Help preserve cultural diversity (Was: Language barriers --- financial barriers)

Mon Mar 23 07:58:36 UTC 2009

Not only the gradual loss of English is to be deplored. Also Sanskrit had
been thrown out of the educational system in some Indian states, with the
result that the knowledge of the vernacular State language also suffers.
Many words in e.g. Hindi or Bengali are tatsama's. Spelling-errors also
increasingly occur as a result of lack of knowledge about the word-formation
of tatsama's. Many users of Indian languages are probably not even aware
anymore of the parent language from which many of their loanwords have
issued.

Of course the Bengali reformers like Rammohun and Vidyasagar pleaded for
English education (in English) but still knew their Sanskrit.

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Indology [mailto:INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk] Namens Dipak Bhattacharya
Verzonden: zondag 22 maart 2009 19:54
Aan: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Onderwerp: Re: Help preserve cultural diversity (Was: Language barriers ---
financial barriers)

<Bengali Renaissance reformers like Raja Rammohun Roy, prince
Dwarkanath Tagore and Vidyasagar were far more incisevely critical of the
Brahmanical culture of their day than Macaulay ever could be>
The thread may have been lost but perhaps the question that brought in the
topic of culture preservation was the inability of a large number of Indian
Sanskritists to understand English. In fact this state of affairs is a
creation of current politics. A language of international standing apart
from one's mother tongue, must be a part of the curriculum in the University
stage. This principle is followed in every civilized society where modern
education has made a place for itself.[[Perhaps many in India might
experience that this is not true of Americans ie U.S. citizens. But perhaps,
it is really not so. It seems untrue of Americans perhaps because poorly
educated Americans too can afford to tour India. They too enter into
Institutes of higher study. It is they who leave the poor impression. But
the above principle seems to have been followed when one talks with a highly
educated American.]]
In India misplaced patriotism has been the reason for banishing English as a
compulsory subject from the University curricula in some states. Such steps
might not greatly harm education in countries where elaborate arrangement
for translation and of quickly getting informed of the latest developments
in research exists. This is not possible in India for many reasons --
copyright, prohibitive cost of getting permission, unwillingness of
publishers to explore such possibilities. For example, R.H.Robins' General
Linguistics has been translated into French. No Indian publisher ever
thought of that.  
As a result the abolition of English has increased the number of graduates
but has also caused a severe lowering of the standard of education. Even
most of the PhD theses produced in these states cannot be sent to states
where a different language is spoken.
It is forgotten that one need not lose one's culture by preparing oneself to
get acquainted with researches being carried on in the world outside India.
On the contrary one enriches oneself and one's culture thereby.That was the
reason, explicitly stated by the reformers of Bengal in the nineteenth
century, for the then emphasis on English education.
Unfortunately, the condition is still valid and will remain so till India is
industrially an advanced country. 
DB

--- On Sun, 22/3/09, victor van Bijlert <victorvanbijlert at KPNPLANET.NL>
wrote:

From: victor van Bijlert <victorvanbijlert at KPNPLANET.NL>
Subject: Re: Help preserve cultural diversity (Was: Language barriers ---
financial barriers)
To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Date: Sunday, 22 March, 2009, 11:05 PM

I do not wish to defend British policies from the days of the Company Raj,
but I am only pointing to the fact that Macaulay edited the Indian Penal
Code which is still in use in South Asia (with the necessary amendments).
Moreover, Bengali Renaissance reformers like Raja Rammohun Roy, prince
Dwarkanath Tagore and Vidyasagar were far more incisevely critical of the
Brahmanical culture of their day than Macaulay ever could be. The fiercest
critics of Indian culture were not the British but the Indian reformers
themselves. Macaulay's Minute on education was fully endorsed by the then
Hindu reformers. The Indian reformers themselves were clamoring for English
education. I think we should not forget this fact. 
Presentday criticism of Macaulay may ultimately be used to tacitly endorse
upper-caste Hindu reactionary world-views.

Victor van Bijlert

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Indology [mailto:INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk] Namens Gruenendahl, Reinhold
Verzonden: zondag 22 maart 2009 18:16
Aan: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Onderwerp: AW: Help preserve cultural diversity (Was: Language barriers ---
financial barriers)

I have great sympathy for Paolo Magnone's point. However, there is one
aspect
that I see differently. 

Paolo Magnone wrote:

... I suspect there is as much typically Anglosaxon
matter-of-factness speaking in Macaulay's infamous "Minute on Indian
Education" as there is  typically German longing for the ineffable
transfactual in Hegel's winged eulogy of India. 

...

To leave that heroic age of the beginnings (the age of the "Renaissance
orientale", contributed to by many but eminently embodied by German
Romanticism ...

_______________________

With regard to Hegel, "German longing", Romanticism etc. it may be helpful
to
take a look at the chapter on Hegel in Wilhelm Halbfaß's "Indien und
Europa".
Here are a few quotes from the English translation (1988):

p. 86:
[Hegel] sought advice and information from his colleague at the University
of
Berlin, the pioneer Sanskritist and linguist F. Bopp [and read H. T.
Colebrooke's first essay "On the Philosophy of the Hindus"], ....

[...but, it bears reminding:]
p. 85:
(...) Hegel was not an indologist.
[Paolo Magnone correctly addresses Hegel as a philospher.]

p. 95:

Hegel's interest in India is inseparable from his anti-Romantic attitude and
his criticism of the Romantic glorification of India. However, F. Schlegel
himself subsequently revised and modified his evaluation of the Indian
tradition, and he distanced himself from the unqualified enthusiasm of his
earlier statements.

p. 85:
Hegel's interest in India is inseparable from that of the Romantics: He was
one of the heirs, but also the most rigorous critic of the Romantic
conception of India. What distinguishes his approach above all from that of
the Romantics is his commitment to the present, and his sense of an
irreversible direction of history. He does not glorify origins and early
stages. The spirit of world history progresses to greater richness and
complexity. What has been in the beginning cannot be richer and more
perfect.
It may be true that India, as part of the Orient, is a land of "sunrise," of
early origins and "childhood." But this does not justify nostalgia and
contempt of the European present. We cannot and need not return to the
Orient: It is a matter of the past.

______

I may add that, so far, I have not come across a "German indologist" of any
description who had a "typically German longing for the ineffable
transfactual", or who wanted to reverse the course of history according to a
presumed "Oriental" model. This is but a small illustration of the
fundamental flaw of Raymond Schwab "Oriental Renaissance". As I have pointed
out elsewhere: When Edward Said stumbled across Schwab's book, roughly two
decades after its publication (1950), he decided that it had been
"unreasonably ignored". This is one point on which I take the liberty to
disagree with Said.

Reinhold Grünendahl

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