On Wednesday 12 Dec 2007 1:16 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > A perennial conundrum for Indian sociology has been figuring out the > correct frame of analysis; if all the theories and categories of sociology > are imported from the West, how can they help us to undestand India? On the > other hand, it has tended to be insular, looking only at India, without a > sufficient comparative perspective. An unresolved debate ... and there are > many others.
Sociology in India is heaven for people like me. I can say what I like and there is nobody to contradict me. But I don't believe I am firing random shots. My first impression that Indians are peculiar and different from observing myself, but was reinforced by Naipaul who characterized India as a "stupefied" nation I will quote from Naipaul's "An Area of Darkness", Penguin, pp 208-209 Quote: ... The British pillaged the country thoroughly; during their rule, manufactures and crafts declined. This has to be accepted and listed against the achievements listed by Woodruff: a biscuit factory is a poor exchange for gold embroidery. The country had been pillaged before. But continuity had been maintained. . With the British, continuity was broken. And perhaps the British are responsible for this Indian artistic failure, which is part of the general Indian bewilderment, in the way that the Spaniards were responsible for the stupefaction of the Mexicans and the Peruvians. It was a clash between a positive principle and a negative; and nothing more negative can be imagined than the conjunction in the eighteenth century of a static Islam and a decadent Hindu India. In any clash between post renaissance Europe and India, India was bound to lose. (Naipaul follows this passage with a footnote that is informative, and I continue quoting from the footnote) If I had read Camus's The Rebel before writing this chapter I might have used his terminology. Where Camus might have said "capable of rebellion", I have said "positive"[....]; and it is interesting that Camus gives, as examples of people incapable of rebellion, the Hindus and the Incas. 'The problem of rebellion has no meaning except within our Western society. [...snip..] What is at stake is humanity's gradually increasing self awareness as it pursues its course. In fact, for the Inca and the Hindu parish the problem never arises because for them it had been solved by a tradition, even before they had had time to raise it - the answer being that their tradition is sacred. If in a world, things are held sacred, the problem of rebelion does not arise, it is because no real problems are to be found in such a world, all the answers having been given simultaneously. Metaphysic is replaced by myth. There are no more questions, only eternal answers and commentaries, which may be metaphysical. end Quote The longer I observe Indian society the clearer it becomes to me that Indians including every one of us have inherited weird (Probably Hindu, and some islamic) cultural characteristics that are unique. We tend to superimpose these characteristics on learned behavior that we acquire from the West or elsewhere and often produce a grotesque parody that does not convincingly correlate with what we aim to produce, but openly shows the really weird and different "Hindu" heritage in behavior. And nobody has bothered to really understand or unravel that complex Hindu behavioral heritage. Modernity (or should I say "modernism"?) and political correctness prevent us from acknowledging caste related influences. It is very difficult to openly point out behavior in an Indian that is plainly a vestige of the caste system for fear of arousing needless passion, but those vestiges are there all around for us to see. Ajit Mani, whom former CiXers will know, and who unsubscribed himself from Silk has a long list of linguistic vestiges of the caste system that Indians often use and perpetuate unconsciously and innocently, with absolutely no idea that they are doing it. Even Indians who are ostensibly sophisticated and "world citizens" who take umbrage at being associated with the India they have "left behind" in favor of modernity often unconsciously display open biases and hints of attitudes that are unique to India. It is often very difficult to point this out, because of a reaction called "cognitive dissonance" that tends to cause anger and denial when uncomfortable facts are pointed out. If Sociology departments suddenly bloom in every town and city in India, it will still be 150 years before India and Indian behavior is anywhere near being sussed out and sorted out intelligently and scientifically. The problem is that most developed nations understand the value of sociology. Indians, are babes in the wood, muddling through human evolution in fits and starts. shiv
