Although there is much to say about "untouchability" in Bharata, there is an overarching ethic of permitting space to groups to develop and maintain their culture. As common to all heathens, there is no forced assimilation into a common culture via ideological conformity (ie, the peculiar ideological culture of the abrahamists). There was also the aspect to allow women to remain unmolested, undisturbed, as well as the sadhu and gai to wander freely the land and theor path not obstructed. The Ascetic also was not disturbed by touch nor the embodied divinity in a vigraha. Overall the practice of not touching, where it can be ascertained as a custom or practice) was heroic in nature and deferential to each being and non-being (inanimate objects also imparted with gender and being in hindi/sanskritik languages). To this the colonialist, per their usual habit, imparted base motives and complexed this practice along with other observations into an ideology of separation of apartheid. and ghetto-ization - more familiar from Europe. It is commonly said in the west that the Buddhists and Japanese and Shintoist/Taoists have a culture of silence. Buddha maintained silence for questions of an absurd nature. The Maun Vrata was also known in Bharata. Osho describes Eastern Art as meditative and western art as aggrandizing. In general, the practice of not touching also fits into such a meditative culture.
Note on ontology (developing out of SNB)
Note that not touching in Bharata is a practice, an action, not a belief nor justified by belief. When the missionary/indologist/anthropologist/colonial official interrogates the Hindu native informant as to why he does this action, the hindu gives ad hoc reasons and almost never embeds his/her response as part of some native theoretical paradigm (when it is, it is almost always traceable directly to some known colonial discourse eg, AIT). Perhaps a native narrative may be offered up - either from current vulgar Indian culture or from ancient times eg, the epics or puranas. But the presented theory/story is almost always an ad hoc explanation and not part of an established doctrine, theory, or theology (except as traceable to known colonial influence(s)).
Significant also is the fact that these stories are proffered in response to an eliciting inquiry from the colonial functionary who approaches the native as a savior or as a neutral observer. That is the inquiry does not occur natively in the culture either from the party not being touched nor from a third party within the culture. When this is stipulated to the colonial inquisitor, their response is always regarding the insidious nature of the perpetrated atrocity eg, the atrocious ideology (ie, ideology manifested as practice) is so thoroughly imbued into both the practitioner and the persecuted that they realize not the offense. Or that they are both complicit in a conspiracy of silence and denial. The former is the familiar non-ideological explanation and the latter is an ideological one. The ideological one precedes the nonideological one with the nonideological explanation being derivative in the sense that it has been emptied of intentionality - in much the same way as (marxist) materialist explanations using nonintentionalist "forces of history" is an intentionality-emptied account of the usual "great men actuating history" historical accounts.
Further looking will show that untouchability as construed by western interlocutors is a translation of the monotheist concern for idolatry (not setting up alternates to the "One God" or True Sovereign, ie, not playing God) transposed onto the native (as untouchability); the native is (falsely) poised as the sovereign enforcing or insinuating an ideology of separation/apartheid. This false insinuation transfers the sin of ideology from the colonizer onto the native and masks the colonizer, protecting the colonizer. The native is essentially "framed" via the construction of the native in the image of monotheist sovereign (who brooks no dissent and owes no obligations to anyone ie, not touched, alien to creation). Set up as a rival to the monotheist sovereign God, the native falls into idolatry (a moral affront to the believers and their God) in direct conflict with the true sovereign and thus becomes targeted in monotheist discourse. Thus, the untouchability believing native is framed for retribution by the believers. And the native is transformed into a colonizer, with attendant ideology, in his own land ie, becomes ideological.
As a category, an ideology/belief system based ontology allows for portrayal of the native as nonreciprocating, transforming the native into an 'agent' of some ideology. The category of heathen practice/praxis, in contrast, does no such thing - there is always reciprocation (even if it is conflict) in practices. In fact a practice with even inanimate objects transforms those objects as moral objects. Thus stones have moral presence in Bharata. The monotheist engages only with the image or construct or stereotype dictated by their ideology, but not with the object; thus ideology allows for dehumanization/demonization, the development of atrocity literature, or the recasting of heathen literature as atrocity literature, etc. Transformed epics or texts or oral texts, in such cases, become plagued by unifocal meanings (eg, as an expression of colonial bombast, colonial aggrandizement) and disputes - and they cease to instruct. They become objects of contention. The colonizer also becomes a stakeholder in them, as their true interpreter, imparter of meaning.
The materialist as a devolute of the ideological
The above shows the dependence of the materialist (including the empirical) on the ideological. The materialist preserves the original interpretative framework as well as the agenda of the ideological, but the removal of intentionality masks its dependence and generates its supposed neutrality. The materialist can then serve as a conduit or vehicle for further ideologization where ideology itself would seem inappropriate. In Bharata and Asia, this is seen where Communism/Modernity/etc pave the way for abrahamization (In China, after the Boxers defeated the American Methodists, the Methodist regrouped by sponsoring the cat's paw of Maoism; in Latin America, the church experiments with liberation theology which is then exported to the rest of the world as various shades of liberationism).
The western (social) empirical thus proceeds from religion/colonial derived theologies/theories (eg, regarding how untouchability evolves/evinces from the decadent or brutal nature of hinduism) and supports these theories with observation. Empiricism also contains its own deniability mechanism of an entire superstructured discourse about observation being tested to support the theory, essentially a reversal of the process of imposition of theory/theology.
No comments:
Post a Comment