<b> Foreword by S.N. Balagangadhara</b>
Non-white and non-Christian cultures will increasingly have a significant impact on the affairs of uhe humankind in this millennium. Here, India will be a global player of considerable political and economic impact. As a result, the need to explicate what it means to be an Indian (and what the âIndiannessâ of the Indian culture consists of) will soon become the task of the entire intelligentsia in India. In this process, they will confront the challenge of responding to what the West has so far thought and written about India. A response is required because the theoretical and textual study of the Indian culture has been undertaken mostly by the West in the last three hundred years. What is more, it will also be a challenge because the study of India has largely occurred within the cultural framework of America and Europe.
In fulfilling this task, the Indian intelligentsia of tomorrow will have to solve a puzzle: what were the earlier generations of Indian thinkers busy with, in the course of the last two to three thousand years? The standard textbook story, which has schooled multiple generations including mine, goes as follows: caste system dominates India, strange and grotesque deities are worshipped in strange and grotesque ways, women are discriminated against, the practice of widow-burning exists and corruption is rampant.
If these properties characterize India of today and yesterday, the puzzle about what the earlier generation of Indian thinkers were doing turns into a very painful realization: while the intellectuals of European culture were busy challenging and changing the world, most thinkers in Indian culture were apparently busy sustaining and defending undesirable and immoral practices. Of course there is our Buddha and our Gandhi but that is apparently all we have: exactly one Buddha and exactly one Gandhi. If this portrayal is true, the Indians have but one task, to modernize India, and the Indian culture but one goal: to become like the West as quickly as possible.
However, what if this portrayal is false? What if these basically Western descriptions of India are wrong? In that case, the questions about what India has to offer the world and what the Indian thinkers were doing become important. For the first time, the current knowledge of India will be subject to a kind of test that has never occurred before.
Why âfor the first timeâ? The answer is obvious: the prevailing knowledge of India among the English-educated elite was generated primarily when India was colonized. Subsequent to the Indian independence, India suffered from poverty and backwardness. In tomorrowâs world, the Indian intellectuals will be able to speak back with a newly found confidence and they will challenge European and American descriptions of India. That is, for the first time, they will test the Western knowledge of India and not just accept it as Godâs own truth. This has not happened before; it will happen for the first time.
Generations of Indian intellectuals have accepted these descriptions as more or less true. The future generations will not be so accommodating though: they will test these answers for their truth. I say this with confidence because I find that more and more people in India are gravitating towards this kind of research. These are not of mere academic interest to such people, whose numbers steadily increase. Many of them realize that Western explanations of their religions and culture trivialize their lived experiences; by distorting, such explanations transform these, and this denies Indians access to their own experiences. It can thus be said to rob them of their inner lives. But that is not all. More than most, they realize that answers to these and allied questions about the nature of Indian culture have the potential to ignite an intellectual revolution on a world scale.
The essays and critiques of Western scholarship on Indiaâs religions contained in this book must be seen as the early signs of this awakening, and of this questioning. It is thus an important chronicle of the beginnings of a shift. Some of the essays are critical surveys of what is still being purveyed as factual and veridical knowledge about India and Hinduism. These are often startling and shocking to the Indian reader, but serve the useful purpose of benchmarking the state of current Western âknowledgeâ about India. Others are critiques of the application of European ideas like psychoanalysis to Indian culture. But all of them, at various levels, must ask the question â is the Western academia producing knowledge about India?
The latter half of the book chronicles how key sections of the academic establishment in America have responded to these challenges, and tries to understand how they processed it as a threat rather than as a long overdue call for a dialog. The book suggests that the answers to some of these questions may lie in American culture and its European roots. In many ways, therefore, the book is an attempt to reverse the gaze on the West, and is sure to make for provocative reading.
S.N. Balagangadhara
University of Ghent,
Belgium
07-18-2008, 11:33 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-18-2008, 11:39 AM by dhu.)
Paternal deceits
Ashish Nandy
<b>Infantilization</b> dates from the 19th century, a response to two developments: the consolidation of the Atlantic slave trade and modern colonialism. These were, arguably, the first serious attempts at globalization. If a cross-continental trade in live human beings, and a political economy touching four continents â on which the sun reportedly never set â are not global, then what is?...
he told me the same things when I met him
History of Indian Science & Technology:
Overview of the 20-Volume Series
By Rajiv Malhotra and Jay Patel
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->..
These traditional folk and elite sciences are intertwined with their distinct ancient cultures and worldviews. Unfortunately, modernization has homogenized the categories, reducing diversity of worldviews in ways similar to the destruction of biodiversity. Using contrived hegemonic categories â such as science verses magic, technology verses superstitions, modern versus tradition â European colonizers systematically exterminated or undermined local traditional science, technology and crafts. Aside from intellectual arrogance, there was a profit motive to this â as evidenced ... <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Oxford's Indian history chair gets head after 3 yrs
14 Mar 2007, 0028 hrs IST, Rashmee Roshan Lal,TNN
OXFORD: Seven years after the Indian government's unprecedented £1.8 million gift to Oxford to create the University's first chair of Indian history and culture, the project is only just getting off the ground in a scandalous story of the NDA government's misjudged great expectations, mismanaged government grants and academic inertia at others' expense.
The chair was finally filled eight weeks ago after being vacant for nearly three years, raising questions about why the former NDA government and its successor, the UPA government, appear neither to have expected nor demanded a return on Indian money.
Though the new occupant of the chair, the earnest, erudite, utterly determined and charming professor of early modern Indian history Rosalind O'Hanlon has taken charge with an ambitious and "exciting" agenda for academic action, highly-placed Indian sources admit that even now, there is no guarantee of India recovering its generous investment any time soon with pioneering work on image-building through an Oxford view of history.
"The Indian bequest may seem generous to us but it is at least £3 million less than needed to properly fund such a chair," the sources told this paper.
When the then foreign minister Jaswant Singh announced the Indian endowment here in November 2000, he said the chair was the personal fulfilment of an old "dream".
But the generous Indian bequest got off to a creaky start by failing to appoint the first Oxford Indian history chair, S Subrahmanyam, for nearly two years after New Delhi handed the money over.
O'Hanlon and other senior Oxford academics in South Asian history, defend Subrahmanyam's record as chair, citing his work on "the early modern Indian period".
O'Hanlon, who insists she has "a scholarly agenda and not a right-wing cultural studies agenda" as suspected by some when the NDA broke new ground by instituting the chair.
She generously says she will continue in Subrahmanyam's footsteps "and neither of us have worked on Vedic glories".
But informed Indian sources suggest the first chair produced nothing of much consequence for the two years he notionally occupied the post, even as he spent much of his time at the UCLA in America.
Observers say it is shocking that there has been no significant demonstrable academic work from the chair in seven years, which could be relevant to the world's historical view of India and India's own understanding of its past.
They say this reinforces the impression of a shameful waste of Indian money at a time universities at home are struggling to find cash to survive.
The Indian history chair is only the third instance of any government, from anywhere in the world, funding a post at Oxford University.
<b>Sociology is being used against Indians.
It has to be stopped completely.
Until then it will be used by others against the Indians. As part of the deal US should have been asked to shut down all the south asia studies departments.</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->By asking that we will look like fools. What we need is to do what China has been able to do more and more of late. They use Chinese businessmen to fund "projects" led by influential faculty in universities and subtly divert the academic community from within.
Before asking anything from US Govt regarding the South Asia studies people, GoI should first deny visas to the most influential people among them and then pick off people one by one. You offer them access and funding by patriotic NRIs and pretty soon, there will be a strong lobby to fight the propagandists from within their own departments.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Per Rajiv Malhotra China, Japan and Korea fund their country studies using government money in US academia. Not just business men. According to him "India is the largest civilization whose study is driven from the outside". Indian govt does zero funding of India studies in US academia.
In the mid 90s the NRI community raised lots of money to fund India studies chairs at all the great utys in US- Columbia, Berekely, Stanford, UPenn and others like UCSanta Cruz. The speil at that time was such chairs would raise more favorable studies in the academia. I havent seen much and the community doesnt even know who the profs are! instead of creating an umbrella group to fund the cahirs the community leaders with money just wrote checks in their own names to get the chairs named after them and baad me jhaye India studies and sociology studies. Each millionare was vying with the others to get chairs named and it was quite cheap- ~ $1M at a State Uty and ~ $5M for an Ivy League. Reminds one of the old saying "fool and his money are soon parted" but then the folks had self and group before natioanl interests.
So rely in on NRI and businesses to fund such chairs is good but wont produce results. In the 90s Bharat Karnad went to big Ambani and to create a foundation for the purpose fo creating an Indian cotrolled awarensss of India in the US. <b>However Mukesh, who is Stanford grad, interjected that he doesnt see any benefit in such a funding of India studies for their business group as they dont plan on being in US. </b>So what could have been done for a few hundred crores in the 90s will require much more in current times. The lesson is the business group has to be engaged in business in India and not just because they have money. They see no munafa as the guy said in "Guru".
Dont just rely on private individuals. To the contrary, I call for a coordinated action between NRIs, GoI, former GoI officials and Indian corporate sector. Here's how it could work:
1. NRIs would fund studies, chairs etc.
2. GoI will deny visas to anti-India folks, especially those that push to exploit caste, regional and religious schisms.
3. Former senior GoI officials and Corporate India would reward those academics who are favorably disposed to India. Sponsor trips where you get to meet the PM or get access to sanitized areas of Indian govt archives etc.
Pretty soon you create a virtuous cycle wherein young academics would sense that they can research India related topics with $$ paid for and previously unimaginable access to GoI top levels, so long as they don't fall into the current establishment's traps. On the other hand, people who are anti-India will get the message that they will never be able to visit India, never get a penny from the new NRI funding sources and will always be out "scooped" by other academics.
Over time this will generate change in the "South Asia studies" departments.
NRI funding wont help as the issue boils down to quo bono?
What is it in for them other thangetting a chair named after them. The NRIs didnt make their fortune doing business with India. On the contrary most of the folks I know funded and established US companies. Its only some of them are altruistic and lend their name to India causes. Unless the NRI makes his money from India there wont be an interest in promoting a poitive image of India through such studies.
<b>
As regarding 3., a reputed pro-deal scholar told me that GOI does not give audience to desi scholars. PERIOD. So being a desi India scholar expert is a sure road to poverty.</b> The babus have the old fears of subversion from desi schoalrs. They think they can pull wool over the foreigners but not desis. Anyway lets see what happens. Meantime what Acharya is saying is true even if folks dont like his message.
As great a scholar as Caroll Quigley has said similar things and now Kevin Phillips is also saying the same.
Krishna Menon found that out long ago and set up 18 area studies centers in 1950s at many utys all over India with the idea that when India needed experts there would be Indians available. The scheme got sabotaged by MEA and UGC. MEA/IFS refused to use any academic expertise nor even give projects to be studied at these centers. The UGC with its Left bias ensured that only commie type studies are conducted so that they are useless and when the economic crunch came some of these centers were shut down or merged.
The real problem is there is no penalty for sabotaging or hindering India only munafa-he-munafa.
I would be surprised if the current scholars of area studies in the West are driven by anything other than munafa. Their whole society exists for munafa. But the problem is due to the economic standing of the West compared to India, they can provide more munafa than we can. Something like wealth condensation.. As you said only nationalists driven by love for their country and culture can reverse the situation.
Seriously, the best way to swing the academic bandwagon to a new direction is to focus BOTH money and prestige to certain lines of thinking. We can't do the former, but we can do the latter. The former may come later, if the latter is established, and it is prestigious to be seen funding the prestigious.
peole will start calling this fascist approach! <!--emo&  --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
:mrred:
Please take some time to find the govt funding sources for the South Asia studies groups in US. They are not State Dept.
There are other depts too in this funding. It has multi dimension support with a history going back to colonial days.
Rajiv Malhotra's presentation said that the main government funding for Sociology was from CIA and DoD. Apart from that Church groups and theological seminaries and foundations were the main non-govt funders.
07-27-2008, 01:14 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-27-2008, 01:16 AM by dhu.)
RM group has lost a lot of public momentum after being out of limelight for past few years. Ideally, they should have set up a parallel forum to sulekha after being driven out with all additional features including bollywood section. "Neo-colonialism" term should have been hammered at every opportunity so that it became natural part of the discourse. This agyatavasa is not working.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/31/stories/...850900.htm
<b>
Kosambi and the discourse of civilization</b>
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
The polymathâs most enduring and wide-ranging contribution to the interpretation of Indian history was his approach to the idea of India as a civilization.
â Photo courtesy: Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Chairman, ICHR
D.D. Kosambi ⦠remembered today chiefly for his work as a historian.
D.D. Kosambi (1907-1966) was a polymath who made original contributions in diverse areas including pure mathematics, quantitative numismatics, Sanskrit studies, and ancient Indian history. But he is remembered today chiefly for his work as a historian. That is not without reason. That is where he made an enduring impact even if some details of his findings and observations may be open to question in the light of later research. If we try to situate his contribution to the interpretation of history, the most enduring and wide-ranging in significance appears to be his approach to the idea of India as a civilization.
When he wrote in 1965 his last major work, The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India, he gave a central place to the notion of civilization. He began with the question: what unifies Indian civilization amidst cultural diversities within? He goes on to ask: what explains âthe continuity we find in India over the last three thousand yearsâ? He underlines the importance of the âmaterial foundation for Indian culture and civilizationâ and, in the concluding chapter, explores the reason why, in his judgment, the ancient civilization was destined to stagnate.
In posing such wide-ranging questions about the civilization in India, Kosambi differed from the general run of academic historians of his times for they rarely engaged in the discourse of civilizations. He was swimming against the current. The specialised and fragmented view in the academic historiansâ professional writings did not usually add up to that vision of totality that the notion of civilization demands. The fact that Kosambi was never given his due by them in his lifetime can be, arguably, ascribed to their disdain for a non-professional who was not only an avowed Marxist, but also given to talking about a dubious entity called âcivilization.â
On the other hand, when Kosambi talked about the Indian civilization, he entered a discourse of civilization that was developed by some of the most creative minds of twentieth century India, including Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, and Jawaharlal Nehru. The questions that engaged such minds were roughly the same as those Kosambi grappled with. What kept India together as a civilization through the millennia? Was it a Hindu civilization, as some would have us believe? Is it possible to discern a continuity in this civilization from the prehistoric to colonial times? How does a notion of an âIndian civilizationâ accommodate the immense diversities in the constituent communities and cultures? Is it necessary, even if it were possible, to talk of an âIndian civilizationâ? How did Kosambiâs intervention relate with the nationalist discourse of civilization?
It is interesting to recall that about two years after the birth of Kosambi (July 31, 1907), M. K. Gandhi, not yet the Mahatma, published his very first political tract, Hind Swaraj (1909). It was an unusual political tract in that it was mainly about Indiaâs civilization. âIt is my deliberate opinion that India is being ground down not under the English heels, but under that of modern civilizationâ (chapter VII). In a chapter entitled âWhat is civilizationâ Gandhi poses a choice between what he considered to be true Indian civilization and the âmaterialisticâ civilization of Europe, for that choice would determine the outcome of the clash between the two. Gandhi virtually subordinates the political agenda before India to the cultural agenda and goes so far as to say our goal was not the expulsion of the English: âWe can accommodate them. Only there is no room for their civilizationâ (chapter XIV).
Gandhiâs denunciation of Europe and idealisation of the non-materialistic tradition in India was, of course, distant from Kosambiâs emphasis on the material basis of Indiaâs attainment of a high level of civilization. On the other hand, consider the fact that throughout the text of Hind Swaraj Gandhi never talks of a Hindu civilization. He talks of an Indian civilization. And the seminal notion of syncretism as the key to comprehending Indian civilization is already there in this very first piece of political statement by Mahatma Gandhi. He speaks of Indiaâs âfaculty of assimilation.â
Between this approach and Kosambiâs there are close parallels. Kosambi begins his treatise on The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India with the statement that India displays âdiversity and unity at the same time.â And he deploys the notion of syncretism in Indian civilization in explicating the absorption of peripheral tribal groups into the mainstream, âtheir merger into general agrarian society,â in terms of the accommodation of their religious belief systems within the Brahmanic scheme of things. He saw a âprocess of syncretismâ in the absorption of âprimitive deities,â a âmechanism of acculturation, a clear give and take,â which allowed âIndian society to be formed out of many diverse and even discordant elementsâ (chapter 7).
The idea of a syncretism in the construal of Indiaâs civilizational unity was of crucial importance in the nationalist discourse. The absence of the European concept of nationhood in the pre-colonial past, despite the substantial evidence of the existence of an indigenous notion of patriotism at the regional and sometimes also at the supra-regional level, was undeniable. The intellectual response to this perception was the idea of Indiaâs civilizational unity, cutting across and over-riding all diversities.
Shortly before Gandhi wrote famously of India as a civilization, Rabindranath Tagore articulated the idea of syncretism in some less-known essays. âWe can see that the aim of Bharatavarsha has always been to establish unity amidst differences, to bring diverse paths to a convergence, and to internalize within her soul the unity within severalty, that is to say to comprehend the inner unity of externally perceptible differences â without eliminating the uniqueness of each element.â Tagore wrote thus and much more in that vein in 1902 in an essay, âHistory of Bharatvarsha,â which was reproduced many times during the Swadeshi agitation in Bengal from 1905. More prominent in the public mind were of course the pronouncements of the nationalist leadership.
While Kosambi shared this perception, while he underlined the unity within apparent diversity, he went on to make a point that was not often made in the nationalist discourse of civilization. âThe modern Indian village gives an unspeakable impression of the grimmest poverty and helplessness,â he writes in 1965 in the book cited earlier (chapter 1). âThe surplus taken away from people who live in such misery and degradation nevertheless provided and still provides the material foundation for Indian culture and civilization.â This evaluation was a radical departure from the oft-heard paeans of praise of the civilization.
Another new note struck by Kosambi was that stability of a civilizational unity was secured at the cost of stagnation and subjection to a regime of superstition and primitiveness. In this regard he follows Marxâs tendency of thought and at one point he even quoted Marx on âthe idiocyâ of rural existence. Kosambi argues that syncretism allowed the admission of many a âprimitive local god or goddessâ and religious beliefs into the ancient Brahmanic system, along with the merger of different social groups with their own belief-systems and cultures. But he adds: âBrahmanism thus gave some unity to what would have been social fragments without a common bond. The process was of crucial importance in the history of India, first in developing the country from tribe to society and then holding it back, bogged down in the filthy swamp of superstition.â
His notion of the âprimitiveâ and the implicit idea of progression to âhigherâ stages may be open to question today. In fact that approach is not so pronounced in his earlier essays on this theme, for example Myth and Reality (1962). However, the point for the present is that, contrary to the usual nationalist position with regard to the virtues of syncretism, he was critical of the consequences in terms of the obscurantism that enveloped the Indian mind.
The most famous exposition of the theme of the unifying Indian civilization in Kosambiâs lifetime was Jawaharlal Nehruâs Discovery of India (1946). Nehru commences with the question, âwhat is this India, apart from her physical and geographical aspects?â (p.36) He goes on to hazard a bold generalisation: in Indiaâs past âdisruptive tendencies gave rise immediately to attempts to find a synthesis. Some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization.â He returns to this theme through the entire work time and again. He ends the book with reflections on the same question: India is âa cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threadsâ¦She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasiveâ (p. 378).
The idea that India was held together by bonds of unity rooted in the past of Indian civilization was not of course new. What was new was its assertion at a time when that unity was threatened by a communal divide that was soon to bring about the Partition of 1947. In the face of the threat, Nehru speaks of a dream of Indian unity. In early 20th century that unity appeared as an undeniable reality to Gandhi or Tagore; to Nehru in 1946 it was a dream, although it was in some ways also a reality. To Kosambi that unity possibly appeared as an enduring fact of history.
But when Kosambi reviewed this book, in Science and Society, he did not comment upon this aspect of it. Actually he found Nehru to be a poor historian so far as ancient India was concerned; he added however that he was âan admirer of the authorâ and he could see how difficult it was for Nehru, sitting in jail, to get the sources he needed. His critique was directed mainly against Nehruâs failure to attempt class analysis in understanding modern developments in India (Exasperating Essays, 1957). In this regard Kosambi was consistent in that he made class analysis the basis of his analysis of changes and continuities in Indian civilization when he turned to that theme in 1965.
That raises finally another question. What explanatory weight is to be assigned to Kosambiâs Marxian method in our effort to understand and contextualise his approach to the civilizational discourse? In a letter to his old friend Daniel Ingalls, an Indologist at Harvard, he wrote in 1953: âThe world is divided into three groups: (1) swearing by Marxism, (2) swearing at Marxism, (3) indifferent, i.e. just swearingâ¦I belong to (1), you and your colleagues to (2).â Perhaps Kosambiâs adherence to Marxism was to its use as a method, not as a source on par with empirical sources of knowledge.
He allowed that in some respects there was a poor fit between Indian history and the classical Marxian scheme. But he consistently used Marxâs method as a tool. Hence his scorn for âtheologicalâ tendencies in Marxism. In his Introduction to Exasperating Essays he writes: âIndian Official Marxists hereafter called OMâ were often displeased with him but he could not but protest their âtheological emphasis on the inviolable sanctity of the current party line, or irrelevant quotations from the classics.â In using Marxist method in his own lights, in his effort to construe the civilization in India, in the convergences and divergences between his approach and the nationalist discourse of civilization, D.D. Kosambi has left much for us to try and understand and evaluate.
(Dr. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya is Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research and a former Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. This article is based on his Kosambi Birth Centenary Address at the University of Mumbai.)
07-31-2008, 04:24 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-31-2008, 04:33 AM by dhu.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Between this approach and Kosambiâs there are close parallels. Kosambi begins his treatise on The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India with the statement that India displays âdiversity and unity at the same time.â And he deploys the notion of syncretism in Indian civilization in explicating the absorption of peripheral tribal groups into the mainstream, âtheir merger into general agrarian society,â in terms of the accommodation of their religious belief systems within the Brahmanic scheme of things. <b>He saw a âprocess of syncretismâ in the absorption of âprimitive deities,â a âmechanism of acculturation, a clear give and take,â which allowed âIndian society to be formed out of many diverse and even discordant elementsâ</b> (chapter 7).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This means that "sanskritization theory" is just a theological assumption about a supposedly errant cultural diversity. It is not uncommon for indian nuclear scientists to perform puja to their kula devatas, narrate Ramayana, and perform whole other array of activities. Believers and seculars are unable to digest these instances and hence the omnipresetnt charges of an underlying "hypocrisy", "munafiq" in Indian traditions. "Hypocrisy" is the most serious charge leveled by the believer/secular for it militates against their belief that 'Beliefs should be congruent to Actions'.
surinder wrote:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Kaushal wrote:<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->
I am slowly coming around to the view that the Indic (euphemism in this instance for hindu) is paralyzed by fear of the (jihadi ) Muslim.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not just of the Jihadi Muslim, Indic is paralyzed by any other conflict as well. There is no apetite for taking on anyone, not just the jihadis.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
While politicians and babus get blamed plenty, there is a lack of will to fight any war in the common people. If there wes the IRA in Northern Ireland, there was a counter movements of the Unionists. (Ultimately, the counter movement puts a check on the will to fight of the initiator. But that requires sacrifice.) If there is a PLO, there are hard dogged Zionists who farm their fields with AK-47 slung over living in a sea of Palis. When the Russians came in A'stan, the ordinary Afghans picked up weapons and fought a long hard battle.
But in India we see seldom see counter movements. When the the Jihadis entered Kashmir, the Pandits just packed up and left, only to become pathetic refugees in Jammu. None among them took up arms and decide to dig in and fight it out. When the Muslim League demoed Direct Aaction Day, INC lost the will to fight for a united India and aggreed to a partition. When the opposing forces came, China went in to fight a long drawn civil war, rather than capitulate. When the time came, Americans fought a long & bloody civil war rather than bifurcate their nation. None in India were eager for a civil war, they just accepted partition and that was the end of their nation. (Americans had been in their land for only a few centuries, Indians have been in India since the dawn of history many many millenium ago. That is how deep our relationship is with our land.)
When the Chinese took Aksai Chin and slapped us in 1962, we just accepted our fate and made peace with it. There was no concerted efforts to fight it out again. A self-respecting nation would go on a massive re-arming spree and fight another day. If the Chinese demand Arunachal, we negotiate with them.
That unfortunately is the truth of India. The problem is not just cops, babus, and politicians. It is us.
This observation is of generation only after the period of 1890s and later. The generation which became educated and elite is basically a British educated maculyte generation which sees the country as an extension of the Anglo American anglosphere. That is where the problem is. They do not have civilizational identity.
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