The
Gita was central to the life of the Ashram. Gandhiji
emphasised that, The Gita has for years been an
authoritative guide to belief and conduct for the Satyagraha
Ashram. It has provided us with a test with which to
determine the correctness or otherwise of our conduct in
question.
35
It was for the only true measure of the truth of
his actions. The Gita for me is a perennial guide to conduct.
From it I seek support for all my actions and, if, in a particular
case, I do not find the needed support, I would refrain from
the proposed action or at any rate feel uncertain about it.
36
In order that the Gita becomes the spiritual guidebook for
the ashramites it was necessary that the Gita was ever present
as an object of contemplation. Each ashramite was urged to
commit the Gita to memory. It became an essential part of
the ashram prayers; both in the morning and the evening.
The day at the ashram began with the congregational
morning worship at 4.15 am to 4.45 am
37
; and closed with
the evening prayer at 7 pm to 7.30 pm. So central was this
worship to the life of the community that Gandhiji could
claim; Ever since the Ashram was founded, not a single day
has passed to my knowledge without this worship.
38
During
the morning prayers the recitation of the Gita was so arranged
that the entire Gita was recited every fourteen days, later
this was changed so that the recitation was completed in
seven days.
39
The 19 verses of the Discourse II of the Gita
that describe the characteristics of a sthitpragnya became
part of the evening prayers.
But recitation of the Gita and committing it to memory
hardly constitutes following the truth of the Gita. The
framework for conduct was provided by the ashram vows; a
set of obligatory observances. These eleven observances drew
their philosophical core from the Gita; the idea of selfless,
detached action. Gandhiji said; The Ashram life is conceived
in the light of comprehensive and non-formal sannyasa of
the Bhagvad Gita.
40
The sannyasa of the Gita, where there
is work and action and yet no action, was to be attained
through the daily practice of truth, non-violence and
brahmacharya.
Truth as God was the root of the ashram, its primary
observance; Ahimsa or love was the means to Truth. Violence
and practice of Truth are opposites of each other and cannot
co-exist; the more he took to violence, the more he receded
from Truth.
41
But it was the practice of brahmacharya that gave the
ashram its character as a community of co-religionists. The
idea of brahmacharya as understood and practised by
Gandhiji and the ashramites was derived from the Gita, more
specifically the 19 verses of IInd Discourse that describe the
characteristics of a sthitpragnya; a person whose
understanding is secure. Brahmacharya in its limited and
restricted sense constitutes observance of chastity and
celibacy, including celibacy in marriage. The true meaning
of brahmacharya is conduct is quest of Brahman; Truth. The
Gita describes this state as a condition of sthitpragnya. A
sthitpragnya is one who puts away all the cravings that arise
in the mind and finds comfort for himself only from the
Atman,
42
and one whose sense are reined in on all sides
from their objects,
43
so that the mind is untroubled in
sorrows and longeth not for joys, who is free from passion,
fear and wrath;
44
who knows attachment no where; only
such a brahmachari can be in the world moving among
sense objects with the sense weaned from likes and dislikes
and brought under the control of the atman.
45
The state of sthitpragnya, Gandhiji would confess, is
impossible to attain so long as one is imprisoned in a mortal
frame, as our pleasures in the objects do not disappear so
long as the body persists. He argued that it was impossible to
attain deliverance so long as one lived in the body, the need
for deliverance remains so long as the connection with the
body remained. Thus, no one can be called a mukta while
he is alive.
46
And yet it was enjoined upon everyone as a
22 TRIDIP SUHRUD
duty to strive for this state as it was possible to become fit for
moksha; in the sense that one would attain deliverance after
death and one would not be born again. Therefore Gandhiji
made this quest central to his life. He said; What I want to
achieve-what I have been striving and pinning to achieve
these thirty years- is self-realisation, to see God face to face,
to attain moksha. I live and move and have my being in pursuit
of this goal.
47
The path shown to him by the Gita to attain
moksha consisted of unattached, selfless action; control over
the senses, faith, devotion and constant vigil.
Gandhiji knew that according to the Gita, when a man
starves his senses, the objects of those senses disappear for
him, but not the yearning for them.
48
The yearning
disappears when one has a vision of the Supreme Truth.
Gandhiji argued that this verse in fact advocated fasting for
self-purification. Fast as self-purification is Upvas (to dwell
closer to Him), upvas can be done only when fasting of senses
is accompanied by a desire to see God; as there is no prayer
without fasting and there is no real fast without prayer.
49
The path of Gita was neither contemplation, nor
devotion; the ideal was a sthitpragnya, a yogi, who acts without
attachment either to the action or the fruits thereof. Gandhiji
adopted two modes of self-practice to attain this state where
one acts, and yet does not act. These two modes were yajna
(sacrifice) and satyagraha.
The Gita declared that; Together with the sacrifice did
the Lord of beings create,
50
and the world would sustain so
long as there was sacrifice, as sacrifice produced rain.
51
Gandhiji found the word yajna full of beauty and power.
He interpreted the word to mean sacrifice, an act of service.
He saw this idea of sacrifice as basis of all religions. His ideal
was of course Jesus Christ. It was he who had shown the path,
Gandhiji said that the word yajna had to be understood in
the way Jesus lived and died. It was not sacrifice when other
lives were destroyed, the best sacrifice was giving up ones
own life. He wrote; Jesus put on a crown of thorns to win
salvation for his people, allowed his hands and feet to be
nailed and suffered agonies before he gave up the ghost.
This has been the law of yajna from immemorial times,
without yajna the earth cannot exist even for a moment.
52
Clearly, Gandhijis interpretation of the word yajna was
radically different from all previous interpretations that had
emphasised the aspect of worship and ritualistic
performances. Yajna for Gandhiji was service to others and
in the ultimate sense sacrifice of self. He said; This body
has been given to us only in order that we may serve all
creation with it. And therefore, says the Gita, he who eats
without offering yajna eats stolen food. Every single act of
one who would lead a life of purity should be in the nature
of yajna.
53
But how does one perform such a sacrifice in daily life?
Gandhijis response was two fold; for one he turned once
again to the Bible and the other was uniquely his own.
Earn thy bread by the sweat of thy brow, says the Bible.
Gandhiji made this central to the life of the ashram and
borrowed a term bread labour from Tolstoy to describe
the nature of work. This was an eternal principal; it was
dharma, duty, to perform bread labour, as those who did
not perform this form of yajna ate according to the Gita
stolen food. The other form of yajna was according to
Gandhiji peculiar to his times, as every age may and should
have its own particular yajna, this was the yuga-dharma.
Gandhiji said that the yajna of his times was spinning; it was
the yuga-dharma. Spinning was an obligatory ashram
observance; each member was required to spin 140 threads
daily, each thread measuring 4 feet.
54
This spinning was called
sutra-yajna; sacrificial spinning.
Gandhijis characterisation of spinning as obligatory yuga-
dharma deeply perturbed Poet Rabindranath Tagore. In a
series of memorable essays the Poet and the Mahatma
debated the significance of this cult of the charkha as the
Poet called it. Gandhiji responded with an essay called the
24 TRIDIP SUHRUD
Charkha in the Gita, and asserted that his belief in the
spinning wheel had come to him from the Gita; he knew
that the author of the Gita did not have the spinning wheel
in mind while enjoining upon all the duty of yajna, but the
Gita had laid down a fundamental principal of conduct;
and reading in applying it to India, I can only think of
spinning as the fittest and most acceptable sacrificial body
labour.
55
He clarified further; I know full well that the
meaning I have read into them will not be found in any of
the commentaries of the book, interpreted literally...If here
we understand the meaning of yajna rightly, there will be
no difficulty in accepting the interpretation I have put upon
it...Spinning is a true yajna.
56
As his conviction that sacrificial spinning was the only
true yajna for his times deepened, he along with the
ashramites resolved to change the name of the Ashram itself.
Ashram, hitherto called Satyagraha Ashram was re-named
Udyog Mandir (literally, Temple of Industry); explaining
the term Udyog Gandhiji said; Udyog has to be read in the
light of the Bhagvad Gita.
57
Spinning came to occupy for
him the place of Gita; he was convinced that for the millions
the only true way of following the truth of the Gita was to
practice sacrificial spinning. In 1932-33 while he was at the
Yeravda prison Mirabehn asked him for an English translation
of his commentaries on the Gita. Earlier he had translated
the entire Ashram Bhajanavali for her, so the demand was
not out of place. Gandhiji wrote to her that he would like to
do that and the prison was the most appropriate place to
undertake such a task; but if he were to do it, it would take
him away from spinning. He wrote; For the spinning is the
applied translation of the Gita; if one may coin that
expression.
58
If Gita and the state of sthitpragnya informed and guided
his spiritual quest to attain self-realisation, to see God face
to face, to attain moksha, satyagraha was his chosen means
to attain swaraj.
The origins of satyagraha were in a pledge, a pledge
made to oneself with God as witness. Gandhiji believed that
the true ideal of a satyagrahi is a sthitpragnya; who performs
all actions with purity of heart and mind; unattached to both
the actions and fruits thereof. He claimed that the first
glimpses of satyagraha had come to him not on 11 September
1906 in that fateful meeting at the Empire theatre in
Johannesburg but way back in 1899 when he read the Gita
for the first time with his Theosophist friends. He wrote; It
is certainly the Bhagvad Gitas intention that one should go
on working without the attachment to the fruits of work. I
deduced the principal of satyagraha from this. He who is
free from such attachment will not kill the enemy but rather
sacrifice himself...As far back as 1889, when I had my first
contact with the Gita, it gave me a hint of satyagraha, and as
I read more and more, the hint developed into a full
revelation of satyagraha.
59
The condition of sthitpragnya and the ideal of satyagrahi
were the same. The quest of a satyagrahi like that of the
sthitpragnya is to know oneself. Satyagraha is not only a
method based on the moral superiority of self-suffering; but
it is a mode of conduct that leads to self-knowledge. Without
self-knowledge satyagraha is not possible; as it is based on
the inviolable relationship between means and ends, and its
essence is in the purity of means. Pure means are not only
non-violent means but means adopted by a pure person; a
person who through a constant process of self-search cleanses
and purifies the self; whose only true aim is to be a seeker
after Truth. Thus, satyagraha, pure means and purity of the
practitioner share an immutable relationship. In absence of
the later two satyagraha is not possible. Satyagraha is
fundamentally an experiment in Truth in the sense that it
allows those who practice it to know themselves. Satyagraha
as a mode of self-recognition is directly linked to swaraj. It
is swaraj, when we learn to rule ourselves.
60
The idea of
ruling the self is fundamentally different from self-rule or
26 TRIDIP SUHRUD
Home-Rule. To rule ourselves means to be moral, to be
religious and to have control over our senses. Gandhijis idea
of true civilisation is based on this self-recognition. True
civilisation must lead to self-knowledge. He says; Civilisation
is that mode of conduct that points out to man the path of
duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are
convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery
over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know
ourselves.
61
In this we have measure of Gandhijis quest. His quest is
to know himself, to attain moksha, to see God face to face.
In order to fulfil this quest he must strive to be sthitpragnya,
he must be an ashramite, a satyagrahi and a seeker after
swaraj. He said; If we can achieve self-realization through
fasting and spinning, then self-realization necessarily implies
swaraj.
62
This he hoped would allow him and his fellow ashramites
to attain the perfect ideal of sthitpragnya because; when it
is night for all other beings, the disciplined soul is awake.
63
This was the ideal for himself and the ashram. He said; Let
us prey that we shall see light when all around us there is
darkness...we should thus be ready to take upon ourselves
the burden of the whole world, but we can bear that burden
only if we mean by it doing tapascharya on behalf of the whole
world, we shall then see light where others see nothing but
darkness.
64
NOTES
1. CWMG, vol. 70, p. 117.
2. Gandhi, M.K., An Autobiography Or The Story of My Experiments with Truth,
Translated from the original Gujarati by Mahadev Desai (Ahmedabad:
Navajivan Press, 1999 reprint), p. 57
3. Sir Edwin Arnolds translation. Gandhijis own rendering reads: In a
man brooding on objects of the senses, attachment to them spring up;
attachment begat craving and craving begets wrath. Wrath breeds
stupefaction, stupefaction leads to loss of memory, loss of memory ruins
reason, and the ruin of reason spells utter destruction. Discourse II:
62, 63. Desai, Mahadev; The Gospel of Selfless Action or The Gita According to
Gandhi, (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1946, 2004), p. 163.
4. The translation was done in 1926-1927, he wrote the introduction to
the translation two years later at Kosani in Almora. The introduction
was finished on 24 June, 1929. The Anasakti Yoga was published on 12
March 1930, the day he left the Ashram at Sabarmati on his historic
march to Dandi. It was translated in Hindi, Bengali and Marathi almost
immediately. Mahadev Desai translated the Anaskti Yoga as The Gospel
of Selfless Action in English. This translation was done during his
imprisonment in 1933-1934. The translation could not be published till
January 1946, as Gandhiji could not read the translation. Mahadev
Desai died as a prisoner in the Aga Khan Palace prison on 15 August
1942, and as a tribute to his memory Gandhiji hastened the publication
soon after his release from prison.
5. CWMG, vol. 21, p. 116.
6. Ibid, vol. 37, p. 77.
7. This debate took place on 24 October 1909 on the Dussehra day in the
Nizamuddin Restaurant in London.
8. On 1 July 1909, Madanlal Dhingra assassinated Sir William Curzon-Wyllie,
political aide-de-camp to Lord Morley, Secretary of State for India,
while he was at the reception hosted by the National Indian Association
at the Imperial Institute in South Kensington, London.
9. CWMG, vol. 37, p. 82.
10. Ibid, vol. 28, p. 47.
11. Desai, Mahadev; The Gospel of Selfless Action or The Gita According to Gandhi,
p. 125.
12. The Gujarat Mahavidyalaya was established on 18 October 1920 and
functions till date. It is now called Gujarat Vidyapith, which in 1963 was
notified as a Deemed University, the University Grants Commission of
India.
13. CWMG, vol. 21, p. 482.
p. 126.
15. Ibid, p. 128.
16. CWMG, vol. 33, p. 32.
17. Ibid, vol. 58, p. 9.
18. Ibid, vol. 70, p. 116.
p. 133.
20. Ibid.
21. CWMG, vol. 33, p. 87.
22. Ibid, p. 85.
p. 127.
28 TRIDIP SUHRUD
24. CWMG, vol. 16, p. 339.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid, p. 340.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid, p. 341.
31. CWMG, vol. 19, p. 331, fn. 1.
32. Ibid, p. 331.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid, vol. 39, p. 142.
35. Ibid, vol. 56, p. 156.
36. Ibid, vol. 32, p. 71.
37. The time of the morning prayer was subject to much experimentation
and change but was finally fixed at 4.20 am, a time when the tiller of the
soil and a true devotee of God woke up.
38. CWMG, vol. 56, p. 152.
39. The recitation of the various discourses of the Gita was distributed
among the days as follows: Friday, 1 and 2; Saturday, 3, 4 and 5; Sunday,
6, 7 and 8; Monday, 9, 10, 11 and 12; Tuesday, 13, 14 and 15; Wednesday,
16 and 17; Thursday, 18.
40. CWMG, vol. 42, p. 110.
41. Gandhi, M. K.; From Yeravda Mandir, translated from original Gujarati
by Valji Govindji Desai, (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1932, 2005), p. 5.
42. II:55.
43. II:68.
44. II:56.
45. II:64.
46. CWMG, vol. 37, p. 116.
47. Ibid, vol. 44, p. 90.
48. II:59.
49. CWMG, vol. 53, p. 259.
50. III:10.
51. III:14
52. CWMG, vol. 20, p. 404.
p. 177.
54. Initially spinning was time bound, half an hour; later the measure was
changed to threads spun.
55. CWMG, vol. 24, p. 435.
56. Ibid, pp. 464-465.
57. Ibid, vol. 43, p. 203.
58. Ibid, vol. 49, p. 357.
59. Ibid, vol. 18, pp. 50-51.
60. Gandhi, M. K.; Hind Swaraj, (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1938, 2000), p. 56.
61. Ibid, p. 53.
62. CWMG, vol. 37, p. 122.
63. II:69.
64. CWMG, vol. 37, p. 122.
TRANSLATING GT 2.47 OR INVENTING
THE NATIONAL MOTTO
Sibaji Bandyopadhyay
PREAMBLE
Sandipthe flamboyant patriot, the dashing fire-eating
swadeshi immortalized by Rabindranath in the novel Ghare-
Baire (Home and the World)at a point of stress breaks
with his far too ornate style and shies away from his habitual
pyrotechnics. For once he leaves behind the subterfuge of
convoluted expressions and goes for the simplicity of the
uncluttered. And, in making the passage from the
inflammatory to the unadorned, from the prolix to the bare,
Sandip supplies the readers with the clue vital to the
unmasking of his own political enterprisehe gives his game
away with almost child-like naivety. Sandip, of course, is too
clever to make the clue public. He takes care to keep that
one moment of rare candor secrethe buries it in his
personal diary.
To find justifications for the erotic impulsion that draws
him towards the wife of a trusting friendan impulsion that
would invariably count as a major moral lapse for any public-
figure even by his most docile, devoted followerSandip
advances a rather daring thesis apropos the Indian
mentality. He conceives of an awesome generalitya
generality that knows no exception and spares none.
Sandip confides in his diary, By birth I am an Indian. As a
result, no matter how much I shout that to deprive oneself
[of sensual pleasures] is sheer madness, I can never wholly
32 SIBAJI BANDYOPADHYAY
rid myself of the toxin of [de-erotized] austerity or sattvikat
that runs in my blood.
1
Sandip laments the difficulty of disavowing the clinging,
cloying residual ideology centered on the theme of
sublimation. To score the point, he uses a word derived
from the word sattva. And, sattvaas many pre-modern
Indian texts explain, for example, the Gt in chapter 14 in
great detailsis one of the three guas or modes which
bind the embodied, the imperishable dweller in the body,
to the body.
2
The other two are the rajas and the tamas.
While rajas promotes passion and tamas dullness, sattva
overpowers both passion and dullness.
3
Sandip alludes to sattva; and that immediately brings to
mind the other two. Sandips thesis then takes on a new
colour and becomes: the staying-power of the Indian rajas is
far too limited; dullards as they are, Indians quickly tire of
the exacting demands of full-bloodied passion and, sooner
or later, settle down on the plateau of impassive goodness;
in place of maximizing pleasures obtainable from the body,
they adopt the minimalist approach and tend towards self-
denial; such is the state and size of an average Indians psyche
that even when he responds positively to mundane
materiality, he is overpowered by the banal spirituality of
austerity.
Sandip however is fully aware that Indias tryst with
destiny has brought her close to a horizon of newer
possibilities. The swadeshi fervor, the urge for self-rule
generated by Lord Curzons imperious decision to partition
Bengal has gripped a sizable section of the population. The
fact that the emergent ideology of anti-imperialism is fast
becoming consolidated indicates that if Indians seize the
moment, they may succeed in capturing the state apparatus
and instate the model of autonomous nation admired by
every self-respecting bourgeois-citizen. But the practical
problem is, while the category of nation-state, at least on
paper, requires clarity of thought in matters relating to the
TRANSLATING GT 2.47 OR INVENTING THE NATIONAL MOTTO 33
mundane, the material and the secular, the agents involved
in the transformative programme launched in Bengal lack
the intellect to appreciate them in their fullness. Nothing
can prevent Indians from weakening the contingent-sensitive
rajas requisite for nation-building by the sattva mode
permanently ingrained in them.
Sandip underscores the point that this a truth grasped
by every leaderand that, in its turn, has contributed to the
deceit of devising an ideological hoax. Lest the current rajas-
fever dies down and Indians fail to reap dividends from the
falling stock of the Empire, the swadeshi sages, the shepherds
of lamb-like volunteers, have gone for a deliberate in-mixing
of the rajas with the sattva mode. They now parade the
spurious compound as a necessary component of Indias
national self-hood. Sandip writes in his diary, [It is because
of the preponderance of the sattva mode that] a peculiar
thing is happening in our country. We are now raising with
full force the call of religion [dharma] and the call of nation
[desh] at oncewe now need the Gt and the [slogan]
Vande Mataram both at the same time.
4
What is interesting
is Sandip in his diary vows to put a stop to the cacophony
created by the clash between the two clarion-calls. He
expresses the wish to blot out all messages that speak ill of
sensuousness or hedonism. But then, he was communicating
to himself.
Sandips aversion for religiosity is beyond doubt. But he
is also pragmatic. He knows, to succeed in life, one has to
learn to preserve appearances. So, instead of announcing
his aversion to the world he does his utmost to solidify the
newly-coined political vocabulary. He chooses the softer (and
in his case, also the cynical) option of combining the calls
of dharma and desh. Furthermore, in a heated exchange
with an old man, a veteran teacher who had the outrageous
temerity of making a few critical remarks about the means
adopted by swadeshi leaders, Sandip actually spells out the
principle which could unite the spirit of patriotism
epitomized by the national slogan Vande Mataram and the
spirit of dedication epitomized by the Gt . Cutting short
the old mans metaphorically-put retort, if we, who have
never tilled the land before think that we will reap the crop
in no time, then, Sandip not only replaces the crop by
the metaphor of fruits, he also switches from Bangla to
Sanskrit. Terribly pleased with himself for having rendered
the old foggy dumbfounded, Sandip records this verbal
parrying in his diary with particular relish. And the note
composed in reported speech but with a swagger that
outsmarts even Sandiphas the additional merit of showing
how the first person plural is subsumed by the first person
singular in the utterance of men who claim to represent
people. Sandip writes in his personal journal: I said, we do
not want crops. We say.... And, what was the statement of
faith to which the multitude supposedly subscribed? To
silence the exasperating teacher, Sandip resorts to the
second part of the first line of the 47th sloka of the 2nd
chapter of the Gt. A specimen of sparkling wit and splendid
conceit, the full retort reads: I said, we do not want crops.
We say, m phaleu kadcana.
5
Rabindranath Thakurs (1861-1941) Ghare-Baire was
serialized in Sabuj Patra in 1915 and was published in book-
form in 1916. Written in a period when the swadeshi
sentiment was still strong, the novel opens up many routes
by which one can trace the trajectory of Indias then
burgeoning nationalism. One such route is suggested by
Sandips triple invocation of (a) Vande Mataram, the word
that began to be popularized by swadeshi volunteers from
1904,
6
(b) Gt, the text which began to move to the centre
of the discursive domain of the English-educated Bengali
bhadralok from the 1880s
7
and (c) Gt 2.47, the sloka that
in the climate of modern hermeneutics came to be
designated the kernel-sloka of the hallowed Book. It may or
may not come as a surprise that the name that resonates
with all three of Sandips invocations is the name of one
individual: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (1838-1894).
Bankim authored the novel Anandamath (1882) which
includes the Vande Mataram poem; he produced the
unfinished but hugely influential commentary on the Gt
(Chapters 1 and 2: published in a journal: 1886-88; Chapters
1 to 4.19: published in book-form: 1902)
8
; and, it was Bankim,
who, besides identifying 2.47, 3.21 and 4.11 as being three
great sentences (mahbkya) of the Gt
9
, was among the
first to argue that 2.47 held the key to the Book.
But, before we can begin to historicize Sandips triple
invocation and subject it to a sustained political scrutiny, we
need to digress a little and re-view the literature of Gt
commentaries and translations with special reference to
2.47.
I
If one studies the Gt independently, one is hopelessly puzzled at first by
internal contradictions... as well as by meaningless repetitions.
Brajendra Nath Seal,
The Gt: A Synthetic Interpretation
10
[1930]
In their monumental survey Bhagavadgtnuvda: A Study in
Transcultural Translation (1983), Winand M. Callewaert and
Shilanand Hemraj observe at one point, The quintessence
of the Gt is often recognized in the verse 2.47...[a verse]
which has defied the translation skill of the best writers and
poets.
11
This indeed is strangesuch is the quality of the
quintessence that its very recognition becomes a source
of a general bafflement; so elusive is the quintessence that
even knowledgeable translators, including artists gifted with
especial compositional powers, encounter immense
difficulties in retaining the message encoded in 2.47; the
condensation achieved by their interpretative exercises
gets diffused whenever they undertake the task of
displacement! What could be the reason for this
extraordinary failure?
Debabrata Mallik gives an inkling of a solution to the
riddle. Mallik, in his 1982 book on Rabindranath, maintained
that while in Sanskrit m could be employed either as a
particle of prohibition or as a particle of negation, the latter
is conspicuously absent in the thirteen principal, that is,
Vedic, Upaniads and the Gt.
12
Even if we choose to steer clear from issues involving
grammatical niceties, Debabrata Malliks assertion helps us
in extracting two different utterances from 2.47: in one m
appears as particle of prohibition in its first line and in the
other m appears as particle of negation in the same. The
distance between the two utterances becomes more
pronounced once we re-call that in line one of 2.47, karmay
ev dhikras te m phaleu kadcana, the word adhikra
actually occurs twice: first after ev in the stated form and
second after kadcana or phaleu in the unstated form.
Putting the words according to syntax the sentence has the
look:
13
karmay + ev + te + adhikra + kadcana + phaleu +
(adhikra) + m
If we retain the words karma and adhikra in the
original but put to use the two particles separately, we obtain
these two utterances:
Utterance I: particle of prohibition for m:
(in) karma + alone + you (have) + adhikra + ever + (in)
fruits + (adhikra) + let (you) not have
Utterance II: particle of negation for m:
(in) karma + alone + you (have) + adhikra + ever + (in)
fruits + (adhikra) + (you) do not have
The moment we arrange the words in terms of syntax
the most significant difference between the two utterances
leaps to the eyes: the choice of particle has a decisive impact
on the unstated adhikra. M used as particle of negation
(Utterance II) renders to the unstated adhikra the same
semantic charge as possessed by the stated adhikra
whatever be the signified attached to the signifier of the
stated adhikra, it completely takes over the signifier of
the unstated adhikra; outright negation has the effect of
flattening out the sentence and constituting a speech-vector
that has unity of direction by the virtue of the fact that its
stated as well as unstated adhikra are equal in magnitude.
On the other hand, the situation is more relaxed when m
is used as a particle of prohibition (Utterance I)it allows
the unstated adhikra to mean something quite different
from the stated adhikra; the signified that can be associated
with the signifier of the unstated adhikra need have no a-
priori connection with the signified of the stated adhikra;
the two signifieds can be quite independent of each other.
The importance of ms role in the opening sentence of
2.47 cannot be overestimated. This is particularly so because
elsewhere in the Gt there is no scope of ambiguity of
meaning involving the particle. In all, m occurs seven times
in the Gt: thrice in 2.47, and once each in 2.3, 11.34, 16.5
and 18.66. Expressions like m bhur (2.47 second line), m
astv (2.47 second line), klaibya m sma gama (2.3), m
vyathih (11.34), m uca (16.5 and 18.66) rule out the
possibility of deploying m in the sense of simple negative na
or not.
14
Let us now make a quick survey of the relationship between
the stated adhikra and the unstated adhikra as it has
featured in commentaries on the Gt produced by divergent
schools of thought in pre-modern India as well as in modern
Gt translations and commentaries. We shall, of course, pay
more attention to modern commentaries, which have proved
to be politically poignant.
II
It cannot but be a matter of great surprise to find such a variety of
opinion as to the message of which the Bhagvad Gita preaches.
One is forced to ask why there should be such divergence of
opinion among scholars?
B. R. Ambedkar
Krishna and His Gita15 [1950s]
Pre-modern reading of Gt 2.47
Callewaert and Hemraj estimate that the total number of
Gt-commentaries composed till the eighteenth century is
near about 250.
16
The list includes texts both complete and
partial. Of these the first is that of formidable chrya
akara (788-820), the never-to-be surpassed Presiding Deity
of the sect bound to the tenets of Advaita or non-dualism.
Following the decline of Buddhism, from 9th century on,
several schools, each tenuously adhering to its chosen line
of argument, arose in India.
17
The more prominent sects
and their chief proponents were: Advaita and chrya
akara; aibdvaita (Saivik non-dualism) and chrya
Abhinavagupta (940-1014); Viitdvaita (qualified non-
dualism) and chrya Rmnuja (1017-1137); Dvaitdvaita
(doctrine of dual non-dual) and chrya Nimbrka (1162);
Dvaita (dualism) and chrya Madhva (1199-1276);
uddhdvaita (pure non-dualism) and chrya Vallabha
(1479). Of the six Masters just mentioned, four of them
wrote full-fledged commentaries on the Gt; namely,
akara, Abhinavagupta, Rmnuja and Madhva. For the
two remaining schools, Dvaitdvaita and uddhdvaita, the
Gt was accorded with proper full-length commentaries by
Keavakmrin (15th-16th c.) and Vallabha (17th c.), a
descendent and a namesake of the uddhdvaita-chrya,
respectively.
In his massive five-volume compendium A History of
Indian Philosophy (1922), Surendranath Dasgupta (1887-
1952) has wryly commented, Most of [the pre-modern]
commentaries [on the Gt ] are written either from the
point of view of akaras bhya, repeating the same ideas
in other language, or from the Vaiava point of view.
18
It
seems, so far as pre-modern Sanskrit commentaries are
concerned, a small number of texts may suffice to build a
representative sample. We pick thirteen texts out of the
available archive.
19
The sample has the look:
Sect Author Title
Advaita 1. akara (9th c.) 1. Gt- bhya
(non-dualism) 2. nandajnnagiri (13th c.) 2. Gt-bhya-bibechan
3. rdharsvmin (14th c.) 3. Subodhin
4. Madhusudan Saraswati 4. Gudrthadpik
(16th c.)
5. Vekantha (17th c.) 5. Brahmandagiri
aibdvaita 1. Abhinavagupta (10th-11th c.) 1. Gtrtha Samgraha
(Saivik non-
dualism)
Viitdvaita 1. Rmnuja (11th-12th c.) 1. Gt-bhya
(qualified 2. Vednta-Deika (13th-14th c.) 2.Ttparaya Candrik
non-dualism)
Dvaitdvaita 1. Keavakmrin (15th-16th c.) 1. Gt-tattva-prakik
(doctrine of
dual non-dual)
Dvaita (dualism) 1. Madhva (13th c.) 1. Gt-bhya
2. Jayatrtha (14th c.) 2. Prameyadpik
uddhdvaita 1. Vallabha (17th c.) 1. Tattva-dpik
(pure non- 2.Puruottama (prob. 18th c.) 2. Amta-taragi
dualism)
In terms of frequency distribution, there is not a speck
of doubt that in eleven out of the thirteen cases, m is treated
as a particle of prohibition in the first line of 2.47.
akara, for example, says: m phaleu adhikra astv
20
:
let there be no [adhikra] for the results of [karma] under
any circumstances whatever.
21
In the out-standing Bangla-
to-Bangla dictionary Bangiyo Sabda Kosh (1933-1946)a
dictionary compiled single-handedly by Haricharan
Bandyopadhyay (1867-1959)the meticulous lexicologist
takes the extra pain to alert readers that [in expressions
such as] m astv, the particle proper to m is the particle of
prohibition.
22
It is noteworthy that in spite of fundamental differences
in their philosophical perspectives, there is absolutely no
conflict of opinion as to the status of m in 2.47 first line
among the principal authors of Gt commentaries of
Advaita, aibdvaita, Dvaitdvaita, Dvaita or uddhdvaita
sects.
Saivik non-dualist Abhinavagupta writes: karmamtre
tvn vypto bhaba, natu karmaphaleu
23
: be concerned with
action alone, not with the fruit of action.
24
Keavakmrin,
the champion of the doctrine of dual non-dual writes,
karmaphaleu te m bh u: let you have no (adhikra) in
karmaphal.
25
The dualist Madhva opines: kmaniedh
ebtra: here we have prohibition on desire.
26
The pure non-
dualist Vallabha affirms, parantu aphaleu m kadcana
adhikra astv: but, let you not have any adhikra on the
fruits of those [karma].
27
In addition, scholars belonging to Advaita, aibdvaita,
Dvaitdvaita, Dvaita and uddhdvaita parties who elaborate
upon the founding-commentaries are united in reiterating
m as a particle of prohibition.
28
The narrative dealing with the nature of pre-modern
deployment of m in the opening line of 2.47 would have
been too smooth, too rounded and regular if it were for not
the school of Viitdvaita. For, the commentary authored
by Rmnuja, the chief ideologue of qualified non-dualism
as well as the sub-commentary on Rmnujas commentary
penned by Vednta-Deika, furnish material which force us
to sit up.
This certainly is reason enough to be jolted out of
complacency: Rmnuja, the arch-rival of akara whose
exegesis on Brahmasutra, the text central to all dispensations
of the Vednta, is particularly memorable for its relentlessness
in mounting vitriolic attacks on that of akaras, chooses
the particle of negation while explicating on the first line of
Gt 2.47. Deviating dramatically from akaras bhya,
Rmnuja drops the particle of prohibition and converts m
into na. He writes: phaleu na kadcidapyadhikra.
29
In his
English translation of Rmnujas Gt- bhya published in
1969, M.R. Sampatkumaran shows no signs of nervousness
while tackling this sentence. He transcribes it as: But never
is there any [adhikra] to the fruits which are known to be
associated with [karma].
30
However, that is not the case with
J.A.B. van Buitenens extraordinarily erudite rendering of
Rmnujas Gt-bhya, first published in 1953. But, before
we turn to Buitenen, we need to pause at Vednta-Deikas
gloss on Rmnujas 2.47 exegesis.
The relevant sentence from Vednta-Deikas sub-
commentary reads as: m iti na niedhbidhi; kintu
abhbhamatrabodhaka iti na kadchidituktam.
31
Vednta-
Deika, in fact, makes the intrusion of na in Rmnujas text
more flagrant by affixing to it grammatical descriptions of
the particle of m. He says: m[here] does not [refer to]
rules relating to prohibition; instead, it only [invokes] the
sense of the lackthis is the implication [of Rmnujas]
na kadcid etc.. Jnanendramohan Das (? 1872-1939) in his
Bangla-to-Bangla dictionary Bangala Bhashar Abhidhan (1st
edition: 1916; 2nd edition: 1937) informs that it is exactly
the sense of a-bhbh or lack or want which n (or na)
evokes;
32
in other words, abhbha-bodh has the function of
conjuring the particle of negation.
J. A. B. van Buitenens translation of Rmnuja-version
of 2.47, however, seems quite circumspect. More or less
ignoring Vednta-Deikas clear-cut m iti na niedhbidhi,
Buitenen draws attention to Rmnujas karmamtre
adhikra
33
and expands the karmamtre adhikra. . .
phaleu na kadcidapyadhikra to mean No more is
required than this: when performing [karma]... one should
consider [karma] in itself reason enough to perform it.
34
Buitenen and M.R. Sampatkumarans renderings of
Rmnujas interpretation of 2.47 offer the readers a chance
to engage in a study in contrast. For, while, Sampatkumarans
But never is there any [adhikra] to the fruits maintains
the commanding tone associated with straight-forward
negation, Buitenens one should consider rings with the
appeal associated with counsel-like prohibition. However,
in his 1981 translation of the Gt 2.47, Buitenen maintains
perfect accord with Rmnujas na: Your [adhikra] is only
to the [karma], not ever at all to its fruits.
35
Let us now tabulate the double-play of adhikrh in texts
belonging to schools other than the school of Viitdvaita
or qualified non-dualism. What is noteworthy in the table
is the variety of signifieds in relation to the signifier of the
unstated adhikra.
Author Text Stated adhikr Unstated adhikr
akara Gt - bhya adhikr t[craving /
grasping
36
]
Abhinavagupta Gtrthasangraha byprito kman
[be engaged] [desire]
Madhva Gt - bhya adhikr kma[desire]
Keavakmrin Gt -tattva- adhikr adhikr
prakika
Vallabha Tattva-dpik adhikr adhikr
nandajnnagiri Gt - bhya- adhikr abhila [urge]
bibechan
rdharsvmin Subodhin adhikr kma[lust]
Madhusudan Gudrthadpik kartabya bhoktabya
Saraswati [warranted] [the wish to
consume and
gratify senses]
Jayatrtha Prameyadpik adhikr km-kartabya
[desire-motivated]
Vekantha Brahmandagiri adhikr bhoktabya
[the wish to
consume and
gratify senses]
Puruottama Amta-taragi adhikr kma[appetite]
The checklist clearly demonstrates the range of meanings
attributed to the unstated adhikra is indeed wide. There
is little doubt that this flexibility is derived by the virtue of
the presence of the particle of prohibition in the sentence.
It is m understood in the sense of being let it not be
that permits akara to slip in, or better still, smuggle into
his Gt -bhya, a word that finds no place in the earlier
Upaniads
37
and is seldom mentioned in the Gt
38
. That
(tantalizing) word is the (Buddhist-sounding) t. This is
what akara wrote: ...while doing works, let there be no
desire [t] for the results of the works under any
circumstances whatever.
39
As a matter of fact, t occurs once in the section of
the fourteenth chapter of the Gt dealing with the three
guas or modes. In 14.7 we hear, rajas or passionthe
mode which enlivened Sandip, the swadeshi leader of
Rabindranaths Ghare-Baire, the gua which retained its
unwavering hold on Sandip even while he recited the Gt
and put to use the revered text as a tool for developing
national consciousnessis of the nature of attraction
springing from craving [t] and attachment.
40
Again, it is the same m which opens the room for using
the unstated adhikar as a synonym for km, the word that
has similar functions in the world of Upaniads as t has
in Buddhist texts
41
. It also encourages manymost
noticeably, Madhusudan Saraswatito innovate on the
unstated adhikar and configure newer sensibilities.
Gt 2.47 in modern Translations
Colonial rajas was then at its unbridled bestpassion for
dispossessing and subjugating others in order to accumulate
wealth and concentrate power in the hands of a chosen few
was far too pronounced among the officials of East India
Company; only a few years back, in 1769-70, a large part of
Bengal Presidency was devastated by a famine that did not
attest to caprices of nature but rather to colonial perfidy
and greed; and, while loot, utter destitution and
decomposed bodies composed the mise-en-scene, the book that
emerged from it was the English translation of the Gt ;
inaugurating as it were the age of serious Oriental
scholarship, that Gt was the first instance of a translation of
a Sanskrit work; translated by Charles Wilkins (1749-1836),
a writer posted in the Calcutta office of the Company, the
first English Gt came out from London in 1785; the
production of the book was financed by the East India
Company and the person instrumental in its publication,
the man behind the scene, was no less than Warren Hastings
(1732-1818), the then Governor-General of India.
In trying to garner financial support for the publication
of the translation from the Company, Warren Hastings sent
a private dispatch dated 4 October 1784 to Nathaniel Smith,
Chairman, East India Company. But the missive soon ceased
to be a mere personal correspondenceadded to Wilkins
Gt as its Preface, the secret document turned into a
revealed testimonial in less than a years time.
Hastings, in his letter to Smith, also appended a sort of
character-certificate for Wilkins. Obliquely referring to the
climate of licentiousness reigning then in Bengal, to the
general sanction of craving for and grasping of spoils of
colonial plunder, Hastings said, Wilkins was one of those
exceptional Company-employees who though were at a
season of life, and with a licence of conduct, more apt to
produce dissipation responded to the desire of
improvement and spent hours in cultivating fruit[s] of long
and laboured application[s].
42
And, in his bid to impress
upon the Chairman of the Company the political as well as
spiritual importance of sponsoring the first English translation
of the Gt, Hastings wrote: [the publication will make it
apparent to the Hindoos that] they [are] receiv[ing] a
different [i.e., better] treatment from our nation [than the
one meted to them by the Mohammedans]...[After making
the necessary] allowance of obscurity, absurdity, barbarous
habits, and a perverted morality [any European reader will
realize that]...the G e et [is] a performance of great
originality and [represents] a single exception, among all
the known religions of mankind, of a theology accurately
corresponding with that of the Christian dispensation.
43
To express his fulsome gratefulness for the unsolicited
patronage, Wilkins dedicated his translation to Hastings. We
thus have this unforgettable sentence in the dedicatory note:
I humbly request you will permit me, in token of my
gratitude, to lay the Geet publicly at your feet.
44
Wilkins translation and Hastings evaluation of the Gt
were to have a momentous role in the shaping of the
European perception vis--vis the Hindu View of Life.
Besides felicitating Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), the two spokesmen of
US-based New England Transcendentalists or the
fountainhead of German Idealism G. W. F. Hegel (1770-
1831) to construe, as it were, the Hindu Unconscious, the
book also opened the flood-gate for Gt-translation.
45
The
second translation of the Gt from the original came when
August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767-1845), the first Head
of the First department of Sanskrit established in Germanys
Bonn University, put it to Latin in 1823. But, between 1785
and 1823, Wilkins English translation was re-translated into
several European languages, such as, French (1887), Russian
(1788), German (1801). It set into motion a process which
is yet to be exhausted.
The Callewaert-Hemraj catalogue shows that the number
of English Gt published between 1785 and 1979 is 273
and the number of Bangla Gt published between 1818
and 1979 is 280.
46
It will be safe to assumegiven the fact
that the spate of translation of the dialogue between Ka
and Arjuna shows no sign of diminishing in intensityboth
English and Bangla Gt have by now crossed the 300 mark.
We have with us a sample consisting of 139 examples of
translation of Gt 2.47: 67 of them in English, 29 in Bangla,
40 in Hindi
47
, 1 in Marathi, 1 in Gujarati and 1 in Latin.
48
The statistical information in relation to the choice of
particle for m is:
Language Particle of Prohibition Particle of Negation
English 13 54
Bangla 12 17
Hindi 7 33
Marathi 0 1
Gujarati 0 1
Latin 1 0
33 106
The sample enables us to draw quite a few conclusions.
Some of them are:
The inclination to favour the particle of negation over
the particle of prohibition is far more pronounced in
translations than in commentaries.
There is a clear pattern in the increase in the
occurrence of the particle of negation over time. For
example: between 1950 and 2005, the particle of
prohibition occurs 8 times and the particle of negation
42 times in English and Bangla translations taken
together; in Hindi, the particle of prohibition features
7 timesthe last instance in 1962and the particle of
negation 33 times.
(While, as is to be expected, in the case of particle of
negation, the unstated adhikra remains embroiled
with whatever meaning is imputed to the stated
adhikra), in the case of particle of prohibition the
unstated adhikra enjoys a partial autonomy.
And, as for the stated adhikra there is no dearth of
creative trans-creations. A few English examples:
Translator Year Stated adhikra
Charles Wilkins
49
1785 motive
John Davies
50
1882 charge
Kashinath Trimbak Telang
51
1882 business
Kisari Mohan Ganguli
52
1883-1896 concern
Mohini M. Chatterji
53
1887 right
Jogindranath Mukharji
54
1900 power
Annie Besant and Bhagavan Das
55
1905 business
Franklin Edgerton
56
1925 interest
W. Douglas P. Hill
57
1928 rightful interest
Dhan Gopal Mukerji
58
1931 task
Mahadev Desai
59
1946 province
S. Radhakrishnan
60
1948 right
Juan Mascar
61
1962 (set thy) heart
R. C. Zaehner
62
1966 proper business
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
63
1967 control
Morarji Desai
64
1974 (are free to) perform
J. A. B. Buitenen
65
1981 entitlement
Barbara Stoler Miller
66
1989 (be) intent
Hans Harder
67
2001 (are) entitled
Boris Marjanovic
68
2002 domain
Laurie L. Patton
69
2008 authority
It is obvious that the true purport of the puzzling
metamorphosis of karmay ev te adhikra m phaleu
kadcana by which the particle of negation gains in
ascendancy cannot be determined unless we go into the
modern genealogy of the term karma and the meaning
that gets to be (finally) imputed to the stated / unstated
adhikra.
III
One has to understand what karma is, and likewise one has to understand
what is wrong karma [or vikarmaa] and one has to understand about non-
karma [or akarma]. Hard to understand is the way of karma.
The Bhagavadgt, 4.17
70
Reflecting on the difficulties of transporting technical
words from the universe of pre-modern discourses to
discourses inhabited by the modern, Warren Hastings had
written to the East India Company Chairman: ...as they must
differ...from the common modes of thinking...it may be
impossible to render [them] by any of the known terms of
science in our language, or even to make them intelligible
by definition.
71
Further, he said, Wilkins, on occasions had
taken the liberty of using several different words to make
intelligible notions that bore single markers in the Gt but
appeared in varying contexts. To instantiate his point,
Hastings gave a set of examples. And theyAction,
Application, Practice etc
72
unmistakably point to
karma. For, Wilkins had designated karma by words such as,
actions (3.4 / 4.9)
73
, work (4.16)
74
, action (4.17)
75
, moral duties
(3.22)
76
, duties (3.23)
77
, moral actions (3.24)
78
, works (5.1)
79
,
duties of life (5.10)
80
, (practice of) deeds (3.1)
81
, the practical, or
exercise of the moral and religious duties (3.3)
82
, application (2.48:
in reference to a mode of conducting karma)
83
, deed
(2.47)
84
.
The very first translation of the Gt is not only like a
reservoir of synonyms, a veritable thesaurus in relation to
karma, it is also symptomatic of the modern dispersal of
meaning of a pre-modern technical concept. Before we
proceed further with the problem of karma, let us see how
the word features in some of the English translations:
Translator Year Karma
Charles Wilkins
85
1785 deed
J. Cockburn Thomson
86
1855 action
John Davies
87
1882 work
Kashinath Trimbak Telang
88
1882 action
Kisari Mohan Ganguli
89
1883-1896 actions
Edwin Arnold
90
1885 right deeds
Mohini M. Chatterji
91
1887 action
Annie Besant and Bhagavan Das
92
1905 action
W. Douglas P. Hill
93
1928 work
Dhan Gopal Mukerji
94
1931 act
Shree Purohit Swami
95
1935 work
Mahadev Desai
96
1946 action
S. Radhakrishnan
97
1948 action
Swami Prabhupada Bhaktivedanta
98
1960 prescribed duty
Juan Mascar
99
1962 work
M.R. Sampatkumaran
100
1969 rite
Dilip Kumar Roy
101
1970 works
J. A. B. Buitenen
102
1981 rite
Barbara Stoler Miller
103
1989 action
Boris Marjanovic
104
2002 action
Laurie L. Patton
105
2008 action
It is eminently evident that there is (a) a marked bias in
favour of action and (b) a tension between action on one
hand and rite or prescribed duty on the other. And, the latter
is most ponderable in Wilkins.
Wilkins uses action as a synonym for karma on several
occasions. But, in a special note on 3.1, he appends the extra-
information that the expression the practice of deeds stands
for the performance of religious ceremonies and moral
duties, called Karm-Yog
106
and, when it comes to 2.47,
he chooses deed over action.
It indeed is credible that Wilkins takes the trouble of
providing the readers with the key to the interpretive
paradigm upon which he bases his translation. In his note
on 9.28 Wilkins makes explicit his antipathy towards the
creed of Snnys or renunciation and argues that Gt is
quite opposed to applying the word in any unrestricted sense.
In his words: Sannysee [means] one who totally forsaketh
all worldly actions; but [the Gt]...confines the word Sannys
to a forsaking of the hope of reward
107
. Wilkins adds to the
ignominy of those who fail to appreciate Gts superb feat
of [unifying] various religious opinions which prevailed in
[its] days
108
because of their (near-pathological) attachment
to the extremist doctrine of unqualified or absolute
Sannys by cutting a sarcastic remark on the commentary on
18.2 contained in rdharsvmins Subodhin. In Wilkins well-
considered view, rdhar is one of those commentators
[who]...wander from the simple path of [the] author into a
labyrinth of scholastic jargon.
109
Now, it so happens that rdhars exposition on 18.2 bears
a striking resemblance with that of akaras.
110
Wilkins
critique of rdhar thus signals the beginning of a critique
of far-reaching consequences. Besides giving a new lease of
life to the polemic violence
111
directed against akara by
pre-modern ideologues committed to the intellectual cause
of schools other than that of non-dualism such as Rmnuja
and Madhva, it gestures towards the 19
th
-20
th
century notion
of karma, a notion unthinkable within the discursive terrain
of all pre-modern sects. This double breakbreak with
akaras uncompromising stand on issues relating to karma
as well as with the general sense of karma shared by every
Brahmanical Apostle of Thoughtwas first theoretically
articulated, and that too with astounding clarity, by
Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay.
Bankimchandras Commentary on the Gt offers two
major and novel theoretical propositions. Let us recapitulate
his arguments step by step and append our own comments
to them.
1. In the course of expounding on 2.47 Bankim complains
at one point: [There is a] confusion...about the meaning
of the word karma. Several Hindu writers of stras or
commentators on stras have created
confusion...Thanks to them, we are to understand...that
karma alone is not karmaonly the sacrifices etc.
prescribed in the Vedas and stras are karma.
112
[Doubtless, the umbrella-term Hindua term that is
more or less a gift of colonial discourseincludes all
orthodox, that is, Veda-abiding stika philosophers. In
his bid to uncover the heinous motive behind the western
manufacture of a commodity called Hinduism, Bankim
himself had observed in his English book Letters on
Hinduism (written in the 1880s but published
posthumously), It being assumed that the whole Hindu
race had a common religion, that common religion very
naturally received from its foreign critics the name of
Hindu religion.
113
In the same book he had also bitterly
castigated the monstrous nature of misuse of [the]
name [Hindu].
114
Yet, Bankims Bangla writings often
become troubling by the lamentable tendency of treating
Hindu/Hinduism as over-accommodative nomen-
clature. Nonetheless, even if we choose to disregard the
appellation Hindu in Bankims 2.47 commentary, it is
indisputable that all pre-modern commentators of the
Gt deploy the word karma in a strict technical senseit
is immaterial whether the exponent is akara or
Rmnuja, Abhinavagupta or Madhva, Keavakmrin
or Vallabha, every one of them use the word as a precisely
delineated, well-delimited, bound category. Each
adheres to the three-fold taxonomic divide for karma:
each maintains that karma is of three kind: niyta or
obligatory/ naimittik or occasional and kmya or
desiderative. For example: akara (18.2)
115
,
Abhinavagupta (3.9 /4.17)
116
, Rmnuja (2.47)
117
,
Madhva (5.4)
118
, Keavakmrin (18.2)
119
, Vallabha
(18.2)
120
. The discursive practice standard to every school
of Vednta propels all its followers to use the word karma
in a rigorous mannerthe systemic marshalling of the
term gives to it nearly the same content as the expression
bundle of reproductive practices carries. Karma there
operates like a short-hand for measures intended to
perpetuate whatever is in the shape of obligatory or
occasional procedures, i.e., for habit-forming
procedures which contribute to the sustenance of the
need economy. Karma also allows for desire by
sanctioning desiderative performances provided they
do not violate the norm (established by protocols
associated with the periodical or occasional) and
thereby fall into the category of vikarmaa (4.17) or
unlawful
121
/ wrong
122
karma. On the whole thus,
karma denotes a structure of regulations in which desire
remains circumscribed by and accountable to the
economy spelled out on the basis of need. Seen in this
light, it seems English words like rite or works or prescribed
duties have greater chance of either corresponding to or
approximating karma of 2.47.]
2. After accusing the Hindu writers of stras of creating
a semantic confusion apropos karma and restating the
same charge in a separate footnote in his commentary
on 2.47[though] the conventional meaning [of
karma] is indeed in favour of sacrifices...I think the reader
will understand hereafter that this conventional meaning
is erroneousBankim grants grudgingly: [but] I am
bound to admit that sometimes the word karma denotes
the Vedic ritualistic [practices] in the Gt too.
123
3. To demonstrate the error of linking karma to Vedic
rituals alone, a mistake pervasive in the Gt-
commentaries composed by orthodox philosophers
from the ninth to the eighteenth century, Bankim turns
to 3.5 and 3.8. Flagging the two slokasno one can
remain even for a moment without doing karma; even
the maintenance of thy physical life cannot be effected
without karma (3.5) and Do thou thy allotted karma,
for karma is better than akarmaa [or non-karma]
(3.8)Bankim stipulates, these two examples are
sufficient to prove that the ambit of the meaning of karma
is indeed far wider in the Gt than supposed hitherto.
Bankim then makes plain the impetus behind his
intellectual coup. After dismissing the seven slokas 3.10
to 3.16 which clearly deal with the theme of sacrifice
as being so unscientific as to throw English-educated
modern readers into a severe whirlpool of supernatural
statements, he says, Here none of the ancient...
commentators comes to our aid; they have set the sails
of belief and passed over easily. We are pupils of the
mlechhas; we do not have this means of succour.
124
So
finally, despite his firm belief that the English do not
understand anything of the Gt
125
, Bankim says in the
same breath in the same passage that the foreign opinion
matches more coherently than the native [one] as far
as the fundamental postulate of the Gt is concerned
126
.
The double-bill of resistance and acquiescence towards
the mlechha or the Westerner permits Bankim to
simultaneously run down the two English Gt produced
by J. Cockburn Thomson (1855) and John Davies (1882)
and fudge together an interpretation undreamed by
earlier Indian commentators. And that firsthand
interpretation is centered on the category of karma.
Freeing it from the iron-shackle of meaning forged by
akara, Rmnuja, rdhar et al, Bankim transports the
word from the domain of constricted signification to that
of open, unbound signification. And, in the process of
canceling out its conventional meaning of Vedic rituals
he takes recourse to an English word. So, in the late
19th century commentary on the Gt penned by Bankim
in Bangla, just at the point of the single most important
conceptual pass-over, readers are presented with an
equation whose left hand side is occupied by a Sanskrit
term and the right hand side by an English term. The
equation is: karma = action.
127
And, the word that occupies
the middle position, shedding light on the two on either
side, is the ordinary everyday Bangla word kj or any
work.
128
In Bankims estimate therefore, the
revolutionary proclamation of the Gt is: karma = kj =
action.
[It must not be overlooked that in their great ideological
battle against Brahmanism, the proponents of Buddhism
had indeed attempted a radical transvaluation by
downgrading the (privileged) karma to the level of
everyday usage signifying nothing special: More subtly,
the notion of ritual at the heart of the term karma in the
vaidika world was replaced by (spiritual) intention in
Pali kamma.
129
But, even if we adopt a liberal stance
and go with Bankim in his unequivocal declaration that
the main thrust of Gts arguments ineluctably leads to
viewing karma as action or kj, a near-cousin of kamma,
the rest of Bankims reading of the Gt does not quite
square with the Buddhist-like nstika rejection of
Brahmanism. For, what he does there amounts to eating
the cake and keeping it tooto vent his ire against his
principal adversary, (the erypto-Buddhist) akara,
Bankim remains faithful to the discursive protocols of
the orthodox or stika schools but dissociates himself with
even Rmnuja, the most vocal critic of akara, on the
question of karma. As we shall see later, these
contradictory moves would soon consolidate to frame
what is now common-speak in discourses on the
founding tenets of so-called Hinduism.]
4. Karma in the Gt is best understood as actionthis first
major theoretical construct of Bankim leaves its mark
on his translation of 2.47 in his Commentary. In Bankims
entire corpus of writing the Bangla version of 2.47 is to
be found twice. The other instance can be located in
the section on the Gt in his Dharmatattva (published
in a journal: 1884-1885; published in book-form with
additional material: 1888). There it reads as: You have
adhikra on karma alone, may you never have [it] on
the fruits of karma.
130
However, in Bankims Gt-
commentarypublication of the exegesis on the second
chapter in a journal ends in 1888the sloka takes the
amended form: You are entitled to karma, but may never
be (entitled) to the fruits.
131
It is noteworthy that
although in both the cases m is used as a particle of
prohibition, in the latter ev or alone/only disappears.
What is the significance of this disappearance?
[One primary postulate of akaras non-dualism was: it
is futile to claim, by taking refuge in false analogies like
abandoning of a barren womans son, that niyta or
obligatory/ ordinary and naimittik or occasional
karma, i.e., works ordained by supra-individual
authorities, do not engender fruitsin the final analysis,
all karma is essentially kmya or desiderative/ desirous/
interested in nature.
132
akara would face no problem
in accepting this verdict from Manu, the supposed
author of the most prestigious dharma-stra or Book
of Conduct known as Manusmti or The Laws of Manu:
...there is no such thing as no desire; for even studying
the Veda and engaging in the rituals enjoined in the
Veda are based upon desire (The Laws of Manu: 2.2).
133
akara would have particularly savoured Manus
definition of Karmayoga: [Karmayoga] was engagement
with rituals enjoined in the Veda (2.2).
The (non-dualist) theorem, every karma = kmya karma
leads automatically to the following lemmas: (a) nikm
karma or disinterested karma is a contradiction in
termsat least, given the parameters set by (unqualified)
non-dualism, nikm karma is inadmissible as a
conceptual category; (b) to be (genuinely and not
hypocritically) nikm one has to give up not the fruits
of karma but karma itselfthe technical word for the
(half-hearted) first act is tyga or abandonment and of
the (all-out) second act is sannys or renouncement;
(c) to imagine that it is logically tenable to conjoin karma
with jna or absolute knowledge is to live in a fools
paradisefor, not the karmayog, the man who performs
his karma as dispassionately as humanly possible, but the
renouncer or the sannys, the man who aims for a total
rejection of the World As It Is in the shape of naikarma
or negation of karma is entitled to jna. The ev of
2.47 therefore is of paramount importance in akaras
(as well as in every other non-dualist thinkers)
commentary. The word has the function of separating
persons qualified to obtain jnna from those who are
bound to the dictates of karma. For akara (and all other
non-dualists) ev by itself proves (a)
jnakarmasamuchhaibd or the theory of conjunction
of jna and karma is a false doctrine jna and karma,
as Surevara (9th century), one of the staunchest
supporters of akaras system put it in his Naikarma-
Siddhi, are comparable to sun and darkness or lion and
goat respectively and therefore the twain have no
common meeting ground;
134
(b) meant for the
karmayog, the full implication of 2.47 is: [Not being
qualified for jna] you have adhikra on karma alone,
may you never have [adhikra] for the fruits of karma;
135
(c) Kas commandment, Never is this [the Doctrine
of the Gt] is to be spoken to one who is not austere in
life (18.67) establishes once and for all that the Gt is
an esoteric text meant solely for the sannys who
understands that he has adhikar on jna alone
136
it
is for those who (as explicitly directed in 2.45) hope to
transcend all the three guas, that is, go beyond not only
the modes of tamas or dullness and rajas or passion
but also sattva or goodness, the mode associated with
tyga or abandonment of fruits of karma
137
; (d)
henceas, commencing his Commentary at 2.10,
akara put it in his opening remarksit is abundantly
clear that those who court support for
jnakarmasamuchhaibd or the theory of conjunction
of jna and karma by citing 2.47 are plainly
misguided;
138
as a matter of fact, 2.47 is quite irrelevant
for the intended addresses of the Gt.
Without doubt, akara could not have been too happy
with verse 6.86 of The Laws of Manufor there, Manu
uses, of all words, karmayoga to describe the tasks of
the renouncers of the Veda. Placing 6.86 in tandem
with Manus definition of karmayoga in 2.2 as
engagement with rituals enjoined in the Veda, the
former presents us with an irresoluble contradiction
karmayoga in 6.86 becomes the activities of those who
have given up on karmayoga!
139
It is not for nothing that
many a commentator of The Laws of Manu has had to
tussle with the semantic import of 6.86s karmayoga in
order to bring a semblance of sense to the verse.
140
To preserve consistency quite a few textual strategies
have been devised. Some, e.g. Govindarga and Nryaa,
have opined that reading 6.86 in conjunction with 4.257
(when he has become free and clear of [all] the debt[s]
he owes...he should dwell in a state of equanimity,
turning over everything to his son
141
) or 6.95 (...when
he has restrained himself and studied the Veda, he may
live happily under the control of his sons
142
) reveals the
true identity of 6.86s karmayoghe is, although
liberated, a householder and not a sannys (and is
therefore expected to maintain some degree of
attachment to karma).
143
Bankim was perfectly right when he, while explicating
on 2.20 threw in this additional comment, It is needless
to say that akaras purpose [is to]...cast away
karmayoga.
144
akaras pre-modern opponents too got
wind of his anti-nomian tendencies; that akaras
rejection of karma was tantamount to the rejection of
works prescribed by the ruti or the Smti and the
drudgery and monotony organic to all normalized
routine-activities, did not escape them. Rmnuja, for
example, even when he equates akarmaa (4.16) with
naikarma and therefore with jna
145
, argues in favour
of karmayoga. Counseling that patient application to set
tasks was more advantageous than relinquishing them,
insisting that divine consciousness can only bloom by a
graded development with the aid of bhakti or devotion,
Rmnuja says: karmayoga is the best means to execute,
because it is easy to execute.
146
But since neither akara nor Rmnuja share Bankims
enthusiasm for expanding the horizon of meaning of
karma they do not latch onto 3.5 and 3.8 the way Bankim
does. So, commenting on Do thou thy allotted karma,
for karma is better than akarmaa [or non-karma]
(3.8), Rmnuja restricts himself to saying: It is very easy
to be active...consequently, activity will not make one
negligent...So this means again that karmayoga is
superior.
147
akara, on the other hand, seizes upon
3.5 (no one can remain even for a moment without
doing karma; even the maintenance of thy physical life
cannot be effected without karma) to further bolster
his critique of karmayoga. He writes: the expression no
one here only applies to the ignorant onesit indicates
the group of people not distinguished enough to acquire
jna; the sloka has no bearing whatsoever on the
wisemen unshaken by the [three] guas need not
be exercised over it.
148
Moreover, just as akara does not spend much time
expounding on 2.47, so do the chieftains of the other
competing schools: akara gives to it five lines,
Abhinavagupta four, Rmnuja eight, Madhva twenty,
Keavakmrin ten and Vallabha three.
149
So, even if,
unlike the non-dualist akara, leaders of other Vednta
factions such as, Saivik non-dualism, qualified non-
dualism, dualism, dual non-dualism and pure non-
dualism, do not write off 2.47 as a materially insignificant
sloka, none of them attach any special importance to it
either. One of the first commentators to be over-awed
by it was BankimchandraWilliam Quan Judge (1851-
1896), one of the more prominent theorists of New York
based Theosophical Society was another. While, in his
book Essays on the Gt, written exactly at the time (1887-
88) Bankim was composing his bhya (1886-88), Judge
declares, This advice (2.47) and the direction to see
the Spirit in all things and all things in It express the gist
of the Bhagavad- Gts teaching
150
, Bankim in his
commentary, musing over the intricacies of 2.47
confesses, I am not saying that I have understood it
completely
151
.]
5. Bankims deletion of ev from 2.47 extends beyond the
re-conceptualization of karmabeside ridding karma of
the haunting presence of jna and thus making its
interchangeability with action logically convincing, the
deletion also helps in re-defining the relationship
between nikm karma or disinterested karma and
sannys or renouncement. Even before he officially
announced in his Commentary that 2.47 was the great
sentence of the Gt and such an elevated, holy
utterance of dharma, beneficial for man and of great
dignity, has never again been proclaimed on earth,
152
Bankim had re-thought the relationship. The New
Thought, which is also Bankims second major
proposition, is voiced in the section called Sannys in
Dharmatattva. To put it in right perspective let us place
the proposition along with those put forward by akara
and Rmnuja on the same issue. The picture then
becomes:
akara: Whatever else it may be, nikm karma is
definitely not sannys; hence, karmayoga is the perfect
anti-thesis of jnayoga.
Rmnuja: Cultivation of nikm karma is the surest way
of attaining the beatitude aspired by the sannys; hence,
karmayoga is superior to jnayoga.
153
Bankim: Doubtless, nikm karma alone is sannys
for, what else is there in sannys?;
154
hence, karmayoga
has the same valence as jnayoga.
[But, this much has to be granted. After a great deal of
intellectual jugglery, Bankims notion of disinterested
action took on a rather complex characterit turned
into nikm kmya karma or desireless desirous
action.
155
But, as Gt gained in political currency and
Bankims Gospel of Action got increasingly embedded
in the political unconscious of the English-educated, the
middle term kmya or desirous in Bankims novel
construction went out of circulation. This vanishing may
be regarded as a collateral damage in the complex
process of harnessing popular support. Thus, wading
through the mires of colonial imposition to chalk out a
nationally respectable counter-discourse, the only
effective analytic tool the enlightened vanguards were
left with was desireless action.]
Conceptual transformations of key-terms crucial to pre-
colonial Brahminical speculations initiated by Bankim (and
a few of his distant compatriots) really mature when the
equation karma = kj = action combines with the equation
(stated / unstated) adhikar = right.
IV
You have the Gt and yet people go searching for dharma in the Veda, Smti,
Bible, or the Quran!
Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay,
Dharmatatva
156
[1888]
The first eight English translations of the Gt are produced
by Charles Wilkins (1785), J. Cockburn Thomson (1855),
Kashinath Trimbak Telang (1875: in verse), John Davies
(1882), Kashinath Trimbak Telang (1882: in prose), Kisari
Mohan Ganguli (date uncertain: perhaps before 1885),
Edwin Arnold (1885) and Mohini M. Chatterji (1887). Of
these eight we have not been able to procure Kashinath
Trimbak Telangs verse-translation published from Bombay.
These eight texts open upassuming that Telang employed
the same word for adhikra in both his verse and prose
renderingsa rather interesting spectrum. Searching for a
word that can best capture the intended meaning of
adhikra in 2.47, each of the seven translators gave much
thought to it and came up with: motive (Wilkins), motive
(Thomson), [business (Telang)], charge (Davies), business
(Telang), concern (Ganguli), motive (Arnold), right
(Chatterji).
(it is more than probable that) the idea of replacing
adhikra by right, the word vital to the credo of liberalism
and absolutely essential for registering claims of legitimacy
for either individual or group interests, occurred first to
Mohini M. Chatterji (1858-1936), a front-ranking
Theosophist who was also a direct descendent of the arch-
liberal of modern Bengal, Raja Rammohun Roy (1772-
1833).
157
The net result:
a) The word that eventually seizes 2.47s stated adhikra
with a near-unanimous consent is right and this sense
passes over to even non-English translations.
b) (Pre-structured) karma becomes gets substituted by
(open-ended) action;
c) The exclusivity of the truly knowledgeable is undermined
with the lessening of emphasis on ev;
d) M is embraced more readily as a particle of negation
than as a particle of prohibition;
e) The most-known English version of 2.47 comes to be
something like, To action alone hast thou a right and
never at all to its fruits (S. Radhakrishnan)
158
. In its more
popular incarnation it became even more compressed.
Perhaps to enhance its epigrammatic quality and give to
2.47 a slogan-like sound, often ev or alone is dispensed
with. (Stripped of all unnecessary complexities) the 2.47
that is now universally regarded as Gts prime sloka and
is known by almost every schoolboy/girl of India, has this
form: You have adhikar in karma, not in its fruits
159
or
You have the right to action but not to its fruits.
[It may help us to understand the transition from
karmay ev te adhikra m phaleu kadcana to To
karma you have the right, but not to the result / fruit
better if we turn to the intellectual-sage Swami
Vivekananda (1863-1902); for, the state of being
unsettled in respect to 2.47 first lines m is nowhere
more palpable than in his sayings / writings. Vivekananda,
the spiritual ambassador of India credited to have
constructed the fundamentals of Hinduism for the
benefit of the west, is reported to have said to one of his
disciples in 1900: Therefore [karma] has to be done
without desire for results. This is the teaching of the
Gita.
160
In the Bangla original the unstated adhikra
is substituted by the word knsh.
161
However, on 20th
August 1893just a few days before he delivered his
historic speech in September 1893 at the Chicago World
Conference on ReligionsVivekananda had written in
an English letter: ...remember the Lord says in the Gita,
To [karma] you have the right, but not to the result...I
am called by the Lord for this.
162
In the second
renderingwhich actually predates the firstthe
stated and the unstated adhikra converge upon the
word right.]
The popular saying, more accurately, the national motto,
You have the right to action but not to its fruits has a
peculiar oxymoronic air about it. It is more so because it
does not include in its ambit 2.47s second line. Without
the support of let not the fruits of action be thy motive;
neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction
163
,
the motto engenders two opposite effects: it rings loud with
the assurance that every subject is free to undertake action;
but, such is its sentence-construction that the guarantee of
ensuring immunity from elitist bias in exercising ones
sovereignty is also undermined. While the first part of the
now standard, trim and crisp 2.47 upholds the sovereignty
of individuals, its second part nullifies its first parts liberal-
sounding pronouncementthe latter portion of the motto
makes hollow the pledge of autonomy by denying subjects
benefits that may accrue from her/his labours.
As a way of illustration let us construct two examples.
Since no delimiting factor imposes barriers to contain the
field of karma / action we have the liberty of selecting any
mode of activity.
Thus, if we choose casting of the ballot as an action
and apply to it the (now fashionable) Law of 2.47, the great
promise of Indian democracy can be re-phrased as: You
have the right to vote but not to the results that follow it!
If, instead of voters, we apply the Law of 2.47 to students,
to the much too taxed and stressed examinees of India who
routinely as well as endlessly undergo the trial of sitting at
tests, the inference becomes: You have the right to sit for
examinations but not to the results!
Surely, one practical implication of the commandment
is that scrutiny or reviewing of answer-scripts is
unwarrantedthe way papers are marked or graded cannot
be interrogated by those who write and submit papers. This
teacherly teaching is unabashedly voiced in at least two
English versions of the Gt. Jogindranath Mukharji (1871-
1930)Principal of Moradabads S.M. College between 1908
and 1930in his translation titled Young Mens Gita (1900)
[second edition: Gita for Everyone: 2000] transformed karmay
ev te adhikra m phaleu kadcana into The power of
action extends to the act never to its fruit.
164
In C.
Rajagopalacharis hands the same phrase gets even a harsher
rendering; in the book by the first and the last Governor
General of independent India, titled (suitably) Bhagavad
Gt: A Handbook for Students (1963), students receive the
instruction: Your duty is but to act, never to be concerned
with results.
165
On the whole, it may not be too foolhardy to hazard the
guess that the dubious double-deal the re-dressed 2.47
epitomizesa sentence now considered the quintessence
of the Gt and in constant circulationis acutely
symptomatic of the politics of the Indian nation-state. It is
somehow more than telling that the first Premier of free
India, the secular-tempered Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-
1964) had, even after putting it candidly in his The Discovery
of India (1946) that totalitarian claims of religion did not
appeal
166
to him and in marked contrast with the modern
assertion of rights, rights of individuals, of groups, of nations
the Indian scriptures did not emphasize on rights as such
167
,
wrote in the same book, it is possible to interpret...action in
modern terms as action for social betterment and social
service, practical, altruistic, patriotic and humanitarian
168
.
Nehru was perceptive enough to record that the
interpretation of action in modern terms which facilitated
the re-interpretation of scriptures in accordance with the
protocols of rights-based discourses was the achievement of
modern commentators of ancient texts. He thus, even while
discussing the Upaniads and the Gt, could afford to
dispense with akara or Rmnuja and concentrate all his
scholarly attention solely on the architects of the action theory.
Of those architects he mentioned three. They were:
Aurobindo Ghosh (1872-1950), Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-
1920) and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948).
Separating the innumerable commentaries on the Gita
[that] have appeared in the past from those that have come
from the leaders of thought and action of the present day
[like] Tilak, Aurobindo Ghose, Gandhi
169
, the author of
The Discovery of India, in spite of his abhorrence for the
totalitarian claims made on behalf of books of religion
170
,
paid his tribute to the Gt as being the one book to which
men almost inevitably turned...for light and guidance...in
times of crisis
171
. Nehru concluded his sojourn into
metaphysical obscurities and philosophical difficulties by
recasting the first line of 2.47. Trying both to be faithful to
the New Dogma and leave a space open for the assertion of
rights by doers, Nehru softened the m phaleu kadcana
part of the sloka. Nehrus liberalist approach culminated in
the production of a maddening muddle. Karmay ev te
adhikra m phaleu kadcana appears in The Discovery of
India as: And action must be in a spirit of detachment, not
much concerned with its results.
172
At this point it may be immensely helpful to recall a
modern but a western commentary on the Gt. The
commentator was no less than the prime mover of modern
idealism: G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831). Reacting strongly
against the growing admiration for the Gt in Europe, Hegel
published two acerbic articles in 1827 on the so-called
philosophy contained in the text that had recently arrived
from India (First Article: January 1827; Second Article:
October 1827). Neither knowing Sanskrit nor being far too
equipped in the field of Indian systems of Thought, Hegel
was placed in a situation of disadvantage in relation to Gt-
enthusiasts, such as the Orientalist scholar Wilhelm von
Humboldt (1767-1835). To counter the handicap as well as
the excessive exuberance of German romantics, particularly
that of Humboldt who had declared, [Gt was] the most
beautiful, presumably the only real philosophical poem of
all known literatures
173
, Hegel had to perforce depend on
translations. He consulted Humboldts compatriot-in-
Indology Arthur Wilhelm von Schlegels (1767-1845) Latin
translation of the Gt published in 1823 along with Charles
Wilkins English rendition. Sentences like Wilkins gives in
his translation the more precise expressions
174
clearly
indicate that Hegel was more inclined to accept the reading
offered by East India Companys employee than the one
furnished by the German romanticist.
It is interesting to note that at places Hegel attempted
to sum up the philosophical content of the Gt by zeroing
on 2.47the first line of which in its English and Latin
incarnations had the particle of prohibition and not the
particle of negation for m. The chief proponent of German
Ideology, unbeknown to him, echoed akara when he said,
We can generally subsume the great interests of our intellect
under the two aspects of the theoretical and the practical of
which the former refers to knowledge [Erkennen], the latter
to action [Handeln].
175
But then, deducing from Humboldts
exposition, Hegel forwarded the view that [the Gt] dealt
with the practical interests [by] the principle [that spelt out]
the necessity to give up all claims to the fruits of action, to all
results.
176
After allowing for the unwarranted replacement
of the particle of negation by the particle of prohibition in
2.47 first line in a fashion most insidious, Hegel proceeded
to demonstrate that the scheme of practices which postulated
the whole person...in ones indifference to the fruits of
actions
177
was bound to inculcate insensitivity to the question
of moral duties / obligations
178
or moral freedom
179
.
Striking the caustic strident note, Hegel wrote dryly, [since]
a fruit is inseparable from the performed action...the more
senselessly and stupidly an action [was] performed, the greater
[was] the involved indifference towards success
180
. Hegel
concluded, even if champions of the Gt were charmed by
the great poetic effect
181
produced by the statement
karmay ev te adhikra m phaleu kadcana, the effect was
empty in content because Krishnas practical principle
could not but culminate in enforcing the unbearable
condition of endurance of a deed and thoughtless state
182
upon menin the ultimate analysis, 2.47 first line did no
better than encourage stupid obedience to actions and
outward deeds
183
.
No matter how misdirected was Hegels orientalist
approach to the Gt, his treatment of 2.47 first line done
with the covert assistance of the particle of prohibition
throws, albeit retrospectively, sufficient light on the
subsequent 2.47-centric engineering of the Gtan
engineering that, for most parts, relied on the explicit
foregrounding of the particle of prohibition.
V
It being meant for the people at large, there is pleasing repetition in [the
Gt].
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi,
The Message of the Gita
184
[1931]
The 2.47-centric engineering of the Gt has a number
of profound consequences. Some of them are:
1. Gt is virtually promoted from the order of Smti to that
of rutifrom being a middle-ranking text empowered to
assist in further corroborating a saying from the Veda-
Upaniads-Brahmasutra cluster but disempowered to negate
the saying, Gt becomes auto-referential; from a certain
point of time it begins to get reckoned as the ultimate
repository of unassailable Truths.
These two examples should be sufficient to show what
was Gts assignment of scriptural rank in the pre-
modern era: both akara and Rmnuja in their
commentary on the one-word aphorism Smtescha or
And on account of Smti of Brahmas utra 1.2.6 cite a
number of verses from the Gt; the arch-proponent of
(unqualified) non-dualism as well as the arch-proponent
of qualified non-dualism refer to Gt only to buttress
arguments purportedly contained in originary texts.
185
Remarking on Rmnujas attitude towards the Gt,
J.A.B. Buitenen has written in the Introduction to his
condensed rendering of Rmnujas commentary on
the Gt: What does the Gt mean to Rmnuja? Being
smti its task is to support the ruti, that is to clarify the
purport of the Vedas.
186
It is only in the modern period that Gts role is
enhanced from being augmentative to authoritative. This
enhancement takes place (mostly) at the cost of
Brahmas utra. The more the workdescribed by Raja
Rammohun Roy (1772-1833) in 1816 as The Most
celebrated and Revered Work of Brahmunical
Theology
187
fades out from the speechscape of the
moderns intent on reactivating the legacy of Tradition,
the more prominent gets to be the Gt. The gap created
by the near-vanishing of the Brahmasutra is filled up by
the latter to such a degree that it becomes
commonsensical to regard the Gt as the principal
arbitrator of Meaningsinstead of being treated as an
appendage, as was done by akara or Rmnuja, it begins
to be addressed as the highest appellate text. This
monomaniac obsession with the Gta monomania
further exacerbated by the substantial ideological
investments made by a host of front-ranking nationalist
leaders in itsucceeds in placing it in the same league
as the Bible and the Quran. B. R. Ambedkar answered his
own question [why is there] such divergence of opinion
among scholars [regarding] the message of the Gt by
asserting, it was because scholars [had] gone on a false
errand...on the assumption that it [was] a gospel as the
Koran, the Bible or the Dhammapada [was].
188
After the
1905 Swadeshi Movement in Bengal it becomes
increasingly difficult to not to consider the Gt as The
Book of the Hindus. And, this rise of the Book is co-
terminus with the consolidation of a reading apparatus
which has 2.47 as its focal point.
Here is one example of the primacy granted to 2.47 in
the modern evaluation of the Gt. In his Introduction
to the Bangla translation of the Gt by Sri Sitaram
Omkarnatha translation in which the latter part of 2.47
first line is let you never have desire for the fruits of
karma
189
Srijib Nyayatirtha says that the contradictions
between the claims of jna and karma in the ruti
tradition are fully resolved by Gt 2.47 and the
resolution is, You have adhikra on karma alone; you
ought never to crave for fruits; because, you have no
adhikra on fruits.
190
2. Accepting karma = action and adhikra = right as the
two inviolable equations becoming customary, all modern
readings of the Gt acquire the in-build tendency of
putting across a theory of praxis via 2.47. It also becomes
customary to parade the theory as being ancient and yet
of contemporary relevance, as being authentically Indian
yet possessing universal appeal.
(B.R. Ambedkar, the father of the Indian constitution,
had written in the 1950s in Krishna and His Gita which
was a chapter of his uncompleted work Revolution and
Counter-revolution: Most writers on the Bhagvad Gita
translate the word Karma yoga as action and the word
Jnana yoga as knowledge and proceed to discuss the
Bhagvad Gita as though it was engaged in comparing
and contrasting knowledge versus action in a generalized
form. This is quite wrong.
)191
3. The word karmayog becomes far too flexible: it now
connotes a man of action, an energetic man capable of
achieving what he sets out to achieve. In the new regime
of meanings, karmayog is rajas personified.
4. But, since the karmayog is naturally assumed to be a tyag,
that is, a person not attached to the results flowing from
his actions and full to brim with the sattva mode, he does
not get sullied even if he destroys the entire world
(18.17). Karmayog thus is that fantastic agent who is
absolved of all responsibilityneither culpable nor
answerable, he bows to no court or community.
5. Exchanging renunciation of karma with abandonment
of fruits of karma in order to fix the profile of sannys
has the effect of equating sannys with tyga and uniting
the renouncer and the man of action in the same
body!
[It really is striking that the modern Indian version of
unity of theory and practicean absurd notion of
jnakarmasamuchhaibd / Philosophy of Praxiswas
championed not only by opponents of akara but also
by those ideologues who professed to image the nation
by drawing intellectual sustenance from akaras non-
dualism. For example: Satis Chandra Mukherjee (1865-
1948), a close friend of Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)
and the moving spirit of the famous Dawn Society, opened
his equally famous journal The Dawn (March 1897) with
two consecutive articles titled What is Truth? and A
Plea for Karmakandain the first Satis Chandra
explicated on akaras theory of my or nescience
and in the second, pleaded that due to pressures of
modernity it would be prudent to give up on akaras
uncompromising stand on the inconsonance between
jna and karma and aim for a synthesis of the two.
192
]
As a way of conclusion let us briefly touch upon the readings
of 2.47 by three ideologues who were hailed by Jawaharlal
Nehru in The Discovery of India as being the providers of
interpretation of action in modern terms. It is more than
remarkable that all three of themAurobindo Ghosh, Bal
Gangadhar Tilak and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
furnish specimens which illustrate the extraordinary
hermeneutic re-adjustments the sloka were subjected to with
the single-minded purpose of endowing the karmayog with
a larger-than-life profile.
1. Gt moves to the arena of Realpolitik during the swadeshi
days. Looking back to the volatile period 1905-08, the
narrator of Rabindranaths short story Samskar (or
Reform / Inherited Values: 1928) says, In those days
if the police found Gt in anyones house they used to
take it as a sure-fire proof of sedition.
193
Although star-
studded by spectacular figures such as Ullaskar Dutta-
Kanailal Dutta-Barindrakumar Ghosh-Upenranath
Banerji and of course the First Martyr, the adolescent
Kshudiram Bose, the master-mind of the Swadeshi
Movement was Aurobindo Ghosh. Involved with the
Swadeshi Movements English mouthorgan the Bande
Mataram Daily from its inception on 7 August 1906,
Aurobindo became its chief editorial writer from
sometime towards the end of 1906 and remained so till
the demise of the journal in May 1908; he was also the
guiding spirit of Bande Mataram Weekly which resumed
publication in June 1907. It is more than revealing that
the name of the English weekly review that Aurobindo
floated after Bande Mataram folded up and ran between
19 June 1909 and 12 March 1910 was Karmayogin.
Aurobindo laid down the founding principles of the
Doctrine of Passive Resistance and provided the
theoretical defense of the morality of boycotting British
goods in the pages of Bande Mataram Daily
194
. The first
[person] to discern a peculiar significance in the religious
semiotics of the song [Bande Mataram]
195
, Aurobindo
christened Bankims poem in 1907 the mantra of a
new religion of patriotism; Aurobindo himself translated
the poem into English, both in meter and in prose, and
printed the two versions of the National Anthem of
Bengal in the pages of Karmayogin on 20 November
1909.
196
Above all, Aurobindo was principally
instrumental in fleshing an anti-imperialist rhetoric in
the language of the Gt. That Aurobindo too, despite
citing verses and chapters from the Gt in his
innumerable fiery speeches, was inclined to view 2.47 as
the kern-sloka of the Gt is indirectly borne out by his
famous Uttarpara Speech. He delivered it on 30 May
1909, about three weeks after his release from police-
custody and a few weeks before his departure to
Pondicherry. After describing his surreal experiences
of meeting Ka in jail and of being gifted a copy of the
Gt by Arjunas Teacher Himself, Aurobindo summed
up the political-spiritual significance of the Holy
Encounter by saying, He demands of those who aspire
to do His work...to do work for Him without the demand
for fruit...He made me realise the central truth of the
Hindu religion.
197
There is little doubt that the Gt
Aurobindo was consulting then was the 1905 edition of
the Theosophist Supremo Annie Besants English
translation.
198
And, in Besants translation, not only does
2.47 take the shape Thy business with action only, never
with its fruits, the note on syntax accompanying the sloka
carries the information that m is a particle of negation
meaning not.
199
2.47 came very handy after the disaster of May 1908.
Following the police crack-down and virtual dissolution
of the firebrand variety of Swadeshi, one of the Bangla
mouthpieces of the Movement Yugantar counseled its
readers to take solace from 2.47, the mantra of
karmajiban [or the karma-life].
200
It is no wonder
therefore that Hemchandra Kanungo (1871-1950)the
most prominent intellectual-organizer of the Movement
and who unlike his Mentor spent years in the Andaman
jailpredisposed as he was to regard the particle-of-
negation oriented, compact 2.47 as the correct form of
the sloka, wrote in his bitter autobiography Banglai Biplab
Prachesta (serialized in a journal: 1922 to 1927; published
as book: 1928), You have adhikar in karma alone, not
in its fruits...Perhaps it is due to the influence of this
teaching of the Gt that almost every attempt at doing
something beneficial for the country has met with
failure.
201
2. In 1915, ten years after the (first) Partition of Bengal,
appeared the fully-accomplished, decisive account of
Gt as the Gospel of Karmayoga in Marathi. The
authoritative text, penned by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, was
named Srimad BhagavadGt-Rahasya or Karma-Yoga-
Sastra (in short: Gt-Rahasya). Its huge success is attested
by the fact that the 1915 Marathi book was translated
into Hindi in 1917, into Gujarati in 1917, into Kannad
in 1919, into Telegu in 1919, into Bangla in 1924 and
into English in 1936.
202
The Bangla translator was
Jyotirindranath Thakur, one of Rabindranaths elder
brothers. Tilak contests akaras textual appropriation
of the Gt on behalf of the sannys by every philosophical
arsenal at his disposalincluding those borrowed from
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche or Darwin. After a protracted
eight-hundred page long incisive analysis, Tilak surmises:
a) Karma-Yoga is the only subject of the Gt.
203
b) There is no also no doubt that all other imports
which have been ascribed to the Gt...especially
[the import] of sannys (Renunciation)are merely
doctrine-supporting.
204
c) The entire import of the Karma-Yoga is given in a
short and beautiful form [in 2.47]; nay, one may even
safely say that [the] four parts of [2.47] are the catuh
sutr [or, four aphorisms] of the Karma-Yoga.
205
d) Now, the word karma as used in the exposition made
in the Gt must not be taken in the restricted
meaning of Actions prescribed by the rutis or Smtis,
but in a more comprehensive meaning. In short,
[karma is] all the Actions which a man performs.
206
e) Taking into cognizance all possibilities, the best sense
of karma is karvatya-karma / Duty or vihita-karma /
Proper Action.
207
Tilaks explication on 2.47, the collation of four
aphorisms in which the theory of Karma-Yoga was supposed
to have crystallized, amounts to: Your adhikra or authority
extends only to the performance of karma or Proper Action;
the Fruit, is never within your authority (or control)
therefore, keep on performing Proper Actions.
208
The
(syntactically arranged) verse karmay + ev + te + adhikra
+ kadcana + phaleu + (adhikra) + m (first line)
karmaphalahetur + m+ bhur; akarmai + te + sago + m +astv
(second line) is thus indeed condensed.
It would be highly irregular if we omit the trenchant
criticism of action-based interpretation of the Gt that was
proffered by the editor of Karmayogin after he settled down
in Pondicherry and emerged as Sri Aurobindo in his second
innings. Sri Aurobindo began serializing his Essays on the Gita
in the pages of Arya from August 1916, just a year after the
publication of Tilaks Gt-Rahasya in June 1915. In the
fourth essay of the series The Core of The Teaching, Sri
Aurobindo minced no words in chastising Bankimchandra
Chattopadhyay for being the first person to have rendered
the Gt with the new sense of a Gospel of Duty misguiding
thus the moderns that followed him to sink into the miasma
of false interpretation.
209
Without naming the pioneers, the
misdirected adventurers who tread the Bankim-track,
Aurobindo rebuked them all by saying, We are told
continually by many authoritative voices that the
Gita...proclaims with no uncertain sound the gospel of
human action, the ideal of disinterested performance of
social duties, nay, even, it would seem, the quite modern
ideal of social service. To all this I can reply that very patently
and even on the very surface of it the Gita does nothing of
the kind and that this is a modern misreading, a reading of
the modern mind into an ancient book.
210
And, what has
been the result of the confusing misreading of the Gt
along the lines of Dogma of action among people in general?
Sri Aurobindos answer: it has culminated in laying an almost
exclusive stress...on the phrase Thou hast a right to action,
but none to the fruits of action which is now popularly
quoted as the great word, mahvkya, of the Gita.
211
3. The person deeply moved by Tilaks Gt-Rahasya
was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Spending his days of
incarceration in prison during the 1919 Non-cooperation
Movement, Gandhi turned his attention to the Gt. In early
youth Gandhi had savoured with much delight Edwin
Arnolds The Song Celestial. He himself reports in his
autobiography: I have read almost all the English translations
of [the Gt], and I regard Sir Edwin Arnolds as the best.
212
And, when Gandhis Gujarati translation of the Gt came
outsurely a coincidence, but nonetheless a startling one
that it came out on 12 March 1930, exactly on the day Gandhi
set out on the Dandi March in protest against the salt-tax
levied by the British governmentreaders learned from its
Introduction that it was Tilak who re-kindled his interest
in the Gt. Gandhi finished the writing of the
Introduction in Gujarati on 24 June 1929; it was
immediately translated into Hindi, Bangla and Marathi; and,
Gandhi himself translated the Introduction into English
under the title Anasaktiyoga: The Message of the Gtit
was published in the columns of Young India on 6th August
1931.
213
The Message of the Gt is particularly memorable
for its account of an exceedingly generous giftTilak had
gifted to Gandhi along with a copy of the Marathi original of
Gt-Rahasya, copies of its Hindi and Gujarati translations.
214
And Gandhi, then physically alienated from the masses due
to the barriers of four walls, poured over the Gujarati Gt-
Rahasyait was that study undertaken in isolation in 1919
which whetted [his] appetite for more and [he] glanced
through several works on the Gt.
215
This venturing out
induced Gandhi to construct three full-scale texts: (a) a
series of lectures delivered from 24 February 1926 to 27
November 1926 (English version: Discourses on the Gt); (b)
Gujarati translation of the Gt (12 March 1930); (c) a series
of eighteen letters each containing a gist of one of the
eighteen chapters of the Gt (begun on 4 November 1930;
English version: known again as Discourses on the Gt).
Gandhi had written to Dhan Gopal Mukherjee (1890-
1936)also a translator of the Gt who dedicated his English
translation of the Book to Jawaharlal Nehru
216
in a letter
dated 7 September 1928: ...it is as a general statement quite
true that my life is based upon the teachings of the Gt.
217
It goes without saying that to base his life upon the
teachings of the Gt Gandhi could not afford to toe the
swadeshi type pro-violence reading of the Song Celestial.
To wrench the Book from the hands of pistol-carrying
terrorists and turn it into The Gospel of Ahims or non-
violence, Gandhi adopted quite a few remarkable textual
strategies. Some of which are:
a) 2.47 first line: karmane bishe ja tane adhikarh (kbu)
che, temanthi nipajatan anek phalane bishe kadi nahi
218
(Gujarati original): Action alone is thy province,
never the fruits thereof
219
.
Gandhi sticks to the particle of negation in
negotiating with m and substitutes the stated /
unstated adhikra by kbu, a word quite proximate
to Tilaks authority or control. In addition to
emphasizing that the cardinal teaching of the Gt
was renunciation of fruits of action
220
, Gandhi
refuses to grant any degree of specificity to the art of
sannys. He writes in his introductory essay The
Message of the Gt: Renunciation means
hankering after fruit.... The sannys of the Gt will
not tolerate complete cessation of all activity.
221
Having removed the sannys (and the warrior or
the khatiya by insisting that perfect renunciation
[was] impossible without perfect observance of
ahims
222
) from the purview of being the proper
addressee of the Book, Gandhi foregrounds the
vaisya or the merchant. He says with utter
nonchalance that the Gt has dispelled the
common delusion that one cannot act religiously
in mercantile and other such matters.
223
b) To simultaneously craft the figure of the karmayog
merchant and hold on to the pledge of ahims,
Gandhi performs an extraordinary feat: he proposes
to introduce a slight change in the original text. On
24 and 25 March 1926 Gandhi spoke on 2.47. In the
rather elaborate discourse on 2.47 we receive the
amazing news that he prefers to read akarmai + te +
sago + m +astv of the second line as karmai + te +
sago + m +astv: I [say] karmai instead of akarmai,
for that is how I always read this verse.
224
The
commentator, in contra-distinction to the practice
of commentary-writing, alters the original sloka by
crossing out the a of akarmai and thereby turn the
word into its exact opposite. Gandhis amendments
lead to:
(Just as Edwin Arnolds The Song Celestial suggests)
karma = right deeds.
Hence, by the logic of binary opposition, akarmai =
wrong deeds and not having the urge to renounce
the fruits of action is one sure wrong deed.
Now, if akarmai is replaced by karmai in the fourth
aphorism, then the Message of 2.47 and by extension
the Message of the Gt becomes: Right deed alone
is thy province, never the fruits thereof; let not thy
motive be the fruits of the right deed, nor shouldst
thou be attached to the right deed.
[Although, due to the replacement of akarmai by
karmai the phrase You should not be attached to
the right deed has the air of being an aphorism la
akara, its political implication cannot be grasped
in terms of non-dualist Vednta. What it does is to
draw sharp line of distinction between the bomb-
wielding Gt-mouthing terrorist like the violent
swadeshi who in the pursuit of his goal of armed
sahimsa resistance has no ethical compunction about
the fruits his actions bring forth and the chark-
spinning Gt-mouthing pacifist like Gandhi who in
the pursuit of his goal of disarming ahimsa resistance
thinks twice before encouraging others to fructify
the agenda of actions set by him.
225
]
Postscript
The swadeshi spokesman, the rajas-sparkling karmayog Sandip
of Rabindranaths Ghare-Baire, the novel that has
immortalized [the] grandeur and pettiness, [the] triumphs
and...tragedies [of] the swadeshi age
226
, proclaims in a
thunderous speech: This is not the moment to ponder over
dharma-karma or moral conductthe need of the hour is to
act cruelly, unjustly with no consideration or hesitation
whatsoever.
227
Indranath is another swadeshi thinker who
appears in Rabindranaths novel Char Adhyay [Four
Chapters: 1934]. Mocking the faint-hearted sentimental
ones, he says, This is what Ka taught Arjuna...[on the
field of battle]: Dont be cruel but be dispassionate in matters
of Duty...And, what after that? Karmay ev dhikras te m
phaleu kadcana.
228
The first-person narrator of
Rabindranaths short-story Namanjur Galpo [The Rejected
Story: 1925]the story written immediately before
Samskar (1928)is an ex-swadeshi who nonetheless stands
behind the footlight when prompted by Gandhi, khaddar-
clad chark-turning political players occupy the centre-stage.
The narrator believes himself to be in the same company
with swadeshi stalwarts like Ullaskar [Dutta]-Kanai[lal Dutta]-
Barin[drakumar Ghosh]-Upendra[nath Banerji].
229
But,
after being sent to jail for participating in the Civil
Disobedience Movement, the erstwhile swadeshi now a
Gandhian, seeks solace not in Gt 2.47 but in 2.45he keeps
chanting to himself, do thou become free, O Arjuna, from
the three-fold modes [of tamas, rajas and sattva].
230
Perhaps it is not for nothing that Gora, the hot-headed
mercurial hero of Rabindranaths novel Gora [published in
a journal: 1907 to 1909; published fully in book-form: 1910],
the young man who can go to extremes to counter the daily
ordeal of facing racist humiliation and discrimination from
the colonial masters, finds himself defeated in executing
one of his cherished plans. To give a fitting reply to an
English missionarys criticisms of Hindu scriptures and
practices, Gora immerses himself in the study of Sacred
Books. He prepares to write a book in English titled
Hinduism.
231
In the process he dives into the ocean of Vednta
philosophy.
232
And, the fall-out is, Goras Hinduism remains
unwritten.
Again, perhaps it is not for nothing that T. S. Eliot (1888-
1965), the modernist chronicler of the Waste Land
populated by lost souls undone by death, in the course of
composing in Four Quartets [1944] a poetic history premised
on the maxim Time present and time past / Are both
perhaps present in time future, / And time future contained
in time past paused for a while to whisper to himself: I
sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant/...as when
he admonished Arjuna / On the field of battle /...do not
think of the fruit of action.
233
NOTES
1 Rabindranath Thakur, Ghare-Baire, Rabindra-Rachanabali (Sulabh
Sangskaran: Volume 4), Kolkata: Visva-bharati, 1995, p. 518
2. The Bhagavadgit, 14.5, tr. S. Radhakrishnan (first published: 1948),
New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India, 2008, p. 316
3. The Bhagavadgit, 14.10, tr. S. Radhakrishnan, ed. cit., p. 319 S.
Radhakrishnan translates sattva as goodness.
4. Rabindranath Thakur, Ghare-Baire, ed. cit., p. 518
5. Rabindranath Thakur, Ghare-Baire, ed. cit., p. 504
6. For a history of the national slogan Bande Mataram see: Sabyasachi
Bhattacharya, Vande Mataram: The Biography of a Song, New Delhi:
Penguin Books, 2003 Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal:
1903-08, New Delhi: Peoples Publishing House, 1977, pp. 474-475
7. Commenting on the period prior to 1880s, the narrator of
Rabindranaths novel Gora (1910) says, At that time there was no
discussion on the Gt among the English-educated in Bengal:
Rabindranath Thakur, Gora, Rabindra-Rachanabali (Sulabh Sangskaran:
Volume 3), Kolkata: Visva-bharati, 1995, p. 434
For a list of works linked to the rise of Bengals Neo-Krishna Movement
that starts around 1880 see:
J. N. Farquhar, Appendix: Neo-Krishna Literature, Gita and Gospel,
Madras-Allahabad-Calcutta-Rangoon-Colombo: The Christian
Literature Society For India;, 1917, pp. 94-106
8. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, rmadbhagabadgt, Bankim Rachanabali
(Volume 2), ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal, Kolkata: Sahitya Samsad, 1994,
pp. 616-706
For an annotated English translation of Bankims commentary on the
Gt see:
Hans Harder, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyays rmadbhagabadgt:
Translation and Analysis, New Delhi: Manohar, 2001
9. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, rmadbhagabadgt, 2.47, Bankim
Rachanabali (Volume 2), ed. cit., p. 669
Hans Harder, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyays rmadbhagabadgt, 2.47,
ed. cit. p. 97
10. Brajendra Nath Seal, The Gt: A Synthetic Interpreation, Calcutta: 1964,
p. 1
11. Winand M. Callewaert and Shilanand Hemraj, Chapter IV: Translations
into English Languages; Section 3e: Samples of Hindi renderings of BG
2.47, Bhagavadgtnuvda: A Study in Transcultural Translation, Ranchi:
Satya Bharati Publication, 1983, p. 137
12. Debabrata Mallik, Rabindra-Rachana-Viksha (Volume 1), Kolkata: Jignasa,
1982, p. 48
13. See, for example:
Pramathanath Tarkabhusan, rmadbhagabadgt, 2.47, Kolkata: Dev
Sahitya Kutir, 2001, p. 133
Swami Jagadisharananda, rmadbhagabadgt, 2.47, Kolkata: Udbodhan
Karyalaya, 1974, p. 61
14. While in Monier Monier-Williams A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (first
published: 1899) the entry for m reads, a particle of prohibition or
negation, Vaman Shivaram Aptes The Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary
(first published: 1890) reads, A particle of prohibition (rarely of
negation). See:
Monier Monier-Williams, m, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Delhi:
Sharada Publishing House, 2005, p. 804
Vaman Shivaram Apte, m, The Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, 2003, p. 1255
As for the word na [or, n = na] Monier Monier-Williams dictionary
has this to say:
n: not, no, nor, neither (as well as in simple negation as in wishing,
requesting and commanding, except in prohibition before an imperative
or an augmentless aorist [cf. m]. Vaman Shivaram Aptes dictionary
too gives the same information: na: A particle of negation equivalent
to not, no, nor, neither, and used in wishing, requesting or
commanding, but not in prohibition before the imperative mood. See:
Monier Monier-Williams, na and n, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, ed.
cit. p. 523 and p. 532
Vaman Shivaram Apte, na and n, The Practical Sanskrit-English
Dictionary, ed. cit. p. 871 and p. 884
15. B. R. Ambedkar, Krishna and His Gita, The Essential Writings of B.R.
Ambedkar, ed. Valerian Rodrigues, New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2005, p. 193
16. Winand M. Callewaert and Shilanand Hemraj, Chapter III:
Commentaries on the Gt; Section 4c: List of Sanskrit commentaries,
Bhagavadgtnuvda: A Study in Transcultural Translation, ed. cit., pp. 98-
110
17. For further information see:
a) Satischandra Mukhopadhyay, Introduction, Brahma-S utra:
Vednta Daran, tr. Nalininath Roy, Kolkata: Basumati-Sahitya-Mandir,
1934, pp. i-ixxx
b) S. Radhakrishnan, Introductory Essay, The Bhagavadgt , ed. cit.,
pp. 11-78
c) Shripad Krishna Belvalkar, Introduction, The Bhmaparvan, The
Mahbhrata (Volume 7), Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research
Institute, 1947, pp. LXXI-LXXXIV
18. Surendranath Dasgupta, Chapter XIV: The Philosophy of the
Bhagavad-Gt, A History of Indian Philosophy (Volume II), Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, 1991, p. 443
19. See:
a) rmad-Bhagavadgt with Eight Commentaries (in three volumes),
critically edited by Shastri Jivaram Lallurama and Dinker Vishnu Gokhale,
Delhi: Parimal Publications, 2001
b) The Bhagavad-Gt with Eleven Commentaries (in three volumes),
critically edited by Shastri Gajanana Shambhu Sadhale, Delhi: Parimal
Publications, 2000
c) Abhinavagupta, Gtrthasangraha, tr. Arvind Sharma, Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1983
20. akara, 2.47, The Bhagavad-Gt with Eleven Commentaries (Volume 1),
ed. cit., pp. 190-191
21. akara, 2.47, The Bhagavad Gita with the Commentary of Sri Sankaracharya
(first published: 1897), tr. Alladi Mahadeva Sastry, Madras: Samata Books,
1992, p. 63 (emphasis added)
22. Haricharan Bandyopadhyay, m-3, Bangiyo Sabda Kosh (Volume 2),
New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1978, p. 1755
23. Abhinavagupta, 2.47, Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, tr. Boris
Marjanovic, Varanasi: Indica, 2004, p. 67
24. Abhinavagupta, 2.47, Gtrthasangraha, ed. cit. p. 112 (emphasis added)
In Boris Marjanovics translation the sentence reads: The Lord is
advising Arjuna that he should be engaged in performing action alone,
without expecting its results. See:
Abhinavagupta, 2.47, Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, tr. Boris
Marjanovic, ed. cit. p. 67
25. Keavakmrin, 2.47, Gt-tattva-prakik, rmad-Bhagavadgt with Eight
Commentaries (Volume 1), critically edited by Shastri Jivaram Lallurama,
ed. cit. p. 172 (emphasis added)
26. Madhva, 2.47, Gt- bhya, The Bhagavad-Gt with Eleven Commentaries
(Volume 1), ed. cit., p. 192 (emphasis added)
27. Vallabha, 2.47, Tattva-dpik, The Bhagavad-Gt with Eleven Commentaries
(Volume 1), ed. cit., p. 194 (emphasis added)
28. See in The Bhagavad-Gt with Eleven Commentaries (Volume 1):
nandajnnagiri, 2.47, Gt- bhya-bibechan, p. 191
Vekantha, 2.47, Brahmandagiri, p. 194
Jayatrtha, 2.47, Prameyadpik, p. 192
Puruottama, 2.47, Amta-taragi, pp. 194-195
See in The Bhagavad-Gt with Eight Commentaries (Volume 1):
rdharsvmin, 2.47, Subodhin, p. 173
Madhusudan Saraswati, 2.47, Gudrthadpik, p. 172
29. Rmnuja, 2.47, Gt - bhya, The Bhagavad-Gt with Eleven Commentaries
(Volume 1), ed. cit., p. 191
30. Rmnuja, 2.47, The Gt - bhya, tr. M.R. Sampatkumaran, Madras:
Vidya Press, 1969, p. 55
31. Vednta-Deika, 2.47, Ttparaya Candrik, The Bhagavad-Gt with Eleven
Commentaries (Volume 1), ed. cit., p. 191
32. Jnanendramohan Das, n -1, Bangala Bhashar Abhidhan (Part II), Kolkata:
Sahitya Samsad, 2003, p. 1172
33. J. A. B. Van Buitenen, Footnote No. 89, Rmnuja on the Bhagavadgt,
Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, 1974, p. 61
34. J. A. B. Van Buitenen, 2.47, Rmnuja on the Bhagavadgt, ed. cit., p. 61
35. The Bhagavadgt in the Mahbhrata, 2.47, tr. J. A. B. van Buitenen,
Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 79
36. Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy (Volume II), ed.
cit., footnote no. 1, p. 415
37. Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy (Volume I), ed.
cit., pp. 87-88
38. Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy (Volume II), ed.
cit., p. 499
39. akara, 2.47, The Bhagavad-Gt, tr. Alladi Mahadeva Sastry (first
published: 1897), Madras: Samata Books, 1977, p. 63
40. The Bhagavadgt, 14/7, tr. S. Radhakrishnan, ed. cit., p. 318
41. Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy (Volume I), ed.
cit., p. 88
42. Warren Hastings, Letter to Nathaniel Smith, Esquire dated 4th October
1784, The Facsimile Reproduction of The Bhagavat-Geeta, tr. Charles
Wilkins, Gainesville, Florida: Scholars Facsimiles & Reprints, 1959,
p. [12]
43. Ibid., p. [15], pp. [7] and [10]
44. Charles Wilkins, To the Honorable Warren Hastings, Esq., Governor
General, The Facsimile Reproduction of The Bhagavat-Geeta, ed. cit., p.
[22]
45. For the influence of Wilkins translation in Europe and America see:
Eric J. Sharpe, The Universal Gt : Western Images of the Bhagavadgt,
London and New York: Duckworth, 1985
For Hegels use of Wilkins text and Hastings Preface see:
G. W. F. Hegel, On the Episode of the Mahbhrata known by the name
Bhagavad-Gt, tr. Herbert Herring, New Delhi: Indian Council of
Philosophical Research, 1995
46. Winand M. Callewaert and Shilanand Hemraj, Chapter V.6: List of
English Translations, Bhagavadgtnuvda: A Study in Transcultural
Translation, ed. cit., pp. 267-287
Winand M. Callewaert and Shilanand Hemraj, Chapter IV.19: (List of
Bangla Translations), Bhagavadgtnuvda: A Study in Transcultural
Translation, ed. cit., pp. 175-187
47. Winand M. Callewaert and Shilanand Hemraj, Chapter IV: Section 3e:
Samples of Hindi renderings of BG 2.47, Bhagavadgtnuvda: A Study
in Transcultural Translation, ed. cit., pp. 137-142
48. For a detailed account see:
Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Atho m phaleu kadcana, Anustup, ed. Anil
Acharya, Kolkata: Sarodiya 2006, pp. 1-232
49. The Facsimile Reproduction of The Bhagavat-Geeta, 2.47, tr. Charles
Wilkins, ed. cit., p. 40
50. The Bhagavat-GtThe Sacred Lay, 2.47, tr. John Davies, Delhi and
Varanasi: Bharatiya Publishing House, 1979, p. 23
51. The Bhagavatgita, 2.47, tr. Kashinath Trimbak Telang, The Sacred Books
of the East (Volume 8), ed. F. Max Mller, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass
Publishers Private Limited, 1998, p. 48
52. Kisari Mohan Ganguli, Mahbhrata, Bhisma Parva: Section XXVI,
The Mahbhrata (Volume II), New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal
Publishers Private Limited, 2004, p. 57
53. The Bhagavat Gt or the Lords Lay, 2.47, tr. Mohini M. Chatterji, New
York: Kessinger Publishing, 1960, p. 50
54. Young Mens Gt (title of 2nd edition, 2000: Gt for Everyone), tr.
Jogindranath Mukharji, New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2000, p. 21
55. The Bhagavat Gt, 2.47, tr. Annie Besant and Bhagavan Das, Adyar:
The Theosophical Publishing House, 1997, p. 45
56. Franklin Edgerton, The Bhagabadgt or Song of the Blessed One, Harvard:
Harvard University Press, 1972, p. 26
57. The Bhagavat-Gt, 2.47, tr. W. Douglas P. Hill, Madras, 1973, p. 90
58. The Song of God: Translation of the Bhagavad-Gt, 2.47, tr. Dhan Gopal
Mukerji, London: J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1931, p. 23
59. The Gospel of Selfless Action or the Gita according to Gandhi, 2.47, tr. Mahadev
Desai, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 2001, p. 161
60. The BhagavadGt, 2.47, tr. S. Radhakrishnan, ed. cit., p. 119
61. The Bhagavad Gita, 2.47, tr. Juan Mascar, London: Penguin Books,
1962, p. 13
62. The Bhagavad Gita, 2.47, tr. R. C. Zaehner, Hindu Scriptures, ed. Dominic
Goodall, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, 2001,
p. 216
63. Bhagavad-Gita, 2.47, tr. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, London, Penguin
Books, 1974, p. 133
64. A View of the Gt, 2.47, tr. Morarji Ranchorji Desai, New Delhi, 1978,
p. 43
65. The Bhagavadgt in the Mahbhrata, 2.47, tr. J.A.B. van Buitenen, ed.
cit., p. 79
66. The Bhagavad Gita: Krishnas Counsel in Time of War, 2.47, tr. Barbara
Stoler Miller, New York: Bantam Books, 1986, p. 36
67. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyays rmadbhagabadgt: Translation and
Analysis, 2.47, tr. Hans Harder, ed. cit., p. 95
68. Abhinavaguptas Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, 2.47, tr. Boris
Marjanovic, ed. cit., p. 67
69. 2.47, The Bhagavad Gita, tr. Laurie L. Patton, London: Penguin Books,
2008, p. 29
70. The Bhagavadgt, 4.17
Translation based on:
S. Radhakrishnan, 4.17, ed. cit., p. 162
71. Warren Hastings, Letter to Nathaniel Smith, Esquire dated 4th October
1784, The Facsimile Reproduction of The Bhagavat-Geeta, ed. cit., p. [9]
72. Ibid., p. [9]
Ibid., 4.9, p. 52
74. Ibid., 4.16, p. 53
75. Ibid., 4.17, p. 53
76. Ibid., 3.22, p. 47
77. Ibid., 3.23, p. 47
78. Ibid., 3.24, p. 47
79. Ibid., 5.1, p. 57
80. Ibid., 5.10, p. 58
81. Ibid., 3.1, p. 44
82. Ibid., 3.3, p. 44
83. Ibid., 2.48, p. 40
84. Ibid., 2.47, p. 40
86. The Bhagavat-Gt or a Discourse between Krishna and Arjuna on Divine
Matters, 2.47, Hertford: published by Stephan Austin, Bookseller to
the East India College, 1855, p. 16
87. The Bhagavat-GtThe Sacred Lay, 2.47, tr. John Davies, ed cit., p. 23
88. The Bhagavatgita, 2.47, tr. Kashinath Trimbak Telang, The Sacred Books
of the East (Volume 8), ed cit., p. 48
89. Kisari Mohan Ganguli, Mahbhrata, Bhisma Parva: Section XXVI,
The Mahbhrata (Volume II), ed cit., p. 57
90. The Song Celestial, 2.47, tr. Edwin Arnold, London, 1910, p. 13
91. The Bhagavat Gt or the Lords Lay, 2.47, tr. Mohini M Chatterji, ed cit.
p. 50
92. The Bhagavat Gt, 2.47, tr. Annie Besant and Bhagavan Das, ed cit.,
p. 45
93. The Bhagavat-Gt , 2.47, tr. W. Douglas P. Hill, ed cit., p. 90
94. The Song of God: Translation of the Bhagavad-Gt, 2.47, tr. Dhan Gopal
Mukerji, ed, cit., p. 23
95. The Geet: The Gospel of Lord Shri Krishna. 2.47, tr. Shree Purohit Swami,
New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2003, p. 16
96. The Gospel of Selfless Action or the Gita according to Gandhi, 2.47, tr.
Mahadev Desai, ed cit., p. 161
97. The Bhagavadgt, 2.47, tr. S. Radhakrishnan, ed. cit., p. 119
98. The Bhagavad gt As It Is, 2.47, tr. Swami Prabhupada Bhaktivedanta,
London: Macmillan, 1972, p. 157
99. The Bhagavad Gita, 2.47, tr. Juan MascarQ , ed cit., p. 13
100. Rmnuja, 2.47, The Gt- bhya, tr. M.R. Sampatkumaran, ed cit.,
p. 55
101. The Bhagavad GtA Revelation, 2.47, tr. Dilip Kumar Roy, Delhi,
1976, p. 26
102. The Bhagavadgt in the Mahbhrata, 2.47, tr. J. A. B. van Buitenen, ed.
cit., p. 79
103. The Bhagavad Gita: Krishnas Counsel in Time of War, 2.47, tr. Barbara
Stoler Miller, ed cit., p. 36
104. Gt, 2.47, tr. Boris Marjanovic in Abhinavaguptas Commentary on the
Bhagavad Gita, ed. cit., p. 67
105. The Bhagavad Gita, 2.47, tr. Laurie L. Patton, ed. cit., p. 29
106. Charles Wilkins, Note on p. 44, The Facsimile Reproduction of The
Bhagavat-Geeta, ed. cit., p. 141
108. Ibid., p. 143
110. For a comparison see:
akara, Gt- bhya, 18.2, tr. into Bangla: Pramathnath
Tarkabhusana, rmadbhagabadgt, Kolkata: Deb Sahitya Kutir, 2001,
Sanskrit: pp. 861-862; Bangla: pp. 862-863
akara, 18.2, The Bhagavad Gita with the Commentary of Sri
Sankaracharya, tr. Alladi Mahadeva Sastry, ed. cit., pp. 442-443
rdharsvmin, Subodhin, 18.2, tr. into Bangla: Swami
Bhabghanananda, rmadbhagabadgt, Kolkata: Udbodhan Karyalaya,
2000, Sanskrit: pp. 393-394; Bangla: pp. 394-395
111. J.A.B. Buitenen, Introduction, Rmnuja on the Bhagavadgt, ed. cit.,
p. 15
Translation and Analysis, 2.47, ed. cit., p. 96
Although Hans Harder replaces the (Bangla) karma by the Sanskrit
karman in his translation, I have retained the former in order to avoid
unnecessary semantic confusion.
113. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Letters on Hinduism, Letter II: What
is Hinduism?, Bankim Rachanabali (Volume 3), ed. Jogeshchandra
Bagal, Kolkata: Sahitya Samsad, 1998, p. 231
114. Ibid., p. 233
115. akara, Gt- bhya, 18.2, tr. into Bangla: Pramathnath
Tarkabhusana, rmadbhagabadgt, ed. cit., Sanskrit: pp. 861-862; Bangla:
pp. 862-863
116. Abhinavagupta, 3.9, Gtrthasangraha, tr. Arvind Sharma, ed. cit.,
p. 119
Abhinavagupta, 4.17, Gtrthasangraha, Quoted: The Bhagavad-Gt
with Eleven Commentaries (Volume 1), ed. cit., p. 395
117. Rmnuja, 2.47, Gt- bhya, The Bhagavad-Gt with Eleven
J. A. B. Van Buitenen, 2.47, Rmnuja on the Bhagavadgt, ed. cit.,
p. 61
Rmnuja, 2.47, The Gt - bhya, tr. M R. Sampatkumaran, Madras,
1969, p. 55
118. Madhva, 5.4, Gt - bhya, The Bhagavad-Gt with Eleven
119. Keavakmrin, 18.2, Gt-tattva-prakik, rmad-Bhagavadgt with
Eight Commentaries (Volume 3), ed. cit., p. 1164
120. Vallabha, 18.2, Tattva-dpik, The Bhagavad-Gt with Eleven
121. The Bhagavad Gita with the Commentary of Sri Sankaracharya, 4.17, tr.
Alladi Mahadeva Sastry, ed. cit., p. 128
122. The Bhagavadgt, 4.17, tr. S. Radhakrishnan, ed. cit., p. 162
123. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, rmadbhagabadgt, Footnote to
2.47, Bankim Rachanabali (Volume 2), ed. cit., p. 669
Translation and Analysis, 2.47: Footnote No. 267, ed. cit., p. 97
128. Ibid.
129. Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, Delhi:
Permanent Black, 2006, p. 52
130. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Section 14: Bhakti: Bhagavadgt:
Karma, Dharmatattva, Bankim Rachanabali (Volume 2), ed. cit., p. 566
Rachanabali (Volume 2), ed. cit., pp. 667-668
Tarkabhusana, rmadbhagabadgt, ed. cit., Sanskrit: pp. 861-862; Bangla:
pp. 862-863
133. The Laws of Manu, 2.2, tr. Wendy Doniger and Brian K. Smith, New
Delhi: Penguin Books, 1991, p. 17
Manusamhit, 2.2, tr. Panchanan Tarkaratna, Kolkata: Sanskrit Pustak
Bhandar, 2000, Sanskrit and Bangla: p. 51
134. Surevara, Naikarma-Siddhi, Section 1: Sloka 55 and 56, tr. Swami
Jagadananda, Kolkata: Udbodhan Karyalaya, 1985, Sanskrit and
Bangla: p. 37 and p. 38
Tarkabhusana, rmadbhagabadgt, ed. cit., Sanskrit: p. 133, Bangla:
p. 134
Sankaracharya, tr. Alladi Mahadeva Sastry, ed. cit., p. 63
136. akara, Gt - bhya, 18.3, tr. into Bangla: Pramathnath
p. 868
p. 867
p. 59
139. The Laws of Manu, 6.86, tr. Wendy Doniger and Brian K. Smith, ed.
cit., p. 126
Manusamhit, 6.86, tr. Panchanan Tarkaratna, ed. cit., Sanskrit and
Bangla: p. 159
140. For a discussion on this troubling verse see:
Wendy Doniger and Brian K. Smith, Footnote: 6.86, The Laws of
Manu, ed. cit., p. 126
cit., pp. 97-98
Bangla: p. 122
cit., p. 127
Bangla: p. 160
143. For a discussion on the commentators part to diffuse the difficulties
involving 6.86 see:
G. Bhler, Footnote: Verse numbers 86, 87-93, The Laws of Manu,
The Sacred Books of the East (volume 25), ed. F. Max Mller, Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2001, p. 214
145. J. A. B. Van Buitenen, 4.16, Rmnuja on the Bhagavadgt, ed. cit.,
p. 80
See especially, footnote number 181, p. 80
p. 71
pp. 67-68
148. akara, Gt - bhya, 3.5, tr. into Bangla: Pramathnath Tarkabhusana,
rmadbhagabadgt, ed. cit., Sanskrit: p. 193, Bangla: p. 194
akara, 3.5, The Bhagavad Gita with the Commentary of Sri Sankaracharya,
tr. Alladi Mahadeva Sastry, ed. cit., pp. 95-96
149. See in The Bhagavad-Gt with Eleven Commentaries (Volume 1):
akara, 2.47, Gt - bhya, pp. 190-191
Rmnuja, 2.47, Gt - bhya, p. 191
Madhva, 2.47, Gt - bhya, p. 192
Vallabha, 2.47, Tattva-dpik, p. 194
See in The Bhagavad-Gt with Eight Commentaries (Volume 1):
Keavakmrin, 2.47, Gt-tattva-prakik, p. 172
And,
Abhinavagupta, 2.47, Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, ed. cit. p. 67
150. William Quan Judge, Second Chapter, Essays on the Gt, Bhagavad-
Gt and Essays on the Gt, New Delhi, 2003, p. 144
151. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, rmadbhagabadGt, 2.47, Bankim
Rachanabali (Volume 2), ed. cit., p. 669, p. 668
Translation and Analysis, 2.47, ed. cit., p. 97, pp. 95-96
153. J. A. B. Van Buitenen, Chapter 2: tman and the Body; Chapter 3:
Relation Karmayoga-Jn nayoga; Chapter 4: Karmayoga; Chapter 5:
Karmayoga (continued), Rmnuja on the Bhagavadgt, ed. cit., pp.
54-65, pp. 65-76, pp. 76-85, pp. 85-91
154. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Section 16: Bhakti: Bhagavadgt:
Sannys, Dharmatattva, Bankim Rachanabali (Volume 2), ed. cit., p. 570
For a fuller discussion on Bankim see:
Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Bankim-bhsya, Atho m phaleu kadcana,
ed cit., pp. 154-179
156. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Dharmatatva, Bankim Rachanabali
(Volume 2), ed. cit., p. 571
157. The Bhagavat Gt or the Lords Lay, 2.47, tr. Mohini M. Chatterji, ed cit.,
p. 50
158. S. Radhakrishnan, 2.47, The Bhagavdgt, New Delhi: HarperCollins
Publishers India, 2008, p. 119
159. English translation of the Bangla Gt published by the official press of
Ramakrishna Mission:
rmadbhagabadgt (first published: 1939), 2.47, tr. Swami
Jagadiswarananda, Kolkata: Udbodhan Karyalaya, 1974, p. 61
160. Sharat Chandra Chakravarty, The Diary of a Disciple, Conversations
and Dialogues, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 7,
Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, 2002, p. 198
161. Sharat Chandra Chakravarty, Swami-sisya-sambad, Swamijir Bani O
Rachana, Volume 9, Kolikata: Udbodhan Karyalaya, 1964, p. 184
162. Swami Vivekananda, Epistle Number IV, Epistles, The Complete Works
of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 5, Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, 2004, p.
15
163. S. Radhakrishnan, 2.47, The Bhagavdgt, ed. cit. p. 119
164. Jogindranath Mukharji, 2.47, Gita for Everyone, New Delhi: Rupa &
Co. 2000, p. 21
165. C. Rajagopalachari, Bhagavad Gt : A Handbook for Students, Mumbai:
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2003, p. 52
166. Jawaharlal Nehru, Chapter Four: The Discovery of India, The Discovery
of India, New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1997, p. 77
167. Ibid.
168. Ibid.
169. Ibid.
170. Ibid.
171. Ibid.
172. Ibid.
173. Quoted: Herbert Herring, Introduction, G. W. G. Hegels Articles: On
the Episode of the Mahbhrata known by the name Bhagavad-Gt by Wilhelm
von Humboldt, New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research,
1995, pp. xiv-xv
174. G. W. F. Hegel, First Article, On the Episode of the Mahbhrata known
by the name Bhagavad-Gt by Wilhelm von Humboldt, tr. Herbert Herring,
ed. cit., p. 23
175. G. W. F. Hegel, First Article, On the Episode of the Mahbhrata known
by the name Bhagavad-Gt by Wilhelm von Humboldt, ed. cit., pp. 12-13
176. Ibid., p. 13
177. Ibid., p. 13
178. Ibid., p. 15
179. G.W.F. Hegel, Second Article, On the Episode of the Mahbhrata known
by the name Bhagavad-Gt by Wilhelm von Humboldt, ed. cit., p. 51
180. Ibid., p. 47
181. G.W.F. Hegel, First Article, On the Episode of the Mahbhrata known by
the name Bhagavad-Gt by Wilhelm von Humboldt, ed. cit., p. 15
182. G.W.F. Hegel, Second Article, On the Episode of the Mahbhrata known
by the name Bhagavad-Gt by Wilhelm von Humboldt, ed. cit., p. 59
183. Ibid., p. 59
184. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, The Message of the Gita, The Gospel
of Action or the Gita According to Gandhi, tr. Mahadev Desai, Ahmedabad:
2001, p. 134
185. akara, Sutra number 1.2.6, Commentary on Vednta-Sk tras, The
Sacred Books of the East (volume 34), ed. F. Max Mller, Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass Publishers, 1998, pp 112-113
Rmnuja, Sutra number 1.2.6, Commentary on Vednta-Sutras, The
Sacred Books of the East (volume 45), ed. F. Max Mller, Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass Publishers, 2003, p. 263
186. J. A. B. Van Buitenen, Introduction, Rmnuja on the Bhagavadgt,
ed cit., p. 7
187. Rammohun Roy, Translation of an Abridgement of the Vedant, The English
Works of Raja Rammohun Roy (Part II), ed. Kalidas Nag and Debajyoti
Burman, Calcutta: Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 1995, p. 57
188. B. R. Ambedkar, Krishna and His Gita, The Essential Writings of B. R.
Ambedkar, ed. cit. p. 193
189. Sri Sitaram Omkarnath, 2.47, Srimadbhagavadgt (volume one),
Kolkata: Akhil Bharat Jaiguru Sampradai, 1996, p. 69
190. Srijib Nyayatirtha, Introduction, rmadbhagavadgt (volume one)
by Sri Sitaram Omkarnath, ed. cit., p. [10] (emphasis added)
191. B. R. Ambedkar, Krishna and His Gita, The Essential Writings of B.R.
Ambedkar, ed. cit. p. 195
192. For a detailed discussion on the ideological and political ramifications
of the philosophical position adopted by Satis Chandra and his
sympathizers see:
Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Introduction to The Dawn and Dawn Societys
Magazine, Volume XII, edited by Madhabendra Nath Mitra, Kolkata:
Jadavpur University in association with National Council of Education, Bengal,
June 2009, pp. 35-70
193. Rabindranath Thakur, Samskar, Rabindra-Rachanabali (Sulabh
Sangskaran), Volume 12, Kolkata: Viswa-bharati, 1995, p. 403
194. Aurobindo Ghosh, The Doctrine of Passive Resistance and The
Morality of Boycott, Bande Mataram, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo
Ashram, 1997, pp. 83-123, pp. 124-128
195. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Chapter Three: Slogan, Vande Mataram:
The Biography of a Song, ed cit., p. 46
196. Aurobindo Ghosh, Bande Mataram (Translation) and Bande
Mataram (Translation in Prose), Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda,
Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1994, pp. 5-6 and pp. 7-8
197. Aurobindo Ghosh, Uttarpara Speech, Speeches on Indian Politics and
National Education, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2005, p. 78
198. Eric J. Sharpe, The Universal Gt: Western Images of the BhagavadGt, ed.
cit., p. 80
199. The Bhagavat Gt , 2.47, tr. Annie Besant and Bhagavan Das, ed cit.,
p. 45
200. Quoted in Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal: 1903-08, ed
cit., p. 314
201. Hemchandra Kanungo, Banglai Biplab Prachesta, Kolkata: Chirayata
Prakashan, 1997, p. 106
For a more detailed discussion on the Swadeshi period see:
Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Swadeshi-bhya, Atho m phaleu kadcana,
ed cit., pp. 180-198
202. Bhalchandra Sitaram Sukthankar, Various Vernacular Editions of
the Gt -Rahasya Srimad Bhagavadgt-Rahasya or Karma-Yoga-Sastra,
Poona: Tilak Brothers, 1983, p. [vii]
203. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Chapter XIV: The Continuity of the Chapters
of the Gt, Srimad Bhagavadgt-Rahasya or Karma-Yoga-Sastra, tr.
Bhalchandra Sitaram Sukthankar, ed cit., p. 657
204. Ibid., p. 657
205. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Translation and Commentary: 2.47, Srimad
Bhagavadgt-Rahasya or Karma-Yoga-Sastra, ed cit., p. 895
206. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Chapter III: The Science of Right Action
(Karma-Yoga-Z stra), Srimad Bhagavadgt-Rahasya or Karma-Yoga-
Sastra, ed cit., p. 75
207. Ibid., p. 75
208. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Translation and Commentary: 2.47, Srimad
Bhagavadgt-Rahasya or Karma-Yoga-Sastra, ed cit., p. 895
For a fuller discussion on Tilak See:
Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Tilak-bhya, Atho m phaleu kadcana, ed
cit., pp. 199-205
209. Sri Aurobindo, The Core of the Teaching, Essays on the Gita,
Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1974, p. 32
210. Ibid., p. 28
211. Ibid., p. 32
212. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story of M
Experiments with Truth, The Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Volume
I), Ahmedabad: Navajiban Publishing House, 1968, p.100
213. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Anasaktiyoga: The Message of the
Gt, The Gospel of Selfless Action or the Gita according to Gandhi, ed cit.,
p. 125
214. Ibid., pp. 125-126
215. Ibid., p. 126
216. Dhan Gopal Mukherjee, Dedication, Bhagavad-Gt, ed cit., p. [v]
217. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Letter to Dhan Gopal Mukherjee;
The Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Volume V), ed cit., p. 179
218. Quoted in: Winand M. Callewaert and Shilanand Hemraj, Chapter
IV: Section 22: Translations into Gujarati, Bhagavadgtnuvda: A Study
in Transcultural Translation, ed cit., p. 193
219. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 2.47, The Gospel of Selfless Action or
the Gita according to Gandhi, tr. Mahadev Desai, ed cit., p. 161
220. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Anasaktiyoga: The Message of the
Gt, The Gospel of Selfless Action or the Gita according to Gandhi, ed cit.,
p. 129
221. Ibid., p. 131, p. 133
222. Ibid., p. 134
223. Ibid., p. 132
224. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Discourse Number 26, Discourses
on the Gt, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, New Delhi: The
Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting,
Government of India, 1969, p. 125
225. For a fuller discussion on Gandhi See:
Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, Gandhi-bhya, Atho m phaleu kadcana,
ed cit., pp. 206-215
226. Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal: 1903-08, ed cit., p. 91
227. Rabindranath Thakur, Ghare-Baire, Rabindra-Rachanabali (Sulabh
Sangskaran: Volume 4), ed cit., p. 488
228. Rabindranath Thakur, Char Adhyay, Rabindra-Rachanabali (Sulabh
Sangskaran: Volume 7), ed cit., p. 385, p. 389
229. Rabindranath Thakur, Namanjur Galpo, Rabindra-Rachanabali
(Sulabh Sangskaran: Volume 12), ed cit., p. 399
230. Ibid., p. 398
231. Rabindranath Thakur, Gora, Rabindra-Rachanabali (Sulabh Sangskaran:
Volume 3), ed cit., p. 395
232. Ibid., p. 394
233. T. S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages: Section III, Four Quartets, London: Faber
and Faber, 1972, p.40, p. 42
GANDHI: NON-VIOLENCE AND
PRAGMATISM
Gangeya Mukherji
This paper seeks to explore Gandhis concept of non-
violence which had been originally given shape in Hind Swaraj
and from which Gandhi can be said to have not deviated till
the last day of his life, barring perhaps one exception, (and
to a lesser extent another) which however could be read in
accordance to what he had theorised in Hind Swaraj. The
statement of his ideas occasionally invited critical comment
perhaps none more so than when he advised Jews living in
Germany to offer non violent resistance in the face of Nazi
persecution. This paper will focus on the significant aspects
that can be culled over from this episode.
This episode is significant for a number of reasons. The
Holocaust constitutes one of the most horrific chapters of
human history and Gandhis suggestion that the Jews offer
their lives to awaken world opinion was greeted in most
quarters with incredulity and derision. This episode
embodies to a great degree not only the question of the
ultimate validity of Gandhian non-violence but it also holds
within itself the contours of the debate as to whether non
violent protest can succeed against despotic regimes and
therefore, provides an opportunity to examine its relevance
for our times.
Is non-violence endowed with an abiding intrinsic validity
existent only on its own set of conditions on the plane of
praxis, or is it perpetually dependent upon its other to
whom it is directed? Is the source of its validity intrinsic or
96 GANGEYA MUKHERJI
will it forever lie in a set of extraneous factors? These will be
the questions that this paper will try to look into.
It was not without hesitation that Gandhi ventured to
offer his views on the Arab-Jew question in Palestine and
on the persecution of Jews in Germany through an article
written in the Harijan on 26
th
November 1938, in response
to letters that he had been receiving which solicited his
opinion on these issues. It would be relevant to quote in
some detail, from his response:
My sympathies are all with Jews. I have known them intimately in
South Africa. Some of them became life long companions.
Through these friends I came to learn much of their age long
persecution. They have been the Untouchables of Christianity.
The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the
treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious
sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of
the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the
friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal
reason for my sympathy for the Jews.
1
He then stated that his sympathy for them was however
tempered with the untenability of the demand for a Jewish
homeland and that he wished that the Jews should make
their native lands their home. To restore Palestine partly
or wholly to the Jews would be a crime against humanity
as it would reduce the Arabs who had lived there for
centuries. Gandhis remark on the persecution of Jews, as
we shall see, reflects on larger philosophical and moral
questions. Since the responses to Gandhis statement are
generally quoted in greater detail than as to what Gandhi
actually stated, I would prefer to place before you his
statement in substantial measure rather than summarize it.
He said:
The nobler cause would be to insist on a just treatment of the
Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France
are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in
France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will
GANDHI: NON VIOLENCE AND PRAGMATISM 97
they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the
world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home
where they remain at will? This cry for the national home affords
a colourable justification for the German expulsion of Jews. But
the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in
history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to
have gone. And he is doing it with religious zeal. For, he is
propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism
in the name of which any inhumanity becomes an act of humanity
to be rewarded here and hereafter. The crime of an obviously
mad but intrepid youth is being visited upon this whole race with
unbelievable ferocity. If there ever could be a justifiable war in
the name of humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the
wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified.
But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons
of such a war is, therefore, outside my horizon or province.
Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be
worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness
masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how
hideous, terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness.
Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution? Is
there a way to preserve their self-respect and not to feel helpless,
neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. If I were a Jew and were
born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim
Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German might,
and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I
would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating
treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews
to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in
the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or
all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or
they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily
undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no
number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside
Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were
to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner
joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may
even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first
answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish
98 GANGEYA MUKHERJI
mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre
I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and
joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the
hands of the tyrant.
2
Gandhi went on to say that Satyagraha in South Africa had
been practiced by a handful of Indians who attracted no
sympathy to their cause from any quarter, and world opinion
and the Indian Government came to their aid after eight
years of fighting. The Jews in Germany were far more gifted
than the Indians in South Africa, and were a compact,
homogeneous community, and therefore infinitely better
placed to offer Satyagraha. Were they to turn to non violent
resistance, they would be able to turn a degrading manhunt
into a calm and determined stand against the godless fury
of dehumanized man. They would be able to render service
to fellow-Germans and to prove their title to be the real
Germans as against those who are today dragging, however
unknowingly, the German name into the mire.
3
This statement aroused a storm of controversy, not only
among Jews around the world, but among non Jewish
Germans also. The Germans alleged that Gandhi had
indulged in slander against their nation, while Jew opinion
expressed outrage and anguish at Gandhis ignorance of
the situation, and his insensitivity to the horrors that the
Jews in Nazi Germany were experiencing. In an agonized
response written on 24 February, 1939 from Jerusalem,
Martin Buber, confessed to having been very slow in writing
this letter to you, Mahatma... to have made repeated pauses
sometimes days elapsing between short paragraphs in
order to test my knowledge and my way of thinking....
searching whether I had not in any one point over stepped
the measure of self-preservation allotted and even prescribed
by God to a human community and whether I had not fallen
into the grievous error of collective egoism.
4
Recollecting
the many instances of genuine Satyagraha he had seen
among Jews, where force nor cunning was used to escape
the consequences of their behaviour, but which apparently
exerted not the slightest influence on their opponents,
Buber stated that non-violence may harbour the hope of
gradually bringing unfeeling human beings to their senses,
but a diabolic universal steam-roller cannot thus be
withstood:
There is a certain situation in which from the Satyagraha of the
strength of the spirit no Satyagraha of the power of truth can
result. Satyagraha means testimony. Testimony without
acknowledgement, ineffective, unobserved martyrdom, a
martyrdom cast to the winds that is the fate of innumerable
Jews in Germany. God alone accepts their testimony, and God
seals it, as is said in our prayers. But no maxim for suitable
behaviour can be deduced there from. Such martyrdom is a deed
but who would venture to demand it.
5
Another prominent critic of Gandhis stand, Judah L.
Magnes thought that the possibility of Jews offering civil
resistance in Germany did not exist as the protagonists of
such action were either killed or sent to concentration camps
in the dead of night, without even a ripple being
produced on the surface of German life, in contrast to
Gandhis actions like the salt march, when the whole world
is permitted to hang upon your words and be witness to
your acts.
6
Many of the analyses of this subject appear to concur
with the view that with his statements on the Holocaust
Gandhi discredited his own position. Joan Bondurant, to
whom we shall return later, is arguably the major exception,
who argues in favour of Gandhis stand, but her analysis
confines itself to the general principle of struggle against
totalitarian systems, without going into the specifics of the
case at hand. Dennis Dalton, one of the few scholars who
have examined this episode in a slightly more detailed
fashion, wondered: Where is his compassionate
understanding for the oppressed or even a hint of practical
programme of action? He seemed unable at this time to
100 GANGEYA MUKHERJI
grasp the enormity of the Holocaust. Yet the differences
between Nazi Germany and British India were evident then
as now.
7
However it is rather puzzling to find Daltons
counter assertion in the relevant end note that Gandhi was
unusually well informed during the 1930s and 1940s about
the plight of Jews in Europe in the face of Nazi persecution.
8
Perhaps the sheer inhumanity of the Nazi state has
understandably obscured the nuances of Gandhis position
regarding non violent resistance to Hitlers regime.
Unfortunately it has in the process threatened to dilute the
potential of the ideas that are encapsulated in the debate
which is still carried on different planes, between different
interlocutors over the times.
In a study unallied to Gandhi and the Jews, Hannah
Arendt famously stated:
In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is
hardly in doubt. If Gandhis enormously powerful and successful
strategy of non violent resistance had met with a different enemy
Stalins Russia, Hitlers Germany, even pre-war Japan, instead
of Englandthe outcome would not have been decolonization,
but massacre and submission. However, England in India and
France in Algeria had good reasons for their restraint. Rule by
sheer violence comes into play where power is being lost...
9
She went on to say that power and violence were
opposites, where the one rules absolutely, the other is
absent, and that unchecked violence ensures the
disappearance of its power. Strangely she is led to the
conclusion that: This implies that it is not correct to think
of the opposite of violence as non-violence; to speak of non
violent power is actually redundant.
10
But the statement
that can be said to emerge from her study is that violence
will hardly be effective with respect to the relatively long
term objective of structural change
11
and that much of
the present glorification of violence is caused by severe
frustration of the faculty of action in the modern world.
12
Gandhi was in fact trying to revitalize the faculty of action
among Indians through his movements in India and
suggested the same to Jews in Germany. However in a study
on Gandhi, while discussing Hitler, Jews, Palestine,
Rajmohan Gandhi writes:
There is no way of knowing how, if born a Jew in Germany, Gandhi
would have organized non violent resistance there. In him we
have seen a calling to present non-violence joined by strong
pragmatism. He never asked Indians to invite a massacre from
the British, or Hindus, Muslims or Untouchables to invite a
massacre from their Indian foes. The real commander of a non
violent battle was very different from the professor of a remorseless
non violent ethic.
13
This statement is extremely significant, because unlike most
of the other statements on this issue, it has perhaps
inadvertently let in a suggestion of uncertainty into Gandhi
stand, and put to question Gandhis repeated assertion made
right from the days of writing Hind Swaraj, till the last day of
his life, that presented with an irremediably unjust situation
he would opt for non violent protest, irrespective of the cost
such a course of action entailed. Rajmohan Gandhis
statement seems to imply that in extreme cases, even with
Gandhi, the pragmatic could become opposed to the ethical.
I would like to argue, that Gandhis position on the issue of
Jews in Nazi Germany, illuminates the point, that Gandhis
pragmatism is a different pragmatism: it is the ethical as
pragmatic, an unshakeable conviction that the ethical was
the pragmatic.
To explain the why and the how of this premise let
us go back to our different interlocutors, and in due course
contemplate on the two different scenarios that may seem
to emerge from this debate.
For a few months after his initial statement of November
1938, Gandhi was engaged in a written dialogue with people
who responded to his suggestion. His responses to them
through the pages of the Harijan clarify his stand. Apparently
he never received the letters from Buber and Magnes and
so never came to reply to them. In his first reply, to his
German critics, he refuted the allegation that as he was
ignorant about the real situation his intervention was
misinformed and inaccurate. Admitting his ignorance about
European politics, he spoke of the main facts about the
atrocities being beyond dispute. He stated that non-
violence was a sovereign remedy, and that to commend my
prescription to the Jews for the removal of their many ills, I
did not need to have an accurate knowledge of European
politics. He wondered whether his remedy was after all
not so indecorous as it may appear, but that it was eminently
practical if only the beauty of suffering without retaliation
was realized.
14
His subsequent statement is a cogent exposition of the
ethical as pragmatic:
To say that my writing has rendered neither myself, my movement,
nor German-Indian relations any service, is surely irrelevant, if
not also unworthy, implying as it does a threat; and I should rank
myself a coward if, for fear of my country or myself or Indo-German
relations being harmed, I hesitated to give what I felt in the
innermost recess of my heart to be cent per cent sound advice.
15
It would be interesting to contrast this with what his disciple,
Nehru, was to say on the Tibetan issue while replying to a
non-official resolution that India should take the Tibetan
issue to the United Nations, moved in the Lok Sabha on
September 4, 1959. He mentioned that his governments
approach was governed mainly by sympathy for the Tibetan
people, and the desire to maintain friendly relations with
China, and that the slight contradiction between the two
was the difficulty of the situation. Any step therefore could
not be taken in a huff, regardless of the consequences, as
it was essential, that India and China should have friendly
and as far as possible, cooperative relations. His summing
up of the situation was in a sense a classic display of diplomacy:
Looking at it from this point of view, the United Nations may
come into the picture for two reasons: one, violation of human
rights and two, aggression. Now, violation of human rights applies
to those who have accepted the charter of the United Nations; in
other words, the members of the United Nations. You cannot
apply the charter to people who have not accepted the charter,
who have not been allowed to come into the United Nations.
Secondly, if you talk about aggression by one sovereign
independent state on another, as I told you, in so far as world
affairs are concerned, Tibet had not been acknowledged as an
independent state for a considerable time. Suppose we get over
the legal quibbles and legal difficulties. What good will it achieve?
It may lead to a debate in the General assembly or the Security
Council which will be after the fashion of the cold war. Having
had the debate what will the promoters of the motion do? Nothing
more. They will return home. Obviously, nobody is going to send
an army to Tibet and China, for that was not done in the case of
Hungary which is a part of Europe and which is more allied to
European nations. It is fantastic to think they will move in that way
in Tibet.
All that will happen is an expression of strong opinion by some
and denials by others. The matter will be raised to the level of the
cold war and will probably produce reactions on the Chinese
Government which will be more adverse to Tibet and the Tibetan
people than even now.
16
It hardly needs to be pointed out that there is no mention
of the moral issues at stake: the suppression of the voice of a
people and of the need to protest against such repression.
We witness in these lines the pragmatism of the state, where
the pragmatic is opposed to the ethical. One wonders what
Gandhi would have said to Nehru or perhaps one need not;
one can perhaps accurately conjecture what he would have
said to Nehru and to the Dalai Lama. It is said that when
Gandhi was proposing non violent resistance to the Jews he
was unaware that Hitler in November1937 had offered a
simple suggestion regarding the Indian political movement
to Lord Halifax: All you have to do is to shoot Gandhi. If
necessary, shoot more leaders of Congress. You will be
surprised how quickly the trouble will die down.
17
Elsewhere
it is narrated as to how Hitler had similarly remarked in
January 1942, If we took India, the Indians would certainly
not be enthusiastic, and theyd not be slow to regret the
good old days of English rule.
18
On another occasion
Goebbels is said to have called Gandhi a fool whose policies
(of passive resistance) seem merely calculated to drag India
further and further into misfortune.
19
Gandhi would have been hardly disconcerted by the
prospects of his likely reception in Germany. In one of his
responses on this issue, he drew a distinction between the
passive resistance of the weak and active non violent
resistance of the strong, which can and does work in the
teeth of the fiercest opposition. He clarified that by advising
non violent resistance against Nazi persecution he had not
logically advised the democratic powers to refrain from
action, on the contrary he expected them to come to the
rescue of the Jews since they were duty bound to do so. He
however was convinced that any such help would be largely
ineffective and the Jews would have to fashion their own
resistance, for which he felt his prescription to be infallible
when taken recourse to in the correct manner. Gandhi also
acknowledged the criticism that he had not been able to
gain universal acceptance for his remedy even within India,
where he was the self appointed General and where non-
violence had not been imbibed in its proper spirit. But he
said that it would be unethical on his part to refrain from
advising non-violence to situations which required it, and
he believed without doubt that it would be effective in
Germany where it was sorley needed. Moreover he counted
himself among the blessed, who expected nothing from
others, at least in the realm of non violent movements.
There is a striking similarity in the conditions which
engendered the writing of Hind Swaraj and his statement
on Jews. Although Hind Swaraj contains the much more
elaborate treatment of non-violence, his statement to the
Jews dramatically introduced the concept of non-violence
in the western world in general, whose ethos he deemed to
be broadly antithetical to the concept and its practice, and
in Germany in particular, which had the most adverse
conditions imaginable for the practice of non violent
resistance. The similarity of origin between Hind Swaraj and
his statement of 1938 lies in the apprehension of violence
being acknowledged as the viable expression of protest under
inhospitable conditions. Hind Swaraj was the rebuttal of the
ideas of the school of violence within the Indian freedom
movement, demonstrated in the assassination of Curzon-
Wyllie by Madan Lal Dhingra. It is highly significant that
Gandhi understood the undercurrent of violence in the
Jewish psyche of the 1930s which led to the predominance
of David Ben Gurion over Chaim Weizmann in the Zionist
movement, and which has come to represent a major stream
of thought in modern Israel. It is another matter that the
Jews were helpless before Nazi persecution, indeed their
very passivity could be said to have been channelized later
into the violent assertion that we witness today. The greater
meaning, in human terms, of their suffering, appears to have
been lost on many of them. Even before Nazi persecution
began a strong Jewish opinion had began to build up against
the assimilationists, those Jews who favoured assimilation
in their native culture, as is was felt that they were diluting
the movement for a separate Jewish homeland by
emphasizing that the fight against anti-Semitism was the
need of the hour rather than the assertion of a separate
exclusive identity. A pro-Zionist attitude had characterized
the first stages of the Jewish policy of the National Socialists.
The polemical Jewish slogan Wear it with pride, the yellow
star, given in response to the Boycott Day of April 1, 1933
was also directed at the assimilationists among themselves,
who it was said, were always behind the times. It was only
six years later that the Nazis would actually compel the Jews
to wear the Star of David as a mark of inferiority. It is also the
psyche of the militant Jews that we speak of today, it is widely
known that the diabolical Nazi machine would have
embarked on its course anyway. However the degree of its
success would have to depend also on the state of the Jewish
mind, as in turn it would be the state of the Jewish mind on
which would depend the subsequent course of Jewish, and
to a great extent, world history. Robert Weltsch, who had
coined the slogan in 1933, was to say later that he would
never have issued his slogan if he had been able to forsee
developments.
20
In October 1938 Zindel Grynszpan, a
German Jew of Polish descent, along with thousands like
him was brutally evicted from Germany. On November 7,
1938 his seventeen year old son Herschel Grynszpan, living
in Paris, shot and killed a young German diplomat posted in
Paris, named Ernst Vom Rath. The assassination was the
immediate provocation for the Kristallnacht or the night
of the broken glass of November 9, when seventy five
hundred Jewish shop windows were broken, all synagogues
went up in flames, and twenty thousand Jewish men were
taken off to concentration camps.
21
On the 26
th
of November Gandhi wrote his first statement
on the issue of Jewish persecution, referring to Herschel
Grynszpan as an obviously mad, but intrepid youth.
However Gandhis prescription of an altogether different
intrepidity for the Jews continues to be misunderstood with
the resultant denial of its relevance in human history. Gandhi
accepted the probability expressed by one of his
correspondents, that a Jewish Gandhi in Germany, should
one arise, would function for about five minutes until
the first Gestapo agent would lead him, not to a concentration
camp, but directly to the Guillotine.
22
But for him that did
not disprove the efficacy of Ahimsa. He could imagine the
suffering and death of many more in such a course of action:
Sufferers need not see the result during their lifetimes.
They must have faith that, if their cult survives, the result is
certainty. The method of violence gives no greater guarantee
than that of non-violence.
23
What would have happened if his advice had been
followed?
Scenario 1. There is unified non violent resistance
movement by Jews in Germany in which they come out
openly against the decree of wearing the Yellow Star, refuse
to leave Germany when given expulsion orders, refuse to
report when served summons from the Gestapo offices.
There are public demonstrations all over Germany, as in
1938 World War II had not commenced, and Nazis are in
control only in Germany and Austria. Jews in the rest of
Europe and America begin protests against the Nazi regime.
Hitler diverts the war machine he had been assembling
for the future war, from preparing for a state of war readiness,
against the Jews. Most of them are mercilessly killed, and
the survivors taken to concentration camps, as extermination
camps have not begun operating, where they also die. Most
of these operations against the Jews are public knowledge,
as the world press still has access to public events in Germany
since Hitler is still negotiating with the major European
powers and war time restrictions are not in place, as it is not
yet war time in 1938. However there is no effect on German
public opinion. The major powers ignore this massacre, or
pass resolutions against it, all the while engaging
diplomatically with Hitler to further goals and aims of real
politic. Hitler goes ahead with his plans of aggrandizement.
The world war tales place with more or less the same results.
The Jews are almost decimated. Only the comment of
Gandhi regarding the resistance/ Holocaust would have
changed. Or would it?
But the above mentioned scenario seems rather
implausible, simply because too many imponderables are
involved. Such global quietude in the face of a resistance
and its reprisals seems inconceivable. Acknowledging that
the Holocaust was the Greatest crime of our time, Gandhi
reiterated in 1946 what he had said in 1938, that a Jewish
resistance would definitely have had other consequences
than those which occurred without such a movement: They
should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. It
would have aroused the world and the people of Germany....
As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.
24
A section
of opinion still holds this statement to be typical of Gandhis
lack of sensitivity and understanding of the Holocaust, where
he offered prescription without offering a practical
programme.
25
But it is a fact that Gandhis contemporary
interlocutors on this issue did not ask for practical suggestions.
They were simply incensed that he had linked Nazi
persecution with the Jew-Arab dispute in Palestine. They
normally stated the fact that non violent resistance was simply
not possible in Nazi Germany, and Gandhis unflinching
stand that it was, never provoked them to ask of him as to
how precisely could it be organised. They stopped with
censuring him. There was no effort to explore the moral
issues Gandhi had raised: individual responsibility to protest
against inhuman regimes; the preparation of the self for
undertaking such a protest; that passivity before oppression
was doubly unethical in as much as it violated the principle
of individual responsibility and frequently if not always,
allowed passivity to depict itself as non-violence.
Hayem Greenburgs allegation, made out in his detailed
letter to Gandhi, that Gandhi had been misled because of
his proclivity for Muslim appeasement, is cited in detail in
most studies, but the infinitely more significant portion of
his letter is not so often quoted. It is another matter that
Greenburg did not recognise that appeasement is built into
pragmatism of a kind which was entirely alien to Gandhi,
and which would make appeasement of a person or a
principle impossible for him. However it was perhaps only
Greenburg of all the distinguished correspondents of
Gandhi on this issue, who understood and acknowledged
the subtle point which Gandhi had made on the virtue of
Non-violence, more clearly in a subsequent statement on
the debate:
I hold that non-violence is not merely a personal virtue. It is also
a social virtue to be cultivated like the other virtues. Surely society
is largely regulated by the expression of non-violence in its mutual
dealings. What I ask for is an extension of it on a larger, national
and international scale.
26
Greenburg saw no schism in Gandhis thinking and accepted
that his suggestion of non-violence was quite natural and
in complete harmony with his entire outlook, and that his
ethical-religious convictions dictate to him the duty of heroic
and active resistance, the truth of which was to Greenburg
as self evident as a mathematical axiom. Noting at the same
time that Gandhi had since the years advocated Satyagraha
as a universal ideal which could be applied by all the
oppressed and injured everywhere and independent of the
specific historical situation, and that it had proved to be
practical and effective, Greenburg expressed his doubts as
to whether Satyagraha would succeed among the Jews of
Germany, not only because of the adverse situation in Nazi
Germany but much more so because the German Jews were
psychologically not equipped for such a movement given
that it was not in keeping with the ethos and character of
the western world:
But I admit to myself that in order to apply Gandhis method of
struggle it is necessary to accept it not only on a purely intellectual
plane; it is also imperative that it be assimilated emotionally, that
it should be believed in with all the force of ones being. Such
faith the Jews of Germany do not possess. Faith in the principle of
Satyagraha is a matter of special predisposition which, for
numerous reasons, the German Jews have not developed. The
civilization in which German Jews have lived for so many
generations, and to the creation of which they have so
energetically and ably contributed, has not prepared them for
the pathos of Satyagraha. They cannot resort to passive resistance
because they lack the heroism, the faith and the specific
imaginative powers which alone can stimulate such heroism.
27
Greenburgs analysis of ahimsa as being antithetical with the
predominant ethos of the western world came quite close
to what Gandhi had himself said in Hind Swaraj.
But Greenburgs highlighting of the brutality of the Nazi
regime was coupled with a hint that although the hope of a
passive resistance from the German Jews could be nurtured
the expectations of that hope being fulfilled would be
unrealistic as it would require a change of great proportions.
This brings us to the second scenario. Could passive
resistance have been successful in Germany and if so what
would be the time frame in which the success or failure of
such resistance can be judged? The second scenario can be
envisaged through the examination of some of the major
trends of the Holocaust. It would be useful to have a sense
of what had actually occurred and thus to know what ought
not to have happened for a non violent resistance of some
magnitude to have been born in Nazi Germany itself.
Scenario 2. This scenario is recreated from Hannah
Arendts interrogation of the cast of characters in her report
on the investigation of the Holocaust at the trial of Adolf
Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendts book which upset Jewish
opinion, justifies Gandhis analysis of the situation without
her knowing it. This is especially noteworthy in the light of
her comments, mentioned earlier, on Gandhian techniques.
It also illustrates how some of Gandhis forebodings
regarding the perils of not protesting against injustice were
proved accurate in the context of the Holocaust.
First, the ironical dimensions of the killing of Vom Rath
by Herschel Grynszpan. Vom Rath was a singularly
inadequate victim, who, far from being a Nazi fanatic was
known for his openly anti-Nazi views, and was in fact being
kept under surveillance by the Gestapo because of his
sympathy for Jews. Grynszpan was probably a psychopath
who had been unable to finish school, having been expelled
in Brussels and Paris. The German government had him
extradited although he was never put under trial, and it is
said that that he survived the war. It was the paradox of
Aushwitz that Jews who had committed criminal offences
were allowed to live. Gestapo encouraged a theory of
homosexuality to explain Vom Raths murder. Arendt has
speculated that the story of his homosexuality might have
been a fabrication by the Gestapo: Grynszpan might have
acted as an unwilling tool of Gestapo agents in Paris, who
could have wanted to kill two birds with one stonecreate a
pretext for pogroms in Germany and get rid of an opponent
to the Nazi regime.
28
Arendt openly spoke about the collusion of some Jewish
leaders with the Nazis during the Holocaust, basing her
comments largely on the depositions in the court in
Jerusalem, and on some highly respected investigative works
such as Raul Hilbergs classic, The Destruction of the European
Jews.
29
Emissaries from Palestine approached the Gestapo
and the SS on their own initiative in the early stages of the
Nazi regime to enlist help for the illegal immigration of
Jews into Palestine, which was gladly rendered. The
emissaries were not interested in rescue operations:
They wanted to select suitable material, and their chief enemy,
prior to the extermination program, was not those who made life
impossible for Jews in the old countries, Germany and Austria,
but those who barred access to the new homeland, that enemy
was definitely Britain, not Germany.
30
We may recall Gandhis relating of the issues of militant
Zionism is Palestine with that of civil resistance of Jews in
Germany 1938. Some of the overzealous proponents of a
Jewish Palestine had begun to operate in Nazi Germany
around this time, of course without a foreknowledge of the
sinister plans the Nazis had for the future. The Zionists
thought that the Jews themselves should extricate the best
biological material for survival away from a hostile situation.
The obsession with the best biological material was common
to the Nazis also. Gandhis worst apprehensions regarding
the consequences of a combination of passivity on the one
hand and militant Zionism on the other, seem to be
completely realized in this comment of Arendt on the
activities of the Zionists in Germany: It was this fundamental
error in judgment that eventually led to a situation in which
the non-selected majority of Jews inevitably found themselves
confronted with two enemiesthe Nazi authorities and the
Jewish authorities.
31
Gandhi had refused to believe that the Germans as a
nation have no heart or markedly less them the other nations
of the earth. Hitler would have been forced to take
cognizance of German opinion as he would be a spent force
if he had not the backing of his people.
32
An armed conflict
may cause destruction, it would not cause a change in human
heart, it may well serve to produce another Hitler as the last
war had. Referring to the continuing incarceration of Pastor
Niemoller and the other protestors against Nazi militarism,
he thought actions such as theirs would, as would a protest
by the Jews, never be in vain. It was a scientific principle that
energy is never wasted, it is only that the mechanical forces
are less abstract. Human actions resulting from a
concurrence of forces albeit invisible have a similar power;
the only thing required was to keep faith. Individual human
responsibility was thus of utmost importance.
Joan Bondurant has doubted the power of any
totalitarianism system, however effective in its policing, to
prevent word of-month propaganda of an idea, or even of
an understanding of a technique if there had been some
previous understanding of its meaning and effectiveness.
In her opinion, had the Jews of Germany been schooled in
Satyagraha, an organized Satyagraha could have got under
way.
33
The trial of Eichmann demonstrated how the mistaken
notions of the leaders of the German Jews had made
collaborators out of them, and how anxious the Nazis had
been to secure their collaboration to ensure the secrecy of
their operations. An authoritative account of those years
unambiguously states that without the cooperation of the
victims, it would hardly had been possible for a few thousand
people, most of whom moreover, worked in offices, to
liquidate many hundreds of thousands of people.
34
It is
ironical that Arendt stated in a later work that a Gandhian
movement in Germany would have resulted in massacre and
submission. In her earlier report on Eichmanns trial she
raised those very issues which were central to Gandhis
argument, and her documentation supports with empirical
data Gandhis claim that non-violence would have worked
in Germany as Hitler would not have been able to dispense
with the veil of secrecy and order needed for fulfilling his
diabolical designs.
Arendt describes how this role of the Jewish leaders in
the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the
darkest chapter of the whole dark story:
Without Jewish help in administrative and police work the final
rounding up of Jews in Berlin was, as I have mentioned, done
entirely by the Jewish police there would have been either
complete chaos or an impossibly severe drain on German power.
35
Arendt spoke of the absurdity of presuming either the
collective guilt of the German people on an ad-hoc
interpretation of history, or a kind of collective innocence
of the Jewish people, and criticised the reluctance evident
everywhere to make judgments in terms of individual moral
responsibility. Gandhi had said much the same.
The scenario that we have been discussing raises one of
the central moral questions of all time, namely upon the
nature and function of human judgment...that human
beings be capable of telling right from wrong even when all
they have to guide them is their own judgment, which
moreover, happens to be completely at odds with what they
regard as the unanimous opinion of all those around them.
36
There are indeed stray stories of individuals reclaiming
a sense of responsibility along with a moral, human space
for themselves. The story of Anton Schmidt was told at the
trial of Eichmann. He was a sergeant in the German Army,
assigned to a patrol in Poland, who in the course of his duties
came across members of the Jewish underground, whom be
helped with forged papers and trucks, without taking any
money. He did it for five months from October 1941 to March
1942, when he was caught and executed. Arendt wondered
how utterly different everything would be not only in Israel
but in all of the world, if only more such stories could have
been told. Peter Bamm, a German Army physician had, in
his account of the killings of Jews in Sevastopol, acknowledged
that he and others like him knew of the extermination units
but did nothing because any protestor would have summarily
disappeared, as totalitarians regimes dont permit their
opponents to die a great, dramatic martyrs death for their
convictions. A great many of us might have accepted such
a death, he says, if only totalitarian states let them do so.
Any sacrifice in anonymity would have been futile. However
he had the courage to say:
This is not to say that such a sacrifice would have been morally
meaningless. If would only have been practically useless. None
of us had a conviction so deeply rooted that we could have taken
upon ourselves a practically useless sacrifice for the sake of a
higher moral meaning.
37
This is obviously the kind of utilitarian ethics, where ethics
dilutes its essence and loses its way into becoming a
pragmatism shorn of value.
Another question which arises from the second scenario
is why in the face of such odds as are characteristic of
totalitarian regimes, did Gandhi continue to emphasize on
the validity of suffering for ones convictions? This is
contained in the obviously larger question: why is the ethical
also the pragmatic? The answer lies evident in Arendts
poignant comment on Peter Bamms reference to the futility
of a sacrifice consigned to oblivion:
The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect,
and there are simply too many people in the world to make
oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the
story. Hence, nothing can ever be practically useless, at least,
not in the long run. It would be of great practical usefulness for
Germany today, not merely for her prestige abroad but for her
sadly confused inner condition, if there were more such stories
to be told. For the lesson of such stories is simple and within
everybodys grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions
of terror most people will comply but some people will not, just as
the lesson of the countries to which the final solution was
proposed is that it could happen in most places but it did not
happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required,
and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a
place fit for human habitation.
38
In arguably his last major statement on this issue made during
the last months of his life, Gandhi lamented that the heartless
persecution of Jews had driven them to Palestine, but it also
grieved him that they sought to impose themselves on an
unwelcome land with the aid of naked terrorism, and
American money and British arms. He hoped a universally
gifted race such as theirs would adopt the matchless weapon
of non-violence whose use their best prophets have taught
and which Jesus the Jew who wore the crown of thorns
bequeathed to a groaning world. It would be a soothing
balm to the aching world, and their case would then become
the worlds case.
39
Sixty years of bloodshed in one of the most intractable
conflicts of our times, has not brought the warring parties
any closer. One wonders whether the Gandhian path of Non-
Violence may not be the way forward.
NOTES
1. M.K. Gandhi, Non Violence in Peace and War, Ahmedabad: Navjivan
Publishing House, 1942, vol I, p. 170.
2. Ibid., pp. 170-172.
3. Ibid., p. 173.
4. Martin Buber A Letter to Gandhi cited in abridged form in Non-Violence:
A Reader in the Ethics of Action, eds., Doris A. Hunter & Krishna Mallick,
New Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1990, p. 147.
5. Ibid., p.141.
6. Cited in Dennis Dalton, Nonviolence in Action: Gandhis Power, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 136.
7. Ibid., p.137.
8. Ibid., pp. 229-230nn177, 178
9. Hannah Arendt, On Violence, London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press,
1970, p. 53.
10. Ibid., p. 56.
11. Ibid., p. 80.
12. Ibid., p. 83.
13. Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an
Empire, Delhi: Penguin Books, 2006, p.444.
14. M. K Gandhi, Non -Violence in Peace & War, op.cit., p.177.
15. Ibid.
16. Indias Foreign Policy: Selected Speeches of Jawaharlal Nehru, September 1946-
April 1961, New Delhi: The Publications Division, Government of India,
1983, p. 346.
17. Halifax quoted in Earl of Avon, The Eden Memoirs, London: Cassel, 1962,
p. 516, cited in Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas, op.cit., p. 422.
18. Hitlers Secret Conversations. 1941-1944, New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux,
1953, p.163, cited in Dalton, Non -Violence in Action, op.cit., p. 229 n176.
19. The Goebbels Diaries. 1942-1943, ed., and trans by Louis P. Lochner, New
York: Doubleday, 1948, p.162, cited in Dalton opcit,. p. 229n176.
20. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,
New York: Penguin Books, 2006, p. 59.
21. Ibid., p. 39.
22. Hayem Greenburg to Gandhi in M K Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and
War, op.cit., p. 464.
23. M.K. Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War op.cit., p. 219.
24. Louis Fisher, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya
Bhavan, 1990, p. 447.
25. See Dalton, Non-violence in Action, op.cit, pp. 136-137.
26. M.K. Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War, op cit., p. 192.
27. Hayem Greenburg to Gandhi, op.cit., p. 462.
28. Arendt mentions the bizarre nature of the case, of the Nazis slandering
the victim for homosexuality and illicit relations with Jewish boys, and
also making him a martyr and victim of world Jewry. See Arendt,
Eichmann in Jerusalem, op.cit. pp. 227-228.
29. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Chicago: 1961. However
Arendt was highly critical of some of Hilbergs later observations on the
Jewish psyche, such as the death wish of the Jews, and the relation
between them was hardly congenial.
30. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, op.cit., p. 61.
31. Ibid., p. 61.
32. M.K.. Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace & War, op.cit., p. 191
33. Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, p. 227.
34. Robert Pendorf, Morder und Ermordete. Eichmann and die Judenpolitic des
Dritten Reiches, Hamburg: 1961, cited in Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem,
op.cit., p. 117.
35. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, op.cit., p. 117.
36. Ibid., p. 295.
37. Peter Bamm, Die Unsichtbare Flagge, Munich, 1952, cited in Arendt,
Eichmann in Jerusalem, op.cit., p. 232.
38. Arendt, Eichmann in Jeruslam, op.cit., pp. 232-233.
39. M.K. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace & War, op.cit., vol. II, pp. 116-117.
1
RAHULA SANKRITYAYANS JOURNEYS OF
THE SELF: NATION, CULTURE, IDENTITY
Maya Joshi
The self has been an object of enquiry in the east and west
since the inception of philosophy. Certain forms of literature
add a phenomenological urgency to the enquiry,
autobiography being the most obvious one of them. As a
genre, autobiography brings into focus issues of identity and
selfhood in its philosophical and historical dimensions. That
this genre has enjoyed greater popularity in India only since
the 19th century is an interesting sociological fact that
requires a separate discussion. Since the 20th century,
however, the genre has gained popularity globally and
provides a rich cross-cultural corpus for theoretical analysis.
Arguably, certain historical moments provide richer soil
for studying the already complex set of thematic concerns
that autobiography highlights. While the genres popularity
with the hitherto marginalized, especially dalit and women
writers in the 19th and 20th century, has been well-studied,
my project focuses on autobiographies of some public
individuals in early 20th century in India, to analyse how the
genre becomes a site for the articulation of identities
individual and collective. The period is one of social
transition and political turmoil, when the familiar tensions
between tradition and modernity, the native and the
foreign, the local and the universal acquire piquancy due to
the urgencies of the anti-colonial movement and nascent
and conflicting versions of nationalism. Progressive agendas
that look westwards collide with nativism and cultural revival,
120 MAYA JOSHI
both working towards a shared anti-colonial agenda. In the
process the categories of east and west, of native and
foreign, authentic and derivative, are evoked, defined,
debated, and contested. As they write their life-stories, these
individuals locate themselves and help create a vocabulary
of the self, while also establishing a relationship with an
audience and helping define key issues that are of continued
relevance in post-independence India.
The most dominant, certainly the most debated,
theoretical formation within this context would arguably be
that of the nation, the terms of its definition being contested
on the grounds of localitydefined as language, geography,
gender or a sense of the past. These contestations could
take the form of rigid binaries, between the inner and outer
domains, the home and the world, the male or female
spheres of experience, and the indigenous or the
imported in language, attire, spatial habitations, or
philosophical premises. Within this binary schema, often
summed up as the east-west divide, academic ventures into
roads less traveled help us discern voices of great complexity.
Rahula Sankrityayans is one such voice, challenging
questions of self and location in multiple domains.
Using his short but eloquent treatise for travelers,
Ghumakkar Shastra, and treating this as analogous to his
longer autobiographical narrative, Meri Jeevan Yatra
(originally published in five volumes), this paper attempts
to locate Rahula Sankrityayan in his time and ours. His drive
for self-definition, traced in detail in his life story, coincides
with a powerful and focused proselytising drive for social
change, shaping the dynamics of the public and the private.
In his writings, the individual self as an object of observation,
analysis and alteration, in keeping with a constantly evolving
worldview, takes shape within a context of multiple and
shifting affiliations to collectivities and communities. These
include the family, religious communities, scholarly
affiliations, anti-colonial political groupings, local/provincial/
RAHULA SANKRITYAYANS JOURNEYS OF THE SELF 121
regional locations articulated in terms of issues of language,
all moving towards a humanism that seeks to transcend
borders, geographical and discursive, even as it is richly
local. This polymaths life and the writing of it often
juxtaposes mutually warring ideological stances and locations
which sometimes get resolved in linear, teleological narratives
of growth, and at other times, in unresolved tensions.
Locating Sankrityayans life in the context of debates
then dominant in the public domain opens up crucial
questions of how an Indian identity may be conceptualized.
His multihued life is an enriching and somewhat unique
motif in the tapestry that is India at this point. Given its
range and variety, a brief biographical sketch is illuminating
and necessary, as his unusual life trajectory shapes the
discussion.
The Many Lives of Rahul Sankrityayan
April 9, 1893April 15, 1963; within this almost-too-neat
70-year span, Rahul Sankrityayan lived many lives. He traveled
indefatigably, wrote incessantly, changed his name thrice,
and with it and beyond it, his ideological affiliations, and
left behind him an enormous archive of writing that is rarely
done full justice to in any one academic department. His
life and work crosses a range of spatial boundaries
linguistic, disciplinary, religious, ideological that defy easy
classification. A quick recapitulation of his travelsusing the
word in the fullest sense of the termindicates the analytical
challenge that he poses. I will then draw upon two texts, his
autobiography, Meri Jeevan Yatra, and his treatise on travelers,
Ghumakkar Shastra, to bring the focus to the theme of travel
as fact and metaphor.
Born Kedarnath Pandey to an orthodox Brahmin family
in Azamgarh village in the state of Uttar Pradesh, he became
a Hindu sadhu and adopted the name Baba Ram Udaar Das
in 1913 at the age of 10. But the company of sadhus turned
him into a bitter critic of orthodoxy. By 1930, he had earned
122 MAYA JOSHI
the title and name that he died with and is known by,
Mahapandit Tripitakacharya Rahul Sankrityayan. This name
and title is itself a testimony to the distance he had traveled,
since no part of it was his by birth. While his titles
Mahapandita and Tripitakacharya indicated his mastery
of Sanskrit and Pali texts, the first name Rahul was chosen
for its Buddhist antecedents (being the name of Prince
Siddhartha Gautamas son) and Sankrityayan was created
out of the name of the gotra (caste lineage) that his family
belonged to. This name, of his own invention (Buddhist and
residually Brahmanical in its inclusion of the caste category),
bears the traces of all but the last and most powerful
ideological phase in his life: the Marxist.
The Buddhist phase had began with his growing distance
from the Hindu reformist movement Arya Samaj, of which
he was a fervent young exponent between 1914 and 1915,
during which he was required to study Buddhism along with
other heterodox schools of philosophy in order to counter
their premises, as was the practice amongst Arya Samajis.
Having already left home to start his regular travels by the
year 1910, at the age of 17, it was during his visit to Nepal in
1923, followed by one to Sri Lanka in 1927, that he
systematically studied Buddhism, acquiring the degrees and
titles mentioned earlier. Having Urdu, Hindi, Sanskrit,
Arabic and Persian and of course his native Bhojpuri already
at his command, he had by now acquired a knowledge of
Pali, Singhalese and Tibetan. He traveled to Tibet four times
disguised as a lama by the assumed name of Chhewang,
affecting madness and mendicancy to save himself from the
double hazard of ruthless local bandits and the British Police,
and brought back with him over 1600 Buddhist manuscripts
and texts on mules, translating some of them along the way.
He also visited Europe as a Buddhist missionary in 1932,
during which period he declined an invitation to travel to
America in the same role.
Rahula Sankrityayans Socialist phase began in 1935,
coinciding with his visit to the USSR, where he was invited
to teach Buddhist philosophy at Leningrad University by the
legendary Professor Tscherbatsky, the noted Russian scholar
of Buddhist logic, who held Sankrityayan in high esteem for
his scholarship and mastery of his subject. He used the time
well by learning the Mongolian and Russian languages. In
1937, 1944 and 1962, he revisited the USSR, the last time
tragically for treatment for amnesia. In between, he returned
to and traveled extensively in India, participating actively in
the nationalist movement, especially in the Kisan Sabha and
the Indian National Congress. His nationalist political
involvement earned him many friendships and associations
as well as several jail terms, which he effectively utilized to
further his education and produce much of his voluminous
oeuvre.
In 1939, he became a member of the Communist Party
of India and remained one for nine years before having his
membership revoked in 1948 for his controversial defense
of the claims of Hindi, a position that was perceived to be
partisan and majoritarian by fellow comrades in the
increasingly communal debates around the espousal of Hindi
as a national language. He rejoined the party in 1955,
continuing his allegiance though focussing the last phase of
his life on Buddhist teaching and scholarship. He finally
settled in Darjeeling, where he passed away in 1963, the last
few years of his active life rendered tragic due to a debilitating
amnesia, ironic in a man who, by the time of his death, knew
around 34 languages, and had written extensively, largely
from memory, in at least three.
This quick sketch captures precious little indeed of
Rahula Sankrityayans significance, which can be gauged
somewhat better by the variety and volume of the written
and translated work he left behind in Hindi, Bhojpuri and
Tibetan (he chose not to use English) . These range from
nine novels, four collections of short stories, an
autobiography published originally in five volumes, fifteen
124 MAYA JOSHI
biographies of religious and political leaders, ranging from
Vir Chandrasingh Garhwali to Mao-Tse-Tung, Stalin to
Mahamanav Buddha, twelve travelogues of travels across Asia
and Europe, with many through remote Himalayan states,
seven collections of essays, ten translated books, and several
little booklets on science, sociology, politics, philosophy,
religion, and folklore in Hindi alone. In addition, there are
three primers on the Tibetan language, two Bhojpuri plays,
and last, but certainly not the least, fifteen volumes of classical
Buddhist texts that he researched, edited, and translated.
These writings, and the life of the writer, testify to a
capacity for and commitment to translation in the most basic
sense of that word. One dictionary meaning of translation is
to carry across, to transport. Sankrityayan the traveler not
only transported those rare Buddhist scriptures to India
physically, he also lived up to the title of translator in the
more mundane sense of the term. But to carry the metaphor
further, he was a translator of himselftraveling across
worlds, and then translating that corpus of knowledge and
experience ranging from the arcane and philosophical to
the folk and everyday, into his writings for the benefit of his
countrymen and women, in keeping with an ideological
commitment to democratizing knowledge . This powerful
sense of affiliation to the land of his birth, its civilisational
depth and variety as well as its social and political future, is
evidenced in his life and work. The specific contours of his
journeying, the various rites of passage that go into the
making of this persona whose unusual trajectory carries
reverberations that are both personal and political, individual
and national, bear closer analysis.
Genealogies:
Tracing the roots of Sankrityayans self-construction, in life
and writing, involves taking a route via philosophy and history.
Locating him within the specific history of India, especially
that of the dominant public discourses at this time in India,
requires an engagement with the debates on nationalism
and its varied genealogies. Indian nationalism drew upon a
rich and often bewildering mix of traditions, with Gandhis
being a case of particular complexity where ideas and inputs
from his own travels, physical and mental, had resulted in
an attempted synthesis of east and west, tradition and
modernity, continuity and change. Gandhis deft
maneuverings bring to focus the constructive imperative, of
developing a strategy for political and psychological
decolonisation. Somewhat like the Gandhian alignment with
diverse streams of thoughtfrom Vaishnava pietism to a
variety of socialism Rahula represents in his one life, in a
highly compressed form, an entire generation attempting
to simultaneously create and explore an indigenous
inheritance and align it with a carefully selective
cosmopolitanism that is a product of precisely these travels
in the wider world. This pilgrims progress takes place with
the larger narrative of the Indias emergent nationalsim,
the making of which was effected along intersecting lines
across the local, the national, and the global. An entire
discursive terrain can potentially be mapped through this
life, where one would encounter, besides Gandhi, individuals
like the socialist Acharya Narendra Dev, who when not
spending jail terms (during which he translated the Buddhist
treatise Abhidharmakosha) was teaching Buddhist philosophy
at Banaras, or Bhadant Ananda Kausalyayan, a fellow
Buddhist missionary whose own spiritual quest mirrors
Rahulas own. One would also encounter polymaths such as
D.D. Kosambi whose wide range of travels across disciplinary
boundaries finds an echo in the kind of ceaseless roaming
without borders that Sankrityayan undertakes, sometimes
serially, as he moves from one position to the next, (a
progressive mental journey towards rationalism as
Prabhakar Machwe, his friend and associate, puts it) or
sometimes, through a simultaneity, as suggested by his self
created name with its mixed geneaologies.
126 MAYA JOSHI
He travels from the rural hinterland of Uttar Pradesh
where he is born into a family of modest means, to the kasbah
(the small town called Rani ki Sarai) where he is sent to
study at a madarsa where the primary pedagogic tool was
the cane wielded by a dreaded provincial schoolmaster, to
the city of Banaras which he sets foot in for the first time in
1902 as a boy for his sacred thread ceremony. From there
he undergoes many rituals of conversion and apostasy, as he
travels the world, ending with his embracing the Marxist
path. Stylistically, his autobiography is derivative of the rich
rural repertoire of oral traditions. He recounts the earliest
memories of his childhood, of listening to his grandfather
recall his adventures from his hunting trips across India in
his capacity as an orderly to an English colonel. The particular
rasa of that storytelling can be tasted in the conversational
prose, peppered with ruralisms, as easily as it is with bits of
Sanskrit and Urdu poetry.
But this is the limit of his rural inheritance. His difference
from his grandfathers travels and narratives indicate the
distance he traveled ideologically. His autobiography at this
point becomes a marker of a rite of passage as he, in
retrospect, indulgently criticizes his grandfathers ignorance
and prejudices about the world he had encountered. One
telling instance is that of his grandfather literally demonizing
the images in the Buddhist caves of Ajanta by incorporating
them into a Hindu myth about demons being frozen into
stone. By countering and exposing this narrative of a
dominant Brahmanical construction of Indias past, where
the heterodox Buddhist tradition is sought to be denied its
very force, Sankrityayan, via his retelling of this history,
performs the progressivist act of rescuing that tradition from
an oblivion brought on by a hegemonic resurgent orthodoxy.
The issue of identity, so interlinked to that of language,
a debate that was raging in progressive circles at the time,
deserves separate space, especially since his own investment
in it had serious repercussions for his scholarly and political
life. It is noteworthy that in Meri Jeevan Yatra as in Ghumakkar
Shastra, his Hindi is peppered with ruralisms, mixes the
Urdu and Hindi registers in such a way that a shloka in
Sanskrit easily rubs shoulders with an oft-repeated Urdu
couplet (ascribed in Ghumakkar Shastra to the poet Ismail
Meeruthi):
Sair kar duniya ki gafil zindagani phir kahan
Zindagi gar kuchh rahi to naujawani phir kahan
This couplet, so central to his world view that it serves as a
leitmotif in his entire oeuvre, urges the young to take heed
and make the most of a brief life by traveling the world. The
carpe diem trope is redeployed to focus on the pleasures
and rewards of sair, (an Urdu word that carries suggestions
of leisurely wandering), and not erotic love, as in the western
context. A precious and short-lived youth is best spent in
this pursuit, we are told, since ghumakkari is an exacting
vocation demanding youthful energy, while the pedagogical
purpose of the enterprise (never ignored in this Shastra)
would be rendered redundant in old age.
In his Preface to his autobiography, Sankrityayan gives
us the justification for writing the account. He is, in this,
following an established tradition that has atleast one
antecendent, in M.K. Gandhi, where the cultural specificity
of the genre is posited as an issue worth debating, requiring
justification. Gandhi specifically addresses an unnamed
friends suggestion that the genre should be eschewed
due to its specific location in a western way of thinking and
being, and offers the response that he is not writing a real
autobiography (with its western self-aggrandising intent)
but merely a story of his experiments with truth
(Introduction, An Autobiography, p. ix). Sankrityayan offers
a justification similar in spirit, though not concerned with
the question of culture specificity:
Main barbar yeh mahsoos karta raha, ki aise raste se guzare hue doosre
128 MAYA JOSHI
musafir yadi apni jeevan yatra ko likh gaye hote, to mera bahut laabh hua
hotagyaan ke khayal se hi nahin, samay ke pariman mein bhi. Main
manta hoon hi koi bhi do jeevan yatraayen bilkul ek si nahin ho saktin, to
bhi isme sandeha nahin ki sabhi jeevano ko usi aantarik aur baihya
vishva ki tarangon main tairana parta hai. (I had often felt that I
would have gained considerably if others who had traveled this
path had left their accountsnot only in terms of knowledge
gained but also in terms of time. I agree that no two lives are
identical, still there is no doubt that all lives have to swim in the
same waters: whether internal or those of the external world.
Prakkathan, Meri Jeevan Yatra: I, p. 1)
This is interesting not only for the use of the metaphor of
the journey to describe a life, but also in the way it reconciles
the principles of individuation with a sense of the collectivity
of human experience. The pedagogic value of the writing
comes from the latter fact: had other travelers left their
accounts, he would have benefited immensely, not only in
quantum of knowledge gained, but also in time saved. This
dual impulse, to understand the world, and to achieve this
in the most efficient manner, points to a traceable
philosophical imperative in Sankrityayans life: life is a quest
for knowledge or enlightenment. This enlightenment, in
Rahulas engagingly cross-cultural quest, looks in both
directions: east and west, and self-consciously disregards the
distinction between high and low aesthetic and cultural
traditions. While the Buddhas Enlightenment interpreted
rationally lights his way, he also moves progressively towards
Marxist philosophy, and in fact often deploys both as
explanatory or justificatory theoretical models.
The philosophical notion of the self that underpins his
writing is explicitly stated in the epigraph to his
autobiography: Berhe ki tarah paar utarne ke liye maine vicharon
ko sweekar kiya, na ki sir par uthaye phirne ke liye (I treat ideas/
knowledge like a boat/raft for ferrying one across the stream,
not as a load to be carried forever on ones head)
These words aptly measure the contours of Sankrityayans
ideological travels. Ascribed to the Buddha (the lines occur
in the Majjhimanikaya and recur in many Buddhist texts) as
he exhorted his disciples to treat his teachings as route maps
to liberation rather than ends in themselves, they remind us
of the antiquity of the metaphor of life as a journey, with
ideas as mere means for crossing over to the other side. The
teleological thrust behind them one does cross over to the
other side indicates a progressive imperative to be open
to experience, to new facts and stimuli, and testifies to a
philosophical notion of the self that is dynamic and at odds
with static orthodox models for the self found in most
religious/ philosophical traditions, including the
Brahmanical/Upanishadic. The individual for Sankrityayan
is in process, as a part of larger collectivities and a flowing
stream of scholarly work, showing a notion of the self that is
flexible, continuous, and communitarian.
This progressivism also entails a pedagogical imperative
that is rather obviously stated in the Preface to the
autobiography in terms of the act of writing as an investment
in our future generations. In Rahula, the national
identification, however, routinely slips into a broader human
one as it does in Ghumakkar Shastra, when he states that it is
imperative for the future of the human race that ghumakkari,
the adoption of dedicated aimless roaming, the rules
for which he delineates in great detail in the Shastra, be
taken up as a vocation by the young men and women alike.
Ghumakkar Shastra: A Treatise for the Times
Written and published for the general public in 1948, this
slim volume elicited mixed responses. While according to
Kamala Sankrityayan, some parents wrote angry letters to
the writer blaming him for preaching a way of life that was
subversive of institutions such as the family, caste taboos, and
narrow parochialism, the location of this text within a
pedagogical system, the informal one of guides and self-help
books as well as a formal one, is declared early in the Preface
to the second edition of 1957. The author notes with
130 MAYA JOSHI
approval and satisfaction that the book has gone into a second
edition because of the support of young and old alike,
resulting in its being institutionalised within the university
system. So the advice proferred, to wander the world while
youth lasts, if somewhat subversive of social convention, is
yet brought firmly back within a safe frame. If it is so easily
absorbed into formal pedagogic systems, the text has already
become that safe thing, a classic in his lifetime, that can be
read for entertainment, its provocative overstatement of its
case merely a rhetorically satisfying embellishment.
The genealogy for the wanderer motif as it appears in
his Ghumakkar Shastra is mixed. In this proscriptive and
prescriptive text, Sankrityayan sets about convincing a
rhetorical audience of youth and their wards of the
desirability and hoary past of this way of life. It is the highest
duty he declares, of every traveler to benefit future
generations of roamers by putting their pens to paper. Of
course, writing, like photographs, can never capture the true
flavour of the experience (even the travails of travel are
likened to spice in food) and therefore first hand experience
is the only guarantee of authenticity. The shastras tell us,
he says, tongue in cheek, that we must cultivate curiousity
for that which is shreshtha (superior) and supremely
beneficial to the individual and society ( p.7) Having made
his claim that wandering is this supreme activity, he sets about
creating an appropriate tradition for it. One clear tradition
is that of the wandering sadhu, the holy sage, the greatest of
whom, he admits is the Buddha himself. Mahavira and
Shankaracharya follow, as do Nanak and Dayanand Saraswati.
This creed, and the language he deploys is quasi-religious,
is the highest, the only timeless, eternal creed in the world,
great as the sky, vast as the ocean (p.11), one that has been
followed by leaders of all the great world religions in their
hey-day.
However, in a characteristically modern twist, he is not
averse to including Christopher Columbus in this pantheon
and cites the Mongolian travelers as facilitators of the scientific
revolution in the west and indeed, Charles Darwin and Marco
Polo as inspired traveler who owed their discoveries to being
on the move. The ghumakkar is the one who has made the
world what it is, he says, somewhat breezily disposing of the
unfortunate violence (the rivers of blood, khoon ki nadiyan)
that had often accompanied these traveler-settlers. Even the
dovetailing of travel and the colonial enterprise receives his
approval as he chides the lazy frog-in-the-well mentality of
the Chinese and Indians who quite failed to inhabit the vast
territories of Australia, which were ours for the taking a
couple of hundred years back, p. 3, and who now complain
of over-population.
Ghumakkari is anything but a narrow-minded creed and
it encourages women to travel as well as men, with the
excellent example of the Buddhas inclusion of women in
the sangha as evidence. In fact, Sankrityayan expanded the
section on women ghumakkars on popular demand from
young female readers, as his Introduction to the second
edition testifies. The treatise then somberly moves on to
detailing all the requisites for becoming a consummate
roamer, and the list is interesting for its dovetailing of this
socially subversive creed into a constructive program of
benefiting the nation, and indeed all humanity.
The wanderer requires courage to withstand
considerable social pressure represented above all by the
family in the form of mothers tears, fathers fears, and
spouses grouses and protests. ( p. 11) This is specially so in
the context ( as his was) of child marriage. The timid fear of
modern technology is breezily dismissed dying in a plane
crash, he informs one timid co-traveller, is to achieve the
highest form of death (yogi ki mrityu) as death is clean
and instantaneous (p. 23). The traveler must of course
be financially independent, to not beg, and this requires
some vocational training, best acquired by observation and
social association. For men he recommends the barbers
132 MAYA JOSHI
profession (easy portability of implements helps) while
women can correspondingly specialize in beauty treatments,
something sure to be an employable skill wherever they go.
Other vocations that he lists are also carefully chosen for
their lower caste associations carpenters, weavers, tailors,
blacksmiths and goldsmiths are the potential choices. In one
fell swoop, not lacking in irreverent humour, he draws a
plan for undoing the caste system as it has existed in India.
Knowledge of the fine arts (especially music which has a
universal language and helps break down barriers) gets the
traveler an entry into the more refined circles where ever
he goes, but special emphasis on the folk traditions is
desirable (ustadi gayan is good but the folk is better), the
flute is a good instrument to carry and can even be improvised
from simple raw materials. The traveler who ventures into
tribal regions needs to be careful to fully benefit from the
educational and entertaining possibilities there. Of course,
his main purpose should be to highlight the poverty and
backwardness of the region and to hope to bring the light
of modernity and progress into those lives within a context
of equality, respect and a rational cultural relativism. The
text here indulges in anthropological taxonomy as he lists
the many tribes and their languages through the length and
breadth of India. In a veiled hint perhaps at his
contemporary, the anthropologist Verrier Elwin, he
mentions one Englishman who married a tribal girl in order
to study the forest tribe better, but declares: Since marriage
is one of the worst things that can happen to a traveler, I
feel such cheap tactics ( saste hathiyar)should not be used
(p.68)
The text delineates other forms of preparedness
knowledge of geography, languages, historythat the
ghumakkar must acquire. Ghumakkari, he warns youth, is no
escape from studies. Within its serious purview lie the
laudable aims of acquiring better understanding of the nation
(desh gyan), and it has inspired some of the best artists. In
fact, Tagore would not be what he is if he had not been
such an indefatigable traveler.
While the analogy with Tagore could be explored
further to contrast their versions of nationalism and
internationalism, Sankrityayans insistence on the local,
displayed in his demonstrated devotion to Bhojpuri, for
instance, gets reasserted towards the very end of Ghumakkar
Shastra within an international context. He notes with
approval a Russian friends congratulating him on exuding
the fragrance of the soil where he hails from (he is told that
he carries the fragrance of the soil of his birth (dharti ki
sugandh) with him wherever he goes. This sugandh
(aroma), he is quick to add as a warning, can easily turn into
a durgandh (stink) in the case the wrong kind of
ghumakkar, who is careless of civilized norms and narrowly
parochial. (p. 129) In a typically dialectical fashion, he
addresses and anticipates the pitfalls of counter-imperialist
nativism, even as he approves of the individual signature of
the native flavor of the soil that the traveler carries.
If Ghumakkarshastra is a somewhat humorous and
hyperbolic plea for movement, progress and change, it rests
nevertheless on a philosophical premise that he traces back
to ancient Indian philosophical traditions and seeks to justify
in terms of his other great ideological passion: Marxism.
The Buddhist Rahul: Issues and Continuities with Marxism
As told in Meri Jeevan Yatra, a multi-volume account of his
various travels, literal and metaphorical, an important point
in this narrative of growth is the encounter with, conversion
to, and movement away from Buddhism. The scholar and
the believer have to be disentangled at this point. It is also a
narrative that tells of the political and social reality of an
emergent nation, attempting to forge its identity as it fights
colonial exploitation. It is important to remember that
Sankrityayans engagement with philosophy as such is
134 MAYA JOSHI
increasingly coloured by a growing involvement with the anti-
colonial nationalist struggle, and more specifically, with a
certain group which seeks to represent the rights of India
poorest, amongst them the peasants of Bihar, his chosen
karmabhoomi. The addition of this class angle to his analysis
of the ills of Indian society has a dual effect: it both draws
him towards Buddhism initially and also finally takes him
away from it.
For it is clear that this scholar-traveler found it necessary
to travel beyond Buddhism to arrive at Marxism a
philosophy and a practice that at first glance may appear to
the casual observer the polar opposite of Buddhism. At the
same time, his continuous and dedicated scholarly
engagement with Buddhism makes him a somewhat
contradictory and divided person politically Marxist, but
committed scholastically and academically to Buddhism to
the very end of his days.
However, beyond these simplistic binaries lies a more
nuanced Middle Way, if one may, that turns our attention
to the philosophical links between Buddhism and Marxism.
It is a link that this traveler in the realms of thought
articulated, as he did all his shifts of belief and conviction,
and his words are the best pointers to the continuities
between these apparently divergent streams of thought.
Indeed, it is precisely in the closeness of Buddhism to
Marxism that Rahula Sankrityayana finds meaning in it. This
necessarily involves an emphasis which underplays the ritual
aspect of Buddhism in favour of rational philosophy and
logic, that teases out the dharmas collectivist possibilities over
the individual ones, and finds value in those aspects of it
that are outward-looking and socially engaged rather than
inward-looking or meditative or detached. And, in so far as
Buddhism has deviated historically from these desirables
of being theoretically conducive to social change, collective
good and rational thinking he feels free to criticize it as
an inadequate answer to contemporary problems.
His very first encounter with Buddhism, by his own telling
in Meri Jeevan Yatra, was quite unconscious and steeped in
ignorance wrought of generations of collective historical
amnesia. He refers to the Buddhist statue worshipped as
Deehbaba in his native village, its Buddhist genealogy lost
in centuries of neglect. The educated Indian classs new-
found appreciation of Buddhism, visible since the early 20
th
century, he points out somewhat sardonically, is actually a
reunion with its lost soul which owes much to the academic
interest of Western scholars, especially the Russians, followed
by the French and the Germans. (Bhadant Bodhananda
Mahastavir, p. 402-3)
Beyond the few lines on Buddhism taught at school, it
was only in 1910, when he reached Bareilly after completing
his first courageous trip to Badrinath, that he received a
somewhat clearer exposition of Buddhism in the form of a
pamphlet. Written in Sanskrit by a Sadhu Khunnilal Shastri,
it whetted his appetite for more. Later, traveling via Sarnath,
he encountered some Burmese monks at prayer. Neither
knowing the others language, the monks tried to convey
something to him by repeating the words chakkhu
chakkhu. In hindsight he comments on his ignorance which
failed to connect to the root of that Pali word in the Sanskrit
for eye (chakshu) to refer to the Buddha who is also known
as lok chakshu. Much later, in his Arya Samaji phase, he
heard more about the more liberal views of the Buddhists,
which ironically had the effect of rousing this hitherto
zealous Arya Samajis curiosity about that rival faith.
Subsequently, meeting the Buddhist monk Bodhananda
Mahasthavir, he ventured into a serious intellectual
engagement with Buddhism which took him first to Sri
Lanka, and then to Tibet, bringing him in close contact with
the Bhikshus Jagdish Kashyap and Ananda Kausalyayana, with
whom he made common cause for the restoration of
Buddhisms lost glory in the land of its birth.
For Sankrityayan, Buddhism also reinforced his favored
136 MAYA JOSHI
philosophy of ghumakkari, a life devoted to ceaseless
wandering as a way to learn and teach. In Ghumakkar Shastra,
he considers the various religious traditions that have
fostered this path; Christianity, Brahmanism, and Islam, all
three acquire a greater degree of tolerance when a
ghumakkar truly devoted to the path takes to these religions.
But Buddhism is the gem amongst them all, due to its
radical freedom from caste-ridden purity/pollution taboos
that prevent free mixing of human beings and render the
travellers enterprise difficult and sometimes impossible. It
is only in the Buddhist tradition that a Mongol and an Indian
face, or an Asian or a European complexion, created no
possibilities of discrimination, he asserts on the basis of
historical evidence. (Ghumakkar Shastra. p.101) Further,
quite contrary to the insulating effect of the Brahaminical
taboos on travel across the oceans, Buddhism encourages
the spread of its rational and universal message via travel
through the most difficult terrains, its missionaries heroically
transcending all obstacles, be they the mighty Himalayas or
the Gobi desert. (Bhadant Bodhanand Mahasthavir, in
Rahula Vangmaya- 2.2: Jeevani aur Sansmaran, p. 403)
Likening Bauddha Dharmas universality to the merging of
many rivers into the one ocean, he celebrates its profoundly
humanistic creed: Jaise nadiyan apne naam-roop ko chhorh kar
samudra mein ek hoa jaati hain, usi tarah Bauddha dharma
hai. (Ghumakkar Shastra, p. 59)
And even though he turned towards Marxism in his later
life, as late as 1956, he writes, in Ateet se Vartaman, of the
unparalleled perfection of the Buddha in the entire history
of humanity: Sab tarah se dekhne par Buddha samantabhadra,
sarvatobhadra the, ise kehne ki aavashyakta nahin. Maanavata
ne apne itihas mein aisa ek hi samantabhadra purushottam paida
kiya.(Needless to say, the Buddha was a perfected human
being, in all aspects. The human race has produced, in its
entire history, only one such completely perfect example of
a fully realized human being.)
The philosophical basis for this high regard for the
Buddha lay in his appreciation of the sophistication of
Buddhist philosophy, in its concepts such as pratitya samutpada
(Dependent Origination), kshanikavada (Momentariness),
and anatmavada (Theory of No-self ) that could be
reconciled with an atheistic, non-metaphysical, scientific,
fundamentally modern understanding of phenomena. In
fact, Bhikshu Jagadish Kashyap, who credits Sankrityayan with
igniting his interest and faith in the Buddha, relates a telling
episode that highlights his reasons for appreciating the
Buddhist faith. He recalls being given a book by the young
Bhikshu wherein the speaker urges his disciples to accept
only that which has been proved by individual exercise of
reason, rejecting the testimony of all texts, received opinion,
and teachers. This was of course, as Jagadish Kashyap realized
to his surprise, an episode from the life of the Buddha, an
episode whose choice indicates the centrality of this aspect
of the Dharma for him. (Rahulaji: Mere Gurubhai, in
Rahula Smriti, Ramsharan Sharma Munshiand Pushpamala
Jain (eds.), p. 206.)
In Ateet se Vartaman, 1956, Sankrityayan explicates
Buddhist concepts. True to his commitment to the common
man, he explains complex philosophical ideas such as the
theory of Momentarines and the Middle Path in lay terms
and demonstrates Buddhisms relevance to the real world.
In the process, he also shows its proximity to Marxism: Aaj
ka sabse unnat darshandvandvatmak bhautikavadBuddha
darshan ke kitna sameep chala aata hai. Isliye darshan ke kshetra
mein Buddha ki den ko naganya maanne wale hamare tathakathit
darshanik kitne bhram mein hain, yeh bhi acchi tarah samjha ja
sakta hai.(the most evolved philosophy of today
dialectical materialism comes so close to Buddhist
philosophy. This proves the ignorance and delusion of the
so-called philosophers of today who deny Buddhas
contribution to philosophical thought.
In his essay Buddhist Logic, published tellingly by PPH,
138 MAYA JOSHI
he further elaborates on the continuities between Buddhism
and Marxism: it is easier for someone with a Buddhist
background to understand Marxist philosophy, he claims,
linking the dialectical method in Buddhism, its rejection of
a creator god, and its human-centred approach with some
Marxist ideas, though it remains for him, a Hegelian
idealism, marked also by certain irrationalities. And as
witnessed in Tumhari Kshaya, his by now radical antipathy to
organized religion, a primary cause of social conflict
according to him, may well be linked to his refusal to identify
himself with Buddhism. Majhabon ki beemari swabhavik hai.
Uska maut ko chhor kar ilaaj nahin. (in Tumhari Kshaya, 1954
) In his essay Akbar, he clarifies his position on the matter
of faith, which for him is not to be confused with culture
(sanskriti) : Sanskriti aur dharma ek cheez nahin hai, iska
udaharan main svayam hoon. Buddha ke prati bahut samman
rakhte hue bhi, unke darshan ko bahut had tak maante hue bhi,
main apne ko Bauddha dharma ka anuyaayee nahin keh sakta.
(Parishishta-2, Akbar, Allahabad: 1957, p. 343). Thus while
the Buddha is a figure of veneration for him, he does not
align himself with the Buddhist faith. In another context,
he will articulate his arguments for Hindi as a national
language by appealing to the votaries of either Sanskrit or
an Arabicised Urdu to not confuse the issue of language, a
cultural matter, with religion (Chairmans Address, Bihar
Region Literary Conference, Ranchi, 1938, in Sahitya
Nibandhavali, pp. 29- 43)
In Bauddha Darshan, he uses Marxist terminology to
critique Buddhisms historically status-quoist character,
whereby the power of money and kingship is not challenged
(soldiers and slaves not allowed to join the sangha, the
monastic order, for instance). For the ruling classes,
Buddhism becomes a serpent with its poisonous sting
removed, he declares. Ramakrishna Bhattacharya, however,
has challenged this perspective, counterpointing it with
D.P. Chattopadhyaya and D.D. Kosambi on Buddhisms role
in challenging orthodoxy and bringing about social change,
citing D.P Chattopadhyayas theorizing about Buddhism as
being a form of primitive communism. While philosophical
concepts such as the ones listed above, all very close to the
spirit of rationality, receive Rahul Sankrityayans minute
attention, the next step, of applying the insights to lived
experience, makes him turn to Buddhisms social and
political implications.
Significantly, his writings on Buddhism do not emphasise
the practitioners Buddhism, in so far as practice is seen to
imply psychological inner work through meditative
practice, for instance. He focuses, much like Ambedkar, on
the political implications of Buddhist ideas. The following
excerpt from his essay Buddha Aur Gandhi illustrates this
point rather well:
...there we are not specially concerned with the issue of which
philosophical concepts the Buddha contributed to the stream of
human thought. Come, let us focus on his [views on] humanism,
love, universal brotherhood, and generosity. Some people hold
the wrong view that Mahatma Buddha was an individualist
concerned with individual liberation alone. However, this view is
deluded. He was not an individualist. One incident from his life
proves this point. Once his foster-mother Prajapati Gautami
presented him with a piece of cloth woven by herself. He
responded by saying that it would be more fitting for her to give
that cloth to the sangha (the community of monks) instead, as
the sangha is greater than any individual. His bodhisattva ideal,
according to which one sacrifices oneself over infinite births for
the benefit of others, is not an individualistic ideal. (in Rahula
Vangmaya, p. 426, translation mine)
Rahula Sankrityayans mode of address here as elsewhere is
public (Come, he says to the reader, including her in the
thought process) and focuses on the least arcane, the most
universally and easily understood, of the Buddhas teachings.
The Buddha is for him a realist-humanist:
He wants the good of all beingssabbe satta bhavantu sukhi tatta.
140 MAYA JOSHI
But he was not a passive dreamer. He was a realist. Thus when he
instructed his disciples to set out to work, inspiring them to
propagate the dharma, he did not say to them they should direct
their efforts to the good of all beings; rather he said that they
should travel far and wide for the good of the many (bahujan
hitaya, bahujan sukhaya). He knew, that the good of the many is
sometimes contrary to the interests of some. Society is divided
along opposing interests. In his view, the way primitive man
consumed worldly goods was the ideal mode of consumption.
(ibid, translation mine)
As the above excerpt clarifies, for Sankrityayan, Buddhisms
significance lies in its proximity to ideals of an egalitarian
social order that did not shy away from the practical problems
of making such an order a concrete reality. Poised at the
junctures of history that he was, and having first taken sanayas
in the Hindu tradition and then having been and Arya
Samaji nationalist, Buddhism was for him the next point of
arrival, easier for him to accept with his growing disinclination
for belief in a Creator. As Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan points
out, like the Triveni at Prayag, his philosophical growth had
three major stages, marking his shift from soul-affirming
theism to soul-denying atheistic idealism to the final one of
atheistic materialism (in Rahul Smriti, p.211, quoted in
Sharma, p.50.)
The seeds of this philosophical shift can be found in the
earlier quote from his writing. His distinction between the
good of all and the interests of some serves to highlight
the centrality of class conflict. This growing conviction was
fed no doubt by his involvement in the Kisan Andolan
(Peasants Struggle) of feudal Bihar, a sub-struggle within
the larger national freedom struggle, a move that turned
him away from the mainstream Congress movement, which
he found riddled with elitism, especially in Bihar, where
one of the worst oppressors of poor peasants, a feudal
landlord, was an elected Congress candidate. As he declares
in his autobiography, the 1917 revolution in Russia had had
a profound impact on him.
His move from Buddhism to Marxism is thus logically
consistent with his politics of worldly emancipation. It is the
socially transformative potential of Buddhism, premised on
a scientific causality, a dynamic ontology, of anatmavada, and
pratityasamutpada, which links with the dialectical view of
history and the open-ended optimism about the human
capacity for change that he finds so attractive about Marxism.
Of course, he could say on occasion that Buddhist
philosophy is not the culmination (poorak) of Marxism,
neither is Marxism that of Buddhist philosophy. Each age
has its own issues, which it is the work of its thinkers to
understand. Marxism is the philosophy of our times. One
that has changed half the world. (at a seminar organized
by the Marxist Club, recalled and quoted by Sharma, p.
103, no date given, translation mine).
And yet for him Buddhism provided a satisfying model
of Indianness, one that reconciled the demands of change
and progress with continuity and rootedness: Kaashi tak
pahunchne mein Ganga ka vahi jal nahin reh jaata, jo Gangotri
mein dekha jaata hai, to bhi Ganga ka apna ek vyaktityva hai
Bauddha sanskriti Bharat ki jis sanskriti ka abhinna ang hai,
uska ek deergh-kaal-vyaapi jeevan haideergh kaal hi nahin,
deergh-desh-vyaapi bhi kehna chahiye ( By the time the Ganga
reaches Kashi, its waters are different from when it was at
Gangotri, but it still retains its own identity. Buddhist culture
is an intrinsic part of a larger Indian culture that is wide-
ranging and vast, not just temporally but geographically as
well) (in Bauddha Sanskriti, quoted in Mule, p. 92)
Sankrityayan, Gandhi and Ambedkar: Some Conjunctures
Sankrityayans historical significance for understanding the
debates on Indian modernity and nationalism emerges when
we study him vis-a vis his influential contemporaries. It would
be useful to consider a contemporary who also engaged with
some of the very same questions from a position that is
recognizably closer to Buddhist ideals than Marxism. In an
142 MAYA JOSHI
insight that would find Buddhist approval, Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi has repeatedly pointed out that
imperialism and the violence that accompanied it were as
harmful to the perpetrators of that violence as to the
ostensible sufferers of it. Hence the satyagrahi, who hates
the sin and not the sinner, acts with love towards the unjust
enemy, knowing that in applying spirit force against him,
he has the best interest of all at heart. The bodhisattva, in
the same vein, may act with violence against some, in the
larger interest of all. Of course, the crucial difference here
is one of methods and means. Sankrityayan does not spell
out his position on that which concerned Gandhi the most:
that the pursuit of the good of the most must be a non-
violent affair. As a communist, he was not committed to non-
violence, though having been a satyagrahi, the actual modes
of protest he most adopted were those institutionalised by
Gandhi, suffering one of his worst head injuries as a result
of a lathi- blow on a protest against a zamindar.
In his essay Buddha and Gandhi, he expressly brings
the past and the present together to suggest how the two
great individuals represent related yet different modes of
tackling social and political problems. He diverges from his
earlier position on Gandhi as an obscurantist when he had
launched a scathing critique of Gandhianism, taking up three
issues: the belief in God as the ultimate power which results
in muddled political thinking and policy making; the
opposition to liquor even at the cost of livelihoods and the
nutritional value of tari (the palm toddy which is a staple of
Bihari peasantry for at least three months in a year); and
finally the positing of brahmacharya in marriage as the sole
means of population control which he thinks is impractical,
and an open advertisement for prostitution,
(Gandhivaad, Dimagi Gulami p. 13) In his later engaging
analysis written when Gandhi was much older, the Buddha,
described as the greatest of Indias sons is yet found
wanting in his egalitarianism. Finding Gandhi going even
further than the Buddha in actively opposing human
inequality, Sankrityayan concedes that perhaps the historical
circumstances in which the two functioned were different,
making it unnecessary for the Buddha to make the choices
that confronted Gandhi.
In terms of historical proximity, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, a
senior contemporary of Sankrityayan, is an obvious and
compelling study. One need not spell out the details of this
modern Dalit leaders harnessing of Buddhism to fight the
caste, but it is arguable that his mode of carving out a specific
Dalit-Buddhist identity is at variance with other existent
traditions of the Dharma as it is practiced, and is perhaps
controversially one-sided. While this is not the context for
exploring the intricacies of the issue, the example of
Ambedkar is useful and evocative in the context of
Sankrityayan as each brought to his engagement with
Buddhism comparable considerations. At one level, the
Sanskrit loving shloka spouting Sankrityayan, born into a
svayampaki Brahmin family of Uttar Pradesh, with even his
assumed name rich with upper caste resonance, could not
be further removed from Ambedkars personal circumstance
of having suffered as an untouchable Mahar in Maharashtra.
However, it is not in their natal identities that their identity
of interest in Buddhism lies, even though contemporary dalit
studies are so heavily weighted towards privileging essentialist
experientialist perspectives as being more authentic.
Rather, it lies in a shared move towards a non-theistic, non-
ritualistic, egalitarian, and rationally satisfactory system of
belief that could offer a liberatory philosophy for the modern
world. Both seek to highlight the democratic, collectivist
and social reform-oriented aspects of Buddhism. They
diverge, however, in their differential equations with both
the rural and the Sanskritic traditions. While Ambedkar
rejected the cultural markers of his birth, most visibly perhaps
in the western suits he is wears in dalit iconography, he made
the single exception of choosing Buddhism for its native
144 MAYA JOSHI
origins, especially vis-a-vis the possibility that it was the
original religion of the untouchables (Zelliot, p. 15, 21).
Sankrityayan too engaged with the discourse of the soil, or
origins, in his quest for a relevant modernity for India,
offering a nuanced counterpoint to both Gandhi and
Ambedkar.
In Conclusion
Sankrityayans life, in its creative and passionate engagement
with the complex reality of a changing world as he
encountered it, especially with ideas that sought to explain
and change that world, becomes a prism to examine issues
of religion, culture, nation and the selfs coming into being
within these frames. Buddhism and then Marxism, each with
its own kind of concomitant internationalism, saturated his
life and thought and formed the crux of his vocational
concerns after he left the Arya Samaj. And yet, each was
interpreted and made relevant for the political context he
found himself in: a multi-layered ancient civilization with a
diverse people needing to be brought together under the
rubric of a nationalism that could justice to the layers of
injustice that threatened to overtake even an emancipatory
agenda. Seeking freedom for self and society, from servitude
both internal and external, required engaging with and
bridging the gulf between the religious and the secular, the
regional and the global, the ancient and the modern, the
scholar and the activist. In his life and his work, or rather in
his life as work (which the autobiography is), lived in a
delicate balance between the iconoclastic and the profoundly
rooted, the private and the public, he poses questions and
suggests solutions of remarkable resonance even today.
Acknowledgements
I must acknowledge the generosity of Rahul-jis family,
Kamala Sankrityayan, his wife; Jeta Sankrityayan, his son; and
Jaya Parhawk, his daughter, all of whom have shared insights,
materials and reminiscences with me since October 2006,
when I first researched this, a process that continues till today.
Note: All works cited are in Hindi, unless otherwise specified
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Works:
Gandhi, M.K., An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments
with Truth, (English)Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press,
1927.
Sankrityayana, Rahula, Akbar, Allahabad: Kitab Mahal, 1957.
, Bhadant Bodhananda Mahasthavir, in Rahul Vangmaya
- 2.2: Jeevani Sansmaran, Delhi: Radhakrishna
Prakashan, pp. 402- 406.
, Buddha aur Gandhi (n.d.), section Ateet se Vartaman
in Rahula Vangmaya - 2.2: Jeevani aur Sansmaran,
Delhi: Radhakrishna Prakashan, pp. 426-428.
, Buddha Charya,(1931, Kashi Vidyapeeth), Lucknow:
Bharatiya Bauddha Samiti, 1995 (third edition).
, Buddhist Dialectics, in Buddhism: The Marxist Approach
(1970), (English) New Delhi: Peoples Publishing
House, 1990.
,Gandhivaad in Dimaghi Ghulami, Allahabad: Kitab
Mahal, 1993, pp.8-15.
, Ghumakkar Shastra,(1948), Allahabad: Kitab Mahal,
1957.
, Meri Jeevan Yatra, Vols. I (1944), II (1950), III &IV
(1967), Delhi: Radhakrishna Prakashan, reprint,
2005.
, Sahitya Nibandhavali, (Collected Essays) Allahabad:
Kitab Mahal, 1949)
, Tibbat Mein Bauddha Dharma( 1948), Allahabad:
Kitab Mahal, 2005.
146 MAYA JOSHI
,Tumhari Kshaya (1939), Allahabad: Kitab Mahal,
1977.
Secondary Works:
Bhattacharya, Ramkrishna, From Buddha to Marx,
(English) in Alaka Chattopadhyaya (ed.) Essays in
IndologyBirth Centenary Tribute to Mahapandita
Rahula Sankrityayana, Kolkata: Manisha Granthalaya,
1994.
Chowdhury, Hemendu Bikash, ed., Mahapandit Rahula
Sankrityayan Birth Centenary Volume, (English)
Calcutta: Bauddha Dharmankur Sabha (Bengal
Buddhist Association), 1994.
Kashyap, Bhikshu Jagadish, Rahulaji: Mere Gurubhai, in
Rahula Smriti, Ramsharan Sharma Munshiand
Pushpamala Jain (eds.), New Delhi: Peoples
Publishing House, 1988.
Machwe, Prabhakar, Rahula Sankrityayan (English) Makers
of Indian Literature Series, New Delhi: Sahitya
Akademi, 1978.
Mule, Gunakar, Rahul Chintan, New Delhi: Rajkamal
Prakashan, 1994.
Munshi, Ramsharan Sharma, and Pushpamala Jain ( eds.),
Rahula Smriti, New Delhi: Peoples Publishing House,
1988.
Sankrityayana, Jeta, Rahul: The Road to Reason( English),
in Birth Centenary Volume, pp. 33-40.
Singh, Namvar, Kedar se Rahul, introductory essay to Rahula
Vangamaya - 1.1: Jeevan Yatra, Delhi: Radhakrishna
Prakashan, 1944.
Sharma, Vishnu Chandra, Rahula ka Bharat, Allahabad:
Sahitya Vani, 1995.
Zelliot, Eleanor, Ambedkars Conversion (English), New Delhi:
Critical Quest, 2005.
ENTERING THE UNIVERSE OF FIRE AND
LIGHT THE LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF
POKAR FROM POKAR ELAYIRAM
1
Kanchana Natarajan
As the Principle of Intelligence itself
I leapt into the universe.
Nandi clearly elucidated
the nature of the universe.
For the sake of all beings
there is a path
that becomes a vehicle
for the five senses.
The universe that appeared before me
was arranged in layers.
The grandfather said,
Enter the tenth one.
I took what was given to me
and put it in my mouth.
Another bunch
of mercurial amalgams
I tied onto my wrist.
Off I went,
Entering the universe
of fire and light.
2
My original intent in undertaking this analysis was to try to
reconstruct a biography of the alchemist Pokar, a mysterious
and compelling figure in the Tamil siddha tradition, based
on a particular Tamil text, Pokar Elayiram, also known as Pokar
148 KANCHANA NATARAJAN
Saptakandam (henceforth in this essay PS7000).
3
I had
earlier, with similar intent, researched the figure of
Iramtevar/Yakoob, a Tamil siddha who converted to Islam.
4
Yakoob is also an elusive figure, as are most of the renowned
Tamil siddhas; but I was able to at least partially develop the
known facts of Yakoobs life into some kind of biography,
albeit sparse and quite heavily symbolic.
Pokar, however, presented me with a different set of
problems, in that I found the text itself to be completely
recalcitrant and frustratingly equivocal. Interpreting the text
or, if I may take the liberty of putting this in meta-textual
terms, entering the universe of fire and light was very
difficult, for reasons that I will elucidate when I take up the
text itself in detail. Perhaps once again, phrasing my
problems meta-textually some form of the fabled mercury
amalgams would have been helpful; but I had recourse to
nothing save my academic training. And this in fact was
counter-productive, for academics are conditioned to analyze
and theorize according to established categories, and offer
in the end something conclusive, some true findings, that
can be corroborated by other scholars and upon which
further research can be built. In the case of the Pokar text,
the first imperative is that one suspends ones standard habits
of academic analysis, for the truth is embedded in a surreal
matrix of what can only be described as accumulated
impossibilities; if this pearl is to be retrieved from such an
ocean, the diver must first of all accept a textual framework
of unrelenting ambiguity, bear in mind that the findings
too may be characterized by ambivalence, and then proceed
to work out a different course through 7000 verses.
During my repeated readings of the text, I persistently
asked myself where, amidst this apparent and deeply
symbolic chaos, some formal and intellectual order was to
be found. As it happened, while mapping the elusive
trajectories of intermeshed narratives in my efforts to
extricate enough facts to begin constructing a historical
ENTERING THE UNIVERSE OF FIRE AND LIGHT 149
biography of Pokar, I was indeed able to chart evidence of
some philosophical order. This took the shape of concise
commentary on Vedanta and this is all the more impressive
in contrast to the surrounding textual upheaval and rupture
of logic.
5
These verses are the gemstone in the ring of the
text, so to speak; they are surely not an accident; they infuse
it with profound philosophical meaning but what are we
to make of the rest of the material?
The text has seven kandas (chapters), each with over
1000 verses. As the language of the text advances from the
first kanda through the later ones, the diction moves from
being refined and evocative to increasingly pedestrian modes
of utterance. The Tamil of the first kanda seems more archaic
than that of the other sections.
Barring in the first kanda, the text abandons all pretence
of abiding by narrative logic. The symbolic realm that the
reader confronts is continually fecund, invented and
reinvented anarchically, breathlessly, relentlessly. Is this the
imagination of a single author or of different self-styled
Pokars?
The typical unities of time, space and action are
disregarded most audaciously and without any apology.
Linearity and teleology are abandoned. There is no
difference between the real and the surreal perhaps this
is true for accomplished siddhas,
6
but it severely disorients
the reader who struggles to follow Pokar on his travels to
mythical lands and across mythical seas, on steam ships and
sky horses; the protagonist finds himself in different regions
and different mythical yugas. His activity is dispersed across
different ages and cartographies he enthusiastically meets
up with both deities and heroic figures: Ganesha, Draupadi,
Tataka, Ravana, etc.; flies kites for serious Chinese spectators,
chides his fellow siddha Yakoppu/Yakoob, now a convert to
Islam, who he meets in Mecca, and so on. The text demands
a suspension, willing and unwilling, of disbelief, as well as of
epistemology and hermeneutics. The sheer scale of Pokars
adventures stuns the reader. In this context, is it reasonable
for the researcher to expect conceptual clarity at all? Or is
this elusiveness itself a primary index of the unfettered
lifestyle of the siddhas?
Expectedly, the lives of Tamil alchemist siddhas are
shrouded in deep mystery, partially because of their
deliberate deployment of opaque language and highly coded
references. Nevertheless, we occasionally come across sparse
autobiographical notes in their major writings, mentioning
their profession or significant events of their lives. Those
particular events/their notations would be found in all of
that siddhas works, and also appear in the works of other
siddhas. However, these cannot be taken at face value
because many dubious details are also to be found in these
texts, inserted by those collating and publishing the writings
in later eras.
7
Online, one finds tall and fantastic attributions about
Pokar, material contributed to the public domain without
any serious referencing, Wikipedia, the free online
encyclopedia, confidently places Pokar in the 5th century
BC, and also identifies him with Lao Tse, the founder of
Taoism. In fact, the two figures have nothing in common
save that both posited the doctrine of primal male and female
energies. According to Wikipedia, Yang and Yin,
propounded by Lao Tse, is the same as the Tamil tantric
Shiva-Shakti tradition, presumably theorised by Pokar.
Several sites offer ingenious life sketches and depictions of
Pokar, and claim that he was the sculptor of the fabled
Navapashana (nine arsenics) idol of Murukan in Palani,
Tamil Nadu.
More established scholarly work on Pokar the alchemist/
tantric illusionist/physician considers him an important
siddha, as his name occurs in many medieval and pre-modern
siddha listings.
8
But the task of constructing a biography is
fraught with great difficulty, because historically there were
at least three identifiable figures with this name. Very often
the three lives were fused by interpreters, compounding
the problem. In A History of the Tamil Siddha Cult, R.
Venkatraman typically brings to our notice that there were
at least three Pokars. He declares that Pokadevar,
mentioned in Tirumulars Tirumantiram as belonging to the
sanmarga tradition, was perhaps the first one. There was
another Pokar residing in Caturagiri, who was interested in
Kayasiddhi; and the third Pokar, who lived as recently as the
17th -18th century, was associated with the Palani shrine
devoted to the Tamil god Muruka.
9
Early reference to Pokadevar is found in Tirumantiram,
10
where the author Mular makes reference to the spiritual
lineage beginning with Kalangi, reportedly the teacher of
Pokar. Here he states the Aghora was the chief disciple of
Kalangi; this contradicts the repeated claim made in PS7000,
that Pokar was the student of Kalangi. Moreover, there is no
mention of this Pokadevar having had any connection with
Palani, or visiting China; and there are no extant texts
attributed to him.
In his well-researched work History of Tamil Literature:
16th century, M. Arunachalam asserts that the second figure
known as Pokar lived during the reign of Rajarajacholan,
when the king was engaged in building the great Tanjore
temple. Arunachalam also mentions another Pokar of the
16th century, who went by the name Pokanathar and lived
in a place called Thirupukalur. One Thiruvottriyur Tattuva
Prakasar who wrote a commentary on the text
Shivajnanasiddhiyar refers to this Pokanathar by the name
Thirupukalurswami.
11
The source of the legend that one siddha named Pokar
lived in Palani, entered samadhi there, and was responsible
for sculpting the image of Dandapani with nine poisonous
arsenics (navapasana) is unclear. The 15th century saint-
poet Arunagirinathar, who has sung 96 or more songs in
worship of Palani Murukan,
12
nowhere refers to Pokar or to
the nine arsenics reportedly used to make the idol. Nor does
the text PS7000 refers to Pokar in relation to the idol or the
arsenics. Therefore we may suppose the legend of Pokar
sculpting the idol to be recent origin; Venkatraman even
goes so far as to suggest, since the text is full of references to
contemporary inventions and scientific principles, that it was
composed in the mid-20th century.
13
However, one of these three Pokars was definitely a
virtuoso alchemist and had either traveled to China from
South India or from China to South India. That there was
an intimate Indo-Sino connection in the ancient and
medieval alchemical worlds cannot be overlooked, because
according to siddha texts, cinnabar or chinapishta that was
required to create the elixir/distilled essence came largely
from Mahachina (the China-Tibet plateau); the same route
was taken by the influential Buddhist Tantric cult of the
goddess Tara.
14
According to B.V. Subbarayappa
15
and the
renowned Chinese scholar Joseph Needham, Pokar was a
Chinese Taoist philosopher who came to South India to study
medicine.
16
Other scholars also hold the view that Pokar was
a South Indian who went to China to teach and learn
alchemy.
17
This presentation focuses on the text PS7000, attributed
to the third of the above mentioned Pokars, who had a
unique mode of travel: the work has multiple references to
fantastic flights and other journeys to various places around
the globe. Seemingly he was also a parachutist; as well as an
inventor who modeled a steam engine in order to visit
European countries.
18
The text also refers to the rasakinaru,
the well of mercury
19
that I have analysed as an alchemical
symbol in my earlier research on the Tamil siddha Yakoppu.
As mentioned earlier, Pokar Saptakandam, or Pokar7000
is a voluminous text with 7 chapters, each of 1000 verses; it
runs to 1120 printed pages.
20
For my research I have used
the 1934 edition. The verses are in a simple antati style. Antati
is a traditional genre in which the last letter, syllable or foot,
of the last line of one stanza is identical with the first letter,
syllable or foot, of the succeeding stanza, the sequence is
kept between the last and the first stanza of the poem as
well. This form of poetry could be easily committed to
memory. PS 7000 is thought to have been composed in the
city of Chidambaram in the early 17th century. This may be
contested, however, for the text among other chronological
anomalies refers to the 19th-century Muslim siddha poet,
Gunangudi Mastan Sahib.
21
Before we proceed to the text itself, we might do well to
keep in mind the warning issued by M. Arunachalam in
relation to the professed authenticity of siddha texts. This
scholar insists there is a specific reason for the proliferation
of siddha works in the early 19th century: at this time the
Maratha king Serfoji commissioned the renowned Tamil
poet Sivakozhuntu Desikar to collate and edit all available
siddha texts. Seeing the potential for royal patronage,
monetary benefits and recognition, various fraudulent
siddhas composed fantasy-based texts, titling them
Thirumular Jnanam, Pokar Jnanam, Karuvurar Poocai, etc.
22
The Pokar text I focus on here is supposedly addressed
to the siddhas chief disciple Pulipani.
23
It is interesting to
note that the main body of the first kanda of the text does
not refer to him at all. He abruptly manifests in verse 1015,
towards the end of the first kanda: My son Pulipani, hear
this.
24
In the earlier portions of the text, Pokar affectionately
refers to a certain Konganar as his student and beloved
child.
25
Pokars alleged flights to China that proliferate in
later parts of the text are also largely missing in the main
body of the first kanda. Of the 1022 verses of the first kanda,
only two verses refer to these flights: an introductory verse
(6), and one single verse at the end of the chapter.
They say:
I went all over the world,
I also went to China and met Kalangi...26
These verses could be later interpolations. The author
of the first kanda clearly seems to be different from the
author/authors of the later chapters, in the mode of
enunciation and, to some degree, symbolic content.
According to the author, the authenticity of PS7000 is
drawn from Shiva himself; the god revealed the text to Pokar,
who was merely the faithful scribe:
It was Shiva
who imparted the 7000.
I just noted down
all of his shastras secrets.
With seven chapters,
that book
is the King of Gurus;
pouring forth
its alchemical methods.
I asked for Grandfathers secrets;
and learned
from listening
to the quality
of his direct teaching.
I listened to sweet Kalangi...
and see!
I have put forth
these 7000.
27
In the later kandas there are several references to Pokar
visiting China many times, meeting his master Kalangi who
sporadically wakes up from his grave to impart instructions
every now and then. The later portions of the text, beginning
from the third kanda, are more akin to science fiction, at
once fantastic and entertaining. There are myriad accounts
of magical flights, including flying on a sky horse; and as
mentioned earlier, the author also constructs a steam
carriage, steam engine, steamship, and travels to Mecca,
Jerusalem, Paris, and Rome. He not only circumnavigates
the globe but also crosses seven mythical oceans of milk,
yogurt, clarified butter, etc. The text abounds in such
hallucinatory articulations.
PS7000 contains no direct references to Pokars birth or
childhood, save a verse confidently asserting: I was born a
siddha and in childhood I went to many places by the grace
of Kalanginatha
28
, consuming the kulikai (elixir).
29
According to one tradition he was born into the family of a
goldsmith. In The Poets of the Powers (1973), Kamil Zvelbil lists
25 prominent Tamil Siddhas and their caste-origins, which
he acquired through some unspecified source; Pokars caste
is specified here as Cinatecakkuyavar, a Chinese potter.
His guru Kalangi also appears on the list as Cinattuacari, a
Chinese preceptor.
30
Pokar is etymologically linked to the
Sanskrit word bhoga (enjoyment), for he allegedly enjoyed
the beautiful and fair Chinese women he encountered on
his travels to that territory. Interestingly, in the first chapter
of PS 7000, the author warns his disciples to keep away from
women, give up lust and stay focused on the Vedantic ideal.
He also cites Kalanginathars view to authenticate his
position.
31
In the second chapter, however, he announces,
almost with relish, various sexual escapades. This gives us a
clear glimpse of Pokars Tantric leanings:
I enjoyed the fair Chinese women through the grace of
the Vedanta mother...
Remembering the wise Kalangi, my master, with great lust I
enjoyed sensual pleasures with the fair Chinese women.
32
Many Siddha Tantrics commonly express a loathing and
abhorrence of women which, however, quite often
paradoxically combines with Tantric-like use of sexual
congress: a very important social component expressed as
social radicalism...
33
The first chapter of PS7000 describes swallowing a pill a
kulikai and levitating/flying everywhere.
34
Mercurial
amalgams were employed by the siddhars for various
activities/acquisition of supra-natural powers; one such is
the power of flight, but it is difficult to say whether this is
literal, or a sort of tantric/yogic astral projection. One of
the most fascinating components of Iramatevar alias
Yakoppus narrative is his claim to have consumed Kulikai
which bestowed upon him the power of flight. He flew in
Arabia and landed in the pilgrim city of Mecca.
35
Whichever
it may be, Pokar perhaps used the mercurial amalgam to
take him to the furthest frontiers of creation, beyond space
and time, to the periphery of the universe, the farthest shores
of his imagination/own being. To use contemporary
terminology, this is perhaps a trip enabled by consuming
intoxicants, for none of the references to the sites and cities
that he claims to have visited match with the actual
geography of those places. His very frequent visits to China
narrated in the later chapters cannot be topographically
authenticated. He refers to China being on the shores of
the ocean, but there is no mention of any Chinese city or
the name of historical Chinese kings or any Chinese masters
of alchemy, excepting his own teacher Kalangi and his
disciple Konganar.
36
He makes a general remark that Chinese
men and women are fair complexioned and non-vegetarian.
He also mentions that Chinese women do not observe
menstruation taboos, nor are they conscious of caste
distinctions.
37
He claims to have entertained the Chinese
with feats such as kite-flying
38
and parachute-jumping.
39
There is a mention of Chinese paper mills
40
and the
populations use of opium.
41
The siddhas love for China is evidenced in this
declaration that has an unexpectedly philosophical twist:
A country that deserves to be called a country is China, just as a
desire that can be legitimately called a desire is the desire for
knowledge.
42
Pokar mentions a vast air balloon/zeppelin, and a steamship
800 yards in length, 500 yards in breadth and 100 yards in
height. It moved when power generated in the boiler
rotated the two wheels on either side of the rudder. He
recounts his travels in a locomotive 100 yards long and 30
yards wide, with a big boiler that produced steam. In this
vehicle he goes with other siddhas to Rome, where he sees
the tombs of many Roman kings.
43
He even manages to
discover the graves of Christ and his 12 disciples. He meets
aggressive evangelists who preach Christianity everywhere.
He observes large forts and people inhabiting these. He
returns to China, first courteously dropping off his fellow
siddhas in their respective countries.
He also travels to Mecca, where he encounters many
Muslims praying on a mound. They see Pokar and proceed
to intimidate him by demanding to know his identity. When
he says he is a disciple of Kalangi from China, and that he
wants to meet Prophet Muhammad, he is allowed to enter
the city. He lives there and observes the precepts of Islam
till he is allowed to see the grave of the Prophet. He is given
roti to eat.
44
There he meets Yakoppu, and both set off to
China. Incidentally, the fact of eating roti as a part of his
acculturation in Mecca is also to be found in the works of
siddha Yakoppu.
45
PS 7000 is also densely packed with the narrations of
various mythical flights and lives of other siddhas, their birth
stars, zodiac signs, horoscopes, lineages, etc. I have refrained
from commenting on this theme here, for lack of time and
also because this aspect requires an elaborate exposition.
Pokars Philosophy, Alchemy and Tantra:
As stated earlier, the first kanda of PS7000 contains some
philosophical commentary. According to Pokar, there are
three attainments: the art of immortalizing the body
(kayasiddhi) through the ashtanga yoga and pranayama
techniques of Patanjali; the attainment of material alchemy
for medicines, etc. (vada siddhi); and finally the attainment
of union with Brahman the Vedantic ideal (yoga siddhi).
The three play a supportive and enabling role in relation to
each other. Prioritizing consciousness over the material body
and material well-being is a cardinal tenet of Advaita Vedanta,
but Pokar seems to make all three practices complimentary
to one another, and this is offered as a unitary worldview.
The first chapter of PS 7000 deals with vasiyogam or
breath control techniques. This technique is seen to be a
means for achieving the end of realizing the Advaitic truth.
The text blends Vedanta with Patanjalis and Thirumulars
yoga methodologies, mentioning these sages by name.
It was my Grandfather
who said,
Climb and see.
But it was
Kalangi Nathar
who gave me birth.
Patanjali,
Viyagiramar,
and Shivayogi Muni
all so rightly said,
Look!
This is the path!
They explained
how to mount
and go beyond.
And it was
the Great Mother supreme
who said,
This is it!
Having become calm...
I perceived the accompanying experience.
Having experienced...
I have composed 7000.
46
The first kanda specifically uses Advaita phraseology to
express Oneness of spirit:
Do not be burnt by the fire of passion,
But every day look with conviction
At the truth established in Vedanta.
47
Pokar recommends that after one has achieved success in
the technique of controlling the breath,
See everything as sariri (the soul)
And remove all sorrows concerning the body...
Look at everything as dream objects and stop worrying...
Deliverance is only through Vedanta and not by any other
means...
Do not forget that you are the ultimate Blissful self.
48
The means of reaching the state of sublimity termed Naan-
Brahmam or ahambrahmasmi is not through the usual process
of hearing, reflecting and establishing in the truth as
recommended by the conventional texts of Vedanta, but
through the yogic practice of asana and pranayama. These
are essential for controlling the mind, which is the first step
towards understanding the truth. This practice of pranayama
as an effective means of controlling the mind is also endorsed
by Sri Ramana Maharishi in more recent times.
49
The text
mentions the three fundamental conditions of being, namely
the wakeful, dream and deep sleep (jagrit, swapna and
sushupti) states, and samadhi in turiya (fourth state). In
addition, though the author does not fully develop the
philosophy of Samkhya, he seems to be aware of the
Samkhyan modes of Prakrti and Purusa: he invokes theistic
versions of these.
50
To narrate the complex parameters of alchemy requires
great expertise in pre-modern science. Such a description
is beyond the scope of this presentation. However, a few key
observations in relation to alchemy in PS7000 may be
pertinent here. The text has references to minerals, metals,
salts, certain toxic substances and numerous herbs. Specific
minerals are used for medicinal purposes and also for
attaining kayakalpa, elixir for longeivity. The basic salt for
making muppu the primordial salt
51
, is punir, a natural exudate
from the soil, similar to Fullers Earth. A detailed account of
the geographical location and method of extracting/
collecting punir and its processing is found in the second
kanda.
52
Several passages describe how to stabilize and bind
mercury,
53
a crucial ingredient in the preparation of various
medicines that are essential for general well-being, as also
kayakalpa or immortalizing the kaya/body. Mercury is
called suta in many Tamil alchemical texts. It is also called
rasa and paarada. As mentioned elsewhere in this essay,
Pokar makes a passing reference to the legend of the well
of mercury, rasakinaru. It is highly probable that the original
Pokar went to China to learn about mercury processing, and
brought the metal back to India. Pokar talks of preparing
mercury through swooning, killing and binding, an
activity he calls sutakattu. Konganar, who is lovingly addressed
as my son by the siddha in the first kanda of PS7000, has
identified mercury with Shivas bija, bindu, semen, and
sulphur with Shakti; he explains that when the two are in
some proportion successfully blended, the elixir distilled can
be consumed for the purposes of immortalizing the kaya/
body.
For want of time, I shall here just make a passing
reference to Pokars sutakattu. Binding (the practice is
known as bandha) where mercury is rendered immobile.
Bandha in Sanskrit literally means to lock. The non-stable
element of the compound is made stable (suta niruttam)
through a series of bandhas (kattutal) or alchemical
processes/techniques. This processing changes the physical
and chemical composition, and thus the behaviour of
mercury.
54
In the long section on sutakattu processing, we
are told that it takes the form of gel or paste, and may be
rendered as soft as butter.
55
Pokar also informs the reader
about the powdering of mercury podi (powder). The bound
mercury in the form of a mani, jewel, (ingestible tablet) can
be made into an elixir, a consumable tablet; and this,
according to Pokar, enabled him to fly to China and
elsewhere. We have no way of assessing whether the details
have any experimental scientific value or whether they are
as fabulous as the other material in the book.
Finally, a word about tantra in as articulated in PS7000.
There are several verses dealing with tantra, which is
inseparable from alchemy in the siddha tradition. There
seems to be a natural symbiosis between the two. The first
kanda abounds with references to tantric formulae and
diagrams as well as description of yogic and meditative
techniques, ritual practices, and Shiva-Sakti and Ganesha
devotionalism. The text focuses on the channeling of prana
(breath) and other vital elements through the six chakras
(plexuses) strung along the length of the spinal column,56
in the order of (lowest to uppermost) muladhara,
svadhistana, manipura, anahata, visuddi and ajna. In
particular, the text describes in detail the manipura, anahata
and visuddi chakras, their different colours and the
manifestaion of cosmic energy in these houses (veedu).
Conclusion
Returning to my initial question about PS 7000 being a
problematic text, I continue to ask myself, as well as place
before you, this urgent question: What keeps us engaged
with this text even while it seems to elude us? Is it the almost
hallucinatory energy of the work? Is it because we cannot
pin down the certainties of its authorship? Are we obstructed
by our academic training, dependent on almost immutable
hermeneutic structures? Do these structures lock us into
particular modes of reading so that we overlook subtexts of
crucial significance? In other words, how should such
problematic texts be read? What does it mean to impose
meaning? Finally, do we find ourselves valorising, and
thereby investing with value, mostly those texts that are a
confirmation of what already has meaning for us? Are we
thus, as readers/interpreters, invariably complicit in the
processes by which textual/intellectual canons come into
being and are perpetuated? And are we thereby complicit
in the processes of textual exclusions, as much as in textual
inclusions?
NOTES
1. I am indebted to Smrti Vohra for the editorial help.
2. The above translation is by Layne Little. A good translation of the first
80 verses of the first kanda has been undertaken by Layne Little, and is
available online at http://www.levity.com/alchemy/bhogar2.html I
have in some places used Laynes translations and at others my own.
3. Sri Patinensittarkalil Maha Makuttuvam Poruntiya Poka Munivar
Tiruvaimalarntaruliya Sattakandam, (henceforth PS7000) according to
the edition of Kantasami Mutaliyar, Published by Parthsarathy Naidu
Sons, Chakravarti Press, Chennai, 1934, (Priced Rs 4)
4. See Divine Semen: The Alchemical Conversion of Iramatevar, in
Medieval History Journal, 7, 2 (2004), Sage Publications, New Delhi, pp.
255-78
5. An exposition and approval of Advaita Vedanta can be seen in the
verses 290- 308 (pp46-49) of first kanda of Pokar 7000. This is interesting
because the text sees no contradiction in recommending Advaita
Vedanta to the alchemists. Advaita privileges spirit over matter and
definitely does not preoccupy with immortalizing body as Tamil
rasasiddhas aim to do.
6. Many Tamil scholars and siddha practitioners who participated in the
conference on siddha medicine held at the French Institute Pondicherry,
August 2007 objected to my non-reverential reading of the text. They
believe that siddhas have incredible power that enables them to move
anywhere and perform any feat.
7. According to R. Venkatraman, this is an area where forgeries could be
produced in abundance as it is very easy to imitate their versification.
However, as forgery into the technical aspects of this school is not easy
far the uninitiated, the forgers have confined themselves to mythmaking,
but to an enormous extent
8. See Kandaswamy Pillai, History of Siddha Medicine, ( Government of Tamil
Nadu, 1979), pp342-345
9. Venkatraman R, A History of the Tamil Siddha Cult, Ennes Publications
Madurai, (1990), p 49
10. Verse 102, Tirumular, Tirumantiram, A Tamil Scriptural Classic, ed. N.
Mahalingam (Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras, 1991), p. 16
11. M. Arunachalam Tamizh Ilakkkiya Varalaru, 16
th
Century, Part 3, The
Parker, Chennai, 1976, (reprint 2005), pp215-16
12. Tiruppkazh Madani, of Sri Arunakirinatar, Tiruppkazh Anparkal, Vasant
Enclave, New Delhi, pp91-206
13. R. Venkatraman A History of Tamil Siddha Cult, Pp163,185,
14. Gordon White, The Alchemical Body, Siddha Taditions in Medieval India
(University of Chicago, 1996), p. 64
15. The Lancet, Supplement to, Index Volume 350, ed Richard Horton,
p.1841 (July-December 1997). This author also believes that Bhogar
might have lived in the fifth to sixth century and the other siddhas were
of a later date.
16. Science and Civilization in Ancient China, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, Vol.5. pt.5 (1983), p 285
13 See White Gordon, The Alchemical Body, pp 376-377, ft n 60.
The text PS 7000 also holds the view that Pokar was a South Indian who
traveled to China to teach alchemy to Konganar.
17. PS7000, Kanda 2, Verses 281-84, p. 206
18. Ibid., verse 323, p 213. Rasakupa in Sanskrit. For an interesting myth on
the origin of mercury and the well containing it, see S.R Sharma and
Y.Sahai, Gushing Mercury, Fleeing Maiden:A Rasasastra Motif in Mughal
Painting, in Journal of European Ayurvedic Society 4 (1995), pp. 149-62
19. A fairly good translation of the first 80 verses of the first kanda has been
undertaken by Layne Little, and is available online at http://
www.levity.com/alchemy/bhogar2.html
Shaking The Tree, Kundalini Yoga, Spiritual Alchemy, & the Mysteries of the
Breath in Bhogars 7000 English Rendering by Layne Little
20. PS7000, Kanda iv, Verse 702 p594
21. M. Arunachalam, Tamizh Illakiya Varalaru, 14
th
Century, p282.
22. Pulipani derives from two languages, puli (Tamil meaning tiger) and
pani, (Hindustani meaning water). It is believed that the disciple brought
water for his master sitting on the back of a tiger.
23. PS7000, Kanda, 1 verse 1015, p. 158
24. PS7000 Kanda1 verse 510, p. 81
25. Translation is mine. PS7000, Kanda, 1 verse 1017, p.158
26. Shaking the Tree: Kundalini Yoga, Spiritual Alchemy and the Mysteries of the
Breath in Bhogars 7000. English Rendering by Layne Little
27. Though Pokar says he is Chinese, his name is found in the list of Tamil
siddhas.
28. PS700, Kanda iv Verses 996-999, p. 640
29. Zvelebel Kamil V, The Poets of the Power (Rider and Company, London,
1973), p.132
30. Translation is mine. PS7000, Kanda 1, Verse 173 p. 28.
31. PS7000, Kanda 2, Verse 654 p. 266
32. Zvelebil, Kamil.V, The Siddha Quest for Immortality (Oxford, 1996), p. v
33. PS7000, Kanda 1,Verse 6, p. 2
34. See Divine Semen and Alchemical Conversion of Iramatevar, p 262
35. According to Gordon White, Pokar taught alchemy to a ruler in China
by name Kong. The Alchemical Body, p 61
36. PS7000, Kanda 7, Verse 282 p. 845
37. Ibid., kanda 2 Verse 800p. 288-89
38. Ibid., kanda 2 Verses 281-84, p. 206
39. PS7000, kanda 3 verse 486, p.398
40. Ibid., kanda 3 Verses 507- 11, p. 401
41. Translation is mine. PS7000, kanda 2 Verse 524, p. 245,
42. Ibid., kanda 3, Verses 203-227, pp.353-57
43. PS7000, kanda 3 , Verse 230 p. 357
44. See Divine Semen The Alchemical Conversion of Iramatevar p266
45. PS 7000, Kanda 1, Verse, 39, p 7, Translation Layne Little.
46. Ibid., Verse 33
47. Ibid., Verses 307-321, p. 50-52
48. See Zvelebil Kamil.V., The Poets of The Powers, (Rider and Company,
London, 1973), pp. 50-51
49. PS7000, Kanda 1,Verse 322, p. 51
50. In some texts like Sattaimuni suttiram, the human body is regarded as the
earth and the sublimated semen is muppu the primordial salt. See
R.Venkataraman, A History of The Tamil Siddha Cult, pp 131-132
51. PS7000, kanda 2, Verses 682-707p. 270-73
52. Ibid., kanda 2, Verses 160-188 pp. 186-91; & kanda 1, Verses 817-20 p. 187,
etc.
53. See Gordon White, op. cit., p. 277
54. PS7000, kanda 1, verses 817-820, p.13
55. See Gordon White, op. cit., p 40
WITTGENSTEIN ON THE FOUNDATIONS
OF LANGUAGE: A NON-FOUNDATIONAL
NARRATION
Enakshi Mitra
For later Wittgenstein, language cannot be founded upon
something more primordial than language itself, something
that has a definite origin and boundary that marks it off and
yet has a magical power of pulling the entire corpus of
language to come to rest on it. None of the usually proposed
foundations universals, physical ostension, mental images,
verbal rules, nervous excitements, brain-patterns, or even
forms of life, can be claimed to have a pre-linguistic or extra-
linguistic character that can serve as the desired origin and
justification of language. Later Wittgensteins engagement
with the foundations of language is an exercise of dissolving
this putative cleavage, of weaving the foundation and the
founded into an indissoluble whole. In this paper we have
tried to catch some glimpses of this enormous philosophical
labour carried out by him - the labour of flattening out the
hidden depths of language (proposed by classical
philosophers) into an open expanse into an unimaginably
rich and complex plethora of uses, ever indeterminate and
ever incomplete.
1
We need to start with his account of concept formation
and family resemblances as an effective strategy to grapple
with this vexed program of foundationalism. To say the least,
it is an explicit attack on the classical foundations of language
and conception the eternal and timeless universals of Plato
166 ENAKSHI MITRA
and Aristotle, and Merkmal definitions cased in necessary
and sufficient conditions, supposedly shared by all the
defined items. Wittgenstein often describes the process of
concept-formation in terms of fibers overlapping and
crisscrossing, common features that appear and drop
out, features that he characterises as family-resemblances.
(PI 66, 67) The account is often prone to certain
misinterpretations, its deeper implications not always
effectively worked out. We shall, however, consciously start
with a minimalist interpretation of the notion of family
resemblance and the fibre-on-fibre account of concepts.
Ironically this leaves us with a multiplicity of temporary and
short-ranged features which might be called local
foundations in lieu of classical universals. This would retain
the overworn dichotomy between particulars and properties,
and perhaps also a cumbrous version of the Augustinian
model of concept-formation, the model that Wittgenstein
has rejected both in detail and in principle. In fine, the
theory of concept-formation that apparently emerges from
Wittgensteins texts will turn out to be nothing but an
uninspiring dilution of the classical foundationalism.
We shall attempt to work our way out of this impasse,
through an extensive critique of the Augustinian model.
We shall have to focus particularly on the dubious
transparency of ostensive and verbal definition and the false
dichotomy between simple and complex the myths that
forge a false cleavage between language and reality ( i.e.,
the foundation and the founded), ultimately claiming to
bridge the two in an isomorphic relation. We hope to end
this paper with a rough idea of Wittgensteins vision of
language, as to how the foundational mechanisms of
ostension, rules, descriptions on the one hand and the
external reality on the other penetrate into each other into
an open and endless flow of uses.
WITTGENSTEIN ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF LANGUAGE 167
The minimalist interpretation of family-resemblances
It is both customary and convenient to start with the concept
of games, an ingenious choice to dissipate our notion of a
fixed and unitary essence lying beneath the usage of all
general words. Wittgenstein cites the examples of board-
games, card-games, ball-games and Olympic games. The
features we consider important in the board-games - like
throwing dice, moving counters on the board - manifestly
drop out in the card-games and others appear. These again
start dropping out in ball-games. Obviously we have to look
for certain other commonalties of apparently a broader range
like amusement, competition, winning and losing, skill
and luck. Bull-fight and boxing often involving bloodshed
and casualties do not satisfy the amusement condition.
Moreover, the kind of amusement we find in chess drops
out from noughts and crosses; another fiber let it be called
amusement again - reappears, which will again drop out
from the next kind of game we come across. Winning and
losing the element of competition (an apparently invariable
feature in all games) - do not feature in patience.
Considering the fact that skill in chess is so different from
skill in tennis, we cannot posit skill as a recurring feature of
all games. Moreover, skill in a very general sense is altogether
dropped out from games like ring-a-ring-a roses. [W]e see
a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-
crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities
of detail. (PI 66)
In PI 67 Wittgenstein further observes: And we extend
our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fiber
on fibre. And the strength of the fibre does not reside in
the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length,
but in the overlapping of many fibres.
The talk of overlapping fibre on fibre naturally leads to
the following picture most commonly used by Wittgensteins
commentators.
168 ENAKSHI MITRA
ABC CDE DEF FGH
g
1
g
2
g
3
g
4
Fig. 1
(Using small g for games and capital letters for the overlapping
features like amusement, winning and losing, skill in chess, skill
in tennis etc.)
The particulars that we call game do not even share a
common necessary condition, not to speak of a common
sufficient condition. Nor can we construct a subset from the
given set of overlapping features and claim it to be the
necessary and sufficient conditions of any game whatsoever.
The fibres go on overlapping in an ever-expanding horizontal
line, never converging to a single point.
There is also no reason to suppose that all persons start
with the same set of fibres, with exactly the same sets
mediating between in the same order. Different language-
users would spin concepts in different lines like
HFA AEB BCG CGD
g
1
g
2
g
3
g
4
Fig. 2
and also in many other conceivably alternative tracks.
Wittgenstein has not only challenged the notion of a
unitary essence but also of a fixed essence. The process of old
fibres disappearing and new fibres cropping up is one of
continuous expansion, and not a permutation and
combination of a pre-given finite set.
Wittgenstein describes these overlapping features or
fibres as family-resemblances. (PI 67) Large families where
we can survey a number of siblings and cousins, their parents,
grandparents and their offsprings together, clearly exhibit
how features like build, shape of the eyes and nose, structure
of the jaws, curve of the lips, colour of the eyes, gait,
temperament, etc., overlap and crisscross in the same way.
None of the above features at any point can be attributed to
all the members in common. Thus though starting with the
instance of game, Wittgenstein privileges the case of family
as well, as an exemplary case to understand how other
concepts, i.e., concepts other than game too, are spun
through overlapping and crisscrossing fibres, and not on the
basis of a putative set of necessary and sufficient conditions.
And a family expands for ever, its new members continually
being born, and old members passing away, generating new
features to be added to the network and old features dying
out.
Since Wittgenstein warns us not to think that there must
be a singular identity behind all uses of general words and
instead wants us to look and see, we cannot now just stop
with two examples we have to examine some simple and
familiar concepts, specially those which unlike game, and
family, do seem to have an essence in common.
To take the example of gold a neat, scientific concept,
dressed up in a complete set of necessary and sufficient
conditions.
2
A definite spectral line, a certain atomic number
(79), a certain atomic weight, a characteristic odour, a
certain degree of malleability, a certain melting point, and
entering into certain chemical combinations and not others.
Suppose something occurred with the same atomic number
but was not yellow but purple, not malleable, had a different
melting point, and produced a different series of spectral
lines. Many chemists who take the atomic number itself to
be the sole defining characteristic still call it gold. Others
who consider each of the above conditions to be necessary
cannot call it by the same name a position rather dubious
in view of the fact that an isotope has a different weight
from that normally characterising the element, yet chemists
call it X (X, but an isotope of X), as long as it has other
170 ENAKSHI MITRA
characteristics of X. And we can stretch our imagination a
little further to the emergence of different metals, each
with a different set of goldish fibers, overlapping and
crisscrossing, but not a single fiber commonly running
through all of them. Conceived in this way one cannot rule
out the possibility of newer and newer samples of gold with
newer and newer fibers, hitherto unrecorded. This is one
reason why one cannot posit a disjunctive property shared
in common by all particulars of the same name whatever
fibers you may have incorporated in that disjunctive set, you
cannot ever put a last member. On the other hand, speaking
of such common properties - a disjunctive set with an
indefinite number of elements is only playing with words.
One might just as well say: Something runs through the
whole thread namely the continuous overlapping of those
fibers. (PI 67) These are the kinds of philosophical
sophistries that we find parodied in nonsense prose like Alice
in Wonderland, where the King, hearing that Alice knew
nothing whatever about a theft, noted down Nothing
Whatever as a very important evidence.
3
With a little stretch of imagination we can even dispense
with a common starting point a minimal necessary
condition of something being a sample of gold viz. its
maintaining a definite size at a given time, its availability to
stable and continued perception etc. Such conjectures are
designed not to evoke a sense of amusement or perverse
excitement, but to break through a certain fetishised notion
of conception, understanding and communication. To have
a concept (that is, to identify a group of particulars as falling
under it), or to understand the meaning of the relevant
term, or to communicate that meaning to others, we need
not and cannot have a precise set of defining characteristics
ready at hand, that once for all sets the mind at rest. Besides,
redefining a term for a special purpose (PI 69) virtually
puts the word out of circulation, i.e., out of general use,
leaving a few exceptional circumstances. Suppose we want
to re-define the length of the corridor in our university
department (which we know to be X meters), in terms of
how many paces it takes to walk through. For this special
purpose we define one pace as 75 centimeters and match
up the two definitions as X meters = Y paces (PI 69). But
apart from serving this very special purpose it cannot be made
to put an absurd demand on everybodys pace to measure
up exactly to 75 centimeters every time they walk, thus
making the very concepts of pace and walk unusable.
Delimiting, loosening, adding or dropping fibres,
shuffling or reshuffling, whether conscious or unconscious,
idiosyncratic or pragmatic, has a significant sociological
dimension
4
. This becomes specially palpable when a person
or a particular community, under the influence of specific
needs, interests, or of a particular history, culture, or
physiology, may identify same objects (i.e., what other people
call same object) under different concept. Secondly, he /
they can identify different objects (i.e., what other people
call different objects) under the same concept.
A very interesting example given by Bambrough may
profitably be used to clarify these points. He asks us to imagine
a tribe the South Sea Islanders, whose island is thickly
clad with a rich variety of trees, and for whom trees are of
greatest importance in their life and work
5
. Their ways of
classifying trees do not conform to the botanists principle
of classification. They do not classify trees as orange trees,
date-palms or cedars, but as house-building trees, boat-
building trees, or in terms of their height, thickness, or
maturity features that are specially relevant to the
necessities of their life. Here of course as in all other cases,
the botanist identification of, say, mango tree and the
islanders classification of boat-building trees work, not with
a unitary essence, but with overlapping fibres. But while the
botanists fibers of classification either go undetected, or
are deemed irrelevant by the islanders, similar charges will
apply to us or the botanist. The South-sea islander assimilates
172 ENAKSHI MITRA
the same trees (say mango) under different concepts; say
one mango tree he calls a boat-building tree, another mango
tree he classifies under house-building trees, and so on. On
the other hand, he also assimilates different trees (mango,
pine, and oak) under the same concept of a boat-building
tree. At any point of time, an existing network of concepts is
already invaded, or rather made intricate, by more and more
tracks and features.
It should be clear that the fibers do not only move
through a horizontal track of time, jumping from tree
1
to
tree
2 ,
from preceding moments to successive ones. There
is, as already stated, a complicated network of fibres that
both overlap and crisscross, a network that has no point of
origin, where games cannot be numbered in an ordinal series
of 1, 2, 3, . . . , and each individual at any moment is a cross-
section of many fibres simultaneously crossing over each
other. The following figure may be taken as a rough
indication of what this network is like and how it expands:
Fig. 3
Here again we take g for individual games, houses or trees (this time
without being numbered); A, B, C as features; and the dotted lines as some
of the possible modes of expansion.

g
g
g
g
g
RUV
RQD
FGE
ARE
ABC
ESU
g
We do not always have to imagine a remote island with a
remote way of life to appreciate the diverse modes of concept
formation. Modern society with its widely ramified
professions, technologies, and industries, offer ample
examples on the issue. Animals are divided in one way by
the zoologist, another by fur-industry, still in another way by
the leather-industry. Houses are identified in one way by
the architect, in another way by the gas-inspector, and in
still another by the fire-department.
We may now concentrate on more unfamiliar examples
cited by Wittgenstein himself on different modes of concept
formation. In RFM V 42, he imagines a person or a group of
persons who observe a surface only as coloured red, white,
and blue, and does not observe that it is also red. A kind of
colour-adjectives were used for things that are partially red,
partially blue, and partially white they are said to be bu.
And someone can be trained to observe that it is bu, and
not to observe whether it is also red, blue or white. Such a
man could only report bu and non-bu. Here Wittgenstein
invites us to imagine that the observation happens by means
of a psychological sieve, which for example only lets through
the fact that the surface is blue-white-red (the French
tricolour) or that it is not. Here the person obviously misses
out the distinction between separate fibres, he assimilate
the three distinct colours, red, white, and blue under one
colour concept bu; he obfuscates the distinction between
the other colours, and calls each of them as non-bu. Perhaps
Wittgenstein is suggesting that the person is thoroughly
indoctrinated in a single and indissoluble ideal of French
revolution and assimilates red, white and blue under a single
concept, while all other colours fall out as irrelevant. The
situation is somewhat like the South sea islanders who
considered three different kinds of trees mango, pine,
and cedar - to be the same. They assimilate the separate
fibres like the shape of the trunk, or the quality of the wood
under the same fibre, say maturity, and identify the three
different trees under the same class-name.
174 ENAKSHI MITRA
It is time to take a pause and reflect a bit on this foregoing
account with its rather excess of examples. Several questions
prop up at this juncture. (a) Are these fibres common
features of a different status temporary and of a smaller
range, unlike the eternal and ubiquitous universals of the
Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy? Unfortunately on a few
occasions, Wittgensteins phrases do provide some fuel for
this kind of interpretation. Now pass to card games... many
common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass
next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much
is lost. (PI 66, italics mine). The metaphor of physical
overlapping of one fibre on another, transferred to the
context of concept formation (PI 67) may also have some
misleading suggestions. On a fragmentary reading of
Wittgensteins texts the notorious ontology of common
features, over and above the individuals and identically shared
by them, remains unscathed. (b) Is Wittgenstein putting
forth a sociological or anthropological theory of language
whereby people are socially determined to hold particular
sets of beliefs, by selecting / rejecting, permuting/
combining from a repertoire of real features given out there?
To put it more precisely, Wittgensteins account might give
the impression that there are bare featureless identities in
the shape of either bare particulars or bare universals that
can only be named, and these form the primordial and pre-
social basis of all alternative modes of description. I.e. when
one conceives a chair or a tree under several alternative
modes one is only combining these bare identities in various
combinations.
6
A proper appreciation of Wittgensteins view
would need us to nullify each of these questions.
The Augustinian model
This myth of detachable common identities, whether eternal
or temporary, one or many, all-pervasive or restricted, is
appended with another myth the Augustinian model in
which all language, all signs are supposed to work. According
to this model or theory each sign reaches out to its
corresponding object in reality, which is its reference, and
stamps a label on it. Laying out the basic points of the theory
we shall find that most classical theories of language adhere
to it in principle, in spite of their internal differences
7
:
(a) Linguistic expressions can be roughly divided into
proper names and common-names (descriptions).
Proper names pick out unique individuals, common
names like table pick out definite properties like
tablehood etc. from among other properties. While for
Plato, the word Table picks out an Ideal Tablehood
from the third realm, for Aristotle it refers to a property
immanent in all individual tables in the mundane world.
(b)While for Russell proper names pick out bare particulars
and universals directly, for Frege they need the mediation
of a definite property uniquely belonging to that
individual, for reaching out to their corresponding
reference.
8
(c) For the British empiricists too the sign table would
either be the name of an abstract mental image or a
logically abstractable essence, or on the most non-
committal Nominalist version, it would still name not a
single individual, but a single group of individuals
arbitrarily selected, which professedly do not share any
common characteristics.
(d)Words pin down their meanings either directly, or
through physical ostension, mental image, silent speech,
or verbal rules phrased in definite descriptions.
The crux of the Augustinian model that Wittgenstein seeks
to dismiss is the mutual externality of language and reality
an idea which all the above schools of philosophy share in
common. If one wishes to graft the model into a sociological
theory of language, the theory would roughly come to this:
All levels of identification whether it is identifying a bare
particular or a bare property are pre-social; it is at the level
176 ENAKSHI MITRA
of permuting/ combining, selecting/ rejecting from the real
features that the process of socio-cultural conditioning comes
into play.
Wittgensteins Critique of the Augustinian model
A short exposition of Wittgensteins reactions to the
supposed sanctity of verbal rules will be an effective prelude
to this critique - extensive in its purview and graphically
detailed in its analysis.
Failure of verbal definitions
Can a common name say, dog including the term
quadruped in its standard definition, be able to hook on
unfailingly to a single, detachable feature of fourleggedness
commonly shared by all the dogs? We have to detail out our
definitions, introduce sharper rules in terms of the specific
shape of the legs, the structure of the bones, the texture of
the hair on its legs, - in order to demarcate the
fourleggedness, say of a Dalmatian from that of a Doberman.
But even then, the respective bones Dalmatian
1
and
Dalmatian
2
may have different kinds of dents or undulations,
the texture of the hair in their legs may have different
degrees of smoothness or varying shades of colour The bone-
structures of Dalmatian
1
and Dalmatian
2
have to be further
analysed and specified as being similar in respect of another
feature or identity, say a common angle of bent at the mid-
joints, which again when shown to exhibit further individual
variations has to be analysed and specified to be similar in
respect of another identity, say Y. Whatever rules we may
specify, however we may detail out the features of similarity,
words will lead to words and to further words. This often
gives the impression that while reality itself is neat, round,
and smoothly bounded, it is language that is inadequate to
capture reality. Language is full of holes, cracks and crevices,
whatever words we use to plug these holes and cracks,
themselves have fresh cracks and so on. This way of looking
at things have naturally led philosophers to rely on ostensive
definitions as the last resort.
Failure of Ostensive Definitions
It is with very simple examples that ostensive definitions start
losing their sanctity. Pointing to a pencil, I may say This is
tove (BB p 2) (Wittgenstein deliberately chooses a fictitious
word which does not have a lexical meaning). This ostensive
definition can be variously interpreted to mean:
This is pencil
This is round
This is wood
This is one
This is hard, etc.
This is the angle of light
To go back to our example of Dalmatians, how can I point
to their common coat apart from the individual spot-patterns
that each Dalmatian has? How can I point to the common
texture of their hair apart from the varying degree of softness
or roughness? Suppose there are two or more Dalmatians
sitting in a sun-room, in different positions and postures,
the sun falling at different angles, and making a different
filigree of light and shade on the body of each. How will an
ostensive procedure be able to cut out their common
Dalmatian coat, except perhaps by being backed up by such
phrases like Do not look at the size, shape, number, or
configuration of black spots, just note that the dogs are all
white with black spots? Do not look at the light and shade
effect on their body; just feel the texture of their hair. Now
is there only one way of taking the words colour, length,
or texture, black and white spots, coat, or hair? (PI
29). To take colour for instance, I point to a transparent
green glass on the table and then to the same glass painted
178 ENAKSHI MITRA
in a picture on the wall, and say This colour is green. What
do I mean by colour in this case? Do I mean the colour in
the transparency, or the opaque green as painted on a
wooden door or as a pigment on the palette? On the first
alternative, the colour of the green glass and that of the
painted glass will not be the name, for it is the complex of
colour-patches that depicts the glass in the picture that is its
colour. The second alternative too has no greater prospect
of presenting a pure opaque green colour as a single object
of ostension. (Remarks on Colour, I 18) Colour takes different
dimensions, depths and hue depending on the thing that
has the colour and depending on its environment; one
cannot find a self identical saturated sample of green, or
white that can be captured by ostension. As Wittgenstein
observes in ROC I 61, We are inclined to believe the analysis
of our colour concepts would lead ultimately to the colours of
places in our visual field, which are independent of any spatial
or physical interpretation; for here there is neither light
nor shadow, nor highlight, etc., etc. ... Of the two
Dalmatians, I may see one as being white with black spots,
and the other black with white spots, putting black and white
alternatively in the background and foreground. Lights
falling on their body at different angles and different
intensity will produce tonal variations of white and grey on
the different parts of the body. There will be intractable
variations if the light happens to filter through curtains of
different colours. Difference in the sitting postures,
movement of muscles too cause subtle redistribution of
shades. A painter who depicts each of these dogs in his
characteristic posture and position with the individual light
and shade pattern of his body, has to use a different
combination of colours on his palette for each of them. The
ostensive definition along with the explanatory phrase Look
at the common white and black coat will be of little help to
him.
Similar remarks would apply to the alternative modes of
identification with even stronger force. How would the
islander pick out the characteristic feature of the boat-
building trees, say, the maturity of wood, girth of the trunk
in isolation from the colour of the wood, its thickness or
texture? To take Wittgensteins own example in PI 47, how
can one alternately point to two exclusive features of the
tree first to its broken outline composed of straight bits
and then to the complexity of its colours? Any ostensive
technique that may be adopted would lead to words, and
words to further ostension, and neither can be privileged as
the originary foundation.
Opacity of Acts of Ostension
The myth of bare particulars or of self-identical detachable
features out there in reality, waiting to be captured by proper
names, needed another myth of there being uniform acts
of putting labels on to each of these entities. On this view,
each of the acts - identifying colour as opposed to shape, or
shape as opposed to number or the angle of light exhibits a
characteristic essence. It just needs a little introspection to
expose the absurdity of such suppositions. We sometimes
attend to the colour by putting our hand up to keep the
outline from view, or by not looking at the outline of the
thing; sometime by staring at the object and trying to
remember where we saw the colour before. We identify the
shape sometimes by screwing up our eyes so as not to see
the colour clearly, and in many other ways. And even if there
were a characteristic process of attending to the shape say,
following the outline with ones finger or eyes, this by itself
would not constitute what we call identifying the shape in
contrast to its colour. (PI 33) It is weirder to talk of a single
act of identifying the common black and white coat of a
Dalmatian an act which brushes away the variant effects of
light and shade, variant sizes and shapes and configurations
of their spots. Can it possibly be by screwing our eyes to have
a blurred image of black and white, which will, so to speak
abstract from individual variations in colour and spot-patterns?
180 ENAKSHI MITRA
Such a blurred image which has rather stronger potentials
to throw out similarity-relations in numerous directions has
still less chance of catching a single detachable correlate.
Wittgenstein had further argued in PI 85 Does the
sign-post leave no doubt open about the way I have to go?
Does it shew which direction I am to take when I have passed
it; whether along the road or the footpath or cross-country?
But where is it said which way I am to follow it; whether in
the direction of its finger or (e.g.) in the opposite one?
And if there were not a single sign-post, but a chain of
adjacent ones or of chalk-marks on the ground is there
only one way of interpreting them? There is not a single way
of interpreting a single act of pointing with the finger. I
cannot only read in the direction of the wrist to finger, or
from the finger to the wrist, but also in the direction in which
his knuckles move (i.e., upwards) the direction in which a
sliver of sunlight falls on his palms, or even the direction in
which the hair stands on his arms. And whatever corrective
techniques he may adopt rubbing his knuckles, flattening
out the bristles of his hair, patting my back every time I do it
in the right way, putting a cross in the wrong direction
all these pictures are again available to innumerable ways of
reading. All ostensive procedures of identification are
pictures that are ruptured from within, they disseminate
into an unending flow of more and more words, and more
and more pictures.
Failure of inner ostension
For the Augustinians, the fact that verbal language and
gesture-language fail to capture a unique meaning only
shows that we need something stronger, something deeper
or inner, to effect the correlation between the word and
its self-identical meaning. They find it in the mental
imageries and internal acts of meaning or understanding.
For them, while physical icons or acts of ostension may miss
its target a mental ostension gets unfailingly hooked on its
unique meaning.
Here the Augustinians are obviously saddled with a
mental picture as a super-likeness or a super-picture which
makes it an image of this and of nothing else. (PI 389) They
need to appreciate the fact that like the physical picture, a
mental picture too, say of a white dog-skin with black spots
can be read in many different ways, it cannot by itself get
hooked on to its unique meaning-entity, the unique
Dalmatian coat, so to speak. Nor is there a mental act of
meaning or intending as a conscious process running
concurrently with the physical process of speaking. It may at
best reduce to an array of unspoken words, mouthed silently,
which plainly cannot have any magical quality to perform a
feat that a physically uttered sentence cannot. We cannot
hold up a single act or occurrence whether mental or
physical a characteristic feeling of meaning, a sincere
tone of voice, or an earnest facial expression as a plausible
agent to do the trick.
Reference and Meaning: A Grammatical Interplay
It might be objected that the foregoing account shows a
failure of various devices in fixing meaning, not a failure of
ostensive definition in fixing reference. Pointing or ostending,
which by its very nature pins down a simple object, cannot
possibly pin down a complex property, a configuration or
arrangement of simples. Features like common texture of
hair, degrees of softness or roughness, broken outline
composed of straight bits, arrangement of colour-patches,
girth of wood, maturity of trunk, (marks of a tree alluded to
in a previous section) are on ultimate analysis configuration
of simples that are duly available to sophisticated version of
ostension (say Russellian acquaintance.) To whatever extent
Wittgenstein may experiment with deviant modes of
conception, he can at best introduce newer and newer
182 ENAKSHI MITRA
modes of configuration; he cannot outgrow the logical
demands of ultimate simples underlying all possible modes
of deviance.
The way Wittgenstein breaks through this classical divide
between reference and description may be condensed
under the following points:
i) The difference between reference and description
consists in an interactive play where the referring game
is the mere preparatory move (like putting pieces on
the board) and descriptions comprise of more elaborate
and complex activities.
ii) However, learning the games of referring are by no
means achieved through a transparent encounter with
putatively given objects. This simple or elementary
character of the referring games is relative relative to
that particular simple/complex interplay in which it is
embodied. The elementary move of referring in one
game can figure as quite a sophisticated and complex
move of description in another game.
iii) In other words simplicity and complexity are not absolute
in Wittgensteins philosophy. The constant meta-
morphosis of simple into complex and vice versa also
breaks through the claims of unique analysis and ultimate
terminus of analysis popularized in logical atomism.
iv) Thus reference is constructed in and through the uses,
the referred object does not pre-exist as a given chunk
to make the referring use possible We shall try to argue
that even within each of these naming-describing
interplays the reference never pre-exists but fleshes out
in and through each description.
Wittgenstein points out that the Augustinian model of
reference and description stands on a par with taking each
letter of a script to stand for a particular sound, or as signs of
emphasis or marks of punctuation. On this conception the
particular language or script turns out to be merely a
description of sound-patterns along with their various modes
of intonation and punctuation. Or to take another example:
a person completely innocent of the intricate mechanism
of a locomotive will equate all the levers the switch, crank,
brake, pump - with their external projections jutting out
from various parts of the cabin and all looking alike.( PG 20,
also PI 4) So far as the builders assistant simply fetches
specific building materials viz. slab, blocks etc., at the call of
the builder ( PI 2), so far as he does not know how to operate
with the inner structure or composition of each of the
building stones, or to integrate them into a continuous
structure, he is at the rudiments of the entire process of
building. The operations of all these persons will not go
beyond passive assortments of the parts (of language,
machine or the building).
Wittgenstein himself has mentioned these games as
referringgames along with a few others:
i. The teacher utters the words in the course of
ostensive teaching, pointing alongside to the relevant objects.
( PI 6)
ii. The teacher calls out names like chair, table,
plate, sofa, chessboard and the child is taught to touch
the relevant object. (We construct this game on the model
of the above.)
iii. One memorises words and their meanings. (PI 47)
iv. A word is uttered and the subject is asked to recall
the image of the corresponding object. (PI 6)
v. Putting pieces on the board before playing. (PI 49)
The point of these examples is to harp on the preparatory
or rudimentary character of reference vis a vis the complex
activity of description with the all important reminder that
they are not preparations for a passive combination into
descriptions. Thus the flaw in the Augustinian model of
language is exposed to be on the same footing with such
184 ENAKSHI MITRA
theories that envisage language-speaking or other activities
as comprising of two primary functions first the elementary
move of gathering materials, and second, the act of passively
assorting these inert chunks. It is strange why Wittgenstein
seems to be quite content in characterizing the Augustinian
model of language as merely an error of omission.
Augustine, we may say, does describe a system of
communication; only not everything that we call this
language is this system...it is appropriate, but only for this
narrowly circumscribed region... . It is like defining game
as consisting in moving objects about on a surface according
to certain rules, thus restricting oneself only to board-games
leaving out the others.(PI 3, also see 2, 4. ) In PG 19, (p. 57)
he qualifies the simplicistic nature of Augustinian model:
So it could be said that Augustine represents the matter
too simply; but also that he represents something simpler.
The first move would be like restricting oneself only to say,
board-games, the second move would be like stopping short
at putting pieces in the board.
It is quite evident that these game of putting the pieces
on board, fetching building materials, linking each letter
with only denoting a sound - in so far as they have no tendency
to move to the actual steps of playing, to the intricate stages
of construction, or to using a set of signs as representing not
sound-patterns but full-bodied reality - they cannot even be
called simpler games in any sense. The simplicity of these
so-called simple moves can only be appreciated in so far as
they do not remain as truncated fragments but are seen as
incorporated into the full-fledged games. And the way the
simple is incorporated into the complex, or reference is
incorporated into description is obviously not through a
passive assortment but in a dynamic interplay of an extremely
complex nature.
To grow out of this passive assortment or linear
combination-model is to grow out of the absolute distinction
of the simple and the complex and purportedly unique
modes of analysis popularized by Logical Atomism.(PI 46-
49) A chair can be seen as made of bits of wood, or of atoms
and molecules, or (normally) as composed of a back-rest
and seat propped up on four legs, or as a unitary design
resisting any analysis (PI 47). The visual image of this tree
can be looked upon as a complex of colour patches, or as a
broken outline composed of straight bits. A curved line can
be said to be composed of an ascending segment and a
descending segment. A chessboard is normally seen as a
unique composition made out of thirty two white and thirty
two black squares. But we can also see it as colours black and
white and a schema of squares. There is no inherent
simplicity in the respective elements of each mode of
complexity, say, of the chessboard. Is the colour of a square
of a chessboard simple, or is it composed of pure white and
pure yellow? And is white simple or does it consist of colours
of the rainbow? Is this length 2 cm simple or does to consist
of 1 bit 3 cm long and one bit 1 cm long measured in the
opposite direction? (PI 47). Is it unimaginable for someone
to see the group | | | | | (e.g.) as the group | | || | | with
the two middle strokes fused, and should accordingly count
the middle stroke twice? (True, it is not the usual case)
(RFM I 168). The question Is what you see composite?
makes good sense if it is already established what kind of
complexity - that is, which particular use of the word - is in
question. Asking Is the object composite? outside a
particular language-game is like asking whether the verb
to sleep meant something active or passive. (PI 47). The
phenomenon of seeing a tree for example in different ways
can be accounted for in two ways: Either we are baptising
the entire tree say by the proper name Terry in which case
Terry can internalize its reference in so many different
ways (two of which we have already cited). On the other
hand we can also say that we are not baptising the tree, but
baptising each of its so-called elements. To take another
example: Suppose there are some squares of different
186 ENAKSHI MITRA
colours like red, green, white and black arranged like a
chessboard. We can have the words, R, G, W, B
corresponding to these squares and a sentence say
RRBGGGRWW describing an arrangement of this sort (PI
48).
Here the sentence above is a complex of names and thus a
description of the configuration of the squares. But none of
the squares which figure as names in this usage is inherently
simple, in other language-games each of them can be said
to be a composite, consisting perhaps of two rectangles,
colours and shapes. Thus what is a name R in this context,
may well be a description or a sentence describing the
configurations of two rectangles, in another context. To say
that we cannot define or describe certain elements but
simply name them will only mean a limiting case where a
complex consists of one square. Here its description seems
to give the illusion of being the name of the colored square.
Similarly the above expression RRBGGGRWW can embody
a preparatory referring move in a game where the entire
figure taken as a single unit enters into certain relations or
interactions with other similar figures.
Adopting this track of argument it will be easy to
appreciate that the block, pillars, slabs etc. can be looked
upon as a complex of colour-patches (where the sub-atomic
cohesion into a hard impenetrable chunk is kept out of the
purview), or as pattern of light and shade, and so on. So the
builders assistant in playing out the referring game of
fetching the building-blocks in the customary fashion is only
exercising a simplicity that is relative in at least two senses.
First, playing this referring-game the assistant is already
R R B
G G G
R W W
embedded (though in an imperfect and incomplete
fashion)into the activity of building which opts out of the
other two kinds of games just mentioned. Playing the
referring games in the other two modes for instance would
have incurred different modes of activity scraping it into
layers of different chromes and lumping them together in a
single compact pile, and placing each block in the same
relative position with the sun and the shadow. (These
referring games will throw up the more complex games of
descriptions - say of comparing two stones in terms of the
variety of shades that each comprises of, or uniting one light
and shade pattern with another.) On similar lines, the
customary referring game of the builders assistant can be
recast into an appreciably complex, sophisticated and
elaborate game of description - the assistant taking note of
how each utterance of the builder hits on his ears, tracing
the movement of his limbs in lifting the slab, the
configuration of his arms and the building materials, pattern
of muscular tension in carrying the materials. Such activities
form the assumed backdrop and not the substantial content of
the referring game played by the assistant. As Strawson
9
pointed out, stating that one is making a referring use or
stating the conditions under which he is making it, forms
no part of the significance of referring-games. However,
when the simple game of the assistant is recast in a complex
game of describing (in the manner indicated), some suitably
simple move of referring ( i.e. referring to ones limbs,
muscles, etc) crops up to even the balance. The relation
between reference and description is a pattern of contrastive
interplay where though there is a constant switch-over of
roles, it perhaps never permits a disturbance in the basic
requirement of a dual tension. One can undertake similar
exercises of transforming the other games of referring
narrated in (i) to (v) into descriptions and thus recasting
the pattern of each simple-complex interplay.
188 ENAKSHI MITRA
Reference as Shown in multiple fashions
Reference turns out not to be a singular pre-semantic
encounter with a simple object lying out there, nor is
meaning or understanding achieved by a compact set of
statements drawing from the supposed transparency of verbal
rules and definite descriptions. Both these phenomena
spread out in a plethora of linguistic and non-linguistic
activities, spilling over the present to a variety of actions
and experiences of different kinds before and after. (BB
p. 145 and also PI 35). We have seen that while with reference
these activities recede to the background, meaning spreads
out in explicit statements and explanations.
Wittgenstein says that the referring game of ostension
cannot take off unless the overall role of the word in
language is clear. (PI 30) One cannot offer or respond to
an ostensive definition, say of a chess-piece unless one is
already initiated into games, the specific variety of board-
games, the conventions of moving the pieces around the
board. The sortals that often come to accompany ostensive
definitions, like colour, shape, length indeed show the
grammar, the post at which we station the word.(PI 29)
But this does not imply that grammar is uniquely shown as
the reference presupposed by all actual and possible
descriptions, in the manner that the unique and ultimate
logical form of all language was claimed to be shown in the
Tractatus. (4.121, 4.1212, also NB p107) The later
Wittgensteins leanings towards multiple ways of shownness
surface in such statements that there is no one way of taking
the word colour or length , and any attempt to
disambiguate them through definitions will go on ad
infinitum.(PI 29) .Similarly there is no one way in which the
alternative grammars of a chessboard or the tree are to be
taken. Alternative or deviant grammars do not entail but
themselves flesh out bit by bit through deviant descriptions
just as in the case of the normal ones.
The idea of a pre-linguistic, primordial referent that
foreshadows all possible descriptions is indeed hard to resist.
Kripke says that baptism captures the necessary identity of a
particular as originating from a particular stuff the material
stuff like the specific pieces of wood in case of a table, and
the eggs and sperms of the parents in case of a human
individual
10
. Now the question is what the referential identity
of the parents is, and the gametes which according to Kripke
are supposed to recur in all counterfactuals stipulated about
the referent? Any attempt to pin it down by ostension or
further definite description would launch a patently
indefinite regress. And the identityconditions cannot hark
back on the original reference (the human individual in
question) on pain of obvious circularity. This clearly shows
that each renewed recognition of an individual as the same
reference of the proper name is not linear addition to the
given transworld identity; rather each preceding stage of
the individual is reshaped and enriched by the subsequent
ones
11
.
Equipped with these fresh insights we can now venture
a more imaginative treatment of PI 66. The examples of
games and family were strategically deployed to show how
the phenomenon of external ruptures gives way to internal
ruptures. Let us recall the statement: Look at the parts
played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill
in chess and skill in tennis. It does not merely show how a
property viz. skill gets replaced by the property of luck, or
how the property of skill in chess drops out to make way
for skill in tennis, but how the property of skill itself breaks
open to dissolve the very dichotomy between a property and
a particular, i.e., between description and reference. This is
another way to see similarity or resemblance in a new light
not as grounded upon non-relational respects or features
or identities that foreshadow different routes of similarity-
relations. To learn the reference or meaning of a particular
word, through ostension or definition, one has already gone
190 ENAKSHI MITRA
through a vast, complicated and indefinite network of
relations similarity relations without a non-relational respect.
Shorn of these respects, i.e., ostensible common features,
and also of unique and unfailing acts of ostension, the
concepts used in our language, as well as the concept of
language itself turn out to be a motley of language-games,
behaviours and practices, without any common structure or
content. Instead of producing something common to all
that we call language, I am saying . . . that they are related to
one another in many different ways. It is because of this
relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all
language. (PI 65) The italic emphasis on related is
indeed designed to wean us away from the non-relational
identity, the foundational core of relations.
Failure of measurement as ostending to a quantitative identity
Do all these reference/description patterns rest on a
uniform quantitative boundary? Is there a single chunk of
an object on which we play out all these modes of simple-
complex interactions? Wittgensteins examples on various
modes of simplicity (and the further contrivances we have
attempted in those lines) seek to swerve from such
constraints. Yet some of Wittgensteins statements in
connection with the teaching of words like slab are a bit
problematic: This ostensive teaching of words can be said
to establish an association between the word and the thing...
[I]t may mean various things: but one very likely thinks first
of all that a picture of the object comes before the childs
mind when he hears the word.(PI 6, italics mine) Also in
the course of dissipating any putative essence shared by the
acts of ostension, Wittgenstein says: Only think how
differently we learn the use of words to point to this thing,
to point to that thing, and on the other hand to point to
the colour, not the shape, to mean the colour and so on.
(PI 35) Is Wittgenstein dismissing a global essence supposedly
shared by all acts of ostension (pointing to things, colour,
shape etc.) at the cost of admitting a local essence shared by
all acts of pointing to a thing? Does this mean that pointing
to one thing as distinct from others harks back on a readily
available quantitative chunk of an object which is absent in
pointing to colours or shapes?
Now we may argue that instead of suggesting a quanti-
tative identity easily available for reference Wittgenstein is
suggesting that the numerical identification of things is not
simply given, but a game we have to learn through an
elaborate ostensive programming. One cannot point to a
piece in a game as a piece in a game, similarly one cannot
point to a thing as a countable object numerically distinct
from another through a single and transparent act of
ostension. Nor can reference be determined through
measurement. A little reflection will show that a measuring
scale fares no better than physical or inner ostension. Any
attempt to pin down a fixed originary moment of complete
identification be it with ostension, or rational intuition, or
measurement will produce an endless regress of origins.
In the first place let us recall that to identify an object say as
blue through ostension, we must already have identified it
as having some feature, coloured, shaped, or hard, etc.
Similarly to put the measuring scale against the object one
needs to identify the two points within which the object lies,
i.e., to have already determined its quantity. Secondly, we
also need to identify the beginning and end-point of the
measuring scale, which cannot be further decided by
another scale without repeating the problem. Similarly we
also need to conceptualise the ostensive procedure itself
as an act of pointing with the finger, or a movement of the
eye-ball, or a mental image. Thirdly, the comparison between
the measuring device and the measured object can no more
be decided by measurement, than the comparison between
the ostender and the ostended be decided by ostension.
Whether the act of pointing be matched up with the table
192 ENAKSHI MITRA
lying in the direction of the finger, or with the bed lying in
the direction of the wrist, or whether the mental image of
the ashtray be matched up with purple colour of the actual
ashtray lying in front, or with its oval shape, cannot be passed
over to further ostensious. Measurement too would involve
at least two more identifications (a) Coinciding the left
end of the object with that point of the scale from which
the markers begin, and (b) Determining the two marks of
the scale between which the right end of the object lies.
12
Thus the limits of an object, the coincidence of points, their
relative position in short reference is presupposed and
not decided by measurement.
It seems that Wittgenstein does not want to retain the
quantitative identity of the thing on which the different
games are built, or the different modes of understanding
are effected. Rather it may reasonably be held that his view
of the dialectic interplay between the simple and complex
also breaks through absolute distinction between the small
and the large of determinate quantitative boundaries where
the large is supposed to be built out of the small static units
through a process of linear addition. Wittgenstein points
out that expressions like division of a line by a point outside
it, and composition of forces clearly show that sometimes
we tend to look upon a greater area as composed by a
division of the smaller and a smaller area as composed of
greater area. (PI 48) The second example brings an
interesting analogy between matter and meaning into play.
Neither matter nor meaning should be looked upon as a
composite, tightly packed up with hard little balls or absolute,
simple elements. Matter is to be conceived as a swarm of
electrical particles, widely separated from each other and
rushing about in great speed thus creating a network or
field of forces. The particles are not inert little balls, resting
smugly in an equally inert, external and empty space. They
are forces which can be said to occupy space only by buffeting
away anything that tries to enter. Thus they are not in space,
they create space, they are space. And in this sense they create
a composition of forces, where the smaller area can be
said to be composed out of greater areas. One cannot look
upon matter or meaning as assorted out of smaller elements
inertly adding up to progressively larger ones, for the smaller
can only be understood as exploding into or creating bigger
space. Reference does not hark back on an inert, simple
quantitative identity underlying all modes of descriptions;
but the way in which that putative identity is invaded by its
other the space of description.
Language, Behaviour and Reality
What we have been trying to appreciate is that reference,
meaning and understanding consist in a plethora of activities,
which cannot be conceived in any fashion unless they are
seen to incorporate the reality into themselves, very much
in the same fashion as the mechanisms of a locomotive absorb
their seemingly external projections. (PG 20, PI 4) The acts
of uttering marks, writing signs or moving ones limbs
traditionally presuppose an immaculate object waiting out
there to be somehow linked, manipulated or maneuvered
by these acts. The Nyaya-Vaisesikas conceive behaviour or
actions as a cause of conjunction or disjunction say the act
of my walking away from this room to the next causes a
disjunction from one part of space and conjunction with
another part
13
(space figuring as an eternal and all-
pervading substance for this school). On this theory behaviors
or actions are envisaged as bridges conjoining the agent with
the object the two entities lying external to each other.
For Wittgenstein on the other hand behaviour does not
connect signs with the signified by making a bridge through
a supposed empty space in between. We have to appreciate
how it constructs the sign and the signified into a new space.
Conceiving the chair and my body in the normal fashion
amounts to bridging them up in the usual way sticking out
194 ENAKSHI MITRA
my limbs to it or fixing a plank between the two. But if I
conceive a chair as an amalgamation of pieces bereft of its
normal function it may be loosened up into a horizontal
chain reaching up to my body. Again to conceive the chair
as an assortment of streaks or colour-patches is to create
another new space a spread of wooden strips, each with a
different streak or a different shade. Conceiving both my
body and the chair as certain designs or as composition of
forces will invoke newer bridges creating newer spaces.
Indeed to build a bridge literally between the two banks of
the river is to carve out a new space, it does not fill up the
supposed empty space yawning between the two pre-given
banks so to speak. The new space that our bridge creates
serves our purpose best, but it has no theoretical power to
block other constructs. The multiple ways of bridging do
not follow from a specific conception of the object, but in
each case the object is fleshed out in and through the bridge.
The next step is to realize how the non-linguistic
behaviours ( absorbing our body and objects into a new
space) get sophisticated and extended into linguistic
behaviours, viz. the action of uttering sounds by different
parts of our speech-organ. Dead phonemes and their
combinations do not constitute language, it is the active
utterances of these sounds, the movement of the speech-
organ, movement of facial muscles, gestures with our eyes
and limbs all imbued with images and feelings that our
non-linguistic behaviours extend to. Once language is seen
as an extension of non-linguistic behaviours it can be seen as
internalizing reality in the way behaviours do.
Initially it will be easier to trace out pain-language as an
extension of pain-behaviour before we can readily
appreciate language in general as an extension of non-
linguistic behaviours. Pain-expressions are neither names nor
descriptions of pain-sensations delinked from common
public space with common public coordinates. Any
expression purporting to name, directly or indirectly (i.e.,
through an intermediary of a private description) a private
referent i.e., a private feeling of pain has to invoke words
from the public vocabulary i.e., use a public bridge or link
to the putatively private sensation. But a private feeling
claimed to reside on the other side of the public bridge
cannot retain its professed privacy. Thus pain-behaviors,
whether overt or covert, are not external manifestations,
but exhaust the entire substance of our inner feelings and
emotions nothing of our inner world remains as an
irreducibly pure content untouched by actual behaviors. (PI
243-315)
14
We deliberately refrain from invoking possible
behaviours in this context for a sensation resting on
unrealized possibility of behavioural manifestation lapses into
the same absurdity Wittgenstein is trying to avoid. This view
also steers clear of the behaviourist position and
demonstrates pain-language as not a description, but an
extension of pain-behaviour. Interestingly behaviorism itself
turns out to be a version of the Augustinian model taking
signs and physical behaviours as mutually external words
being names of behavioral items, which are combined into
sentences or descriptions. Further, behaviourism itself fails
to make the desired connection between language (the
word pain) on the one hand and pain-behaviours on the
other (the purported meaning of signs.) The bridge of
physical ostension which for the behaviourists is the only
resource available, does not withstand the critique of
Augustinian model. For Wittgenstein, language does not
name or describe behaviour but itself is behaviour, it does
not represent meaning but is itself the meaning.
This equation of language and behaviour will be patently
opposed to the Fregean standpoint where understanding
or speaking is to apprehend non-sensible thoughts residing
in the third realm - thoughts that just happen to get clothed
in the sensible garb of signs. Frege will put signs, behaviours
or actions as physical events in the first realm. Meaning for
Frege involves an intention to represent (i.e., intention to
196 ENAKSHI MITRA
be true of) which can conceivably belong only to thought.
Behaviours and actions cannot perform this function of
meaning, it is the thought viz. These behaviours and actions
represent this reality (truly or falsely) that needs to be
invoked to account for meaning and communication.
15
For
Wittgenstein on the other hand, there are no pre-
interpretive and absolute thoughts in the third realm that
enters into the sensible garb of signs or generate the non-
linguistic behaviours. Rather it is the non-linguistic instinctive
behaviours that get their sophisticated extension and
replacement into the utterance of signs and sets the pattern
of a thought.(Z, 541,545)
16
This internal blend of language, behaviour and reality
get effectively reinforced in Wittgensteins reflections on
the notion of understanding. For him understanding cannot
take us from signs to extra linguistic reality (Russell), or from
signs to transparent sign-independent thoughts in the third
realm (Frege). Understanding is rather moving from a
relatively strange set of signs to an easily surveyable
symbolism.(PG p 40) In understanding a musical piece we
are never expected to learn or be able to say what it is all
about, what is crucially involved is rather understanding why
these bars should be played in this way, why the pattern of
variation of loudness should be just like this. Understanding
music is translating a musical picture to a picture in another
medium. Similar remarks apply to understanding a
proposition which is virtually understanding a picture. (PG
p 41)
The difference between understanding a picture and
not understanding it is internal to the picture itself. To survey
these two cases of not understanding a picture
a. I do not understand the picture. I say this when I am
not able to envisage the flat colours as going out of itself
to represent anything.
b. I do not understand the picture. - I say this when
though I am able to see it in its representational aspect I
am not able to identify what reality it is supposed to
represent.
In neither of the above cases the failure to understand the
picture is the failure to go beyond the picture to an external
reality. Likewise, the success in understanding the picture
is also internal to the picture. Similarly the failure or success
in understanding a proposition is internal to the sign-system
that constitutes the proposition. (PG p 42 )
Had signs been an inessential garb of reality and
understanding been a passage from one to the other, then
one could easily have replaced any word in a sentence by
any other. E.g. I see a black patch there can successively be
replaced by a, b, c, d, e, f. ( PG p 44) The fact that we cannot
make this substitution shows that the meaning of I is not a
piecemeal entity which previously linked with the isolated
phonetic content of I now needs to be linked to another
sign. It shows that I has spilled over its phonetic bounds to
absorb other words and contexts into a full-fledged reality.
As the replacement of I by a cannot replace these rich
layers of association [we] cannot think the sense of the above
sentence straightaway in the new expression.
This relentless and tortuous grapple with foundations
rules out all possibility of reading Wittgenstein as presenting
a theory of socio-cultural relativism, where different modes
of conception are different ways of permuting and
combining a given set of pre-social identities. While the talk
of customs, institutions and forms of life (PI 198-
199,205,337, RFM I-63 ) temporarily shifts the focus to socio-
cultural factors, they are in the long run, strategic reminders
that one cannot find a starting point or origin where all
explanations end, but that one can only spread out the whirl
of organism in a progressively enriched and full-bodied
expanse.
On ultimate analysis, language, behaviour and reality
198 ENAKSHI MITRA
cannot be externalized from and yet expected to entail each
other through a logical mechanism. Such foundationalist
ambitions may be paralleled with that of freezing the ocean-
waves a moment before they break and then professing to
extract the crushed expanse of the foams of its frozen
reservoir. It is extremely important to realize that behaviour
itself as a pure reference severed from all uses and behaviours
ironically lapses into the ghostly fragment an iron rod
severed from the entire mechanism, when language is like
an engine idling, not when it is doing work. (PI 132) While
meaning cashes out into linguistic and non-linguistic
behaviours, behaviour itself is not a pre-behavioral chunk
given out there. Thus in fine language and behaviour forge
a non-foundational blend that internalizes and does not
represent the supposedly extra-linguistic reality.
NOTES
1. The abbreviations used for Wittgensteins texts are as follows: The Blue
and the Brown Books (BB), Notebooks (NB), Philosophical Investigations (PI),
Philosophical Grammar (PG), Remarks on Colour, (ROC), Remarks on
Foundations of Mathematics (RFM), Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (TLP),
Zettel (Z).
2. I have been obliged to borrow many examples from John Hospers, An
Introduction to Philosophical Analysis for their wonderful variety and
simplicity.
3. Lewis Caroll, Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Wordsworth Classics, Great
Britain, 2001, p 136.
4. We shall have to submit at the end that Wittgenstein is not offering a
sociological foundation of language.
5. See R. Bambrough, Universals and Family Resemblance, George
Pitcher (ed.), Wittgenstein: The Philosophical Investigations, pp. 202 203.
6. This theory is propounded by Russell in his Philosophy of Logical Atomism,
Logic And Knowledge, R.C.Marsh (ed.) Routledge And New York, 1994.
7. I acknowledge the influence of Baker and Hackers treatment of this
issue (Baker and Hacker, 1980, volume 1, p. 33, p. 45 59)
8. Frege states this quite explicitly in Sinn und Bedeutung, The Thought:
A Logical Enquiry in Michael Beaney (ed), The Frege Reader.
9. On Referring, in R. Ammerman (ed), Classics of Analytic Philosophy.
10. Naming and Necessity, Lecture III, p 112 114.
11. Kripke holds that the concept of reference or reality is too rich to be
specified in terms of anything else (ostension or definite description)
and thus all circularities or regresses involved in specifying the identity-
conditions of an individual only shows the inadequacy of language in
capturing reality. This view as we have noted is flatly opposed to
Wittgensteins. On the other hand, Kripkes emphatic rejection of a
tertium quid (ostension or definite description) for reaching out to
reference brings him closer to Wittgenstein in certain respects. However,
for Kripke the referent causes the usage of rigid designators and repeats
itself as a unique transworld identity in all descriptions. For Wittgenstein
on the other hand, language internalizes reference in inexhaustively
different ways.
12. This analysis of measurement is derived largely from R.S. Jones, Physics
as Metaphor, pp. 18 30.
13. Prasastapada Bhasyam, Part I,5.
14. I am greatly indebted to C.E.M. Dunlops Wittgenstein on Sensation
and Seeing As in Synthese for the treatment of pain.
15. Frege, Gottlob, The Thought: A Logical Enquiry.
16. Norman Malcolms article The Relation of Language to Instinctive
Behaviour has helped me shape up this line of argument.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Texts
Remarks on Colour, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe, (trans.: Linda. L.
McAlister and Margaret Schattle), Oxford, Basil
Blackwell, 1950.
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, ed. G.H. Von Wright
(trans.: G.E.M. Ascombe), Oxford, Basil Blackwell,
1956.
Notebooks 1914 1916, ed. G.H. Von Wright and G.E.M.
Anscombe (trans.: G.E.M. Anscombe), Oxford, Basil
Blackwell, 1961.
The Blue and The Brown Books, ed. R. Rhees, Oxford, Basil
Blackwell, 1975.
Zettel, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. Von Wright (trans.:
G.E.M. Anscombe), Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1981.
Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (trans.: C.K. Ogden), London
200 ENAKSHI MITRA
& Boston, Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1983.
Philosophical Grammar, ed. Rush Rhees, Tr. Anthony Kenny,
Basil Blackwell, 1984.
Philosophical Investigations, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe, R. Rhees,
and G.H. Von Wright (trans.: G.E.M. Anscombe),
Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1984.
Other Readings
Baker, G.P. & Hacker P.M.S., Wittgenstein: Understanding and
Meaning, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1980, Vol. 1.
Bambrough R, Universals and Family Resemblances in
George Pitcher (ed.), Wittgenstein: The Philosophical
Investigations, London, MacMillan, 1966.
Dunlop, Charles, E.M., Wittgenstein on Sensation and
Seeing as, Synthese, Vol. 60, No. 3, 1984.
Frege, Gottlob, On Sinn Und Bedeutung(1892), in The
Frege Reader, (ed) Michael Beaney, Oxford, Blackwell,
1997.
Frege, Gottlob, The Thought: A Logical Enquiry in The
Frege Reader, (ed) Michael Beaney, Oxford, Blackwell,
1997.
Jones, Roger S., Physics as Metaphor, London, Wildwood
House Limited, 1982.
Kripke, Saul, Naming And Necessity, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980.
Malcolm, Norman, The Relation of Language to Instinctive
Behaviourin Investigating Psychology: Sciences of The
Mind After Wittgenstein, (Ed) John Hyman, Routledge,
1991.
Prasastapada, Prastapada Bhasyam, Prathama Bhaga, Tr:
Damodarasrama, Damodar Asrama, Kolkata.
Strawson, P F, On Referring in Ammerman R.R. ed. Classics
Of Analytic Philosophy, Routledge, London and New
York, 1994.
TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHY OF IMAGE
Franson Manjali
We shall begin with certain more or less commonplace
statements about language and image. The world of image,
like the world of language, is nothing static. This follows
from the fact that neither of the two phenomena is natural.
Secondly, the world of image and the world of language are
not independent of each other. In fact, they feed into each
other, ceaselessly. And finally, both image and language have
been claimed for and studied in terms of their literary-artistic
and scientific-documentary ends.
It is a well-established fact today that externalized visual
manifestation of language, that is, writing, was historically
preceded by and is derived from drawing. Therefore, the
historical movement of representation could only have
been: from speech to image and then to writing. But then,
speech itself could be said to be preceded by the non-
manifest mental image. This at least was the perspective
adopted by Aristotle, according to whom, (s)poken words
are the symbols of mental experience and written words are
the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the
same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds,
but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize,
are the same for all, as also are those things of which our
experiences are the images. (On Interpretation)
We cannot, in this paper, go into the seemingly endless
discussions and debates that try to account for the
intertwining relationship between language and image. We
can only try and identify some of the more recent and
contemporary benchmarks on this question. In any case, our
202 FRANSON MANJALI
purpose in touching upon this question, in the context of
understanding the relationship between philosophy and
media is only secondary. Our intention is to identify and
present some of the philosophical perspectives on image,
with as far as possible, a reference to the media.
1
***
A philosophy of image a rather vaguely used term ought
to be able to account for the use of the term image
beginning from its sense of the mental image to the current
proliferation of images in the scientific, artistic, literary and
mediatic domains. Aristotles use of the word impression
to speak of the mental image must have been preceded by
the existence of seals and other graphological signs and
practices in ancient Greece. Today, when the brain scientists
take this notion far more seriously, they refer to some sort of
a reality that is present in the brain that can be scanned
and displayed on a visual monitor. A monitored map of
the brain simulates in a more or less organized way the
chaotic activation that the neurons are supposed to receive.
If the image was for Aristotle the form of a representation
within us of the outside reality, today this inside reality is
said to be mapped and given for further viewing. While a
mirror reflects the reality for a viewer in front of it though
with a left-right inversion on the basis of the luminous rays
falling on the latter, the image on a computer monitor
involves complex physical mediations between its own
properties and the properties of the thing that it simulates.
What the monitor projects for our viewing is the technically
organized simulation of a reality that is hidden and not given
to our viewing.
2
Since we are used to believing in the images that we
perceive on a monitor, or for that matter and more surely,
our mental images it is not difficult for us to conclude that
the image, whether simulated or not, is distinct from the
thing. Rather than an exact counterfoil to the real thing,
TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHY OF IMAGE 203
the image is now seen as a node in the chain of visible forms
that are available to us, including the thing itself. This means
that image is not just a psychological resultant of perception,
imagination or thought, but a mode of existence of the real
world.
Jean-Paul Sartre in his well-known work, LImaginaire
(1940) had made a clear break with the tradition coming
from Hume, which viewed the image or imagination as a
pale copy of the mental image or impression resulting from
perception. According to him, imagination and perception
involve distinct attitudes of consciousness. The former is
active, and in it one gives oneself an image of the object,
and the latter is passive, merely letting one to encounter
the object in reality. For Sartre, image is a certain manner
in which the object appears to consciousness, or rather, a
certain manner in which the consciousness gives itself an
object. (Sartre, p. 21)
Secondly, contrary to perception which manifests only
slowly and bit by bit, imagination appears in one bloc and
produces the image as a whole and with an immediacy. In
this wholeness of the image, the object is however rendered
as non-present and non-existing. That is to say, while one
can act on the basis of the impression got from perception,
the image of an object in imagination does not prompt ones
action upon it. Furthermore, according to Sartre,
imagination involves a continuous emotive effort on the part
of consciousness, while on the contrary, in perception, the
object is passively received by it.
This phenomenological position on image has at least
two counterpoints in European philosophy. The first of these
appeared as a direct critique of Sartres perspective on
commitment in art and literature. Levinas in a short article,
Reality and Its Shadow (1948) published in the Sartre-
founded journal Les Temps Modernes rejects the idea that the
(artistic) image can have any value either as representational
truth or as manifesting the commitment of the artist. In the
204 FRANSON MANJALI
image, according to Levinas, there is no transmutation of
the object by means of emotive or existential energy. But
rather, he argues, it is the image that takes a hold over us
and renders us to a fundamental passivity. Levinas: An image
marks a hold over us rather than our initiative, a
fundamental passivity. Possessed, inspired, an artist, we say
harkens to a muse. An image is musical. An image detracts
us from the secure path of our conceptual reality, and sets
us to its own rhythm. Hence art maintains itself as a realm of
sensation (i.e., the aesthetic realism) which can be
rendered into conceptual / discursive mode only by means
of acts of criticism. In this realm, the image is no longer in
contact with reality. In Levinass words, it, disincarnates
reality.
Image also bears a relationship to the object, which is
that of resemblance, something which other represent-
ational media such as symbol, sign or word cannot have. The
thought that is, from a phenomenological point of view,
aimed at an object cannot pass the level of image. This is
what accounts for the opacity of image, in contrast to the
transparency of the sign. This space where conceptual
thought is arrested in its quest for reality, is according to
Levinas, the shadow of reality, or the image. Image resembles
reality not in comparison, nor analogically, but as the shadow
that accompanies and resembles the thing. Confronted with
the face of a person, ones thought can attain only its
caricature, its image. The image precedes the thing. Levinas:
...the thing is itself and its image.... this relationship between
the thing and its image is resemblance.
Thus image is characterized by its own specific
temporality. The artistic image is accompanied by a stoppage
of time, its inability to participate in real time. Its time is an
instant drawn from the real time, separated from it, and
destined to last, in its immobility, forever. Levinas: A statue
realizes the paradox of an instant that endures without a
future. It is this time of the image that Levinas refers to as
the meanwhile or the interval, or even the time of
interruption. (Later, Maurice Blanchot will speak of this as
the time of times absence specifically in the context of
literature.) Even when an object unfolds or develops in
historical time, as image, it may be immobilized as a shadow
and an instant of its existence may be immobilized as an
interval. The shadowy meanwhile (that an image is in relation
to its object) is, according to Levinas, never finished, still
enduring something inhuman and monstrous.
***
A general skepticism towards art and artistic image that seems
to lurk in Levinas work, is not discernible in the works of his
one-time teacher Heidegger, and that of his close associate
and friend, Maurice Blanchot. Heidegger, as we know, spoke
of the artwork in term of its ability to induce truth as
unconcealment (alethia). In the context of the dynamic
flow of the historical world, the artwork is essentially a useless
object; it is like a broken tool as he puts it. Broadly speaking,
it is this idea that resurfaces in Blanchots essay, The Two
Versions of the Imaginary (Blanchot, M., The Space of
Literature, Appendix 2).
Blanchot, however speaks of the inoperative, and
inhuman aspect of the artistic image in somewhat human
terms. Here again the image comes not after, but before
the object, as the incapacitated shadow that resembles reality.
But, Blanchot compares the artistic image not to an inorganic
object or tool, but to the organic body, more precisely to the
dead body. The image bears a cadaverous resemblance to
the thing. Like the dead body, it retreats from the human
reality, and occupies a special place as well as a fleeting but
enduring time in the human social milieu. The artistic image
bears on itself the pompous impersonality and immobility of
the dead body. The death of the living body that Blanchot
speaks of is not the sublating death of Hegel, nor is it death
featured as destinal possibility as in Heidegger. He is instead
206 FRANSON MANJALI
referring to Levinas notion of death as impossibility.
Blanchot: It is as if the choice between death as
understandings possibility and death as the horror of
impossibility had also to be the choice between sterile truth
and the prolixity of the non-true. It is as if comprehension
were linked to penury and horror to fecundity. (ibid., 261)
Like the undying death of the other that induces infinite
responsibility in the self, the cadaverous absence-presence
of the image, induces the other of all meaning and due to
its ambiguity, nothing has meaning, but everything seems
infinitely meaningful. (Ibid., 262)
***
Henri Bergsons Matter and Memory (1910) antedates Sartres
LImaginaire by more than three decades. It can be considered
as the quintessential work in a philosophy of image. In his
materialist account of consciousness, the distinction between
matter and consciousness is eliminated by resorting to a
universally pervasive notion of images, which act among
themselves continuously. Bergson poses his problem frontally
in the first paragraph of his work:
Here I am in the presence of images,..., images perceived when
my senses are opened to them, unperceived when they are closed.
All these images act and react upon one another in all their
elementary parts according to constant laws of nature, and, as a
perfect knowledge of these laws would allow us to calculate and
to foresee what will happen in each of these images, the future of
the images must be contained in their present and will add to
them nothing new.
This naturalistic materialism of images, which mediate the
presumed opposition between matter and mind has had its
takers and opponents. Levinas rejects it for assuming that
there is a natural continuity of time as the essence of
duration and for not being sensitive to the paradox that
an instant can stop. We have seen that for Levinas, image is
the shadow of reality, an image arrested in time, the immobile
interval.
While for Gilles Deleuze, the Bergsonian perspective of
the world as incessant interactive mobility of the material
images amounted to a theorization of the Cinema, before
its time. (Deleuze, G., Cinema I Movement-Image, 1983) This
is in spite of the fact that Bergson himself was philosophically
sceptical of the artificial movement-image he saw in the
nascent cinema of his time. Deleuzes justification for this
unexpected Bergsonism in cinema runs as follows:
The cinema can, with impunity, bring us close to things or take
us away from them and revolve around them, it suppresses both
the anchoring of the subject and the horizon of the world. Hence
it substitutes an implicit knowledge and a second intentionality
for the conditions of natural perception. It is not the same in the
other arts, which aim rather at something unreal through the
world, but makes the world itself or a tale [rcit]. With the cinema,
it is the world which becomes its own image, and not an image
which becomes world.
***
The second part of Roland Barthes Camera Lucida (1980)
a work that is written in homage to Sartres LImaginaire
begins with a discussion of the photographs of the then
recently deceased mother of author. What characterizes the
photographic image, according to Barthes, is its property of
that-has-been. This image, unlike the artistic or the
cinematic image, is ultimately intractable, that is: what I
see has been here, in this place which extends between
infinity and the subject (operator or spectator); it has been here,
and yet immediately separated; it has been absolutely,
irrefutably present, and yet already deferred. (Ibid., p. 77)
The referent of this image was really present in some place
and at some time to some consciousness, which may be either
the operator (of the camera) or the spectator (of the
208 FRANSON MANJALI
image).
3
The referent (e.g. of a person, ones mother),
emanates from the image for the spectator, in one bloc,
without giving much scope for personal interpretation. (This
is the basis of Barthes opposition between two contrary
qualities of the photograph: punctum that which hits me
directly like an arrow, and studium that which permits
contemplative study.) And yet, though the photograph
refers to a point distanced in space and situated in the past
time, the photographic image is without future. The
photograph is both like a specter from the past and a sign of
ones future death, Barthes would say. In other words, shall
we insist, it does not cease to be a caricature, a shadow of
reality and the arresting of time?
In the concluding sections of the Camera Lucida, Barthes
had alluded to this ambivalence in the context of the
photographic image. On the one hand, Barthes had noted,
the unmediated or immediate evidence of reality that a
photograph can give makes it a mad medium. But on the
other hand, it is tamed in the attempt to make it into an
art such as the cinema or by a banalizing preponderance of
it, as is the case in television and other electronic media
today. Roland Barthes:
Mad or tame? Photography can be one or the other: tame if its
realism remains relative, tempered by aesthetic or empirical habits
(leafing through a magazine at the hairdressers, the dentists);
mad if this realism is absolute, and so to speak, original, obliging
the loving and terrified consciousness to return to the very letter
of Time: strictly revulsive movement which reverses the course of
the thing, and which I shall call..., the photographic ecstasy. (Ibid.,
p. 119)
***
Photography, as we know was a technological invention of
the 19
th
century marking a major transformation in the
history of the image. The epoch was also characterized by
large-scale developments in the mechanical reproduction
of the work of art. While the period leading to the European
Renaissance was marked by a proliferation of Christian
religious paintings, more or less sacred, the 19
th
century
photographic image and the easy availability of mechanically
printed images took away, as Walter Benjamin says, the aura
of the artwork, and pushed it closer towards a depiction of
historical reality. Photographic image as a bearer or
documented reality, either benign or harmful, is indeed
the contemporary mode of its employment and of
understanding its use in the media today. Even neo-realist
cinema claimed to present documented historical reality by
means of its own specific techniques.
From the painted images of Jesus resurrection which
served as the resurrection of the image against the
monotheistic proscription of images in divine worship to the
recent attempts to censor the violent media images in the
aftermath of the terrorist destruction of the twin towers in
New York, the Western civilization seems to have come a
full circle. The ambivalent disposition of man towards image
has perhaps come from the fact that its mute presence can
be both in the service of man and a possible source of
destructive violence. Unlike linguistic discourse, the
unmediated and immediate character of image has been a
source of concern both in the mediation between man and
god and between man and man. Can the image kill?
4
is in fact
the title of a recent work by Marie Jos Mondzain, a
contemporary philosopher of image. Similarly, Image and
Violence is a central chapter in Jean-Luc Nancys book, The
Ground of the Image.
5
We shall dwell on these two works in
the remaining part of this paper.
Both Nancy and Mondzain are thus concerned with the
question of the relationship between image and violence.
But while Nancy approaches it in terms of a deconstruction
of the ontology of image, Mondzain inquires into the
relationship between the image and the spectator that is
210 FRANSON MANJALI
always in the process of being constituted and reconstituted
both from the end of production and that of reception of
images.
Both are also concerned, at least as a starting point, with
the sacredness of images, and even if not entirely, with the
sacred image. The sacred, Nancy clarifies, is that which is
separated, cut off, from the rest of objects. It is distinct
from them. The distinctness of the image, comes from its
being both present and absent, and at the same time, neither
present nor absent. In Mondzains rather technical
definition, image (is) a certain category of vaguely
designated objects like the visible objects which are strictly
speaking neither objects among other objects, nor signs
among other signs, but some sort of specific appearances
(apparitions), offered only to the eyes and not to any other
organ.
6
Further, from a more closely spectator-oriented
perspective, she would say, image (is) is everything that
makes a subject who can see a subject capable of maintaining
a spectatorial relation with the visible.
7
The image, whether it is created by human hand or not,
cannot be touched. It maintains its sacred distance from
us, even when it is exposed to us in its intimacy. It exercises
a sacred, even violent, force over us. Though sacred, Nancy
says, the image cannot be sacrificed. In its simultaneous
separation and intimacy, the image maintains a pompous
and violent domination over us. It remains present for what
is absent, and its distinct presence cannot be made absent,
either by sacrifice or by consumption. This is what gives the
image its power over us, its power to engulf us, to render us
passive, even when it is we who are looking at it. Hence the
fear and the corresponding query, Can the image kill? An
answer to this question is indeed not difficult to find, for no
violent image as such can make us violent, just as any number
of images of virtue cannot, in themselves make us virtuous.
It is not the violent or virtuous contents of the image that
makes us respectively violent or virtuous, but it is the
unmediated quality of the images that can hold us in their
violent sway.
In its monstrous intimacy, in being an indelible excess
over the given field of forces, image is akin to violence. This
excess is also not different from and parallel to the excess of
the scopic drive in us. We wish to see over and above as well
as behind what we see. According to Mondzain, this
principle has been profitably exploited in the violent history
of images. That is how the Byzantine church authorities,
rejected the iconoclasts demand for (re-)enforcing a ban
on divine images, even while they were not favoring idolatry.
Rather than prevent the believers from seeing the divine
image in conformity with the monotheistic Gods decree to
Moses, the officials decided that it was even better if the
former are in visual contact with the figure of the Christ
incarnated in images.
What the medieval church sought to achieve was the
elimination of the brute and violent power of the images as
such, by claiming that the divine figure is incarnated in them,
that is, they took the place of or represented an absent god.
The strategy they employed was to both ward off the
substantiality of the incarnated images and to incorporate
the followers into the body of the church. Mondzain, speaks
of this complex move to reestablish the authority of the
church even when faced with the proliferation of images:
Only the image can incarnate, such is the main contribution of
Christian thought. Image is not a sign among other signs, it has
the specific power of making one see, of pictorially realizing forms,
spaces, and bodies that it offers to view. Since Christian
incarnation is nothing but the coming in the visible of the visage
of God, incarnation is nothing other than the becoming image of
the unfigurable. To incarnate means to become an image, and
more precisely an image of passion. But this power of
appeasement, is it the case with every image whatever be its form
and content? Certainly not. ... Only the image which has the force
to transform violence into critical freedom, is the image that
incarnates. To incarnate is not to imitate, reproduce nor simulate.
212 FRANSON MANJALI
The Christian messiah is not Gods clone. It is not even to produce
a new reality to be offered to the idolators eyes. The image is
fundamentally unreal, and it is in this that rests its force, in the
rebellion against all substantialization of its content. To incarnate
is to give flesh, and not to give body. It is to operate in the absence
of things. Image gives flesh, that is to say, carnation [flesh-tint]
and visibility to an absence, in an insurmountable distance from
what is designated. To give body is, on the other hand, is to
propose the consumable substance of something real and true to
the members of a community, who are founded and who will
disappear in the body with which they are identified. To
commune in and by the image is to be devoid the incarnation of
a visibility without substance and without truth.
8
The Byzantine church thus claimed the incarnation of Christ
in the nonsubstantial and visible image, but at the same time
it sought to incorporate the believers in its own body by means
of their communion in and through the substance of his
image. The power and the violence of the image is thus
contained by invoking the absence of any substantial
presence behind it, but at the same time the substantial
image is employed to incorporate the faithful into a
common, and potentially violent body on the basis of their
exposure to the visible image. In our own day, perhaps this
is how, the preponderant and seemingly endless stream of
images, even though harmless in themselves, and in their
contents since there is no causal connection between
images of violence and acts of violence which incarnate
one or other kind of absent realities, incorporate and confuse
the viewers who are exposed to them through the public or
private media into a common, nay, communal body, ready
for violence.
In the modern technologies of media, especially in film
and television, the role of the screen is to offer a determined
place of the subject with respect to the voice of the master,
that is, to organize the spectators look. The screen is that
which divides visible space into two: that of the director
and that of the spectator. The directorial voice directs
the course of the visible image for the spectator who is
reduced to the silence of scopophilic desire, and is
incorporated into the master discourse. The spectators
body that fuses with the body in which he or she is
incorporated, is also led by the imaginary personhood of
the latter body. This is how the television or the cinema
screen induces a personification of the guiding body of the
visual discourse that keeps unfolding there. The violence
that the screen-image may induce is not due to the contents
of what appears there, but due to the suppression of the
body, the voice and the thought of the spectator who is under
the guidance of the director. Since the image and its power
is essentially unchannelisable, the operations of incarnation,
incorporation and personification that takes place can be
resisted only by opening it to a non-directed and open-ended
critical discourse, or shall we say, a deconstructive discourse.
In Modzains words: The visible does not kill in the field of
an always active speech.
9
However, is language itself immune from any play of
violence? And in what is image necessarily manifest as
violence? Jean-Luc Nancy explores these questions, in his
text, Image and Violence (The Ground of the Image, Chapter
2). There is indeed a truth of violence, where the latter is
straightaway a display of force, over and above the given play
or equilibrium of forces, leaving behind tell-tale signs of
destruction. He insists too, in a rather deconstructive vein,
that truth itself whether in language or not cannot be
dissociated from a certain violence. (Though this violence is
quite different from the violence of the image.) Truth, he
says, cannot irrupt without tearing apart an established
order.
10
Truth breaks open towards the outside of a given
system, it involves acts and the reality of transgression. Theres
a difference between the two kinds of truth, and the two
kinds of violence, according to Nancy. The true truth is
violent because its true while truth of violence is true only
because it is violent. Similarly, true violence is both
214 FRANSON MANJALI
destructive and self-destructive, while the violence of truth
is that which withdraws even as it irrupts and... that [which]
opens and frees a space for the manifest presentation of the
true.
11
Similarly, Nancy points out that image and violence also
share certain common features. Violence communicates
itself to its beholders only by leaving an image of itself. It
renders itself visible by authorizing its own action upon the
surroundings. Image, is similarly an excess upon what is
already given to view. Violence, truth and image, all these
involve the appearance of a certain alterity in relation to the
given self. In other words, a self-manifestation of the other.
Both truth and violence, involve some kind of showing: a
demonstration in the former and a monstration in the latter.
That is why, the image is a continuous and unstoppable
irruption in relation to the placid stability of the given order.
A dynamic and energetic metamorphosis that it is, the
image cannot be completely separated from blood-stained
cruelty. The image, in Nancys words is the prodigious force-
sign of an improbable presence irrupting from the heart of
a restlessness on which nothing can be built.
12
NOTES
1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference on
Philosophy and Media organized by the Department of Philosophy,
University of Poona, Pune, in March 2008.
2. In a recent note, Claudine Tiercelin provides us with an account of the
new and recent developments in response to the question What is an
image?: Firstly the proliferation of images of every kind, but even
more, the appearance of new types of images (photos, films, videos,
synthesized images, virtual images and digital images, etc.) and the
galloping complexification of networks and medias within which they
are inserted. And then, the appearance of new techniques of imagery
and among them cerebral functional imagery intended to establish the
mapping of brain in its functioning. She notes that there has been,
thanks to these new technologies, a transformation of the methods of
cognitive science, cognitive psychology and the philosophy of mind,
and it becomes possible not only to obtain structural information
relating to the anatomy of the brain (MRI, X-ray) but with the aid of
techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG), positron emission
tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI) or
the magneto-encephalography (MEG) to observe in vivo the brain
involved in cognitive activities, such as, notably that of imagery. (text
translated from French by the present author) (Internet site, http://
www.lemonde.fr/savoirs-et-connaissances/article/2004/06/30/
claudine-tiercelin-le-concept-d-image_371085_3328.html)
3. This notion of the intractable has been questioned since the advent of
the digital images, which allows for distortion and manipulation of the
image shot by the camera. See especially, criticism by B. Stiegler, The
Discrete Image in Echographies of Television (2002).
4. Limage, peut-elle tuer? (Paris, Bayard, 2002) is the French title of
Mondzains book. Quotations from this text are translated by the present
author.
5. The first six chapters of Nancys The Ground of the Image (New York,
Fordham University Press, 2005) are a translation of Au fond des images
(Paris, Galile, 2003). We shall be referring to only the first two chapters
of the English version, viz., The Image the Distinct and Image and
Violence.
6. Mondzain, Marie Jos, Homo Spectator, Paris, Bayard, 2007, p. 13.
7. Ibid, p. 13.
8. Mondzain, Marie Jos, Limage peut-elle tuer ? Paris : Bayard, 2002, pp. 31-
32.
9. Ibid., p. 59.
10. Nancy, Jean-Luc, The Ground of the Image, (Tr.) Jeff Fort. New York,
Fordham University Press, 2005, p. 18.
11. Ibid., p. 18.
12. Ibid., p. 23.
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Rancire, Jacques, 2007. The Future of the Image. (tr.) G. Elliott.
London: Verso. Fr. Orig. published in 2003.
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1986 edn. Limaginaire. Paris : Gallimard.
Orig. edn. 1940.
Stiegler, Bernard, and Jacques Derrida. 2002. Echographies
of Television Filmed Interviews. (tr.) Jennifer Bajorek.
London: Polity.
Tiercelin, Claudine, 2003. Description of a University course
on Image on the Internet.
SPECIAL ESSAY
*translated from Bengali by Nivedita Sen
BACK TO THE LAND OF THE PAST...*
Sumanta Banerjee
When I woke up, I saw the train entering the station. The
name of the station was written on a yellow signboard. I knew
now that I would have to get down. The pillars on the platform
were red in colour, the doors of the office were painted
green. When it stopped, I alighted. I saw Baba, Ma and Boudi
(my sister-in-law) waiting at the furthest corner of the
platform. There was nobody else anywhere, I was the only
passenger to disembark at this station.
Ma rushed forward. I hope you had no trouble, she
said, welcoming me affectionately. No, only the last few days
were a little strenuous, I replied. Boudi smiled and said,
Come lets head home.
When we crossed the gate of the platform and came
and stood outside, I looked all around to see that many
people had come. Robi-da (Robi Sen) was standing at a
distance. Behind him was Dhritin Chakraborty; rubbing
shoulders with him were my colleagues from the Statesman
Murali-da (Muralijiban Ghosh), Prashanta Sarkar, Ashim
Ray, Shyamadas Basu. Where was Bhabani Choudhury? I
didnt spot him in the crowd ! Even further away, I saw,
through something of a blur, my Delhi friends- Rajinder
Paul, Dilip Chaudhury, Subba Rao, Sudesh Vaid. On seeing
me, they greeted me with a wave of their hands.
Robi-da was the only one to come forward. Come over
220 SUMANTA BANERJEE
to Samarbabus in the evening he said. Youll meet
everybody.
But where is Samar Sen ?, I asked, surprised.
At the same place, Robi-da replied. In the Swinhoe
Street house.
***
I got out of the station with Baba, Ma and Boudi. I observed
that it was the same old Kolkata. We got onto a tram. Baba
lit a pipe, Boudi took out some change from the bag on her
shoulder, and bought the tickets, and Ma turned all her
attention to me - as always pestering me with a hundred
queries! We reached our old house- 37, Ekdalia Road.
Have a bath quickly, Ma said. There wont be any
water.
That same water problem even now! I exclaimed. Why
dont you leave this house?
Tell me how we could possibly do that! Ma said. This
is the house where your father... She left the sentence
unfinished.
In the afternoon, all of us sat down to eat. I ate jhinge
posto (vegetable cooked in poppy seed paste) after ages;
made by Ma, it was just as before! I could taste Boudis
culinary skills clearly in the doi machh - carp cooked in
yoghurt. We talked a lot as we ate; even after the meal was
over, sitting with our curry-stained fingers, there was no end
to chatting. Baba was quiet like earlier times. Ma had
unending questions - how was Dada, what were the
granddaughter and grandson-in-law (Runki-Anil) upto? How
old had their children (Piyal-Piyali) become? Hidden behind
the questions was an unarticulated wish - when would they
come? When would they all meet again?
I looked at Babas face. Except for Runki when she was
twelve-years old, he knew none of these people. He had
departed long ago. What was he thinking, sitting and hearing
about these unfamiliar people from unknown future
BACK TO THE LAND OF THE PAST... 221
generations? I observed that that there was a wan smile on
that old, tranquil face. After the meal, Boudi dragged me a
little aside and asked me about my elder brother, How is
he? Does he take his medicines and pills regularly?
I allayed Boudis concerns by offering a catalogue of my
Dadas daily regimen in the world of the living.
***
I indulged myself in a long siesta in the afternoon. After the
stress of the last few days, this was needed very badly. When
I woke up, I found the day rolling into late evening. I went
and stood on the balcony overlooking the main road. I
noticed that the park next to the tram line was just the same.
It used to be called the Temporary Park - I dont know why.
Yet it had survived like that for so many years. A few gas
lights had just been lit up. I saw that Baba had started off for
his walk in the park. With him was his childhood friend and
university colleague Kumudbandhu Ray, whom we used to
address as Jethamoshai. He had a beautiful singing voice.
After a while, their contemporary Suren Das, who had been
my teacher at Jagabandhu School, joined them. He walked
at an impossibly fast pace with his body leaning forward. We
used to call him the Sir of the 110 degrees angle. I
remembered his son Debabrata, whose nickname was Bagha.
In February 1946, on Rashid Ali Day, in the widespread
demonstration in Kolkata protesting against the trial of the
I.N.A. Captain Rashid Ali in Delhis Red Fort, Bagha was
killed by a police bullet. When he was hospitalized with the
injury, his parents had gone to meet him. Amidst intolerable
pain, he had said smilingly, Why fear? I am giving up my
life for the country! He couldnt have been very old - he
was a year or two senior to us. Fourteen-fifteen? He was always
a sort of daredevil. And the times were such! In the words of
the teenager prodigy, the contemporary young poet Sukanta
Bhattacharya, The drum-beats herald the victory of the last
battle for freedom no more fear anywhere. No wonder
that boys like Bagha would be in the front line of that battle.
Putting on a kurta over my pyjamas, I then got ready to
go out. I would have to go to Samarbabus. Samar Sen. The
avant garde poet of the 1930-40 period, who stopped writing
poems, gave up a comfortable job in the Anandbazar Patrika
establishment, and opted instead to start the radical journal
Frontier to give voice to dissenting views during the tumultuous
days of the Naxalite movement. His home used to be the
haunt of young admirers of his I being one of them.
Ma sensed that I would spend the evening at the adda
of old friends. Youre going there to drink that horrid stuff
again? Ma rebuked me. Why dont you drink it sitting at
home? She then affectionately added, Dont be late.
As soon as I stepped out from the house, I slipped into
those familiar streets. After crossing the tram line, I took
Cornfield Road and then turned into Swinhoe Street. There
was a light burning downstairs in Samar Sens house. As I
knocked on the door, Samarbabu came out, sporting a kurta
and a lungi. He wore glasses, and had that gentle smile on
his face. On entering the drawing room, I saw Robi-da,
Pradyot-da, Dhruba-da (Mitra), Kiran Raha and a few others.
A bottle of whiskey had been opened. As soon as I entered,
Robi-da yelled, Here comes the bastard ! Where else can
he go? Hed have to come back here !
When did you arrive?, Samarbabu asked.
Robi-da answered on my behalf. This morning. I went
to the station. In fact, I told him then to come along in the
evening.
Who else has come today? Dhruba-da enquired.
I didnt see anybody else getting down at the station I
replied. I was the only one.
After this, the discussion veered in another direction.
The gathering did not air views on politics. They became
immersed instead in conjectures about all the people known
to them who had stayed back in Kolkata to date, the ailments
that they were suffering from, and forecasts of how long
they were destined to live. Well, I found it funny! Earlier, in
this very house on Swinhoe Street, every evening the air was
filled with sounds of political debates and speculations. And
then, before the adda broke up, sometimes there would be
some reminiscing on friends who were dead. Now I observed
that the discussion was about the future; the objects of this
discussion were those who were still alive. And the predictions
were about the number of days that they would have to count
to wait for their death.
I saw that in one corner of the room, just as in earlier
times, Kiranbabu was sitting silently and listening to everyone
else talk. Kiran Raha was a well-known film critic in his days;
but his weak spot was Satyajit Ray. We, the youngsters, used
to make fun of his partiality for Ray. But Kiranbabu older
than me by several years never took offence, and was always
affectionate towards me.
I dragged a wicker stool to sit near him. He didnt say a
word. I understood that he had been a little hurt by my
behaviour. Kiranbabu, I couldnt manage to go to your house
before you left. I said softly.
Oh no! So what? You are a very busy person, he replied.
He then paused a little and said, You were in Kolkata when
I was ill, isnt it?
Yes, for a while, I said embarrassedly. But amidst so
much work...
Kiranbabu pressed my hand and said, I know. Actually,
I had lost my hearing towards the end and was unable to
recognize anybody. All my old friends had therefore stopped
coming. It was sensible of you not to come.
On the other side, the adda had warmed up. Robi-da
was abusing with gusto those who were still alive and kicking.
Nobody- no minister/ deputy minister/ Congress/
Communist/ political leader/ film star/ cricket player- was
being spared the sting of his scathing tongue.
Taking this opportunity, I turned to Dhruba Mitra and
remarked sardonically, Do you remember, Dhruba-da,
Mrinal Sen used to say, Robi Sen is the Durbasha of this era.
Nobody dare stand face to face with him.
Robi-da was going to say something, but Dhruba-da shut
him up, sidled up to me and asked me in a suppressed voice,
Is Suchitra still singing?
I saw her at a gathering at Rabindra Bhaban the other
day, I replied. But the singing was done by her students.
I wonder how she is, Dhruba-da seemed to say to
himself.
It seemed like a veiled entreaty: When will she return?
In the midst all this, I noticed that Samarbabu was just as
he was before - calm and steady. He was listening quietly,
expressing a few opinions from time to time, at times
exceedingly sarcastic even at his own expense. In the very
middle of all this, he turned to me once and enquired about
how my wife Bizeth was. His question reached straight into
Robi-das ever attentive auditory cavity. Immediately, Robi-
da pointed a finger at me and asked, His wife Bizeth...?
Talking about her? That young woman even cast a spell on
Frontier. It was a Bhanumatis feat!
Somebody who possibly kept track of my wifes birthplace
said in a stuttering voice, Why Robi ? Do-nt-yo-u-kno-w?
Bhanumati was, in fact, born in Hyderabad!
I realized that under the trance of alcohol, a historian
among the group of scholars present here was confusing
Bikramadityas wife, Bhanumati the expert magician, with
another Bhanumati who in a much later period acquired
fame in Hyderabad as a danseuse and the mistress of a nawab
of the Asafzahi dynasty there. But then, this Bhanumati also,
one has to admit, was a specialist in another form of magic!
However, in a bid to manage the situation, and in order
to calm down Robi-da, I protested: Ah! Why are you drawing
Bizeth into matters regarding Frontier? She was always non-
political! She had never bothered her head about these
things.
Indeed! Robi-da now gave me a dirty look and
exclaimed. Looking at the others, he then said with a
dramatic gesture, Then let me tell you... In 1971, when
the Pakistani soldiers had entered Dhaka... at that time...
I then remembered. I quickly interrupted Robi-da and
said, Aha! That was just an act of Bizeths impulsiveness...
But who could hinder Robi-da? Meanwhile, he had
whetted the curiosity of the others. Shutting me up,
everybody leaned forward to listen to Robi-das account.
What happened, Robi? Why dont you spill the beans?
I noticed Samar Babus lips curving into a mischievous
smile. Robi-da then settled down to narrate the story with a
flourish: In 1971, when the news of the atrocities committed
by the Pakistani soldiers had started pouring in, and in Delhi,
intellectuals like this bastard Sumanta were organizing
meetings and demonstrations of protest, his wife Bizeth
suddenly sent a poem to Frontier.
A poem in Frontier? But Frontier never published poems!
somebody in the room butted in sarcastically.
Robi-da made a face and said, But that is what I am
talking about! This was the first time that a poem was
published in Frontier.
Was it a very fiery poem? someone asked.
Rubbish! Of all the..., Robi-da snapped back. Then he
pointed his finger at me and shouted: This scoundrel! It
was to expose the hypocrisy of scoundrels like him that Bizeth
wrote that poem. Taking a swig of whiskey from his glass,
and twisting his face into a grimace, Robi-da continued:
Bizeth wrote about how they gave fiery speeches in meetings
and demonstrations during the day, and in the evenings,
how after boozing at home or at the Press Club, they shed
tears for East Bengal.
Falteringly, I said, Bizeth actually wrote it and sent it to
Samarbabu in a fit of anger. She never imagined that it would
get published... I turned towards Samarbabu and said, Do
you know? She still feels embarrassed about the affair!
Samarbabu smiled gently and said, Why? It was nice of
her...
The night was dragging on. Suddenly, Sulekha-di came
out from the inner rooms. I could make out that this was
Samarbabus dinner time. We all got up one by one. Sulekha-
di took me a little aside and said, Bithi has heard that you
are here. She wants to meet you.
Where is Bithi? I asked. At Apus place, she replied
in a very soft voice.
I recalled that their daughter Bithis husband Dhurjati -
our friend Apu - had come back here many years ago.
Does Apu still have his old phone number?, I asked.
Sulekhadi smiled and said, Everything is the same here-
nothing changes. I will call tomorrow, I said.
All of us got out of Samarbabus house, one by one. I saw
Robi-da off at the doorstep of his Bamunpara Lane house.
How is Bizeth?, he held my hand and asked.
Shes fine! I replied. With a very soft touch to his voice,
Robi-da bid me goodbye: Youre lucky, Sumanta!
I started walking towards my old house in Ekdalia Road.
It was eleven at night. Thinking about Robi-da, I recalled
many things. He was a single-minded worker of the old
Communist party. I have heard so many stories about the
underground period of 1948-49 from him. Most of them
were amusing, because he had a special ability of debunking
everything, no matter how serious it was. But camouflaged
under this mans iconoclastic behaviour, we all knew that
there was the history of an emotional relationship.
I kept walking and turned up at those old roads - Bondel
Road, Ballygunge Place, Mandeville Gardens. I tried to
remember - Kalindi Sen lived somewhere in this vicinity.
What a great actress! She had been my Boudis colleague at
IPTA- through that link, she was close to our family. Those
who had seen Kalindi act in Amritalal Basus Byapika Biday
produced by Sabitabrata Dutta, would never be able to forget
her. Where was Kalindi Sen now?
***
The phone rang out loud at the dead of night. Startled, I
got up from my sleep. The sonorous voice that came floating
in as I picked it up sounded familiar. Sumanta, is anything
brewing? It was the voice of Kedar Ghosh, our chief reporter
in the Statesman. He was our big boss. When I was on night
duty, he used to call me up regularly like this in the middle
of the night to find out if some mishap had taken place in
the city at some unearthly hour, and to give me instructions
if needed. I got alarmed, hearing his voice all of a sudden.
Had I gone off to sleep while on duty in the reporters room
of the Statesman? I looked all around me, but no! I was in my
room in our Ekdalia Road house. Kedarbabu? You?, I then
asked hesitantly over the phone.
The reply came from the other side. In that ever-familiar,
dry, solemn voice devoid of any feeling, he said: Come and
see me tomorrow.
But where, Kedarbabu? I asked hastily, before he could
hang up.
There seemed to be a note of impatience in his voice as
he replied, as if I had raised a meaningless, irrelevant issue.
Why? In the office! he said.
I couldnt sleep for the rest of the night. I started
wondering whether this meant that the Statesman got
published here too. In other words - I would have to go to
that old office tomorrow morning ! Who all would I see there?
***
The next morning. I reached that old crossing at
Dharmatolla. The Statesman office seemed the same as in
former times, but looked a little out of place from the
outside. The shops, crowds, cars and other vehicles were
missing. It seemed to be just an unfinished sort of house in
the midst of undeveloped surroundings. As if it were waiting
for everybody to arrive.
I entered the premises. It was already eleven. But there
was not much of a crowd in front of the advertisement
counter downstairs. Everything was sort of hazy. Standing
before the lift, when I pressed the bell, it did not descend.
Perforce, I climbed the stairs to the first floor. The corridors
were empty - there was nobody around. But as soon as I
drew near our old reporters room, I felt reassured. Ah!
Here was our peon Tewari sitting on the bench that was
placed outside this room. He had on his usual half-sleeved
kurta and khaki shorts. He stood up, and greeted me with a
beaming smile: So youve come back? It seemed as though
he had, in fact, been waiting for me. I asked him how he
was.
I remembered that it was Tewaris job to take the typed
copies of the reports prepared by us to the room of the sub-
editors, which was just opposite our room. Those were days
when computers and e-mails had not yet become the
standard things. Tewari used to doze off late in the night.
While we were on night duty, therefore, many of our copies
would often not reach the sub-editors room. They would
get scattered around midway on the floor of the corridor.
Quite often, when we got out after finishing our night duty,
we would see Tewari sitting on the bench, leaning against
the wall and sleeping while one of the copies typed by us
was lying under the bench. We would pick it up and hand it
in at the subeditors room. But we never complained against
Tewari. The reason was not entirely a love of the subaltern
(although the theory about subalterns had not been
fashioned at that time, those of us who were leftists supported
workers like Tewari). Let me divulge the real reason.
Towards the end of the month, young reporters like us used
to run out of the money that we earned from our wages. We
then had to appeal to Tewari. He used to give us loans on
interest!
On entering our reporters room, I saw Lord Morley -
our senior colleague Murali-da or Muralijiban Ghosh - sitting
at his table back in the room facing the door. (We had fondly
christened him with the name of the British administrator
John Morley of the famous Morley-Minto reforms in India,
partly because of the similarity in the sound of the two names,
and partly because of Murali-das strict adherence to English
speech pattern). He was rubbing his forehead, as if in
excruciating pain, poring over some junior reporters copy
to correct it before sending it to the press! Before I could
say anything, I heard a scream from behind - So youve come
at last? I turned back and saw Shyamadas Basu , our staff
photographer, getting up from his table to greet me. He
caught hold of me and dragged me to the other table the
more important one where our boss Kedar Ghosh was
sitting with his pipe in his mouth, talking to somebody on
the phone. Shyamadas was least bothered about his phone
conversation and shouted: Here, Kedarbabu, he has finally
turned up.
Kedarbabu hung up and said, Yes. I had a chat with
him over the phone yesterday. Then he turned towards
me and said, Look at the roster to find out your assignment
today.
I turned around, and found that the long, wide table of
the reporters was still in the same place. In the middle of
the rows of mammoth Remington typewriters, I could see
the old roster register with the red cover lying there as in
the past. Before I could pick it up and open it, Murali-da
piped up, Ah! What will you get by looking at the roster?
You dont even have an assignment! Unless Satya-da comes,
wholl give you an assignment? Hell be here a little later.
It occurred to me that in fact, I couldnt see Satya-da,
meaning Satya Bose, our deputy chief reporter, anywhere.
It was Satya-da who would regularly note in the roster who
among us would go news-gathering where - Writers Building
(the red-brick colonial structure housing the secretariat in
Dalhousie Square), the Municipality offices in Dharmatalla,
or the police headquarters at Lalbazaar, or meetings,
demonstrations etc. in the Maidan or elsewhere. He was a
quiet person - a man of the old British era. With a lot of
care, he would scribble through our copies with a pencil to
make them printworthy. I owe a lot to him during my training
in journalism. Whether it was winter or summer, Satya-da
would come wearing a tie and a suit. He would address us
affectionately as Bhai, and cajole us to extract copies from
all of us by the stipulated deadline.
I was waiting for Satyada, when Ashim Ray suddenly
appeared, pushing open the door. He had that familiar
cropful of hair, and a playful smile under the moustache on
his face as I used to know him when he enjoyed fame as an
offbeat novelist among a limited circle of readers like us. He
was sporting a coloured bush shirt and trousers. Seeing me,
he came forward and said, How are you? One did not get a
chance to talk to you amidst that crowd at the station
yesterday.
How are you? I asked.
Getting by alright, he replied. Now that you are staying
here, come over to our place one day. Do you remember
the house?
Wouldnt I? I replied. The first floor of that old, red
house at the corner of Rashbehari and Kalighat. I had first
gone there soon after joining the Statesman. It must have
been 1962. You had invited me to have tea one Sunday
morning. I was an admirer of your novel Gopal Deb. I was
really floored when you requested me to review Ekaler Katha,
Gopal Deb and Dwitiyo Janma for the magazine Ekshan.
Ashim now looked at me with a suggestive smile and
said, And dont you remember the last visit? I recollected.
Of course I do, I answered. It must have been 1973-74.
Bhabanibabu and I...
Ashim interrupted me and said, Both of you came over
suddenly one Sunday afternoon. At that time, you were
both... Ashim left the sentence unfinished.
I caught the thread and said, Yes. Both of us were then
underground. And do you recall - your wife Geeta had
cooked and fed us a fabulous dish of hilsha with mustard! Its
taste still lingers in my mouth.
Ashim smiled gently and said, Geeta reached here even
before me. She has now settled down. I will ask her to cook
Shorshe-Ilish (Hilsha in mustard paste) one day and invite
you all.
I remembered that I had last met Ashim at the corner of
Gariahat in 1985. We had both gone and entered a small
tea stall. Ashim had broken down while giving me a
description of the incident. He and Geeta had gone to some
far-flung region to spend a vacation. Geeta had suddenly
taken ill. There were no doctors anywhere around. Ashim
had run around desperately here and there - but Geeta
finally died, virtually without any treatment. While narrating
to me his helplessness during his wifes last moments, Ashim
had broken down despondently inside that tea shop. After
some days, Ashim had himself taken ill. One day, I heard
that Ashim was in hospital. He died soon after.
Meanwhile, I found our reporters room was getting
crowded. Phani-da (Chakrabarty), a senior colleague of
mine, had just arrived. He welcomed me loudly with a wide
smile, So! Youve arrived at last, Sumantababu? Then he
drew me aside and spoke in a low voice. There is a lot to
talk about. Bhabani has sent a message. Will you be there in
the evening? Ill tell you when we meet. Immediately after
that, he excitedly walked over towards Kedarbabus table
and began to report, Do you know Kedarbabu, what a to-
do there was at Writers Building yesterday... After a while,
Prashanta Sarkar sauntered in. Tall, and clad in a white shirt
tucked into a pair of black trousers, he peered at me from
behind his thick glasses. He held out a packet of Charminar
towards me and asked, So mawai! How do you feel being
here? He always pronounced mashay (sir) as mawai.
I smiled and said, I still havent got used to it. Prashanta
laughed out loud and said, You will, by this evening. Then
he opened the roster and passed his eyes over his
assignments, puffed out some smoke from the cigarette
dangling from a corner of his lips, and said, Okay listen,
Mawai! Come to Olympia at nine in the night. That rascal
Dhritin will also be there. He pulled a typewriter and started
typing some news report or feature story. Then he turned
to me and said, Why dont you drop in at Raghu Banerjees
office around afternoon?
Watching him typing, I was reminded of days long past,
and about his remarkable professional skill. Prashanta Sarkar
known by his pet name Balai-da! According to Raghu
Banerjee, he was a crack reporter. He used to be a stringer
for different newspapers. He could report the same incident
in diverse ways, preparing it within a very short time for several
newspapers. He was on the staff of the Statesman. And yet he
could feed in the same news from various angles,
interpreting according to the different needs and exigencies
of papers like the US Life/Time chain, Bombays Blitz, the
Kolkata weekly Darpan for all of which he wrote. If we
asked him how he could juggle these various roles, he used
to say, Arrey Mawai, I was initiated into this racket by the
Communist party. I was a member of the party during the
1948-49-50 period. In those days, the party line would change
every now and then. One had to walk in step, and change
positions. I have thus learnt how to change the colours and
feed the same news story to different papers.
Sensing what was going on in my mind, Prashanta
stopped typing, lit another cigarette, turned to me and said,
Raghu has promised to take us somewhere today. It is a
hijra settlement in the Khidirpore dockyard. Will you come
long? I can sell the story to Time.
By Raghu, he meant Raghu Banerjee, the Divisional
Commissioner of Kolkata, a powerful officer. He sat in the
New Secretariat from morning till night. Then he went home
and slept. At midnight, he would get out in his car. If we
(that is Prashanta, Dipankar Ghosh, Shyamadas and I) were
on night duty, he would turn up at the Statesman office, and
when our work for the day was over, his work would begin.
That is to say, he would do the rounds of the entire city,
taking us along with him. He had the lanes and by-lanes of
Kolkata on his fingertips. He would go crazy wanting to show
us which old house had a blend of Moghul architecture,
gothic architecture and Bengali atchala (a traditional
thatched cottage with eight roofs). Or he might have come
upon a prostitute on some night at the corner of Free School
Street who he would be eager to introduce to us because
nobody could sing like her Rabindranaths Dui haat-e kaaler
mandira je shodai baaje (The cymbals of Time for ever being
played by the pair of hands).
***
While being engrossed in all these memories, I suddenly
looked up and found that the fingers on our office wall clock
were about to reach half-past twelve. All except I were very
busy around this time. Everybody was getting out on their
respective assignments. About an hour or so later, Ashim
Ray would have to go to cover some public meeting.
Shyamadas would accompany him to take pictures. Shyama
has always been the trouble-shooter in our office. Although
no one dared to question Kedar Ghosh, who lorded over us,
he would give in to all of Shyamadass demands - however
unreasonable they were. I dont know why. Even now, lifting
the camera bag onto his shoulder, Shyamadas went up to
Kedarbabus table and announced, Kedarbabu, Satyada
hasnt come in till now. So let us now take Sumanta along
with us on our assignment.
Looking at his watch, Kedarbabu lowered his face and
mumbled a hmm of sorts, indicating his assent!
Ashim, Shyama and I were walking through the corridor
after getting out of the reporters room, when we saw SB -
or Satya Brata Chatterjee coming out of the news editors
room on the left. He was better-known as an art critic among
the painters circles of Calcutta than as the news editor of
the Statesman. Seeing me, he struck his forehead and
exclaimed: Oh no! You again?
I laughed and said, No. I will not bother you any more.
I have given up painting. And I dont do reporting any
more.
Youve done a sensible thing, SB said. You never
managed to do much with either of these. Then he
pondered a little and added, However, I thought a few of
your pictures werent bad - I had written so in the Statesman
then. When was it that your exhibition took place?
I scratched my head and tried to recall the year. Was it
1962 or 1963 when, along with the paintings of my friend
Moni Jana (now living in some obscure village in France
perhaps!), I had exhibited my paintings in the Academy of
Fine Arts? In those days, renting a hall for exhibiting paintings
was affordable. There were only a few galleries which one
could easily go and book for exhibitions - for instance, the
one behind the museum in Sudder Street, the Artistry House
adjacent to the office of the Asiatic Society in Park Street,
Chowringhee Terrace in Bhowanipore. And another that
was most popular and easily available was the Academy of
Fine Arts patronized by Lady Ranu Mukherjee the wife of
Sir Biren Mukherjee, an industrialist knighted by the British
Queen! who also happened to head the board of directors
of our newspaper Statesman.
I asked SB, Does the Academy of Fine Arts still exist
here?
Why wouldnt it? SB replied. Lady Ranu is present
here in person. Of course! I remembered that Lady Ranu
was a patron of art! Our Debu-da (artist Debabrata
Mukhopadhyay) who was my maternal cousin, used to banter
and say, Lady Ranu is no ordinary person! Our Lady Ranus
place is second only to that of Lady Gregorys of Ireland!
Walking down the corridor in a hurry with a bundle of
papers in his hand in the opposite direction, SB turned
towards me and said, I hope you are coming to the mosque
in the evening! We could talk then.
Mosque meant the place for reading the evening
namaaz for mullahs like us! In other words, it was our favourite
haunt the Olympia Bar!
Ashim, Shyama and I started walking. At the end of the
corridor, when we were at the head of the stairs, I suddenly
remembered something. I turned to the right and looked
at the two lavatories adjacent to each other. Lo and behold
The nameplate was still intact.
Whats up? Why have you stopped? asked Shyama.
Looking up at Ashim, I drew his attention to the board
on the womens lavatory and asked, Do you see - it still says
Ladies?
Getting restless, Shyama asked, So what? He was going
to utter an abuse when I interrupted him and said, Aha !
Ashim, dont you recall? In keeping with our Statesman
stylebook, there was a strict injunction against ever using
the word ladies in the Statesman newspaper - one must only
write woman.
Remembering it, Ashim gave a mischievous grin and said,
Yes. There would only be exceptions under two
circumstances. First, one would have to write Lady if one
had to report something about Lady Ranu Mukherjee,
because she was the wife of the chairman of our board, Sir
Biren. And the second condition...
Before he could finish, Shyama laughed out loud and
declared, Oh yes! I remember.
In those days, there was actually a joke doing the rounds
in our office - As soon as a woman sits on a commode in the
Statesman office, she becomes a lady!
The three of us got out of the Statesman office and came
onto the road. Come, lets do some groundwork before
getting off, said Shyama.
The term groundwork had been coined by Muralida.
It meant - after coming out from our office, and before going
out on our respective assignments, we should tarry for an
hour or so at Chhota Bristol - the Little Bristol bar in the lane
opposite the Statesman office and down a few pegs, to
prepare the groundwork for our reporting during the rest
of the day !
Following Shyamas advice, we entered Little Bristol. The
ancient English Bristol Hotel that used to be on the main
road had become extinct for a long while now. Its small,
cheap, desi version was in the lane that faced our office. It
was called alternatively Chhota Bristol or Moti Sheel (named in
the memory of the famous millionaire of old Kolkata, whose
descendants still carried on the business there). As soon as
we handed the price for three pegs of rum to the waiter, a
bottle of water and three glasses of rum arrived. Pouring
water into all the glasses, I said, Look here, Shyama, you
rascal! You died panting from asthmatic spasm. You always
suffered from asthma. But here I find that you have no
dearth of breath. Youre carrying on as ever even after
coming here!
Shyama took a sip from his glass and said, Why shouldnt
I go on? I dont care a fig for anyone. I dare anyone to tear a
single strand of my pubic hair!
I patted Shyama on his back and said, Bravo Shyama!
This is why you are our Shyama. This is why Dipankar had
named you raw.
Dipankar Dipankar Ghosh was our colleague in the
Statesman. Hes been left behind in the world of the living.
Rolypoly and jovial as ever, he still sings in his bass voice the
old song that he learnt in Oxford as a student Ippy ai, ai,
ippy ai... she came in blue pyjamas...shell be coming around
the mountains...
Shyama laughed, raised his hand and said, No, no! raw
was not for my smutty jokes but...
Ashim reminded us, Dipankar used to say, Shyama is a
raw diamond, an uncut, unspoilt one! It was true that a
genuine human being like Shyama was rare. I asked him,
Tell me, do you still have that studio in that lane behind
Dharmatolla?
Shyama struck his hand on the table and said, Of course.
I still use the dark room there. Come along one day. We
could have an adda.
I suddenly recalled an incident one evening at that studio
of his. Remember? I asked, looking at Ashim. We were
chatting while in an adda at his studio one day. Dhritin
Chakraborty was also there. We were probably discussing
poetry. Suddenly Shyamadas, who had his stomach lined with
quite a few pegs by then, stood up and said, Damn your
habit of writing poems on the sky, the stars and the moon! If
you want to hear, listen to my poem. He then recited in a
serious voice: I could fuck your moonlight, as long as I have
a lantern in my hand!
Ashim and Shyama both burst out laughing. Shyama
patted me on my back and said, Wow Sumanta! Your
memory is great!
The day was getting on. It was time for Ashim and
Shyamadas to go and cover the meeting. We guzzled the
booze in one gulp and got up. After getting out on the road,
Ashim asked me, Why dont you come along with us? Its
not as if you have any other work.
What is this meeting all about ?, I asked.
What else?, Shyama replied. The CP(I)M.
But all their leaders are still... I said.
Why?, said Ashim. Kakababu and Promodebabu are
here. And Anil Biswas has just arrived. He then grinned in
his characteristic cynical manner and said, The gathering
at the Maidan is, in fact, to greet him with a warm welcome.
His comment stirred up old memories ...Kakababu (or
uncle) was the endearing term we used, during our days in
the united Communist Party of India (CPI), for Muzaffar
Ahmad, one of the founders of the Communist movement
in India, who later led the CPI(M); Promodebabu was
Promode Das Gupta, the veteran secretary of the partys
West Bengal unit, whom I had encountered both as a former
functionary of the CPI, and later as a journalist; and lastly,
his successor Anil Biswas who was the West Bengal CPI(M)s
secretary, recently dead all of whom have found shelter in
this world !
Now, turning back at Ashim and Shyamadas, I said, No,
let it be, You better carry on after all, you have to write
the report.
Before leaving, I pulled Ashim a little away and asked,
Look here, I dont see Bhabani Choudhury. Doesnt he
come to office?
He remained quiet for a while. Then he said, After
coming here, Bhabani didnt join the Statesman again. You
know him. Would he ever be the slave of the management
of the paper again after waging war against them?
I remembered the first strike in the Statesman office to
meet the demands of the press staff and other workers in
1966. At that time, among the reporters, it was Bhabani alone
who joined the strike in their support. He is a pioneer.
During the all-India newspaper strike in 1969, the other
reporters of the Statesman joined him in participating in the
strike. After a year or two, he went a step ahead. Resigning
from the Statesman, he went underground and joined
revolutionary politics.
But cant one meet him? Is he underground here too?
I asked Ashim.
Only if he makes himself available can you meet him,
he said with a smile.
***
After seeing off Shyama and Ashim, I crossed the road and
reached the Central Avenue intersection. It was two in the
afternoon. I entered the House of Lords of Coffee House. It
used be very crowded at this time in the past. But I saw that
it was virtually empty now. A few people were sitting at a
couple of tables. I saw Robi-da puffing away at a cigarette at
a far flung table. In front of him was Debesh-da, or Debesh
Bhattacharya, an officer in an insurance company. He would
spend the major portion of the day in Coffee House. He
would pore over a pile of newspapers, mark out a particular
news item and ask, Tell me, will Johnson sit with Ho-Chi-
Minh? Or What do you think? Do you think Prafulla Sen
(the then chief minister of West Bengal) will survive this
election? I advanced towards their table with trepidation. I
thought Debesh-da would start firing questions again. But I
immediately felt assured that those were all questions of a
previous era. Debesh-da certainly wouldnt bother his head
with those any more. Instead, he would start with Tell me -
what do you think? Would America eventually be routed in
Iraq? Or Tell me - who is really this Osama Bin Laden?
But it is these questions again which had flummoxed me
while in the other world, and having failed to find answers
there I had finally landed up in this world!
As soon as I stood near the table, Debesh-da raised his
head, and seeing me, said, Ah! Youve come. We were
waiting for you. Saying this, he spread out a heap of
newspapers. I could spot among them the pieces of news
items circled in the familiar black ink by him. But these were
no political news. Debeshda broke into a roar of laughter
and said, Look, theyve carried your obituary!
I pulled up a chair to sit and grabbed the newspapers. It
was true! Strange! There were obituaries on me. In some
papers, there was just a quarter of a column but in some
others it was spread over a full column, accompanied by a
hideous, passport size photograph. What was written was even
more horrendous. Wrong facts and foolish observations! The
more I read, the more furious I became.
Look at this, Robi-da? The gumption of the fellows! I
said complainingly: All of you know me. Tell me, is there
any sense in what they have written? I have to register my
protest!
Robi-da turned the newspapers over with a serious face
and said, But they have missed out on the main thing.
What is that? I asked.
Robi-da took a puff at his cigarette and said, Not one,
but two things. Firstly, that you, son-of-a-bitch, were a
number-one womanizer - they havent written that. And
secondly, they also havent said that you were a fake
revolutionary.
We all started laughing. But something made me feel ill
at ease. There were many wrong dates in the obituaries.
Those who had written them had jumbled up many
incidents. In our times, there used to be a department called
the morgue in the Statesman, which prepared files
compiling facts about the lives of certain famous people and
would regularly update them - so that the obituaries
published on the day after their death would be more or
less correct. In my lifetime, I could not gain a place in those
exclusive files, and thus failed to enter the `morgue! As a
result, I have to suffer this sorry state today! But then what
was the need for these obits on me? May be some of my
acquaintances, out of friendly affection, had inserted them
in the newspapers.
But there are many wrong statements here, Debesh-
da, I protested again. It is necessary to submit a rejoinder
to them.
This is the fun, you idiot! Debesh-da laughed aloud,
and said. You people have no privileges like rejoinders,
contradictions, letters to editors, in this world. In the other
world, they will eternally remember you solely through what
will be written in the newspapers about your lives. No matter
how much you protest sitting here, you wont be able to
achieve anything.
Thumping his chest, Debeshda said, Look at me. I had
spent my life being a pimp for insurance companies. I hadnt
become famous like you. No obituary came out in the
newspapers after my death. Only you people have
remembered me as I once used to be!
Its true, Robi-da said. Remember, Sumanta? With a
cancer in his throat, and a grotesque bandage tied around
his neck, Debesh took us to Elphinstone bar one day and
treated us to booze?
Jumping up, Debeshda said, Lets go to Elphinstone.
Surprised, I asked, Which age are you living in,
Debeshda? Is Elphinstone there any more? In its place is
Elphin!
Oh, you dont know - we have all the old things here,
Robi-da said, laughing loudly. Lets go.
After getting out of the House of Lords, we walked a bit-
and what a surprise ! I found that it was indeed true! Our
old Elphinstone was still there. As we were about to enter,
somebody from the first floor of a house across the road
waved at me and said, Welcome Mr. Banerjee! I recognized
him - the Parsi gentleman who once ran Elphinstone.
I entered - and found that not much change had taken
place. There were the the same light green coloured
surroundings. The same waiters. Robi-da and Debesh-da
ordered some rum. I was terribly hungry. I asked the waiter:
Do you still make the steamed Bombay Duck that you used
to serve in the past ? He gave me a happy smile and said,
Certainly, Sir.
***
Through with eating and drinking, when I returned home,
the afternoon was rolling into evening. I went and lay flat on
my bed. I woke up with a tickling on my feet. I opened my
eyes to see Boudi standing with a cup of tea, smiling gently.
Do you know what time it is? she asked. Getting up
hurriedly, I saw from the window that it was late evening. I
took the cup from Boudis hand and started sipping at it.
Whats the hurry? Boudi asked.
I have to go out, I said impatiently.
We know youll go out but where? Boudi enquired.
Looking at Boudi, I remembered something. Somebody
has invited me to Olympia, I said enigmatically.
Do you really need an invitation to go to Olympia? she
asked.
But the host is a special person, I replied.
Boudis curiosity was gradually rising. Who? she asked.
I reminded her. Do you remember S.B.Chatterjee? He
has invited me.
She then smiled and said, Yes, I remember. After the
first show of Pather Panchali, he had come and congratulated
me profusely. This was back in 1955, when the film was
released with Boudi acting in the role of Sarbojaya.
Let me then tell you a story, I said. Its another
example of his complimenting you.
Boudi sat down eagerly to listen to me. I was then
working in the Statesman, I said. One evening, we were
having an adda at the Olympia. It was getting late. I
remembered suddenly that you had asked me to return
home early - you needed to consult me about something. I
was about to get up hurriedly when S.B. Chatterjee asked
me, Why are you getting up so soon? Boudi is waiting, I
blurted out. All hell broke loose after that! Beating his
forehead, SB said in mock indignation, Goodness! Its bad
news! Theres now a Charulata in every home! (SB was
mischievously referring to the just released Charulata of
Satyajit Rays, where theres the hint of a romantic
relationship between the heroine and her younger brother-
in-law).
Boudi burst out laughing and said, I didnt know the
man was so witty!
But soon after, she looked at me seriously and pleaded,
But I really need to consult you on something. We must
find time and sit down one day.
***
It was December. There was a hint of winter in the evening
breeze. I opened the wardrobe in my bedroom to find that
Ma had caringly arranged and stacked my old woollens. The
sports jacket that was very precious to me was hanging there.
I had got it tailored in my initial working years, ages ago.
Pulling it out and wearing it, I saw that it still fitted me more
or less. I found a pair of terywool trousers. It was irritating
trying to get into them. They tapered towards the legs like
Aligarhi churidars. I recalled that drainpipes had been
much in vogue those days, and I must have ordered those
trousers according to those prevailing sartorial norms. What
could I do? Finding nothing else, I put them on.
When I got out on the road, the lights had been switched
on. My watch said it was only seven. It would be no use going
to Olympia now. Nobody would have come at such an early
hour. I, therefore, started walking slowly towards Gariahat.
The old shops still stood there. There was no big crowd
though. Through the main road, a few trams crawled by
over a track surrounded by green grass. As I reached the
corner of the Gariahat market, I met Bhagirath Maity. He
was sitting in his accustomed place running his stall of
newspapers and magazines. An activist of the Communist
party, he used to sell the party paper Swadhinata. Seeing
me, he said, No! Swadhinata doesnt come out any more.
But many other papers come here. Will you take one? I
evaded his request, exchanged a few standard words and
proceeded towards Rashbehari Avenue.
I walked a little further and saw that the tea-shop called
Paniyan was still there on the right side of the road, and its
doors were open. Inside, the chairs and tables were neatly
laid down in rows on either side. I entered and found the
actor Utpal Dutt sitting there alone, reading a book. He
raised his head, and opening his eyes wide, said Sit down
in his booming voice.
I looked all around me and said, It looks the same.
Then I drew up a chair, ordered tea, turned towards Utpal
and said, Remember? When the Soviet Union attacked
Hungary, we were students of the Calcutta university. Those
of us who were communists arranged a debate in Ashutosh
Hall. We invited Amlan Dutta and other anti-Communists
as speakers. We were determined to defeat them. Who
could we get to speak against them? Finding no way out, we
turned up here to see if we could get hold of you. It was on
an evening like this. We came and saw that you were sitting
exactly at this table. Immediately, we grabbed you and took
you along. And how brilliantly you spoke! You demolished
the logic of all the others and absolutely checkmated them.
Utpal shook his finger, interrupted me and said, You
made a mistake even to begin with. Soviet Union did not
attack Hungary, but went to rescue it from the hands of the
counter-revolutionaries.
Let that be I replied. What is the need of going back
to those old disputes?
Utpal opened his eyes even wider, looked at me and
said, No, no! It is necessary. The counter-revolutionaries in
Romania were the ones who assassinated Ceausescu. He
fought for Communist ideals to his last breath.
I didnt argue any more. Come to Minerva Theatre next
Saturday, Utpal said. You will see my new play Nepaler
Gagane Lal Tara (Red Star Over Nepal). Satya (Satya
Bandyopadhyay the well-known actor from Utpals Peoples
Little Theatre group) has just arrived here. He will act in
the role of Comrade Prachanda.
Promising that I would definitely go, I came out. It was
eight oclock now.
***
I hopped onto a tram and got down at the corner of Park
Street. Colourful garments were hanging behind the glass
panes of the old shop Hall and Anderson. Bang opposite
Chowringhee, I saw the statue of Outram Saheb still riding
his horse and looking back at us with imperial contempt.
(James Outram was the British general who suppressed the
Great Mutiny in Lucknow in 1857-58, and as a homage to
him the colonial rulers put up his statue at the spot leading
to the Maidan from the Park Street-Chowringhee crossing
which was allowed to remain there by the post-
Independence regime, till it was removed at the end of 1967
when a non-Congress government was installed in West
Bengal). I avoided his gaze and entered Park Street.
Connoisseurs of food had begun to converge in Peiping
restaurant. Book lovers were coming out of Oxford Book
Store, with their hands full of packets containing newly
bought books.
I peeped through the glass door of the Olympia bar
and saw that the entire crowd was there. I pushed open the
door. On the right, the long upholstered sofa adjacent to
the door was occupied by Satya Brata Chaterjee (that is, SB);
Niranjan Majumdar, the Associate Editor of the Statesman,
who had once-under the pseudonym Ranjan - written in
Bangla a superb travelogue on Darjeeling in winter, which
he named Sheete Upekshita (The Neglected Heroine in
Winter), capturing the loneliness of the deserted tourist
hill-resort in the cold weather. But Niranjan no longer speaks
Bangla ! Among others, there was Gour Ghosh (of
Anandabazar Patrika a veteran journalist and well-known
novelist, worshipped as `Gour-da by his young admirers). In
a corner sat Gopal Ghosh (the famous painter), who was
sketching single-mindedly on a paper serviette. Opposite
them, occupying a few chairs sat some others - the chief
among them was my old friend Dhritin Chakraborty, who
was talking endlessly; next to him sat the poet Shakti
Chattopadhyay, who, having drunk quite a lot in the
meanwhile, was now shaking his hand to impede the rush
of Dhritins words. In one corner, Mriganka Ray of Calcutta
Film Society sat quietly, biting his nails as usual.
As soon as I pushed open the door and entered, Dhritin
shouted at me: Here, that fucking idiot Banerjee has
arrived. Then he gave me a big smile, hugged me and said,
I cant tell you how much we missed you, Sumanta!
Seeing an empty chair, I sat down, and asked him: Order
a rum, and cut out all your tall talk!
Ordering a peg of rum, he went back swiftly as usual to
whatever he was discussing. As far as I could grasp it, the
subject was the military strategy by which American forces
could be vanquished in Iraq. Dhritin had a thesis of his
own on this. He was giving out a long list of military successes,
like Kutuzovs ingenuity in warfare as narrated in War and
Peace, the leadership of Marshal Zhukov in the Second World
War, and the success of the guerilla war of Giap in Vietnam.
He was peppering all this with some wondrous one or two-
line quotes from sources that were far removed from each
other like a maxim of the Chinese military expert Sun
Tzu now, and some comment of the English novelist Graham
Greenes the next movement.
They were fireworks of words that could nonplus you.
But one had to admire Dhritins exceptional memory!
At one point, I interrupted him and said, Why dont
you talk about somebody in this country gaining fame, instead
of naming so many foreigners? Have you forgotten about
yourself?
Dhritin was initially taken aback and shut up. Then he
remembered. He patted me on my back and laughing out
loudly, recited his famous utterance, In future, Lenin will
be known as Dhritin of Russia.
All of us thumped the table and shouted, Bravo! This is
what is called patriotism.
Shakti, beside himself in glee, got up from his chair and
started dancing with his glass in his hand.
This is why Bengalis never achieved anything, piped
up Gour-da. No matter how many slogans of patriotism you
mouth, you ultimately have to take the name of some foreign
leader or expert in order to establish yourselves.
No, Gour-da, I objected. There are a few exceptions.
Such as? enquired Gour-da.
I now turned towards Niranjan Majumdar. He was
listening quietly all this while. He was a slightly built man.
Fair complexioned, and wore broad-rimmed glasses over his
two bright eyes. Do you remember, Niranjanbabu, I asked,
that an editorial was printed in the Statesman after the death
of that great theatre personality Sisir Bhaduri? It was probably
written by you.
May be, said Niranjan, smiling softly.
You had written in it that Sisirbabu laughed at efforts
to set up minor playwrights as Shakespeares of Shyambazar
or Molieres of Manicktola.
He was indeed an exception! Niranjan said, shaking
his head. Patriotism did not impair his critical judgment!
Then he paused a little and said, Remember how he
declined the Padma Bhushan award? He thought poorly of
the governments flirtation with artists and the arts.
Niranjan then started picking up the books on his table.
It was time for him to leave. Bending a little, he said in a
tender voice, But Sisir Bhaduri will be remembered long
not only by theatre-lovers but also by those who teach English
and feel that the classroom is not quite enough for
communicating Shakespeare.
Clutching onto the books under his elbow, Niranjan
Majumdar got up. Before going out, he looked at me and
said, If you arent doing anything tomorrow for lunch, why
dont you come down to Amber? Lindsay will be there!
Lindsay was Lindsay Emerson, the associate editor of the
Statesman. I wasnt that well acquainted with him. But I liked
the man. He was a bit restless and kind of eccentric. I have
heard that during the period when the British owned the
Statesman, although he was the seniormost among the
associate editors, he had not been made the editor because
he had married a Bengali - Mrinalini Bonnerjee (of the
family of W.C. Bonnerjee), later known as Minni Bonnerjee.
***
Prashanta arrived at Olympia around ten at night. With him
was the writer Samaresh Basu. Samaresh dragged me away
from Dhritin and others and sat me down at another table.
He had the same wide smile on his face. Do you remember?
he said. When I met you last in Delhi, I had spoken to you
about writing a book on the artist Ram Kinkar. But Kinkarda
left when I was halfway through. So, as soon as I finished the
first instalment of the book, I took off in a hurry to reach
here. There is unlimited time here at my disposal. I dont
have to churn out the heap of trash for the puja annuals of
Desh and Anandabazar every year any more.
So how do you spend your time? I enquired.
With great enthusiasm, Samaresh thumped on the table
and said, Ah, that is exactly what I am talking about. Now it
is just adda and more adda, sitting with Kinkarda. Samaresh
then brought his face close to mine, as if he was telling me
something secret, and said, He has given me a lot of new
information about his life. He has remembered those things
after coming here. This is a world of memories. You will also
recall a lot of things as you continue to stay here, Im sure.
Leaning against the chair, Samaresh then took a long
sip from his glass of whiskey and said, I am, therefore,
rewriting the book Dekhi Nai Phire (I Never Looked Back)
totally from cover to cover.
Wow! That will be terrific! I exclaimed. But the
readers of that world will not get an opportunity to read the
new book.
Perhaps they will not get it at present, Samaresh
announced, assured in his self-confidence. But what about
the future? They will all have to come here.
Soon after, Samaresh curled his lips slightly and smiled
mischievously in his customary way. I knew for sure that he
was about to titillate me with some drollery! He drew near
and said, Do you know who I met after coming here?
Who? I asked curiously.
He suppressed that smile at the corner of his mouth
and said, Shobhna Butani. I got startled. I recalled a lot of
things about days long past. Delhi - was it 1971? Samaresh
had come to Delhi. I was introducing him to my friends on
the lawns of Sapru House. At that juncture, suddenly there
appeared our friend - Shobhna Butani !
Shobhna was an extremely vivacious young woman, and
very large-hearted. She was the Queen Bee of the avant-
garde society of young film buffs and theatre activists of Delhi
in those days. She was full of affection. Within moments,
Samaresh and Shobhna hit it off. There is a current phrase
these days to explain these things- Just a matter of their
mutual chemistry, what else? When he returned to Kolkata,
Samaresh wrote a novel about Shobhna - Amrita Bisher Patre
(In the Vessel of Ambrosial Poison), under the pseudonym
Kalkut.
Shobhnas life was tragic. She had got married to a young
man known to us. The marriage did not last long. Then she
went off to Bombay. She made friends with a young film
director. We suddenly heard one day that both of them had
jumped into the sea and died. To this day, I dont know
whether it was an accident or a suicide.
Samaresh had finished his glass. I was also gearing to get
up. It was almost eleven. Olympia would shut shop shortly.
Suddenly, the words of a song came floating in from the
rear in a full-throated voice that I had been familiar with for
long the first line of Rabindranaths song Krishnakoli !
Its only her that I....
I looked back and lo and behold! It was exactly as I
thought. The two brothers Hori-da and Moni-da were sitting
at the table at the back. Moni-da looked at me and continued
singing, his face breaking into a smile, ...No matter how
dark she is, Ive been smitten by her black, doe-like eyes...
Hori-das face was small, like that of a naughty child.
Hello? Remember us? he said laughingly.
Wouldnt I know them? This pair of brothers were like
permanent fixtures at Olympia. They were both house
agents. Their office was behind the neighbouring Park
Street. Moni-da had learnt music from Shailajananda
Majumdar (the famous exponent of Rabindranaths songs)
at Santinikentan in his childhood. Currently, he would
practise Rabindrasangeet sitting at Olympia, just moments
before the clock struck eleven, prior to the closing of the
bar.
One by one, we all descended onto the road. Bidding
farewell to one another, we headed in the direction of our
respective homes.
I hailed a taxi going towards Ballygunje.
***
One evening, I was sitting at home, chatting with Boudi while
drinking tea. Ma came in suddenly and announced, See
who has come.
I turned back to see Dipen Bandyopadhyay entering the
room with his little steps. He had that familiar Shantiniketani
sling bag on his shoulder and wore a brown Khadi kurta
with white pajamas. Dipen was junior to me by a year at
Scottish Church College, where we both participated in the
Communist movement in the 1950s. Besides, Dipen was an
acclaimed writer of short stories and novels. He left us in
1979.
Immediately after entering the room, he dragged me
out of the chair, took me under his arm and addressing my
mother and Boudi said, Mashima (Aunty) and Boudi, Im
taking this fellow to Coffee House.
Wait, Ill get some tea right away, Ma pleaded. But
who would listen? Never mind that he was short in stature!
His hands were pretty strong. He literally pulled me out
from the house and made me get down on the road. Running
along with him, I got onto a moving tram.
Sitting on one of the benches, Dipen took out his snuff-
box from his pocket and took a pinch of it. He then looked
at me sternly and asked, Youve become too smart, havent
you?
What do you mean? I asked.
Continuing in the same manner, Dipen said, Youve
been here for quite some time now. And yet, you never
thought of looking me up! What do you think of yourself,
you rascal?
How would I know where you are? I replied.
Cut out that crap! In College Street, there is a place
called Coffee House. Have you wiped it clean off your
memory?
Really! I hadnt thought of it. I was going to say with a
sheepish face, Do you know the actual reason? These last
few days...
Dipen cut me short and reprimanded me in the voice
of a schoolmaster: Let it be - thats enough. I know - you
have been gallivanting all around Chowringhee and Park
Street for these last few days. You have been spotted at many
places. Every piece of news reaches my ears.
I then laughed to try to assuage Dipens hurt pride and
said, Okay, I hold my ears and confess that it was a grave
oversight. It will never happen again. I will present myself in
Coffee House everyday from now onwards.
We reached College Street in no time. Both of us got
down. I found that those book stalls were still there
temporary fixtures on the outer railings of Presidency
College, storing and selling old and rare books from
makeshift shelves, to be removed at night and re-installed
the next morning. The road wasnt too crowded. But once
we entered Coffee House, I could make out the familiar
sounds from a crowded hall. There was a haze of smoke. We
sat at a table and ordered two cups of infusion (black
coffee). Then I turned towards Dipen and said, Do you
know? After you left and came here, I suddenly got a letter
in Delhi from some publishers - I cant recall who - from
Kolkata who wanted to bring out English translations of your
writings. They requested me to choose a story of yours. I
chose a story, and did translate it, and sent it too - within the
deadline. But till date I have not heard anything from them.
I dont even know whether that book eventually came out.
Dipen remained silent for a while and asked, Which
story did you translate?
Swayambar Sabha I replied.
Why did you choose that story? He wanted to know.
I dont know why, but in it you seemed to grasp our
mood and tenor of those times, I answered.
And my novel Tritiya Bhuban? Dipen asked with a note
of impatience in his voice.
I knew you would ask this question I laughed and said.
In Tritiya Bhuban, you had faithfully captured the ambience
of the political agitations, friendships, love relationships of
our student days in Scottish Church College, but you know
what...
Before I could finish my words, I felt somebodys hand
slap me on my back. I turned and raised my head to see
Boudhayan Chattopadhyay. He gave me a sweet smile and
asked, When did you come? Boudhayan-da was an old
Communist and an economist of considerable fame who
had taught at various universities, both abroad and in India,
including JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) in Delhi. Once
he joined us at our table, the discussion then turned in
another direction - the economy of the country, world
politics, the education system in schools and colleges and
finally, the condition and destiny of the world of intellectuals
in Delhi.
There was no end to Boudhayan-das curiosity - what
were his former colleagues and friends in Delhi doing?
Where, what new research was going on? Who were the
people dominating the intellectual scene at Teen Murti?
What was the fate of the Sapru House library? Which were
the new theories that the Leftist intellectuals were busy
discussing?
Tired of answering these questions, I said, Boudhayan-
da, the intellectual world of the capital has changed a lot
since our generation. Nobody bothers about Marxism and
all that any more. Now it is the age of po-mo and sa-ban.
Dipen had possibly not heard me correctly. He nodded
in agreement with me and said, Yes. Now there is a
movement for the rights of homosexuals.
I struck Dipens hand hard and said, Damn, you ass! Its
po-mo not homo- meaning, the initial syllables of post-
modernism.
Ok, I understand po-mo, Boudhayan said. But where
did sa-ban come from?
That is the abbreviated version of subaltern, I replied.
Sa-ban in other words, soap in Bengali! With the soap of
their theory, those guys are washing and bleaching history
to give it a spring-clean.
Boudhayan-da was going to ask some more questions. I
interrupted him and said, Look here, Boudhayan-da, if one
had to explain the state of Delhis academic world, one could
say in one sentence that it is now the empire of the three
Dadas.
What do you mean? Boudhayan-da asked, knitting his
brows.
Counting on my fingers, I said, Derrida, Foucault-da
and Ashis-da.
Forever hooked on his familiar mannerism, Boudhayan
now began to rub his thumb with his forefinger and wanted
to know, Derrida and Foucault I can understand. But who
is this Ashis-da?
Why? I retorted. Dont you remember Ashis Nandy?
Totally baffled by this, Boudhayan-da uttered in
amazement - Oh, my God! and got up from his chair.
I realized now that I shouldnt have brought up the
name, remembering the scrap that Boudhayan-da and Ashis
got into several years ago over issues like secularism,
scientific inquiry, etc.
As soon as Boudhayan-da left, a horde of poets, artists
and litterateurs came up at Dipens table. Among them, I
could recognize Purnendu Patri, the versatile poet and artist,
who among other things left behind before he departed, a
rich collection of his reportages and poems about the heroic
Tebhaga peasants movement in Bengal in the late 1940s.
He was just as preoccupied and serious as before. As if he
had met me only the day before, he said, Sumanta, there is
a meeting at my place at six in the evening tomorrow. I have
kept your name among the group of editors. After listening
to them for sometime, I gathered that they were gearing up
to bring out a new literary journal. Dipen and Purnendu
would be the joint editors. They were preparing a list of
poets, story-writers, essayists who had newly arrived in this
world. I had arrived recently, so they wanted to know who
were getting ready to come here - that is, who were about to
die. I tried to remember. The faces of a few of them came
floating into my mind. After mulling over for a moment, I
gave out their names. I assured Dipen and Purnendu that
they would not have to wait long for them!
As I was getting out from Coffee House, I suddenly heard
my name being called out from the left - Hey Sumanta!
I looked back and saw that the table in the corner right
next to the window was occupied by Gagan Dutta and
Nirmalya Acharya. Nirmalya had a bale of proofs in his hands.
I turned back from the exit and proceeded towards their
table. Pulling a chair, I said, So Mashai, are you bringing
out Ekshan here too? Ekshan was the magazine which
Nirmalya, along with our friend, the actor Soumitra
Chattopadhyay, used to bring out for several years each
issue stamped by Satyajit Rays unique cover design. It went
extinct after Nirmalyas death.
Nirmalya smiled gently and said, A husking pedal
pounds the grain even in heaven.
I looked at Gagan. What grain are you pounding? I
asked.
Gagan said, Dont you remember? When you visited
me the last time, I had told you about my plan.
I remembered. Was it 1980 or 81? It was a long night we
had spent at Gagans flat in Ulster Gardens in London. There
was the painter Moni Jana - and me. Gagan had made us
listen to some symphony recordings of Gustav Mahler, the
Austrian musician and composer of the early twentieth
century. He was taken up with Mahler at that time. He was
trying to make two tone-deaf listeners like us understand
that Mahlers various experimental symphonies represented
the connection between romanticism and modernity in the
history of Western music.
Actually, Gagan must have wanted to do research on a
similar twilight world in the history of our Indian music
where romanticism and modernity encountered each other
for the first time.
Gagan had told us that evening, I will go back to India.
I will open a studio. Whatever songs and music I have
recorded, I will take them back. I will then open an archives
for everybody.
Now, I turned to Gagan and said, How far has that
project of yours advanced?
Come and see, Gagan said.
Where? I asked.
Gagan now smiled a smile befitting an elder brother (He
was really older than us), Why, dont you remember our
house on Tamer Lane?
He stirred my memory with a sudden and forceful tug.
On the first floor of that house, there used to be so many
addas in Gagans room. There gathered in that room,
evening after evening the familiar pair called Pulu and
Lalu (the former being the nickname of the actor Soumitra
Chattopadhyay and the latter of Sushanta Bandyopadhyay);
Ashok Palit (who wrote poetry and had an excellent voice
for recitation); Tapan Dutta (Gagans younger brother - he
used to keep us enthralled by singing Rabindrasangeet);
Ramen Mitra (our friend - a student of history and dedicated
worker of the Communist party), and so many other friends-
Saila Ghosh, Bimal Chakrabarty....
Guessing the reminiscences of my mental universe,
Gagan said, Not everybody has reached here yet. But so
what? You and Nirmalya are here. Come along. I have made
a great studio in that room in Tamer Lane.
I got excited, and was going to say something, when all
of a sudden Keya (Chakrabarty) came and stood before me.
When did you come, Sumanta-da? she asked. Keya was my
pupil when I taught for a brief while at Scottish Church
College. But more importantly, she emerged as a great
actress with the Nandikar group headed by Ajitesh Banerjee.
She died in a freak accident of drowning.
I got up. I urged her, Come along, Keya. Lets go and
sit quietly somewhere.
I took her outside, near the steps of Coffee House.
Listen, there are many things I have to say to you, I said.
Keya twisted her lips in an ironic smile and said, Its too
late now, Sumanta-da. Couldnt you have said them earlier?
I was hesitantly going to give an explanation, but Keya
stopped me and diverted me to a different topic altogether.
Come to the Academy of Fine Arts next Sunday morning,
she said. There is a new production of Nandikar under the
direction of Ajitesh-da. I have a small role.
What is the play? I asked.
Sounding a little apologetic, she answered, You know
we usually do only adaptations. This play is an adaptation of
a novel by a Hungarian writer - Embers by Sandor Marai.
She then smiled mischievously, and said, The story is
up your street! You must come to see the play. With those
parting words, Keya went back to Coffee House.
***
I woke up the next morning at the crack of dawn. I went to
the balcony and saw that the winter fog had started receding.
A tram was screeching out from its depot. One or two old
men had got out for a walk in the Temporary Park in front of
our house. A train from Canning had just reached and
stopped at Ballygunje station. I heard its whistle. From the
train, a group of fisherwomen had come out walking down
the street now in a sprightly gait, carrying baskets of fish on
their heads, their hips swaying rhythmically to their steps.
They were all rushing to the Gariahat market.
Suddenly, I heard a slight sound on the main door of
our flat. It seemed as if somebody was gently knocking on
the door outside. Who had come so early? Even Ma, Baba,
and Boudi had perhaps not yet woken up at this hour! I,
therefore, had to answer the call.
I opened the door to see Bhabani Chaudhuri standing
at the foot of the stairs. He had that familiar apologetic look
on his face, a good-natured smile, rather defensive - as if to
say he had done something very wrong! He had a stubble
that must have grown over the last two or three days. He
looked haggard. He was wearing a pair of grey trousers, and
a dirty shawl hung over his shirt. He held a packet of books.
I hurried forward, held his hand and brought him inside.
He freed his hand, and said uncertainly but with a smile,
Oh, no, no ! But I...wont sit for long...
I forcibly took him into my room, sat him down on a
chair and said, Wait. Let me first arrange for some tea.
In his characteristic manner, Bhabani continued in the
same vein, But Sumanta! No, no! What is all this fuss...?
Without heeding what he said, I entered the kitchen. I
saw that Ma had got up and was lighting the stove. Bhabani
has come, I whispered to her. He must be famished. Could
you give him some toast, omelette and something else with
tea?
Re-entering my room, I saw Bhabani opening his packet
of books. Some posters printed in red ink came out of it.
One was a copy of Deshabrati (the underground journal of
the CPI-Marxist-Leninist). He forwarded it to me and said,
This is our latest issue. You will get all the news here.
He then looked at me and said, I have come to you with
a special request.
What is it? I asked curiously.
The comrades are waiting for you, he said in a soft
voice. They have requested me to take you back with me.
I got startled. Who? I blurted out.
Bhabani started naming them one by one, and all the
doors of my mind that had remained shut for so long opened
up one after another. Kabul, Jaideb, Shamsul - Telenipara,
Kamalpur- martyrs of face-to-face confrontations with the
police; martyrs killed by torture inside police lock-ups;
martyrs shot inside jails; martyrs covered all over with wounds
in the burnt houses of peasants; martyrs drenched in blood
on wintry roads; martyrs at the altar of political fratricide -
there is no end to the list. I remembered that old song that
was popular among us in those days: How many lives have
been sacrificed at the steps of the altar of liberty? Their names
trickle down in every drop of tear.
How many more lives? Looking at Bhabanis face, I left
the question unuttered. He was looking at me fervently with
a steady gaze. With intense hope, he was waiting to hear
what I would say in reply to his appeal.
I took the decision instantaneously. Lets go, I said.
After getting done with tea and breakfast, both of us got
up. Dont worry, it will be night by the time I return, I said
to Ma. You all finish your dinner and go off to sleep.
***
Bhabani and I caught a train and got down at Sheoraphuli
station. Moving through the tea shops, the stalls selling
vegetable fritters, the groceries, and the rows of cycle
rickshaws on both sides of the road, we finally descended
into that familiar sloping trail leading to our den. It was a
narrow path through the paddy fields. The fields around
stretched endlessly. After walking a little, I could recognize,
among the shelter of trees, that old mud hut thatched with
hay. This was that room of Pralays, where Bhabani had
brought me one day, somewhat more than thirty years ago.
It was here that we conducted meetings night after night.
***
Seeing us, they came out of the hut. I could recognize
everybody. They held up their clenched fists to give me a
Red salute. It was after a long passage of time that I too
raised my unaccustomed hand in the forgotten salute today.
After that, we entered the hut one by one and sat on
the mat placed on the floor. I remembered that before the
meeting started, we would have to pay homage to the martyrs
of our movement. Everybody had to say a few words recalling
the comrades who had been killed. I was thinking about
what I would say when my turn came. At which point, Kabul
seemed to interrupt my thoughts and said, Tell us about
yourself, Agnu-da.
***
His words brought me out of my stupor. Agnu was the tek-
namethe pseudonym given to me by the party during my
underground days. I realized only then that there was no
need to commemorate martyrs at todays meeting. I was
sitting in front of the martyrs themselves. I then remembered
a favourite song of those days, Well meet again in the world
of martyrs...
***
But Kabul-bhai, I wasnt able to become a martyr like you
people! I protested, staring blankly at Kabul. Now Jaideb
smiled back from the other side, and said, So what? Neither
is Bibhutida. Bibhuti was Bhabanis tek-name. I
remembered that like me, Bhabani also had reached this
world without being killed by police bullets unlike Jaideb,
Kabul and others but after months of a painful ailment.
Jaideb said, Should one make such class distinctions amongst
ourselves, Agnu-da? All our troubles today are because of
these hierarchical differences that we have created. Whats
the difference? We are martyrs, you are not but the pain
of the torment that we all are suffering from remains the
same. I nodded my head in agreement. Remaining silent
for a while, I said, Tell me where I should start from.
Kabul said, Tell us whatever you want to. After all, this
is not Lord Sinha Road.
I couldnt help laughing. I recalled the days and nights
that I spent in the cell at the Intelligence Branch
headquarters on Lord Sinha Road. After my arrest, in reply
to the detective police officers grilling there, I had, in my
deposition, offered concoctions of truth and falsehood in
order to cheat them. Till now, I had remained incarcerated
within the pages of those statements of mine that were
documented in their office. After so long, today at last I
found an opportunity to liberate myself from that captivity.
I now geared up to pour out my heart to all these fellow
sufferers of mine - those who had been my intimate
companions and associates through much joy and sorrow in
the past.
I started to dig up my memory with great effort. In our
underground lives, we had trained ourselves to forget
everything - our past, the origin of our class - so that we
could be declassed and unite in soul and spirit with landless
peasants, so that we could push into oblivion our own
individuality by demolishing our legacy. In a well thought
out, systematic way, we had tried to forget the names of
comrades and the addresses of those who sheltered us, so
that in the face of police torture, even at some unguarded
moment we could never let those names pass our mouths.
We had pledged and steeled ourselves to completely
obliterate our memory.
Today, after so many years, I tried desperately to scrape
at that very memory in order to unearth its residues. I started
talking about how I had escaped from Kolkata with the help
of some friends. Assisted by Khalil Chacha (Uncle Khalil -
an old worker comrade of Ahmedabad who in his youth had
been an associate of S.A. Dange in the Girni Kamgaar Union
in Bombay in the 1930s and had joined our politics in the
decade of the seventies), I had found shelter at a chawl a
slum adjacent to Topi Mills in Ahmedabad. Then, after a
brief stay at my in-laws in Hyderabad, I moved over to
Bangalore and lived incognito for a few months at a friends
place there.
In Bangalore, I would go to the Cubbon Park Library
every afternoon. I would read in the newspapers that our
outposts and hideouts in Bengal were getting destroyed one
by one. I got to know that my comrades - Bhabani Choudhury,
Satyabrata Dutta and Mahadeb Mukherjee had been
arrested. In the evening, after returning to my room, I would
sit at my typewriter and write the history of the Naxalbari
movement.
Bhabani interrupted my words. That red typewriter?
he asked.
Everybody started laughing. One of them said, Do you
know, Agnu-da? The police had hassled us so much about
the whereabouts of that typewriter of yours - as if it were a
deadly weapon!
They were in fact, searching for it to bring it up as an
evidence in the case against us, Bhabani explained. It was
that typewriter that Agnu used to type out the English articles
for Liberation (the English underground journal of the CPI-
Marxist-Leninist).
I listened to them silently. I remembered that my
favourite little red Olivetti typewriter was the gift of a sister-
in-law of mine. It was an old companion. Whenever there
would be an outstation assignment for the Statesman, I used
to take it along with me so that I could send my dispatches.
It was quite rough and tough; and yet quite amenable to my
mood and temper. So when I brought it along with me during
my underground stint, it adapted itself quite easily. Its
keyboard kept typing those fiery and verbose writings of our
party journal Liberation with equal alacrity. Did it recall the
words of a totally different writing style of the Statesman of
the past? Who knows!
But it was an irony of history that Liberation and the
Statesman did indeed at one time develop a secret link. In
1973-4, some issues of Liberation were produced by the
printing press of the Statesman. A few comrades from the
workers union of the Statesman embraced our political
ideology then. Deep at night after completing their night
shift, or in their spare time on certain holidays (when the
Statesman didnt come out), they used to secretly print copies
of Liberation and place it in our hands.
I was mulling over these memories when Jaideb asked,
But Agnu-da, how did you get caught?
I thought for a while and said, May be I wanted to get
caught. Left alone, how long could I have kept dodging
them? And then, when I saw that every one of my comrades
was being arrested? After all, the bird wants to get back to its
flock. Then I paused a little and tried to remember. Was it
the year 1975? While living in Hyderabad, I had written an
article for the Economic and Political Weekly, possibly
mentioning the class distinctions among the scheduled castes
who made a living by farming in Andhra Pradesh. I had signed
it in my own name. As a result perhaps, the detective
department of the police could locate me. Later when they
arrested and took me to Lord Sinha Road, an officer there
bragged, It was after reading your article in EPW that we
guessed you are in Hyderabad. I dont know whether it was
true or not.
Recalling those past incidents, I said, Right after the
Emergency was declared in 1975, I got arrested in
Hyderabad. But there was no case against me in Hyderabad.
You would remember that we were all accused in the
Kamalpur conspiracy case - Kamalpur in Burdwan in West
Bengal was where our party congress was held. Before
sending me to Burdwan, they kept me in the Secunderabad
jailthe main jail in Hyderabad - for some days.
Image after image floated in slowly before my eyes. It
was now easy for me to begin narrating without a pause,
Within the compound of the prison, behind the main
prison, there was a row of cells. They locked me up in one
of those cells the day before they sent me to Burdwan. I lay
alone, unable to get a wink of sleep. Suddenly I heard
somebody humming in Telugu from the adjacent cell. I
could make out only the words Naxalbari and Srikakulam.
I got up with a start. With my ears to the wall, I tried to listen
with rapt attention. But I couldnt catch the voice any more-
it faded into the distance. I awoke the next morning and
was sitting quietly inside the cell. I suddenly saw somebody
walking fast in the narrow verandah in front of my cell.
Seeing me awake and arise, he came and stood with his hands
on the grill in front of my cell. He had a crop of curly, black
hair; He was of powerful build. Whats your case? he asked
me. Naxal, I said. He then raised his hand in a Red salute.
After that, he started talking in broken Hindi. I am
Bhumaiyah, he introduced himself. I stood stunned.
Bhumaiyah and Kishta Gaur were two legendary heroes -
two peasant leaders of the Naxalbari movement from the
Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh. Accused of executing
notorious landlords, they had been sentenced to death. From
then onwards, leaders and activists of the Human Rights
movement across India had been carrying on an agitation to
revoke the sentence. They had been able to keep it in
abeyance so far. I dont have time to wait, said Bhumaiyah.
Every morning, they let me walk outside the cell for just
five minutes. Now it is Kishta Gaurs turn to come out. Adieu,
comrade. Clenching his fist in a Red salute, Bhumaiyah
went away. I stood holding the bars of my cell. The person
who came after sometime was a man of short stature, with a
round face and a bald pate. He gave me a gentle smile, and
introduced himself, I am Kishta Gaur. He then extended
a packet of Charminar towards me. I was about to take out a
cigarette when he said, Keep the whole pack. That was
my first and last meeting with the two of them. After that I
was transported to the jail in Burdwan. On a morning in
December 1975, I suddenly got the news that Bhumaiyah
and Kishta Gaur had been executed. In our cell in Burdwan
jail, some of us Naxal prisoners held a memorial meeting on
that day to pay homage to the two martyrs. I remembered
that Bhumaiya and Kishta Gaur had said, We know we will
be hanged. We are, therefore, donating our eyes. We could
not see the triumph of the revolution, but those who get
our eyes, will.
I stopped at this point.
There was a long silence after this. We finished another
round of tea served in small earthen pots. We lit our bidis.
But Agnu-da, what is happening now?, Kabul asked a little
while later. We hear that a Red Corridor has been carved
out from Jharkhand and Bihar in the north all the way down
to Andhra Pradesh. All of Dandakaranya is now a liberated
zone.
But Agnu-da, the struggle now is on a much bigger scale,
isnt it?, asked Jaideb very excitedly. See how it has spread
everywhere! And the weapons are also of a much higher
quality. This is no longer the era of our hand-made pipe
guns and primitive bombs!
I looked at the faces of Bhabani, Kabul, Jaideb, Shamsul
and others, gazing at me with eager expectation. They wanted
to hear from me - the newly arrived person from that other
world - all its fresh news. But what could I tell them? During
all these years, I had cut myself loose from them and their
concerns. How could I explain? Looking at their faces, I
forced an expression of a smile on my face, and trying to
infuse a tone of self-confidence in my voice, said, Certainly.
But the word sounded so vacuous - even to me!
It was getting late and dark. I would have to return
home now. Bhabani would stay back. Hed have to attend
an important meeting all through the night about some
serious matter. They put me in charge of a young boy, who
escorted me back to Sheoraphuli station, carrying a hurricane
lantern all through the stretch of the road. I managed to
get on to the last train.
It was very late at night when I got down at Howrah
station. A few lights flickered dimly on the platform. Some
people were sleeping curled up with blankets on the
benches. Seeing me, a dog came forward barking, smelt me
and went back. I came out of the gate at the station.
In front of the gate, I saw two beggars. They were beating
their sticks on the road and mumbling something.
Approaching them to give them some money, I found that
both of them were blind. One of them had a crop of curly
black hair and was of powerful build. Another was of short
stature, with a round face and bald pate. Neither of them
was begging. I pricked up my ears and listened to their words.
In a kind of broken Hindi, they were muttering, Where
are our eyes? Who are the people who got them? Would
you be able to find them?
REVIEW ARTICLE
BETWEEN DETERMINATION AND
RESPONSIVENESS: A THIRD SPACE
IN FOUCAULT?*
Manas Ray
Perhaps it would not be altogether unacceptable to suggest
that throughout the 1970s, Foucault was found struggling
in intellectual directions not easily reconcilable.
Consequently, his positions on law (developed mostly during
this phase) show a measure of inconsistency
1
. Critical
scholarship on Foucaults law has so far progressed in two
opposed theses: expulsion and retrieval. The first suggests
that Foucault views modern power as driven not by codes of
law but by codes of normalization. In other words, it would
argue that Foucault subscribes to the progressive attenuation
of law (read as juridico-political) by the two exclusively
modern forms of power: discipline and biopolitics. Retrieval
thesis in contrast emphasizes the crucial dependence of
disciplinary apparatus on law; as such law and the disciplines
are interdependent, which also explains the constant
proliferation of law in modernity. To be noted, in neither of
these two approaches does law have a measure of autonomy;
instead, the debate has been around whether or not
Foucaults regicide of political power is complete in terms
of law itself.
Critical more of the first than the second thesis, Foucaults
Law offers a third position. Stressing the productive
irresolution (56) that the two dimensions of law
*Ben Golder and Peter Fitzpatrick, Foucaults Law, Routledge-Cavendish,
London & New York, 2009, $ 32. 35, 160 pages.
270 MANAS RAY
determination and response are caught in, Golder and
Fitzpatrick argue that Foucaults law cannot be either
confined or contained effectively as suggested by both these
theses in their opposed ways. The authors maintain that far
from expelling or extricating law or subordinating it to
different sources of power, Foucault was in fact thinking
along lines of an uncontainable and illimitable law a law
that is always spilling over, always open to possibilities of being
otherwise and thus making any question of expressing this
or that power look unconvincing. Given that it is the first
book to come in this area in almost fifteen years and the
notoriety that Foucaults law has enjoyed among scholars,
this slender volume might well have some long vibrant years
ahead of it.
The authors read in Foucault two crucial, uneasily but
integrally related dimensions of law which they spell out as
follows: The first dimension is...a determinate law which
expresses a definite content. This is...law on the side of
the norm a law to be resisted and transgressed. The second
dimension of law is that dimension in which law, in a
constitutive engagement by way of that same resistance and
transgression, extends itself illimitably in its attempt to
encompass and respond to what lies outside its definite
content. (71) Law in its exactitude only pursues its recesses;
transgression and limits do not have a life of their own outside
the ceaseless act of negation and renewal. Textually rich in
illustration, this is a markedly Nietzschean Foucault (at times
via Blanchot and Bataille). (Occasional disappointments with
some of Foucaults own takes on law are not concealed.)
Since law is a form of power and since power for Foucault is
primarily the power of dispersal, therefore for Fitzpatrick
and Golder Foucaults law much like violence itself
involves an excess, a supplementary effect on the conditions
that produce both.
For a good part of the book, what the authors argue is,
however, not at great variance with the so-called retrieval
BETWEEN DETERMINATION AND RESPONSIVENESS 271
thesis. They begin by situating liberal law in the
governmentalization of the modern state that is, the
penetration of the pastoral gaze to effectively manage
population through calculated means and targeted ends.
The transition from the government of oneself to biopolitical
management of life may not, however, be as seamless as they
suggest (We read the difference as being largely one of
emphasis and of detail 32). Recently it has been argued
that by the mid-70s, Foucault had started questioning the
idea of discipline as a defining modern power. Apparently,
the economic liberalism of the Physiocrats alerted Foucault
to the potentials of the non-disciplinary regimes of modern
power
2
. Roughly coeval in the sense that both originated in
the eighteenth century (with a slight time lag), I doubt
whether Foucault read the anatomo-political techniques
(discipline) and the techniques aimed at the collective or
social bodies (biopolitics) in such dispersed manner. What
is more, besides Foucaults citing of thanatopolitics in History
of Sexuality Volume 1 (an argument that receives grudging
acceptance by Golder and Fitzpatrick; 32) and the attempt
to frame society in the lines of war in Society Must Be Defended,
Birth of Biopolitics makes it sufficiently clear that counter-
Machiavellian art of government (29), regardless
Physiocratic freedom (which would subsequently pave the
way for governmentality) was possible to a large extent due
to the sustaining structures of the erstwhile raison detat. In
contemporary regimes of biocapitalism, are we moving out
of disciplinary space as such with the coming of neoliberalism
or is there an attempt to frame a new disciplinary space based
on the current tides of economic self-interest and
empowered community and matched with an aggressive
biopoliticization of governance?
Golder and Fitzpatrick locate law in a triangle:
sovereignty, discipline, and governmental management,
which has population as its main target and apparatuses of
security as its essential mechanism (33). This is not an
272 MANAS RAY
altogether new position, certainly not one that would place
it too far from the retrieval thesis, neither is the subsequent
elaboration of disciplines dependence on law due to
unconvincing truth claims of the human sciences (61),
though seldom the point has been made with such
elaboration and astuteness. What is doubtlessly new is the
deliberation on laws response to recalcitrance. By alerting
the determinate in law, recalcitrance opens a whole new
theatre of illimitable responsiveness, of transgression and
limit, to the point where the very reason for disciplines
recourse to law is in jeopardy or nearly so (proving once
more the absolute irreducibility of the two axes of power:
juridical and discipline 78)): We locate Foucaults law
between a subordinated law and a surpassing law, between
a law which is confined by the emerging modalities of
disciplinary power and biopower and one which is illimitable
and always going beyond itself and those who would seek to
instrumentalize it. It is in the seeming inconsistency between
these two different facets of law that Foucault is in fact saying
something entirely consistent and very apposite about
law. (39)
3
I say nearly so because for the play framed around
positive law to continue, the circuit can never be completely
jeopardized; a return has to be enacted at some point. The
theatre is renewed with every return: the law in modernity
comes to be ever more constantly involved in deploying and
harnessing the disciplines a kind of constitutive
compatibility of law and discipline. (28) In other words,
law enacts the possibility of what it can only be otherwise:
containment. Such formulation, albeit fascinating, leaves a
number of issues unsettled. Thought, Foucault observes,
exists independently of systems and structures of discourse
(Practicing Criticism in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews
and other writings, 1977-1984, Routledge, 1988). In a similar
vein, one is tempted to ask whether recalcitrance too can
be imagined as a space outside the systems and structures of
discourse. To extend the analogy further, one might also be
curious to know whether the alerting of the determinate by
recalcitrance is comparable to the materialization of thought
in discourse, which has its conditions of existence and rules
of formation (ibid). Such equivalence between thought and
recalcitrance would have wider implication for Golder and
Fitzpatricks project. If recalcitrance is continuous resistance
to prescriptive modes of conduct, then as a relation of power
it is part of the wider syndrome of strategic games between
liberties. Laws responsiveness as much as its determination
is essential for the strategic games of power; as a matter of
fact, inventiveness of adjudication is one of those things
that resist recalcitrance from imbibing what can be called,
the logic of rule in other words, losing its agonal quality
a problem most identity movements face at some stage.
4
Let me cite one last example of such unsettled issues.
Early in the book and much in lines of the retrieval thesis
the authors had suggested that the coexistence and
interaction of law and the disciplines actually help them to
realize their fullness. (59 60) These do not come to interact
as fully formed modalities, but are actually constituted in
the very process of cooperation. How would the aporic space
that the authors imagine between the disciplines and the
law in the earlier citation fit in here? Is it being suggested
that coming to fullness for the disciplines, especially is
also a process of being irreversibly fissured? If that is one of
the arguments that the book offers, then the implications
are well-nigh torrential for both a re-reading of Foucault
and the extensive interpretative literature on the topic.
There is indeed something playful, even tireless, in
Golder and Fitzpatricks emphasis on the responsiveness of
law. The gesture, however, is predominantly political - a
meditation (or, for that matter, a series of meditations) on
the limits of politics reduced to representative-calculative
governance; by the same token, it is an usurpation of the
question of justice from the habitual grooves of thought stuck
274 MANAS RAY
in the rhetoric of security and self-preservation. Ever since
Hobbes fragile formulation of the modern state to help
transform the homo hominus lupus into the homo hominus dues,
the human to be properly inclusive has to pass as it were
through the security check. Therefore, a suspected non-
citizen can well be kept in indefinite detention by a decree,
bringing together the two axes of security geopolitical and
biopolitical in perfect unison. It is here that the limits of
liberal law are met. As part of the same political gesture
mentioned above, if Golder and Fitzpatrick are interested
in positive law, it is only by way of inviting the excluded
either as insurrection, or pathology or both into the realm
of Business as Usual. As a matter of fact, they are not
interested in the positivities of law as such but in their
opposite: transgression. Transgression, the book reminds us
at different places, is that what brings positivities into effect.
The emphasis on limits and transgressions is an attempt to
look for new sources of possibilities for justice at the limits of
law, beyond legal positivities and verifiable empirical
realities.
5
Continuing on the same register, the play between
endless responsiveness and ever-renewed returns also shows
that power by definition is incomplete - better, it is at once
more than complete and always inadequately complete. All
this goes to suggest that law cannot have an autonomy from
power, neither can power be without the law and the subject;
law, subject and power form a mutually constitutive circuit.
What allows law to be illimitably responsive i.e., laws alterity
is precisely its empty form. This is a theme that runs
throughout Fitzpatricks collection of essays, Law as Resistance
(reviewed in the last issue of the LCH) especially, in the
second half of the collection. In a way the argument reaches
its climax in Foucaults Law: (T)he strategic reversibility of
Foucaults law consists precisely in the fact that what makes
it open to appropriation and domination simultaneously
makes it open to resignification and renewal that eludes
the determination of a sovereign or a given regime of
power. (84)
Read literally, such formulations should not have made
Franois Ewalds conception of the social law entirely
unacceptable to Golder and Fitzpatrick. For Ewald, the social
is the space of ever renewed contestation and negotiations
with the aim of reaching provisional consensus. What propels
laws strategic reversibility for Golder and Fitzpatrick,
conversely, is laws illimitability, its perceived propensity to
break asunder even the slightest semblance of consensus.
Committed as the authors are to the dispersal and the
suscitating opening of society to alterity (100), Ewalds
understanding of social bond framed in the lines of what
can be called a discursive modus vivendi is politically
contestable6; in fact, they call it the comfortable enclosure
and sheltering of a socius (100) and read in his enterprise
an attempt to propose means by which society coincide with
itself (102). Even though Ewald moves away from Kants
notion of law as rational statements making the basis of the
social, he sees an untarnishable source of reflexivity in society
as this comment would illustrate: It is a fact that there is no
(positive) law without a law of law, no law without a principle,
an instance of reflexion, whereby the law thinks about itself.
(104) Such faith in ratiocination helps Ewald to embrace
the social in a disenchanted world but by the same measure
it constricts the scope of his argumentative democracy.
Ewalds arguments are not without purchase in
governmentality literature and bear some apparent
similarities with Foucaults notion developed in the 1970s
of the modern liberal state being framed in the lines of
civil society. What often is missed out in this context is
Foucaults argument that the deployment of pastoral power
in modern societies is structured and mobilized by the
perceived threat of the illiberal. The agenda of limited
government is actually a call for pervasive governance,
promoting the new emphasis on the self-forming, self-
276 MANAS RAY
monitoring, ethical citizen. It can perhaps be said that what
Foucault was trying to achieve over the 1970s contrary
currents regardless is a cartography of the new classificatory
state. As a matter of fact, his enterprise seems more relevant
today as everyday life is kept hostage at the juncture of all
kinds of risks and explained by a host of risk discourses:
anthropological, medical, criminological, public safety, etc.
The aim is to produce a governable biopopulace and
quarantine the new savage.
The crucial question is: how does this book (along with
Fitzpatricks Law as Resistance) the stress on illimitability
and alterity of law being so abiding for the authors match
up with this new scenario? For law to be indefinitely
responsive, it needs a liberal space; by implication, the
beyond that responsiveness imagines has ultimately to be
folded back unto the very matrix it desperately wants to
exceed. This is in a way a veritable aesthetic format. Viewed
in another way, infinite response is a disavowal of
representation, of any systemic knowledge as such; it is an
opening to the ethics of illimitable responsibility for the
other. But regardless of whether one takes the aesthetic or
the ethical route, the question that remains to be answered
is what chance does legal responsiveness have in a world
where liberal freedom is increasingly implicated in liberal
war? If we wish, we can perhaps take the question a step
further and ask, wasnt this always so right from the very
inception of liberalism as a philosophy of governance? Hasnt
liberalism always been driven on the one hand to discipline,
quarantine or even eliminate what it perceived as illiberal
internally and on the other wage war to expand the zone of
liberal peace externally?
7
One can think of two prospects
here. First, the optimistic prospect. Here justice wills itself
into the body of law as a corrosive moment and paves the
way for ceaseless agonism. The other is pessimistic, where
an illimitable law operating within a liberal matrix is
exhausted in the dialectical spiral of secrecy and revelation,
of rights and counter-rights. This is also not to forget also
that illimitable response logically also implies illimitable
determinacy.
NOTES
1. A different version of the essay came as a book review in Law, Culture
and the Humanities (Vol. 6, No. 3, October, 2010)
2. Michael C. Behrent: A Seventies Thing: on the limits of Foucaults
neoliberalism course for understanding the present in Sam Binkley
and Jorge Capetiillo (ed) A Foucault for the 21st Century: Governmentality,
Biopolitics and Discipline in the new Millennium (2009).
3. The idea of laws infinite responsiveness is profoundly Derridean
thoughts journey from the finitude of experience to a generalized
realm beyond finitude. Comparing Derridas scheme with Kants
autonomous subject of reason and pure duty, Claire Colebrook
comments: Without that appeal to an original, if purely formal,
subjective ground, Derridas deconstruction can never arrive at justice
or pure law, but can only regard any positive law as necessarily haunted
by the possibility of a justice that resists full conceptualisation and
actualisation. Colebrook, Legal Theory after Deleuze in Rosi
Braidotti, Clarie Colebrook and Patrick Hanafin (ed) Deleuze and Law:
Forensic Futures (2009), p. 10.
4. For a somewhat comparable line of analysis of thought and recalcitrance,
see Jon Simons, Foucault and the Political, 1995, especially pp. 54-56, 82;
see also the introduction of Deleuze and Law, cited above.
5. Marriane Constable does a similar kind of exercise in engaging with the
silences of legal texts. See her, Just Silences: the limits and possibilities of
modern law (2005). In this context, of interest is her argument that
illimitability is actually the sign of eternal deferral and spiraling
incompletion of the positivist legal system; either it is eternally replacing
custom or it is being already transformed into something else (pp. 30-
31).
6. For a Rawlsian modification of Foucault, also see Duncan Ivison,
Postcolonial Liberalism (2002), especially, chapter 6: The Postcolonial
State.
7. Julian Reid, The biopolitics of the war on terror (2006) and Michael Dillon
and Julian Reid, The Liberal Way of War: killing to make life live (2009) make
a forceful argument along these lines.
BOOK REVIEWS
Vinay Gidwani, Capital, Interrupted: Agrarian Development and
the Politics of Work in India. Permanent Black: Ranikhet, 2008.
xxv + 337 pp. Rs. 750 (hardback).
Priya Sangameswaran
Capital, Interrupted: Agrarian Development and the Politics of Work
in India is an exposition of the various interruptions that
capital encounters in both the human and non-human
worlds and in that sense, it is an argument about the specificity
of the experience of capitalism in any given space-time. But
to view the book only as yet another case study of a local
manifestation of capitalism albeit a brilliantly written one
would be doing it injustice. Empirically, the book uses a
mix of archival, ethnographic and survey research to explain
a seemingly straightforward phenomenon the emergence
of the Lewa Patels as a significant force in central Gujarat by
the early part of the 20
th
century and their relative decline
in recent times. But in doing so, Gidwani offers new
theoretical insights about core Marxist concepts like value
and labour, presents the continuities and discontinuities
inherent in the dynamics of class and caste formation in
colonial and post-colonial settings, and underlines, once
again, capitals para-sitic existence viz., the fact that its force
can be understood only by taking into account other kinds
of energies and logics.
It would be difficult to do justice to the entire range of
arguments in the book in the space of a short review,
especially given that these arguments could be analyzed from
a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives.
Instead, I would like to focus in this review mainly on two
chapters the third chapter (Machine) and the fourth
chapter (Distinction).
282 BOOK REVIEWS
Chapter 3 is an insightful account of the complex
working of development in post-independence Gujarat. The
story of canal irrigation in Matar taluka in central Gujarat
that Gidwani recounts, along with its various expected and
unexpected effects, can be used to productively engage with
and add to the developmental studies and agrarian studies
literatures. Here I briefly juxtapose Gidwanis arguments
with three other important works. Firstly, Gidwanis
conceptualization of development as a machine is very
different from James Fergusons anti-politics machine put
forward in his famous 1990 book The Anti-Politics Machine:
Development, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho.
Fergusons development machine seems to almost
mechanically transform political questions into technical
questions and mask the expansion of state bureaucratic
power. Gidwanis development machine lacks any such
singular essence; on the contrary, it brings into relation
previously unconnected parts (living and nonliving) in
dynamic ways, thereby transforming the parts themselves as
well as having unanticipated effects. Fergusons emphasis is
on how every so-called failure in development forms the
basis of further intervention by the state; for Gidwani, on
the other hand, the unpredictable trajectories of the
development machine mean that the failure of the state to
deliver is not the same as the failure of development... it is
the failure of the Indian state to contain the power of
development (p. 136).
The emphasis in Gidwani on the non-human as well as
on uncertainty remind us of Timothy Mitchells argument
in The Rule of Experts (2002); like Mitchell, Gidwanis
argument also seems at least partly a response to the
(relatively) crude notions of power that underpin some of
the post-development critique. Further, both Gidwani and
Mitchell see the state and capital as concrete abstractions,
whose areas of operation and effects are so widespread that
they seem to extend everywhere, but who seem to lack
BOOK REVIEWS 283
presence outside of their effects even as they are real in
their effects (p. 130). But where Mitchell and Gidwani differ
is in the theoretical approach used to make their argument
about the parasitic survival of capitalism and the nature of
its effects. As Gillian Hart points out in her thought-provoking
essay on development, power, and capitalism, Mitchell does
this in part by eliding Marxism.
1
Gidwani, on the other hand,
goes back to Marxism and the Marxist categories of value
and labour; while these are not discussed explicitly or in
great detail in Chapter 3, notions of value and waste, of forms
of labour and how they constitute self-identities, form the
subject of other chapters in the book and contribute to the
argument about the working of development. Thus
Gidwanis principal argument in Chapter 1 (Waste) is that
development was the internal reference point against which
all problems were posed in colonial India. For instance, to
reconcile the challenge that colonialization posed to
liberalism, the notion of value (and its converse, waste) was
extended beyond its meaning in classical political economy
to include norms of conduct (both economic conduct that
would multiply the production of wealth as well as moral
conduct). This, in turn, led to a particular discourse of land
and waste in both colonial and post-colonial settings, and
affected developmental interventions like the canal
irrigation scheme discussed in Chapter 3.
A third comparison that it might be productive to
indicate is between the idea of the desiring machine in
Gidwanis exposition of the working of development and
Akhil Guptas description of the post-colonial condition in
Notes from Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of
Modern India (1998), where peoples consciousness about
their lack of development and the consequent desire for
development informs their sense of self (in combination with
other identities of caste, class, region, and gender). In both,
the desire for development is also a major factor feeding
into the emergence of new kinds of resistances, although
284 BOOK REVIEWS
the political implications of these resistances are not
straightforward. Gupta discusses how the economic and
social ascendance of newer upper caste groups in the
aftermath of the green revolution in Uttar Pradesh led to a
form of agrarian populism which focused on the failure of
the state to implement development, even as it glossed over
differences within the peasantry. The development machine
has had a somewhat different trajectory in central Gujarat.
There, it was historically subordinated pastoralist groups such
as the Bharwads and the Rabaris who began to slowly bring
into question the domination by upper caste elites. This was
in part due to their desire for development (which includes
in it a proclivity for certain kinds of labour and not others
an argument that is developed further in Chapter 4), and
in part due to the various surprises produced by different
developmental interventions (for instance, the explosion of
grass along irrigation minors and subminors and along
perimeters of cultivated plots and field channels following
the introduction of canal irrigation). More critically, as in
the case of the agrarian populism in Uttar Pradesh, the
politics of the subaltern is not necessarily congruous with a
politics against capital. One example of this is the fact that
the initial surpluses of the Bharwads and the Rabris from
dairying were invested in moneylending and slowly control
was acquired over land via mortgage transactions. Similarly,
Gidwani also makes a connection (albeit one that is not fully
developed) between the decline of upper caste elites in
the region (for whom development has not worked in their
favour, or at least not to the extent expected) and the socially
regressive nature of their politics of communalism.
Chapter 4 starts with a very specific goal viz., to explain
why piecework arrangements (in contrast to daily wage
contracts and in-kind harvest shares) have become dominant
in a variety of agricultural tasks in the study region, using
what Gidwani calls a cultural logic of practice. While the
growing importance of piecework arrangements is part of a
BOOK REVIEWS 285
wider change in agrarian relations, Gidwanis focus is not
the commonalities across such a shift in different contexts
(such as the availability of surface irrigation and the use of
modern crop varieties), but rather the conjunctural nature
of such a shift (in this case, the long struggle between
different castes to change their relative standing in society).
In discussing this, Gidwani contrasts two major theoretical
approaches new institutional economics and Marxist
political economy and points out how these are inadequate
to explain the shift to piecework because they grant greater
causal primacy to seemingly hard material factors as
compared to supposedly soft cultural accounts.
New institutional economics approaches explain the rise
of piecework by emphasizing efficiency considerations, in
particular the argument that piece-rate regimes increase
worker productivity, ease temporal constraints on
agriculture, and lower supervision costs on employers.
Marxist political economy approaches highlight disciplinary
considerations, that is, the opportunities for surplus
extraction and social control of workers that piecework or
task-related regimes offer to employers. Both discuss power,
freedom, and exploitation within the labour process, albeit
in different ways; but Gidwani points out that the two sets of
explanations are limited. A very different kind of
understanding of power and freedom emerges when
Gidwani uses Bourdieus insights to analyze how different
caste groups seek to attain social distinction via the labour
process. Thus the Lewa Patels drive for refinement had led
to their seeking to disengage from direct supervisory
cultivation and therefore to a preference for hiring out work
on a piece-work basis. In what is reminiscent of James Scotts
weapons of the weak, households that depend primarily
on labour income also use variations of a logic of distinction
e.g., being late for work, and selective shirking. Some of
these households (particularly from the subordinate groups
like the Baraiyas/Kolis) have managed to negotiate piece-
286 BOOK REVIEWS
rate contracts where they can work at their own tempo, and
without constant interference and berating from the upper-
caste Patel employers. Other households have found
alternative avenues of income generation.
A number of points are noteworthy in this chapter. Firstly,
the complex working of the development machine is very
much evident in the changing nature of the labour process
too, as the ability of labourers to challenge the terms and
conditions of work are augmented by favorable factors such
as increase in demand for labour because of changes in
cropping practices, which in turn clearly results from
particular developmental interventions. Secondly, the
articulation of work practices as being embedded in a cultural
universe is critical, because it brings in the idea of self-
regulation within the labour process, thereby adding more
analytical potency to the concept of the government of
work. Thirdly, such an analysis of work practices also enables
one to go beyond a politics of labour that is essentially framed
in terms of an antagonism between capital and labour, and
instead focus on a politics of work that includes affirmative
forms of being (a point that is discussed in the fifth chapter
titled Interruption). Here Gidwani is drawing upon Diane
Elsons reading of labour, where labour itself is seen as the
object of Marxs theory of value, instead of just being a means
of explaining prices.
2
However, there are two concerns that must also be
highlighted. Firstly, while the juxtaposition of the new
institutional economic, Marxist political economy and the
cultural logic of practice approaches is an interesting and
productive exercise, the fundamental nature of the
irreconcilability between them is under-estimated. This is
also a point that applies more generally at other junctures
in the book where different theoretical perspectives are
evaluated. Secondly, while the explanation of the logic of
distinction and how it feeds into a specific balance between
work and leisure for the Lewa Patels helps to understand
BOOK REVIEWS 287
the formation of a particular kind of caste identity, the
phenomenon of the withdrawal of family labour (particularly
female labour) from the commoditized labour circuit could
do with a more complete and detailed explanation. In its
current form, it almost seems to subsume gender to caste
and does not engage adequately with the vast literature on
the question of female participation in the work force and
how this is shaped by a caste-class-gender nexus. Such an
exercise would also better complement the rich account of
the establishment of the corporate identity of the Lewa Patels
in the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century
in Chapter 2 (Birth), wherein caste is treated as an identity
overdetermined by factors ranging from particular systems
of revenue administration to hypergamous marriage
practices.
This brief discussion of some of the major arguments in
the book should hopefully give enough of a flavour to
stimulate further engagement with it. But in concluding
this review essay, a final noteworthy feature of the book that
deserves to be highlighted is the succinct but forthright
discussion of the ethical dimensions of a research such as
this as well as of the political economy of knowledge,
particularly in the aptly titled Afterword: Aporia. This, in
combination with the attention paid throughout the book
to the political implications of the research findings, means
that the book could potentially result in a lot of unsettling
in the realms of both theoretical practice and political
practice.
NOTES
1. Gillian Hart (2004), Geography and development: critical
ethnographies in Progress in Human Geography 28(1), pp. 91-100.
2. See Note 35, Chapter 5, pp. 315-316 for a brief discussion by Gidwani of
this alternative interpretation.
288 BOOK REVIEWS
Nonica Datta, Violence, Martyrdom and Partition: A Daughters
Testimony, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009, xv +
235 pp. Rs.695
Satish C. Aikant
Oral history in recent years has acquired a salience and
acceptance that is both popular and academic and has
occupied a recognised place within the scholarly practices
of numerous academic disciplines, such as anthropology,
education, history, geography, political science and sociology.
It is an interesting and developing field which plays a vital
role in recovering lost histories while enlarging our
understanding of the past. As a methodological tool it is being
widely used by feminist historians to contest the subaltern
status of women and recover histories that would otherwise
remain hidden behind the dominant discourses, thus
foregrounding the silenced subjectivities of women. One
cannot simply run down subjectivity as not expressing visible
facts - the ostensible business of history, because what an
informant believes is, indeed, a historical fact as much as
what really might have happened. Very often, we find that
written documents are only the uncontested transmission
of unidentified oral sources. The importance of oral
testimony lies not in its strict adherence to a so called fact,
but rather in its departure from it, as imagination, symbolism,
memory and desire structure it. Education, religion, politics,
local and family traditions and public culture -all influence
the way the past is remembered and interpreted.
Violence, Martyrdom and Partition: A Daughters Testimony
by Nonica Datta is based on the oral narrative of a woman in
colonial Punjab. The narrative invests new meanings into
the received accounts of communal divide and the
BOOK REVIEWS 289
concomitant violence which has shaped much of our colonial
and postcolonial history. What is significant about this
testament is the view from the other side that violence and
retribution can also derive legitimacy from the victims
perspective. One could perhaps concede that the specific
acts have their own contexts of validation. Datta has worked
extensively outside the archive to recreate an account of an
individuals history as it emerges in uneasy tension with
nation and community, by engaging into debates on women,
agency, speech/silence and subaltern interrogations of
dominant historiographies. She uses memory as an important
tool. Of course, memory comes loaded with ideological and
cultural representations of both the present and the past,
so that accounts of the past are never pure recall of life as
it were. As poststructuralists maintain, accounts of
experience cannot give direct access to reality because it is
impossible to compose or frame them outside the language
and discourses in which we make sense of our lives. Datta is
fully aware of the limitations of her approach and as a
historian marshals enough evidence to make up a coherent
and credible account.
The authors subject/informant Subhashini (1914-2003)
was born to a Jat family in Karnal district of Haryana. Her
father Phool Singh was a colonial subject in service of the
British Raj as a patwari, who, by the time Subhashini was
born, had resigned his job to become an itinerant Arya Samaj
preacher. This was a time when the Arya Samaj movement
was gaining ground in Punjab. As a child Subhashini was
sent off by her father to a gurukul to instil in her the spirit of
Arya dharma. She attended kanya gurukuls in Delhi and
Dehradun, to study the basic teachings of Dayanand
Saraswati. She also spent some time in Gandhijis Sabarmati
Ashram, but Gandhi did not impress her much. She was
married off, much against her own inclination, though she
remained devoted to the ideal of a brahmacharini and would
call herself a rand-lugai, a wife leading the life of a widow.
290 BOOK REVIEWS
By now her father, who was popularly called Bhagatji, had
started a gurukul for boys in Bhainswal, and also set up in
Khanpur the Kanya Pathshala, a gurukul for girls, which
Subhashini was asked to supervise. In the meantime there
was some communal turmoil when Karamat, a Muslim
pastoralist had a liaison with a Hindu Jat widow Shiriya Devi.
The Hindu Jat community was up in arms. Bhagatji warned
the woman but she wouldnt listen, and a Hindu Jat zealot
Baru Ram kills her on a field with his harvesting tools. This
infuriates Karamat who vows revenge on the Jat community
whose spiritual mentor was Bhagatji. On the fateful day of
14 August 1942 Bhagatji was found murdered. Subhashini
was convinced that the killers of her father were Musalman
Rangars. The bunyan tree under which he had died became
a sacred spot for the Jat community. Phool Singh turned
from a bhagat into a shaheed, a hutatma, in the memory of
the local Jat community. As far as Subhashini was concerned
her father had achieved martyrdom, and the day which was
to remain etched in her memory became the defining
moment in her life. From then on this beleaguered daughter
became obsessed with the idea of retribution and took upon
herself the moral responsibility to devote all her energies to
the education of the girls of Kanya Gurukul, Khanpur, the
task her father had assigned her.
The Aryan concept with its associations of vigour,
conquest and expansion was an important element in the
nationalist construction of a sense of identity, and within
the framework of the Aryan there was a virangana (the heroic
woman) ideal that has for a long time presented an
alternative paradigm for womanhood. On the one hand it
challenges patriarchy, while on the other it asserts the female
potential for power as well as virtue as strong reservoirs
against unholy colonial intrusions. Dayanand believed that
in the ideal society of the Vedic period women participated
in all spheres of public life, and it was the Muslim influence
that had corrupted a Hindu social order. A woman was seen
BOOK REVIEWS 291
as a symbol of purity and the Kanya Gurukul became a model
for womens institutions in many provinces.
Subhashini who strongly subscribed to the tenets of the
Arya Samaj had fully internalised the role that was assigned
for a Hindu woman. It was an activist and militarist path that
was obviously very different from the one advocated by
Gandhi, who wanted to deploy the femininity of women
against colonial masculinity, but which also saw women as
suffering and patient. That is perhaps the reason why Gandhi
never appealed to her. For her, women were both victims
and agents. If she perceived women as victims, who felt
oppressed in the Hindu patriarchal dispensation, she also
saw them as agents when it came to defending themselves
from Muslim marauders. Thus the Hindu woman became
the agent, while the Muslim man became the victim. When
Swami Shraddhanand launched his programme of shuddhi
in the 1920s using the community and nation making
discourse he advised the Hindus that the best way to avoid
conflict with the Muslims was to take care of their own
women and children. Subhashini could never forget that
Bhagatji was killed by a Muslim.
Partition is recorded in the popular imagination as a
traumatic event, and of unprecedented communal upheaval
and pain which rent asunder the lives of the people and left
deep scars on their psyche. The two communities have not
yet been able to come to terms with the violent rupture. Yet
a narrative such as Subhashinis presents us with a completely
different perspective on the partition violence. This is an
account that views partition as an occasion for retributive
justice, and hence for celebration. For her the moment of
reckoning though is not 1947 but 1942, the year of her
fathers martyrdom. 1947 is celebratory not just because it
comes as a culmination of the anti-colonial resistance but
because the collateral violence becomes a crucial mechanism
for the articulation of subjectivities and communal identities.
For Subhashini the partition, even if it comes as a tragedy,
292 BOOK REVIEWS
accomplishes a certain poetic justice. From her perspective
violence is justified because it defends community interests,
redresses the wrongs visited on a community, and in the
case of pre-emptive violence protects the community from
potential threats.
Violence, Martyrdom and Partition also raises some disturbing
issues. The legitimation of violence, retributive or otherwise,
in the wake of partition naturalises and reinforces the pre-
existing notions of fundamentally opposed Hindu, Sikh and
Muslim communities. Datta strictly adheres to her protocol,
scrupulously avoiding any normative position while
recounting Subhashinis testimony, and skillfully crafts
memory as history giving us an account that is credible. In
the process she opens up a historians territory to look at an
event from various perspectives, not necessarily congruent.
BOOK REVIEWS 293
History in the Vernacular Edited by Raziuddin Aquil and Partha
Chatterjee, New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2008
Mohinder Singh
The essays collected in this volume deal primarily with the
state of history writing in Indian vernaculars. One important
qualification, however, is that those works of history that
consciously follow the model of history written by academic
professional based on the method of Western historiography
have been excluded from history in the vernacular. What
then is history in the vernacular? The professional works
of history are produced mostly in academic spaces such as
universities, research institutes, professional journals etc. and
carried out mostly in English language. In the practice of
professional history writing, the basic idea is to follow the
basic assumptions of the method of modern historiography
such as the logic of rational causation and a secular time
frame. Such practices were adopted and imitated in major
modern Indian languages also. But such works dont
constitute vernacular histories according to the Editors of
this volume. The book is a collection of essays that seek to
explore other works of history writing in Indian vernaculars
which were not affected by the methods and assumptions of
modern historiographical practice. Some of these essays
explore the practices of recording history in different
vernaculars during the period that has now come to known
as early modernity. Some contributions, such as by Janaki
Nair on political history writing in pre-colonial Mysore, by
Sudeshna Purkayastha on Assamese buranjis, by Sanjay
Subramanyam and V. N. Rao on Telugu karnams, by
Raziuddin Aquil on history writing by prominent Muslim
intellectuals, and by Kumkum Chatterjee, engage with works
294 BOOK REVIEWS
of history proper in different vernaculars languages. Other
contributions have analyzed texts in other genres wherein
history appears as the main preoccupation - genres such as
autobiography (Udaya Kumars essay), poetry (Rosinka
Chaudharys essay), history in dream (Pradeep Kumar
Duttas essay).
The notion of early modernity is one of the most
interesting developments in recent historical research. While
the dominant, Eurocentric concept of modernity - developed
in the grand tradition of classical social theories of Marx and
Weber - worked with sharp dichotomies such as tradition
and modernity, the new approach uses this concept in a
much more flexible way. Once the concept of modernity is
loosened from its grounding in the specific history of Western
Europe, signs of modernity, the proponents of this approach
claim, could be found in the other parts of the world as
well, just before the advent of colonial modernity, during
the period between 15
th
and early 19
th
centuries.
Distinguishing early modernity from colonial modernity,
Partha Chatterjee, in the Introduction to the book dates
the latter roughly to 1830s and identifies it with the changes
brought about by the colonial regime in the fields of
economy, education, law, and administration. According the
Chatterjee, while the category of colonial modernity has a
fully recognizable shape as a formation and as a historical
period, the concept of early modern is still in its nascent
state and can not as yet be identified as a formation, socio-
economic or discursive. The early modern, according to
Chatterjee, modern could appear in South Asian historical
evidence from the 15
th
century to the present. But as
Chatterjee himself admits, compared to colonial modern,
the category early modern remains ill defined and barely
recognizable category.
A necessary consequence of this shift is that some of the
old debates of social theory are being be addressed differently
now. One of the most significant of these debates is
BOOK REVIEWS 295
universalism versus relativism, wherein the central question
is: are there universal concepts? This book collects essays
that deal with one such concept in many different ways, the
concept of history. The old colonial prejudice that Indians
lacked works of history before colonialism based on a secular
time scale is decisively being laid to rest. The essay by Sanjay
Subramanyam and V. N. Rao History and Politics in the
Vernacular addresses this question of the possibility of
universal concepts. They show how the relativists, who
emphasize the essential difference of cultures, too share in
the old prejudices despite inversion of judgment in favour
of celebrating the absence of universal concepts. Through
analyzing Telugu texts of early modern period they show
that not only is the concept of history to be found in them
but also a concept of politics based on secular morality, not
dharma based but a niti based understanding of politics. An
interesting paradox in some of these developments lies in
the fact that a more universalist and less Eurocentric
understanding of modernity is appearing with the emphasis
on the vernaculars. In this way, it becomes possible, not only
to disconnect the analysis of notions of history and politics
in pre-colonial India from Eurocentric assumptions, but also
to liberate history writing from its nationalist assumptions
also.
CONTRIBUTORS
CONTRIBUTORS
ENAKSHI MITRA is Assistant Professor in the Department
of Philosophy, University of Delhi.
(email: enakshimitra21@gmail.com).
FRANSON MANJALI is Professor in the School of Language,
Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi. He was a Fellow of the Indian Institute of
Advanced Study during 1998 1999
(email: franson.manjali@gmail.com).
GANGEYA MUKHERJI is Senior Lecturer in English at
Mahamati Prannath Mahavidyalaya, Uttar Pradesh. He was a
Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study during 2008-
2010 (email: gangeyamukherji@gmail.com).
KANCHANA NATARAJAN is Associate Professor in the
Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi. She was a
Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study during 2008-
2010 (email: kanchana237@gmail.com).
MANAS RAY is Fellow in Cultural Studies at the Centre for
Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC). He was
a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study during
2008 2009 (email: manas04@gmail.com).
MAYA JOSHI is Associate Professor in the Department of
English at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi (email:
joshi.maya@gmail.com).
300 CONTRIBUTORS
MOHINDER SINGH is Assistant Professor in the Department
of Political Science, University of Delhi. He was a Fellow of
the Indian Institute of Advanced Study during 2008 2010
(email: mohinder.du@gmail.com).
NIVEDITA SEN is Associate Professor in the Department of
English at Hans Raj College, Delhi (email:
nivedita118@gmail.com).
PRIYA SANGAMESWARAN is Fellow in Environmental
Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
(CSSSC) (email: psangameswaran@gmail.com).
SATISH AIKANT is Professor in the Department of English
at H.N.B. Garhwal University, Uttarakhand. He was a Fellow
of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study during 2008
2010 (email: aikant.satish@gmail.com).
SIBAJI BANDYOPADHYAY is Professor of Cultural Studies
at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
(CSSSC) (email: guhalipi@yahoo.com).
SUMANTA BANERJEE is veteran journalist, political
commentator and researcher on popular culture and social
history of 19
th
century Bengal. He is currently based in
Dehradun. (email: suman5ban@yahoo.com)
TRIDIP SUHRUD is Professor of Political Science at the
Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and
Communication Technology, Ahmedabad (email:
tridip.suhrud@gmail.com).

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