[Reader-list] A Kafila of Brown Sahibs and Memsahibs?

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

*A Kafila of Brown Sahibs and Memsahibs?*
**
*By Ritwik Agrawal | October 13, 2010 6:26 pm*
**
*Link -
http://www.ritwikagrawal.com/2010/10/13/a-kafila-of-brown-sahibs-and-memsahibs/
*

On 5 October, Kafila.org published a
*post*<http://kafila.org/2010/10/05/nirmohi-akhara-and-ram-lalla-virajaman-susmita-dasgupta/>by
Nivedita Menon, guest authored by Susmita Dasgupta, which argued that
Nirmohi Akhara is not a “Hindu” sect and that Ram was a fictional hero not
backed by Puranic texts and therefore worshipped only by those on the
margins of society.

Almost every line of the original post leaves the author and her hypothesis
vulnerable to being taken apart. For instance, the author contends that
Krishna-worshippers traditionally believed themselves to be non-hindu. At
some time, krishna-worshippers could “climb into the Hindu fold because
Krishna has a Puranic backing”. It is curious why those who defined
themselves as “non-Hindus” would want to climb into the “Hindu” fold. Maybe
there are lots of details and resultant complex analysis involved in this
picture, which the author hasn’t had the time or effort to look into, eager
as she is to wade into murky waters to serve one or the other political
project. If such service is to be done at the expense of the truth or
academic method, then so be it!

I shall not dwell any more on the factual inaccuracies and logical
inconsistencies which are scattered all over Susmita’s post and her response
to comments. Indeed, certain commentators, like “BC” and “suresh” have
already raised some extremely probing questions to which Susmita has
(wisely) chosen not to respond.

Having read the post soon after it was published, and having found it
legitimately funny [though such an outcome was probably not foreseen by the
author or her promoters], I had submitted the following comment to Kafila:

My heartfelt thanks to Susmita and Nivedita for providing some much needed
comic relief in the midst of an overheated debate on Ayodhya.

Susmita, in the course of your researches (?) did you bother inquiring from
the Nirmohi Akhara as to their religious persuasion? Specifically about
whether they consider themselves within or without the fold of hindusim.

Even though it was the first serious engagement with Susmita’s post, this
comment was not approved by Kafila’s extremely enlightened moderators – the
flimsy reasons cited by them [only on my prompting via this blog] can be
read *here*<http://www.ritwikagrawal.com/2010/10/05/muzzled-by-kafila-org/#comments>

My comment was not made in jest. It’s tone was somewhat dismissive because I
think indulging in long debates with people who cannot respect academic
rigour or method and for whom facts are but inconvenient obstacles in the
way of ideology, constitutes a waste of time. Indeed, there would be some
justification in labelling the Kafala bunch, barring some honourable
exceptions like Rohini Hensman and Jairus Banaji, as extremists [glib ones,
though] for this very reason.

The second part of my comment [about asking the Nirmohi Akhara] involves a
serious question of methodology. It is alright to to go back to Rabindranath
and Saratchandra and other Indian and Western scholars, however did the
author bother to ask the present followers of the Nirmohi Akhara about their
religious persuasion? Isn’t it extremely condescending for all of us, far
way from ground realities and communicating in a foreign tongue, to be
passing judgement on the religious beliefs of a set of people without even
bothering to consult them about it? Forget about involving them as actual
participants, in this instance English speaking “scholaraship” has failed to
even use the “subject of study” as a “native informant” !

Such methodology brings to mind the following passage by the brilliant
social theorist *Achille Mbembe:*

On key matters, the Hegelian, post-Hegelian, and Weberian Traditions,
philosophies of action and philosophies of deconstruction derived from
Nietzsche or Heidegger, share the representation of the distinction between
the West and other historical human forms as, largely, the way  the
individual in the West has gradually freed her/himself from the sway of
traditions and attained an autonomous capacity to conceive, in the here and
now, the definiton of norms and their free formulation by  individual,
rational wills. These traditions also share, to varying degrees, the
assumption that, compared to the West, other societies are primitive, simple
or traditional in that, in them, the weight of the past predetermines
individual behaviour and limits the areas of choice – as it were, a priori.
The formulation of norms in these latter societies has nothing to do with
reasoned public deliberation, since the setting of norms by a process of
argument is a specific invention of modern Europe.
(Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony,2001)

If, in the above, we replace Western/European by
English-speaking/convent-educated and take other societies to mean
non-English speaking, then we see that the kind of attitude adopted by
Susmita Dasgupta and other writers at Kafila is precisely the kind that
Membebe bemoans and rejects in Western discourses about Africa [and by
extension, other colonized societies]. Somehow, in their keen-ness to
emancipate the masses by “representing” their interests, some people forget
or fail to take into consideration the masses own feelings on the matter.
 In doing so, they end up behaving like arrogant white masters in a colony
instead of equal participants in a democratic set up. In the present
instance, the Nirmohi Akhara should be consulted about their own religious
beliefs. The fact that they may not speak English, or refuse to participate
in coffee table discussions should be immaterial. Please note that my
question, was and is, one of methodology. I am not presupposing Nirmohi
Akhara’s response [or lack thereof] if a query over their religious beliefs
is indeed posed to them.
By censoring out my comment, Kafila doesn’t muzzle me since I am still
reaching a audience similar to theirs through the same medium, but by
muzzling the Nirmohis on a matter inextricably linked to them, not only does
Kafila show intellectual arrogance, but a rather unfortunate sense of
cultural and linguistic superiority which is a relic of the colonial
episteme. Kafila should know that if they open their eyes to this, they can
discard what we can call, the *Educated Brown Man’s Burden*, and this will
enrich both their understanding and analysis.

-- 
Aditya Raj Kaul

India Editor
The Indian, Australia

Web: http://activistsdiary.blogspot.com/