Stop Feeding the Crocodile: The Ivy League Syndrome
SWARAJYA, SEPTEMBER 19, 2015
Stop Feeding the Crocodile: The Ivy League Syndrome
Rajiv Malhotra
Indian–American researcher, author, speaker. Current affairs, inter-civilization, science
A new humanities discourse around India has to be created from scratch. The existing one, is beyond repair.
Recently,
Narendra Modi’s visit to Silicon Valley was attacked in a petition by
US-based academicians led by scholars like Wendy Doniger and Sheldon
Pollock. Over 80 per cent of the signatures were by Indian ‘sepoys’
joining the bandwagon. As a rejoinder, there emerged two counter
petitions supporting Modi, each signed by much larger numbers of
US-based academicians, who were also mostly Indians. This clash
between the two camps of Indians is important to analyse because they
represent two entirely different constituencies.
The
anti-Modi petitioners proudly characterised themselves as faculty
members of South Asian Studies, the new term for what was known as
Indology in the colonial era. Stated simply, this is the study of
India’s faiths, culture, history, politics, journalism, social
sciences and related areas. On the other hand, the pro-Modi
academicians were mostly from science, technology, business, medicine,
law and other technical fields. I will refer to the former group as
‘South Asianists’ and the latter as ‘technocrats’. It is not a mere
coincidence that these opposing camps are shaped by the disciplines they
work in. It is important to understand the reasons for this.
South
Asianists learn about India using Western-developed frameworks,
vocabularies and theories that have Western cultural biases built into
them. This hegemonic discourse on India subverts Indian native
categories and the Vedic worldview, characterizing Indian civilization
as a human rights nightmare whose solutions must come from Western
thought. In other words, the South Asian Studies lens uses the West’s
past for interpreting India’s present. The solution offered is that
India’s desirable future is to mimic the West’s present society. The
field is driven by the consensus of Ivy League gatekeepers, who can act
like a sort of mafia to make or break an individual’s academic
career.
The
technocrats are not burdened by such culturally-determined
programming, at least not to the same extent. Their disciplines are
based more on empirical data and logic. In other words, it is possible
to argue one’s controversial thesis in Chemistry, for instance, by
demonstrating laboratory evidence that is verifiable. But it is not as
easy to prove a theory of human rights violations without dealing
with cultural biases of various kinds. The humanities are inherently
more subjective, and hence vulnerable to power plays.
Another
difference is that the technocrats tend to be more logical. A typical
batch of students entering college in the technocrat fields tends to
have higher scores in mathematics (i.e. logical mind set) than their
counterparts entering humanities and social sciences. Add to this that
India’s technocrats are now super confident, knowing that they are
second to none in their fields. They have achieved global success
based entirely on merit. Therefore, they see no reason to bow down to
Westerners when it comes to interpreting their Hindu heritage. This
latter quality is what differentiates me from the Indian scholars of
Hinduism Studies: I owned companies where I employed many Americans,
and a large number of managers from many nations reported to me. I
find that Indians lacking such a background of managing Western
professionals with authority are afraid to take them on, because of
their deep inferiority complexes.
In
other words, our colonized mentality can be isolated largely to our
professionals in the humanities and social sciences. We have a clash
between Indians in the two camps of humanities and technical fields.
The technocrats tend to be patriotic and the humanities/social
sciences scholars tend to be Hinduphobic and apologetic. The Indian
media, in turn, are largely educated in fields with deep influences
from South Asian Studies.
I
am not against Western Ivy Leagues in general. But I oppose their
stranglehold over South Asia Studies in particular. This is equivalent
to the power of colonial era Indology that was headquartered in
places like Oxford.
Until
recently, the South Asianists and their mainstream media supporters
have had a virtual monopoly as the voice and face of India. But in
recent years, a counter voice has emerged that cannot be dismissed.
Only a couple of months ago, I was personally the target of a massive
attack demanding that my books be withdrawn (ironically by the same
South Asianists who oppose such bans when their own books get
targeted). While it garnered 240 signatures, a counter petition
initiated by Madhu Kishwar that supported me got well over 10,000
signatures. Every such victory is another nail in the coffin of the
Hinduphobic forces.
The clash is also over who has the adhikara (authority)
to speak for our heritage. South Asianists close ranks to mock at the
voices that are not certified by their institutions. But our
tradition has always valued experience over book knowledge. Our
history is filled with exemplars who did not get certified by any
institutions resembling the Western Ivy Leagues.
With
this background, I wish to discuss the right and wrong approaches to
address this problem. In the 1990s, my Infinity Foundation pioneered
the funding of Western academicians in order to improve the portrayal
of Indian civilization. It took over a decade and several millions of
my hard earned dollars before I understood the academic game. Gradually,
I developed my insights into how insidious the South Asian Studies
machinery is. I witnessed first-hand the complex funding mechanisms,
intellectual and political networks, and interlocking of agendas
across government, private foundations, church and academics. That is
when I concluded that planting chairs in such a giant machinery was
like feeding a crocodile hoping to turn it into a friend.
I
am now an ardent critic of Indian movements that seek to establish
Hinduism-related chairs within Western academe. Such projects are
premature and counterproductive, driven naively by glamour and
prestige.
What we need first and foremost is a new corpus of content and discourse,
one that would challenge the prevailing discourse on Indian
civilization. Such provocative discourses simply cannot be produced from
within the walls of the very same fortress that has to be exposed and
dismantled. It cannot be achieved as an ‘inside job’ because that
would entail a greater degree of personal risk and brilliance than
what is available among our academically certified scholars today. It
would also need a large critical mass of like-minded scholars in one
place, with political clout and will. It is a sheer waste to develop a
random scattering of chairs here and there, occupied by individuals
craving personal (petty) career success.
Given
the cost of setting up one academic chair in USA (approximately $4
million), it would be far better to use that money and set up a whole
department of scholars in India with the concentrated goal to develop anew discourse
on some specific topic. As an example, a centre to develop a Hindu
perspective on women’s status and role could be tasked to produce game
changing discourse on that theme. This would then be disseminated
worldwide through multiple channels. Several such theme-specific
centres ought to be established in India. This is how China has
taken control of the way China is being studied worldwide. They did not
outsource the knowledge production about their civilization the way
Indians have.
Such an approach would nurture the ‘Make in India’ spirit in the field of South Asian Studies. It would keep the adhikara and
world class expertise within Indian institutions. The new genre of
discourse would also be intimately connected with our raditional mathas and peethams,
rather than with the likes of Ford Foundation, Western churches and
think tanks and their paradigms. This would de-colonize our youth and
media once they realize that we are the best experts on who we are as a
people.
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