The unknown Indianness hiding behind a ‘phalanx of quotations’ - A subaltern reading of ‘Is there an Indian way of thinking?’

Interpreting Ramanujan, I think I need to be more context sensitive. So, before starting with the discussion, I feel obliged to start with some biographical account. Many years back, during my Intermediate, I’ve read a novel called “The untouchable” that talks about a ‘Dalit’. I felt agitated, sorry and impatient against the dominant characters in the novel. Few years later, after having read Ambedhkar, I read the novel once again. The agitation now I feel is not just against the characters in the story but also against the author and his dominant castes’ saviour complex. Comparing it to the lines of a Dalit author, I significantly found the difference that the former is trying to gain self-pity for the characters and the latter is proclaiming the self-esteem. It was almost clear for me that people outside the community cannot voice for the community. It may not seem relatable to bring this parallel to start with Ramanujan but the impressions of experience were almost the same. The impressions after reading Ramanujan essay, “Is there an Indian way of thinking” is first mindboggling but later felt that my community casted out from the context.

            The first day, I read Ramanujan’s essay, “Is there an Indian way of thinking?” was so interesting but re reading it later made me feel that the essayist is a bit privileged to generalize the notions. His concept of being ‘Indian’ is highly feeble. Paradox! What he said in his essay may be true that Indians have this trait of hypocrisy in common and the essayist is also not an exclusion to it. It is true that though Ramanujan stayed in America, he hasn’t lost his connection with the native roots which he calls that ‘Indian’. Talking about Ramanujan, Pritish Nandi says in ‘Indian Poetry in English Today’ that “the Indian Poet in English represents his generation and speaks for it. Yet he knows his own generation is freak, part of an affluent subculture, rootless, often alienated from the mainstream of the Indian experience”. He may have did it well in his poetical context but the lens of his ‘Indian’ argument doesn’t seem to fit well in the subaltern lens.

            D’ Gennte in her book Fiction and Diction laughs at certain theoretical unanswerable questions. She says all ‘the celebrated texts that take the question as the title doesn’t really answer it’ and in the essay ‘Is there an Indian way of thinking?’ Ramanujan doesn’t decide his opinion in grey or black but hides in grey. The famous saying may go like not to ‘define your world in black and white because there is so much hiding among greys’ but when taking a concrete question as the title, we should either confirm whether it is black (left) or white (right) or specify if it’s grey (an inconclusive one) but the essayist seem to hide behind a ‘phalanx of quotations’ not just to rob readers of their convictions but also to confuse them.

The Hindu ‘and’ Indian

The concept of ‘Hindu’ is controversial. It’s an umbrella term that has been used by people to talk about Indian tradition which was proved wrong by Ambedhkar. Hinduism we say today is the triumvirate of Brahma, Vishnu and Maheswara and village gods have no place in it. Ambedhkar preferred to call it Brahmanism but not Hinduism because he is anticipated the fact that under this umbrella term, all the village gods and goddesses which have no connection with the religious texts of Brahmanism will be under threat and it is true that today all these nature gods and goddesses are brahminised. So, I can call that the term has been indoctrinated and it’s surprising that the intellectuals had fallen in trap to this term. Ramanujan is also not an exception.

While talking about karma, Ramajuna says that the ‘notion that is almost synonymous in circles with whatever that his Hindu or Indian’. Hindu and Indian are distinctive terms. Whatever that is Hindu is not Indian. He using ‘or’ between these two terms bring the problem in here. I feel that here is where the Brahminical privilege comes into existence. This confusion of the essayist had not just confined to this essay but also found in ‘Annaya’s anthropology’. He while talking about the Brahminic traditions he calls it ‘our ritual pollutions’. He continues to use the pronouns ‘our’ and ‘we’ and continues to generalise the Brahminic traditions as Indian. It may be true that Ramanujan may alienated himself from the caste lines and turned a liberal but still the privilege seems to expose in certain phrases. Quoting his words from Annaya’s anthropology is more appropriate here in which he says “Here I am, a Brahmin myself, yet I don’t know a thing about such things” putting himself high in the ladder. Surprisingly he doesn’t call them brahminical and continues to cite Manu with ease which is even more triggering. The essayist’s insistence on Brahminism in the name of Indianness continues to follow in the text.

Sanskritization

Wendy Doniger in his introduction to Ramanujan says, “A.K Ramanujan was one of those thinkers, like Freud (whom he greatly, though not uncritically, admired), who so transform our wat of looking at a subject that we are in danger of undervaluing their contribution.” It had to be admitted that Ramanujan has been torch bearer of the rich folk tradition to make it’s entry into Indian English literature. His ‘Flowering tree’ had in fact created ripples in the western circles. At a time when Indian literature meant Sanskrit, a language understandable to a privileged section in the society and is Greek and Latin to major communities in India, Ramanujan proved that folk traditions are equally rich. But still Ramanujan seems to put Sanskrit on the highest pedestal. In Speaking of Siva, Ramanujan says,

“A Sanskrit epic like the Mahabharata contains in its encyclopedic range much folk material, like tales, beliefs, proverbs, picked obviously from folk sources, refurbished, Sanskritized, fixed forever in the Sanskritic artifice of eternity.” 

Though he talks about the return to oral tradition later, he epitomizes Sanskrit and its text and places them on a higher pedestal. While trying to make his point on Indians as more materialistic, Ramanujan picks certain texts as Indian. Surprisingly, they are Ramayana, Mahabharatha and Manudharamasastra. He said that the local tales are materialised in these texts many a times and also worked close with Velcheru Narayana Rao, a renowned Telugu author to bring it out more brahminical. From a subaltern lens, these texts and the language are not Indian at the first space. Considering them as Aryan (The early colonizers), they feel the language more as an imposition which has been dominating them and their culture since ages. In fact, it is the culture in the Sanskrit texts that had over shadowed many aboriginal Indian cultures.

To cite an example, all the early Telugu literature was nothing but the translated versions and interpretations of these same texts. Until the entry of the triumvirate subaltern poets, Vemana, Gurram Jashuva and Sri Sri, not even a single character was from the Telugu culture. Weirdly, Ramanujan tries to find similarities between the Sanksrit Karma and Telugu talaratha or Tamil talaividi which is just cherrypicking to prove the point but not factually or historically correct. It just seemed as an attempt to generalize that the concepts in the Brahmanical texts and Indian texts are the same. A language that belongs to Indo – Aryan family of languages taken into the essay to prove the point ‘Indian’ in the text is counterfactual.  

The normalization of the Caste

The essayist seems to go to any extent to make a justification of his point. In this flow, he even takes the caste at a very lighter vein. In fact, he seems to be telling about the division of labourers with pride. He says –

“Even musical instruments have their caste properties; a vina, no less than the icon of god, has to be made by a particular caste, or family, after observing certain austerities, made on an auspicious day”   

Trying to make a point on context – sensitive, he fell into picking a sensitive content romanticizing the division of labourers. This comes out of a brahminical privilege. It is clear in all these contexts that the essayist’s understanding on the society is generalised as Indian on the whole which is unfortunately brahiminical. It may not be the intention but the privilege has already has an unconscious effort in the essay.  

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Works Consulted

 

Ramanujan, A.K, The Collected Essays of AK Ramanujan, Oxford University press, 2006

Ramanujan, A. K, Is there an Indian Way of Thinking? An Informal Essay, Journal Article, Contributions to Indian Sociology, V 23, N 1, 1989 pp. 41-58 d.o.i 10.1177/006996689023001004, Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/006996689023001004

Ramanujan, A. K, Annaya’s anthropology, trans. by Narayana Hegde, Retrieved from https://vijeejournalist.com/2016/11/annayas-anthropology/

Phule, Jotirao, Caste laws in ‘Individual and Society’, Pearson, 2017

Ramanujan, Attipat Krishnaswami. Who needs folklore?: The relevance of oral traditions to South Asian Studies, Center for South Asian Studies, School of Hawaiian, Asian, and Pacific Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1990.

Iliah, Kanche , Why I Am Not a Hindu : a Sudra Critique of Hindutva, Philosophy, Culture, and Political Economy, Bhatkal Books International, 1996.

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