India/western Sociology

[dhu]

Rajiv Chandran



Arvidsson's book is important coming from the western establishment. However one wonders if even this work is not relegated to the sidelines by preponderant Indo-European discourse in academia. Here formal academics - not only social sciences, but natural sciences as well, in content, in discourse, institutions and personalities seem to almost be conspiratorially enmeshed in indefinitely perpetuating hegemonic western categories. One wonders how much we can trust the same european engineered narratives of our own history. From the works of K D Sethna , Kota Venkatachelam, T S Narayana Sastri and others it would seem that our history has been completely mutilated both in terms of chronology, important figures, dates and the resultant antiquity (in an effort to bring it as close as possible to that of the greeks - this in itself seems to be a technique to facilitate India's intellectual achievements - by falsely showing it as having later antiquity than corresponding greek achievemnts ) . Several Indian scholars have demonstrated how the idea of the invading Aryan is a lately introduced red herring that artificially creates an upper bound to India's antiquity and distorts most of the post-kali narrative as carefully mentioned in the Puranas. Rajiv Malhotra's work needs no mention in exposing how ancient indic ideas are stealthily appropriated by western academic establishment in a continuing process of domination of the indian mental landscape. C K Raju's work has demonstrated how most of the formative mathematical discoveries now attributed to Greeks as "Western Science" had its origins and epistems in ancient India. However it would seem most Indians have become so colonized as to lose not only perspective but identity as well - resulting in a profound loss of pride, and lack of sense of ownership of his/her own heritage. That said the importance of keeping up the good work learning of one's own roots. The above cited people's work show how pedagogy, identity, geostrategic value, politics, general welfare, social integrity etc are devastatingly affected by such speculative theories that we (Indians as well a major part of the non-west) seem to have internalized in the last two to three hundred years. However of late there seems to be some recognition at least amongst a section of the Indians regarding the same. Better late than never. More people need to read and hear about such things.