Indianization & Decolonisation

The situation, following Ayodhya,  continues to worsen at an ever-accelerating speed. It is therefore urgent and vital to consider this urgent question. Might it be fatal to pretend that we can separately, as though in a vacuum, celebrate the pre-modern strengths of our multi-faceted samaj while ignoring or overlooking a politics anchored in a sense of victimhood which then justifies a ‘need’ for some form of retribution, even violence. 

Anyone who dips into the treasure-trove of Dharampal’s archival work, is likely to come away feeling enraged by the enormity of what was lost because indigenous knowledge systems were de-legitimized by the European colonizers. Many extend this rage to Muslims as the earlier outsiders who took control over large parts of India. All of this causes some people to remain rooted in, or cling to, feelings of victimhood which then circumscribes both their vision and action. This is the easy and lazy way of dealing with the past.
By contrast it requires hard work and effort to free yourself from the victim identity and instead focus on what actually matters today. Only then can the focus shift to how we might find clues in pre-modern knowledge systems that might enable us to build a better life for all in the 21st century.

Let us focus on just three areas of potential opportunity.

ONE: DEFENDING SYNCRETIC CULTURE
India’s indigenous sciences and technologies are deeply anchored in the syncretic culture which is the DNA of this sub-continent. This mixed and fluid culture is now being undermined, and in places physically attacked, both by groups of citizens and agencies of the state. As far as I know those traditional knowledge systems were possible only because of an overlapping mutuality across caste and religious lines.
Those equations would, in many cases, not conform to current standards of equity and sameness in dignity but we can learn from their nuances without aiming to replicate them in a literal manner. Yet this is only possible if all engaged in the process:
a) acknowledge perceived injustices in the past and present,
b) attempt to address the inequities from a position of inherent dignity rather than unresolvable victimhood, and
c) accept or at least explore the many ways in which India’s struggle for freedom acted as an enriching process that enabled diverse segments of India’s samaj to sublimate the pain of the past and renew itself.

TWO: ANTI-COLONISER v/s ANTI_COLONISATION
Some of the core insights of our knowledge systems and even our multi-layered samaj, can make vital contributions to building relations and production systems that can help us to survive the ecological and economic disaster that now appears to be inevitable. For instance, the mainstream global consensus around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is an extremely limiting and self-contradictory framing of both the nature of the crisis and possible solutions. There is no escape from interrogating and challenging the re-colonization of the world through a particular definition of ‘development’.

In this context, an anti-colonizer focus will be an easy default response. But it is an anti-colonization focus that will spur creativity, fostering fair and just alternative systems. The difference between these two approaches cannot be over-emphasized.
The anti-colonizer approach is rooted in a seemingly permanent, unsolvable, sense of victimhood and resentment. Those locked into this frame are preoccupied with seeing Muslims / Christians/ Europeans or assorted ‘outsiders’, as a race or an ethnic group with whom scores have to be settled. In the anti-colonizer discourse the victims seem to have no way of being freed from a sense of inadequacy and animosity.
By contrast the anti-colonization approach is driven by a vision of the good society that works for all. The pain of past and present injustices is fully acknowledged but the focus is on identifying the fundamental flaws underlying the problems we face today. For example, M.K. Gandhi’s searing critique of modernity in Hind Swaraj.
Therefore, a reactive and anti-colonizer discourse about traditional knowledge has no future – because it doesn’t help us to challenge the dominant definitions of either ‘development’ or ‘growth’.

THREE: LOK VIDYA
The PPST as a group attracted people with both the anti-colonizer and anti-colonialism impulses. This is why the group split on the issue of the demolition in Ayodhya. As a participant in the three large conferences hosted by PPST—Mumbai IIT in 1993, Anna University Chennai in 1995 and Raj Ghat, Varanasi in 1998 – I experienced the PPST platform as being both constructive and creative. Awareness of the damage done by colonial rule was always in the background but this was not the impetus for working on indigenous knowledge systems.

Most of those who flocked to the PPST events came to seek answers and methods for redefining ‘development’. They sought ways to re-energize grassroots bazaar energies in a time when ‘the market’ threatened to take over all of life under the guise of liberalization and globalization. They sought to honor and give due importance to the Lok Vidya (People’s Knowledge) that had been rendered invisible by the juggernaut of modernity. Therefore, many who flocked to these conferences were also engaged with diverse kinds of constructive efforts on the ground, be it in health, water-management, agriculture etc. Others were closely engaged with movements, like Narmada Bachao Andolan, which resisted the destruction and displacement caused by ‘development’ projects. Today some of this energy is manifest in platforms like National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) and Vikalp Sangam.

People’s knowledge, or Lok Vidya, cannot be celebrated in the abstract while sections of its practitioners, of any identity group, and those who defy or challenge the Hindutva project, are threatened.
The key question now is whether Lok Vidya is doomed to remain a ‘niche’, a fringe phenomenon struggling to survive? Or can it inspire us to effectively redefine, if not over-throw, currently dominant framing of both ‘development’ and ‘growth’.

If it is merely a specific area of indigenous knowledge, be it health, textiles or agriculture, that interests someone then there will be plenty of space to keep them busy for decades – but only as bit players who will have little or no role in shaping the future of samaj or India’s systems of production at a macro level. Even more importantly, there is a risk that the crafts and knowledge of Muslims and other non-Hindus, could be given space while their loss of dignity and loss of belongingness continues unattended.