06-09-2007, 08:18 PM
VS Naipaul in Tehelka:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->âWas it always so?â
âI think there is a difference between what the universities produced up to the 1940s and after 1950. In America for instance, a strange academic language has evolved.
What is even more strange is that some Indians want jobs at these universities and so they develop this mimic language, this hollow language and they become monkeys. The influence of all Western universities on India is bad. It imposes an idea of what thought is, of what history is, for instance. <b>This idea of history doesnât deal with India. There is an Indian history waiting to be written, a big view rather than these monographs that people write. </b>The monograph method and form doesnât serve the need. India should have and could have a Gibbon.â
âWhat about historians like Pannikar? He had a larger view, surely?â
âWhat I admired about Pannikar was his book Asia and Western Dominance.
It was about how Java and Sumatra, islands which were turned by the Dutch from nations into plantations, preserved their soul. He says they preserved their soul because of their religion and this is true, but he mistakes the religion. He thinks it is Islam. The Javanese and the Sumatrans were animists, Hindus, Buddhists and Islam was an imposition, destroying the soul of these nations. Islam is a proselytising religion.
It explains the need for fundamentalism. People have to be constantly told to give up their old evil ways and sprinkle themselves with the sands of Arabia.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->âWas it always so?â
âI think there is a difference between what the universities produced up to the 1940s and after 1950. In America for instance, a strange academic language has evolved.
What is even more strange is that some Indians want jobs at these universities and so they develop this mimic language, this hollow language and they become monkeys. The influence of all Western universities on India is bad. It imposes an idea of what thought is, of what history is, for instance. <b>This idea of history doesnât deal with India. There is an Indian history waiting to be written, a big view rather than these monographs that people write. </b>The monograph method and form doesnât serve the need. India should have and could have a Gibbon.â
âWhat about historians like Pannikar? He had a larger view, surely?â
âWhat I admired about Pannikar was his book Asia and Western Dominance.
It was about how Java and Sumatra, islands which were turned by the Dutch from nations into plantations, preserved their soul. He says they preserved their soul because of their religion and this is true, but he mistakes the religion. He thinks it is Islam. The Javanese and the Sumatrans were animists, Hindus, Buddhists and Islam was an imposition, destroying the soul of these nations. Islam is a proselytising religion.
It explains the need for fundamentalism. People have to be constantly told to give up their old evil ways and sprinkle themselves with the sands of Arabia.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->