The message of The
Arctic Home of the Vedas was tailor-made to appeal to the chauvinism of the
orthodox community. While its pseudoscientific thesis in no way revolutionized the
way historians view the Vedic period, Tilak's theory did have significant
implications: The Vedic texts need not be deciphered. They described what
actually existed in the pre-diasporic Aryan world. The Aryans were neither
primitive nor illogical. In fact, they were almost superhuman to have survived
in the form that they did. If the Aryans were, indeed, the first to attain a
level of civilization higher than that reached by any other group in the age of
metals, how could they now justifiably remain dependent on the West? It was
this vision of the Aryan's intrinsic ascendancy over others (both foreign and
domestic) that came to fuel nationalist rhetoric. This racialist script was
exported to the West by Swami Vivekananda.
In fact, Vivekananda
held that there exists only one really civilized race in the world, the Aryan.
Until endowed with Aryan blood, no race can be deemed civilized. Civilization
cannot be taught: It necessitates the Aryan giving his blood to a race for it
to become truly civilized (Vivekananda 3:535). The Aryans were lovers of peace
and cultivators of the soil. Vivekananda contrasted these Aryans with India's
first inhabitants, races of wild people and cannibals who were neither Aryan
nor Hindu. Exposure to the sun had turned their skin black.
Accordng to Vivekananda however the Aryans did not swoop down
and steal land from these aborigines. Nor did they settle India by
exterminating the native population (The complete Works of Vivekananda, 5.534),
as Christians were wont to do (Vivekananda 2.282). Rather they absorbed them,
making modern India a totally Aryan nation (Vivekananda 3:292). The only
vestige of this successful miscegenation was the alteration of the
"transparent glow of the white complexion of the Himalaya dwellers"
into the bronzed hue of the present-day Hindu (Vivekananda 3:506). Once again,
apparent inclusivity masked social, racial, and political exclusionism.
When not constrained
by nationalist rhetoric, as in a 1900 lecture in Oakland, California,
Vivekananda elaborated upon the racial subtext that there is no kinship between
the northern and the southern Indian.
The North,
Vivekananda maintained, belongs to the great Aryan race to which all Europeans
(except the Basques and the Finns!) belong. The South stemmed from the same
race as did the ancient Egyptians and Semites (Vivekananda 8:241-42), racially
and culturally distinct from the Aryan center. While the great Aryan race
comprises the top three castes, the non-Aryan race consists of shadras, aborigines (who aspired to become civilized), and
the Dravidians.
This racialist
argument foregrounds the larger political concern of validating caste
distinctions. Rather than evolving toward a civilized mode of existence,
non-Aryans are presented as "schemers" trying to live as did the
Aryans, coopting their lifestyle by entering schools and colleges, wearing the
sacred thread, performing ceremonies, and enjoying equal rights in religion and
politics (Vivekananda 3:520). Too many different uncivilized and uncultured
races tried to flock to the Aryan fold with their superstitions and hideous
forms of worship. While appearing civilized, they clearly were not. These
barbarians wreaked havoc by introducing "mysterious rites and
ceremonies" to the old faith. They destroyed Aryan vigor and chaste
habits. They defiled India with their superstitions (Vivekananda 3:263). Their
rank imitation of the Aryan lifestyle initiated a process of decay. The central
Aryan core, forced to succumb to the allurements of sensual forms of worship
prevalent among these various low races, lost its integrity. In the past, when
contact with "outcastes" had threatened to "destroy Aryan
civilization," the Aryans had struck out in a natural reaction of
self-preservation, as when they destroyed Buddhism (Vivekananda 6:164). But,
the successful seduction of the Aryans by sensualists resulted in blind
allegiance to usages "repugnant to the spirit of the 8astras" and
ultimately destroyed the Aryan race (Vivekananda 6:182). Aryavarta
became a deep and vast whirlpool of the most vicious, most horrible, and most
abominable customs. It lost all internal strength and became the weakest of the
weak (Vivekananda 4:445).
Vivekananda thus
directed a public relations coup against foreign critics of caste and Indian
social reform. In this scenario, Aryan civilization is a fabric; its cotton
consists of its highly civilized, semicivilized, and barbarian tribes; the warp
is the varnishramadharma, and the woof is represented
by the conquest over strife. Europe has been able to produce nothing of this
magnitude. All the West can do is exterminate the weak like wild beasts
(Vivekananda 5:537), acts of which India is incapable. Unlike Europe's
extermination policies, Aryans have established a system of inclusion. Through
the implementation of varna, Aryans raise everyone up to their own level or
even higher than themselves. While Europe metes out death to the weak, Aryan
civilization devised social rules for their protection.
Vivekananda conceived
of caste as a liberating force. While individuals have every chance of rising
from a low caste, "only in this birth-land of Altruism" are they
compelled to "take" their whole caste with them (Vivekananda 4:297).
Vivekananda viewed caste as one of the greatest social institutions that the
Lord gave men (Vivekananda 4:299). Although it evinces some unavoidable defects
(which Vivekananda blames on foreign persecutions and undeserving brahmins), it
has worked wonders in India and "is destined to lead Indian humanity to
its goal." Exactly what Vivekananda envisioned to be India's goal was
clear.
Effective reform or
actual amelioration of the disenfranchised was never an issue at home.
Vivekananda held to the status quo, camouflaging his orthodox politics in a
mystification of caste. Without caste reform, any romanticization of the
downtrodden is foreclosed. What remains is a glorification of an India in which
the brahmin descendants of Aryans are the only real beneficiaries.
Vivekananda's plan
for India's future consisted of a recreation of the past glory. In order to
achieve his end of moral regeneration, he first established an Indian utopia in
the Aryan past. He read into the Veda, or rather, invoked the Veda to portray
an India that seeks the common good through caste and liberation through austere
religious vows, fasting, and retreat. The language of the Veda becomes the
means by which renunciation is attained. Vivekananda juxtaposed this ideal
fiction of the Aryan past with an equally fictive West fraught with rank
materialism, power, sense-pursuits, and strange luxuries in the form of
fashion, food, drink, magnificent palaces, manners, and transportation.
Vivekananda presented
the Aryan ideal as an alternative to the decadent West. India will lead the
world in the regeneration of man the brute into man the god (Vivekananda
4:315). For the colonized, this message was, indeed, uplifting. However, behind
the rhetoric of the holy man lies a disingenuous will to power: the
determination to maintain traditional structures of power and domination.
What is particularly
striking about these stagings of the past is their
literary aspect, specifically their modernism. In reading Tilak, and
Vivekananda, one is reminded of certain short stories by Borges, where history
is presented as inevitably limited and parochial in focus. Facts are only
interpreted according to the ideology of the time, just as memory is activated
by conventional scholarly wisdom.
The Anti-Myth
Joyiba
Govind Phule called for the victims of Aryan perfidy to use reason, recognize
what had been inflicted on them, and revolt against brahmin treachery by
discarding the scriptural instrument of this fraud and enslavement (Phule
1991a: 2.32). Once the spurious Vedas are rejected, the true Vedas can be
unearthed. Phule did not reject the concept of textual authority or legitimacy.
He rejected rather the false readings of the Veda that held his people in
thrall. Read correctly, the Vedas reveal a different message-that the Dasyus were the original inhabitants of the land; they were
brave, pure at heart, and upright in their conduct. Phule exhorted their
descendants to acknowledge this alternate rendering, recognize the degradation
to which they have been reduced by the Aryans (Phule, Collected Works, 1991a:
2.83), and reject it.
By introducing this
new category of reason into the discussion, Phule effected a dissociation of
"thing" from "name," or objects from what they were called.
Reference did not determine the signify, but rather the application of a sign (Aryanhood) to an object (the Ddsa)
categorized and interpreted that object. By challenging the myth of a utopian
past, Phule launched a radical attack on Vedic revivalism. He realized full
well that the brahmin and upper-caste intellectual (that is, the new middle
class) would represent the Aryan in any return to origins. He also understood
how any glorification of supposedly Aryan values further consolidated brahmin
ascendancy. Finally, he suspected that opposition to the West, another key
component of revivalism, often masqueraded as patriotism when, in reality, it
masked hegemonic desire on the part of high-caste reformers.
B.R. Ambedkar
(1892-1956) belonged to the Untouchable Mahar caste of Maharashtra. Ambedkar
received a M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York, and passed the
bar from Grey's Inn, London. He was able to achieve what none of his
caste had ever done because his father had joined the British Army and his
family had found the means to secure him an education. Ambedkar dedicated his
life to working for the advancement of his people. Initially, he worked as a
social advocate in the field of journalism, later as a representative for his
people testifying at government commissions, and finally as their guru and
leader.
By 1956, Ambedkar was
disgusted with the continued impossibility of his people's condition. He was
tired and ill. With the claim that he was born a Hindu but had no intention of
dying a Hindu, since the religion offered him no human dignity, he converted to
Buddhism, as did his followers. His commitment to the plight of his people
spearheaded the mobilization of low-caste Hindus that took shape with the Dalit
revolt in the seventies and continues to this day in the social and political
struggle of the scheduled castes.
Ambedkar had begun
his mission where Phule left off," by pointing out the fallacy of Indian
social reform: Brahmin-based reform was a contradiction in terms. To expect a
brahmin to revolt against social inequity was like expecting the British
Parliament to pass an act requiring an blue-eyed babies to be murdered
(Ambedkar Writings and Speeches, 1979: 1.71) was Ambedkar's harsh analogy.
Ambedkar particularly poked fun at the Arya Samaj's
pretense of determining caste by worth. Ambedkar deemed all such efforts
futile. He believed that if reformers really wanted to destroy caste, then they
would have to destroy the authority of the Veda, since the Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda Eave the caturvarna
its eternal and sacrosanct status as a system. By invoking the sanction of law,
it presented caste as natural, ideal, sacred, and divine. The Rig Veda thus
codified caste and ensured its continued application. Given the damage produced
by the Purusha Sukta, Ambedkar felt that to preach
the Veda as the basis of everything, as did the Arya Samaj,
was pure mischief.
Throughout his
writings, Ambedkar sought to destroy the Veda as the basis of society and
debunk its eternality, status as revelation, infallibility, and stationary view
of society (7.14). He challenged the Veda's moral and spiritual value in the
past as well as its authority (4.37, 39) and philosophical worth (4.44)
in the present.
Ambedkar began by questionning the Veda's canonicity. Since Rammohan Roy, Hindu reformers had learned a valuable lesson
from Christian missionaries. Book religions had definite advantages over
bookless religions. They possessed a written constitution or voucher for truth
that gave authority and induced obedience. The Veda had the double advantage of
being both a book and a revealed religion.
Caste, if preached by
the Vedas, became both sacred and uncontested
it automatically received the authority of the book and the sanctity of
divine word. It had to be accepted as sacred, divine, and eternal truth; it
could not be attacked, test one risk the guilt of sacrilege (Ambeakar 1989: 5.183). By giving caste a place in the
Vedas, brahmins ensured their sacredness and invulnerability (Ambedkar 1989:
5.181).
According to
Ambedkar, the establishment of Vedic authority and infallibility involved a
wide-reaching brahmin conspiracy (4.27) to legitimate the caturvarna
system (4.36) and provide it with an impregnable line of defense. In any other
society, the existence of hard and fast classes would have caused embarrassment
and self-recrimination. Hindu society, however, evinced no such concerns.
Thanks to the Purusha Sukta and the authority vested
in the greatness of ancient Aryan civilization, brahmins could steadfastly
maintain an iniquitous class stratification and justify their behavior
(Ambedkar 1990: 7.239). Since they held a monopoly over scholarship, they could
safely benefit from a system that need never undergo scrutiny. No Voltaire had
arisen from their ranks to decry intolerance (Ambedkar 1990: 7.240). Before
Ambedkar, no one had judged the Purusha Sakta
immoral, criminal in intent, and antisocial in its results. By condemning the
hymn, Ambedkar also condemned the Veda and the world of the Aryans. The
ultimate goal of his polemic was to dismantle the caste system they legitimized
(Ambedkar 1990: 7.32). Since the Ddsas were believed
to have been conquered by the Aryans, their presumed descendants, the shzidras, were seen to inherit their position of
subservience legitimately." It was to reject this script of subjugation
and to rehabilitate his own people, the Mahars-the principle
and largest Untouchable community in Mahdrdshtra-that
Ambedkar sought to rewrite the Aryan myth. Ambedkar read the Rig Veda and
constructed an elaborate portrait of the Aryan people toward this end.
Ambedkar also
challenged the racial portrayal of the Aryan that presented them as a fair race
with sharp noses as compared to the Dasa/Dasyu who were believed to be dark-complected and
flat-nosed. In modern times, the Dasa has been
identified with the shz7dra and aboriginal tribes. Ambedkar claimed that the
philological evidence keeping the racial myth alive was as spurious as the
Western equation of varna with color." Rather than Mueller's reading of andsa as a-nisa, without a nose
(that is, flat-nosed), Ambedkar sides with Sayapa's
reading of an-isa, signifying devoid of good speech (Ambedkar 1990: 7.76).
He maintained that
the Veda had been consistently misread by brahmin scholars in a racial sense in
order to foster a two-nation theory that benefited their interests. With the
brahmins as the representatives of the Aryans and the low castes seen as
non-Aryans, brahmins could foster both their hegemonic power over their
brethren as wen as kinship with Europeans. Ambedkar found no evidence that the
term drya was used in the Rig Veda in a racial sense.
The Dasas were as civilized and powerful as the
Aryans (Ambedkar 1990: 7.105). He did not read any racial distinction between
the Aryan and the Ddsa, since there are numerous
instances in the Rig Veda where Dasas become Aryans.
Similarly, there is no evidence that the Aryans were a different color than the
Dasas.
Ambedkar read the
Veda to suggest that the Aryans were not a single homogeneous people, rather
two groups with distinct cultures. One group, the Aryans of the Rig Veda,
believed in sacrifice, traced their descent through man, and produced the
Brahmanas, Sutras, and Aratiyakas. The other group,
the Aryans of Atharva Veda, believed in magic, traced their descent through
Prajapati, and produced the Upanishads (Ambedkar 1990: 7.291).10 These two
separate ideologies were fundamentally different and irreconcilable: the former
believed in the caturvarna and the latter did not (Arnbedkar 1990: 7.97). The two groups were eventually
consolidated with the Rig Vedic ideology prevailing.
Ambedkar's rewriting
of the Aryan myth was no less fanciful than brahmin-authored versions. It
differed, however, in one important respect. It was potent enough to enable him
to lead millions of Indians out of the slavery into which they had been born.
Joyiba
Govind Phule and, to a greater degree, Ambedkar were not subalterns in
search of a critic to speak on their behalf. They both had rather clear voices.
The very fact that significant Indian discourse on the Aryan centered on
nativist concerns raises interesting questions concerning the serviceability of
postcolonial criticism to a broad spectrum of literary production under
colonialism. One might well question whether professional spokespersons for the
subaltern are deaf to their voices because they attacked an enemy who was not
the colonial power, but an opponent from whose ranks the critics themselves
spring and within whose hegemonic structure of knowledge and discourse they
continue to operate. In this context, the tendency to demonize all colonial
relations as a kind of "original sin" (Rothstein 2001: A17) seems
particularly unsupportable. The "original sin" concept has had the
effect of whitewashing the checkered past of many colonized and postcolonial
elites. Many abuses of power and human rights violations perpetuated by these
elites are swept away by the concept of colonialism as the hegemonic evil. Are
we to read critics' deafness as an oversight (or, as they might say, over-site)
or rather as a mask for their own needs to maintain traditional lines of power
while restructuring the contemporary image of power?
The oppressor/victim
binary of colonial discourse analysis does not fully explain the Indian need to
idealize the antiquity of Aryan India and establish culture as diffused from
India to the rest of the world. It does not account for the fact that patterns
of admiration and positions adopted vary within various groups and from
individual to individual in the receiving culture and are rooted in the
specific cultural traits of Hindu caste society and its literary tradition.
Phule and Ambedkar offered a radical attack on revivalism and challenged the
elite myth of the past. They realized that brahmins and upper-caste
intellectuals (that is, the new middle class) would always represent the
idealized ancient Indian society, since their values could be seen to stem from
that past. They also realized that opposition to the colonizing Other could be
taken for nationalism, when it merely masked the preservation of traditional
lines of power.
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