tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1674709389503889160.post6836294681851342135..comments2024-03-25T14:25:25.102+00:00Comments on Poetry as Socio-proctology: Is Sanjay Subhramanyam the ghost of Vasco da Gama?windwheelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18099651877551933295noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1674709389503889160.post-65455593448920141922013-07-14T09:55:02.739+01:002013-07-14T09:55:02.739+01:00'Subrahmanyam argues that “we need to see Indi...'Subrahmanyam argues that “we need to see India not as a civilisation but as a crossroads, as a space open to external influences rather than a simple exporter of culture to its neighbours”. A national culture that lacks the confidence to admit that “like all other national cultures, it too is a hybrid, a crossroads, a mixture of elements derived from chance encounters and unforeseen consequences, can only take the path to xenophobia and cultural paranoia.” - See more at: http://caravanmagazine.in/books/master-centuries#sthash.FnmTD4yx.dpuf<br />I think the problem with Subhramanyam's historiography is that it does not have a theory of cultural continuity and assimilation. What is the mechanism whereby a 'chance encounter' leads to a normative change? How do normative changes go from being epigenetic to phylogenetic? What are the channels through which change is disseminated? <br />There may be a few people who believed that Indian culture was an exporter of culture, but received no influence from outside but how significant were they? Why is Subhramanyam engaged in an Oedipal struggle with them? Was Partha Chatterjee one of them? Was Ranajit Guha? Has there in fact been a single eminent historian a decade or two senior or junior to Subhramanyam who has maintained such a thesis? If not, why is Subhramanyam tilting at those windmills and laying waste to those straw-men?<br />If Subhramanyam's view is correct then some of the corollaries that follow are<br />1) twilight clauses for caste or tribe based affirmative action. If discrimination against Dalits or OBC's or whatever was the product of a chance encounter and if chance encounters determine historical trajectories then there is nothing specifically Indian which continually re-inscribes them.<br />2) break up the Indian Nation State. It is an accidental agglomeration of heterogenous territories and can only maintain itself by systematic violence.<br />3) Carve out confessional states for non-Hindus out of the territory of India. Why? Hinduism can only generate paranoia and xenophobia. Islam can generate patriotism and an openness to influence from Islamic countries. Christianity can do the same w.r.t Christian countries. But K.Subhramanyam, Sanjay's father, in boosting National defence, was doing something paranoid and xenophobic and evil and mad because he was decreasing the frequency of 'chance encounters' like invasion, genocide, mass rape and enslavement, which alone animates the country and gives it the semblance of life.<br />4)The fact that India has no history- just chance encounters- does not mean that no other country is incapable of having a history. So Indian history is only valuable if its study can yield sufficient money or prestige to permit emigration to a country which does have history and thus the will and the means to protect itself from 'chance encounters' in the same way that the DNA has evolved means to repair the effect of random mutations.<br /> Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com