[Reader-list] Of mocking and an "intellectual community"

[Rana Dasgupta]

Kshmendra Kaul wrote:
> It appears that for some in this "intellectual community", it is an "intellectual"  accomplishment to make fun of someone's lack of familiarity with and skill at the English language.   

Listen I'm not going to defend my ridiculous post about jeans.

But it wasn't about anyone's command of language.  Everyone makes 
mistakes like that; in this case serendipity produced nice effects.  The 
return of the repressed, or something like it.

No: my mail was about what imaginary communities one considers oneself 
to be part of.  Dhatri brings it back in her last mail:

 >USA IS HAVING JUST 500 YEARS OF HISTORY
 > EUROPE --PROBABLY 3000 YEARS
 > ASIA - INDIA IS THE OLDEST

I have three questions to Dhatri, and to anyone else who may care to answer:


Question 1:

What does it mean to say that "Europe" has 3000 years of history?  Is 
there *anything* that persists across such a period of time, beyond just 
land itself?  Can a modern European really claim any kinship with 
someone who lived in the same landmass 3000 years ago?  Does s/he not 
have more in common with *anyone* on the planet today than with this 
notional ancestor?  If, therefore, the European can imagine a 
relationship of kinship with that person of 3000 years ago, does it not 
mean that s/he can imagine kinship with *anyone*, and has s/he not 
entirely overcome all human limits - such as the idea of "Europe"?

Lists of originary moments tell us nothing about anything.  I would say 
that America is an older society than most of Europe because it has 
lived with the same language of the state for over two centuries.  an 
18th century american would not have to learn many new concepts to 
parcipate in contemporary american politics, while an 18th century 
venetian or prussian would be bewildered by modern italy or germany.

So why the insistence on India's ancient origins?  How does it help to 
explain who you are - you who are so modern in your concerns?  You have 
surely more in common with the British and the Mughals than you do with 
someone from Harappa - for whom your idea of "India" would be entirely 
mystfying.  And, if you *are* able to perform such a feat as to imagine 
kinship with a citizen of Harappa, why can you not imagine kinship with 
far more proximate figures? - citizens of Pakistan, for instance, who 
are like you in nearly every respect, or citizens of Afghanistan or America?


Question 2

When you are able to think across such enormous timescales - 5000 years 
or so - why does *everything* not become relativised?  Over such a 
period, nothing has remained the same - no border has remained stable, 
no ruling clan has stayed in charge.  Every group has committed 
violence, and every group has been defeated.  (Your list of Indian 
invaders, by the way, does not include Emperor Ashoka, who invaded so 
many lands that were not his own, and whose violence was so sickening 
that even he was forced to turn away.)

Why are you not left with a sense of eternal change, and a benign 
indifference to who happens to be in today?  You speak of "pain" - but 
there are many things apart from pain in this vast period of time.  Or 
at least, there is no more pain here than in any other place of the 
world.  History being, to paraphrase Bernard Malamud, "a tragedy full of 
joy".

How can you draw out of such a vast and complex period just one simple 
story?  Isn't this an affront to your own history?


Question 3

What is your utopia?  If you were free to rewrite history, if there had 
been an eternal Hindu India, if there had never been any Persians or 
Mongols or British to irritate this narrative sweep, what is the 
paradise that such a history would have produced in the present?  In 
what terms would you describe it to yourself - peace, harmony, military 
might, wealth, spiritual achievement? - and what would its relations be 
with the outside world?


Yours

R