{ dispatch from abroad }

INDIA: Empire, Elitism, Education

t h o m a s w a r d

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep
But I have promises to keep...

Dr Vishnu Bhat, retired professor of English at Madras Christian College and noted Sanskritist, has a distinctly Indian interpretation of Frost's immortal words. In a conversation about the Indian conception of literature, Dr. Bhat used these lines to demonstrate the eternal (rhyming) conflict between duty and beauty--the conflict between the inert, inactive awe at a world often harsh and foreign but nevertheless beautiful, and the active participation in reality's coarsest grit.

On a trip to the temple at Kanchipuram, I had to push though a crowd of poor schoolchildren begging me for the pen I was using to make notes on the glories of the ancient past--a past which, itself, is marked by the systematic oppression of society's lowest members.

Wave after wave of invasions--martial and cultural--has left increasing numbers of so-called "tribal" peoples marginalized and displaced. Beginning with the influx of Aryan peoples from the north, Sanskritic languages have continued to vie with aboriginal and Dravidian languages for primacy. The Aryans made efforts to keep their culture "pure" through the institution of the caste system and the restriction of knowledge to the elite classes.

In a way, it is ironic that it was Vishnu Bhat who should start me thinking about beauty and duty. Dr. Bhat is an orthodox Brahmin specializing in a knowledge that was once so elitist that the punishment for illegally hearing it was an earful of lead; and I am a college student reared on the ideas of plurality and equality, espousing the freedom of intellectual property. And yet it is the very brahmanical learning which has yielded Dr. Bhat's brand of literary theory which interests me. Dr. Job Thomas (head of Davidson's South Asian Studies department) has expressed his exasperation at constantly coming up against what he sees as a Sanskrit-dominated hierarchy in Indian scholarship. For example, if an archeological site doesn't show signs of Aryan/Sanskrit culture, it is largely ignored. And yet, it is Sanskrit rather than Toda or Telegu ("native" languages) that I find the most beautiful. Surely the world doesn't need another Brahmin poseur spouting slokas when Harappan pottery lies collecting water for mosquitoes to breed in. I can't help but wonder whether it is a lack of appreciation for India's indigenous (non-Sanskritic) cultures that allows for the continued marginalization of the tribals.

Globalization is but the latest in India's history of invasions. As more and more people living in traditional ways become dispossessed, they move to the cities, essentially nightmarish perversions of their jungle homes. And we, the merry band of scholars, can but ask: "What can I do about all this?" We have all realized the problems inherent in globalization, and we try to buy Indian goods (we all sport swadeshi homespun clothes). But the only reliable water comes in bottles proudly bearing the little red dot of the Coca-Cola caste. And when it comes to choosing between economic imperialism and amoebic dysentery, the Coke-bottled water inevitably helps us swallow our righteous indignation.

I ended up giving my pen to one of the poor children in Kanchipuram, but I have plenty more with which to practice writing the Sanskrit alphabet.