04-12-2004, 04:45 AM
I will comment on the above at greater length when the opportunity avails itself but for now I shall restrict myself to a contrarian view on Max Mueller (This does not mean that I entirely dispute what has been proposed above).
I am pasting below something I have parked elsewhere:
It is common these days to find many Indians stating that Max Mueller was an India-hater and a hand-maid of Macaulay.
Max Mueller was the son of a well-known German poet and influenced greatly by the German scholastic community of his era. His ideas should, hence, be viewed as a part of the continuum of the era. Secondly, he never visited India so he definitely had a poor grasp of the first-hand subtilties of India. His information was also being filtered through the English Raj, which was obviously the only source.
Let me point out what Swami Vivekananda, a great Indian reformer and patriot said about him: "Max Mueller is a Vedantist of Vedantists. He has, indeed, cought the real soul of the melody of the Vedanta." This is a peculiar statement regarding someone who is these days commonly regarded as detrimetnal to Indian interests. In 1897, when Tilak was charged of sedition by the English court he tabled a representation to the British government along with D. Nowroji to discharge Tilak. This move shortened his imprisonment by 6 months. If one reads his book 'India: What it can teach us' it is in large part sympathetic towards Indians (especially if Annie Besant, who supported the Jawlianwalla masscre can be considered sympathetic). It is interesting to note that the Indian freedom fighters themselves termed him mokSha mUla bhaTTa! Ironically his efforts to translate the vedic texts were critical in allowing many Hindus to get some idea of the vedic texts - we should realize that understanding the vedic language is not a joke, and only a small section of highly educated brAhmaNas, who were facing extinction, could really fathom its complexities. While it is good to study vedic in its original, it is not easy at all. Given this background MMs efforts ironically helped many Indians themselves to get a glimpse of the veda and start their new round of interpretations (including Vivekananda and Aurobindo).
So at the face of it there is no evidence that MM was a British agent trying to subvert Indian identity. This did happen but we have to look elsewhere. So what really happened?
If we look at the early stage of MMs career, then we see that he was sympathetic towards India. In the later phases of his life, he suddenly found himself making a U-turn (vide Rajiv Malhotra): In the 1860s he found himself actually refused professorship by the British because in part of his pro-Indian and Indian-influenced world views. This had it is effect on him and placed pressure on him to conform to the European norms. In 1880s he started translating Kant, here he started rediscovering his Western identity, which had been smudged by his dabbling with the "Orient". In the process he started making statements like:
"If I live for any purpose it is for this, that I will preach the union of Eastern and Western Theism, the reconciliation of Europe and Asia. The idea may seem absurd to many in the present age. It may provoke ridicule and angry reviling. But posterity will prove a better judge."
The synthetic phase, where he started becoming obsessed with his own ideas, set soon there after. This gradually completed the U-turn as he started placing things in his own occidental categories. Yet, he did not completely give up his attachment to India: It occasional showed up in works like Ramakrishna (which he wrote in his later life; compare with Kripal lurid depiction of RK as a homoerotic tormented soul) and Six systems of Indian philosophy that he wrote just before his death. So I think we have to look elsewhere to find the real subversionists of Indian identity and history.
I am pasting below something I have parked elsewhere:
It is common these days to find many Indians stating that Max Mueller was an India-hater and a hand-maid of Macaulay.
Max Mueller was the son of a well-known German poet and influenced greatly by the German scholastic community of his era. His ideas should, hence, be viewed as a part of the continuum of the era. Secondly, he never visited India so he definitely had a poor grasp of the first-hand subtilties of India. His information was also being filtered through the English Raj, which was obviously the only source.
Let me point out what Swami Vivekananda, a great Indian reformer and patriot said about him: "Max Mueller is a Vedantist of Vedantists. He has, indeed, cought the real soul of the melody of the Vedanta." This is a peculiar statement regarding someone who is these days commonly regarded as detrimetnal to Indian interests. In 1897, when Tilak was charged of sedition by the English court he tabled a representation to the British government along with D. Nowroji to discharge Tilak. This move shortened his imprisonment by 6 months. If one reads his book 'India: What it can teach us' it is in large part sympathetic towards Indians (especially if Annie Besant, who supported the Jawlianwalla masscre can be considered sympathetic). It is interesting to note that the Indian freedom fighters themselves termed him mokSha mUla bhaTTa! Ironically his efforts to translate the vedic texts were critical in allowing many Hindus to get some idea of the vedic texts - we should realize that understanding the vedic language is not a joke, and only a small section of highly educated brAhmaNas, who were facing extinction, could really fathom its complexities. While it is good to study vedic in its original, it is not easy at all. Given this background MMs efforts ironically helped many Indians themselves to get a glimpse of the veda and start their new round of interpretations (including Vivekananda and Aurobindo).
So at the face of it there is no evidence that MM was a British agent trying to subvert Indian identity. This did happen but we have to look elsewhere. So what really happened?
If we look at the early stage of MMs career, then we see that he was sympathetic towards India. In the later phases of his life, he suddenly found himself making a U-turn (vide Rajiv Malhotra): In the 1860s he found himself actually refused professorship by the British because in part of his pro-Indian and Indian-influenced world views. This had it is effect on him and placed pressure on him to conform to the European norms. In 1880s he started translating Kant, here he started rediscovering his Western identity, which had been smudged by his dabbling with the "Orient". In the process he started making statements like:
"If I live for any purpose it is for this, that I will preach the union of Eastern and Western Theism, the reconciliation of Europe and Asia. The idea may seem absurd to many in the present age. It may provoke ridicule and angry reviling. But posterity will prove a better judge."
The synthetic phase, where he started becoming obsessed with his own ideas, set soon there after. This gradually completed the U-turn as he started placing things in his own occidental categories. Yet, he did not completely give up his attachment to India: It occasional showed up in works like Ramakrishna (which he wrote in his later life; compare with Kripal lurid depiction of RK as a homoerotic tormented soul) and Six systems of Indian philosophy that he wrote just before his death. So I think we have to look elsewhere to find the real subversionists of Indian identity and history.