CRITIQUE OF WEST IN INDIA

[vidya at cco.caltech.edu]

This thread has become more a discussion of India's history than a  
discussion of Indian criticisms of the West. Let me get back to the  
original issue that Dr. Fosse raised. India never tried to assess the  
West in ancient or medieval times. Except for a few stray references  
to yavaNas and mlecchas, there is not much to go on. Halbfass has a  
good collection of references in his chapter on Indian xenology.  


It is only in the 19th and the 20th centuries that the West (as an  
entity by itself) has impinged upon Indian minds to any significant  
extent. Gandhi and Vivekananda are good sources for criticisms, if  
you are prepared to overlook the claims of spiritual superiority that  
they assert for India. Also, you will find many more pieces of  
criticism of the West in contemporary Indian journalism than anywhere  
else. These are mostly in English and some of the major Indian  
languages, none in Sanskrit or Pali. On the one hand, this makes  
things easier - you have good documentation, you don't have 15  
different versions of the same work and you don't have missing  
sections, so you don't have to translate, or speculate about what  
they really mean, or bother about filling in the gaps. On the other  
hand, they leave no doubt about what exactly they think of the West,  
and therefore may not exactly be music to lay Western ears.  


Modern Indian journalistic criticisms of the West are by necessity  
political in nature, partly by virtue of India's legacy as an  
ex-colony. Depending upon the journalist, they may also be influenced  
by Marxist thinking, but they remain uniquely Indian criticisms  
nevertheless. They are also mostly criticisms of the contemporary  
West, not of classical Greece/Rome, nor of Imperial Europe. This may  
not be what you are looking for, but they represent a significant  
trend in modern India's evaluation of the West as an Other that helps  
in formulating its conception of its own Self. However, these  
journalistic criticisms do not arise from a blind pride in things  
Indian (spiritual or otherwise). The same journalists do not hesitate  
to tear apart Indian thinking on many of the same issues on which  
they find fault with the West. Read any issue of magazines like India  
Today or Frontline and daily newspapers like The Times of India, The  
Indian Express and The Hindu. The West (meaning Western Europe and  
USA) comes in for a lot of criticism for the world wars it imposed  
upon unwilling peoples, for the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,  
for its handling of the cold war (including Korea, Vietnam and  
Afghanistan), the Gulf war, Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia, for Britain's  
war in the Falkland Islands (anyone remember that any more?), for the  
US role in the Philippines and Panama, for the debt trap that the IMF  
and the World Bank push developing nations into, for the Mexican peso  
crisis, for the Western xenophobia against Muslims (Iran and  
Palestine), for its nuances of "cultural imperialism", all the way  
down to the recent issues of using Indian women as guinea pigs in the  
UK and the debate over affirmative action in the US. A very recent  
example is a May '95 issue of Frontline in which Jayati Ghosh  
examines the Oklahoma bombing case and the consequent anti-Iran/Arab  
voices that were raised in the US, (very publicly and very loudly  
too) and, more interestingly, how no one even said a simple sorry to  
Iranian/Arab Americans after the real bomber was found to be a white  
American. 


Regards

S. Vidyasankar