09-08-2006, 01:22 AM
xposting Dhu's post from other thread.
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?roo...5&filetype=html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> Cntemporary research that addresses the important period of the early 19th century in India generally takes the controversy between Anglicists and Orientalists as a useful explanatory framework [Cohn 1988, Kejariwal 1988, Dirks 2001]. Convinced that the Indian society was saturated by heathendom, Anglicists considered India to be corrupt. They believed that its culture was degenerate and its population irrational, retarded, superstitious and morally depraved. The Orientalists, on the other hand, genuinely sought to understand the foreign culture. Surely, they wanted to bring reform. But they were certain that a transformation could only be successful if it resonated with the mores of the natives. Hence, they studied the Indian culture, learned its local languages, collected and preserved what belonged to its cultural inheritance, and discovered a grand past that presented an India excelling in the political, social, religious and intellectual domains.
The differences between the two factions are generally considered significant and important [cf Kopf 1969, 1991, Frykenberg 1979, Jones 1976]. However, we would like to highlight that they turn out to be superficial when it comes to the assessment of the fundamental structure of the Indian society. Unerringly, both identified brahmins as the âpriestsâ. They both were convinced that these âpriestsâ had a negative influence on religion and society. Brahmins were held responsible for the creation and sanctification of the caste system, which brought social development to a halt. They accepted as true that this system consisted of a rigid social compartmentalisation and that it was created to preserve religious and social privileges of the brahmin caste. They were convinced that the brahmins used their religious authority to dominate those in civil power which explained why the system of hierarchical castes was not contested by those in power as well, etc.
If there were differences between Orientalists and Anglicists in this regard, they were very shallow. Anglicists found Indian culture and society intrinsically corrupt from the very beginning. Orientalists, however, saw Indiaâs culture as being based on sound principles which steadily degenerated. But the cause of corruption, however, was in both cases the same, i e, âbrahmanismâ.
In this article, we propose that both the idea of religious degeneration and the role played by the priests in this process are derived from deep seated Christian conceptions of religion. On the one hand, the biblical story of a god-given religion that was subsequently corrupted through the course of time was the general framework that structured the history of Christianity and of all the other so-called religions. On the other hand, because Christianity assigned a primary role to the clergy, religion was an affair of the priests only. Consequently, the mechanism of degeneration had to be found in the priesthood: priests became the instruments of the devil and began to transform the original god-given religion. This understanding of religion, we would like to suggest, structured the European quest for the âreligiousâ elsewhere. Brahmins were identified as âpriestsâ, who created âbrahmanismâ, which was imposed upon Indian society. One of the main elements of this sacerdotal religion that preserved their privileges was the caste system. This conception, we would further like to emphasise, became more poignant, more structured and more coherent against the background of the reformation and the Protestant critiques of the Roman-Catholic church.
If this suggestion is convincing, the prevalence of Europeâs conceptualisation in the modern Indian intellectualâs reflection on his own society is nothing but remarkable. Even though there existed a long tradition of criticism of brahmins and caste in India itself, Rammohun Roy, for example, while criticising contemporary brahmanism vigorously, merely echoed the assessment of the British. Similarly, Babasaheb Ambedkar did the same a century later when he took up its sacerdotal invention of caste along familiar lines. By doing so, both accepted exactly that which Orientalists and Anglicists shared: they ended up criticising âbrahminsâ as âpriestsâ and âbrahmanismâ as a deprived âreligion of the priestsâ.
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http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?roo...5&filetype=html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> Cntemporary research that addresses the important period of the early 19th century in India generally takes the controversy between Anglicists and Orientalists as a useful explanatory framework [Cohn 1988, Kejariwal 1988, Dirks 2001]. Convinced that the Indian society was saturated by heathendom, Anglicists considered India to be corrupt. They believed that its culture was degenerate and its population irrational, retarded, superstitious and morally depraved. The Orientalists, on the other hand, genuinely sought to understand the foreign culture. Surely, they wanted to bring reform. But they were certain that a transformation could only be successful if it resonated with the mores of the natives. Hence, they studied the Indian culture, learned its local languages, collected and preserved what belonged to its cultural inheritance, and discovered a grand past that presented an India excelling in the political, social, religious and intellectual domains.
The differences between the two factions are generally considered significant and important [cf Kopf 1969, 1991, Frykenberg 1979, Jones 1976]. However, we would like to highlight that they turn out to be superficial when it comes to the assessment of the fundamental structure of the Indian society. Unerringly, both identified brahmins as the âpriestsâ. They both were convinced that these âpriestsâ had a negative influence on religion and society. Brahmins were held responsible for the creation and sanctification of the caste system, which brought social development to a halt. They accepted as true that this system consisted of a rigid social compartmentalisation and that it was created to preserve religious and social privileges of the brahmin caste. They were convinced that the brahmins used their religious authority to dominate those in civil power which explained why the system of hierarchical castes was not contested by those in power as well, etc.
If there were differences between Orientalists and Anglicists in this regard, they were very shallow. Anglicists found Indian culture and society intrinsically corrupt from the very beginning. Orientalists, however, saw Indiaâs culture as being based on sound principles which steadily degenerated. But the cause of corruption, however, was in both cases the same, i e, âbrahmanismâ.
In this article, we propose that both the idea of religious degeneration and the role played by the priests in this process are derived from deep seated Christian conceptions of religion. On the one hand, the biblical story of a god-given religion that was subsequently corrupted through the course of time was the general framework that structured the history of Christianity and of all the other so-called religions. On the other hand, because Christianity assigned a primary role to the clergy, religion was an affair of the priests only. Consequently, the mechanism of degeneration had to be found in the priesthood: priests became the instruments of the devil and began to transform the original god-given religion. This understanding of religion, we would like to suggest, structured the European quest for the âreligiousâ elsewhere. Brahmins were identified as âpriestsâ, who created âbrahmanismâ, which was imposed upon Indian society. One of the main elements of this sacerdotal religion that preserved their privileges was the caste system. This conception, we would further like to emphasise, became more poignant, more structured and more coherent against the background of the reformation and the Protestant critiques of the Roman-Catholic church.
If this suggestion is convincing, the prevalence of Europeâs conceptualisation in the modern Indian intellectualâs reflection on his own society is nothing but remarkable. Even though there existed a long tradition of criticism of brahmins and caste in India itself, Rammohun Roy, for example, while criticising contemporary brahmanism vigorously, merely echoed the assessment of the British. Similarly, Babasaheb Ambedkar did the same a century later when he took up its sacerdotal invention of caste along familiar lines. By doing so, both accepted exactly that which Orientalists and Anglicists shared: they ended up criticising âbrahminsâ as âpriestsâ and âbrahmanismâ as a deprived âreligion of the priestsâ.
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