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Engaging with Vernacular Modernity


By Bhawesh Pant

In the larger project of 'decolonising' theories when the academia from global south is toiling to contribute theorisation from their part of world, Prof. Purushottam Agrawal's contribution is hard to ignore. His continuous engagement with vernacular figures and texts calls for detailed deliberations. Bhawesh Pant's talks with Prof. Agrawal:

Bhawesh Pant: Greetings Prof. Agrawal. Hope you are doing good? What do you mean when you say ‘to think in terms of vernacular modernity’?

Prof. Agrawal: The term ‘modern’ is etymologically connected with ‘mode’, that is why, in popular perception, it is associated with anything new, just off the shelves. ‘something in circulation’. In this context, it also carries the connotation of ‘improved’. But, to understand it properly, let us be clear that philosophically, the term, ‘Modern’ indicates a specific orientation of ethics and method of knowledge leading to the emergence of a new kind of consciousness of the relationship between human beings, nature, and society. Historically, this new consciousness is related to the spread of commerce and consequent changes in social equations. Many people see modernity as a sort of violent break from tradition, but that is not the case. Modernity apparently looks like a rupture, but if you look at its emergence in any society carefully, the ‘rupture’ can clearly be seen as qualitative outcome of a series of gradual quantitive changes. No society becomes modern overnight.

Now, the question is: were such changes in economic life and in the sphere of ideas and attitudes taking place in Europe alone? Till, some decades ago, most of the people even in academia would readily say, ‘yes, of course, modernity emerged in Europe and then spread to other parts of the world’. It was in this sense that the colonisation in spite of all it’s brutality was considered historically ‘progressive’ as it took dynamism of modernity to ‘traditional’ societies and thus forced them out from their stagnation into the flow of history.

This belief has been under increasing scholarly scrutiny; many people now realise that modernity must be seen as a global phenomenon, not as Europe’s unique invention.

The most crucial feature of modernity that can be disaggregated; and can be recombined in a number of different ways is the emergence of a new subjectivity which ‘speaks’ through a re-definition of the individual’s relation with society and cosmos. Historically speaking, the emergence of a social constituency responding to, and participating in such a re-definition is very important to any process of ‘modernization’. A ‘radical’ break from tradition or from the immediate past is not a pre-condition of the emergence of modernity either in Europe or elsewhere.

This is what you can see happening in Indian vernaculars, parallel to early modernity in Europe, hence my insistence on vernacular modernity. It was not about merely repeating the ancient wisdom or being ignorantly proud of the ‘golden’ past; it was about adding to what was there by asking important questions and by offering thought-provoking answers.

Engaging with vernacular modernity is not exciting only for academics, listening to the voices of vernacular modernity will greatly enrich every Indian’s sense of self and surroundings. It will also help collectively to imagine a more humane society.

Bhawesh Pant: Don’t you think one has to be really cautious while exploring ‘our modernities’ because the latter can lead to the creation of hegemonic nationalist consciousness?

Prof. Agrawal: This sounds like a valid concern, but only if you forget the dialectics of universal and particular with reference to modernity. In this case, my position is radically different from the so-called ‘nativist’ one.

I am not looking for any ‘purely Indian’ modernity because I know this kind of purity in matters of cultures and attitudes is purely a delusion, sometimes amusing, sometimes disastrous. Let me, however, hasten to add, I also do not dismiss nationalism as such. I feel that in post-colonial societies like India, an inclusive and democratic nationalism is the need of the hour.

It is also useful to remember that in history, diffusion worked in ‘both the directions’, ( between Europe and non-Europe) as C.A. Bayly points out even in the specific context of state and government in ‘modern period’. I look for dialogue between cultures on the parameters of universal human values. Let me underline my categorical rejection of the cultural and moral relativism of the post-modernist variety. All said and done, humankind cannot do without a trans-cultural notion of human values and a set of minimum expectations rooted in the same. Such a trans-cultural universalism can be imagined and articulated only when we explore the trajectory of interactions between various cultures and traditions instead of attributing all yearnings of universal human values to European enlightenment and its ‘export’ to other societies.

Bhawesh Pant: In Akath Kahani Prem Ki you are rejecting the tag of ‘Indian Luther’ latched to Kabir by scholars hailing from colonial episteme. Instead, you consider him to be an articulative moral agent and historical actor. Why?

Prof. Agrawal: Simply because he was one! I mean an “articulative moral agent and historical actor” and hugely different from Luther in temperament and agenda. As we know, (I have cited references in Akath…), Luther was not averse to hatred for Jewish people, call for their expulsion from Germany and violence included. He was opposed to the Roman Catholic Church, not at all to the idea of organised religion and its control by the priests. He, unlike Kabir, ended up establishing a church opposed to the Roman Catholic one, his imagination could not even accommodate anything like Kabir’s bhakti, which in essence is an adventurous attempt to articulate spirituality beyond organised religion.

It is, therefore, to be frank, quite ridiculous to describe Kabir as Indian Luther.

Bhawesh Pant: While reading your work on Kabir, it emerges that you are very much concerned ‘to rescue spirituality from hegemonic theistic episteme’. Your comments.

Prof. Agrawal: Exactly. Spiritual angst is inbuilt in the human mind. In fact, as Marx reminded in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844, the essential human nature is ‘inorganic’ i.e, the human being is part of nature, yet aware of its being as distinct from nature, unlike other animals. Marx used the term spiritual also but later discarded it for the obvious reason that the term is closely connected with organized religion and in the European context, even carries the connotation having to do with ‘spirits’ i.e. ghosts.

Nehru talking to RK Kanrnjia in 1960, recognised the need to deal with ‘spiritual emptiness being caused by our technological civilisation”.

How do you deal with that? We have taken organised religion’s monopoly over spirituality as a divinely determined fact, which it is not. It is even more ironical in the Indian context, as here even in the organised religion, the theistic element is not that strong.

I feel, we have to perforce think in terms of some kind of rational spirituality beyond organised religion.

Bhawesh Pant: Ram is in popular political appeal. What was Kabir’s conception of Ram? Kindly demarcate between Kabir’s conception of Ram and Tulsidas’s conception.

Prof. Agrawal: Kabir rejects the idea of avatar because it is connected with the defence and preservation of birth-determined social hierarchy, but freely uses names drawn from avatar narratives—Raghunath, Govind, Keshav, Madhav, etc along with the core name—Ram. Every name gives identification to abstract Nirgun, placing it in a web of relationships. Kabir’s Ram appears in his poems not only as Lord but also as a parent; but most frequently as a friend and beloved; in such contexts where Lord is beloved, love is articulated in the idiom of erotic. This way, the divide between ‘divine’ and ‘secular’ is eliminated, and Kabir’s audience realises the truth of what Jayasi declares in his epic, Padmavat—‘love makes human-divine’ ( मानुष प्रेम भयउ बैकुंठी).

Tulsidas on the other hand vehemently opposed this idea of Ram and its logical conclusion i.e. with criticism of caste hierarchy. His notion of Ram is that of an ardent defender of the Varna order.

Bhawesh Pant: How to comprehend Kabir’s Utopia or Amardesh?
Prof. Agrawal: We do not find a detailed blueprint of the social system, Kabir would like to see, but ample evidence of his orientation and preference is spread all over his works. Unlike the secularist utopias imagined in the nineteenth century, Kabir’s utopia ( sometimes called Amardesh —the country immortal, sometimes just ‘that land’) is not about equality only, but also about balance and moderation. Madhi (the middle way) and Samata (balance) are amongst his favorite expressions in this regard. To him, social and spiritual; outer and inner are intertwined; no question of them being in a relationship of antagonism, not even of mutual indifference.

Such imagination of spirituality, human relations,  and social system is at the root of Kabir’s repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with most of what actually exists. His social criticism is distinct from the previous ones by the siddhas and naths precisely due to this alternative imagination. His criticism is not merely a cynical rejection of existing arrangement; but confident, self-assured critique.

Due to its richness and emphasis on the middle way, Kabir’s utopia can serve as a departure point for imagining an alternative in the 21st century.

Bhawesh Pant: You are forwarding a conception of the Public Sphere of Bhakti kindly elucidate for our readers. How it is different from the Habermasian notion of Public Sphere?

Prof. Agrawal: To talk of the public sphere of Bhakti is not to talk of the public sphere of exactly and strictly European or even the ‘bourgeoise’ variety— the category which is the subject of Habermas’s inquiry. But, at the same time, Habermas gives a very basic definition of ‘public’- "We call events and occasions ‘public’ when they are open to all, in contrast to closed or exclusive affairs.”  Bhakti in early modern India is not a private emotion, it is a public act.

About the applicability of this concept, even in the context of Europe, there have been attempts to disentangle the analytical from the programmatic strands in Habermas’s argument. Thus disentangled, the public sphere can be seen primarily as ‘the place of voice rather than of authority’, even outside the bourgeoisie class of an industrial society. It denotes the existence of arenas that not only are autonomous from the public ‘order’ imposed by state but are also public in the sense that they are accessible to different sectors of society.

Bhakti, in vernacular modernity of India, was open to all, in contrast to the close and exclusive affairs, and also was from the very outset an arena of contested meanings. This contest manifested itself not only in poetic compositions but in organised activities, institutions, and practices as well. The point is that diverse, at times conflicting ideas regarding social practices were being propagated in a shared idiom of bhakti, wherein there was a lot of contest around terms, categories, and meanings.

The name ‘Ram’ was the most keenly contested signifier of conflicting notions of social and spiritual ideas.

As you are aware, the idea of ‘Public Sphere of Bhakti’ was first put forward and elaborated upon by me in ‘Akath Kahani Prem ki… Recently, some other scholars like Christian Lee Novtezke have also been drawn to this, even though he still hesitates to call it the public sphere of bhakti and prefers the expression, ‘pre-modern public sphere’.

Bhawesh Pant: You are extensively stressing to deliberate on ‘everyday practices or everyday life’ to sense the historical or contemporary expressions of social. What made you take this line of inquiry?

Prof. Agrawal: In a nutshell, the glaring discrepancies, I discovered in those descriptions of ‘social’ which do not seriously engage with everyday practice. I have given many examples of this in my work ( Akath Kahani and others). To mention, just one here, we have been made to believe that Kabir was a ‘marginalised’ voice; in spite of strong, in fact, irrefutable evidence on the contrary in history as well as in our own time.

Bhawesh Pant: What are your current engagements with the exploration of vernacular modernity?

Prof. Agrawal: I am about to finish a Kabir book in English, not a translation of Akath, but a new book. After this the plan is explore the vernacular expressions of Hinduism.

Bhawesh Pant: Thank you, Prof. Agrawal, for your time. Take Care.

Prof. Agrawal: Thank you very much for such probing questions, hope, my answers will be helpful.

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