Critique of the West in Indic literature and society

[kichenas at math.umn.edu]

I was surprised by Dominik Wujastyk's remark regarding the
East India Company's debt in the period 1800-1807. Is it claimed
that the Company never turned a profit, and that the appropriation 
of the wealth of India was not the reason for its presence? 
Wasn't its debt in this period related to Wellesley's policy 
of conquest?

As for the initial question, it seems that many answers given
have to do with the defence of India rather than a criticism
of the West.

Western thought, like Indian thought is of course a self-contained
and growing set of systems, and it would be perhaps better to 
criticize individual systems of the West, many of which involve
presuppositions which are not admitted as obvious by Indians.

One point, however, which is widely presented as characteristic
of the West, and as the foundation of the Western conception of
progress, is the concept of domination of nature,
which, from an Indian standpoint, is quite arbitrary. For instance, 
it is odd to interpret technology as a means to counteract the
natural order of things, since it makes use of nothing but
the laws of Physics, which are, of course, more complex than
those obvious to common sense.


                                Satyanad Kichenassamy
                                School of Mathematics
                                University of Minnesota
                                kichenas at math.umn.edu