It took some serious looking, but I found it again. This next quoteblock is relevant to one bit of what I've been complaining about above.
Stolen from an excerpt Dhu pasted in post #114 in the MF Hussain thread. My inserts in purple.
http://www.india-forum.com/forums/index....__p__80251 (Also look up post on "kitsch" there, which also discusses alienation)
It sounds so "reasonable", doesn't it? To see sacred Hindu 'scultpures' and Kovils - undoubtedly beautiful, I'd be the last person to contest that - as "art/architecture" at the expense or eclipse of religion.
And the more reasonable you think it sounds, the more de-heathenised (in this case de-Hinduised) one is.
Repeat - good line, must steal:
1. Actually, 2nd to last word should be "religion" (or heathenism) not "culture" - in this case Hindu religion. But Hindus tend to use the words interchangeably, since they think the two mean the same thing. They *should* mean the same thing - or rather, something intrinsically interrelated (all heathen culture is born of heathen religion, being outward symptoms of it and hence inseparable from that heathen religion) - but they don't mean the same in English.
2. And it's not just modernist movement that imparts this. It doesn't even need to be consciously attempted.
The phenomenon can easily become aangeleerd, a word which I don't know to translate into English in context (note I don't mean "nurtured"). I mean... Actually, I mean exactly the example of the person who went west above:
- he went west (but he could just have stayed in India and deHeathenised his brain there by mentally going "west". Same thing - all you need is the tendency for it)
- and by contact with and appreciation for and consequently internalising the *understanding* of how the christowest looks at Hindu temples/moorties and all heathen temples, heathen literature and heathen rites, the Hindu got alienated. And that's how s/he starts looking at the same things in future. The minute he (shorthand for he/she/it) understood their way of thinking and made it his own, he created distance from his Hinduness (the Hinduness/view which a heathen upbringing had instilled) and he could no longer see his temples and moorties in the heathen manner anymore. And was moreover convinced that his new way of viewing was the Superior (therefore Right) way of viewing the same - note use of word "epiphany" - which makes the alienation more permanent and the original heathen views unrecoverable*. Interestingly the subject described viewing Hindu religious depiction as religious iconography as "colonial" whereas his "epiphany" to see them as but "fine art" instead is submitted as the improvement/correct way.
* But then, de-heathenisation is a one-way process. A one-way valve. (And self-deheathenisation is deservedly so.)
It's also besmettelijk to heathens - I think that would be "contagious" in English: Heathen "contact" with deheathenised heathens is even more dangerous than heathen contact with the christowestern unheathen views of heathenisms. Because
a. not all heathens have a tendency to self-deheathenise (to the same extent) when exposed to the same experiences/influences
b. BUT a de-heathenised heathen can transmit deheathenisation better to heathens (even those immune to *western* views): the deheathenised has better access to heathens, has a common background/way of thinking (starting point is the same), hence can translate alien thinking to the heathen (using the very manner in which the self-deheathenised translated alien thinking patterns into something acceptable for itself). And by bridging the gap from a heathen's natural way of thinking to alien thinking patterns, he/she/it can lead heathens by the hand from A to B to start thinking in the same manner. That's why I complained about Tamizh Hindu blogs with alien views: they have the power to [and *do* factually] influence Tamizh Hindus - who would have been entirely immune to western aliens - to start viewing deeply Hindu things in the same self-alienated manner. Which is exactly why you can also find Tamizh christians and even presumably alien 'Indian art connaisseurs' eager to take part in the "discussions" at these blogs: it becomes a secularised, secularising space, even though the subject matter was and should have remained intensely privately Hindu: Hindu moorties and Kovils.
It's amazing how irretrievable heathenism is. Even knowing to value one's heathenism - what's left of it - is a notion already lost on so many. But if one were to only know to value it, I think it will teach one to hold on more consciously to it and be wary of letting go so easily. Or so I suspect (a theory).
Stolen from an excerpt Dhu pasted in post #114 in the MF Hussain thread. My inserts in purple.
http://www.india-forum.com/forums/index....__p__80251 (Also look up post on "kitsch" there, which also discusses alienation)
Quote:Entire modernist movement aims to impart sense of alienation from Indian "art objects" as separate from Indian cultural matrix.
Quote:The neurological basis of artistic universals V.S. S. Ramachandran
www.interdisciplines.org/artcog/papers/9/8
Excerpt:
A strange thought occurred to me as I looked at the stone and bronze sculptures (or "idols", as the English used to call them) in the temple. In the West these are now found mostly in museums and galleries and referred to as "Indian art". Yet I grew up praying to these as a child and I never thought of them as art. They are so well integrated into the daily worship, the music, dance and into the very fabric of life in India, that itââ¬â¢s hard to know where art ends and where life begins; they are not separate strands of existence, the way they are here in the West.
[color="#800080"](The above is the untouched/unsubverted i.e. Hindu POV. Next comes the transformative/destructive contact with the west and alienation ensues, followed by the pompous certainty that the new, alienated view is the "Right and True" way of looking at Hindu things[/color]
[color="#0000FF"]Thanks to my Western education, until that particular visit to Chennai, I had a rather "colonial" view of Indian sculptures. I thought of them largely as religious iconography or mythology, rather than fine art. Yet on this particular visit, these images had a profound impact on me and started haunting me even in my dreams. One day, when I woke up, I had an epiphany of sorts and I began to see the sculptures as indescribably beautiful works of art, not as religion. Thus began a love affair with art that has continued unabated for the last five years.[/color]
..
When the English arrived in India during Victorian times, they regarded the study of Indian art mainly as "ethnography" and "anthropology". (This would be equivalent to putting Picasso in the anthropology section of the national museum in Delhi.) They were appalled by the nudity they encountered and often referred to the sculptures as "primitive" or "not realistic".
It sounds so "reasonable", doesn't it? To see sacred Hindu 'scultpures' and Kovils - undoubtedly beautiful, I'd be the last person to contest that - as "art/architecture" at the expense or eclipse of religion.
And the more reasonable you think it sounds, the more de-heathenised (in this case de-Hinduised) one is.
Repeat - good line, must steal:
Quote:[color="#800080"](Dhu wrote
1. Actually, 2nd to last word should be "religion" (or heathenism) not "culture" - in this case Hindu religion. But Hindus tend to use the words interchangeably, since they think the two mean the same thing. They *should* mean the same thing - or rather, something intrinsically interrelated (all heathen culture is born of heathen religion, being outward symptoms of it and hence inseparable from that heathen religion) - but they don't mean the same in English.
2. And it's not just modernist movement that imparts this. It doesn't even need to be consciously attempted.
The phenomenon can easily become aangeleerd, a word which I don't know to translate into English in context (note I don't mean "nurtured"). I mean... Actually, I mean exactly the example of the person who went west above:
- he went west (but he could just have stayed in India and deHeathenised his brain there by mentally going "west". Same thing - all you need is the tendency for it)
- and by contact with and appreciation for and consequently internalising the *understanding* of how the christowest looks at Hindu temples/moorties and all heathen temples, heathen literature and heathen rites, the Hindu got alienated. And that's how s/he starts looking at the same things in future. The minute he (shorthand for he/she/it) understood their way of thinking and made it his own, he created distance from his Hinduness (the Hinduness/view which a heathen upbringing had instilled) and he could no longer see his temples and moorties in the heathen manner anymore. And was moreover convinced that his new way of viewing was the Superior (therefore Right) way of viewing the same - note use of word "epiphany" - which makes the alienation more permanent and the original heathen views unrecoverable*. Interestingly the subject described viewing Hindu religious depiction as religious iconography as "colonial" whereas his "epiphany" to see them as but "fine art" instead is submitted as the improvement/correct way.
* But then, de-heathenisation is a one-way process. A one-way valve. (And self-deheathenisation is deservedly so.)
It's also besmettelijk to heathens - I think that would be "contagious" in English: Heathen "contact" with deheathenised heathens is even more dangerous than heathen contact with the christowestern unheathen views of heathenisms. Because
a. not all heathens have a tendency to self-deheathenise (to the same extent) when exposed to the same experiences/influences
b. BUT a de-heathenised heathen can transmit deheathenisation better to heathens (even those immune to *western* views): the deheathenised has better access to heathens, has a common background/way of thinking (starting point is the same), hence can translate alien thinking to the heathen (using the very manner in which the self-deheathenised translated alien thinking patterns into something acceptable for itself). And by bridging the gap from a heathen's natural way of thinking to alien thinking patterns, he/she/it can lead heathens by the hand from A to B to start thinking in the same manner. That's why I complained about Tamizh Hindu blogs with alien views: they have the power to [and *do* factually] influence Tamizh Hindus - who would have been entirely immune to western aliens - to start viewing deeply Hindu things in the same self-alienated manner. Which is exactly why you can also find Tamizh christians and even presumably alien 'Indian art connaisseurs' eager to take part in the "discussions" at these blogs: it becomes a secularised, secularising space, even though the subject matter was and should have remained intensely privately Hindu: Hindu moorties and Kovils.
It's amazing how irretrievable heathenism is. Even knowing to value one's heathenism - what's left of it - is a notion already lost on so many. But if one were to only know to value it, I think it will teach one to hold on more consciously to it and be wary of letting go so easily. Or so I suspect (a theory).