The Accessibility of Indian Concepts by Ruchika Nambiar

Journal of Contemporary Thought, 40 (Winter 2014)

The Accessibility of Indian Concepts Ruchika Nambiar This essay explores the pervasiveness of Western conceptual frameworks in the Indian context and seeks to argue that a lack of “responsiveness” – a numbness – among Indians towards these concepts is proof of a complete absence of understanding and is precisely what gives Western concepts their stronghold. The essay attempts to map the range and nature of the influence these concepts have on India and tries to understand the extent to which this influence compromises an Indian “way” of thinking and functioning. It then considers the forms in which Indian concepts may be preserved today and in what ways they may still be accessible to us. Keywords: Concepts, cognitive frameworks, East-West comparison, Indian thought, cultural exchange.

What happens to a society or a form of life when the concepts that structure it do not allow those living in it to engage with them or creatively develop them? Since its colonial past, India has been structured – socially, economically, politically – based on concepts and ideals it has inherited from the West and has continued to do so even after independence. Cora Diamond, in her essay “Losing Your Concepts,” states that any form of responsiveness to a concept – even so much as finding it unintelligible or absurd – is a sign of possession of that concept (274). I will be using this idea as a basis for scrutinizing the status of Western concepts that have been adopted by India in an attempt to more precisely map the range and nature of their influence. I will also be drawing from Vivek Dhareshwar’s essay “Framing the Predicament of Indian Thought” which argues that Indians have been insulated from their experience due to the adoption of Western cognitive frameworks (258). Using these two pieces as a launch pad, I wish to examine the extent of the damage, if any, done to Indian conceptual frameworks and the forms in which they may still be accessible to us. I will structure this enquiry by examining three claims in the following order: 1) Western concepts, which have been formulated within the theological framework of Christianity, have infiltrated India so effortlessly precisely because, among Indians, there is no such “responsiveness” (of the kind Diamond specifies) that could wonder about it, question it, resist it or even so much as care about it; 2) If Indian reality has, in fact, been insulated by a Western cognitive framework, it then implies that the Indian experience still exists in some form – maybe even preserved – and is perhaps still accessible.; 3) Finally, I wish to investigate the accessibility of this Indian reality, first focusing on the role of native languages and whether they may be of any use in accessing these Indian concepts, and second, discussing S. N. Balagangadhara’s “We Shall Not Cease from Exploration” and the suggestions he puts forth to salvage an Indian way of thinking.

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A lack of ‘responsiveness’ In order to understand what it means to have lost a concept, it is necessary to understand what makes for possessing it. In his essay “Language and Political Change,” Quentin Skinner details the three criteria to be fulfilled in order to come into possession of a concept after it has been assigned a word: one must 1) understand the criteria for the word’s application, 2) be aware of its range of reference, and 3) be conscious of the evaluative qualities of the word (13). While this is an enormously useful and precise breakdown, there seems to be something valuable lost due to the scrutiny and dissection subjected to an intangible understanding of language and concepts in order to arrive at this breakdown. What I mean by this intangible understanding is the complex and layered understanding we have of what language is, how it is shared and how it functions. We are able to perceive its nuanced nature, the different levels at which it operates, the ambiguities it creates and the ways in which we are, nevertheless, able to employ it in a generally cohesive manner. This kind of ephemeral “sense” (for lack of a better description) that we have of the dynamic nature of language and concepts (or any tool or medium used to build a shared understanding among multiple persons) seems to lose its essence in the attempt to analyse and explain it. The major strands of understanding that can be organized in a linear way are picked out and highlighted. But our understanding of language is far from linear. A significant amount of information is lost in translation. Diamond does not necessarily provide a better understanding, simply a different one that better captures this broader, intangible aspect while Skinner captures the more precise elements. Her method of approaching it is, say, less formal and left largely to the reader’s ability to “get” what she is saying, without breaking down what she means by terms like “responsiveness” in any formal, structured way. A combined understanding of both Skinner and Diamond’s method of analysis can provide what I believe a far more wholesome understanding of concept possession. Diamond describes the possession of a concept as the ability to engage with it in any form, the ability to have any kind of “responsiveness” towards it. This could even be so much as being able to acknowledge the unintelligibility of a particular concept, because to make that acknowledgment would mean being aware of what that concept entails in order to be aware of what it does not. …part of life with concepts is responsiveness to ways of talking which make no sense within that life; in the example, what makes no sense in the life of moral discussion is talk of the putting of babies into cages as a question like the use of taxes for public education. When someone speaks as if he did not know or had somehow forgotten that these are questions of different sorts, a participant in the life in which

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they have a different character may respond: “What is this?” “What is going on?” “Huh?” The larger claim I want to make is that the responsiveness to Levi and Tolstoy through which we can recognize a deepening of the notion of human being is a responsiveness belonging to a general type of human responsiveness to features of conceptual life, a kind of responsiveness to which the “Huh?” that I mentioned also belongs. (274)

It is, I believe, such a lack of responsiveness towards a concept that is a far more serious issue than the simple matter of the loss of a concept, and understanding the distinction between the two is relevant to my enquiry. The reason for such a long-winded comparison between the methods of Skinner and Diamond is that a better understanding of the difference will help us more precisely locate the problem that Indian concepts face today. India seems to be able to rather effortlessly adopt and employ Western concepts such as secularism, democracy, rights, corruption and the like. And it seems its employment of many of these terms may, under a regular level of scrutiny, pass some or all of the criteria on Skinner’s test of comprehension. We are able to use the term ‘corruption’ with the same evaluative qualities as the Westerners, we apply it to the same situations they do, we are able to picture the same ideal societies the Westerners picture when we speak of ‘rights’ or ‘freedom’, we envision the same utopia they do as we struggle our way towards a well-oiled ‘democracy’. However, if we are to consider these same words in terms of Diamond’s idea of “responsiveness,” the result is slightly different. We employ the terms correctly, technically, but we are far from responsive to them. In fact, we are able to use them correctly precisely because we are not responsive to them. We are able to use them correctly much in the way of rote learning – a detached, mechanical and automatic way of thinking about them. As Vivek Dhareshwar describes it, we deploy terms like, say, ‘corruption’ with the intention of making a judgment; we do not employ them in order to gain true understanding ("Framing the Predicament" 261). In order to enter the field with a ready, preconceived judgment, this judgment had to have come from somewhere specific. While retracing most of the concepts we currently deploy, we discover that most of them have their evaluative meanings rooted in Christianity, a religion which is, to us, entirely foreign in its sources and structures.1 To say that our use of Western concepts passes through Skinner’s three criteria is not to discredit or undermine Skinner’s test in any way. If anything, it only proves just how thoroughly enslaved India is to Western modes of thinking in order to pass such a carefully devised test and perhaps reveals the full force of the cognitive enslavement Gandhi discusses while speaking of the effects of colonialism in his Hind Swaraj.2 It is to say that we are in complete possession of these concepts, cognitively. But due to an entirely different experiential reality, we are entirely unresponsive to these

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concepts and are therefore able to analyse the Indian experience much in the way of the disengaged Westerner who has no real part to play in it. Any inkling of responsiveness would have resulted in a desire to question, a desire to as much as wonder about the contradictions that exist in our society as a result of these concepts. This is not to say that our loss of consciousness of our own conceptual frameworks, or the adoption of one we are unresponsive to, renders us incapable of navigating the world – we are entirely capable of functioning on the basis of a foreign conceptual framework, of living up to its ideals. It is only that our reality, however ideal it may seem, is somewhat illusory because we do not fully understand the ideals we attempt to live up to. Our reflection upon our experience helps us arrive at our opinions, beliefs and philosophies and consequently the systems we create to organize our lives as individuals as well as communities. However, the gamut of human activities and behaviours – both significant and insignificant, conscious and unconscious – that comprise the experience of “life” is hardly ever reflected upon in its entirety. Large portions of this spectrum – actions of ours that we believe are too insignificant to enter the dialogue, the things we do that fill up “dead space” in our days that we don’t care to account for or remember the next day – remain outside the sphere of our reflection and if analysed, may very well reveal themselves to be rather inconsistent with the ideals and philosophies we have subscribed to. Our adoption of a foreign conceptual framework distances us further and further from these areas of our experience, reducing our already diminished ability to perceive them. Without the use of our own conceptual frameworks, we are deprived of a language with which to understand and express these experiences, and therefore they become disconnected from and almost invisible to our reflection upon our own lives. I must return to and clarify a statement I’d made earlier about India seeming to be able to adopt and employ Western concepts rather effortlessly. One might argue that we are miles away from being able to effortlessly function by the standards set by a Western society – our government is far from being efficient, we are unable to curb “corruption,” our systems are disorganized and ineffective, we are still battling with internal conflicts due to class, religion and language, we’re still very much steeped in outmoded customs and practices. However, one must note that all of these are examples of the execution of certain ideals – we believe we have not gained the ability to effectively execute the ideals, but we’ve taken the ideals themselves for granted. We still believe we must follow a certain conception of government, a certain organization of class and religion, a certain idea of justice and rights – we just haven’t found a way to do it right. We criticize the execution. We criticize the inefficiency of the government, the corruption of bureaucrats, the substandard civic amenities, the lack of proper laws. However, this criticism does not qualify as responsiveness to the concepts because we fail to question or even recognize the modes of

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thinking that have led to that government, those bureaucrats, the ordering of that civic life or the formulation of those laws. We fail to question whether the system of hierarchies we use, the kinds of laws we formulate, the nature of penalties we employ are in alignment with an Indian way of thinking and functioning. An example of this may be the concept of rights – one that has originated within a Western context and has been taken for granted as an ideal. S.N. Balagangadhara argues that the concept of obligation is better suited to a fluid Indian way of thinking (We Shall Not Cease from Exploration 40-42), an example I will return to in more detail towards the end of this essay. It is not to say that these Western systems are necessarily inappropriate for us, it is only to say that we have adopted them without analysing if they are. We do not understand the context or the origin of these systems, and in this manner, they are alien to us. We continue to construct on top of these alien systems, attempt to better them and make them adhere to ideals that are not our own instead of revisiting the very foundation upon which those systems have been built. We continue to try and fix our machines to make them run smoother, when, in fact, our tools haven’t been built for these machines. Diamond’s “responsiveness” would cause us to ask, “What are these machines?”, “I’ve never seen anything like them,” “What am I to do with them?” They would ideally be so unintelligible that we would hardly be able to tell whether they require fixing or not. It is, in fact, the ease with which we have been able to adopt Western ideals that is the greatest proof of our absence of understanding, and it is this lack of understanding from which these ideals continue to draw their strength. It is this complete disconnection that keeps us from realizing the unintelligibility and absurdity of these ideals. If we had even the slightest understanding of them, we would care about the infiltration of these ideals into our society, whatever form this “caring” takes, be it curiosity, wonder, confusion or even resignation. But in order for us to care about the infiltration, we would have to consider it an infiltration in the first place. If we study the entire gamut of activities and behaviours that constitute “life,” we would see that in many ways, we continue to act like Indians, only that we think like the Westerners. We may be able to better understand the gap in our comprehension if we are to consider our cognitive self and our acting self to be two separate individuals. I do not wish for this separation to be understood necessarily as a separation between the conscious and the unconscious self. Rather, one’s cognitive self is that which theorizes, intellectualizes and systematizes one’s experience whereas the acting self is that which responds to external conditions and stimuli in whatever way one is naturally inclined to, regardless of how one’s cognition chooses to process it. It is our cognitive self that has adopted these Western concepts. If we assume that only the cognitive self is affected by this infiltration, but only the acting self has the capacity to care about it, then it goes to follow that there is no one who will

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really care about the infiltration. The former is incapable of caring about it because he does not see the problem with it, and the latter, while capable, has no need to care about it because the infiltration is not affecting him. The latter individual does not know of the concept, has never heard of it, does not recognize or understand it, and therefore does not acknowledge even its existence. It is this separation, this existence of two mutually exclusive entities that I wish to discuss in the next section to further build upon Vivek Dhareshwar’s idea of “insulation.”

What does “insulation” imply? Our disconnection from our experience and its separation from our reflection has been rather aptly described by Vivek Dhareshwar as an “insulation,” a fitting image that helps us better understand our condition. What insulates reflection from experience? The insulating material is discursivity, that is, discourse employed in a certain way. Norming a site, founding a practice, giving reflexivity to practice are all roughly equivalent descriptions. I have used the term ‘deployment’ for reflection that develops after the insulation and that uses discourse from different sources (thus deployment of feminism, of nationalism, of Indic or Orientalist thought, and so forth). In more concrete terms, all of them involve making discourse pass through a practice, or making a practice discursive. Language or more accurately discursivity plays a central role in constituting normative institutions/structures. ("Framing the Predicament" 271)

The extremely specific and recurring use of the word ‘insulation’ gives us something significant to consider. An “insulation” suggests a separation between two entities, a non-mixing of the two. It suggests that Western concepts have not been able to entirely penetrate the surface and have created a separate, illusory reality outside of it. I wish to explore just what the nature of this insulation is and if it does, perhaps, preserve some portion of the Indian experience. If so, what is this portion and how may it be used or accessed? Does this insulation keep the Indian experience inviolate and untouched or does it simply keep it from complete destruction? I aim to explore these questions only after first ruling out the possibility of having lost Indian concepts in an irretrievable way. For this, we need to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to lose a concept, and especially what it means to lose a concept in a cross-cultural exchange. In order to lose a concept in such an exchange with the West, we would have to assume there is a direct counterpart, an analogous Indian concept for every Western concept. Only then would it follow that to gain one would be to lose the other. However, this theory would give rise to the same problems as does the process of a simple translation between different languages. If we are speaking of a different conceptual framework, it means the elements of understanding are arranged differently, in different permutations

The Accessibility of Indian Concepts

and combinations. Two concepts can only be analogous if they have the same (or at the very least, similar) configuration of elements. So to speak of analogous concepts across the two cultures would be to assume that they operate within the same conceptual arrangement, which is not true in the case of India and the West. Conceptual configurations in the West are entirely different from those that developed in India because they both have vastly different notions of the self (S.N. Balagangadhara’s idea that I will further elaborate upon in the next section (Comparative Anthropology 252-281)). So in such a case, there is no question of a loss of a concept. A loss, too, can only take place within the same conceptual framework. For example, for India to have lost its own formula for secularism in the process of gaining a Western conception of the same, we would have to assume that India had a concept of secularism that is even remotely comparable to the Western one in the first place. To assume this would be to graft upon India a very specific permutation of elements (say these elements are theological, social and political histories that, combined in a specific order, give rise to the Western concept of secularism) that could result in the creation of that concept. However, to graft a specific combination of these elements onto a culture would mean that this specific combination has already been formulated and exists in history. To graft a specific and historical combination onto another culture is also to deny that culture its own combination of histories that probably went into creating a different concept that is not secularism, and probably not even comparable to secularism because it has entirely different intentions and effects. It is in our desire to compare and make sense of something foreign and unintelligible that we seek analogous concepts, we seek to organize a culture’s past in the same way our own past unfolded so that we may be able to move towards a common future where everything may be understood universally. In that exercise, we deny the existence of different conceptual frameworks. But the greater abomination is the deliberate ignorance of a culture’s history for the convenience of a “universalizable,” shared understanding of society, the deliberate overwriting and restructuring of a culture’s experience in order for it to fit into an existing framework. But overwriting too is something that takes place above, a layer, an external addition to something that has not essentially been changed. For the past has not truly been changed and neither have the impressions it has left that reveal themselves in the unconscious functions and behaviours of that culture. If these impressions still have the ability to reveal themselves in any form, it is not entirely accurate to think of them as lost. And as has been argued above, a true loss wouldn’t be possible, logically, in an exchange between different conceptual frameworks. At most, it may mask, it may insulate, but it cannot do damage to the essence of the concept itself. However, even if we haven’t technically lost our concepts, it does not immediately follow that they are in any good condition to be used. The insulation may protect these concepts in the form of their unconscious manifestations in social

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behaviour. But the problem is simply that – it is protected in an unconscious form. Since Western concepts have taken over the cognitive framework, what the insulation does not protect us from is the loss of consciousness of our original concepts, the loss of the memory that they ever existed. Our adopted cognitive framework may, for instance, cause us to condemn a particular behaviour that is actually natural to our way of functioning within our original Indian framework. However, we do not attempt to modify the cognitive framework to better suit our actions; it is instead the other way around. By evaluating such actions negatively using the Western cognitive framework, we begin creating systems and constraints that can control or eliminate such actions. However, these behaviours being most natural to us, we attempt to find loopholes within those systems that may let us continue performing them. In this way, our cognitive and our acting selves become increasingly alienated from each other, neither one able to affect change in the other, their goal now being to work in spite of each other. Naturally, this leads to the creation of a confused identity and, as a result, it is rather easy to reach the conclusion that the culture is hypocritical and inconsistent because it acts in contradiction to the values the culture itself has (seemingly) subscribed to of its own volition. [A. K. Ramanujan provides a great many examples of this perceived hypocrisy in his “Is there an Indian way of thinking?” demonstrating how the application of the terms ‘hypocrisy’ or ‘inconsistency’ itself are judgments passed within a Western framework. (44)] Therefore, while the insulation may cause us to continue behaving in an “Indian” way, our cognitive frame will continue to compel us to create tighter, stricter systems and eliminate loopholes in order to curb these behaviours more effectively. The longer this attempt at control continues, the more we will lose consciousness of our concepts and the more they are rendered formless and wordless, the faster we will lose all memory of them as well. However, this fortunately not being the current state of affairs (yet), there still seem to exist various channels through which Indian ways of thinking and functioning may be accessed and this is what I wish to explore in the remainder of this essay. To build a fuller understanding, let us briefly consider some examples of concepts and behaviours that may be considered somewhat “original,” if I may use that term loosely, to an Indian mode of thinking. Dhareshwar himself discusses how we have ceased to use Indian concepts such as atman, dharma and avidya in order to reflect upon our experience, instead trading them in for lukewarm English translations if not entirely different concepts altogether. The seemingly obvious route of returning to the study of ancient, precolonial literature in the hopes of uncovering “original” Indian thought poses the problem of our inability to process it in a fair manner, no matter how noble and unbiased our intentions. Our cognition has been “westernized”

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and therefore we arrange and systematize our understanding of the world in the same way the Westerners do. Awareness of this framework alone will not allow us to rid ourselves of it while analysing such literature as it affects the very way we process information – it will cause us to make the same connections expected of a Westerner and we will simply regurgitate the already existing interpretations of such literature (perhaps with some minor variations that can justify having performed the exercise at all). In order to process the information in a new way (since simply being aware of our cognitive enslavement is not enough), we require certain tangible anchors that will help keep us from slipping back into the Western cognitive frame. We require to first uncover at least a few key modes of “original” Indian thought or action that will serve as flags that we can look for while processing information. Essentially, what we need is to know at least some things about Indian behaviour and functioning that we may use as foci around which to build a new understanding and around which to arrange the information that we process. The notion and manifestation of morality is what I believe to be one such flag that I wish to examine in the rest of this section because it is significantly distinct from the Western notion of morality. One way in which to consider how or whether Indian concepts may still be in function is to reflect upon the way in which the notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are structured, my aim being to focus specifically on what the state of mind of guilt can reveal to us. If our borrowed Western concepts have been formulated within the framework of Christianity, then there is already a very specific notion of right and wrong that has been assigned to them. They come installed with very specific triggers of guilt. My aim is to examine whether these triggers are able to function the way they should on Indians, given our lack of responsiveness to the concepts and their inability to operate outside of the cognitive, reflective frame. Consider if, while we can reflect upon and judge an act as wrong or immoral, does performing it necessarily evoke guilt? It is possible to adopt a detached, reflective stance on an action when we think about it or talk about it, it is possible to deem the action wrong or immoral or corrupt or hypocritical. But this has no bearing upon the fact that if it evokes no positive or negative states of mind, we have no reason to continue or cease performing that particular action, regardless of how we reflect on it. If I am to jump a red light at a traffic signal, I may all the while be thinking to myself that it is against the law. I may even use the word ‘wrong’ to describe my action to myself. But this does not stop me from doing it if no one is looking. Even if I assign the term ‘wrong’ to my action, there is no feeling of wrongness for me to want to change my action. We can thus see how these triggers of guilt are unable to operate outside of the cognitive frame. The emotional responses that these triggers try to project into the “actional” frame (to use Dhareshwar’s term) end up slamming against the walls of the cognitive frame and receding back into

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that frame, unable to penetrate, and every collision leads to more and more empty discourse on what is right and wrong. And the discourse grows more incredulous with every time that it is unable to leave even the slightest dent on actual action. So, of course we think of ourselves as inscrutably corrupt and hypocritical. If we can find more such attempted bridges between the cognitive and the actional frame that reveal a discrepancy in favour of one or the other side, we will be able to more precisely map which frame prevails in which situations. This does not necessarily mean we must go looking for the situations that do invoke guilt in us in order to grasp and chart our own moral domain. For even a search for guilt is indicative of our continuing to operate within the Western theological framework that identifies concepts of ‘guilt’ and ‘confession’ as key. We cannot search for guilt of a similar structure, we cannot search for a similar, recognizable configuration of right and wrong, because to do so would simply be to find new objects to fit in the same old shelves instead of discovering or building our own shelves. S. N. Balagangadhara details a rather effective method of getting a hold of the nature of our morality by travelling further than the formal conception of a moral system and studying, instead, our notion of the self, the moral agent. He discusses the differences in Western and Eastern conceptions of the self. To simplify, the former, rooted in Christianity, maintains the notion of a single, absolute self with fixed ideals – an ideal self (or a single God) that one strives to reach. The latter on the other hand has a more flexible and dynamic notion of the self. There is no concept of a fixed self and the self must be fluid and adaptable to its environmental conditions. There is the notion of “appropriateness,” of dynamic ideals. (Comparative Anthropology 252-281) Even a brief overview such as this one will reveal just how they can lead to radically different ideas of morality. So the violated traffic light, the bribed bureaucrat, they all take on entirely different meanings in this new light if we are to stop thinking about laws and penalties for a moment. So it is futile to ask where we can look for guilt. More fundamental is the question that asks whether there is any guilt to find at all. In any case, guilt is simply the example I’ve chosen to employ in this enquiry. Looking for other triggers that the cognitive frame attempts to use to evoke experiential responses within the actional frame (and whether these triggers work as intended or not) is perhaps one path to adopt while trying to reveal loopholes in the cognitive frame that are potentially exploitable.

How accessible is Indian thought? My task in this section is to examine the true nature of damage done to Indian concepts. If we are to agree that there is a significant portion of our mind (even if this portion is largely unconscious and has no reflective ability of its own) that has no possession whatsoever of Western concepts, then we may wonder whether there has been any damage done at all in this area. On

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the other hand, it could also mean that the absence of any damage might be indicative of a problem that may very well be insurmountable. Of what use is the protection (whether partial or whole) of Indian concepts by insulation, if this insulation is so resistant to breach that it has forever rendered the concepts practically inaccessible? Can we then justifiably consider them lost if we are never to access them again? If we only have the ability to reflect upon our experience within a foreign cognitive framework, then does it mean that all the solutions we formulate to access Indian concepts are also formulated within this same foreign framework? Any reflection that takes place within this framework only serves to maintain the insulation firmly in place, so would it then mean that any attempt to solve the problem ensures that the problem continues to exist? If so, then are our concepts doomed to live on only in theory and in our realization of their loss? This is the only condition that may render the concepts completely, one hundred per cent, inaccessible. Any other condition provides some hope, even if feeble, that there exists some channel through which these concepts may be accessed. However, I don’t believe this condition is of such nature wherein any attempt to think about the problem is still part of the problem itself. That is not to say that any solutions one may come up with would be anywhere close to easy, practical, quick or even entirely viable on the scale that is required to dissolve it entirely. It is possible to think outside of and above a Western cognitive framework, though this would require an extremely high level of awareness about where this framework has come from and how and why it is structured the way it is. It requires more than a basic understanding of the history of Western concepts in order to sense their “alienness.” And most of all, it requires a constant state of alertness and continuous reminders in order to keep from slipping back into that framework once one has managed to clamber one’s way out of it. It is, therefore, easy to see why this is not a solution that can simply be fed to a large number of people in a single dose and have them realize their situation overnight. It would be a slow and sluggish process of creating awareness that would cause a gradual progression in two parts – sensing the increasing alienness of our current conceptual framework while simultaneously sensing the increasing comfort in settling back into a way of life that is more natural to us. It is, perhaps, to realize this naturalness of an Indian way of life that Gandhi proposed for us to rely heavily upon action over discourse to dissolve the cognitive framework. In settling into the comfort of a “natural” mode of behaviour with less regard for the laws and systems that may condemn that behaviour, we will then be in a position to tangibly link these laws and systems to the feeling of alienness towards the conceptual framework. It is once these tangible symbols of alienness have been assigned that we will be in a position to question, resist or change the systems we function under. Finally, I wish to touch upon the role of native languages in preserving Indian concepts. Dhareshwar, while referring to dharma, atman and avidya, very deliberately keeps from providing English translations of the same

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because to do so would be to refute the very argument he makes. His point is to say that dharma is not the same as ‘duty’, atman is not the same as ‘soul’, avidya is not the same as ‘ignorance’. These English terms come with their own evaluative baggage and to assign them to Indian concepts would be to deny the Indian concepts their own original evaluations. It is such evaluative meanings that form the bricks of a moral domain. To assign an Indian concept an English evaluation would be, as we have seen, to force upon Indians a different conception of the self entirely. Therefore, translating the word for ‘bed’ or ‘box’ from one language to another is hardly the same as translating a word with value such as ‘courage’ or ‘ignorance’. The latter would begin to change, brick by brick, the very moral domain those values constitute. Thus, it serves to question whether these native languages will ever be able to leave their domain. If any and every translation of value disfigures the original value, then how is one ever to discuss these values in a universal way? It would require for a universal, perhaps purely descriptive, value-less meta-language to be formulated in order to create a space in which these values may be discussed dispassionately across conceptual frameworks. Having said this, it is rather worrisome that the effects of colonialism have been such that it is English that is currently assuming the seat of this meta-language. So long as we consider English to be the secular, dispassionate, rational space within which we may reach a universal, objective consensus on the concepts of the world, we will continue to remain oblivious to the perhaps unnecessary evaluations and judgments we subject our experience to as a result of using the English language. Even though Mark Goldie discusses the true non-secular nature of the modern theory of ideology by proving that it is very much a product of the Christian theological framework (266-291), we may very well extend his argument to any reflection that takes place in the English language. In fact, the seemingly secular, rational thinkers of the Enlightenment (Hume, Locke, Bacon, et al) that Goldie discusses, whose works reached us in the English language, only cement the misconception of all “secular,” “rational” reflection taking place in English, while native Indian languages are still steeped in ancient and outmoded structures of thought. Making use of precolonial Indian literature as a point of access would, as I have mentioned in the previous section, require a great number of prerequisites in order for such an analysis to yield anything substantial. While the gap between different languages cannot be closed entirely, it can perhaps be reduced by an extremely conscious awareness of the implications of words, a very deliberate resulting usage of them, a breaking down of evaluative words into smaller and smaller fundamental elements whose meanings are less open to interpretation, and finally, a process of constant, rigorous clarification of meaning. I find to be especially relevant the example of Balagangadhara’s attempt to dissolve the Western conception of ‘rights’ (demonstrating how it has originated entirely from

The Accessibility of Indian Concepts

the alien Christian idea of a ‘sovereign’) and making preliminary efforts at formulating or reformulating, in its place, the concept of ‘obligation’ – which is perhaps far more naturally relatable to Indians (We Shall Not Cease from Exploration 40-42). While there are most definitely kinks that need to be straightened out (some of which Balagangadhara himself points out), this idea of ‘obligation’ is far more accommodating of the flexibility that entails a fluid conception of the self and is therefore something we can rather comfortably ease into, if we could formulate a way to institutionalize the concept and provide it with the same scalability the institution of ‘rights’ had. But perhaps even the obsession with ‘institutionalization’ is a Western problem. Perhaps we must revisit our organizational hierarchies and see whether we even require to have every one of our systems scalable such that they may function the same way in the entire country as they would in a mere district. But these are questions for a different time. I had a second reason for referring to Balagangadhara’s suggestion of ‘obligation’. It is of significance to note the ways in which he goes about refining and clarifying the sense in which he uses the term ‘obligation’. He does so by using specific examples and situations in which it is appropriately used, thereby creating a specific, yet not necessarily permanent, evaluative meaning for the term, while continuously dissolving the pre-installed Western evaluation that comes with this English word. This dissolution is in no way permanent – he does not wish to forever alter the English connotations of the term. He only wishes to give it a specific contextual meaning that may be used when required and dissolved when its use has come to an end. It is this flexible treatment of language that, while surely tedious, may perhaps be one of the methods we could consider adopting in order to make any headway in trying to discuss our predicament, free of the default Western evaluations and cognitive frameworks that have clouded our vision. While it is true that our adoption of Western concepts has obscured our self-understanding for so many years, it is this very fact of the ease of their adoption that will become our most effective tool in enabling us to realize their alien nature. Once we have undertaken the initial task of making ourselves aware of the histories of these concepts and contrasting them with our own histories, it is then much easier to understand just why we have not developed any responsiveness towards these concepts. And it is an awareness of this unresponsiveness that, once recognized, will begin to seem more and more of an anomaly that needs to be rectified and will finally reveal to us the strangely confused society these concepts have created for us.

Notes For detailed studies on the evolution of important political concepts, see Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. Terence Ball, James Farr, Russell L. Hanson. 1.

Journal of Contemporary Thought

For strong points of view on the issue, see Gandhi 40-51; Bilgrami 41594165; Dhareshwar, "Politics, Experience and Cognitive Enslavement" 64-86. 2.

Works Cited Balagangadhara, S. N. "We Shall Not Cease from Exploration" (Unpublished Article 1985). ––. “Comparative Anthropology and Moral Domains.” Cultural Dynamics (1988): 252-281. Bilgrami, Akeel. “Gandhi, the Philosopher,” Economic and Political Weekly 38.39 (2003): 4159-4165. Dhareshwar, Vivek. “Politics, Experience and Cognitive Enslavement: Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj.” Democratic Culture: Historical and Philosophical Essays. Ed. Akeel Bilgrami (New Delhi: Routledge, 2011): 64-86. ––. “Framing the Predicament of Indian Thought: Gandhi, the Gita, and Ethical Action.” Asian Philosophy: An International Journal of the Philosophical Traditions of the East 22.3 (2012): 257-274. Diamond, Cora. “Losing Your Concepts.” Ethics 98.2 (1988): 255-277. Gandhi, M. K. Hind Swaraj. Navjivan Publishing House (1975). Goldie, Mark. “Ideology.” Political Innovation and Conceptual Change. Ed. Terence Ball, James Farr, Russell L. Hanson (Cambridge UP, 1989): 266-291. Ramanujan, A. K. “Is there an Indian way of thinking? An Informal Essay.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 23.1 (1989): 41-58. Skinner, Quentin. “Language and Political Change.” Political Innovation and Conceptual Change. Ed. Terence Ball, James Farr, Russell L. Hanson (Cambridge UP, 1989): 6-23.