dear all,
am so happy c-u and alpana aunty has started writing on something other than the river-link!personally, that was such a big boring time to read u people.
as for me ,am reading rajani kanta bordoloi's uponyaxs these days......i must say the language is a beauty in itself.wish i had lived to hear people speak such an assamese!(hey its bihu almost , thought aunty would start a sithi in assamese .what say?).....His rohdoi ligiri with her numerous escapades read like R.K.Narayan's Guide to me in the last pages!and can understand doyaram giving her(singing of giving her) kopou phul , but why on earth 'long '( as in long guti in r.k.b's language)!! some exotic indian spice?? beats me why the bihu songs have so many refrences to it??!!!
for shyamanta saikia:
thanks for teh detailed writing,i do believe i follow you quite a bit .(only derrida knows if your signifiers have really been received as teh proper signifieds by me,. well forget it!:)
What had irked me (irks me)is this reductionist view of aNY structuralist enterprise towards understanding any religion (more so) .your last paragraph thus makes much more sense to me.
i mean i can understand a structuralist reading of a movie, a trend like ------to some extent only---a tribe,it's way of living (the big question of course is , we tend to use our structures to look at them. so basically we at first creatE what we want to see.(the noumene does get created by us, in that sense...and we have the phenomena as we want it/that phenomena only which we understnd it as we do!!).that's how structuralism/formalism seems to me as. and broadly speaking......most theory: an interesting world no doubt, but then even post-positivity cannot bring us out of it.but yes, very interesting detours they are.but we all know that it is when theory , with all its hypotheses,meets with metaphysics ,there is a head-on collision(!) in which metaphysics survives with all its happy elusiveness!!what is complicated in hinduism is teh so many 'unseens' beyond the idols, the trishuls , the rites and the rituals.with that 'Truth is o!
ne' (thankfully) there at teh very midst of all ,we have the ' Bahudha's rampant. and forget anyone being a hindu with a thorough reading of the vedas, gandhi would not even spare max mueller of not understanding hinduism, he's a mere reader of it.(the corollary could be if you understand hinduism you have to be a hindu?...are we talking about , finally our 'birth' as a point of injunction??so what /till where, do we have access with a system of understanding like 'structuralim' for instance.....).
For example... a
>structuralist will say that the principle of LIFE AFTER DEATH is
>primary to all religions: if you are a Christian you will HAVE to
>believe in heaven and hell and similarly if you are a Hindu, you
>will HAVE to believe in rebirth and Karma. If you don't believe in
>them you can never be a Hindu. Structuralism might help us discover
>such principles.
i try to understand your 'have to's ! yes all religions are based on certain fundamental principles through which Good can be differentiated from Bad.but just as you said there are embellishments(i mean the sati ,etc.--to fight those notions, in academic austerity , thankfully we have people like romila thapar who tries to clarify history of such false mixtures of dubious 'reality'...) aplenty in religion which might end up as pure hinduism through a theorised view!(of course Kant told us long back ,( i still cannot believe , for some reason, that he was just five feet!anyways.) ,as we see--perceive---through categories, we just see things in structures just as so! so is not that again some intrinsic network within by which we are bound to look at things? so with/without theory, does not make too much of a difference.( as i love to say" same difference"!).and when its religion its all teh more dicy as its more of faith and belief that gives 'shape' to a re!
ligion......than the so many max muellerian readings(no ofence, i adore that german Great.)
So ,again, Gandhi did not hesitate to take in ample doses, teachings of christianity to mix with his 'ahimsa'.THE DIFFERENCES make teh reality of any 'form' like religion all the more unique,and yes when we try to see teh form too much we might end up as somebody trying to differentiate teh dance from teh dancer :):).thanks again, liked reading your well written post.
madhuleema chaliha
>From: "S Saikia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Hindutva and Its Discontents-Levi strauss
>Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2004 20:56:03 -0500
>
>
>
>
>madhuleema chaliha wrote:
>
>
>>ha, to resort to 'theory' is pretty alright, but before being
>>structuralist(do we raelly end up >being so in proper when we bring
>>in levi-strauss ,( however religiously ) ) to posit it as >some
>>'touchstone' method to define essential hinduism and it's 'mere
>>embellishments'? i >smell a lot of complications there !!
>
>
>
>
>As a general rule, there are two ways by which a religion can be
>defined: substantatively( if you believe certain types of things you
>have a religion while if you don't believe them, you don't have a
>religion ) or functionally (if your belief system plays some
>particular role either in your social life, in your society, or in
>your psychological life, then it is a religion; otherwise, it's
>something else ). Classical Hinduism has always been defined
>functionally rather than substantatively. (I said classical Hinduism
>because, methinks, POPULAR Hinduism is nothing better than blind
>idol-worship: how many of us, for example, can be bothered to go
>through a single reading of a single Veda?). But questions like "Who
>is a Hindu?" or "What is Hinduism?" are substantative questions.
>
>Now, Hinduism is pretty nebulous in nature. Its followers are not
>constrained to choose/follow any one particular kind of life. You
>can take your pick - Ram, krishna, kali, ganesh, ganga mayia,
>shivlinga, the spirit that lives in the tree in your back yard,
>choose what you may. You can guide yourself either by the Gita,
>vedas, Upanishads or whatever suits you. one can be polytheistic,
>monotheistic, or even atheistic, and still call oneself a Hindu.
>Name one belief that you do not consider essential to Hinduism, and
>there is a sub-philosophy of Hinduism without it (sounds very
>convoluted, but necessary). A cursory look seems to show that
>Hinduism consists in the belief that each has his/her own set of
>beliefs and should be allowed to pursue it as long as it doesn't
>cause serious trouble for someone else. Followers have always
>followed their own path without proselytising on others.( I haven't
>heard worshippers of Krishna clashing with worshippers of Ram or
>Kali yet ,though the situation may change if Mr. Advani shows too
>much zest in Ram. )
>
>"Ekam sat, vipra bahudha vadanti" (ie truth is one, sages call it
>differently) is an easily accepted and well regarded idea in
>Hinduism. The metaphysical question "What is Hinduism?" doesnot have
>a cut and dried answer. One answer is that this is very similar to
>saying that all human beings are inherently Muslims, and it is up to
>everyone to recognize this fact and embrace Islam (I have seen
>claims made to this effect repeatedly on the net). It is really
>quite wasteful to expect everyone to agree to such claims. More
>specifically, however, the reasons for such claims in Hinduism are
>twofold. One is historical; every facet of ancient Indian culture
>from science to religion to philosophy has come to be labeled as
>Hindu. The second is that Hinduism is culled from diverse sources,
>including the Vedas (a compilation of Hymns produced by ancient
>seers, primarily containing rituals), the Upanishads (actually the
>last portion of the Vedas containing philosophic revelations),
>Smritis (containing social injunctions), Puranas (inspiring stories
>and parables), the epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata; a portion of the
>Mahabharata known as the Gita contains the essentials of Hindu
>philosophy), and a host of other religious and philosophic treatises
>such as the Samhitas, Agamas, etc. etc. Since none of these sources
>may be considered paramount, and not every Hindu necessarily draws
>his religious inclinations and inspiration from a single source, it
>is nearly impossible to characterize a single definition of Hindu.
>
>
>--- Due to this very nature instead of bothering ourselves with the
>metaphysical questions "What is Hinduism?" and "Who is a Hindu?", I
>believe we should take the "epistemological detour" by asking "WHAT
>can we really know about the essence Hinduism?" and "HOW can we know
>what we know?"
>Only after we answer the last couple of epistemological questions
>can we go back to the primary concern of defining Hinduism: for as
>long as the very metaphysical tools that we are using are in
>question, we are going nowhere.
>
>
>>you are talking about christianity as the referent point for your
>>test.i wonder how the > well-defined norms of christianity be used
>>to define other religions(which are not well- >defined as yet...as
>>we are wont to find definitions in evrything, to be 'structurally'
>> >right!).
>>
>>let me just refer to a principal adherent to hindusim, gandhi, (as
>>in the more uncommon >'mahatma'!),who disagreed with a lot there in
>>hinduism yet found in its basic nature more >that would quench his
>>thirst as a hindu.there is a structure(if you want to call a flow a
>> >strucure...)which 'defines' hinduism well enuf
>
>I am not trying to fix Christianity as the yardstick to judge all
>religions. When I suggested the structuralist method of Levi-Strauss
>I had something else in mind. Hinduism has developed throughout
>history; it is not one book or one seer we have to follow.
>Throughout history various social customs and belief came under the
>same umbrella and became a part of the religion and this is not only
>true regarding Hinduism but regarding every religion in the world-
>Christianity included. The Romans, due to their prevalent beliefs,
>included the idea of worshipping the CROSS in a religion which
>decried idolatry! (What if Jesus was executed with a gun: something
>to think about) Hinduism, throughout the ages, absorbed customs like
>Sati, animal sacrifice etc. as its parts whcih in fact had no
>relation whatsoever to classical Hinduism.
>
>Structuralism is not merely pitting one religion againt another; it
>is a study of the structure of religion in general. In the words of
>Levi-Strauss himself structuralism does four things: first, it
>shifts from the study of 'conscious' PHENOMENA to a study of the
>'unconscious' INFRASTRUCTURE; second,it doesnot treat
>phenomena/terms as independent entities, taking instead its basis of
>analysis the RELATIONS between the phenomena/terms; third it
>introdues the concept of SYSTEM in anthropology, linguistics, or any
>cultural phenomena and finally, aims at discovering 'GENERAL LAWS'
>EITHER BY INDUCTION OR BY LOGICAL DEDUCTION, WHICH WOULD GIVE THEM
>AN ABSOLUTE CHARACTER. (Structural Anthropology, 1963)
>The principles of structuralism has been applied successfully in
>linguistics, anthropolgy and other elements of civilization with
>remarkable success in identifying the general STRUCTURE underlying
>seemingly diverse phenomena.
>
>>and am sure the structuralist who try it out can only miss its
>>nuances wholesale.and if i may say, he nuances make it all: any
>> >structure.(no am not putting myself against the levi-strauss(!),
>>am just compelled to put >in these words as i find certain
>>application of theory fearsome
>
>I am not denying that Hinduism is unique;what I am suggesting is not
>OVERTHROWING but simply looking under the 'nuances' to detect the
>unquestionable implications of being a Hindu. For example... a
>structuralist will say that the principle of LIFE AFTER DEATH is
>primary to all religions: if you are a Christian you will HAVE to
>believe in heaven and hell and similarly if you are a Hindu, you
>will HAVE to believe in rebirth and Karma. If you don't believe in
>them you can never be a Hindu. Structuralism might help us discover
>such principles.
>
>These are simply my lame views on the massive subject. Regards!
>
>syamanta saikia
>
