Intellectuals In Colonial India
The pith of the book is social responsibility an old but relevant subject. But when Prof K N Panikkar, the author of this book, looks into the pre-colonial history in terms of social responsibility, the lay reader may find something unusual as celebrities figure as people with great limitations. One can find grains of Marxian ideology between the lines. And this can be sensed when Panikkar poses questions before the reader How did the intellectuals of pre-colonial India perceive the social, political and economic realities of their times? Intellectual consciousness has been perceived in two planes cultural and ideological struggles occurring simultaneously. The struggle against the ideological basis of the traditional order on the one hand, and against colonial hegemonisation on the other. The intellectual quest to shape the future of Indian society which was based on this dual struggle remained contradictory in its attitude towards tradition and modernity. This contradiction confused people and led to
an acute identity crisis in that period. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru expressed this in the following words: Perhaps my thoughts and approach to life are more akin to what is called western than eastern, but India clings to me as she does to all her children, in innumerable ways. I cannot get rid of that past inheritance or my recent acquisitions.... I am a stranger and an alien in the West. I cannot be of it. But in my own country also sometimes I have an exiles feeling.
Transforming indigenous culture had been on the agenda of the forces of colonial hegemony. The officials of the East India Company were conscious about their cultural engineering programme disguised as reforms. Panikkar says that intellectuals who depended on colonial initiative for the implementation of their programme made this design a self-defeating exercise. The failure to recognise this reality led many of them to entertain illusions about colonial rule.
The intellectual community in India functioned within the parameters of a bourgeois-liberal ideology, except in the second quarter of the 20th century, when a section of it was drawn towards Marxism, says Panikkar. To elaborate, he says: A reformist, Raja Rammohan Roy, and a conservative, Radhakanta Deb, or a rationalist, Akshay Kumar Dutt and revivalist Dayanand Saraswati, or an English-educated Ranade and a vernacular-educated Narayana Guru, had broad areas of agreement over several issues of ideological and structural transformation of society. This was because they were all ideologies of a developing bourgeois order and their social and political premises were liberal democratic.
Nineteenth century intellectuals were firm believers in the efficacy of enlightenment as a panacea the negative side of religion as a social force. At the same time, that the thought of Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man grew among different religions showed its positive side. Panikkar opines: It is paradoxical but true, that the struggle for secularism in contemporary India does not go beyond the nineteenth century struggle for the social and political acceptance of religious universalism.
He then points to another social problem: poverty. Intellectuals in colonial India did not show much concern for this problem.
He feels that as time was running past, intellectuals could not afford to remain a stagnant force. Intellectual transformation had become a historical necessity to counter colonial cultural hegemonisation. Throughout the book, the reader is exposed to the paradoxes faced by Indian intellectuals in that period and the process that led to acculturation.
To elaborate on acculturation, Panikkar draws attention to Indulekha, a Malayalam novel published in 1889. The story is set amidst the social and ideological changes taking place in Malabar. Madhavan and Indulekha represent the English-educated class, pictured as modern and cultured. By 1971, the novel had gone through 60 editions with a print order for each edition ranging from 1,000 to 6,000. The author, Oyyarath Chandra Menon, had received both traditional and colonial education, and was a true representative of the acculturation process.
All the eight essays help in understanding the interconnections between culture, ideology and hegemony in the context of religion, social ideas, and even in spheres like medicine and literature. All in an informative volume for students, has many new things to offer to the lay reader, but nothing fresh for those who are already well-informed about colonial India and the Marxian perspective.
Culture, Ideology and Hegemony
K N Panikkar Tulika Rs 250/199 pages