Indian Exceptionalism: Colonial Stereotypes and Postcolonial Realities

" Thus, to espouse capitalism without qualification is suddenly to be a good Indian!
"

And you blame us??? Chacha Nehru and his progeny inflicted socialism on us leaving a very bad taste in our mouth. Are you someone who was spared the vagaries of a sociaist economy because you are too young? Or did you grow up in unfettered capitalism and hanker for a golden era that never existed?

antihistory,

Having reread your piece, I was wondering if you cared to discuss how the theme of exceptionalism (if it relates) might apply to particular crises in contemporary history: points of Hindu-Muslim tension, struggles over land and resource ownership, or other examples.

Wheel O time says
#92 Posted by KaalChakra on October 28, 2007 11:01:30 am
dash_dot, american universities - even the best of them - are full of all sorts of weird people, in the name of 'diversity.'


But there ARE a few very good researchers among social walas too. Their distinguishing mark is that they do not reject the scientific approach.


I totally agree with you. In fact this diversity results in "progress" as nothing is ever rejected oturight as being too way out.

What I quoted there was from a paper by Professor Sokal from NYU. It was a hoax paper, which he wrote to show the decrepit nature of "some of the guys" in the social sciences. He later owned upto to this hoax.

Here is the link to the full epsiode: http://physics.nyu.edu/~as2/

The whole page relates to this and the debates that followed it. They make an interesting read and I would recommend it for its many insights.

In fact what we often see today on the "not-so-margins" is the wholesale hoaxing of people. This is done by using mumbo-jumbo, big words, complex sentences - and a whole load of "self-referencing" to create an aura of high-mindedness.

At its core, social sciences (sociology, linguistics, etc) should and must analyse what has happened and what is happening currently within a society or groups of societies. For it provides us with a valuable set of tools to lay out policies for the betterment of the society.

A good handout on this is available here http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/sociology.html

or check this out http://sociology.berkeley.edu/index.php?page=intro

Very easy to read, understand, and assimilate.

This is my point. The rest is all, as they say a lot of .....

Re: # 92

Kaalchakra - this quote is from a paper by Professor Sokal from NYU. It was a hoax paper, which he wrote to show the decrepit nature of the social sciences. He later owned upto to this hoax.

Here is the link to the full epsiode: http://physics.nyu.edu/~as2/

The whole pages relates to this and the debates that followed it. They make an interesting read and I would recommend it for its many insights.

dash_dot, american universities - even the best of them - are full of all sorts of weird people, in the name of 'diversity.' :)


But there ARE a few very good researchers among social walas too. Their distinguishing mark is that they do not reject the scientific approach.

"Dismantling the myth of uniqueness, while preserving an emphasis on the richness and particularity of Indian social practices and customs, may be a first step toward thinking about the sources of violence in Indian society."

There is nothing in exceptionalism that warrants response by violence. The sources of violence are not on account of exceptionalism but on account of politics of domination.
Unless and until such violence is part of the exceptionalist discourse like in Islam.
Identity and uniqueness are part of every society. There are common grounds between different societies and there are also uniqueness within them. So what 'myth' you are trying to break is not clear to us.
It is almost a tautology to say :-

""My take on it: Indian society may be exceptional, but only to the extent that any and every other society in the world is also exceptional. "

I think all of us are still trying to understand what priceless pieces of insight your article is trying to convey.

"Hindus and Muslims were two different nations and peoples who could not live together; Indians
were primarily a religious people or religious peoples; Indian communities were prone to violence; Indians were uncivilized, even if in an earlier golden age they had been civilized; liberal values such as democracy or freedom of thought and expression were unknown to Indians."

Hey, all these were not mere stereotypes but were representations which very much true and part of the indian society. British colonial representation only exaggerated this part and turned in into one whole representation of indian society.

The "exceptionalism" of the traditions were a very much part of cultural reality. To say that the exceptionalism of TNT was a product of British colonial representation and not a product of exceptionalism of Quran is absolutely wrong.

Gandhi was a product of romantic liberal thought and there is NOTHING innate about the 'secularism' of indian society.

The author must try and use clear language and define the words and avoid hiding his presumptions in jargons.

Hey we need to have something in plain language or you need to publish in a social studies journal where they understand words like "exceptionalism"

BTW that #88 is a QUOTE from an academic journal of the kind favoured on this board....here is the reference

Social Text #46/47, pp. 217-252 (spring/summer 1996). a leading North American journal of cultural studies -- whose editorial Collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross

Dig a bit deeper to read it all...

Re: # 57 this might be of interest to many here.....


""There are many natural scientists, and especially physicists, who continue to reject the notion that the disciplines concerned with social and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute, except perhaps peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive to the idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised or rebuilt in the light of such criticism. Rather, they cling to the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in ``eternal'' physical laws; and that human beings can obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to the ``objective'' procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method."

"But deep conceptual shifts within twentieth-century science have undermined this Cartesian-Newtonian metaphysics; revisionist studies in the history and philosophy of science have cast further doubt on its credibility; and, most recently, feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified the substantive content of mainstream Western scientific practice, revealing the ideology of domination concealed behind the façade of ``objectivity''. It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical ``reality'', no less than social ``reality'', is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific ``knowledge", far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential; and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities. These themes can be traced, despite some differences of emphasis, in Aronowitz's analysis of the cultural fabric that produced quantum mechanics; in Ross' discussion of oppositional discourses in post-quantum science5; in Irigaray's and Hayles' exegeses of gender encoding in fluid mechanics; and in Harding's comprehensive critique of the gender ideology underlying the natural sciences in general and physics in particular.""

Re: # 85
beej you be red-flagged as yet..... some harridan has been going around red-flagging posts

Re: # 83

nb
very correct in what you say. This is what I have experienced here in the UK and in Canada (where there are great numbers).

Infact compared to the parsees and other small groups these guys ran at the first sign of freedom in the subcontinent (both pakistan and india) .

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nb,

your interesting post raises a lot of questions-what factors contribute to anglo indians, dalits, jains, parsis, jews, muslims, sikhs migration or entrenchment within india.

#51, because Anglo-indians really are a very very small minority-there are many more Jains and Sikhs. I agree with you though that no matter what, people have the right to express themselves, and they do express themselves. Are you aware that they have 2 members of Parliament nominated from their community? However, in a democracy, it is unfortunately numbers that count. I grew up with a lot of Anglo Indians, so I think I know more about them than most people.
And Dotty is right, large numbers of them and their equivalents in Sri Lanka ran out crying at the end of British rule. Think of Charmaine Solomon, the well known Sri Lankan-Australian cookbook writer who shudders she left Sri Lanka just in time because Bandranaike died the next year. To me that is as stupid as someone saying they escaped America in 1962 just in time.
And in Australia, I run into them all the time, still grateful to have left Gorakhpur and Agra and Bardhhaman/Burdwan, and talking about how well they have been accepted. They tell me that, but still complain of racism when they are talking amongst themselves.
For all that, there are a fair few of them who chose to stay on in India, you only need a visit to The Dalhousie Insitute in Calcutta to see that.

Re hamidm2 #61

[... the only point i am trying to make is that if the common man cannot understand what the intellectuals are talking about, what good is it ? ....... should the common man just trust the intellectuals to think for them while they go about doing the grunt work ?......... why don't we all just bend over and let the denizens of this or that think tank or institute have at it !]

But then, wouldn't that be the kind of exceptionalism that Rohit Chopra and Samina Shah are railing against?

Re antihistory #40

[Is it a bad thing that Dalits use the same logic to gain political capital and voice? The quick answer: it is not a bad thing only as long as that does not shut out other voices, within or outside the Dalit community. But already there is some evidence that some segments of the highly fractured (by region, language, gender, and religion etc.) community will benefit more than others from this narrative.]

Yeah; like Lallu Prasad Yadav, M. Karunanidhi, Murasoli Maran and his children, and above all, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadera, have benefitted and will continue to benefit.