Calibrating Western Philosophy for India: Rousseau, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Bergson and Vaddera Chandidas 2018058192, 9781138607101, 9780429020698

Citation preview

Calibrating Western Philosophy for India

This book proposes a new way of reading modern Western philosophers in the Indian context. It questions the colonial methodology, or the practice of importing theories of Western philosophy, and shows how its unmediated application is often incongruent, irrelevant, and unproductive in local frameworks. The author shows an alternative route to approaching philosophers from the West – Rousseau, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, and Bergson – by bending and reassembling aspects of their ideas and theories to relate with the diversity and complexity of Indian society. He also offers insights on the politics of non-being and negation from a neglected modern Indian philosopher, Vaddera Chandidas, as a step forward from the Western philosophers presented here. An intervention in philosophical research methodology, this volume will interest scholars and researchers of philosophy, Western philosophy, Indian philosophy, comparative studies, postcolonial studies, literature, cultural studies, and political philosophy. A. Raghuramaraju is Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India. His books include Debates in Indian Philosophy: Classical, Colonial and Contemporary (2006), Enduring Colonialism: Classical Presences and Modern Absences in Indian Philosophy (2009), Modernity in Indian Social Theory (2011), Philosophy and India: Ancestors, Outsiders and Predecessor (2013), and Modern Frames and Premodern Themes in Indian Philosophy: Border, Self and the Other (2017). He has edited Debating Gandhi: A Reader (2006), Debating Vivekananda: A Reader (2014), Ramchandra Gandhi: The Man and his Philosophy (2013), The Seven Sages: Selected Essays by Ramchandra Gandhi (2015), and Desire and Liberation by Vaddera Chandidas: Biography of a Text (2018). He also co-edited Grounding Morality: Freedom, Knowledge and Plurality of Cultures (2010).

Calibrating Western Philosophy for India Rousseau, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Bergson and Vaddera Chandidas A. Raghuramaraju

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 A. Raghuramaraju The right of A. Raghuramaraju to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Raghuramaraju, A., 1957– author. Title: Calibrating Western philosophy for India : Rousseau, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Bergson and Vaddera Chandidas / A. Raghuramaraju. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018058192 | ISBN 9781138607101 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780429020698 (ebk.) Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, Comparative. | Philosophy— India—History—20th century. | East and West. Classification: LCC B799 .R29 2019 | DDC 109—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018058192 ISBN: 978-1-138-60710-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-02069-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To Kalidindi N. Satyanarayana and Kalidindi Girija Kumari In gratitude and admiration

Once a passer-by found Mulla Nasrudin searching for something under a light. Upon his return, he still found the Mulla continuing his search. When asked what he is searching for, Mulla replied that he is looking for the key that he had lost. The passer-by joined him in the search to help him, but in vain. He asked Mulla whether he knew where he lost the key. Mulla replied that he had lost it somewhere else. When asked, why then he is searching here, he replied, because there is light here. The scene in Indian academic humanities and social sciences is similar to that of Mulla. This asks a further question: what if Mulla continues to search even after this, either along with the passer-by or without? Is it possible to search where he lost the key, given the fact that there is no light there? An attempt is made here to move some part of the light to the place where the key was lost.

Contents

Introduction

1

1 Rousseau: the founder of the institution of the old age home

12

2 Derrida and the two forms of the word: writing West and speaking India

35

3 Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India: major and minor literatures

55

4 From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas: excavating the relation between non-being and permanence

70

Conclusion

90

Bibliography95 Index100

Introduction

Philosophy may or not be related to reality. However, it is largely related to the immediate or distant context of earlier philosophies. Modern Indian philosophy has been confronted with a unique situation such that it has to relate both to its immediate inside – that is, modern India – and to the distant outside – that is, colonialism and modernity, or colonial modernity. In undertaking this enormous task, it faced several problems and regularly failed in accomplishing the work it intended to accomplish. At times, modern Indian philosophy leaned too much towards the West and neglected its Indian roots. Those who chose to focus on Indian texts from the past found themselves isolated and risked being considered outdated. One way to understand this complexity surrounding modern Indian philosophy is to contrast it with modern Western philosophy. Modern Western philosophy rejected classical Western philosophy and sought to start afresh with new foundations and axioms. This is clearly available in Descartes and Locke, particularly in Locke’s idea of tabula rasa. This is also evident in Macaulay who in his “Minutes” on education for India clearly rejected not only Sanskrit and Arabic, but also Greek philosophy and Christian theology. The main argument of his “Minutes” is to implement in India what was implemented in the West. That is, he was recommending modern education based on modern science and rationality in India.1 Unlike many who paid attention to what he said about knowledge systems in India, as available in Sanskrit and Arabic, there is a need to pay equal attention to his emphasis on promoting modern education in India. Therefore, I find it difficult to criticise him from the point of view of the West vs. India. Thus, instead of looking at the “Minutes” through the binary of the West vs. India, recognising his emphasis on modern education, I see that the binary that is operating in the “Minutes” is modern vs. premodern, or classical. Alternatively, instead of reading these “Minutes”

2  Introduction as advocating eurocentrism that gives rise to different kind of emotions, I see them as advocating modern centrism that rejected not only knowledge systems in Sanskrit and Arabic, but also Greek and Latin, the latter preceding the former. This thus dissociates Macaulay from both the classical West and India, and placed him against both the classical West that was rejected by modernity and classical India consisting of both Sanskrit and Arabic. What is problematic for me in the “Minutes” is not so much eurocentrism, but totalism. That is, in the entire “Minutes”, he finds nothing that is valuable in Indian knowledge systems, and he concedes nothing that is wrong in modern knowledge systems. This totalism is not only factually wrong, but can give rise to a methodology that is closed in nature. In contrast to this, we have in modern Indian writers like Swami Vivekananda and earlier in Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya a new approach or methodology that is different than such totalism. They admitted that there is something wrong with Indian knowledge systems and there is something valuable; similarly, there is something right about modern knowledge and something wrong with it. It is this move from totalism to partial that is available in Vivekananda. While this is a larger problem, however, in this book I confine myself to discuss the problems faced by Indian scholarship in undertaking this engagement with the Western philosophy. In undertaking this task, I want to set aside the oft-tread path where it is argued that Indian scholarship turned to the outside, i.e., Western scholarship because of political influence of colonial rule (Kalidas Bhattacharyya 1982: 173). Instead, I want to tread a path where I argue that Indians turned towards the West as they lacked modern internal resources to theorise. I have argued elsewhere that Indians borrowed theory from the West, as there are no new philosophical or metaphysical works from this sub-continent for at least three centuries (Raghuramaraju 2009a, 2018b). This is despite there being classical texts in India. Given the fact that modern India is a mix of both the classical and modern, not merely modern as in the West, nor merely classical, but a strange combination of both modern and the classical is necessary. For instance, modern Indian politics and state cannot be understood using Kautilya. We also need to use Western philosophy or theories to understand modern India. The problem lies in understanding the nature of this use. For instance, while agreeing with modernists about the archaic nature of the classical text, I part ways with them when they recommend the modern Western theories to understand modern Indian society. I have argued that Marxists in India used class to understand caste and failed to grasp its nature. I claimed that social realism is more important to

Introduction 3 Marx than the concept of class, which he used as an instrument. Marxists in India failed to see this and unreflectively used class as a universal and failed to understand Indian society (Raghuramaraju 2017b). That is, they failed to calibrate Marx. To understand modern Indian society, mere modern Western theories are not sufficient. Further, liberals and Marxists tried to bring Western philosophers or social theorists in total to India, into Indian educational institutions. While this facilitated our understanding of these modern thinkers from the West, it failed on three counts. One, we failed to understand Indian society; two, Indians who read these thinkers failed to contribute anything new to extend the scholarship on these thinkers in comparison to the Western academics; and three, educational institutions in India did not have enough space to install these tall thinkers. Moreover, we cannot completely abandon them, as we in India do not have modern philosophers or theorists to understand and interpret modern Indian social reality. This thus makes it necessary to borrow from the West, and does not make it possible to abandon them. Given this peculiar problem, instead of abandoning them, I suggest in this book to calibrate them before bringing them here. Further, I want to avoid the practice in philosophy undertaken by those such as B. K. Matilal, Daya Krishna, and Harald Coward. They tried to compare classical Indian philosophers such as Nyaya in the case of the former two, and deconstruction in the case of Coward, with modern Western philosophy, that commits temporal imbalance eventually rendering – largely due to age – classical Indian philosophy weak against the strong modern Western philosophy.2 Further, I also want to avoid comparing two modern thinkers, one from the West and another from India: Ajay Skaria, who tried to link Gandhi and Derrida; and Aishwarya Kumar, who tried to link Walter Benjamin and B. R. Ambedkar. While this seeks to give Indian thinkers visibility at the international level, it can also expose them to vulnerabilities. That is, the scholarship that is readily available on Derrida or Benjamin is not available on Gandhi and much less is available on Ambedkar. Given this limitation, those who after reading these authors wish to access the writings of Indian thinkers, they are likely to be disappointed, which eventually can become counterproductive – if not boomerang. Being unable to calibrate a Western philosopher like Foucault by Said before using him outside the West to understand the nature of colonialism can pose a serious problem. (For more on this, see Raghuramaraju 2009a.) Therefore, there is a need to build the various protocols of scholarship, convert these writers into authors, and then embark on

4  Introduction comparisons. All this involves making things ready. One exception to this is Indian philosopher S. Radhakrishnan (1977), who compared Plato and Upanishads, thus avoiding temporal imbalance. He also made Indian philosophy that he was comparing available by way of translations and commentaries. He translated Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Dhammapada, and Brahma Sutras (that he was comparing with Western philosophers) into English. He succeeded in publishing the results of his comparative philosophy in international journals like Mind. In this book, I also want to move away from both those who committed temporal imbalance (this is while accepting their indirect [for more on this, see Raghuramaraju 2006] but correct criticism that those like Radhakrishnan tried to equate Advaita with Indian philosophy), those who undertook comparison between two uneven scholarships and even the comparative philosophy of Radhakrishnan. Radhakrishnan embarked on making the internal resources ready. I would like to explore ways to calibrate Western thinkers before introducing them to India. Instead of comparing two systems that stand outside each other, I wish to undertake the task of bending one – in this case, philosophy from the West – before transporting it to the other side, which is India, and in the process calibrating one with the other. To return to the main argument, recall that modern India is the complex though clumsy combination of the convergence of both modern West and Classical or pre-modern India. There is a need to recognise this unique – though not positive – situation. Neither mere modern Western philosophy nor classical Indian will be able to theorise this phenomenon. Indian academic efforts to undertake this arduous task of theorising is far from satisfactory. In the fields of engineering and medicine, Indians have succeeded in understanding their modern discipline and have done well by migrating to North America and European countries, and some of them also have contributed to the growth of the subject. In the fields of the sciences, too, there has been success in understanding modern science and contributing to it in the form of Satyendra Nath Bose, C. V. Raman, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Meghnad Saha, S. Chandrasekhar, and others. We have also drawn the attention of some sections in the world about our art and literature, particularly the classical. However, in humanities and social sciences, the progress both at the level of understanding Western theories and philosophy – not to mention contributing at the global level – is disappointing. While Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (1984) refers to how Indians have not contributed to the world in the fields of philosophy and human sciences, I would like to recognise the importance of understanding the subjects from the West as equally important. Without

Introduction 5 understanding, it will not be possible to contribute. I find understanding Western theories and philosophy either consumed too much of time and energy, or did not lead to a good result. This has had tremendous implications for our contributions. While contribution is at the level of research and creativity, understanding forms part of teaching. Regarding teaching philosophy in India and in some other social science disciplines while working on e-PG-Pathshala for the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, was a revelation. The reason why we are not doing well in research in India is that our teaching is not in place. It lacks clarity, the courses are not related, they are scattered and assorted. They do not extend the purview or contribute to the cumulative understanding of the subject to the student. This problem of Indian academia is not merely the problem of research that matters in contributing to the subject, but also with regard to teaching. Given this, there is an imperative need to borrow academic models from the West. Before I discuss this, let me refer to those who oppose the borrowing due to uniqueness of India. I want to tell them that if we are different, then we have to ask what the basis for our difference is. That is, what distinguishes India from the other, even from the other from whom we have borrowed? We need to answer this question. The basis for our difference has been claimed as spiritual. However, this in fact justified colonialism, which seemingly assured, “if you are spiritual and otherworldly, we will take care of you in this world”. Therefore, those like Bankim, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo came up with the proposal for Indian identity and difference: that India stands for synthesis of both spiritual and material. There are two problems associated with this: one, academic institutions in India did not take this new proposal for critical scrutiny, nor did they provide further details of this; and two, many of those who theorise these modern Indian thinkers either looked at them from the point of view of political correctness that did not enable them to capture facts, or their scholarship was governed by the obtaining of scholarships. Political correctness and scholarship did not take this proposal further. This kind of scholarship has been criticised by some classicists by pointing out that this is coloured by Indologists and Western political interests, and is a dwarfed account. While acknowledging this, I want to ask whether Western scholarship will say the same thing about Indian accounts of Western philosophy. They will not allow a dwarfed status to Indian scholarship on Western philosophy. The question that needs to be asked is: is there an agency in India that can match Western scholarship’s attitude to Indian scholarship?

6  Introduction This thus makes us borrow from the outside without surrendering to it. In this context, I find the idea of calibrating the Western philosophers to be used in India. Unlike Macaulay, who subscribed to the total rejection of those from India and acceptance of those from the modern, I find the methodology of Vivekananda that toes the line of partial is useful to offer calibration of the Western philosophers for the use in India. As a part of calibrating, Chapter 1 suggests a new reading of Rousseau that has not been attempted in the West; it also highlights how he laid the foundation for the old age home. In suggesting a new reading and identifying the foundation for new social institution in Rousseau, I want to point out that modern Indian society is at the junction of both the pre-modern/tradition and the modern can and should critically reflect about the old age home. That is, whereas the old age home is an unintended consequence of modernity in the West, it in India can have the status of a reflected institution. That is, in focussing on the adulthood of an individual, the modern West did not reflect upon or take into serious consideration the post-adulthood non-productive phase of human existence. Having made this attempt to bring into discussion a new way of reading Rousseau and using him to accomplish something in India that eluded the attention of those in the West, Chapter 2 discusses Derrida. Following the texts from the West – namely, Rousseau and Derrida – I attempt to enlarge the stature of India by grouping it with Socrates, and I suggest that Derrida’s logocentrism is dependent on the written word. I make a distinction between two forms of the word, word as spoken and as written. Taking a clue from his text, I show how his canvas consists of Plato, who wrote and is the first metaphysician, and Nietzsche, who is the last Platonist. I contrast this canvas with the previous one where you have word as spoken, in a dialogical form, in Socrates and others. Following Rousseau’s characterising of the Oriental as speaking people, I tried to increase the territory of the speaking people by bringing Socrates, who speaks and who never wrote, along with Indians who alleged to be speaking, according to Rousseau. The difference between speaking and writing can be an important implication in the social sciences; for instance, to undertake different way of understanding oral cultures and societies, and written ones. Having enlarged the philosophical domain of the non-West, Chapter 3 makes a further attempt to reduce the domain of the West by seeking to bend Deleuze and Guattari before bringing them to India. Here I take the metaphor of bending from their use of ‘bending’, in the works of Kafka. Before bending them to bring them here, this

Introduction 7 chapter presents a critique of their relation between major and minor literatures. Having bent them though without breaking, I seek to bring them to India to understand the Indian freedom movement. Alternatively, I try to deflate but not puncture Deleuze and Guattari in the West before transporting them to India, and then inflate them to be used in India, ensuring that they are manageable as well as useful. This is necessary as we do not have theories from India to understand modern Indian society. The bent and calibrated Deleuze and Guattari are used to understand India. I have enlarged the Indian domain in Chapter 2 and reduced the Western domain in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4, I take for discussion how a neglected modern Indian philosopher – Vaddera Chandidas, who wrote a metaphysical text titled Desire and Liberation: The Fundamentals of Cosmicontology – proposed a radical reading that excavated the politics of non-being that was posited by permanence, which in turn was a projection of intellect. While Deleuze’s reading of Bergson in his Bergsonism leaves the discussion of negation in the hands of intellect, I argue that Chandidas takes the discussion much further and dislodges all form of non-being including pre-existence and post-existence as unreal and as mere projections of intellect. I am able to make this move not using another modern philosopher from India, but by using a calibrated philosopher from the West as a scaffold. There is a reason why I chose Rousseau, Derrida, Deleuze, and Guattari from the West and not perhaps those like Plato. The reason is that there is no reason to calibrate someone like Plato, though there is lot of resemblances between his dialogue, Symposium, and Upanishads regarding desire as foundation for first creation of the universe is. These run parallel and leave little scope for calibrating a Western philosophical text for India. The texts by those whom I discussed in this book fulfil my requirement of calibrating for India. To make my task of calibrating within manageable limits, I have confined myself to the seminal paper by Derrida and made small use of his Of Grammatology, and two short books – one by Deleuze and Guattari on Kafka, and another by Deleuze on Bergson. Here, let me point out that there may be other texts that can be calibrated for India. It is also possible that an Indian text can be calibrated for the West. All these are possibilities that can be pursued. The book then goes into different stages of calibration as a form of a new reading of Rousseau and identifying him as a founder of the new social institution called the old age home, contrasting the word as written that preoccupied Derrida with word as spoken that brings together the speaking people from India and Socrates who never wrote

8  Introduction but spoke; bending Deleuze and Guattari to understand better Indian freedom movement; and using Deleuze as a scaffold to highlight the radical and creative contribution of a modern Indian philosopher, Chandidas, on the idea of non-being. In the earlier practice of either completely abandoning the Western philosophers or uncritically embracing them, the latter proved to be unmanageable; or committing the temporal imbalance of comparing classical Indian philosophy in comparison with modern Western philosophy like B. K. Matilal and Daya Krishna; or comparing Derrida with Gandhi or Benjamin with Ambedkar that leads to asymmetry into the availability of scholarship. In this work, I try to propose a new way of negotiating the Western philosophy to be used for India. This task of the work made me for the time to discuss Western philosophy more than my earlier books, which largely are about modern Indian philosophy. However, considering modern Indian philosophy is difficult, as it demands both the perspective of classical Indian and Western, the latter including classical and modern. Without firm grounding in some aspects of these two philosophical traditions, ideas in modern Indian philosophy will slip out of your hand. This is because modern Indian philosophy is a strange mix without precedents of both classical India and the modern West. It is unlike the modern West that clearly disinherited its classical philosophy. The other problem with modern Indian philosophy is that there is no ready-made material for study, and one needs to first prepare it, unlike the classical Indian or Western philosophies. I try to overcome this difficulty by following the works of two classical Indian philosophers who have not been discussed in the mainstream, namely Badarayana and Gaudapada. The methodology that I have followed in this book comes from my reading of Badarayana, the first compiler; and Gaudapada, the first master of comparative philosophy who compared and calibrated two indomitable and opposing schools of thought – Vedanta and Buddhism. The unique features of these two pre-Samkara classical philosophers are that Badarayana’s compilation gave rise to different but powerful interpretations that led to the formation of different philosophical schools in India; and Gaudapada, with his master comparison, still remains an enigma, where he is interpreted as a Buddhist by those like Vidhusekhara Bhattacharya and as a Vedantin by those like Damodar Karmarkar and T. M. P. Mahadevan. I found reading these two classical philosophers useful in undertaking this work. My approach towards modern Indian philosophy largely borrows Badarayana’s methodology of compiling and Gaudapada’s handling of Vedanta and Buddhism, two major philosophical systems in

Introduction 9 a comparative mode. This helped me to handle the convergence of the modern West and classical India in modern Indian philosophy. (For more on this, see Raghuramaraju 2018a.) I acknowledge the following permissions: Chapter 2: “Derrida and the two forms of the word: writing West and speaking India” was earlier published as “Two forms of the word, the spoken and written: Derrida, pre-Platonic writing West and speaking India” in eSocialSciences, IKF (IRIS Knowledge Foundation) Mumbai, March 2017. Chapter 3: “Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India: major and minor literatures” was published as “Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India: re-examining the relation between art and politics in Europe and India” in Sophia, 57.3: 475–87, 2018. Chapter 4: A slightly different version of “From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas: excavating the relation between non-being and permanence” was published as “Excavating the relation between non-being and permanence in the Vedas, Upanishads, Bergson, Deleuze and Vaddera Chandidas” in Deleuze and Guattari Studies, 12.1: 66–83, 2018.

Acknowledgements I sincerely thank Shashank Shekhar Sinha for his encouragement and critical engagement with the idea of this book. His persistent critical scrutiny both at the level of ideas and publishing at various stages of the making of this text goes a long way in shaping this work. I have undertaken this work while on sabbatical granted to me by University of Hyderabad during 2017. I thank Vice-Chancellor P. Appa Rao, my department and sabbatical committee for granting leave, which enabled me to complete this work. At my new place of work, at the Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati that provided me with an excellent academic atmosphere, I am extremely thankful to Kalidindi N. Satyanarayana, the Director, P. C. Deshmukh, K. Krishnaiah, and V. Raghavendra. Nadimpalli Satyanarayana Raju’s generosity and guidance in shaping my career has been of immense help, and I am extremely indebted to him. Mudduluru Venkatrama Raju, Sundar Sarukkai, and Dhawanti Nayak provided continuous support, and big thanks to them. Prabha Shankar Dwivedi took a personal interest in making thorough corrections of the entire manuscript that brought more clarity; for this I sincerely thank him. I also thank Aparna Devare, C. Bharath

10  Introduction Kumar, Vamshi Krishna Reddy and G. Vedaparayana. Thanks also to M. Mohan Raju, M. Sudha, C. Radha Krishnama Raju, C. Madhavi, C. Bhaskar Raju, C. Parvati, K. Krishnama Raju, K. Vijaya Lakshmi, Ravi, Hima Bindu, A. Subramanyam Raju, A. Aruna, A. Mahita and A. Samhita. I want to thank Pankaj Kumar Verma and Kashyapi Ghosh for helping me in proof reading. Chapter 1 was first presented at Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities at Manipal University. I thank Sundar Sarukkai, who organised it, Nikhil Govind, Meera Baindur, George Varghese, and the students for their critical comments. It was also presented at the Centre for Philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru University – I thank Manidipa Sen, Gopal Guru, Bhaskarjit Neog, Ajay Verma, and students for their crucial comments. In addition, it was presented at the Department of Philosophy, University of Mumbai – I thank Kanchana Mahadevan, teachers, and students for the discussions that helped me revise this chapter. Chapter 2 was presented at the invitation of Pramod Nayar and Anna Kurian in the Department of English, University of Hyderabad at a one-day seminar on “Derrida@50”. I thank Pramod Nayar, Anna Kurian, and the participants of the seminar for their critical comments. Pramod Nayar generously gave a definite shape to this chapter with his close reading and fine-tuned it to bring it to its present form. I am extremely thankful to him for this generosity. This chapter was subsequently presented at the Department of Political Science, Delhi University. I thank H. M. Sanjeev Kumar and participants for their critical comments. Chapter 3 was presented at the Plenary of the International Seminar on “Aesthetics and the Political in Contemporary India: Deleuzian Explorations”, at the Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai. I thank Parthasarathi Mondal for the invitation and the delegates for their critical comments. An earlier version of this text was presented as “Reexamining the comparative philosophy between east and west: Deleuze, Guattari and Gandhi” at the International Workshop on “The challenge of postcolonial philosophy in India: Too alien for contemporary philosophers, too modern for Sanskritists?” held at the University of Vienna, Institute for Philosophy, September 28 and 29, 2017. I am extremely thankful to Elise Coquereau-Saouma and Elisa Freschi for their kind invitation and critical comments during and after the workshop. This chapter was subsequently presented as a plenary talk in a national seminar on “Comparative Humanities: Re-Configuring Humanities across Cultures” at English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. I thank P. V. Amit Kumar and D. Venkat Rao, and other participants for their critical comments. This chapter was also presented at the Department of Philosophy,

Introduction 11 Delhi University. I thank Devarakonda Balaganapathy and other participants for their critical comments. Chapter 4 was presented at the Deleuze conference at the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, Manipal University. I thank Sundar Sarukkai and George Varghese and others for their critical comments on the paper. This chapter was also presented at the Centre for Philosophy at Jawaharlal Nehru University. I thank the participants for their comments. Jay L. Garfield’s critical comments on the earlier draft of this chapter helped me to considerably revise it. I thank the three referees of Deleuze and Guattari Studies for their comments that helped me revise this chapter. I also thank my colleague Kavita Chauhan for helping me locate Sanskrit verses, and Aparajita Basu for copyediting. In this chapter, I use some parts of my earlier works published as Enduring Colonialism: Classical Presences and Modern Absences in Indian Philosophy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009) and “Pre of Art in Modern India”, in Third Text, 100 Special Issue, 23.5: 617–24, September 2009.

Notes 1 home.iitk.ac.in/~hcverma/Article/Macaulay-Minutes.pdf 2 I have highlighted problems surrounding cross-cultural philosophy in my response to a symposium on “Does Cross-Cultural Philosophy Stand in Need of a Hermeneutic Expansion,” by Douglas L. Berger, titled “Consolidation before Expansion: Revising Cross-Cultural Philosophy” (Raghuramaraju 2017a).

1 Rousseau The founder of the institution of the old age home

Given the overall task of this book (that is, to calibrate Western philosophy for India), I want to undertake the following to accomplish this task. One, I want to begin a new interpretation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) that is different from and not undertaken by anyone so far, thereby demonstrating my competence to handle texts from the West. Two, I want to establish a new connection; namely, that Rousseau is the founder of a new social institution: the old age home. This connection has not been made earlier. This further serves two purposes: one, it enhances my competence to deal with Western philosophers; and two, it provides an opportunity which eluded the attention of the West for Indians in reflecting about old age. This, thus, provides me an opportunity to demonstrate my ability to handle philosophical texts from the West and to calibrate Western philosophy for India. Despite Rousseau’s location within the radical project of modernity, there have been attempts to relate him to pre-modern traditions, where, to make a different use of Patrick Riley, his radicalism “waxes a bit” and the pre-modern tradition “wanes a little” (1986: ix). A concerted attempt was made by Judith Shklar and Patrick Riley to accomplish this. Contesting that, this chapter points out how these attempts have ignored – not inadvertently, but conveniently – the Cartesian legacy. Descartes inaugurated the radical project of modernity, which was inherited and significantly extended by Rousseau. This chapter explicates the limitations of these interpretations by relating Rousseau with Descartes. Following a brief discussion of Shklar and Riley in the first section, the next will undertake a new reading of The Social Contract. This will avoid the existing practice of cherry-picking that can relapse into cherry-pecking of his political ideas. Further, this section explicates the nature of the frame of the text – namely, inquiry – announced by Rousseau right at the outset. The third section discusses various ideas

Rousseau 13 and claims regarding his rejection of slavery, which is surrounded by rhetoric rather than justification. The last section highlights how he lays the foundation of a new social institution; namely, the old age home.

I The discussion on the ‘waxing’ of the radicalism of Rousseau conveniently centers around the concept of ‘general will’ and avoids any mention of his radical and novel ideas such as the autonomous individual in the state of nature that seeks to disinherit the entire past, his rejection of slavery, or his uncompromising plea for liberty and freedom. Considering these ideas will obstruct their rendering of Rousseau’s relation with his predecessors. Both Shklar and Riley largely focus on the concept of general will. Shklar does concede that this concept is “ineluctably the property of . . . Rousseau”; however, she adds that he “did not invent it.” She claims that “Father Malebranche was the first well-known writer to put the words ‘general will’ to philosophical use” (1973: 275); it was, she says in another place, also used earlier by Montesquieu and Diderot (1985: 168). Not only does she reduce Rousseau’s claim on the authorship of the idea of general will, she goes on to reduce its importance, by claiming that it “does very little”. She recommends that contrary to general will, people “must merely hold [on] to [their] . . . ancient laws and customs which, thanks to the wisdom of the legislator, are the main source of its well-being” (in Shklar 1973: 277, original emphasis). The most important ancient laws for Shklar are those of Sparta and Rome. Highlighting their significance for Rousseau, she says that they were “not merely private daydreams for Rousseau”. According to her, he used them negatively as swords to “smite his contemporaries” and positively as “an image of the perfectly socialized man, the citizen whose entire life is absorbed by his social role” (1985: 13). Continuing this line of argument pursued by Shklar, Riley claims that “Rousseau is not conceivable without Augustine and various seventeenth-century transformations of Augustinianism” (1982: 5). He, too, endorses her when he reiterates that Rousseau wanted will to take a particular form; he wanted voluntarism to legitimize what he conceived to be the unity and cohesiveness, the generality of ancient polity, particularly of Sparta and of republican Rome. (1982: 99)

14  Rousseau Comparing the relation between “hidden seventeenth-century theological roots of” general will and Rousseau, Riley says, is like the relation between ‘art-history’ to ‘art’ and ‘music-history’ to ‘music’ where the former is “something secondary but not inconsequential” (1982: xiv).1 Both Shklar’s and Riley’s interpretations reduce the radicalism in Rousseau and focus on the concept of general will. Skhlar is quite categorical in her declaration that “Rousseau’s general will was [not] . . . a plan for revolution” (1973: 278). They do not take into consideration other radical ideas in Rousseau. This cherry-picking of just one concept – namely, general will – axiomatically resulted in larger conclusions that were determined by premises rather than a comprehensive discussion of all the ideas in the text. In the context of locating Rousseau within the pre-modern tradition, Riley reluctantly concedes that Rousseau did give general will “an almost wholly secular turn: the city steps into God’s place” (1982: 109). The expression ‘almost wholly’ reveals his reluctance. Riley does not explain the nature of the turn towards secularism, nor does he give any importance to it. This is evident as he finally loses what is gained through this ‘secular turn’ by rendering the modern city inside the theological concept of God. Instead of recognising the difference in kind between the classical and the modern, thereby acknowledging the radicalism in Rousseau, Riley concedes only a degree of difference and neutralises it. This attempt at focusing on a convenient concept like general will – not factoring in other important and fundamental ideas such as autonomy of the individual, freedom, or rejection of slavery – presents a distorted picture of Rousseau by not properly recognising his relation with Descartes. This is evident in the following passage by Shklar: To Madame d’Houdetot, Rousseau wrote of his bottomless doubts. To resolve them he followed Descartes into his own mind, and also found the cogito. Beyond that every doctrine of Descartes was refuted later by philosophers. (1985: xiv) While conceding how Rousseau took Descartes’s help to resolve his ‘bottomless doubts’, she is quick to cover this with an abrupt judgement by declaring how every doctrine of Descartes was later refuted by philosophers. She thus erases the importance of Descartes and renders Rousseau’s use of him not very significant. This chapter seeks to correct the distortion and relocate Rousseau within the project of modernity by retracing the Cartesian lineage.

Rousseau 15

II In explicating Rousseau’s relation with Descartes, this chapter focuses on discussing some novel ideas in The Social Contract. While rereading this enigmatic text, let me, at the outset make two preliminary clarifications about it. First, having sustained interest and gained enduring value through the centuries, this text has two aspects to it: one, the radical political ideas; and second, the rhetorical force that pushes at least some of these ideas. The rhetorical aspect of Rousseau is identified – but not elaborated on – by Ronald Grimsley (1973: 19). He points out how “logical argument or a historical demonstration” in “Discours sur les sciences et les arts is not particularly impressive”. And how Rousseau has not offered adequate explanation in proposing a: necessary connection between the corruption of man’s moral life and the development of culture and that the ancient republics of Greece and Rome were morally superior to large modern states may or may not be true. (1973: 19) I want to highlight the rhetorical aspect, apparent not only when explaining the contemporary corruption of man’s moral life with reference to the ancient republics, but also in the normative political proposals in The Social Contract. Between these two aspects that are present in the text, while logic and argumentation consolidate the first quality, lyrical value and an underlying speed of statement propels the reader from one sentence or idea to the next. The ensuing momentum in the rhetoric pushes the reader away from reflecting and rationally understanding the meaning of the idea. I realised that texts, particularly the classics, have their own speed. Speed can vary at different places, even within a text. Sometimes the text moves, or allows us to move, at one speed. It may subsequently, though not predictably, become faster at some places and slower at others. The speed operates more at the realm of rhetoric and less with rational justification. Second, the text can be divided into two broad parts. One is the frame, while the other consists of the ideas that are presented and organised, at times loosely, within the frame. Not recognising this difference led to Shklar and Riley cherry-picking ideas from Rousseau and constructing a maze that distorts his ideas. In doing so, they have neither distinguished the content from the frame nor paid any attention to the latter. This chapter distinguishes content from frame and

16  Rousseau highlights the importance of the frame, thus offering a new reading of Rousseau. With this background, let me proceed with rereading the text. Inquiry: The first sentence is of paramount importance. It is the key, as it succinctly frames the text. The impact of this prevails throughout, so the framing of the text not only needs to be acknowledged, but also distinguished from the rest of the text. Commenting on the first sentence of the text, Victor Gourevitch makes an apt observation when he says that the Social Contract “begins with ‘I’ and ends with ‘myself’ ” (1997: xv). He adds: The aim therefore is, as Rousseau announces in the very first sentence of the Social Contract, to inquire whether in the civil order there can be some legitimate and sure rule of administration, taking men as they are, and the laws as they can be: In this inquiry I shall try always to combine what right permits with what interest prescribes, so that justice and utility may be disjoined. He goes on to add, Whereas the principles of natural right are derived from ‘the natural man’, the principles of right are derived from ‘men as they are,’ here and now, and whose amour proper, individual interests and common utility or common good have to be taken into account. (1997: xvi–xvii) Gourevitch makes a good observation about the beginning and ending of the text – that it begins with ‘I’ and ends with ‘myself’. Moreover, he also refers to the first sentence of the text. He pays attention to ideas such as how principles of natural right are derived from the nature of man, whereas principles of political right are derived from men as they are. However, the word ‘inquire’ that is present in the first part of the sentence eludes the attention of Gourevitch. I wish to argue that it is the fundamental concept that provides a frame, and considering this will radically change our understanding of this text. Let me explicate the nature of this framing and revisit this first sentence differently. The text begins with “I mean to inquire” (Rousseau 1952: 30). Let us pause at this stage and reflect on this enigmatic word, ‘inquire’. I reread the entire text keeping this word in mind

Rousseau 17 and found that the impact of this word pervades the entire text and, like a frame, holds it together. The entire text is an inquiry, and while Rousseau might not have given enough justification for his assertions, he casts the entire text in the format of inquiry. This mode of inquiry brought freshness and has greatly enchanted readers. Without it, the text would be like a painting without a frame, which cannot be hung on the wall. However, the modern reader, in the eagerness to pick up radical modern political ideas or concepts, often tends to bypass this frame and proceed directly to harvest ideas organised within the frame. Books on political philosophy have rarely paid attention to this first sentence, nor recognised its importance, thus rendering it dispensable. Most in fact head straight to the passage in the fourth paragraph in Chapter I, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains” (Rousseau 1952: 3). This oft-quoted statement has dominated the reading of this work. Due to the strong focus on this radical statement, the first sentence – particularly the word ‘inquire’ – lost its visibility, and its meaning remained obscure. However, I find that our understanding of this text will be considerably compromised if we do not study this first sentence and recognise important elements in it, including some fundamental words. Before proceeding further, I wish to stop for a moment and closely scrutinise the word ‘inquire’. In declaring his project to be an inquiry at the outset, Rousseau, I would like to argue, is performing three tasks. One, he is – unlike Shklar’s and Riley’s attempts to relate him to pre-modern traditions – rejecting the path followed in the classical philosophies. Two, while largely following the path charted by Descartes, he is making some modifications to it. In addition, three, he is declaring the nature of his path. To begin with, he is rejecting the path followed by classical philosophies where the truth has already been laid out and the task is to discover it. This ancient path pervades Greek philosophy. Referring to this, Leo Strauss says that traditional natural law is “primarily and mainly an objective” rule and measure, a binding order prior to and independent of the human will (1966: vii–viii). The human being merely has to receive these pre-established truths passively. It is against this background that the importance of the term ‘inquire’ needs to be recognised. Two, he is also distinguishing his path from that of Descartes, the father of modern philosophy. While the Cartesian method is largely preoccupied with doubt and seeks to establish certainty, Rousseau’s method is one of inquiry. Whereas Descartes moves from doubt to arrive at certainty, Rousseau moves from inquiry – which is different

18  Rousseau from doubt – to a lighter form of certainty; that is, ‘sure’. This is clear in the first sentence. To quote, “I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration” (1952: 3). Here the inquiry is not about abstract things like in Descartes but about civil order and if it can support a sure and legitimate rule of administration. Thus, the civil order has to fulfil two important requirements: one, a form of certainty or surety, thereby reflecting the Cartesian concern; and two, legitimacy, which locates or anchors the project within a political domain. Rousseau prefers the method of inquiry instead of the Cartesian method of doubt in which extremism leads to counter-extremism, or certainty. Inquiry can be less extreme and more open-ended. Lastly, the open-ended nature of inquiry is an intrinsic part of Rousseau’s positive project, which is prefaced by rejecting the methods of classical theories and distinguishing itself from Descartes’s method of doubt. By way of extending the discussion on this positive project, I now bring into the format of inquiry the reader of the text, alongside the author. Here let me introduce a distinction between Rousseau, who is inquiring, and those who read the nature of this inquiry. While he has rejected the path followed by classical theories and, in a radical departure, has also distinguished his path from Descartes’s. The path cleared by Rousseau remains at the level of the author who, in this case, is Rousseau. However, texts cover not only authors but also readers. There is a possibility and a need to extend the openendedness of inquiry to include the reader. This radical text can have two kinds of readers: one, like the classical reader, who reads and receives it passively; two, those who read it in the mode of critical inquiry as proposed by Rousseau. The first one can ultimately relapse into the orthodoxy that Rousseau seeks to dismantle. The second kind of reader on the other hand seeks to critically engage with the text and maintain continuity with the main tenor of the author. Unlike discovery, inquiry, in addition to being open-ended, need not remain author-centered. The author might behave like a classical thinker in transmitting to the reader what he or she has seen in this inquiry. The reader would in turn receive it passively, thus compromising on the extent of radicalism in modernity. Like the author – in this case, Rousseau – the reader, too, needs to be alert and be a co-inquirer in this pursuit. This would make it a joint venture or a cooperative pursuit, deeply involving the reader in exploring new paths. Not recognising Rousseau’s attempt to dismantle the classical path à la Shklar and Riley and distinguish it from Descartes’s can amount to discounting his contribution. More importantly, there is further

Rousseau 19 danger that one might receive these ideas outside the purview of the path of inquiry; for instance, in the traditional mode of ‘final truth’. This would breach the radicalism set by Rousseau. Alternatively, as already pointed out, if we receive these ideas outside the new path Rousseau has laid, they will lose their dynamism and remain static. To avoid these consequences, we need to consider the fundamental status of the word ‘inquire’. Alternatively, the idea of inquiry in Rousseau has two facets: one negative, the other positive. The followers of modernity and the subsequent scholarship did not pay enough attention to the negative aspect in their preoccupation with the positive aspects. It is important to pay attention to the negative aspect too in order to recognise the radical project of modernity. It not only lays a new path; the ingenuity of the new path lies in the way it unleashes its critique of the pre-modern philosophies that follow the path of discovering the already existing truth. Let me support this by referring to something similar. Henri M. Peyre says of French poet Arthur Rimbaud that he no longer used language to transmit “a preexisting meaning to express and convey a feeling or an idea. It became a sacred value . . . aiming at ‘changing life,’ . . . at creating what did not yet exist” (1973: vi). Therefore, there are two levels: one, foundational; the other, ordinary. What Peyre claims on behalf of the poet with regard to language is true of the new thinking initiated and sustained by Rousseau. The first sentence is to be taken as a frame or a foundation, supporting the entire text, hence to be distinguished from other sentences. Consequently, it must be recognised that the subsequent political ideas that drew the attention of scholars comprise the edifice built on this foundation. By not recognising this architectural design or not excavating this buried foundation, we will have compromised, if not distorted, the understanding of this text. The Wall: certainty Having fixed the frame, I now move a little further and note in the same sentence another seminal idea, which may not have eluded the attention of as many as the word inquiry perhaps did. This is the distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’. He wants to take men as they are and laws as they ought to be, to explore the nature of finding out about the ‘sure’ and ‘legitimate’ rule of administration. Let me scrutinise the two words ‘sure’ and ‘legitimate’ inserted within the larger frame of the distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, between men being taken as

20  Rousseau they are, and laws as they should be. For me, the more important term here is ‘sure’ rather than the political term ‘legitimate’. One way of understanding this desire to frame legitimacy with sure ground is to see the Cartesian connection. The major preoccupation of Descartes is for certainty, certainty in the human realm. So, the certainty or sure ground that Rousseau is looking for, or seeking to ensure, has Descartes in the background. In this first sentence, in addition to the significance of the term inquire, there is a distinction introduced between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, and legitimacy is sought to be specifically grounded on sure foundations. The radical project of modernity is revealed not only by looking forward to or reading the next sentence in the text but also by contrasting it with previous theories. So, this first sentence of the book frames the text. The next section discusses different, intricate, and incomplete ideas of freedom and Rousseau’s arguments for the rejection of slavery.

III The Frame: freedom and slavery Now let me turn to that famous line, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains” (Rousseau 1952: 3). I want to closely scrutinise various components of this enigmatic sentence. There is a political message in this powerful statement that caught the imagination of millions and inspired them into political action. I want to distinguish between the idea and the rhetoric, two traits of this sentence, and lay bare the relation between them. Let me begin by asserting that Rousseau takes human beings to be, by nature, in the state of freedom. Alternatively, he rejects the thesis that human beings are naturally in bondage. Thus, he institutes the autonomy of free individuals right at the outset. Claiming that human beings are by nature in the state of freedom and not in bondage is different from asserting that the human being who is in bondage needs to be freed subsequently. Before recognising the performative power of the claim that man is born free, let us ask in what sense this claim is to be understood. If one begins to reflect on the claims and meaning of the statement, one finds it difficult to understand when and how man is born free. It is not factually correct to claim freedom for the act of birth when in all respect there is dependency that surrounds it. Moreover, Rousseau himself admits at the beginning of the next section that children are dependent on the father.

Rousseau 21 Now let us turn to the next idea in this statement. Having made this fundamental claim about the idea of an autonomous free individual, Rousseau turns his attention to the unnatural phenomenon called bondage. He says “and everywhere he is in chains”. Unlike the previous claim, this is not difficult to accept, as there is indeed bondage all around. Therefore, we have the first claim that is difficult to understand and the second idea that is easy to understand. Further, there is a difference, even opposition, between the first and the second; namely, what was and what is. What was, is the state of freedom. However, what is, is the state of bondage. So bondage, unlike freedom, is not natural. Man is living in an unnatural state. The underlying structure of this statement reveals the opposition between two states, the state of freedom and the state of bondage. While we need no explanation to understand the process from freedom to freedom or slavery to slavery, the process from freedom to bondage does require explanation. Rousseau undertakes this in the sentence after the next, when he asks “How did this change come about?” (1952: 3). That is, how did the change from freedom to bondage come about? There is a variance, an opposition, or even mutual exclusiveness between the previous and the subsequent stages. His answer to this question is he does not “know” (1952: 3). What is interesting is that, in the context of admitting that he does not know the explanation for this heterogeneous, oppositional transformation, where the present is the opposite of the previous, he makes two stunning moves that further dissociate his inquiry from two other standard paths. In saying that he does not know, he silently, but with a high level of ingenuity, dissociates his inquiry from the path of anthropology and history. With this act of dissociating in the context of declaring his failure, he ensures that the previous state of freedom is not a state that belongs to the past where one could ask when was that state, or when did that state exist. Answering these questions would lead one into the domain of anthropology, the discipline of space or spaces, or into the domain of history, which is dominantly the discipline of time. In obstructing these two paths of inquiry, Rousseau makes a sudden move that inhabits the political arena. This puts the reader in a state of confusion, where he or she is left with reading the dominant, and in this case the prominent, political claim of legitimacy. While the text moves the reader towards the political site of legitimacy, the author has already registered two important additional theoretical moves that have serious consequences as they steer the discussion away from facts. In other words, Rousseau is shifting the discussion not only from the factual domain to the abstract ideal domain, but also from facts

22  Rousseau to legitimacy. However, one should remember that this legitimacy is within the domain of politics that is parked away from history and real society. Rousseau, therefore, does not provide evidence for his claim that birth is a state of freedom. While we do understand his second claim about the pervasiveness of bondage, what is left unexplained is the transition from freedom to bondage. Finally, he moves into the political domain, which is bereft of realism, and embarks on explaining the legitimacy of individual freedom and rights. This political domain, Durkheim infers, is not an historical state but only a methodological one (1960: 69). There are two moves here. One, the previous state of freedom is not a real state that can be handled either by anthropology or by history, but a hypothetical one. The ‘are’ in “men being taken as they are” does not refer to empirical men. This makes the state not real and empirical but rational and ideal (the implication of this to democracy needs to be worked out carefully). Second, instead of providing justification for this state, which is fundamental to his philosophy, Rousseau covers it with political claims; thus, this state remains without support. In a way, it hangs in the air. In addition to these two states – the natural state of freedom and the artificial state of slavery – he introduces in the same paragraph another important variable; namely, conventions, when he says that “social order is a sacred right” and it is the “basis of all other rights”. While this is true, he dissociates rights from nature and asserts that they “must therefore be founded on conventions” (1952: 3–4). So, there are three states: the natural state of freedom, the forceful state of slavery, and the state based on conventions. This state of conventions is founded on his fundamental thesis of contract. Unlike the other two states, this third state is not based on mere nature, nor is it sustained by force, but is grounded in contract, which is the product of reason and will. Thus, Rousseau institutes individual will, which is based on rationality, as the firm and proper foundation for building a social fabric. Rousseau has not given justification for his claim that man is born free. He debunks the explanation of how the state of freedom becomes the state of bondage. Further, he dissociates the factual domain from the postulated political domain and begins to operate from the latter. The implications of this to political philosophy are serious. This introduces for the first time an unbridgeable gap between radicalism and realism in the political domain. Reconciling both becomes an arduous task for subsequent political philosophers. At a more theoretical level, this poses the problem between claims and

Rousseau 23 justification. Justification for the claims, or the lack of it, poses a serious problem in maintaining modernity’s claim of being rational. Despite these serious gaps between claims and justification, the text moves the readers ahead. I would like to assert that it is the presence of rhetorical force that made this possible, rather than semantic content. The rhetoric moves the statement rather than the factual status. The claim that man is born free is not factually true. If it is a hypothetical state or a methodological device, then relating it to the historical reality, namely, the state of slavery, Rousseau rightly points out, is not valid. The rhetoric fired the emotions of the modern reader. This pushed readers away, instead of enabling them to rationally reflect on and understand the claims. What is problematic is not the use of rhetoric, but equating modernity with rationality, which involves admitting ideas after thorough reflection. These semantic aberrations in the foundations of modernity lurk in modern life, with freedom being absolutised where it cannot be. Having identified the first frame in the word inquire and highlighted rhetorical elements in key statements in the text, let me now discuss another idea that offers a remarkable relation between master and slave. Foundation for laying a new and radical relation between master and slave This brings us to the sentence that lies between the famous sentences, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains” and “How did this change come about?” In this sentence, Rousseau says: “One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they” (1952: 3). It is necessary to recognise here that something very novel and with radical implications is being proposed, perhaps for the first time. While Riley rightly observes that Rousseau’s is “the most perceptive understanding of mastery and slavery after Aristotle and before Hegel” (2001: 1), he, however, does not explain why this is so. In my reading, Rousseau’s understanding of the relation between master and slave is radical for two important reasons. One, he rejects outright the classical relation between master and slave made notoriously famous by Aristotle, who proposed one-way dependency where the slave is necessarily and continuously dependent on the master. Two, he becomes the precursor of a radical understanding of the relation between master and slave. He points out how, though in different proportions, there exists a two-way dependence between master and slave – the master, while being dependent on the slave, continues to

24  Rousseau be under the false feeling of being master of others. This has been substantially made use of by Hegel, though without acknowledging Rousseau. Rousseau, in my reading, has for the first time proposed this two-way dependence, though in varying degrees, between master and slave, by highlighting that the master remains a greater slave than the slaves do. This is unprecedented. In addition to providing the basis for Hegel and later Marx, talking about the mutual dependency between master and slave, particularly the master’s dependence on the slave, in a fundamental way sows the seeds for revolution and social change. There is a difference between the slave being dependent on the master and the master being dependent on the slave. The latter makes a greater case for changing this relation to liberate the slave from the grip of the master; whereas if it is the slave who is dependent on the master, one has a more difficult case to make against this relation. Border: slavery in modernity Having postulated his idea of freedom, Rousseau goes on to criticise both Aristotle and Grotius for defending slavery. He criticises Aristotle, who maintained that equality is unnatural, and that inequality is the natural state of man. While agreeing with Aristotle that there is inequality all around us, he differs from Aristotle when he says that this inequality is not the cause but the effect. To quote Rousseau, “Aristotle, before any of them, had said that men are by no means equal naturally, but that some are born for slavery, and others for dominion” (1952: 5). The inequality that is before us is not caused by inequality from the beginning. In other words, according to Rousseau, there is no continuous relation between the past and the present. This is already pointed out earlier when he says that man is born free but everywhere he is in chains. On the contrary, he looks at this relation as discontinuous. For him, unlike Aristotle, it is a case where the original equal state was converted into a state of inequality. Rousseau also criticises Grotius’s defence of slavery. In this context, he argues how one cannot alienate oneself entirely. He lays out the argument against slavery that an individual cannot “alienate his children” as children are “born man and free”; their liberty belongs to them and no one but they themselves have the right to dispose of it (1952: 7), and he further rejects other forms of slavery with regard to prisoners of war as slaves, and claims that war “is constituted by a relation between things, and not between persons; and . . . the state of war cannot arise out of simple personal relations” (1952: 8). Therefore, voluntary slavery is “absurd”, “inconceivable”, and “meaningless”.

Rousseau 25 Such an act is “null and illegitimate” as one “who does it is out of his mind”. Extending such an act from the individual domain to the “whole people” in addition “is to suppose a people of madmen”. He concludes, “madness creates no right” (1952: 7). A close look at the nature of the argument reveals that all these are a series of claims. One can ask why it is madness, why this is absurd and inconceivable, or null and illegitimate. Rousseau later claimed, “To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties” (1952: 8). If I cannot surrender my rights like I would sell my property, then in what sense is my body mine? Simply saying that my liberty is sacrosanct is to avoid argumentation. Rousseau does not provide argument for his claim that “For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible”. Similarly, why is it that such a “renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature”?; further, why does this act of removing liberty lead to removing “morality from his acts” (1952: 8)? All these are a group of related claims, and need arguments to support them. In fact, one might validate arguments in favour of voluntary slavery from the right to own – when I own something, I can both use it and dispose of it. For instance, there is a difference between the rights to use and to sell and the right to use and sell. I can use my office, as I am employed, but I cannot sell it; whereas I can use my house and also sell it, as I own it. Similarly, according to the right to own, I have a right on myself that no one else has; if this is so, and then I am entitled to use it as well as sell it. While this is permitted by the rights discourse, Rousseau’s arguments restrict it to the ‘use but not sell’ format. The preceding self-evident claims are not good enough justification for rejecting voluntary slavery. Rousseau’s appeal to follow ‘use but not sell’ is rhetorical, emotional, and not supported by arguments. There is a need to make a strong case for restricting it to ‘use and not sell’ to distinguish it from ‘use and sell’ which is permitted in the modern discourse of right to own. Given the difference between claims and their supporting arguments, let us find the support first by looking within the text. This brings us to the beginning of the text, where Rousseau states that justice and utility cannot be divided, in the sense that they are together and remain inalienable. He declares, “In this inquiry I shall endeavour always to unite what right sanctions with what is prescribed by interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be divided” (1952: 3). An act is just when it generates utility. Acts cannot be just if they do not generate utility. Rousseau intertwines ‘justice’ and ‘utility’, and thus connects the ontological status of justice with the teleological or

26  Rousseau consequential ideal of utility. Justice has to always be seen in relation to utility. Nothing should be in the realm of justice for its own sake. For instance, take case 1 where A gives something to B. A expects something in return from B. B gives something in return and A receives it. Now, take case 2 where A gives something to B. A expects something in return from B. B does not give it. A feels let down. Take case 3 where A gives something to B. A expects something from B. B gives it, but A is not there to receive it. The reason why A is not there is that he has completely enslaved himself to B. Even though B is ready to give to A, A is unable to receive it as he is not there, as an autonomous individual, but has become a slave who belongs to someone else. Thus, all actions are contracted, and the contract involves two people. In any exchange in a contractual transaction, one gives and the other takes. This giving and taking are just and justified if they involve utility, as actions without utility are not just for Rousseau. Rousseau does not endorse a third kind of situation. He makes a distinction between giving oneself to the other and surrendering oneself entirely to the other, undermining one’s individual autonomy. This argument validates Rousseau’s rejection of voluntary slavery defended by Grotius. His claim at the beginning of the text about the indivisibility of justice and utility provides a solid argument for rejecting Grotius’s defence of voluntary slavery. Having discussed the frame and his ideas of freedom and rejection of slavery, let me in the next section discuss how Rousseau laid the foundation for a new social institution: the old age home.

IV Picture: the old age home Feminists have laid bare the gendered nature of the modern self. S. M. Okin clearly brings out the imbalance between abstract reason and feeling where the former is identified with man and the latter with woman. In this context, she traces the tilt towards reason in John Rawls to the legacy of Kant. Following Okin, I would like to discern a different dimension where reason, though equated with or including man, excludes an important aspect of human life, including male life – that is, old age. In addition to the earlier exclusion based on race, colour, region, or gender, I will focus on a different kind of exclusion – excluding certain phases in an individual’s life. This new kind of exclusion is not recognised in scholarship. I would like to start that discussion, and I begin by bringing Rousseau into it.

Rousseau 27 Okin shows how modern morality is based on reason – which excludes non-reason – associating men with reason and women with non-reason, such as feelings and emotions. She alleges that Kant in his minor writings, however, consistently did not allow any place for love in the realm of morality. He did this, according to her, because he took into consideration only two kinds of love, ‘practical love’ and ‘pathological feeling’, but neglected another form of love that is more substantial and positive, namely “love that is typified by parent/child relations” (1989: 232). This strategy to exclude non-reason like love, which is equated with woman – and only include reason, which is equated with man, Okin rightly claims, is to exclude woman from modern morality. While accepting her claims on how modern philosophers too surreptitiously excluded women, I want to make two comments on her analysis. One, in the context of analysing the original position, she discusses Kant and Rawls. While accepting the Kantian legacy in Rawls as rightly claimed by her, I would like to mention that the idea of the original position that she extensively discusses in her paper is clearly available in Contract philosophers like Rousseau rather than in Kant. Two, while she is right in drawing attention to how modern philosophers like Kant excluded women, I would like to highlight how the idea of the man who excludes women is not an empirical male. Rather, a rational adult male also excluded the post-adult phase of human beings, namely, old age. This is why I discuss Rousseau. Alternatively, following Okin’s path, let me lay bare how the modern self that Rousseau inhabits is not merely a gendered male who excluded women, but an adult who also neglected an important aspect of human life: old age, including old age of the male. Shifting the discussion from gender division, let me turn towards the three different phases in the life of any individual, including males: childhood, adulthood, and old age. I will now highlight the adult nature of the modern self and discuss how this adult male self excludes not only women, but also old age. In shifting male old age from the domain of modernity, I want to strengthen the domain that it excludes – women, as well as old age (including that of males). One way to understand the nature of the modern self in Rousseau is to trace its ‘legacy’ to Descartes. He institutes a self that is not historical or empirical but autonomous, one that constitutes certainty. This autonomy has its own costs. It excludes everything that is noncognitive, including feelings and emotions. This excludes women, as rightly highlighted by Okin, but it does not exclude only women. It also excludes some crucial aspects of all human life, including men.

28  Rousseau Let me explain this in detail. Having established the centralised self through certainty and the novel method of doubt, Descartes brings in reason as that which constitutes the modern self. He says: I reflected that we were children before being men and had to be governed for some time by our appetites and our teachers, which were often opposed to each other and neither of which, perhaps, always gave us the best advice; hence I thought it virtually impossible that our judgments should be as unclouded and firm as they would have been if we had had the full use of our reason from the moment of our birth, and if we had always been guided by it alone. (1985: 117) Here Descartes concedes the existence of childhood, which is governed by ‘appetites’ and ‘teachers’ who do not give the ‘best advice’. This makes him wish that one were born with reason and perhaps without appetite, and could avoid advice from teachers. However, we know that this is not possible, though he does not seem to accept it as a fact. He highlights the primacy of the rational domain that is outside childhood and encompasses the non-childhood phase, which is adulthood. The underlying argument of this passage is to bypass the biological domain, and in doing so skip or exclude childhood from the philosophical domain. In making a case for reason simultaneously, he is knocking down the domain of childhood from the discourse of modernity. The individual that Descartes instituted is one that does not factor in childhood. This is the first step away from the empirical individual (1985: 114).2 Having established the possibility of one, that is, I, the individual is embellished by two associated features, reason and adulthood. This by implication keeps the domain of childhood outside the purview of modernity, because it is the domain of nonreason and is guided by appetites and unreliable teachers. The roots of a human being, namely childhood, are chopped off. This adult self inhabits, with minor modifications, the Social Contract Philosophy, in the form of man in the state of nature. This brings us to Rousseau who says that: The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural, is the family: and even so the children remain attached to the father only so long as they need him for their reservation. As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children, released from the obedience they owed to the father, and the

Rousseau 29 father, released from the care he owed his children, return equally to independence. If they remain united, they continue so no longer naturally, but voluntarily; and the family itself is then maintained only by convention. (1952: 4) Here it may be pointed out that while Descartes denies modernity to childhood by excluding it, Rousseau, by way of naturalising Cartesian rationality, includes childhood. However, if we read this passage closely, an important subtext introduces a linear notion of time that replaces the circular notion of time. The child is free after he or she attains adulthood. However, this leaves the deal incomplete as one might legitimately ask why the father should spend time and resources on the child. What does he get in return? So the account is not settled. In a traditional paradigm, the account is settled when children take care of parents in their old age. This is not acceptable to Rousseau, as that would make the contract brief and put the child in debt. This would also legitimise the return to family, which he is seeking to dismantle. So how does one settle this deal? If we read the passage carefully, the subtext reveals that children need not take care of their parents. The father takes care of children until they become independent, and the account is settled. It is settled because the father is paying off his debt to his father by bringing up his own children. Therefore, it is more in the form of paying off a debt than making his children indebted to him. This legitimises the institution of the old age home in the modern times. It is this way of dismantling family that facilitates dispensing with the old, who are no longer useful for production. The children and the adult, as they are the future and present resources, respectively, should be protected from spending their time on the old, who are no longer useful for production. While Descartes sought to keep childhood outside the domain of modernity, Rousseau, while accounting for it, however hands over the childhood in the hands of either a tutor or the father. More importantly, in this process, he laid the foundation for the institution of the old age home. This modern institution has come into existence based on his views on the relation between child and father. The larger design eluded the attention of feminists, who rightly criticised Rousseau for factoring in only the father and quietly excluding the mother from his analysis. While accepting the feminist critique of patriarchy that survives in a disguised form in modernity, I am highlighting how the latter excludes an important aspect of human beings, that is, old age. Okin, in her preoccupation to highlight the exclusion of women by excluding

30  Rousseau them from parental love, fails to notice how the male self that ruthlessly excluded women also excluded old age. There is a need to move the focus from gender exclusions to the exclusion of some phases of human life. Let me explain the compelling reason for this by bringing into the discussion compulsions of capitalist production that colonises the modern self, perhaps not immediately and directly, but eventually. Some interpret Rousseau as a romantic who highlighted how modern society enslaved human beings. For instance, David Gauthier argues that both Rousseau and later Marx did not see the “primary effect of the division of labor” as enriching persons by “giving them access to the capacities and powers of their fellows” but to “enslave them by making the exercise of their own capacities dependent on their fellow’s alien wills” (2006: 14). In contrast to this clear anticapitalist portrayal of Rousseau, given the fact that division of labour is an important instrument of capitalism, Christopher Brooke asks whether Rousseau – along with Marx – “is an apologist for liberal capitalism on the one hand or sympathetic to the claims of radical socialism on the other” (in Riley 2001: 118). Extending Brooke, I would like to highlight how Rousseau made a subtle but significant move and dissociated adulthood from old age, to make the adult male available for capitalist production. This can be seen as reflecting the birth of capitalism. The dismantled circularity of traditional societies and instituted half circle in a linear temporality allowed for the young and the old to separate, thereby facilitating a higher and undisturbed availability of the young for production. In capitalist societies, you have to take care of children because they are the reservoirs of the future. Old people, on the other hand, have no potential for production. The non-inheritance of experience of the previous generation is the cost we seem to pay for individual freedom and liberty. Foucault elaborates on the production aspect of the modern self, particularly the technology of the self. Clarifying the ‘general theme of [his] research’ he says in an Afterword that “the goal” of his work “during the last twenty years” has “not been to analyze the phenomena of power” but “to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects” (1984: 208). One of the three modes of objectification which transforms human beings into subjects, is “objectivizing of the productive subject, the subject who labors, in the analysis of wealth and economics” (1984: 208). I want to claim here that Rousseau, by making adults available for production, laid the foundation for pervasive phenomena by dissociating old age from both childhood and adulthood. Alternatively, I want to fine-tune Foucault’s diagnosis of how the ‘mad’, ‘sick’, and

Rousseau 31 ‘criminals’, get objectivised by the ‘sane’, ‘healthy’, and ‘good boys’, respectively. As a part of this fine-tuning, I want to introduce another binary between adult and the old age and highlight how in Rousseau, the former objectivises the latter. Yet, another important insight from Foucault is his attempt to excavate the birth of new institutions in the modern period, like clinic, prison, and asylum (1970, 1973, 1975). Following him, I want to show how in excluding old age, and making adult individuals available for production, Rousseau enabled human resources to capitalist production. This has deprived the adult from understanding the life experience of the old. I also want to show how this led to the foundation of a new social institution, namely old age home. Rather than analysing this from the point of concern for the old, I want to reverse the strategy and argue that everyone will become old unless they die prematurely. That is, here I am not as interested in the care aspect that involves the need to look after the old. I am speaking of the experience of the old from the perspective of adults and children. One, the experience of the elderly may help the present adults – who will possibly become old in future – to learn, and in the process change their attitude towards life and work. There are experiences of children that might remind the old that, if they lived together, it might help them understand their own childhood better. Relooking at children by the old, like rereading a text, might enable a better understanding of their own childhood. Similarly, there are experiences of the old that can equip children and prepare them to better organise their own old age. It is in this context that this denial of how old age is lived, may take the adults away from an important domain of human experience, which one may have to confront suddenly rather than get acclimated to gradually. Instead of seeing the experience of the old as a burden, it can be seen as an asset to be used in future. One of the reasons why the old become a liability rather than an asset is the relation to production. More importantly, the reason why this ruthless exclusion of an important human domain eluded the attention of modern readers of this text is the age of the reader who has been exposed to modernity. Modernity targets children and adults by appealing to them. In enticing these two phases of human life, modernity excludes an important aspect of life – old age – a domain that is generic rather than gendered. Here, I am aware of the variance between women’s and men’s old age, and how the former can be more difficult in a patriarchy. Therefore, in addition to males, we need to further scrutinise the age of the male reader to whom this rhetoric appeals at the

32  Rousseau subconscious level. The relation between the adult male and modern texts needs to be problematised while assessing modernity. Here we have two situations. One, contrary to the claims of modernity that seem to totalise autonomy of the individual, in reality, autonomy is restricted to the adult domain. As pointed out previously, there is a relation between adult autonomy and capitalist production. Two, the adult domain is autonomous. Father, an adult, is autonomous – and he is available for production. This is claimed as a form of individualism by modernity. However, Rousseau makes the father take care of his children, which compromises his autonomy. The father might ask why he should take care of his children. More importantly, he might question if his father was asked to take care of him when he was a child. There may be no necessary relation between nurturing and growing. Animals, or at least some of them, do not nurture their newborns, and yet they survive and grow. Therefore, there is a contingent relation between nurturing and surviving. This is particularly important, as the adult is unnecessarily made to compromise his autonomy in taking care of the children. In other words, Rousseau takes it for granted that children need to be taken care of by the father, when there is no such necessity and newborns can grow on their own after a minimum lactation period where the mother – and not father, as wrongly claimed by Rousseau – can feed the child and then leave as animals do. Strictly speaking, modernity in general – and Rousseau in particular – is on weak terrain here. If one were to make a case for extending nurturing to children that deviates from the state of animals, then we should not build the institution of family with the father as envisaged by Rousseau, but with the mother who provides the foundation to this first association outside her womb. Her fundamental status in building the institution of the family that enables the extending of childcare has to be acknowledged. She lays the foundation of this first social institution. A family based on this first foundation can then have its other members like the father. Family, therefore, can be grounded on the first relation between the child and the mother, and not between the father and child, as envisaged by Rousseau. Let me explain. There are many things that can be performed equally by both women and men. Then there are specific things that can be largely performed only by women, like giving birth. Even test tube babies are an extension of women’s capability. Man is the supplier of sperm. Instead of looking at this as division of labour, let me look at this as belonging to two phases of biological production. Women farm the seed of man. Within the patriarchal form, the harvest belongs to

Rousseau 33 the male. The female who is the cultivator and nurturer of the product is erased and thus exploited. The male makes his stage appearance at the first and third phases, namely, investment of the sperm and marketing of the product. The woman’s involvement at phase two is erased and marginalised, and she thus stands exploited. Exposing the politics of this exploitation, there is a possibility where the second phase – the most important one – should be sumptuously rewarded and the first and third phases should be rewarded marginally. This exposes how adulthood, which is central to modernity, is parasitic on child production and child nurturing where women play an indomitable and indispensable role. The woman – the cultivator in this domain – should get more than she has been given. Once this is corrected, she also gets a larger share of the rewards. I am making this roundabout argument for family with a new form of circularity where all three phases of human life are lived together, learning from each other face to face in the Levinasian sense of alterity. This is not because it is desirable, per se, but if we envisage extended childhood care and nurture, then this form of family can be considered less exploitative. However, if we do not think it necessary to have extended childhood care, then even this idea of family can be withdrawn. The chapter began by criticising the attempts by Shklar and Riley to absolve the radicalism of Rousseau within the pre-modern traditions. In these attempts, his radicalism not only waxes but also evaporates completely. In contrast, I have located him within the project of modernity initiated by Descartes. By taking him out of the pre-modern traditions, I have tried to display his novel ideas, offer new justifications for his rejection of the institution of slavery, and highlight the problems surrounding these new ideas. Having proposed a new reading of Rousseau’s The Social Contract, this last section points out how Rousseau laid the foundation for a new social institution called the old age home. This connection between Rousseau and the old age home has not been made earlier. This rereading can throw better light on understanding this text that has shaped, and continues to shape, modern life. Having undertaken these two tasks – namely, proposing a new reading and establishing a relation between Rousseau and old age home – I want to highlight how the old age home is not a product or a result of a reflection by modernity and its individualism, freedom and liberty. It, on the other hand, is an unreflected consequence of the result of assumptions made by modernity about rationality, production, and adulthood. The modern individual is thrown into the old age home rather than choosing it. Let me elaborate.

34  Rousseau I make a distinction between making a choice and being forced into accepting consequences following from the actions of our choice. The discourse of rights is based on choice. However, individualism that factors in adulthood – and does not factor in old age, into which one is thrown because of the choice about individualism that takes into consideration only the adulthood – is not based on choice. The latter is the unintended consequence of the former. Thus, there lurks within the domain of modern individualism that is governed by choice an aspect such as the old age home that is outside this domain of choice. Speaking in terms of temporality, this is governed by sequential temporality. In contrast, instead of passively following or embracing this experience and combination from the modern West, India can learn from this experience and rationally reflect about a combination that follows another kind of temporality, which is simultaneous. We can consider following the modern Western way, but this will be governed by choice and deliberation rather than merely embracing the consequences. We can also factor and change this combination and relook at the move by modern philosophers like Rousseau who sought to dismantle family, reconsider feminist critique of patriarchy without dismantling family. This can become an important academic discussion that has enormous social relevance to Indian society. This can also provide a different combination to modern Western society. There are serious problems in the pre-modern or in tradition, but modernity may not be a solution to solve these problems. Having demonstrated my ability to reread Western philosophical texts differently and made new connections not made earlier, thus making an initial move to relate Rousseau to India, I want in the next chapter to discuss another Western philosopher, Jacques Derrida. This I will do to extend the boundaries between particular kinds of Western philosophy (the philosophy of the written that is inaugurated by Plato) and contrast it with the philosophy of the spoken (that includes Socrates). I will try to broaden the extent of India by including Socrates within it.

Notes 1 Christopher Brooke makes a further addition to this line of thought, enticing Rousseau as a “part in discourse partially shaped by Stoicism” (Riley 2001: 95). 2 The implications of modernity excluding childhood are symbolically captured in the Hollywood classic Citizen Kane (1941). Kane’s longing for the Rosebud that symbolised his childhood is the price he had to pay for his success as a rich citizen. This clearly shows the inability of modernity to read the vocabulary of the lost past, or of childhood.

2 Derrida and the two forms of the word Writing West and speaking India1

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak finds Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) a better philosopher to launch her postcolonial critique. This choice of Spivak’s differs from that of Edward Said, who in his Orientalism uses Foucault to launch his critique of Orientalism, particularly through Foucault’s thesis on power/knowledge. Said admits at the outset that he “found it useful . . . to employ . . . Michel Foucault’s notion of a discourse, as described by him in The Archaeology of Knowledge and in Discipline and Punish, to identify Orientalism” (1979: 9). Spivak, though not directly referring to Said’s use of Foucault, prefers Derrida, as he is “less dangerous when understood than first world intellectuals masquerading as the absent nonrepresenter who lets the oppressed speak for themselves” (2010: 263). Said and Spivak are both inheritors of specific legacies – Foucaldian and Derridean poststructuralism, respectively – as they set about constructing postcolonial thought. While Said and Spivak differ with regard to who is better suited to understand the Orient or India, I am toeing a line, which asks for the need to calibrate a Western philosophy to be used for India. Let me begin with a confession. Located within Indian academia, it is difficult to get into the mainstream scholarship on Western philosophy in general and Derrida in particular. I therefore confine my discussion to his path-breaking essay, “Structure, sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences” (2005), except to deviate, though infrequently, by referring to his Of Grammatology (1994). Standing at the gateway to his scholarship, I plan to operate at the border between inside and outside Derrida, the latter consisting of pre-Platonic philosophy and India that defies centers. In this chapter, I frame this key essay that first identified the pervasive problem of logocentrism surrounding Western metaphysics. This framing I undertake by distinguishing two forms of the word, the word as spoken and as written, the latter falling within and the former outside the frame. I do not

36  Derrida and the two forms of the word discuss the difference between the spoken word versus the written word in Indian philosophy as discussed by T. R. V. Murti (1996) or the relation between Derrida and classical Indian philosophy as discussed by H. G. Coward (1991). I am, on the other hand, interested in distinguishing the difference between pre-Platonic speech as dialogue/ debate and post-Platonic speech as writing. In the second section following this discussion, I will attempt to understand Derrida outside this frame by bringing into discussion ideas and instances from India. For instance, I highlight the variance between the indomitability of centers in post-Plato philosophising in the West and the Indian one where we have innumerable centers, managing which is unwieldy if not a mess. At the outset let me admit that in this chapter I confine myself to the claims made by and approvingly quoted – for instance, in the case of Rousseau – by Derrida. I am not entering into the historical and sociological truth about these claims.

I While accepting the Biblical claim about the ontology of the word (that in the beginning was the Word), it is important to examine the form and nature of the word. The claim about the ontological status of the word is important to understand better the Platonic intervention in the history of Western thought. I want to use two claims made in Of Grammatology, one by Nietzsche and other by Derrida himself. Though not explicated, Derrida cites, at the beginning of his first chapter of his Of Grammatology, Nietzsche, who wrote, “Socrates, he who does not write” (1994: 6). This is an important statement, however one that Derrida did not pursue in this book. Instead he goes on to discuss Plato and Aristotle (1994: 11, 15), Rousseau, Saussure, and Levi-Strauss on the relation between speech and writing. The other claim made by Derrida is that Nietzsche was the last Platonist. I want to make use of both these statements and highlight how Plato brought about an enormous change by doctrinising thought that was in a dialogical form. This transformation of dialogue, which is a form of speech, into writing is radical. This reveals the variance, difference, and opposition between philosophising before and after Plato. So there are two phases. Phase one has Socrates, who does not write but participates in a form of speech that is debate or dialogue. In phase two, open-ended dialogue is compressed and frozen by the written word. I want to claim that Derrida’s primary preoccupation is with the second phase. And I want to use the first phase as a frame to the second phase.

Derrida and the two forms of the word 37 In discussing the relation between speech and writing, Derrida discusses Rousseau, Saussure, and Levi-Strauss. He says of Rousseau that for him writing is “nothing but the representation of speech; it is bizarre that one gives more care to the determining of the image than to the object” (in Derrida 1994: 36, original emphasis). He goes on to point out that for Rousseau, “people forget that they learn to speak before they learn to write and the natural sequence is reversed” (1994: 37). However, this positive attitude to speech and critical attitude to writing changes in Rousseau’s Confessions, where, Derrida writes, Rousseau, “tries to explain how he became a writer” by describing “the passage to writing as the restoration, by a certain absence and by a sort of calculated effacement, of presence disappointed of itself in speech” (1994: 142). In this work, says Derrida, “Rousseau is suspicious also of the illusion of full and present speech, of the illusion of presence within a speech believed to be transparent and innocent” (1994: 140). He urges us to reread the Essay on the Origin of Languages. Having pointed out disappointments with speech, Rousseau says Derrida “considers writing as a dangerous-means, a menacing aid, the critical response to a situation of distress” (1994: 144). That is: [W]hen speech fails to protect presence, writing becomes necessary. . . . This recourse is not only “bizarre”, but also dangerous. It is the addition of a technique, a sort of artificial and artful ruse to make speech present when it is actually absent. It is a violence done to the natural destiny of the language. (1994: 144) The disappointment in the speech is further covered up by deploying the analogy of mother and wife. Rousseau claims that although there is no substitute for a mother’s love, however, “it is better that the child should suck the breast of a healthy nurse rather than a petted mother” (in Derrida: 1994: 145–146). Similarly, writing becomes a supplement to speech.2 Having explained the transformation from speech to writing in Rousseau, let us now turn to Derrida’s discussion of Saussure. Saussure, points out Derrida, privileges speech over writing (1994: 30–31); he says of writing that it is a “garment of perversion and debauchery, a dress of corruption and disguise, a festival mask that must be exorcised, that is to say warded off, by the good word” (1994: 35). While Derrida endorses Saussure’s denouncement of ‘classical linguists’ about their blind prejudice towards writing (1994: 39), he,

38  Derrida and the two forms of the word however, “challeng[es] in the very name of the arbitrariness of the sign, the Saussurian definition of writing as ‘image’ – hence as natural symbol of language”(1994: 45). He claims that Saussure was “never able to think that writing was truly an ‘image,’ a ‘figuration,’ a ‘representation,’ of the spoken word, a symbol” (1994: 45). Derrida concludes that despite his “intention or motivation”, Saussure inherited “an entire uncritical tradition” (1994: 46). Having made this allegation, he now turns to Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss considered the: passage from speech to writing as a leap, as the instantaneous crossing of a line of discontinuity: passage from a fully oral language, pure of all writing – pure, innocent – to a language appending to itself its graphic ‘representation’ as an accessory signifier of a new type, opening a technique of oppression. (1994: 120, original emphasis) He identifies the “second wave of mediation” where Levi-Strauss seeks to “neutralize the frontier between peoples without and with writing; not with regard to the use of writing, but with regard to what is supposed to be deducible from it, with regard to their historicity or nonhistoricity” (1994: 128). For Levi-Strauss, says Derrida, to “recognize writing in speech, that is to say difference and the absence of speech, is to begin to think the lure” (1994: 139). The reason why I discussed Derrida’s treatment of the relation between speech and writing in the writings of Rousseau, Saussure, and Levi-Strauss is to show that he is preoccupied with writing – and as he rightly points out in the case of Levi-Strauss, the “writing in speech” (1994: 139). In contrast, I highlight a mode of speech in the form of debate or dialogue in Plato. That is, despite the claims of those inside the debate, it remains ‘open’, as there exists no provision to close it off. Thought in a dialogical form was far more open with multiple interventions and interpretations. It is devoid of a permanent center. There may be a temporary winner in the dialogue, but even this subsequently is open to further contestations, returns, and revisits. In contrast, in the dialogue that is written by Plato, Socrates is a winner once for all. To reiterate, the scene would be different if the dialogues were not written down; it would have remained open, despite claims by several. Before this change, the dialogue not only had several contestants, but also was available for subsequent contestations. This defies the possibility of a center. That is, thought not only had simultaneous centers contesting each other, but also openings into the future. That is, there

Derrida and the two forms of the word 39 is a need to distinguish between range of interpretations, possibilities, and opening in the realm of speech and the range within the realm of hermeneutics. All this changed because of Plato’s radical act of writing down the open-ended dialogue, in a frozen, written form. The written as a presence closed forever all these openings, each of which had innumerable possibilities. Therefore, there is a subtle but significant difference between the written as a presence and its relation to possibilities and the spoken as a presence and its relation to possibilities. My contention is that there is a need to distinguish between the word in the spoken form and the word in the written form in order to identify the purview of logocentrism to understand this concept better. This is important because the word is available in both forms. Derrida’s reference to the theories that he is critiquing as contesting logocentrism, or presencing, are largely where word is in the written form. In highlighting the continuity between Socrates and Plato and critiquing his metaphysics as laying the foundation for logocentrism, we often do not notice the underlying changes in the format; namely, from dialogue to doctrine, or more specifically dialogues presented in a doctrine form. The question that is important is that what in Plato makes him the first metaphysician, definitely not the content as he is only reporting, in a systematic manner, the ‘live’ dialogues. Socrates and others in the dialogues spoke their views. In none of the dialogues is there Plato. So, how does he become the first metaphysician in a tradition of which Nietzsche is the last? The answer to this lies in distinguishing between the spoken word as a presence and the written word as a presence. Plato characterised the latter as an indomitable presence. The claim that I am making is derived from Nietzsche’s statement about Socrates and Derrida’s claim about Nietzsche. The new presencing that scuttled the open-endedness is then consolidated. In this move towards consolidation, Plato presented, to use a phrase that I used elsewhere in referring to Adi Samkara, a refrigerated account of thought. In this new format, Socrates claims that a human being’s task is to passively and merely discover the already existing, everlasting, and immutable forms. It is allowed to be contested within the free play, but eventually lost, thus confirming and vindicating Socrates’ claim. Instead of this claim being put to simultaneous (in the form of others contesting the point in the course of the debate within Socrates) and sequential (in the form of others contesting it later), the changed format allows this claim to be contested within the free play within the dialogue and then contested from outside by subsequent thinkers like Aristotle. Unlike in the pre-frozen,

40  Derrida and the two forms of the word pre-doctrinaire situation, where thought is not closed, in the frozen situation, one is forced to contest a closed or a final view. The temporality that underlies this frozen scene is where one has – one necessarily has to have – a closed and official position that you contest not from within but necessarily from the outside. By the logic of the position, one is left with contesting the existing center and forced to institute another center. Derrida brilliantly identifies this last point. This initial move by Plato forms the frame without recalling this one cannot understand the nature and boundary of Derrida. Having set the frame, let me in the following provide background to Derrida to highlight the importance of his essay. Scene One: Derrida thus inhabits the inside of the frame, one of writing, outside of which lies not mere speech but a particular form of it, namely, debate or dialogue. In scene One, Plato and Plato’s Socrates maintained that there is a divine order independent of human beings. The only task of human beings is to merely and passively discover that which is already there. To repeat, Leo Strauss succinctly capture this when he says that traditional natural law which is “primarily and mainly an objective rule ‘rule and measure’, a binding order prior to, and independent of, the human will” (1966: vii–viii). This leaves very little, in fact almost nothing, for human freedom and creativity. Subsequently, there have been attempts by Aristotle and Christianity to offer alternative but contesting centers. Despite differences, all of them in varying degrees, sought to privilege the transcendental reality. This convergence to locate centers came under the scanner of modern philosophy. Scene Two: A Modern philosopher like Descartes sought to outright reject the transcendental that became a breeding ground for instituting centers. Descartes formulated a new logic in his Discourse on Method, a logic of exclusion that sought to disinherit everything from the pre-modern including the classical transcendental. He sets out his normative scale, which is cogito, reason and certainty, and embarks on excluding, at the outset, others. These are childhood (as it is the domain governed by appetite and teachers rather than reason, the latter he identifies as the domain of adults) (1985: 117), language (1985: 113), history (for him the past is like travel, which takes us away from the present), oratory, poetry (poetry is the “gift of mind rather than fruits of study” 1985: 114), moral writings of pagans (1985: 114), customs, evolutionary

Derrida and the two forms of the word 41 growth of societies (he rejects gradual growth of societies [1985: 116], and he even rejects classical logic and mathematics as they are “mixed up with” all sorts of things [1985: 119–120]). The reality that modernity instituted is immanent. These moves give us a general idea of the project of disinheriting and excluding all those emerging from the premodern from the domain of modernity. Scene Three: Subsequent to modern philosophy’s attempt to disinherit the pre-modern, including transcendental from the classical, logical positivists found that ordinary language is full of non-referential words and they sought to eliminate metaphysical words, having earlier eliminated metaphysics through the method of the verification principle. This principle accepted only two kinds of statements; namely, analytical and synthetic statements. They proposed not only establishing the relation between word and object, but also insisting that a word refers to only or some specific set of objects. This is the route towards the project of artificial intelligence and passwords culture. When the anti-positivism in humanities was decentered through deconstruction, it surreptitiously re-camped in a different form in the departments of computer science and occupied our pockets in the form of mobile phones, thus forming another center. So, logical positivism is everywhere but we do not see it. It is this new and disguised form of authority whose non-visibility Derrida seems to highlight. This is not a theological or political authority that you know and can suffer, endure, or even confront. This is a new form of oppression that is invisible. Foucault highlights one aspect of this in his work on power/knowledge. One way to understand Foucault’s thesis of how knowledge generated power is through the following example. Take an example of a village that had no school, and most of the villagers will not be called illiterates. Imagine a new school in this village. Now this creates a new problem; that is, those who go to the school will be literates but designating those who don’t will pose a problem. It is not proper to call them illiterates; still, if we call them pre-literates, then this new designation is temporally post to the arrival of literacy, but the designation is employed retrospectively. This retrospective designation, as Foucault would call it, is thrust on the people by arrival of literacy. This is how knowledge generates power and operated on people. Derrida takes the discussion to the very site of logic and language, what he calls logocentrism. A discussion of Derrida’s legacy without

42  Derrida and the two forms of the word recalling the legacy that he inherited will fail to bring down his radical project that goes beyond Nietzsche, who declared that God is dead. So there are two phases of deconstruction. Phase one, the demolition of the fort of center; phase two, of discourse as bricolage. The latter takes us back into the discourse that existed with Socrates. Let us now discuss the major themes and claims in Derrida’s essay. Let me begin with structure. Derrida makes a subtle but a serious distinction between structure and center, and claims that the center is more important than structure. This, in a way, lays the foundation for the demolition of structuralism. He is alerting us to the center of the problem, or its opposite – its virtue is not in the structure, but in the center. If you concentrate, congregate or rally around the structure to demolish it, then you are indulging in a negotiation with the surface that invariably fails – or worse, may become counterproductive. The center of the structure, Derrida will argue, “permits the free play of its elements inside the total form” (2005: 352). As already pointed out in the case of Plato, the center of the structure controls but does allow free play between or amongst its elements; however, only inside the total form. Having conceded this much, thus making a right assessment of the strength and nature of what he is critiquing, Derrida goes on to make a big claim that a structure without a center is ‘unthinkable’: “And even today the notion of structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself” (2005: 352). He is thus claiming that the center is more central than the overall structure. He says, “Thus it has always been thought that the center, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which while governing the structure, escapes structurality” (2005: 352). The important point that is to be noted here is that center is not a part of structure; on the contrary, it is the center that is unique, and governs the structure. So, structure does not govern its center; rather, it is the center that governs the structure. At this moment, he makes another interesting move, by employing a psychological move, namely, anxiety. He says, on the basis of this certitude anxiety can be mastered, for anxiety is invariably the result of a certain mode of being implicated in the game, of being caught by the game, of being as it were at stake in the game from the outset. And again on the basis of what we call the center (and which, because it can be either inside or outside, can also indifferently be called the origin or end, arche or telos), repetitions, substitutions, transformations, and permutations are

Derrida and the two forms of the word 43 always taken from the history of the meaning [sens] – that is, in a word, a history – whose origin may always be reawakened or whose end may always be anticipated in the form of presence. (2005: 252–253) Let us identify various ideas that are introduced, relations established, connections drawn, and conclusions arrived at. First, there is an anxiety. This anxiety is caused by the reader’s unease with the situation and her or his inability to identify the problem that causes this anxiety. Similar to that of Freudian repression, the inability lies in the nonavailability of the problem in a centralised mode. Just when one wants to complain that there is a ‘problem’ of rigidity supposedly imposed by the center, one is confronted by the phenomena of free play that is allowed by the same center. The presence of free play thus is an antidote to the complaint of rigidity. The range of free play consists of repetitions, substitutions, transformations, and permutations in the history of meaning. All these do not enable one to make a clear and total complaint about the cause of anxiety around the idea of the center and structure. In a sense, these aspects of free play camouflage the politics of the center. This camouflage does not enable the reader to easily address, or even identify, the problem. This generates the anxiety. The deceptive variety that camouflages the center makes a large claim that prevents one from seeing the center’s politics in Derrida’s work when he introduces two other variables; namely, origin and telos. That the center is not an artefact but has been present from the beginning and is therefore either natural or divine; and the tyranny of, or difficulties with, the center; have to be tolerated as they have a teleology. So the presencing by the center through these strategies is not only from the inside but also from the outside. Inside can be in the beginning: there was the word or God, a transcendental being created the immanent world. Elucidating the different dimensions of the center Derrida says, the entire history of the concept of structure, before the rupture of which we are speaking, must be thought of as a series of substitutions of center for center, as a linked chain of determinations of the center. Successively, and in a regulated fashion, the center receives different forms or names. The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphysics and metonymies. (2005: 353)

44  Derrida and the two forms of the word So, to reiterate, the center is more central than the structure; thus, there is a need to pay attention to center rather than mere structure; each center of a structure does permit free play of its elements, however, inside the total form. Metaphysics managed these different presences through a series of camouflages is the root cause of anxiety. Disclosing these camouflages and identifying the root of the problem as lying not with structure but with center explains the movements of the center or centers. Derrida first declares that we must realise that “there was no center”; center “should not be thought in the form of a being-present”; and “center had no natural locus, that it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of non-locus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions come into play”. Thus, decentered or deconstructed, “in the absence of a center or origin, everything becomes discourse”. Explaining the consequences of this he writes, when: everything became discourse . . . a system in which the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of differences. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the play of signification infinitely. (2005: 354) Tracing the beginning of this rupture, he concedes that it: would be somewhat naive to refer to an event, a doctrine, or an author in order to designate this occurrence. It is no doubt part of the totality of an era, our own, but still it has always already begun to proclaim itself and begun to work. (2005: 354, original emphasis) He says probably the beginnings are there in: Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics, the critique of the concepts of Being and truth, for which were substituted the concept of play, interpretation, and sign (sign without present truth); the Freudian critique of self-presence, that is, the critique of consciousness, of the subject, of self-identity and of self-proximity or self-possession; and, more radically, the Heideggerian destruction of metaphysics, of onto-theology, of the determination of being as presence. (2005: 354)

Derrida and the two forms of the word 45 Identifying the nature of this line of decentering and depresenting, he points out: But all these destructive discourses and all their analogues are trapped in a kind of circle. This circle is unique. It describes the form of the relation between the history of metaphysics and the destruction of the history of metaphysics. (2005: 354) I suggest that there is a need to distinguish two stages of the Derrida essay: the diagnostic and recommendatory. That is, the essay until now works towards brilliantly and ingeniously diagnosing the problem. Having accomplished this task successfully, Derrida now embarks on making recommendations for overcoming this problem. I am of the opinion that he falters here; he uses the mood belonging to the diagnosis as a bricolage, even at the second stage. In other words, already available and ready-made use of the earlier mood does not sit well to accomplish the task that requires a different mood. Let me elaborate this by carefully identifying the following moves from his recommendations. I argue that not distinguishing these two stages, and not reading through the classification of the cluster of recommendations, has serious implications to those who inhabit his legacy in different disciplines and cultures. First, he says, “If one erases the radical difference between signifier and signified, it is the word ‘signifier’ itself which must be abandoned as a metaphysical concept” (2005: 355). What is important in this conditional statement is the idea of ‘erasing’: erasing the radical difference between signifier and signified. If this happens, Derrida says, then it is the word signifier itself that ought to be abandoned as a metaphysical concept. There is a difference between abandoning the word signifier and abandoning it as a metaphysical concept. If it is the former, then it can lapse into chaos or end up in what Umberto Eco calls in another context ‘overinterpreting texts’ (in Collini 1992: 45). However, if it is the latter, then this consequence need not follow. Alternatively, Derrida is suggesting in this sentence the need to reject the relation between signifier and signified as rigid and authoritative, and yet save the project from relapsing into the predicament of ‘anything goes’ or chaos. That is, he is rejecting signifier as a metaphysical concept. Second, he introduces the idea of ‘erasure’, and distinguishes “two heterogeneous ways of erasing the difference between the signifier and the signified”. The classical way that “consist[s] in reducing or

46  Derrida and the two forms of the word deriving the signifier” that is, “ultimately in submitting the sign to thought”. He proposes another way, which “consist[s] in putting into question the system in which the preceding reduction functioned” (2005: 355, original emphasis). That is, Derrida proposes an undermining of the very structure that he excavated, and which is operated by the center. Illustrating how this is executed by Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger, he says that unlike the classical practice where the ones who destroyed the predecessor center, congregate, and thereby consolidate another center, which becomes another oppressor (this is exactly like one replacing the other), these destroyers: destroy each other reciprocally – for example, Heidegger regarding Nietzsche, with as much lucidity and rigor as bad faith and misconstruction, as the last metaphysician, the last “Platonist”. One could do the same for Heidegger himself, for Freud, and for a number of others. And today no exercise is more widespread. (2005: 356) So there is a difference between what happened and what he proposes ought to happen; there is a diagnosis and a recommendation. If we do not read the recommendation with the Derrida mood of diagnosis, we tend to highlight the words like ‘erasure’, and do not realise that he is referring to erasing the metaphysical concept and not erasure, per se. For instance, as pointed out earlier, Derrida should not reject the relation between signifier and signified in the pre-metaphysical, pre-Platonic and Socratic dialogical discourse (that is governed by openness between and amongst various points that are in dialogue and in debate). These debates are not closed forever. Derrida is not rejecting any relation between signifier and signified, but only rejecting this relation as absolute and total, and he concedes this relation as a functional relation. That is, destroying each other should not be taken as total destruction, but rather as their destruction as absolutes. In other words, there is a need to distinguish reading them in isolation or as absolutes and reading them in conjunction with other concepts. If this is not done, then there is a real danger where we receive the legacy of Derrida in different cultures exactly like the way that is repudiated by him; namely, the classical way where he himself becomes another center. At the end of the essay, Derrida distinguishes two “interpretations of interpretations, of structure, of sign, of play”. One “seeks to decipher, dreams of deciphering a truth or an origin which escapes play and the order of the sign, and which lives the necessity of interpretation

Derrida and the two forms of the word 47 as an exile” (2005: 369). This is something like a relay race, where players change but not the baton that is passed from one to the other. The hand that hands over the stick to the next one is withdrawn, but only after ensuring the successful continuation of the race. Derrida is cautioning us not to be deceived by the discontinuity of the players, but instead to pay attention to the achieved continuity in the play. The continuing presencing enables the race to progress through the stick where several players are used. In contrast, the second mode of interpretation, Derrida goes to explain, “is no longer turned towards the origin, affirms play and tries to pass beyond man and humanism” goes beyond the dream of “full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of play” (2005: 369–370).3 Derrida acknowledges that Nietzsche showed the way to this kind of interpretation of interpretation. Let me now make some general comments on this path-breaking essay. One, the essay, while highlighting the centrality of the center and unravelling the process of replacing one center by another, focussed on one aspect of this trajectory; that is, a linear trajectory in the history of Western metaphysics: Nietzsche to Freud to Heidegger. Derrida fails to focus on another kind where there is a more active negotiation that borders on contesting or simultaneously rejecting each other. That is, he fails to account for the competing centers during Nietzsche or during Freud. Rather he seems to take each of these thinkers as monolithic. Thus, in the case of Socrates prior to Plato, where Socrates’ ideas are contesting and contested, there is a possibility of dialogue. It simultaneously decenters the impact of the center. This is the format of the debate where two or more speakers and their ideas actively engage and contest each other. More importantly, it remains open-ended. In the process, the truth is continuously negotiated through contestation. This simultaneous contestation of the thinkers eludes Derrida’s attention. Having framed Derrida’s concern within the written and outside the speech, and raised some critical points, let me in the next section discuss a theme that falls outside the frame discussed previously; namely themes from India.

II One way to make this connection is to carefully read Derrida’s Of Grammatology, where he quotes Rousseau who contrasted Orientals from French, English and German: Our [French, English, German] tongues are better suited to writing than speaking, and there is more pleasure in reading us than in

48  Derrida and the two forms of the word listening to us. Oriental tongues, on the other hand, lose their life and warmth when they are written. The words do not convey half the meaning: all the effectiveness is in the tone of voice [accents]. Judging the genius of the Orientals from their books is like painting a man’s portrait from his corps. (in Derrida 1994: 226, emphasis added by Derrida)4 So the Orient can fall outside the frame of those who excel in writing, and according to the same argument, those who do not write do not have a history. The people of the Orient are those who speak and do not write. Before I discuss those who speak but do not write, I propose that pre-Platonic thought was expressed in speaking, as debate or dialogue, which includes notably Socrates and other prominent philosophers. They are thus in the company of the Indians (I have elsewhere argued, against Akeel Bilgrami, that Gandhi is in the company of Christ and Socrates, who are from outside India [Raghuramaraju 2013]). The speaking Socrates and others in his dialogues belong to word as speaking and are different from those like Plato and ones who toe his path who belong to the other aspect of the word, word as written. I concede Rousseau’s opinion, without questioning the validity of his characterisation of others as speaking. However, I want to use this characterisation as facilitating coming together of Socrates and others in the dialogues along with the outsiders – that is, we, for instance, from India. This thus enlarges the domain of India that can be contrasted from the written West. So there is a written domain consisting from Plato to Nietzsche and the spoken domain that includes pre-Plato, which is Socrates and others in the dialogue, along with us from India. Having made this move, let me now discuss the variance in the use of Derrida in the West and ‘outside’ it. I want to make a bricolage use of the legacy that Derrida inherits in order to save the danger of Derrida’s legacy in different cultures from relapsing into the predicament of the engineer. According to Derrida, for Levi-Strauss, bricoleur is someone who uses “the means at hand”, that is, the: instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those who are already there, which had not been especially conceived with an eye to the operation for which they are to be used and to which one tries by trial and error to adopt them, not hesitating to change them whenever it appears necessary, or to try several of them at once, even if their form and their origin are heterogeneous – and so forth. (2005: 360)

Derrida and the two forms of the word 49 Derrida goes to argue that if “one calls bricolage the necessity of borrowing one’s concepts from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or ruined, it must be said that every discourse is bricoleur” (2005: 360, original emphasis). That is, there is a possibility where we, in India, can use Derrida’s writings as a bricoleur. Giving the nature and limitations of Derrida, who operates within the written and not with the spoken, this use of Derrida in India will leave many aspects – particularly those that fall outside the written – outside his purview. So, when using him to liberate ourselves, we need to be critically conscious of both of these; namely, use him as a bricoleau and be conscious about the limitations that surround his scholarship. Here, let me bring into the discussion two instances that provide a counter to Derrida who relentlessly sought to dismantle Western logocentrism. One, there is a difference between deconstructing a center and deconstructing an unwieldy phenomenon. In India today, we also have a new phenomenon that is not a center but something that is messy and unwieldy. This is a situation where you do not have rules, but precedents. In addition, decenters unmindfully are in the belief that they are defying rules. Indian society, despite several attempts to the contrary, largely remains less centered. Let me explain: I am not saying that there are no centers in India; there are, but there remain large areas that remain outside the center. That is, unlike in the West, where there are clearly laid out centers and those who oppose, do so, from the outside. In India, on the other hand, there are not only many centers, but also large domain of reality that falls outside the centers. Unlike in the West, where modernity as a center dismantled the premodern and removed it from the social domain, in India, pre-modern not only coexists with the modern, thus defying the modern canon but also posing a series of problems to this canon, and thereby, decentering it. However, not in respect of centralised power, but in respect of the sheer volume and plural powers, the pre-modern is greater than the modern in India. Modern cities in India are extensions of premodern villages; pre-modern voters sustain the success of democracy in India. (For more details on this, see my 2017b book.) Thus, the reality outside the center is larger, though perhaps less powerful than what is inside the center. If not carefully handled, the existence of the pre-modern can become a serious problem.5 Two, I bring into discussion Akeel Bilgrami’s argument around Gandhi as an exemplar. This I do to bolster my argument about the nonwritten word. Bilgrami (2006) identifies the whole of Western morality

50  Derrida and the two forms of the word as subscribing to rules and principles. In contrast to moral principles, he finds an alternative; namely, moral examples who are more open-ended. In this context, he proposes Gandhi as proposing not a moral principle like in Western moral thinking, but as embodying an exemplar. (For a critique of Bilgrami for not considering Socrates and Christ as exemplars along with or before Gandhi, see Raghuramaraju [2013].) I highlighted these two instances that fall outside the word as written not only to positively frame Derrida’s logocentrism and presences, but also to show the borders and limitation of his ingenious attempt to un-envelope the pervasive phenomena of Western metaphysics. Without this framing, there is a problem of totalising the extent of this pervasive phenomenon that might distort Derrida. This brings us to the task of identifying the nature of Derrida’s legacy for India. One, given the presence of large areas that do not have centers, a project based on Derrida that operated against the center as its goalpost, it may not be useful or even proper to use him directly in India as seems to be the practice in liberal arts and social sciences disciplines in India. This will add to the present practice in India, which is similar to that of making PDF files of a non-Word document (that is, different from PDF files of a Word document in use within Western academics) or wanting to lay tiles in muddy soil. It is equally true, and pathetically so, that modern India has not produced good modern philosophical theories that are available ready-made which can theorise modern Indian texts and social institutions and practices. Here it may be pointed out that modern India is complex as it contains the combination of a huge and voluminous pre-modern simultaneously existing with the modern. Theorising this strange and unique combination is indeed an arduous task. To come back to the lack of modern philosophical theories, this understandably makes those from India look at those like Derrida and his philosophy as a useful way to theorise and understand the Indian themes. I have argued elsewhere that this modern absence is the reason for Indians using theories from the West, rather than colonialism as held by many (Raghuramaraju 2009a); that is, using the outside not because of colonialism but because of lack of internal resources. I have elsewhere argued the difference within the use of the outside by Indians like Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi. That is, outsider not only as an oppressor but, on the contrary, as an enabler (Raghuramaraju 2017b). The mismatch does not justify using Derrida as a bricolage, as bricolage makes sense against the overarching and oppressive presence of centers which India seems to be lacking.

Derrida and the two forms of the word 51 However, though not directly but indirectly, those like Derrida will be immensely useful to warn those from India against the dangers of allowing India that seems to lack strong centers to become one in the future. This will be a very good cautioning to circumvent danger in future; that is, the Western experience and the pervasive logocentrism can help Indians to avoid these possible developments. This demands a thorough understanding of Western philosophy that includes Derrida. The understanding of Indian society and texts should precede this, at least in some cases. Otherwise, this can lead to more confusion. Two, Derrida’s legacy can be of paramount importance in understanding the modern institutions that India inherited. Some of this is what was alluded by Spivak. In this context, one can also understand the complex and mutually manipulative relation in India between modern and traditional institutions; particularly, the way in which the latter sought to reconfigure their nature and territory. Three, given the lack of modern philosophies in India, we can make a selective, reflective, and judicious but not bricolage use of his deconstruction to understand better some centers and some deceptive and nascent centers in India. Four, we can understand better the relation between two forms of the word, the written and the spoken; the organised social institutions; and unorganised, yet powerful and oppressive, social institutions and practices. Last, while Derrida’s legacy may not directly find place in India, however, this is confined to his preoccupation that consists of his critique of logocentrism. Outside this negative domain, and with regard to those aspects that fall outside the logocentrism that is in his positive programme, Indian texts and realities are nearer to him. So, he belongs to India in this other and positive side. He might find a text like The Mahabharata with its polyphonic character less logocentric, and centeredless, unwieldy, and often messy Indian realities and practices less oppressive. Alternatively, those from India might make him see at least relative advantages in logocentrism that he ingeniously unearthed and relentlessly sought to dismantle. This other side – the positive side to Derrida – might get highlighted if you locate him within India, given the fact that located within the West naturally seems to have bolstered the negative side; that is, his critique of logocentrism. I began by distinguishing two aspects of the word, the spoken and written; located Derrida’s concern in his path-breaking essay in the transformation of the spoken in the form of open-ended dialogue into the written in Plato; and also identified the contribution to this in the form of modernity and logical positivism. I discussed key ideas of his essay by distinguishing the diagnosis part from the recommendatory

52  Derrida and the two forms of the word one. I used Rousseau’s classification between those who speak and those who write, and discussed instances from those who are on the ‘outside’. In the end, I have identified the possible ways of inheriting Derrida in India and in other disciplines like liberal arts and social sciences. This chapter highlighted speech as a form of word in addition to word as written. I have identified Derrida’s preoccupation with the latter and contrasted it with the former. The former consists of Socrates and others who did not write. In enlarging the domain where Socrates and others who are speaking philosophy, along with Indians in Rousseau’s portrayal, there is a possibility to relook at philosophical activity in India. This is with regard to the pre-Samkara period. This consists of Gaudapada, who proposed – perhaps for the first time – a comparative method to compare two incompatible philosophical schools, the Vedanta and Buddhism. We can also revisit the work of Badarayana, the first compiler who compiled, Vedanta Sutras. There is a further possibility of re-examining the speaking philosophy in Upanishads, by not merely looking into what is said about Brahman and Atman, but also examining the nature of who is speaking and to whom are they speaking. Further, in retracing philosophical activity in the pre-Samkara period, we can instead of taking the logocentrism and critiquing it like Derrida, take the written word not as an axiom but as a reference to look into the vibrant philosophy as speaking. In this context, we can examine different forms of speaking, including those that reveal the limits of speaking like not this, not this, neti, neti. We can also see the relation between speaking and silence. This can revitalise and enrich our understanding of Indian philosophy. I brought these from the West and grouped them along with Indian reality that falls outside the written and logocentrism. This thus sizes the indomitable West and makes it sizable to be used for India. The next chapter makes a further step, as I try to bend two other philosophers from the West, Deleuze and Guattari.

Notes 1 This chapter was previously published as “Two forms of the word, the spoken and written: Derrida, pre-Platonic writing West and speaking India,” in eSocialSciences, IKF (IRIS Knowledge Foundation) Mumbai, March 2017. 2 Rousseau uses the same argument in his The Social Contract where he first postulated a state of nature that is desirable; having postulated this, he then goes on to show how it is no more possible to retain this state, and in the conclusion, he comforts the reader by saying that leaving the state of nature where there is only a natural liberty is substantially compensated in the contracted civil society, by civil liberty. Let us discuss this. For Rousseau, though the ‘noble savage’ in the state of nature is still desirable, and

Derrida and the two forms of the word 53 perhaps there is no need to leave the state of nature as it is a desirable state. He says: To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts. (1952: 8) However, later he goes on to change this position and says that yet man in the state of nature has: reached the point at which the obstacles in the way of their preservation in the state of nature show their power of resistance to be greater than the resources at the disposal of each individual for his maintenance to that state. That primitive condition can then subsist no longer; and the human race would perish unless it changed its manner of existence. (1952: 11) This reason is external reason, as it emphasizes the sociological necessity. Having given the inevitability and subsequently the survival arguments, Rousseau further consoles his reader by saying that though forfeiting a natural state is a big loss, but what is gained in turn is better than what is lost. To quote him: The passage from the state of nature to the civil society produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. . . . Although, in this state, he deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless continually the happy moment which took him from it for ever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man. Let us draw up the whole account in terms easily commensurable. What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses. If we are to avoid mistake in weighing one against the other, we must clearly distinguish natural liberty, which is bounded only by the strength of the individual, from civil liberty, which is limited by the general will; and possession, which is merely the effect of force or the right of the first occupier, from property, which can be founded only on a positive title. (1952: 15–16) This third reason is internal one as it comes from within the individual and is not dictated by the sociological determination. So, in Rousseau we have three arguments, one, for staying in the state of nature and two, for leaving the state of nature, the inevitability, and to have a better state of affairs.

54  Derrida and the two forms of the word 3 I discussed this obsession with origin and the end of the same in Chapter 1 while discussing the metaphysics of Vaddera Chandidas. 4 While Spivak highlights eurocentrism in Foucault and Deleuze in her work (2010), this passage from Derrida eludes her attention. 5 At a different level, there have been attempts in the modern times when there have been radical moves to decenter interpretations. For instance, there have been several interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita as a text that positively promotes violence as Lord Krishna asks and instigates a reluctant Arjuna to fight war. This continued in the modern period, particularly in the interpretation of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi’s political guru. Gandhi repudiated this entire hermeneutical tradition beginning from the classical times by claiming with textual evidence that the text outrightly rejects violence and positively promotes non-violence (see Raghuramaraju 2016).

3 Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India Major and minor literatures1

This chapter begins with a discussion of the major and minor literatures in Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) and Félix Guattari (1930–1992), and then moves to reconfigure them. While retaining their internal relation, the chapter includes both the major and the minor literatures within a larger minor, by bringing reason and its realities of modernity as a major within the West. Having slightly bent the framework, it then attempts to understand the effective and positive relation between literature and politics in M. K. Gandhi and the Indian national movement, by relating them to major and minor literatures. This chapter thus seeks to understand India better using a calibrated Deleuze and Guattari and interprets them differently in a transplanted context. Let me begin with a distinction between using ready-made academic material and having to first prepare the material before it can be used. There is a variance, an unevenness, between these two. I am sensitive to this and wish to tread carefully to not accentuate the difference or unevenness. Unlike in the West where academic resources are available ready-made, in India, they are not, and one has to get them ready for use. This is a long procedure and requires different levels, stages, and methods of preparation. First, the resources have to be identified and their descriptions drawn up. One then needs to find out if there are existing interpretations on them, and write about these realities, practices, or ideas in a new idiom. Only then can these be used in academic discussions.2 Directly using the resources from India can expose these scholars from India to vulnerabilities and render them less enduring – to be considered esoteric at most, attracting more of curiosity than academic credibility, as is evident in those attempts of B. K. Matilal, Ajay Skaria, and Aishwary Kumar, despite themes and ideas from India gaining visibility at the global level.

56  Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India

I With this introductory clarification, let me ask, “How should I enter into Deleuze and Guattari’s work?” I would like to enter into their work by following the path used by them while working on Kafka. They ask right at the beginning of their monograph on Kafka: “How can we enter into Kafka’s work?” They choose to echo “the portrait of a porter with his head bent” (1986: 3) in Kafka’s The Castle. About this they say: The bent head that one can no longer raise appears all the time in the letters, in the Notebooks, in the Diaries, in the stories, and also in The Trial where the judges have their backs bent against the ceiling, against some of the assistants, the executioner, the priest and so on. Thus, the entrance we have chosen not only promises to connect with things that we hope will eventually appear in the work but is itself constituted by the connecting of two relatively independent forms, the form of content (the bent head) and the form of expression (portrait-photo), which reunite at the beginning of The Castle. (1986: 4) Following their take on Kafka, I too wish to enter with a similar posture and bowed head – that is, humbly. In this chapter, I want to bend the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari – without breaking it – for India. I want to deflate them in the West before transporting them to India, where I want to use them again by inflating them. I will confine the discussion in this chapter to their book on Kafka (1986). This book has dense philosophical discussion on an important literary writer. I will take some specific insights and ideas from this text, and reuse them to construct a frame for some themes from India. This frame is a philosophical move that I use to write this chapter. Now, when I have made my confession, the next issue is, from where do I enter? Here too, as in Kafka, the: castle has multiple entrances whose rules of usage and whose locations aren’t very well known. The hotel in Amerika has innumerable main doors and side doors that innumerable guards watch over; it even has entrances and exits without doors. Yet it might seem that the burrow in the story of that name has only one entrance. (1986: 3)

Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India 57 Likewise, several works of Deleuze and Guattari serve as multiple entrances. There are several main doors without entrances as well, in the form of books. Each entrance – that is, one of their books – has several commentaries published as books and journal articles. Both Deleuze and Guattari are concerned about those at the margin, the minor literature that is located within the major. This is important, because despite the fact that they do not directly discuss the Third World in their work, what they say about minor literature can be extended to understand themes from India. I highlight the variance between their predicament within and outside the West, and seek to place them within the Indian context to rejuvenate their radical political project. This brings me to their famous idea of minor literature and the specific relation between major and minor. To recall, I use Deleuze as a frame to understand the rhizome-like phenomena in India. Having made the clarification, I will now discuss how they distinguished between major and minor literatures. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the problem of expression that leads to their “method” is “staked out by Kafka not in an abstract and universal fashion but in relation to those literatures that are considered minor” (1986: 16). Instead of rendering concepts faceless, Kafka, they claim, depicted it in minor literature. Having identified the location of the expression in and by Kafka, they further clarify that minor literature – say Jewish literature of Warsaw and Prague – is not to be equated with minor language as opposed to a major language. Minor literature, according to them, is one that is constructed by a minority “within a major language” (1986: 16). Identifying the “first characteristic of minor literature”, they point out that it affects the major language “with a high coefficient of deterritorialization” (1986: 16). They give two concrete examples: one, Prague Jews, for whom “Prague German is a deterritorialized language, appropriate for strange and minor usage”; and two, what blacks do in America “with the English language” (1986: 17). This is the first characteristic of minor literature.3 The second characteristic of minor literature is that everything in it is political (1986: 17). In contrast to major literature, in minor literature the “cramped space forces each individual intrigue to connect immediately to politics”. This makes the individual concern become “all the more necessary, indispensable, magnified”. In this way, they claim, “the family triangle connects to other triangles – commercial, economic, bureaucratic, judicial – that determines its values” (1986: 17). Collective value is the third characteristic of minor literature. As “talent is not abundant in a minor literature”, this forces the necessity

58  Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India of the collective nature of minor literature. The scarcity of talent, Deleuze and Guattari point out, has turned out to be “beneficial” as it “allows the conception of something other than a literature of masters; what each author says individually already constitutes a common action, and what he or she says or does is necessarily political, even if others aren’t in agreement” (1986: 17). They go on to add: It is literature that produces an active solidarity in spite of scepticism; and if the writer is in the margins or completely outside his or her fragile community, this situation allows the writer all the more the possibility to express another possible community and to forge the means for another consciousness and another sensibility. (1986: 17) Therefore, the minor literature that constitutes these three characteristics, “the deterritorialization of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of enunciation”, is not located within “specific literatures”, but constitutes what Deleuze and Guattari call “revolutionary conditions for every literature within the heart” of major literature (1986: 18). Even he who has the misfortune of being born in the country of great literature must write in its language, just as Czech Jew writes in German, or an Ouzbekian writes in Russian. And to do that, finding his own point of underdevelopment, his own patois, his own third world, his own desert. (1986: 18) Subsuming the current discussion on “marginal literature”, “popular literature”, or “a proletarian literature”, they say that laying out the criteria about these is difficult if one does not start with the more objective concept of minor literature.

II While accepting this novel thesis and a radical positioning of the minor within the major literature, I want to relook at the rise of Renaissance art and literature. I find the rise of art and literature during this period coinciding with the advent of modernity. In this context, I want to explore here whether there is any causal relation between these coincidences, the rise of modernity, and instantiation of art and literature during and after the Renaissance. I want to use this

Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India 59 general background to locate Deleuze and Guattari’s radical positing of the minor within the major. Let me begin with literature and art. The major themes of Renaissance art and modern literature are from the pre-modern. They consist of religion, nature, countryside, and childhood. Here let me clarify that the relation between art and life; art and nature, following Aristotle, was an extension of life or nature. This gets subtly but substantially changed during the Renaissance, when instead of becoming an extension it is seeking to reclaim what is rejected in reality by modernity; namely, the pre-modern. It is this act of reclaiming what is rejected in reality that forced to relook at how the rejected contents like religion, countryside, and childhood are framed and prisoned. The nature of the content from the pre-modern made me to relook at the causes for this upsurge in art and literature during this period. Alternatively, and interestingly, and not coincidentally, I find that the content in art and literature is what is excluded and rejected by modernity. Let me explain. Here instead of referring to this extension and amorphous domain called modernity, I want to focus on Descartes, in whose writings we can find foundations of modernity. He formulated a new logic in his Discourse on Method, a logic of exclusion that sought to disinherit everything from the pre-modern including the classical. To repeat, he sets out his normative scale, which is cogito – reason and certainty – and embarks on excluding, at the outset, others, which are childhood (as it is the domain governed by appetite and teachers rather than reason, the latter he identifies as the domain of adults) (1985: 117), language (1985: 113), history (for him the past is like travel, which takes us away from the present), oratory, poetry (poetry is the “gift of mind rather than fruits of study” (1985: 114), moral writings of pagans (1985: 114), customs, and evolutionary growth of societies (he rejects gradual growth of societies) (1985: 116); he even rejects classical logic and mathematics as they are “mixed up with” all sorts of things (1985: 119–120). While there are several aspects to modernity, such as industrial revolution, Enlightenment, capitalism, and humanism, my focus is on this foundation to the modern. This inaugurated entirely new way of looking at the world thus becoming a radical project. Descartes may have been a good Christian; however, the philosophy that he was laying the foundation of was not an extension of Christianity. His writings do not motivate you to be a good Christian. On the contrary, it radically opposes any aspect of life, including religion, that does not pass through the protocols of modern rationality and objectivity. It instead moves to be away from any form of religion in particular,

60  Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India and any form of pre-modern in general. The radical project of modernity lies in this clear and ruthless exclusion and disinheriting the past, and started everything new. Locke’s idea of tabula rasa represents one form of this. This unloading of the pre-modern attracted and appealed to a generation of people. It is another matter that the extremism did pose some problems, which led subsequent philosophers like Kant and Hegel to deal with it. Despite these, modernity remained an indispensable way of life. Therefore, instead of finding pre-modern elements such as religion and nature in the writings of Descartes and later writers such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot who reduced the radicalism in modernity, there is a need to distinguish the foundation to modernity as available in Descartes from the diluted version of modernity in subsequent philosophers. To return to the main idea, these moves by Descartes give us a general idea of the project of disinheriting and excluding all those emerging from the pre-modern to the domain of modernity. Therefore, modernity and its rationalism rejected the pre-modern – and that which is rejected is reclaimed in imagination in art and literature. Thus, there is a causal relation between modernity on one hand and art and literature on the other. The latter is a reaction to and dependent on the former. In addition to the nature of the content in art and literature during the Renaissance that is from the pre-modern, I also want to scrutinise the place of frame that imbricates the picture in art or binding in literature. I want to claim that art and literature during the Renaissance, while reclaiming in imagination what is rejected by the modern, do fix these contents from the pre-modern within the frame and binding so that these contents are quarantined, and do not encroach into the social reality. This ensures that these remnants from the pre-modern, though inside, yet remain enclosed, and almost are sterilised for social and political purposes. It is possible that this will have become diluted subsequently in contemporary art that depicts the impact of machines on human beings. This rendered art and literature in the West confined itself at the individual level. Having reconfigured the relation between modernity and its rationalism as major, and art and literature – including major and minor literatures – as minor, now let me discuss the second characteristic. Contrary to the assertion by Deleuze and Guattari, the literature and art during this period – particularly, the nostalgic arts like paintings of utopian landscapes, poems that depicted nature, and religious themes – did not contain politics, nor did it generate political change. Even in those writings such as those of Goethe, Zola, Malraux, and

Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India 61 Hugo that depicted the impact of the political is at the individual emotional level and did not extend to become a political movement that had lasting influence. Thus, the impact of this form of literature within the modern West remained restricted to the imaginary realm without any significant impact at the social and political levels. I do not find in the literature of the West during this period the components of the revolutionary politics that gave rise to radical political movements. Literature provided a contrast, but it did not lead to any revolutionary changes in the political realm to counter modernity. In contrast, modernity grew substantially, subsuming literature within its fold, thus successfully co-opting it. Despite being political, literature remained confined to the imaginary realm, and did not have much impact in the realm of reality. Alternatively, unlike in Deleuze and Guattari’s portrayal envisaging a radical and confrontationist role to minor literature, I want to claim that both forms of literature, both major and minor, are discharging the role of reclaiming in imagination what is rejected in reality by modernity and its rationality. So, the radicalness of modernity lies in its attempt at excluding and thus disinheriting the pre-modern as evident in Descartes move to exclude various aspects that form part of the past and non-rational. This is despite those aspects like God that he at times evoked in his writings. The project of modernity is more fundamental than the author; that is, Descartes. Subsequently, that which is excluded by the modern and rational is reclaimed in art and literature in Renaissance art and later literature. This multilayer of subtexts that form part of the grammar of art and literature during this period must be excavated to get at the correct and comprehensive algorithm; otherwise, one might make ad hoc distinctions, such as that between modernity and modernism, to classify artists. This distinction in turn leads to clumsy overlapping and leaves crucial ideas hanging outside the categories. Shakespeare is a modernist because his historical plays discharge the job of preserving what is vanishing. He is also a modernist because his tragedies are based on non-reason. In contrast, in Greek tragedies like those of Antigone, the prophecy, customary law that Antigone defied, and the time given and the reverse sequence between those who prayed that Antigone be saved and Creon’s agreeing to their prayer – all these fall outside the programme of modernity set by Descartes. There may be some common aspects between the pre-modern and modern forms of art and literature similar to that of use of space and time in both Newtonian and Einsteinian science; however, there is a paradigm shift à la Thomas Kuhn that gives different meaning to

62  Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India the same terms. Instead of focussing attention on the surface similarities, there is a need to identify the difference in meaning. To return to Shakespeare, in contrast to the causes of tragedy in the pre-modern Greek plays, in the case of modern plays like Shakespeare, the plays are not the tragedies that happen to be based on non-reason; they are inevitably tragedies because they are based on non-reason. Love determines the tragic fate in a prophetic manner. Therefore, the core is not tragedy, but reason and non-reason. That which is outside reason cannot give certainty. The rejected and removed leftover from the premodern that are termed as non-reason are rehabilitated on paper and on canvas. Alfred Tennyson’s brook, childhood in the form of a “rose bud” in the film Citizen Kane, Paul Gauguin’s Marquesas Islands – all these reveal the underlying task of art and literature in the West. Unless we understand this underlying and complex relation between art and modernity, many significant things about these genres will elude us. The rejected and removed pre-modern is disinfected by art and contained in text or on canvas. This perhaps is one of the underlying reasons why in the West, institutions such as museums, libraries, and other spaces that house the lost pre-modern receive an almost sacred attention. The processed pre-modern inside the text and canvas is safe, as it largely produces synthetic sensibilities. Such sensibilities are safe, following Foucault’s views on prison that is right inside the city yet well enclosed, differently, as these forms from the pre-modern do not infect the modern. Like in Foucault, we can see how these frames quarantined the contents from the pre-modern. These contents in the painting though clearly enclosed are within the gallery, which is a public space. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s formulation of the minor, I assert that the task of the domain of imagination – creative imagination – was trying to reclaim what is rejected, demolished, or lost in reality. Further, even with regard to the third characteristic, minor literature like Kafka did not become a collective programme. Extending this to even major literature, one can claim that literature in the West did not lead to a collective programme. If there were changes at the collective level in the West that led to political movements, these were in philosophy; economics, such as capitalism; social movements; and politics such as the French Revolution, but not in literature. And what succeeded even in these movements was not dissent from modernity, but various aspects of modernity that were deterritorialised and reterritorialised, being mute witness to the extreme expansion of the modern project. So, there is variance, even conflict, between what is claimed by Deleuze and Guattari about minor literature such as Kafka and

Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India 63 the reality on the ground. Having made these critical claims that bend without breaking them in the specific context of their thesis in their book on Kafka, let me, now, transport them and use their work and the important characteristics formulated by them to understand the development in India.

III Modernity, art, and literature from the West travelled to the non-West during colonialism. While modernity initially threatened to repeat a clean sweep outside the West, it met with mixed and varied success. It did have an impact on societies like India, where it managed to reject and remove certain domains of the pre-modern. However, other domains of the pre-modern received the modern without disappearing. In some cases, the modern was received as an addition, or as incorporation, either as an influential partner or otherwise. Some parts of pre-modern Indian writings are residing in disguise (see Raghuramaraju 2013). There remained large domains that interrogated modernity, resisted it, and repudiated it, meeting modernity with a dispersed and decentralised response. There is a variance between the success of modernity in the place of its origin and outside it, like in India. This is despite the claim made by those like Latour that people who belong to the modern period and came under the influence of modernity have never been modern (1991). The problem with this claim is not whether they are modern or modern enough, but has not modernity and rationalism – particularly, the impact of modern science and technology – made a huge impact on the lives of people? Do people live modern lives or continue to live the pre-modern life? Conceding the fact that there remains some amount of pre-modern in the modern period, however, it is a matter of fact that people’s lifestyles have changed. People do not go to a pre-modern medical consultant, but go to the professional doctor. The changing nature of people and society due to modern life needs to be taken into consideration while highlighting the presence of pre-modern in the modern. Alternatively, the presence of the pre-modern cannot be used to falsify the phenomena called modern. A mutually exclusive sequential relationship between the premodern and the modern removed the former, which in turn enabled the rise of art and literature in the West. In contrast, the coexistence, simultaneous relationship, and the presence of the pre-modern presented a different picture between the place of its origin and in India. Alternatively, the absence of the pre-modern inevitably led to dissent

64  Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India with modernity relapsing into the romantic problematic. Let me illustrate this. Disinheriting of the pre-modern by the modern in the West perhaps left no choice for the dissenters of modernity but to operate within the realm of fiction like the works of Ruskin, Tolstoy, Thoreau, and other romantic writers. In India, on the other hand, the existing pre-modern realities impelled Gandhian dissent to become a political programme. Let me explain the relation between dissent in the West and Gandhi. Partha Chatterjee points this out while elucidating the difference. He says: But the point about Gandhi’s selectiveness in picking ideas from his favourite authors [Ruskin, Tolstoy, and others] can be illustrated a little more in order to lead on to my next proposition that the fundamental core of the Gandhian ideology does not lie in a romantic problematic. (1986: 98) He goes on to say that the: thorough going anarchism in Tolstoy was not accompanied by any specific political programme. There was simply a belief that the exemplary action of a few individuals, resisting the state by the strength of their conscience, would sway the people towards a massive movement against the institutions of violence. . . . In one aspect of his thought, Gandhi shared the same standpoint; but his thought ranged far beyond this specific ideological aspect. And it is here that the comparison with Tolstoy breaks down, because Gandhism also concerned itself with the practical organizational questions of a political movement. And this was a national political movement, required to operate within the institutional process set up and directed by the colonial state. In its latter aspect, therefore, Gandhism had perforce to reckon with the practical realities of a bourgeois legal and political structure as indeed of the organizational issues affecting a bourgeois political movement. (1986: 101, original emphasis) While accepting Chatterjee’s distinction relating Gandhi to nationalism through the Western route, I should like to emphasise the relation between Gandhi and the pre-modern societies – in the process, making contingent the necessary route assumed by Chatterjee between nationalism in the West and Gandhi. Moreover, Gandhi’s project could

Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India 65 become a political programme because of the existence of pre-modern social realities in India, a point not recognised by Chatterjee. This was not available to the dissenters of modernity in the West like Tolstoy, Ruskin, and Thoreau. This I want to claim forced their voice to “lie in a romantic problematic”. Here, let me point out that unlike Chatterjee, I would disaggregate the ‘national’ political and treat the nation only as an aspect of the political, and see – again unlike Chatterjee – the political in Gandhi’s village reconstruction is an institution from the pre-modern. It is this facility that does not allow dissent in India to merely sit in a “romantic problematic”. Therefore, it is necessary to revisit Chatterjee’s fixing of Gandhi as a contributor to nationalism and see him as the one contesting nationalism, taking the debate between pre-modern and modern into active consideration. Chatterjee, in complaining about the political programme of Gandhi, misses the positive aspects of this difference. He fails to recognise the positive aspects in Gandhi, which can be traced to the simultaneous existence of the pre-modern.4 Having discussed the political impact of literature in India, let me now discuss the third characteristic feature of the minor literature elucidated by Deleuze and Guattari; namely, its collective aspect. Similar to the predicament of the second characteristic of minor literature, the third characteristic feature also meets the requirements in India. Let me elaborate how this happens in the following, again with regard to Gandhi. Gandhi is also known as Mahatma. While M. K. Gandhi refers to an individual, however, Mahatma does not refer to an individual as it designates a universal. Maha-Atma means over-personal self. A universal includes the collective and does not refer to any particular individual. The journey from individual to over-personal self or Gandhi to Mahatma is a long one. There are several people who contributed to the arrival of this journey. To begin with, it was Tagore who gave the honorific ‘Mahatma’ to Gandhi, or at least began referring to him as the ‘Mahatma’ as early as February 1915 (Bhattacharya 1997: 4), or “popularised it” (Sen 2005: 92). Elucidating the “true meaning of the great word ‘Mahatma’ ”, Tagore says: It implies the emancipated soul that realises itself in all souls. It means the life that is no longer confined within itself, but finds its larger soul of Atman, of Spirit. Then, in such realisation, it becomes Mahatma. For it includes all spirits in itself. . . . [It is the] great universal spirit, the Mahatma, whose activities are for the whole world, is not for any confinement, or limitation, but for the universe. . . . The Infinite Soul, whose activities are boundless

66  Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India and whose dwelling place is in the hearts of all human beings, he is the Mahatma. (in Prabhu and Kelkar 1961: 10–11) Justifying the designation of Mahatma, Tagore says: Offer him the throne of all India, he will refuse to sit on it, but will sell the jewels and distribute the money among the needy. Give him all the money America possesses, and he will certainly refuse to accept it, unless to be given away for a worthy cause for the uplift of humanity. His soul is perpetually anxious to give, and he expects absolutely nothing in return – not even thanks. (in Prabhu and Kelkar 1961: 12–13). Tagore, in a prophetic mode claimed, “Gandhi . . . is a liberated soul. If anyone strangles me, I shall be crying for help; but if Gandhi were strangled, I am sure he would not cry. He may laugh at his strangler; and if he has to die, he will die smiling” (Prabhu and Kelkar 1961: 13). When Tagore called him Mahatma, Gandhi realised that he was not yet a Mahatma. He immediately saw the chasm between these two notions of the self, the particular and the over-personal, and also recognised that the distance to be covered to reach the over-personal self was long. Sensing the arduous nature of this crossing over, Gandhi seems to have sought the help of Tagore, whom he called ‘Gurudev’. By using this phrase, he seems to address Tagore: “If you want me to be Mahatma then you be my Guru and lead me from my present state of particular self to the state of over-personal self”. In asking Tagore, to lead him, Gandhi seems to have imbricated Tagore in this onerous task. Thus, imbricated with the historical stage, let us see how each performed his role in an ingenious and interesting way. There are two issues that need our attention. Gandhi undertakes the arduous journey from the individual self to the over-personal self not by leaving the institution of the family, the path usually followed by earlier sages and seekers, but by remaining within the folds of family. This is an instance of variance with the canon or precedents, and carries serious implications that need to be acknowledged and factored in. For instance, Gandhi’s son Harilal did not understand the nature and consequences of this new combination that his father was experimenting with. For him, it was something like questions in the examination that are given from outside the syllabus. Therefore, we need to relook at the relation between father and son against this larger background and not reduce it to an ordinary quarrel. Harilal Gandhi’s

Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India 67 failure to understand this new combination that his father is undertak­ ing is possibly one of the reasons for the strained relation between a father and his son. Harilal Gandhi’s point to his father seems to have been that he, being a father – particularly as he remained within the family – should have taken care of his children. The major issue surrounding Harilal Gandhi’s differences with his father was for not recommending him for a scholarship. Gandhi did not want to discharge this duty of being a committed father, as he was preoccupied with the idea of Mahatma, which transcends – and in some cases even negates – the empirical self. This decision of Gandhi to stay within the fold of family and yet undertake the discipline and privations of Mahatmahood posed serious problems for those around him, like his wife Kasturba. Her ingenuity lies in quickly making both mental and physical adjustments to this new arrangement. Her task was difficult, but she discharged it brilliantly, making Gandhi’s job easier. In addition to Tagore, Harilal, and Kasturba, others who contributed in a critical manner to the making of Mahatma are Mohammad Ali Jinnah and B. R. Ambedkar (for more on this, see Raghuramaraju 2018c). This, thus, is another instance to show how minor in India is not individual but collective; in fact, more than collective, as Mahatma is a universal concept. Therefore, there is a variance – as available in texts on modernity, particularly in Descartes – in relation between pre-modern and modern in the West and in India. While they are ordered in a sequential relation in the West, they follow simultaneous order in India. Pre-modern India simultaneously exists, or rather coexists with modernity, thus providing a variance to the Western experience. Further, this variance with the advent of modernity through colonialism did not allow in India the rise of arts and literature reclaiming what is lost in reality, as they did in the West; that is, art and literature did not face the same predicament in India as they did in the West. My second claim is that the fact of literature, both marginal and major not giving rise to political movement in the West, rejects the claims in the form of three characteristics of minor literature, according to Deleuze and Guattari. By contrast, the literature of the West, though not that of Kafka but those including Tolstoy, Ruskin, and Thoreau, remained within the romantic problematic, and failed to make a stage appearance in fundamentally effecting political change. In contrast, these same literary figures provided inspiration and support to major Indian political leaders like Gandhi. We cannot think about Gandhi and his contribution to freedom struggle without these literary figures from the West. In addition, the freedom movement in Indian is a massive, political and collective

68  Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India exercise. That is, while the three characteristics of minor literature that Deleuze and Guattari identified failed to be effective in the West, they have become massive support in the transplanted context that is India. It is for this reason that I want to bend Deleuze and Guattari, and transport them to India. Therefore, in the West, modernity sought to disinherit its premodern. What is lost in reality, which is pre-modern, is sought to be reclaimed in imagination by art and literature. This lowers the status of literature in the West and makes Deleuze and Guattari’s thesis about minor literature less relevant. In contrast, the literature, though not Kafka, that failed to become a political project but remained within the romantic problematic in the West, has contributed immensely to the political project by influencing those like Gandhi, who played a major role in the Indian freedom struggle. This, thus, makes Deleuze and Guattari’s thesis about minor literature relevant in India. This is an instance where bended Western philosophers can be of enormous importance to India.5 The chapter began by discussing the problem in comparative philosophy between India and the West. I discussed Deleuze and Guattari’s thesis on minor literature and argued that they do not reflect reality. I, then, highlighted how in the transplanted context, literary figures from the West made huge impact on Indian politicians like Gandhi. This move to bend philosophers without breaking them before transporting them avoids the problem associated with the available practice that commits temporal imbalance in which India loses before the beginning of comparison; or creating visibility of modern Indian thinkers by comparing them with modern philosophers such as Derrida, which has danger due to disproportion in the availability of the scholarship on philosophers who are compared. In this move to bend, the other like India continues to deal with its own other; that is, those from outside India thus avoiding relapsing into seclusion and provincialism. Further, it also circumvents the danger where the other from the outside with its overpowering dominates and destroys the native. In the specific case of India, this over-indulgence with philosophies from the outside – that is, the West – has not led to good understanding or critical engagement with it, thus creating caricatures of the outside. These caricatures co-exist with the destroyed native scholarship. The chapter also rejects those who are against borrowing from the outside – except that, while there is nothing intrinsically wrong in borrowing, the borrower should know what to borrow, how much to borrow, from whom to borrow, her or his capacity to use what is

Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India 69 borrowed, and the capability to repay. Bending those from the outside provides one an opportunity to reflect on these aspects of borrowing. The next chapter makes a move whereby a modern Indian philosopher’s position takes the discussion of non-being much further than those such as Bergson and Deleuze.

Notes 1 This article was previously published as “Bending Deleuze and Guattari for India: Re-examining the relation between art and politics in Europe and India,” Sophia, 57.3: 475–87, 2018. Reprinted by permission of Springer. 2 Even regarding the state of philosophy in the West, Deleuze and Guattari raise doubt when they ask, “Is there a hope for philosophy, which for a long time has been an official, referential genre? Let us profit from this moment in which anti-philosophy is trying to be a language of power” (1986: 27). In comparison, the plight of philosophy is found even more wanting – particularly the themes from India. Indian academics, in making a minor use of Western philosophy, made theory in India doubly minor, robbing it of its radicalism. 3 One can see similarities between this and Foucault. Foucault, too, shows how that which is excluded by reason is quarantined by society in the form of clinics, prisons, and asylums. This suggests how – unlike in Hobbes, where those outside the contract are also physically outside – Foucault, in contrast, shows how that which is outside reason remains – albeit quarantined – within. 4 The portion regarding the relation between the advent of modernity and rise of art and literature are from Raghuramaraju (2009b). 5 In my book Raghuramaraju (2011), I have argued that Alasdair MacIntyre is more relevant to India than to the West.

4 From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas Excavating the relation between non-being and permanence1 I The Entrance There are many doorways through which one may enter. I choose the one that excavates the fundamental relation between ontology and politics. In this context, I want to explicate the relation between inequality and non-being. I will identify three important ideas that mediate this relation. They are: negation, permanence, and hierarchy. Inequality is part of a larger whole; that is, hierarchy. Therefore, to understand the nature of inequality better, we need to step inside hierarchy. One way of problematising hierarchy is to scrutinise its ontological status and explicate its foundations and the conditions that make it possible. This line of inquiry can throw more light on political discussions, as well as the social phenomenon of inequality. For instance, there is a possibility to better understand the underlying philosophical foundations of Aristotle, who defended inequality as natural, as opposed to Rousseau, who claimed equality to be so. Both Aristotle and Rousseau evoke nature to justify inequality and equality respectively. For Aristotle, among the “barbarians, however [contrary to the order of nature], the female and the slave occupy the same position” (1986: 3). On the contrary, civilised people do and should practice inequality. In contrast, Rousseau says in his now famous statement that man is born free but everywhere he is in chains (1952: 3). While agreeing with Aristotle that there is inequality all around us, he differs from Aristotle when he says that this inequality is not the cause but the effect. To quote Rousseau, “Aristotle, before any of them, had said that men are by no means equal naturally, but that some are born for slavery, and others for dominion” (1952: 5). The inequality that is before us is not due to inequality at the outset.

From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas 71 In other words, according to Rousseau, there is no continuous relation between the past and the present. In fact, he looks at this relation as discontinuous. For him, unlike Aristotle, it is a case whereby the original state of equality was converted into a state of inequality. While their political stands are diametrically opposed to each other, they have two things in common. One, both use nature, albeit diametrically opposed interpretations of it; two, both follow a homogenous movement – that is, a movement from inequality to inequality (Aristotle), and movement from equality to equality (Rousseau). It is in Hegel where the movement is from inequality (real) to equality (rational). This movement is a historical and a long one, empirically difficult but not logically impossible, and the process is governed by dialectics. Similarly, there is a possibility to better understand anthropological studies such as Louis Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus, which cogently contrasts the hierarchy in Indian society with the egalitarianism of modern European society. Contrasting hierarchy from equality, Dumont says, “castes teach us a fundamental social principle, hierarchy. We, in our modern society, have adopted the principle contrary to it” (2013: 2). Clarifying the status of the objects of his study, he says, “The principle of equality and the principle of hierarchy are facts, indeed they are among the most constraining facts, of political and social life” (2013: 3). His “first aim”, he declares, is to “understand the ideology of the caste system. This ideology is directly contradicted by the egalitarian theory which we hold” (2013: 4). Hierarchy is sustained by permanence. That which is in a state of flux cannot provide conditions for the formation, sustenance, and growth of hierarchy. The hierarchical model of polity suggested by Plato in his Republic is sustained by his obsession with permanence, or rather his rejection of anything that changes. Remove permanence from Plato’s philosophy, and his political order in the Republic collapses. Similarly, there are clear and complex portrayals of non-being in classical Indian philosophies that also promote hierarchy. Thus, there is a close and necessary relation between permanence and hierarchy. To continue the exploration along these lines, I would like to argue that permanence is made possible by non-being. Non-being is the resource for permanence. In the relation between being and nonbeing, the former is identified with change and the latter with permanence. Non-being, in turn, is made possible by negation – non-being is the negation of being. With this project of excavating the relation between ontology and politics in the context of explicating the relation between non-being and inequality that can shed different – if not better – light on the political discussions of equality and inequality,

72  From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas this chapter discusses the Vedas, Upanishads, Bergson, Deleuze, and Chandidas on non-being. The views of Henri Bergson (1859–1941) and Vaddera Chandidas (1937–2005) on negation will also be discussed. I will return to the relation between ontology and politics in the conclusion at the end of a philosophical discussion on the concept of non-being. Let me now identify the wall on which I would like to hang my chapter, much like a painting. This chapter seeks to extend Deleuze’s account of Bergson’s philosophy of non-being. This is undertaken by bringing into the discussion different versions of non-being from some Indian philosophical traditions including the Vedas, Upanishads, and Chandidas. The views of Bergson and Chandidas on negation will also be discussed. The first section will discuss different versions of nonbeing in classical Indian philosophy. The reason is twofold: (1) the variety that is available, and (2) classical Indian philosophy propounds non-frozen and clearly distinguished dimensions of non-being, presented as pre-existence, post-existence, and non-existence. The next section will discuss Deleuze’s interpretation of Bergson on non-being and negation. This will be followed by a discussion on a form of permanence other than non-being, namely, certainty, in rationalists like Descartes, and its rejection by Hume. The chapter finally discusses rejection of negation, a mere project of intellect that clouds reality, which is in constant process and change in Chandidas.

II The Wall There are different versions of non-being in classical Indian philosophical theories; most of these converge on the notion of non-being as pre-existence, except Buddhism and Carvaka. Buddhism, however, converged with them on the notion of post-existence, which is another form of non-being. So, there is a classical convergence on the notion of pre-existence and/or post-existence, though with some exceptions. Both these states are identified with permanence. Let me identify some versions of non-being from classical Indian philosophy here. (Some part of the following discussion is from my book [Raghuramaraju 2009a].) An earlier formulation of non-being is available in the Rgveda, · where it is claimed that void or absolute absence preceded existence. This idea of absence is expressed in negative terms. It is said in Songs of Creation that “Then there was neither Aught nor Nought, no air

From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas 73 nor sky beyond” (Muir 1868: 129).2 So this state of pre-existence, in which nothing whatsoever ‘is’, is designated as a state where there is no trace of ‘change’. It is from this state of pre-existence or non-being that existence is formed. According to the Rgveda, it is from this void· like situation that existence first arose. To quote: Who knows, who ever told, from whence this vast creation rose? No gods had then been born – who then can e’er the truth disclose? Whence sprang this world, and whether framed by hand divine or no – Its Lord in heaven alone can tell, if ever he can show. (Muir 1868: 129)3 So, existence or being came out of non-being. However, being and non-being are heterogeneous and mutually exclusive. Hence, the difficulty in explaining such a process, is taken to be a mystery. The problem regarding the relation between non-being and being recurs subsequently in Taittirīya Upanis· ad where it is maintained that in the beginning “this [world] was non-existent” and from this “Being (sat) was produced” (Hume 2003: 287). In Muṇḍaka Upanis· ad, nonbeing in the form of pre-existence is referred to as “invisible, ungraspable, without family, without caste (a-varna). Without sight or hearing is It, without hand or foot”. It is eternal, “all-pervading, omnipresent, exceedingly subtle”, and imperishable.4 The state of affairs of preexistence is mostly the opposite of what is found in existence. The first phase of this transition into the opposite is variously interpreted. There are different versions of creation. The first form of creation is water, and everything else subsequently emerges from it. In Chāndogya Upanis· ad, there are two contrasting versions of non-being. One version depicts it as non-being, and another as being. The first version says that in the “beginning this world was merely non-being”. Explaining the evolutionary process of this state of non-being it details the various stages as it first “turned into an egg”. After “a period of a year. It was split asunder. One of the two eggshell-parts became silver, one gold”. A cosmological explanation is offered: That which was of silver is this earth. That which was of gold is the sky. What was the outer membrane is the mountains. What was the inner membrane is cloud and mist. What were the veins are the rivers. What the fluid was within is the ocean.

74  From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas Reporting further developments, Chāndogya Upaniṣad says, “When it was born, shouts and hurrahs, all beings and all desires rose up toward it” (Hume 2003: 214–215).5 These accounts bring some philosophical ideas from classical Indian philosophy into discussion of non-being. To return to the argument, while the concept of non-being as pre-existence is not accepted by Buddhism and Carvaka, post-existence – a form of non-being – is accepted by Buddhism and is named Nibbana. Another form of nonbeing is non-existence. Thus, there is a larger convergence on the concept of non-being, as most Indian philosophical schools – with the exception of Carvaka – accept at least some form of it. Despite these different versions and dimensions of non-being, I would like to claim that the very acceptance of non-being by these philosophical schools quietly privileges it. That is, non-being is not accepted per se, but because it is permanent. Alternatively, permanence gives credibility to non-being. Having introduced the ideas of non-being from Indian philosophy, now let me analyse in the next section Deleuze’s discussion of the concept of non-being in Bergson. The reason for undertaking this task is that in his short book entitled, Bergsonism, Deleuze lucidly analyses various aspects of Bergson’s philosophy of non-being. As my discussion is confined to non-being, I refrain from highlighting both the differences between Bergson and Deleuze on non-being as well as the different versions of non-being from the history of Western philosophy.6

III The Frame Deleuze creates a wonderful frame or scaffolding for Bergson’s idea of non-being and attendant philosophical problems in his short book Bergsonism (1991). Let me begin by closely analysing the idea of non-being in Bergson as presented by Deleuze. Before discussing nonbeing in Bergson, Deleuze creates a frame in the form of questions and answers; that is, the idea of non-being is discussed within the frame of questions and answers. He claims that the frame prevails over the idea. He cautions that if one discusses the idea, that is, the idea of non-being, without paying attention to the frame, one may not be able to understand the idea, particularly a radical aspect of the idea that is controlled by the frame. He observes that this outcome occurs not because the ideas themselves lack radicalism, but because the

From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas 75 underlying frame prevents them from being expressed. Let us discuss the nature of this frame before addressing the problem of non-being. Tracing the roots of this frame, Deleuze points out that the habit of answering questions is inculcated in childhood and institutionalised at school. He clarifies that this begins very early in a child’s life when “the school teacher. . . ‘poses’ the problems; and the ‘pupils’ task is to discover the solutions” (1991: 15). While many see this as a ladder to success or a scale for ascertaining progress, he, on the contrary, identifies two important issues: first, the control exerted by questions; and second, the slavishness of giving answers. The point Deleuze makes is that answers are in reality controlled by the questions asked. If one gives answers that are controlled by the questions, the truth or falsity of the answers are dependent on the questions. So, truth or falsity is controlled by the paradigm of the question. Questions, thus, limit the universalism of the enquiry. According to Deleuze, one way of seeing the limitation of the restricted domain of truth or falsity within the confines of the question is to interrogate the question. This, he says, is true freedom: “True freedom lies in a power to decide, to constitute problems themselves. And this ‘semi-divine’ power entails the disappearance of false problems as much as the creative upsurge of true ones” (1991: 15). This shifts the focus from answers to questions. Extending Bergson’s take on this, Deleuze writes, “The truth is that in philosophy and even elsewhere it is a question of finding the problem and consequently of positing it, even more than of solving it” (in Deleuze 1991: 15, original emphasis).7 Perhaps most critically, Deleuze says that the difficulty with speculative thinking is that problems are solved not when answers are found, but when questions are ‘properly stated’. So, our analysis must move from a focus on answers to the questions themselves. When questions are properly interrogated and properly stated, we get solutions, which may have remained ‘hidden’ or ‘covered up’ until then. Embedded within the twin concepts of covering and uncovering are the ideas of not merely discovering what is already there, but also inventing what “did not exist” and what “might never have happened” (1991: 15). To reinforce his claim about questions, Deleuze quotes Marx, who declared “Humanity only sets itself problems that it is capable of solving” (1991: 16). Deleuze claims that according to both Bergson and Marx, problems are not the shadows of pre-existing solutions. He sums up, saying: the history of man, from the theoretical as much as from the practical point of view is that of the construction of problems. It is

76  From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas here that humanity makes its own history, and the becoming conscious of that activity is like the conquest of freedom. (1991: 15–16) Having laid bare the relative relation between the answer and the question, Deleuze considers the more substantial difficulty between the problem and the truth: “how can this constitutive power, which resides in the problem, be reconciled with the norm of the true?” (1991: 16). This is a significant issue in comparison with the one between the problem and the solution. While handling the relation between the problem and the solution, where problems have already been stated, it is “relatively easy” to say “in what the true and false consist when applied to the process of stating problems” (1991: 16). Deleuze also points out, for those who become conscious about the need to “take the test of true and false beyond the solutions into problems themselves” that “many philosophers fall into circular arguments” (1991: 16) while undertaking this task. Distinguishing them from Bergson, he says that the latter’s great virtue lies in attempting an “intrinsic determination of the false in the expression ‘false problem’ ” (1991: 17). Having moved the focus from ideas to structure, and within the structure, from solutions to problems, Deleuze says that Bergson classified problems into two categories: true problems and false problems. False problems again are of two kinds: non-existent problems, and badly stated problems. The terms of non-existent problems are indicative of confusion between more and less. On the other hand, badly stated problems or questions represent badly analysed composites. Having laid bare the larger frame, Deleuze discusses the realm of ideas, namely, the problem of non-being. (Along with non-being, he also discusses two other problems; namely, disorder and possible. I will not discuss them here except those that are relevant to nonbeing, as my focus is on non-being.) Let me caution here that unless one takes into consideration these clearly classified levels and realms, distinctions, and their relations, one will miss seeing the complexity of the issue. We will not be able to capture the underlying politics if we begin to discuss the idea of non-being directly. Deleuze sees this danger and devotes key parts of his short book in analysing the frame before he brings into the discussion the idea of non-being. In the section “COMPLEMENTARY RULE”, Deleuze writes: “False problems are of two sorts, ‘nonexistent problems’, defined as problems whose very terms contain a confusion of the ‘more’ and the ‘less’; and ‘badly stated’ questions, so defined because their terms represent badly analyzed composites” (1991: 17; original emphasis). He

From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas 77 says that Bergson cites the problem of non-being, of disorder, or of the possible as examples of the first set of problems; namely, the problem of more or less. In cases such as that of non-being, the issue is with regard to more and not less. Let me now discuss the problem of non-being. 1 Deleuze says that there is within the problem of non-being an idea of being. 2 Further, he says, there is a logical operation of a generalised negation. 3 Plus, there is the particular psychological motive for that operation (such as when a being does not correspond to our expectation and we perceive it as something lacking – the absence of what interests us). Similar to the idea of non-being is the idea of disorder in which there is order plus its negation. There is more in the idea of the possible than there is in the idea of the real. Hanging the three ideas of non-being, disorder, and the possible on the same string, he speaks of the common feature in questions such as “Why is there something rather than nothing?” or “Why is there order rather than disorder?” or “Why is there this rather than that (when that was equally possible)?” (1991: 18). He contends that all these questions converge on the same error; namely, mistaking less for more. It is as though non-being existed before being; disorder before order; and the possible before existence. That is, at first, there was void and being came to fill that void; disorder was replaced by order; and the possible by the real. In addition to the opposition or negation between these three contra pairs, the falsity of this problem, according to Deleuze’s estimate, lies in the idea of temporality. It is assumed that non-being, disorder, or the possible, existed primordially. Therefore, there are two crucial issues: one is the temporality where nonbeing, disorder, and the possible preceded being, order, and the real, respectively; then there is the fundamental problem of each of the pairs negating the other, which is the source of the false problem identified by Bergson. Having set out the first part of the false problem, that is, mistaking more for less, I will now discuss another part, that is, mistaking less for more – the outcome that results when problems are badly stated. For instance, the question of reducing or not reducing the concept of happiness to that of pleasure, where pleasure is subsumed under happiness. Having discussed these two kinds of problems – of taking more

78  From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas for less and less for more – Deleuze highlights how Bergson at times says that ‘the less’ is mistaken for more. For instance, a doubt about an action only adds to it in so far as it is an additional aspect about that action, whereas in reality it only indicates a weakness in “the person who denies” (1991: 19; original emphasis). Bergson gives the example of a divinely created will or thought that is complete in itself. These thoughts are examples of less being mistaken for more. Doubt adds more but performs the role of less – it reduces the idea that is stated. Though it is an addition, it reduces the strength of the idea instead of contributing to more. What results is not something more, but something less: it is a deficit of the will. So, the relation between non-being that denies being is either more or less. If it is both, then there is a contradiction. According to Deleuze, there is no contradiction if we “bear in mind that what Bergson is condemning as non-existent problems is the obsession in all its aspects with thinking in terms of more or less” (1991: 19). He says about the falsity of the problem. The idea of disorder appears when, instead of seeing that there are two or more irreducible orders (for example, that of life and that of mechanism, each present when the other is absent), we retain only a general idea of order that we confine ourselves to opposing disorder and to thinking in correlation with the idea of disorder. The idea of non-being appears when, instead of grasping the different realities that are indefinitely substituted for one another, we muddle them together in the homogeneity of a Being in general, which can only be opposed to nothingness, be related to nothingness. The idea of the possible appears when instead of grasping each existent in its novelty, the whole of existence is related to a performed element, from which everything is supposed to emerge by simple ‘realization’ (1991: 19–20). Thus, for Deleuze, the problem, as stated in Bergson, is the attempt to homogenise diversity in being, in the order, and in the actual; a hasty presentation of totality with its opposites, namely, non-being, disorder, and the possible, respectively, in order to establish a contrast. There are two things at work here: one, wrapping up diversity to homogenise; and two, contrasting it through its negation. Deleuze points out that each time we think in terms of more or less, we convert the differences in kind and render them into mere differences in degree. This rendering for Deleuze shows how “the first type of false problem rests, in the final analysis, on the second” (1991: 20; original emphasis). This rendering of difference in kind into mere difference in degree is the pervasive problem. According to Deleuze, it “is perhaps the most general error of thought, the error common to science and

From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas 79 metaphysics” (1991: 20). This state of affairs forces us to be “victims of a fundamental illusion that corresponds to two aspects of the false problem”. This illusion, says Deleuze, is based on the “deepest part of the intelligence”, according to Bergson, and cannot be dispelled; it can only be repressed. Bergson finds the solution to this predicament in the domain of epistemology, in the hands of intuition. The passage where Deleuze paraphrases Bergson is worth quoting: We tend to think in terms of more or less, that is, to see differences in degree where there are differences in kind. We can only react against this intellectual tendency by bringing to life, again in the intelligence, another tendency, which is critical. But where, precisely, does this second tendency come from? Only intuition can produce and activate it, because it rediscovers differences in kind beneath the difference in degree, and conveys to the intelligence the criteria that enable it to distinguish between true and false problems. Bergson shows clearly that the intelligence is the faculty that states problems in general (the instinct is rather a faculty for finding solutions). But only intuition decides between the true and the false in the problems that are stated, even if this means driving the intelligence to turn back against itself. (1991: 21) Thus, according to Deleuze’s rendering of Bergson, there is the intellectual tendency that reduces difference in kind into difference in degree. The solution to this problem for Bergson does not lie within the realm of intellect, but within intuition. He sees the solution to the perennial philosophical problem – rather, the two false problems, of taking more for less and taking less for more, that are created by the intellect – outside intellect and in intuition. It is only intuition that can restore the balance by recognising and rediscovering the difference in kind. Three important philosophical moves are made here: one, there is an issue of false problems, which are of two kinds; these problems are created by the intellect; and this accumulated and pervasive impasse is then overcome by the shift to the domain of intuition, as proposed by Bergson.8

IV The Border At this point, after having examined the problem of non-being as perceived by the intellect and intuition, I would like to excavate the

80  From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas foundation of non-being. Before I begin, however, I will traverse another discourse where one finds a disguised aspect of non-being. Through a flashback, I will attempt to locate Bergson in a larger discussion that preceded him, but of which he is in reality a part. The classical obsession with permanence surfaces, though in a disguised form, as certainty in Descartes. The Cartesian obsession with certainty is the modern secular infatuation with disguised divinity. The transcendental notion of permanence – in the form of non-being – is sought in the immanent. Descartes takes the relation between permanence and God as contingent. He seeks permanence or certainty within the empirical domain. He does not consider if there is a close and inseparable relation between permanence and God. Descartes seeks to secularise certainty by making it part of immanence, in contrast to the classical notion of certainty that is transcendental. However, the classical urge for certainty that remained at the back of his mind needs scrutiny that is more philosophical. We will understand Descartes and the project of modernity better if we see the relation between certainty and God as necessary and inseparable. From this point of view, can one ask for certainty that is necessarily related to God and yet leave God behind? Not confronting Descartes through this counterfactual made the discourse of counter-tradition initiated by Hume superficial. I will come to this matter later. Descartes argues that reason can attain certainty. Here, I want to claim that Cartesian certainty is a modern form of permanence. Let us view his moves from the point of view of certainty, rather than rationality or individuality. He categorically rejects or excludes emotions, feelings, desires – anything falling outside reason. He embarks on excluding non-reason at the outset. This sharp demarcation achieved through the logic of exclusion between reason and emotion prompts him to demarcate sharply between man and animal, adult and child. Consequently, the reason why animals and children are excluded and man, the adult, is included, is that Descartes identifies the former combination with non-reason, which is not permanent, and the latter combination with reason, which is the domain that is permanent. Setting aside any scope for overlapping between man and animal, he says in Part Five of Discourse on Method: For it is quite remarkable that there are no men so dull-willed or stupid – and this includes even mad men – that they are incapable of arranging various words together and forming an utterance from them in order to make their thoughts understood; whereas there is no other animal, however perfect and well-endowed it

From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas 81 may be, that can do the like. This does not happen because they lack the necessary organs. . . . On the other hand, men born deaf and dumb, and thus deprived of speech-organs as much as the beasts or even more so, normally invent their own signs to make themselves understood by those who, being regularly in their company, have the time to learn their language. This shows not merely that the beasts have less reason than men, but that they have no reason at all. (1985: 140) Therefore, at the outset he rules out any possibility of an overlap between man and animal, thus instituting a clear demarcation between them. As referred to earlier, establishing another major distinction which has a far-reaching consequence, Descartes says that: I reflected that we were all children before being men and had to be governed for some time by our appetites and our teachers, which were often opposed to each other and neither of which, perhaps, always gave us the best advice; hence I thought it virtually impossible that our judgments should be as unclouded and firm as they would have been if we had had the full use of our reason from the moment of our birth, and if we had always been guided by it alone. (1985: 117) Here, he is excluding childhood and appetites, as they are unreliable and impermanent. He privileges adulthood and reason as they promise certainty. The ‘I’ – which is the mind for him – is certain, and hence permanent; whereas the ‘non-I’ – the body and other things – is not certain, as they can be in principle be doubted and hence are impermanent. David Hume challenges the centrality of reason championed by rationalists. There are two aspects that underlie Hume’s most famous statement, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (1960: 415). In this statement, he is attacking the philosophical position whereby reason is placed higher in the hierarchy; here it is worth noting that he does not attack the hierarchy; rather he retains it, thereby merely inverting the position of the contents in the hierarchy. That is, he is restoring to passion what is assigned to reason by rationalists like Descartes; thus, he is relegating reason to the lower position. This move of relieving passion from the servitude of reason provides relief to many.

82  From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas However, two structural limitations surround this counter-tradition from Hume. Hume’s inversion of hierarchy, in an important respect, is parasitical on Descartes’s programme of instituting the hierarchy. While he succeeded in stunning this rationalist programme in the process of restoring centrality to passion, he did not pay attention to the problem of evanescence closely associated with passion. While passions are real and deeply human, they are fleeting in nature and were thus not taken into reckoning by the rationalists. The inability of appetite to lend consistency, reliability, clarity, and firmness to one’s sense of judgement is the reason why rationalists dispensed with it. This objection continues to haunt attempts to privilege desire. Judgements, both adjudicating what is good and bad as well as constituting or formulating dos and don’ts, have to be certain and not fleeting in nature. This forms the basis of Robert C. Roberts’s criticism of Martha Nussbaum’s work, where the former argues that “emotions are not judgments” (1999: 795). Rationalists do not reject emotions because they do not exist as descriptions, but because they are not capable of normative certainty. They cannot be judgements, because they are not rational. In contrast to reason which is claimed to be certain and permanent, emotions are fleeting and evanescent in nature. Thereby, reason is prized and emotions denied, because reason is certain and can give us certainty and permanence. In other words, there is a background to reason, which provides it with a justification; namely, permanence. Reason derives its centrality through permanence. So, the battle is to be shifted from reason-emotion to permanence-evanescence. And permanence is identified with nonbeing, which is a product of negation. This shift is significant. So, it is permanence, which gives strength to reason and denies status to emotions. On the other hand, the empiricist response takes the form of an assertion of the primacy of emotions, experience, desire, and suchlike, outside the domain of reason. Further, following Hume’s assertion that reason is the handmaid of passion, the claim for passions falls outside reason. This claim is internally validated. Rationalists do not deny the facticity of passions. They reject them because they are fleeting in nature, and hence cannot provide a reliable foundation to those that need permanence and certainty. In contrast, reason is claimed to provide this assurance. Unless this fleeting nature of passions is thoroughly addressed, the success of the Humean project in upsetting the rationalist project may remain within Cartesian hierarchical structure. Hume is more interested in depriving reason of status than in identifying the source from which reason derives its strength and resources.

From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas 83 Therefore, the justification for passions or emotions is either selfjustification or non-rational justification. This, as already pointed out, is negotiated within the parameters of passion-reason, where these are sustained by evanescence and permanence respectively. As a result, the empiricist attack remains at the surface and does not reach permanence. Now, that I have brought permanence to the center stage and highlighted the larger convergences, I wish to claim that we need to move the site of our discussion from non-being to permanence; and from reason and non-reason to permanence. Permanence privileges nonbeing or reason. The ontology of non-being or reason is sustained by permanence. Here, let us consider a counterfactual: is non-being or reason acceptable if neither assures permanence? The answer is no. The question that needs to be asked here is if there is a concept of nonbeing that is not permanent. This will reveal the necessary relation between non-being and permanence, and more importantly, how nonbeing is founded on permanence. Bergson, and those who came before him – both rationalists and empiricists – are working around the phenomenon of non-being or reason, without recognising permanence as the foundation. In addition, without permanence, hierarchy cannot be sustained; hierarchy, in turn provides foundation to inequality. Therefore, there are three types of philosophers: those who accept non-being, which is permanent; those who accept permanence without non-being, such as certainty and rationality; and those who reject reason but continue to accept hierarchy. This brings us to the modern Indian philosopher, Chandidas, who has dealt with this problem. Let me discuss how he brings into the forefront new dimensions of the problem of non-being.

V The Picture I will now compare Deleuze’s Bergson and Chandidas. Before that, I would like to present a brief background of Chandidas and his place in Indian philosophy. A twentieth-century philosopher and a wellknown Telugu novelist from Andhra Pradesh, a state in southern India, he authored a philosophical text titled Desire and Liberation: The Fundamentals of Cosmicontology, with an introduction by Kalidas Bhattacharyya. Bhattacharyya, who discovered this metaphysical text, wrote a long introduction, and was instrumental in its publication in 1975. He compared this book to the writings of other modern

84  From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas Indian philosophers like Sri Aurobindo and K. C. Bhattacharyya. According to Bhattacharyya, this work presents “a completely new system of metaphysics, presented though in an extraordinarily concise form, almost in the way of ancient Indian Sutras” (in Chandidas 1975: v, original emphasis). However, no one took note of this work. In my book Enduring Colonialism (Raghuramaraju 2009a), I placed the radical philosophical views of Chandidas within Indian and Western philosophy. The following discussion is an extension of this work. To return to the main argument, though Chandidas did not directly discuss Bergson, I would like to use his insights to compare them. Like Bergson, Chandidas sees non-being as the product of negating being. Further, like Bergson, he too understands negation as a product of intellect. However, unlike Bergson, he does not see the solution as lying with intuition. Instead of looking for solutions to the problems created by non-being in intuition, as suggested by Bergson, Chandidas, to use Deleuze’s insight, seems to focus on the very site of the problem; that is, the problem of non-being. While Bergson related non-being to negation, in Chandidas, an intermediary in the form of permanence is introduced between non-being and negation. Non-being gains prominence and acquires an ontological status because it is claimed to be permanent. Non-being merely having an ontological status is not attractive enough. Non-being gains credence because it is seen as unchanging and permanent. In contrast, being is the site of change. Looked at from this perspective, anything that is not permanent but fleeting in nature and evanescent, is treated as unreliable. Those numerous aspects – such as desires or emotions – that are not permanent lose their importance. Here, non-being not only gains ontological precedence; it relegates all those that are changing to the status of the unreliable. The ordering of pre-existence preceding existence makes it possible to look at existence as transitory and vulnerable. In fact, it has already made place for liberation from existence, which is post-existence. Therefore, the root that enables existence and post-existence is the formation of pre-existence, which is a form of non-being. Conceding this state in a way made it possible to see the relation between human beings and desires as contingent. It is the changing nature of being that restricts it to the marginalised predicament where being is rendered dependent on non-being. That is, permanence provides foundation to non-being. This dependency of non-being on permanence needs to be recognised in order to expose the claims of non-being. Claiming, as Bergson did, that non-being is a product of the intellect or that it is related to negation is not enough.

From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas 85 There is a further need to show why non-being is privileged. According to Chandidas, non-being is privileged because it is permanent. In comparison to permanence, all those who are not permanent but changing are rendered unreliable. This is the major move advanced by Chandidas. Having brought permanence into the discussion, let me now explicate the sources of permanence. One might echo Plato’s position that permanence is self-sustained and is the basis of reality. Following this commitment, any change, for someone like Plato, is decay. In addition, emotions are by nature bereft of permanence. Chandidas lays bare further ground on permanence; namely, the negation that sustains it. While Bergson relates non-being with negation, Chandidas relates negation to permanence. Permanence, not non-being, is based on or is sustained by negation. Pre-existence, non-existence, or post-existence are the negation of existence. Without further explication, we will not be able to unravel the conceptual prison that holds what belongs to being, including desires and emotions that are fleeting in nature. Here there is a closer resemblance between Chandidas and Bergson. However, Chandidas’s contribution to this problem lies in dislodging permanence as a core feature of reality. As already pointed out, for him, permanence and non-being – both consisting of pre-existence and post-existence – are the projections of intellect and are sustained by negation. Chandidas goes beyond Bergson when he claims that contradictoriness is the inherent tinge of reality. Acceptance of contradictoriness dislodges the entire species that consist of non-being, permanence, negation, and intellect. Chandidas says of contradictoriness: Contradictoriness is an inherent structural tinge of reality. Contradictoriness is not a functional juxtaposing. Functional juxtaposing is a derivative of intellection. Contradictoriness is the ontic structurality. In so far as ontic structurality is fusable through ontological functionality, contradictoriness contradicts itself. This functional contradicting of itself is the reason of its identity. Contradictoriness is not denying or negating. (1975: 1) A close reading of this dense philosophical prose written in an aphoristic manner reveals that contradictoriness, constituting the core of reality, privileges change. It renders those who do not change, like permanence, as marginal and not the core of reality. Once contradictoriness is seen in the privileged position, change acquires more respectability. From this point of view, existence is in continuous process.

86  From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas As Chandidas says, process is the “continual passage of reality. Process is the pulse of reality. It is multi-dimensional variableness”. Ultimate reality “is an accomplished fact of perpetual making” (1975: 24). Unlike in Hegel, where this continuous process is unidirectional, in Chandidas it moves multi-directionally. While negation institutes limits to existence in the form of pre-, post-, and non-existence, it is contradictoriness that releases it and discloses the eternality of process and existence, cleansing it of any such associations that obstruct it. To reiterate, Chandidas embarks on this by first moving permanence to the margins. He discloses that permanence is in fact sustained by negation. It is, according to him, the projection of intellection and not a characteristic feature of reality. For him, negation and permanence are mere projections of the intellect. Reality is essentially in continual process, moving multi-directionally. This movement is governed by contradictoriness. Having disclosed this false identification pervading the history of philosophy, Chandidas depicts being and whatever is associated with being, such as emotions and desires as real and are eternally continuous. To reiterate, this continuation is sustained by contradictoriness. Contradictoriness circumvents any move towards permanence that is final. In circumventing the claims towards permanence that is final, in the form of post-existence, Chandidas liberates reality from the substratum of stasis that beginning and ending would otherwise require. In exposing the marginal status of negation that makes preexistence, an aspect of it is non-being, as sustained by negation,9 which in turn is a mere projection of intellect, and claiming contradictoriness as a core of reality that is in continual process, moving multi-directionally, Chandidas seems to unveil different way of looking at reality.

VI The Exit This chapter sought to excavate the relation between inequality and non-being. I discussed different versions of non-being and its different aspects including pre-, post- and non-existence that draw on resources from the idea of permanence in classical Indian philosophical schools. Then I moved on to analyse non-being in Deleuze’s presentation of Bergson. To thicken the plot, the discussion identified the insufficiency in the treatment of the problem of reason and non-reason in the debates between Descartes and Hume, who provide dominant and

From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas 87 counter-traditions in the West. I have identified permanence as sustaining both non-being, reason, and have discussed Chandidas, who sought to historicise the human craving for permanence by relegating it to the margins as a projection of intellection, sustained by negation. He claims contradictoriness to be the pulse of reality. This gives a new lease of life to those aspects belonging to non-reason that suffered or were merely put aside as belonging to a counter-tradition bereft of a positive programme. I concluded by claiming that this rendering is more powerful in dethroning non-being than that attempted by Bergson, who leaves it to intuition. Thus, following this path of scrutinising the philosophical foundations of inequality – through hierarchy, permanence, non-being, and negation – provides a better understanding of the socio-political debate between equality and inequality. Instead of paying attention to the ontological foundation of non-being and inequality mediated by negation and hierarchy, modern political philosophy beginning with Rousseau has conducted the discussion on the level of politics. In order to understand the foundations of inequality, there is a need to excavate its ontological foundations. From this perspective, there is a need to revisit the debate between equality and inequality, Aristotle, and Rousseau to understand this perennial political problem better. This chapter made attempts in this direction.

Notes 1 This chapter is a slightly revised version of “Excavating the relation between non-being and permanence in the Vedas, Upanishads, Bergson, Deleuze and Vaddera Chandidas,” previously published in Deleuze and Guattari Studies, 12.1: 66–83, 2018. Used with permission. 2 नासादासीन्नो सदासीत्तदानीं । नासीद्रजो नो व्योमा परो यत् । किमावरीवः कुह कस्य शर्मन्नम्भः किमासीद्गहनं गभीरम् 3

(ऋग्वेद मंडल-10 सूकत संख्या-129)

को अद्धा वेद क इह प्र वोचत्कुत आजाता कुत इयं विसृष्टिः । अर्वाग्दे वा अस्य विसर्जनेनाथा को वेद यत आबभूव ।। 6।।

4 This process from pre-existence to existence is explained through literary allusion: यथोर्णनाभिः सृजते गृह्णते च यथा पृथिव्यामोषधयः सम्भवन्ति । यथा सतः पुरुषात्केशलोमानि तथाक्षरात्सम्भवतीह विश्वम् ।। 7।।

As a spider emits and draws in [its thread], As herbs arise on the earth, As the hairs of the head and body from a living person, So from the Imperishable arises everything here. (Hume 2003: 367)

88  From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas 5 आदित्यो ब्रह्मेत्यादे शस्तस्योपव्याख्यानमसदे वेदमग्र आसीत् । तत्सदासीत्तत्समभवत्तदाण्डं निरवर्तत तत्संवत्सरस्य मात्रामशयत तन्निरभिद्यत ते आण्डकपाले रजतं च सुवर्णं चाभवताम् ।।3.19.1।। तद्यद्रजतँसेयं पृथिवी यत्सुवर्णँसा द्यौर्यज्जरायु ते पर्वता यदु ल्बँसमेघो नीहारो या धमनयस्ता नद्यो यद्वास्तेयमुदकँस समुद्रः ।।3.19.2।। अथ यत्तदजायत सोऽसावादित्यस्तं जायमानं घोषा उलूलवोऽनूदतिष्ठन्त्सर्वणि च भूतानि सर्वे च कामास्तस्मात्तस्योदयं प्रति प्रत्यायनं प्रति घोषा उलूलवोऽनूत्तिष्ठन्ति सर्वाणि च भूतानि सर्वे च कामाः ।।3.19.3।।

6 There is an extensive discussion on various versions of non-being in Western philosophy. For instance, though Plato does not use non-being, he uses Forms; he also does not offer the view that being comes out of non-being, a view available in the Vedas and Upanishads. However, Plato argues that the empirical world is a copy of the Real, which is Form. However, like the idea of non-being, Plato associates Form as embodying permanence and change, that is, the nature of the empirical world, as decay. This denouncing change as decay and privileging Forms, as they are permanent, made Karl Popper target Plato as an enemy of open society. Popper talks of Plato’s: world of unchanging Forms or Ideas, of which the world of changing things in space and time is the offspring. The Forms or Ideas are not only unchanging, indestructible, and incorruptible, but also perfect, true, real, and good. . . . The perfect and good Forms or Ideas are prior to the copies. . . . For if the starting point of all change is perfect and good, then change can only be a movement that leads away from the perfect and good; it must be directed towards the imperfect and evil, towards corruption. (2007: 36) Thus, Form is associated with permanence and empirical reality is vulnerable to change. Open society calls for freedom and change and rejects any attempt to hold permanent ideas that smack of essentialism.   While Plato privileged the non-empirical transcendental that is permanent and rendered the empirical world as ever-changing and unreal, a careful reading of modern Western philosophy revealed to me that instead of rejecting the transcendent along with its associate ideas, modern philosophers, beginning with Descartes, have been attempting to secularise these metaphysical or theological concepts like Form or non-being. For instance, Descartes, as rightly pointed out by J. P. Sartre, “sought for solution, in imagination, for the union of ‘thinking substance and extended substance’ ” (2012: 27). This is not satisfactory for Sartre. Similarly, you have Kantian noumena, or transcendental self in different forms in the phenomenological tradition. Hegel tried to save this project by locating these transcendental ideas within the historical process and dialectical mode. However, the

From Bergson to Vaddera Chandidas 89 problem with him is that he posits a unidirectional historical process that defies the actual developments of the world that seems to be moving in a multi-directional trajectory.   Like Bergson, Sartre traces the relation between negation and non-being. He says that “non-being does not come to things by a negative judgement; it is the negative judgement, on the contrary, which is conditioned and supported by non-being” (2012: 31). He, however, concedes that “nothingness haunts being” (2012: 35). While non-being that is derived from negative judgements haunts being, Sartre confronts the question, “where does Nothingness come from?” (2012: 46). His answer is, “Man is the being through whom nothingness comes to the world”. He is then confronted by another question that is a corollary to this one, namely, “What must man be in his being in order that through him nothingness may come to being?” (2012: 48). Since my focus in this chapter is not to discuss non-being in Western philosophy, but on juxtaposing philosophical ideas of the relation between non-being and being in classical Indian philosophy, Bergson, and Chandidas, I have not elaborated on this in the main body of the chapter. 7 Here my primary concern is Deleuze’s interpretation of Bergson on the relation between being and non-being. I am not discussing the differences between Deleuze and Bergson, but the former’s account of the latter. We need to independently discuss Deleuze’s take on questions, whether he concedes truth value to them or limits the universalism of answers. 8 For a comparative study of nothing in Bergson, Advaita, and the concept of zero, see Malkani (1918). 9 This attempt of Chandidas is quite different from that of Daya Krishna, who suggests that the problem of negation to be “bur[ied]” or “consign[ed] . . . to flames and get rid of it forever” (2011: 123). I am thankful to Jay Garfield for bringing this to my notice.

Conclusion

I began this work by distinguishing between two kinds of philosophy: one that is related to reality, and the other that is not. I chose to follow the path of the former and identified the problems related to the existing practices of Indian philosophers when dealing with Western philosophy. I have argued that while recognising the need to borrow from the outside, or even the compulsion to borrow from the outside due to the politics of colonialism, they did not reflect either on the predicament or on the options that were available to them. In contrast, I have reflected on both using the idea of borrowing and highlighting such questions as what, from whom, and how much to borrow. Further, I have looked at how to use the concepts borrowed and perhaps equally significantly, how to repay the lender. With this reflection in the background, I have gone on to highlight the problems in the practice of using Western philosophy in an unreflective way. This method thus reduces the issues that arise from the mismatch between the size and quantum of what is borrowed and the places where it is received and used. I have suggested a specific method of borrowing that allows us to ‘bend’ Western philosophy without breaking it. Alternatively, I have proposed deflating issues/ideas in the West and inflating them after transporting them to India, to use a metaphor. I have both identified and justified choosing Rousseau, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, and Bergson from the West for this discussion; I have excluded others such as Plato. In this context, I have kept other possibilities open, including bending Indian philosophy for the West. Chapter 1 presents a new way of reading Rousseau that is different from the existing readings. I have shown how the existing scholarship on Rousseau pays disproportionate attention to and was indeed carried away by the radical political ideas inherent in his work. These works, I allege, failed to recognise both crucial and even foundational

Conclusion 91 ideas that form the frame of his political philosophy. In this context, I have shown the fundamental importance of the term ‘inquire’, which appears in the very first sentence of The Social Contract. This term is foundational for understanding the new path introduced by Rousseau. However, it was the dominant politics that attracted readers towards this text, and the basic idea eluded their attention. I have claimed that not recognising the idea of inquiry compromised our understanding of Rousseau’s radical political project. In addition to highlighting fundamental ideas in Rousseau that escaped the attention of Western scholarship, in this chapter I have shown for the first time how his form of individualism that equates the individual with the adult human person consequently and necessarily led to the foundation of a new modern social institution called the old age home. I have distinguished between choosing something and embracing the unintended consequences, and pointed out how the modern West faces the latter. I suggest that Indians could learn from this experience and avoid unintended consequences by undertaking the task of reflection, thereby converting the unintended into deliberated choice. Having made this small but seminal connection between Rousseau from the West and India, I move on in Chapter 2 to distinguishing between the spoken and the written word. Using textual analysis from Derrida, this chapter distinguishes Socrates’s legacy of the word spoken in dialogue with other human beings from Plato’s written one. I connect Socrates, who spoke and never wrote, and others in the dialogue to the non-Western, such as India. India, alleges Rousseau, is largely known for speaking, and not writing like the West. Derrida approvingly cites this allegation. This chapter, thus, introduces the fundamental distinction between two forms of the word, that which is orally communicated and that which is set down in writing. Following Rousseau, who identified the West starting from Plato with the written word and the East with the spoken word, it makes a further move to group the speaking Socrates from the West together with the speaking East or India. This step thus reduces the philosophical terrain of the West and increases that of the East or India. While the previous chapter makes a small though significant case for India in the context of discussing Rousseau, the second chapter makes an additional move and enlarges the philosophical domain of India. Chapter 3 embarks on a journey seeking to bend Deleuze and Guattari, to transport them eastwards, and then to re-inflate them to be used in India. This philosophical move to bend philosophers from the West, without breaking or distorting them, centers on the relationship between minor and major literatures in Deleuze and Guattari’s work

92  Conclusion and the Indian freedom movement. Closely scrutinising the three characteristics of the relationship between minor and major literatures, I have reconfigured how minor and major are both minor, when seen within the pervasive and dominant domain of modernity that disinherited the pre-modern. I have demonstrated that literature and art that were created in the West subsequent to the advent of modernity sought to reclaim in an imaginary realm that which had been rejected by modernity, the reality that is the pre-modern. In the context of refiguring the relation between art and literature as minor and the modernity as major, I have asked, given the association of the Renaissance with modernity, why the art of that period did not include in its contents images and symbols of modernity. That is to say, Renaissance paintings and literature are replete with themes from the pre-modern, be it from the Christian religion, the countryside, or nature. The question is: why did the Renaissance artists not paint modern instruments and objects like telescopes, or concepts like gravitation or electricity? Instead, they focussed on such images as the Last Supper, David, and the Madonna. Writers were enamoured of daffodils and brooks. The pervasive presence in the modern discourse of the Renaissance of the themes from nature and the pre-modern religion and culture not only intrigued me, but also looked to me to be a scandal. Having identified this enigma with regard to the relation between modernity and modern art and literature, I go on to claim that the other two characteristic features of Deleuze and Guattari’s relation between minor and major – namely, how the former is collective and political – are not true in the modern West. I have argued that literature during the modern period in the West largely remained effective at the individual level. It has not culminated into the collective movement. In presenting this critical account, by way of bending them without breaking, I have, however, demonstrated how both of them are useful in India. That is, this is a case where what is not useful in the original context is, however, useful in the transplanted one. This is demonstrated with the discussion of the national movement in India and the role played by individuals like Gandhi. Gandhi, I have pointed out, was influenced by literary figures like Tolstoy, Ruskin, and Thoreau, all dissenters in relation to the modernity of the West. While these inspirational thinkers themselves were unable to make major political interventions within the West, their influence on Gandhi ultimately caused him to bring in a vital political movement in the form of the Indian freedom struggle against British imperialism.

Conclusion 93 Gandhian intervention is both collective and political. This development is unlike the scene in the West. Chapter 3, thus, as it progresses shows how the works of philosophers like Deleuze and Guattari that are not useful in the place of their origin, the West, are indeed useful in a transplanted context, like in India. Having made this progress, enlarged the non-Western domain in Chapter 2, and decreased the Western domain in Chapter 3, the next chapter goes beyond Deleuze’s reading of Bergson on the question of non-being. While Bergson tries to trace the roots of non-being to negation, there are two problems with this approach. One, he makes negation to depend on intuition, thus making it vulnerable; and two, he fails to outline further stages in this direction, such as how negation makes permanence possible. After extensively engaging with philosophers from the West, identifying them, making an appropriate selection amongst them to be used in India, and making significant interventions, I have in Chapter 4 turned to Indian philosophical texts. During my extensive research on various texts from India, I have found an extraordinary original metaphysical work that was not noticed by philosophers earlier. In fact, following Bertolt Brecht’s lines in his famous play Life of Galileo, I can say that any mortal except Kalidas Bhattacharyya, who discovered the text, did not read this philosophical text by Chandidas. I am the second who read it seriously. (The exact lines from Brecht about Galileo referring to his discovery are: “What you are seeing has been seen by no mortal except myself. You are the second” [2014: 23]). This neglected philosophical work is by Vaddera Chandidas, a modern philosopher from India. I have researched on this book for about two decades before writing a full-length book on it (2009a). The presence of texts like Desire and Liberation by Chandidas further enabled me to make use of what is borrowed from the West more meaningful. This chapter goes on to show how permanence is further identified with pre- and post-existence. This form of permanence is contrasted with Existence and Being, which are identified with change. Thus, Chandidas shows how it is negation that makes permanence possible, and that it is a mere projection of the intellect. Totally rejecting the primacy of permanence, which is made possible by negation, Chandidas proposes contradictoriness as the pulse of reality. Extending Chandidas, the chapter argues that it is permanence that makes hierarchy possible, which in turn makes inequality possible. Thus, this view provides a philosophical base to the political discussion regarding equality and inequality. My aim in this book, therefore, has been

94  Conclusion to calibrate Western philosophy for effective use in India by proposing various ways of bending it without breaking it. In this text, I have avoided the unreflective use of philosophical texts from the West that pervades academics in India today. I have also avoided the temporal and proportional imbalance committed by earlier philosophers. Instead, I have ventured to borrow from the West through the method of bending without breaking, thus avoiding the dangers of relapsing into provincialism. In this context, let me clarify that I do not agree with thinkers like Daya Krishna and others who allege that Western philosophy has ignored Indian philosophy. I am of the opinion that it is not the strong Western philosophy that kept Indian philosophy outside. Philosophy in the West, with the advent of modern science, found itself defensive – and as part of its survival started clearing up and sanitising its own subject. For instance, this is the task undertaken by logical positivists. They not only kept Indian philosophy outside – albeit, at times sheltering it in their departments of theology and religion – but also excluded many of their own earlier philosophies as non-philosophical. Against this background, instead of demanding that they too include philosophies from places beyond their shores, like India, a better plea would be to sanitise the philosophies from India using modern protocols and tools. This task is what I have undertaken in Chapters 2, 3, and 4. Some find my engagement as being not part of the discipline of philosophy. I am happy about this conclusion, as it takes me away from the center and places me near the border. This situation I find challenging. On a lighter note, I am reminded of Bertrand Russell’s example about the present king of France. He claims that this statement is neither true nor false, as there is no present king of France. Similarly, if I claim that I am doing philosophy, then someone can reject that statement. I do not want to make any such claim, so the statement that what I am doing is not philosophy is neither true nor false. Of course, I do not mean to insinuate that there is no philosophy today in the sense that there is no king of France today.

Bibliography

Aristotle (1986) Politics, translated with introduction by Ernest Barker, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Berger, Douglas L. (2017) “Cross-Cultural Philosophy and Hermeneutic Expansion,” Journal of World Philosophies, Vol. 2 (Summer), pp. 128–132. Bergson, Henry (1911a [1907]) Creative Evolution, translated by Arthur Mitchell, New York: Henry Holt & Co. ——— (1911b [1896]) Matter and Memory, translated by Nancy Margaret Paul, and W. Scott Palmer, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. ——— (1919 [1889]) Time and Freewill, translated by F. L. Pogson, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. ——— (1946 [1941]) The Creative Mind, translated by Mabelle L. Andison, CT: Greenwood Press. Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi (1997) The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates Between Gandhi and Tagore 1915–1941, New Delhi: National Book Trust. Bhattacharyya, Janaki Ballabha (1965) Negation, Calcutta: Indian Studies, Past and Present. Bhattacharyya, Kalidas (1982) “Traditional Indian Philosophy as Modern Indian Thinkers View It,” in Indian Philosophy: Past and Future, edited by S. S. Pappu Rama Rao and R. Puligandla, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 171–224. Bhattacharyya, Krishna Chandra (1984) “Svaraj in Ideas”, Indian Philosophical Quarterly, Special Number, Svaraj in Ideas, vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 383–393. Bhattacharya, Vidhushekhara, ed. (1943) The Agamasastra of Gaudapada, edited, translated and annotated by Vidhushekhara Bhattacharya, Calcutta: University of Calcutta. Bilgrami, Akeel (2006) “Gandhi’s Integrity: The Philosophy Behind the Politics,” in Debating Gandhi: A Reader, edited by A. Raghuramaraju, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 248–266. Brecht, Bertolt (2014) “Life of Galileo”, translated by John Willett, edited by John Willett and Ralf Manheim, London: Bloomsbury.

96  Bibliography Brook, Christopher (2001) “Rousseau’s Political Philosophy: Stoic and Augustinian Origins,” in The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau, edited by P. Riley, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 78–93. Chandidas, Vaddera (1975) Desire and Liberation: The Fundamentals of Cosmicontology, with introduction by Kalidas Bhattacharyya, Tirupati: New Directions Press. This work along with other related works is republished as Desire and Liberation: Biography of a Text by Vaddera Chandidas, edited with a new Introduction by A. Raghuramaraju, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018. Chatterjee, Partha (1986) Nationalist Thought and Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Collini, Stefan, ed. (1992) Interpretation and Overinterpretation: Umberto Eco with Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler, Christine Brooke-Rose, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coward, Harald G. (1991) “Speech Versus Writing in Derrida and Bhartrhari,” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 41, No. 21, pp. 141–162. Deleuze, Gilles (1991 [1988]) Bergsonism, translated by Hugh Tomlinson, and Barbara Habberjam, New York: Zone Books. ——— (1994) Difference and Repetition, translated by Paul Patton, London: The Athlone Press. ———, and Felix Guattari (1986) Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, translated by Dana Polan, and Forward by Reda Bensmaia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Derrida, Jacques (1994 [first published in English in 1974]) Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas. ——— (2005 [first published in 1967]) “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in Writing and Difference, translated with an introduction and additional notes by Alan Bass, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 351–370. Descartes, Rene (1985) Discourse on Method in the Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. I, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Durkheim, Emile (1960) Montesquieu and Rousseau, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Dumont, Louis (2013, revised eleventh English impression) Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications, translated by Mark Sainsbury, Louis Dumont, and Basia Gulati, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Foucault, Michel (1970) Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan, New York: Random House. ——— (1973) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, translated by R. Howard, New York: Random House. ——— (1975) The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith, New York: Random House. ——— (1984) “Afterword: The Subject and Power,” in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Chicago: The Chicago University Press.

Bibliography 97 Gauthier, David (2006) Rousseau: The Sentiment of Existence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gourevitch, Victor (1997) The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, edited with introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grimsley, Ronald (1973) The Philosophy of Rousseau, London: Oxford University Press. Hiriyanna, M. (1967) Outlines of Indian Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Hume, David (1960) [1888] Treatise of Human Nature, edited with an analytical Index by Selby-Bigge, Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Hume, Robert Ernest (translator) (2003, seventh impression [1877]) The Thirteen Principal Upanishads, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Karmarkar, Radhunath Damodar, ed. (1953) Gaudapada-Karika, edited with complete English translation into English, Notes, Introduction and Appendices, by Raghunath Damodar Karmarkar, Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Kristeve, J. (1980) Desire in Language, translated by Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez, New York: Columbia University Press. Krishna, Daya (2011) “Negation: Can Philosophy Ever Recover from It?” in Contrary Thinking: Selected Essays of Daya Krishna, edited by Nalini Bhushan, Jay I. Garfield, and Daniel Raveh, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———, M. P. Rege, R. C. Dwivedi, and Mukund Lath, eds. (1991) Samvād: A Dialogue Between Two Philosophical Traditions, New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research. Kumar, Aishwary (2010) “Ambedkar’s Inheritances,” Modern Intellectual History, Vol. 7, No. 2 (August), pp. 391–415. Latour, Bruno (1991) We Have Never Been Modern, translated by Catherine Porter, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Mahadevan, T. M. P. (1960) Gaudapada: A Study in Early Advaita, Madras: University of Madras. Malkani, G. R. (1918) The Problem of Nothing, Amalner: The Indian Institute of Philosophy. Matilal, B. K. (2001) The Collected Essays of Bimal Kumar Matilal: Mind, Language and World, Vol. I, edited by Jonardan Ganeri, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ——— (2002) The Collected Essays of Bimal Kumar Matilal: Ethics and Epics, Vol. II, edited by Jonardan Ganeri, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Muir, J. (translator) (1868) “Songs of Creation,” in Rg Veda, X, 129, in Original Sanskrit Texts on the Origin and History of the People of India, their Religion and Institutions, Urbaba: The University of Illinois. Murti, T. R. V. (1996 [first published in 1983]) “The Philosophy of Language in the Indian Context,” in Studies in Indian Thought: Collected Papers of Prof. T. R. V. Murti, edited by Harold G. Coward, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, pp. 357–376.

98  Bibliography Nussbaum, Martha (1994) The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice of Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Okin, Susan Moller (1989) “Reason and Feeling in Thinking About Justice,” Ethics, Vol. 99, No. 2 (January), pp. 229–249. Peyre, Henri (1973) “Foreword,” to Enid Rhodes Peschel’s translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell, The Illuminations, New York: Oxford University Press. Popper, Karl (2007 [1945]) The Open Society and its Enemies: The Spell of Plato, Volume One, New York, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Prabhu, R. K., and Ravindra Kelkar, eds. (1961) Truth Called Them Differently: Tagore and Gandhi Controversy, Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Radhakrishnan, S. (1977) Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Raghuramaraju, A. (2005) “Rethinking the West,” Third Text, Vol. 19, No. 6, pp. 595–598. ——— 2006. Debates in Indian Philosophy: Classical, Colonial and Contemporary, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ——— (2009a) Enduring Colonialism: Classical Presences and Modern Absences in Indian Philosophy, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ——— (2009b) “Pre of Art in Modern India,” Third Text, 100 Special Issue, Vol. 23, No. 5, (September), pp. 617–624. ——— (2011) Modernity in Indian Social Theory, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ——— (2013) “Gandhi to Western Moral Philosophy,” in Philosophy and India: Ancestors, Outsiders and Predecessor, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 17–29. ——— (2016) “The Ethics in M. K. Gandhi: Truth and Non-violence,” in Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Ethics, edited by Shyam Ranganathan, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 341–356. ——— (2017a) “Consolidation before Expansion: Revisiting Cross-Cultural Philosophy,” Journal of World Philosophies, Vol. 2 (Summer), pp. 137–140. ——— (2017b) Modern Frames and Premodern Themes in Indian Philosophy: Border, Self and the Other, London and New Delhi: Routledge. ——— (2018a) “Ramchandra Gandhi and Contemporary Indian Philosophy,” interview by Richard Marshall, for 3: Am Magazine, 24-2-2018. ——— (2018b) “Introduction: Life and Times of a Modern Indian Philosophical Text,” in Desire and Liberation: Biography of a Text by Vaddera Chandidas, edited with a new Introduction by A. Raghuramaraju, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018. ——— (2018c) “On the Idea of Mahatma,” in Reasoning Indian Politics: Philosophers Politicians and Politicians seeking Philosophy, edited by Narendra Pani and Anshuman Behera, London: Routledge, pp. 71–87. Riley, Patrick (1982) Will and Political Legitimacy: A Critical Exposition of Social Contract Theory in Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bibliography 99 ——— (1986) The General Will Before Rousseau: The Transformation of the Divine into the Civic, Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———, ed. (2001) The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roberts, C. Robert (1999) “Emotions as Judgements,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. LIX, No. 3 (September). Rousseau, J. J. (1952 [1762]) The Social Contract and Discourses, translated with introduction by G. D. H. Cole, New York: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. Said, Edward (1979) Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books. Sartre, Jean-Paul (2012 [1943]) Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, London and New York: Routledge. Sen, Amartya (2005) The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity, New Delhi: Penguin Books. Shklar, Judith N. (1973) “General Will,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, edited by P. Weiner, New York: Scribner’s. ——— (1985) Men & Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skaria, Ajay (2006) Unconditional Equality: Gandhi’s Religion of Resistance, Ranikhet: Permanent Black. Spivak, Gayatri (2010) “Can the Subaltern Speak: Reflections on the History of an Idea,” in Can the Subaltern Speak? edited by Rosalind Morris, New York: Columbia University Press. Strauss, Leo (1966) The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Genesis, Chicago: The Chicago University Press.

Index

Adi Samkara 39 Ambedkar, B. R. 67 anarchism 64 anxiety 42, 43 Archaeology of Knowledge, The 35 Aristotle 23, 24, 36, 40, 59, 70, 71, 87 Badarayana 8, 52 Bergson, Henri 70 – 89, 93 Bergsonism 7, 74 Bhattacharyya, Kalidas 83, 84 Bhattacharyya, Krishnachandra 4 Bilgrami, Akeel 48, 49 bondage 20 – 22 Brecht, Bertolt 93 bricolage 42, 45, 50 bricoleur 48, 49 Brooke, Christopher 30 Buddhism 8, 72, 74 Cartesian method 18 Cartesian obsession 80 Carvaka 74 Castle, The 56 Chandidas, Vaddera 70 – 89, 93 Chāndogya Upaniṣad 73, 74 Chatterjee, Partha 64, 65 Chattopadhyaya, Bankim Chandra 2 childhood 28, 29, 31, 40, 59, 75 Christianity 59 Citizen Kane 62 civil liberty 53 collective value 57 colonialism 3, 50, 63 colonial modernity 1

Confessions 37 contradictoriness 85 – 87 Coward, H. G. 36 Deleuze, Gilles 55 – 69, 74 – 78, 86, 93 Derrida, Jacques 34, 36, 91; word, forms 35 – 54 Descartes, Rene 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 28, 29, 33, 40, 59 – 61, 67, 81 Desire and Liberation: The Fundamentals of Cosmicontology 7, 83, 93 deterritorialization of language 57, 58 dialogue, transformation 36 Diderot 13 Discipline and Punish 35 Discourse on Method 40, 59, 80 Dumont, Louis 71 Durkheim, Emile 22 Eco, Umberto 45 egalitarian theory 71 Enduring Colonialism 84 English language 57 Essay on the Origin of Languages 37 eurocentrism 2 false problems 79 Foucault, Michel 31, 35, 41, 62 free play phenomena 43 Freud 46, 47 Gandhi, Harilal 67 Gandhi, M. K. 50, 55, 65 – 67, 92 Gandhism 64

Index  101 Gaudapada 8, 52 Gauguin, Paul 62 Gauthier, David 30 general will concept 13, 14 Gourevitch, Victor 16 Grimsley, Ronald 15 Grotius 24, 26 Guattari, Félix 55 – 69 Hegel 23, 24 Heidegger 46, 47 hierarchy 70, 71, 81 Homo Hierarchicus 71 Hume, David 81, 82 Indian national movement 55 individualism 34 inequality 70 Jinnah, Mohammad Ali 67 Kafka 56 – 57, 62, 63, 67 Kantian legacy 27 Karmarkar, Damodar 8 Kautilya 2 Krishna, Daya 8, 94 Kuhn, Thomas 61 Kumar, Aishwarya 3 Levi-Strauss 38, 48 Life of Galileo 93 logocentrism 35, 41, 49 – 52 Macaulay 2, 6 Mahadevan, T. M. P. 8 major literatures 92 Marxists 3 Matilal, B. K. 8 metaphysics 44, 45 Mind 4 minor literature(s) 57, 92 “Minutes” 1, 2 modern Indian philosophy 1 modernity 31, 32, 41, 60, 63, 68, 92 modern morality 27 modern Western philosophy 1 Montesquieu 13 Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 73 Murti, T. R. V. 36

national political movement 64 Nibbana 74 Nietzsche 36, 39, 44, 46, 47 non-being concept 70 – 89 Nussbaum, Martha 82 Of Grammatology 7, 35, 36, 47 Okin, S. M. 26, 27, 29 old age home institution 7, 12 – 35, 91 open-ended dialogue 36, 39, 51 Orientalism 35 parent/child relations 27 permanence 70 – 89 Peyre, Henri M. 19 philosophical traditions 8 Plato 36, 38 – 40, 42, 48, 51, 71, 85, 91 Prague German 57 proletarian literature 58 Radhakrishnan, S. 4 radicalism 12, 18, 33; breach of 19; waxing of 13 rationalism 60 Rawls, John 26 reality 86, 87, 92 Renaissance 59, 60 Republic 71 Ṛgveda 72, 73 Riley, Patrick 12 – 15, 18, 33 Rimbaud, Arthur 19 Roberts, Robert C. 82 romantic writers 64 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 70, 71, 87, 90, 91; freedom and slavery 20 – 23; master and slave, relation 23 – 24; modernity, slavery in 24 – 26; old age home institution, founder 12 – 35; political philosophy 22 Ruskin 65, 67, 92 Russell, Bertrand 94 Said, Edward 35 Saussure 37, 38 scholarship 5, 8, 19, 67, 90 secularism 14 Shklar, Judith 12 – 15, 18, 33

102 Index Skaria, Ajay 3 Social Contract, The 12, 15, 16, 33, 91 Social Contract Philosophy 28 social realism 2 Socrates 36, 38, 39, 42, 47, 48, 91 speech 35 – 54 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 35, 51 state of bondage 21 state of freedom 21, 22 Strauss, Leo 17, 40

teaching philosophy 5 temporal imbalance 4 Tennyson, Alfred 62 Thoreau 65, 67, 92 Tolstoy 64, 65, 67, 92 totalism 2

tabula rasa 1 Tagore 65, 66 Taittirīya Upaniṣad 73

“wanes a little” 12 “waxes a bit” 12 writing 35 – 54

Vedanta 8 Vivekananda, Swami 2, 50 voluntary slavery 25, 26