11-17-2005, 07:23 AM
http://www.swaraj.org/multiversity/paran...nglish.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->With these preliminary qualifications in mind, let me straightaway go to what is so obviously the central question before us as scholars, teachers, and members of the academy. Simply put, the question is this: how are we going to go about decolonizing the academy? Political independence, at least a semblance of it, we may have attained, but, clearly, the intellectual and cultural independence that accompanies it is still only a distant possibility on the horizons. I think one definite way of proceeding in that direction, a way that has been tried and known to work in the past is that of recovering our own indigenous and native and traditional knowledge systems and strengthening them. Now this work is being done in many different ways, in many different parts of India. For example, Dhvanyaloka itself, as its name suggests, is dedicated to the task of recovering and using Indian traditions of criticism and poetics. Let me cite another example. There is an organization called PPST, short for Patriotic Peoples Science and Technology. What they have been trying to do is to look at indigenous science and technology, some of which survives to this day and was available before the British conquest. A lot of very useful and groundbreaking research has already been done on this subject.
One of the people who inspired it, who has been connected with it is, Dharampalji. I would suggest that all of us should read a book called The Beautiful Tree. âThe Beautiful Treeâ is, of course, a quotation taken from Mahatma Gandhi. I believe that he used it as a metaphor to describe the totality of Indian society. When you destroy its root, the whole of the beautiful tree perishes. Dharampaljiâs book is called The Beautiful Tree because he wanted to show how strong the roots of our culture and civilization were before the British tried to destroy them. What this book does is to look at education in 18th century India from British records. Note that unfortunately our own native records are usually not available. So Dharampalji looks at colonial records and the results are astonishing. <b>We are used to thinking that before British rule, we were totally uneducated. In fact, the paradox is that literacy was higher in the 18th century, in certain parts of the country, than it is today. So in this survey of several villages in Tamil Nadu where records were maintained, we find that the populace in general was fairly well educated, regardless of caste. </b>
Similarly, Dharampalji and others have looked at the state of science and technology in 18th century India, before British paramountcy or the consolidation of the Empire. The question is what was the state of India? The British would like us to believe that it was very, very backward, but their own records show that this was far from the case. Dharampaljiâs Collected Writings, should you be interested, are now available from The Other India Press in Goa.
Claude Alvarez has published them. Claudeâs work is also very important when we talk about indigenous science and technology. He did a Ph.D. on Indian science and technology in the Netherlands. When he was researching on this topic, he found very little material. At last, he came across one of Dharampaljiâs articles, which he read like thirsty man drinks a glass of cool water. Claudeâs book was republished in 1997 by the Other India Press under the title, Decolonizing History. Let me give you just one or two examples of our indigenous science and technology. One is the advanced metallurgical traditions of India. Nowadays we talk about the need to cut down on the high energy expended to make steel. In India, we had a tradition of small furnaces in which we made pretty high quality steel in villages. This skill was known and recorded in the 18th century and still continues today. Another example is inoculation. In Bengal there were people who toured the countryside inoculating adults and children against small pox. In the early 18th century, the British were learning from them. The latter made records, some of which are still available. Yet another example is plastic surgery. In Pune, for instance, barbers were expert plastic surgeons. There are detailed British records of how a person whose nose was cut off had a new nose grafted on to his face. Now, nose surgery is very sophisticated. Even today not everybody can do it. So also the case of artificial limbs, especially the world-famous Jaipur foot. These were made, and continue to be made, extremely effectively in India. These knowledge systems-and many more-were available in India in the 18th century and some of them survive to this day. So the point is that one way of decolonization is certainly by looking at traditional knowledge systems in whichever field they are. Whether they are in science and technology, whether they are in humanities, whether they are in social sciences, and what Professor C. D. Narasimhaiah has done is to help this process of recovery and renovation of traditional knowledge systems in our literary, aesthetic, and philosophical traditions. Because there has been a rupture in our own mind, that is to say that the continuity is broken, a lot of such work of recovery needs to be done before we can feel reconnected with ourselves. For example, when we read Aristotle we hardly realize that a lot of work had to be done on the Poetics before it could be applied to texts. To make the past contemporary is the great task of the archaeologist of knowledge. Similarly, a lot of work has to be done on our ancient texts, whether itâs the Natyashastra or Kavyamimansa or whatever. We need to make these texts not just available, but current; we need to make them applicable to our own lives and also to the literary texts that we read. So this is one important way of decolonizing ourselves, and this is something that Professor Narasimhaiah and Professor Kapoor, to name two examples, have been doing.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->With these preliminary qualifications in mind, let me straightaway go to what is so obviously the central question before us as scholars, teachers, and members of the academy. Simply put, the question is this: how are we going to go about decolonizing the academy? Political independence, at least a semblance of it, we may have attained, but, clearly, the intellectual and cultural independence that accompanies it is still only a distant possibility on the horizons. I think one definite way of proceeding in that direction, a way that has been tried and known to work in the past is that of recovering our own indigenous and native and traditional knowledge systems and strengthening them. Now this work is being done in many different ways, in many different parts of India. For example, Dhvanyaloka itself, as its name suggests, is dedicated to the task of recovering and using Indian traditions of criticism and poetics. Let me cite another example. There is an organization called PPST, short for Patriotic Peoples Science and Technology. What they have been trying to do is to look at indigenous science and technology, some of which survives to this day and was available before the British conquest. A lot of very useful and groundbreaking research has already been done on this subject.
One of the people who inspired it, who has been connected with it is, Dharampalji. I would suggest that all of us should read a book called The Beautiful Tree. âThe Beautiful Treeâ is, of course, a quotation taken from Mahatma Gandhi. I believe that he used it as a metaphor to describe the totality of Indian society. When you destroy its root, the whole of the beautiful tree perishes. Dharampaljiâs book is called The Beautiful Tree because he wanted to show how strong the roots of our culture and civilization were before the British tried to destroy them. What this book does is to look at education in 18th century India from British records. Note that unfortunately our own native records are usually not available. So Dharampalji looks at colonial records and the results are astonishing. <b>We are used to thinking that before British rule, we were totally uneducated. In fact, the paradox is that literacy was higher in the 18th century, in certain parts of the country, than it is today. So in this survey of several villages in Tamil Nadu where records were maintained, we find that the populace in general was fairly well educated, regardless of caste. </b>
Similarly, Dharampalji and others have looked at the state of science and technology in 18th century India, before British paramountcy or the consolidation of the Empire. The question is what was the state of India? The British would like us to believe that it was very, very backward, but their own records show that this was far from the case. Dharampaljiâs Collected Writings, should you be interested, are now available from The Other India Press in Goa.
Claude Alvarez has published them. Claudeâs work is also very important when we talk about indigenous science and technology. He did a Ph.D. on Indian science and technology in the Netherlands. When he was researching on this topic, he found very little material. At last, he came across one of Dharampaljiâs articles, which he read like thirsty man drinks a glass of cool water. Claudeâs book was republished in 1997 by the Other India Press under the title, Decolonizing History. Let me give you just one or two examples of our indigenous science and technology. One is the advanced metallurgical traditions of India. Nowadays we talk about the need to cut down on the high energy expended to make steel. In India, we had a tradition of small furnaces in which we made pretty high quality steel in villages. This skill was known and recorded in the 18th century and still continues today. Another example is inoculation. In Bengal there were people who toured the countryside inoculating adults and children against small pox. In the early 18th century, the British were learning from them. The latter made records, some of which are still available. Yet another example is plastic surgery. In Pune, for instance, barbers were expert plastic surgeons. There are detailed British records of how a person whose nose was cut off had a new nose grafted on to his face. Now, nose surgery is very sophisticated. Even today not everybody can do it. So also the case of artificial limbs, especially the world-famous Jaipur foot. These were made, and continue to be made, extremely effectively in India. These knowledge systems-and many more-were available in India in the 18th century and some of them survive to this day. So the point is that one way of decolonization is certainly by looking at traditional knowledge systems in whichever field they are. Whether they are in science and technology, whether they are in humanities, whether they are in social sciences, and what Professor C. D. Narasimhaiah has done is to help this process of recovery and renovation of traditional knowledge systems in our literary, aesthetic, and philosophical traditions. Because there has been a rupture in our own mind, that is to say that the continuity is broken, a lot of such work of recovery needs to be done before we can feel reconnected with ourselves. For example, when we read Aristotle we hardly realize that a lot of work had to be done on the Poetics before it could be applied to texts. To make the past contemporary is the great task of the archaeologist of knowledge. Similarly, a lot of work has to be done on our ancient texts, whether itâs the Natyashastra or Kavyamimansa or whatever. We need to make these texts not just available, but current; we need to make them applicable to our own lives and also to the literary texts that we read. So this is one important way of decolonizing ourselves, and this is something that Professor Narasimhaiah and Professor Kapoor, to name two examples, have been doing.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->