12-09-2006, 09:57 AM
Just reposting post no 95 as I think it got lost in the other discussions taking place.
<!--QuoteBegin-kartiksri+Dec 8 2006, 02:07 PM-->QUOTE(kartiksri @ Dec 8 2006, 02:07 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Dec 7 2006, 08:26 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ramana @ Dec 7 2006, 08:26 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Dhu, I request you to get together with Acharya and write up a more detailed response about Modernity and India. Its very much needed. Thanks in advance.
BTW, Balagangadhara's reply to Jeffery Kirpal
Our problem is as Engineers and technical people we dont know the language of discourse for social scientists and hence even when we have the right reply we cannot articulate it well. We need to develop wrtiting skills.
He writes of the angst we all went thru.
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->15. The third charge is that your stance prevents you knowing you are blind. That is to say, why are you blind? Better said, what makes you blind? The answer to this has layers too, and let me peel just a few of them. To do that, I shall have to engage you in your own territory, on your own turf. That is, I want to talk to you about your understanding of your own culture and religion. (Is this not what 'cultural hermeneutics' all about?) Let me, therefore, play the ventriloquist and displace your voice to ask myself a few questions: Is the alienation from our own experience (that I spoke of) any different from what any believer undergoes in the west, when he 'discovers' that God is dead? Is my experience any different from a westerner losing his belief about God and the mystic? Are our travails anything other than the story of 'modernity' as it plays out in India?
[/b]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
[right][snapback]61788[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
[right][snapback]61827[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think I'm responding to your thoughts or maybe dhu's or kram's. Really dont know where to start. When a tree is small as this discussion was at the beginning, you can jump from one branch to the other with no dificulty, but when the branches grow up and become trees in their own right, you don't know at which end of the tree you are. Everything is jungle !!
Maybe I can attempt to organise this jungle. This thread was started with the intention of discussing a particular period of our history. But in understanding that
and getting to the depth of it, the scope widened and widened and is almost trying to encompass everything. Right now it has become more philosophical in the sense the Hindu view of the world and sciences vis-a-vis the Western view. This seems to be the region of historiography. I dont know whether my level of knowledge enables me to go along with you to that level.
Indian philosophy focusses on "looking within self" rather than "looking without", though there are schools of thought like Nyaya, Vaisheshika which are not psychological but rather analyze nature. Other schools of philosophy like Uttara Mimansa (or Vedanta), then Buddhist and Jaina are psychological (sorry my terms maybe amateurish, but as ramana put it, I'm an engineer without a good vocab of jargons, so please understand the spirit of what I want to say). The Western Philosophy was more focussed on making sense of nature and bettering the nature around, thus more materialistic. I read somewhere a comparison: If we consider Man, Nature and Society as the three points of a triangle connected to each other, then each of the early philosophies primarily focussed on one of these areas. Indian on the Man (looking within), Western on nature, Chinese (Confucianism) on society and interaction with other men. I accept this is a very simplistic view, but basically trying to understand the difference between Western view and Indian view. Indian philosophy doesn't understand why we need to make a better place to live in when this is all maya. Rather you look within, you will see that what you are is your soul, which is a part of the Supreme Being and then this body, life, world etc become irrelevant. I believe Indians are predisposed towards and excel at abstract thinking mainly because of this.
Now when you say we were always modern, I get an idea where you are coming from. Modern, Ancient are all qualifiers of time. But we believe in a cyclical world, so things like modern, ancient become irrelevant. It is basically a indicator of material progress which is something we consider as maya. ALso the teachings of Upanishads are timeless, they can be applied to any period with any state of material progress. So to that extent we are always modern.
You see if you were to look at things from Indian philosophy point of view, there is no meaning discussing things like "When India became modern". But then there is also no point discussing Sourav Ganguly's return to Indian team or the Asiad performance of India or whether Ash will marry Abhishek B. But guys like me being materialistic, being happy that we are nuke power, being happy when Sensex touches 14000, being sad when Indian cricket and hockey teams lose time and again, being unhappy when we produce only one chap who wins medals at Olympics, also find it interesting to discuss on "When India became modern" from a materialistic point of view. I see only two ways, from Indian philosophy point of view this discussion become totally irrelevant as irrelavant as discussing the politics of history or the outrageous Marxists. The only way to discuss is in a materialistic framework (materialistic in this sense includes social, economical, political, technological etc.). I hope I have chose the terminologies well. <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin-kartiksri+Dec 8 2006, 02:07 PM-->QUOTE(kartiksri @ Dec 8 2006, 02:07 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Dec 7 2006, 08:26 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ramana @ Dec 7 2006, 08:26 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Dhu, I request you to get together with Acharya and write up a more detailed response about Modernity and India. Its very much needed. Thanks in advance.
BTW, Balagangadhara's reply to Jeffery Kirpal
Our problem is as Engineers and technical people we dont know the language of discourse for social scientists and hence even when we have the right reply we cannot articulate it well. We need to develop wrtiting skills.
He writes of the angst we all went thru.
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->15. The third charge is that your stance prevents you knowing you are blind. That is to say, why are you blind? Better said, what makes you blind? The answer to this has layers too, and let me peel just a few of them. To do that, I shall have to engage you in your own territory, on your own turf. That is, I want to talk to you about your understanding of your own culture and religion. (Is this not what 'cultural hermeneutics' all about?) Let me, therefore, play the ventriloquist and displace your voice to ask myself a few questions: Is the alienation from our own experience (that I spoke of) any different from what any believer undergoes in the west, when he 'discovers' that God is dead? Is my experience any different from a westerner losing his belief about God and the mystic? Are our travails anything other than the story of 'modernity' as it plays out in India?
[/b]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
[right][snapback]61788[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
[right][snapback]61827[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think I'm responding to your thoughts or maybe dhu's or kram's. Really dont know where to start. When a tree is small as this discussion was at the beginning, you can jump from one branch to the other with no dificulty, but when the branches grow up and become trees in their own right, you don't know at which end of the tree you are. Everything is jungle !!
Maybe I can attempt to organise this jungle. This thread was started with the intention of discussing a particular period of our history. But in understanding that
and getting to the depth of it, the scope widened and widened and is almost trying to encompass everything. Right now it has become more philosophical in the sense the Hindu view of the world and sciences vis-a-vis the Western view. This seems to be the region of historiography. I dont know whether my level of knowledge enables me to go along with you to that level.
Indian philosophy focusses on "looking within self" rather than "looking without", though there are schools of thought like Nyaya, Vaisheshika which are not psychological but rather analyze nature. Other schools of philosophy like Uttara Mimansa (or Vedanta), then Buddhist and Jaina are psychological (sorry my terms maybe amateurish, but as ramana put it, I'm an engineer without a good vocab of jargons, so please understand the spirit of what I want to say). The Western Philosophy was more focussed on making sense of nature and bettering the nature around, thus more materialistic. I read somewhere a comparison: If we consider Man, Nature and Society as the three points of a triangle connected to each other, then each of the early philosophies primarily focussed on one of these areas. Indian on the Man (looking within), Western on nature, Chinese (Confucianism) on society and interaction with other men. I accept this is a very simplistic view, but basically trying to understand the difference between Western view and Indian view. Indian philosophy doesn't understand why we need to make a better place to live in when this is all maya. Rather you look within, you will see that what you are is your soul, which is a part of the Supreme Being and then this body, life, world etc become irrelevant. I believe Indians are predisposed towards and excel at abstract thinking mainly because of this.
Now when you say we were always modern, I get an idea where you are coming from. Modern, Ancient are all qualifiers of time. But we believe in a cyclical world, so things like modern, ancient become irrelevant. It is basically a indicator of material progress which is something we consider as maya. ALso the teachings of Upanishads are timeless, they can be applied to any period with any state of material progress. So to that extent we are always modern.
You see if you were to look at things from Indian philosophy point of view, there is no meaning discussing things like "When India became modern". But then there is also no point discussing Sourav Ganguly's return to Indian team or the Asiad performance of India or whether Ash will marry Abhishek B. But guys like me being materialistic, being happy that we are nuke power, being happy when Sensex touches 14000, being sad when Indian cricket and hockey teams lose time and again, being unhappy when we produce only one chap who wins medals at Olympics, also find it interesting to discuss on "When India became modern" from a materialistic point of view. I see only two ways, from Indian philosophy point of view this discussion become totally irrelevant as irrelavant as discussing the politics of history or the outrageous Marxists. The only way to discuss is in a materialistic framework (materialistic in this sense includes social, economical, political, technological etc.). I hope I have chose the terminologies well. <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->