India, Europe and the Question of Cultural Difference: The Apeiron of Relations (Critical Humanities Across Cultures) [1 ed.] 9780367544607, 9780367554378, 9781003093541, 0367544601

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INDIA, EUROPE, AND THE QUESTION OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCE

This volume critically engages with the question of cultural difference and the idea of living with diversity in the context of India and Europe. It looks at certain essential European categories of learning such as art, nature, the human, literature, relation, philosophy, and the humanities and analyses texts from Sanskrit language (through Telugu resources) to argue that categories like prakriti, loka, jati, dharma, karma, sahitya, and kala cannot be conflated with conceptual formations such as nature, world, caste, religion, (sanctioned) action, literature, and art, respectively. The book questions and unravels the efficacy of European concepts, theories, and interpretive frames in understanding Indian reflective traditions and cultural forms. It also lays the groundwork for reorienting teaching and research in universities in the humanities on the basis of key cultural differences. By focusing on major themes in the humanities discourse and their limitations, the work engages with the writings of Heidegger, Derrida, and Agamben, among others, from radically new vantage points of Sanskrit-Indian reflective traditions, and challenges prevailing ideas about Indian art, literature, and culture. Part of the Critical Humanities Across Cultures series, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of Indian languages and literatures, comparative literature, art and aesthetics, postcolonial studies, cultural and heritage studies, philosophy, political philosophy, comparative philosophy, Sanskrit studies, India studies, South Asian studies, Global South s­tudies, and for those working on education in the humanities/human sciences. D. Venkat Rao teaches at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. Among his publications are the books Critical Humanities from India: Contexts, Issues, Futures (2018); Cultures of Memory in South Asia (2014); and In Citations: Readings in Area Studies of Culture (1999). He has translated into English a Telugu intellectual autobiography called The Last Brahmin (2007, 2012, 2017) and has designed several courses interfacing areas of culture, technology, and literary and cultural studies.

Critical Humanities Across Cultures Series Editor: D. Venkat Rao Department of English Literature, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, Telangana, India This series initiates and invites two related paths of inquiry: first, to unravel the assumptions that govern European account about itself and through them its representations of other cultures like the Indian (Asian or African); and second, to risk and open up inquiries into reflective practical traditions of ‘non-European’ cultures which sustained a certain cultural reflective integrity in their locations and spread it beyond. Such an inquiry helps in responding to the contemporary crises in several domains such as ethics, art, caste, action, justice, science, university, the human, and the question of living together with difference. The series is open to contributions that engage with the interface between Europe and non-Europe – ­cultures that faced colonialism – across the disciplines and media without alibi. With the view of the historical reality that European representation of other cultures were conceived in the domain of the humanities, the volumes in the series address certain critical questions: Is the discourse of the humanities a cultural universal? Do all cultures consolidate their reflections of being human in such a discourse? How is the relation between modes of being and forms of reflection articulated in such cultures? Can we inquire into cultural difference beyond the regional discourse of ethnology and configure European difference from another cultural background (say that of Indian or Chinese or Asian and African)? The series will be of provocative significance to disciplines of philosophy, literary studies, anthropology, politics, comparative thought, art, aesthetics, and law. India, Europe, and the Question of Cultural Difference The Apeiron of Relations D. Venkat Rao

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.­routledge. com/Critical-Humanities-Across-Cultures/book-series/CHAC

INDIA, EUROPE, AND THE QUESTION OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCE The Apeiron of Relations

D. Venkat Rao

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 D. Venkat Rao The right of D. Venkat Rao 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 A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-54460-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-55437-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-09354-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by SPi Global, India

For Bernard surplus as a responsive reception

CODA-SUTRA

Mlechcha shaastram pathishyanti sva shaastraani vihaayate … Evam kalau sampravrutte sarve Mlechcha mayaabhave [Abandoning one’s own learning (jana, people) will study Mlechcha disciplines or discourses. Thus, in the epoch of Kali, everything will be pervaded by Mlechcha ethos.] (Sri Brahmavaivartamahapuranamu, I, N.L. Narasimhacharya (trans), (Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshvara Arshabharati Trust, 2000), 1.2.7.25 and 57, pp. 169, 171. Mlechhas are people with unrefined or in-distinct speech.)

The Way ‘home’ (if there is one) is roundabout

What do you do with what you have?!

CONTENTS

viii xiv

Preface: Antarmukha Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: genealogies of Euro-analysis

1

2 Contextures of learning: Darshana and Theoria in mnemopraxial traditions

33

3 Alithic modes and lithic conceptions: aporias of Indian cultural form(ation)s

82

4 Inquiring ethos and the enigma of difference: broaching the mnemocultures of humanities

138

Conclusion: moving On… Bahirmukha

199

Glossary of Sanskrit terms

204

Index 207

vii

PREFACE A N TAR MUK H A

The Puranas of India figure the universe as a striated oval formation. The striae are the distinctive spatio-temporal assemblages called lokas. These assemblages encircle one another; and the entire constellation of striated assemblages is encircled by the mightier elemental forces of water, fire, wind, and sky. At the centre of the assemblages of the oval formation vibrates the earth – the bhuloka. Now the bhuloka itself is a striated assemblage – with alternation of islands and oceans. The earth is not flat as the ancient Greeks thought – but a colossal confluence of heterogeneous formations that are moving and stable. The Puranas tell us that the oval figure of the universe so described is just a fractal formation and countless such formations recursively emerge, disperse, and disappear interminably – without meaning or purpose. Borgesian figments and Joycean echolalias can find their comforting hearth in the Indian Puranas. No one dared to elicit a cosmological design from the Puranas. Puranas are unfit for (cosmo)logical investigations. They are indeed the figments of fantasy which would make school children laugh elsewhere. Yet, the Puranas endure; for centuries they have been transmitted from generation to generation through enlivening cultures of memory. They intimate and relate the most obscurely distant with the most proximate, the newly born, the yet-tobe born, and the about-to-depart. They permeate all kinds of striated assemblages – elemental, divine, demonic, human, animal, vernal, mineral, and the stellar; the Puranas are cherished by the lively millions. What enables the longevity, shareability, and the intimacies of the Puranas to live on? Is there a system or logic that explains the enduring liveliness of the Puranas? That is, how do different assemblages of people relate themselves to the entities (human and non-human, organic and non-organic) that surround them, and work with some kind of coherence in the habitat they move in and about? How do they figure, receive, respond, and transmit this sense of coherence? It is these factors of relations, sense, and work which differentiate one assemblage from another. Such assemblages embody relative coherence as they live and share a sense of order. Such shareable experiential coherence nurtures what endures in a people as an assemblage – without which there can neither be culture nor any formation of impartable tradition. viii

PREFACE

Traditions lend and extend reflective integrity and iterable actions among an assemblage of people. But what enlivens the shared impulse across the most heterogeneous assemblages? None of the plethora of explanatory accounts that mushroomed over the last 100 years has deflected the shared Puranic impulse. The Puranas make explanatory accounts redundant; like many other cultural forms of India, the Puranas braid explanations within their compositional weaves. Creative reflection or reasoning imagination throbs (in) the Puranic impulse: the Puranas evince coherence without a system. It is from such implicit coherence, even as assemblages intermingle and cross-breed, it should be possible to sense how people in such assemblages respond to each other and to their habitat on the one hand and to other entities and habitats on the other. The two most powerful and tenacious but inseparable forces which accord normative status to order and system are ‘religion’ and ‘politics.’ Religion readily provides explanatory accounts about a whole range of generic questions: How did the universe come about? ‘Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?’ Can anything exist without a reason? What is the meaning and purpose of the universe and life in it? Such explanatory accounts aim at demarcating order from disorder or chaos; for they strive to provide meaning and reasons in response to such questions. The concept of politics is deeply filiated to this very aim: finding order out of disorder. From Cronos to contemporary democracies, politics is reckoned as the sovereign power to create or sustain an ordered formation. Such a normative model with its religious/political vectors dominates understanding of assemblages of life and living today. In other words, a certain theoretical understanding of man and the world as developed specifically in European culture is now universalised. Philosophical anthropology has institutionalised the European account of man and this normative model ruptured prevalent modes of being and going about in the world elsewhere; the non-European assemblages are obligated to conform to the dominant model today. India, Europe is an attempt to recount the story of a violent interface between ruptured assemblages – Indian and European. It tries to tell the story of how Europe systematically and deliberately wrenches itself apart and demarcates itself decisively from Asia; it tries to tell the story of how India with all its heterogeneous constellations of assemblages is impelled to obligate itself to the heritage that allures and spurns it. In delineating this account, India, Europe also affirms the need to configure cultural difference that staggers the interface between these two cultures. Such an inquiry, unintelligible in the traditional Indian context, unintelligible because it was unnecessary, from a cultural context which did not sublimate system and order, is all the more pertinent today. For, comparative accounts of such scenarios are often regulated by the reigning model of reference – in this case Europe. India, Europe is not a comparative study of two cultural histories. It is more an attempt to explore how different cultures think differently. Thus it ix

PREFACE

tries to tell how Europe tries to configure its identity on the basis of very rigorously formulated principles, ideals, laws, and histories; and at the same time it undertakes the risky effort at sensing the cohering impulse of what is called ‘India.’ As a result, one can begin to see how the system-driven Europe differs (and differentiates itself) from divergent assemblages of ‘India.’ In order to outline the tropes and nodes that contribute to a relative coherence among Indian formations, this work risks sketching what can be considered as the ‘background’ of Indian traditions. Myriad questions fly in the face of such an effort: how to access such a ‘background,’ of cultures that faced colonialism? How to think today of the reflective cultural currents and enduring practices of the past which have been displaced, discarded, ruptured, or made over in the colonial epoch? How to reconfigure our relation to these pulsating currents beyond and beside the European formation? The Indian traditions expose one to a set of ‘enigmas:’ the figure of ‘India’ evinces coherence without a system, shareable intimacies without explanatory designs; modes of being without purposive ends, performative reflections without rational justifications. How can such an a-systemic coherence be possible? Doesn’t coherence imply an implicit logic – an ordering reason? If there is such an order doesn’t that indicate the prevalence of a system? As we grapple with such questions from within the disciplinary/discursive structures and the institutions that were spread across the globe by the European West, one is impelled to ask whether these sclerotic frames of discourse and institution are themselves not a part of the problem. One wonders whether these very structures of knowledge production and dissemination occlude access to the reflective integrity of modes of being and forms of thinking of assemblages that sustained themselves outside the fold of the European West. For Europe deploys its discursive/conceptual frames to gather and represent itself and what is outside of Europe. What kind of thinking has gone into the making of these structures and how does one differentiate this thinking from the reflective coherence at work in a culture like India? If European West advanced itself by means of conceptual grids and theoretical apparatuses one is impelled to ask: is theory or system-building a universal urge? Should cultural reflections and practices be sublimated and justified only through conceptual mechanisms? Why is it such endeavours seem to be conspicuously absent in the extended cultural traditions of India? If theory building is the root model of European configuration of learning and if our efforts (even when necessary and positive) are aimed at displacing bad theory with better theory – aren’t we reinforcing theorisation as the most covetable and superior model of explanation? Wouldn’t that imply bestowing a hierarchy to the configurations of learning (theoretical and non-theoretical)? What would be the implications of such an endorsement in cultures whose root model of configuration of learning is said to be practical or performative? Is theory-building or systematisation the ultimate destination of all reflective explanations? Why is it Indian reflective creative traditions never seem to have exclusively valorised such a x

PREFACE

destination? Can there be reflective modes of being which are alternative to the European ones? As we pursue this path of inquiry from the receiving ends of Europe, another inevitable set of questions emerges. Does this inquiry scapegoat some hypostatised Europe? Is there a homogenised Europe? To what extent the DeutschFrench conceptualisation of Europe transparent across all European countries? As there are nationality-based (German, French, British, and Italian) approaches to Greek and Roman antiquity, are there similar approaches to European interfaces with non-European cultures? Is Dutch-European approach to Indonesia identical to British approach to India? Does the French approach to Africa differ from the Belgian approach? What about Deutsch approaches to Islam? These questions, urgent as they are, get barely addressed in Indian and European (Western) academy today: they throw up new challenges and invite new inquiries. Unfortunately India, Europe can only flag these questions without engaging them within the bounds of this work. As we ponder these questions, we also notice that the extended productivity of the European model in fact reveals its possible limit as well. The model of theorisation is most effective when it confronts another theory or explanations based on such a model; or, when it purports to make sense of otherwise chaotic phenomena by projecting an order on the phenomena. But when such theoretical apparatuses confront reflective coherences which are not driven to system-building explanations (as can be seen in the case of European encounter with Pagans of antiquity and modernity), the invasive theoretical apparatus finds its limits. For, when the system-building urge faces something which is coherent but deeply unstructured, describable but non-systemic, the theorising drive is forced to see its limits. India, Europe attempts to thematise a few of such limits from the apeironal cultures of India. The heterogeneous phenomena, the diverging assemblages of jati, for example, exposed the system-builders of Europe to such a limit. But disregarding the centrifugal force of such phenomena, European theological–­ theoretical system of explanation imposed itself on the proliferative ensemble of jatis and ignored the anomalies. The theorising urge pushes forward and disregards the impasse that the confrontation exposes one to. For, the axiom of this theorisation appears to be that theory alone can substitute theory. But this betrays the urge: theory cannot thus provide an alternative to theory; on the contrary it would only constrain one to generate another theory albeit as an alternative within the circle of theorisation. Such theoretical turn can be quite productive within the circle. Thus in working through the discursive and institutional domains, which are the pristine creations of Europe’s theory-building urge, one cannot rush to embrace an oedipal posture with regard to these domains and erect Indian (or non-European) versions of these domains – Indian discourses, Indian theories, and Indian institutions. India, Europe offers no such defensive or apologetic counsel. Every disciplinary/discursive frame, in the Indian context, (such as literature, philosophy, or even Indology) grafted on to the (say, Sanskrit or other Indian xi

PREFACE

languages) cultural currents implicitly reinforces the cognitive and normative efficacy of the discipline. Each research (as in folkloristics) by default enhances the asymmetry between these European theoretical and Indian praxial-­reflective formations – and reduces the latter (inherited cultures of memory) to the status of a disciplinary object (Indian philosophy, Indian literature, or Indian epics). Consequently, the reflective efficacy and reach of these cultural currents beyond their modern enframing, objectifying disciplinary forms, never gets a chance for rethinking. Even radical postcolonial thought has rarely turned its attention to the promise of these live currents. Our discipline-bound researches and teaching in the university today are yet to address the question of cultural difference in any significant way (beyond the disciplinary determinations). In this context it must be noted that jati is just one (and not a particularly privileged one either) reflective liveable node among many others (such as dharma, karma, adhyatma, itihasa, jnana, para, vidya, loka, deha, manas, prakriti, and others) which weave the expansive network of reflexive praxial traditions of India. They show the limits of European explanatory system (composed of concepts like justice, agency, law, politics, spirit, knowledge/episteme, the other, history, world, and nature). India, Europe is an attempt to clarify these distinctions of reflective currents. Here it must be pointed out, however, that one cannot assume a homogeneous India either. The Sino-Burman-Tibetan cultural base of the north-east of India and its encounter with Christian Europe demands different kind of inquiries. The systemic erasure or alteration of cultural memory in the context of the north-east invites newer responses. As we struggle to find alternatives to this disruptive system, we may need to ponder collectively and individually: should cultural difference be configured only through the root model of theorisation? Can we envisage new modes of the liveable-thinkable? One’s attempt to access the resources of reflective coherence that sustained a culture for centuries must be sensitive to the seductive complicity which the conceptual and theoretical apparatuses pull one into. Yet it is precisely from such an aporetic situation where the invasive apparatus is exposed to its limits (which it disregards in appropriating what does not cohere within its frame) that one must figure out cultural difference: why and how reflective coherences are not always necessarily theoretical or system-building. The critical thread of inquiry here is to pursue how cultural thinking differs in these two continents of thought (India and Europe) and how they have been so far configured. The difference is demonstrated through a detailed engagement with the ideas from these two cultures and the work shows why and how European concepts are incompatible with Indian reflective work. The major orientation of India, Europe is to affirm the necessity to engage with Indian reflective traditions in order to respond to the contemporary crises in several domains such as the humanities, ethics, art, caste, action, justice, university, and the question of living together with difference. India, Europe has emerged from the scene of the day-to-day classroom teaching. Although my training has been in literary studies this work does xii

PREFACE

not indulge in disciplinary fetishism for reasons that unfold in the work. I doubt that there is any specific disciplinary system which holds key to unlock the enigmas of cultural reflective traditions. Yet the work is impelled to focus on one such system of thinking valorised in the name of ‘philosophy’ in Europe. India, Europe in a way recounts the celebrated (and interrogated) saga of ‘philosophy’ which is declaimed in the slogan: Europe is philosophy and philosophy is Europe. I must place on record my vulnerability at the very outset: I am not trained in philosophy and I don’t claim to offer a philosophical or theoretical account of either Europe or India. In the same breath let me also state without any doubt that I am no specialist of ‘India studies’ and not a self-proclaimed Indianist (whatever that might mean). Yet I draw from the Sanskrit sources through my knowledge of Telugu. Throughout I have used Sanskrit–Telugu bilingual editions for advancing my account in this work. Not being a specialist, I have stayed away from using the standard diacritical marks in the use of Indian words in this work. It is the everyday practice of teaching in the humanities that has impelled me to risk this kind of work. It is a result of the violent interface between the ruptured inheritances and the spurning implants. How do we receive and respond to the millennially enduring inheritances, now ruptured, in the host organism that we are, in the context of such repulsing implants that are a part of the life of the educated today? How and what can those nonconceptual but pervasive intimations from the everyday languages of India – intimations enlivened in the idioms of dharma, loka, prakriti, jati, karma, vidya, kala, jnaana, and encompassing all, para and apara – help us think along and beyond the sedimented concepts of man, nature, identity, world, and knowledge, – concepts unleashed by the implants of Europe? In responding to this task India, Europe can only embody and enact a ruptured coherence and cannot promise to offer a systematic work. The Puranic impulse has not been determined by any narrative imperative; it can only weave and unfold what it receives from the striated assemblages.

xiii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work, India, Europe and the Question of Cultural Difference, has been in the smithy for some time now. It was exposed to relentless heat and blows. Yet, it was uncertain what kind of alloy would result from the strife and what forms of relations and figurations would it bring forth. But it is time to take the risk and let the forge drift. As the smithy is ready to send off this restive amalgam, it is time to recall and acknowledge the nurture, care, support, and seasoning it received from many who patiently witnessed its morphing. Most of this work was first exposed at the annual meetings of the singular forum – Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics – a daunting arena indeed. The forum, first of its kind in India, formed of a small collective of individual scholars, provides the most hospitable but also severely testing place for anyone to present one’s work freely. As the forum opened its doors warmly to my work, India, Europe has begun to take shape. For this, I wish to gratefully acknowledge among many Ashis Nandy, Vinay Lal, Roby Rajan, Dinakaran, Anish Damodaran, and many others. Prof. Nandy’s critical affable support and Vinay’s extended dialogue kept this work on the simmer. There is another experimental site which helped me to process compounds of this alloy. Over the last few years it is my classroom with just a handful of students which primarily provided the space to risk the unexplored and unformed. Several semester-long courses gradually enabled the work to take its shape. I am grateful to several of my students – particularly Shreesha, Malini, and Krishna – who critically responded to this work as it was in the making. It is now heartening to see these scholars setting out on different kinds of adventures of their own. The most remarkable person who exposed me to life of the mind and who continues to succour it is Bernard Sharratt. Thirty-five years ago, as a small-town young man I knocked at Bernard’s office door in Canterbury. He welcomed me into his calm but deeply reflective ambience and since that day in October ’85, Bernard continued to guide and impact what all I wrote and taught. His unprecedented experiments in teaching, designing new courses, and fraying novel paths of inquiry remained as beacons beckoning me to adventures of thought. In a word, Bernard is incomparable. He was my teacher and remains so even to this day. A modest token of my regard xiv

A cknowledgements

and admiration for Bernard, I dedicate this work to him as my responsive reception to what he opened up for me. I am lucky in receiving sympathetic support for what I have been doing from many others. I wish to take this opportunity to thank all but can only name a few here. I am grateful to my other teacher over 40 years ago, T.R.S Sharma, for his continued sparring with me over inquiries of common interest; Alok Bhalla has been a companion in intellectual pursuit – who provided me many opportunities to present my work at various gatherings. I thank him wholeheartedly for his openness to what I do. My gratitude is due to S.N. Balagangadhara, P.C. Kar, J.P. Dimri, K.C. Baral, Dilip Das, and Vivek Dhareshwar for their sustained support. I wish to thank the anonymous reviewer of this work. His/her evaluation is exemplary in its insight, erudition, depth, and empathetic questioning. What is remarkable about this evaluation is that s/he shows genuine concern and thinks along with this work even when s/he thinks differently on many issues. I am grateful to this anonymous reviewer. An earlier, shorter, version of the chapter ‘Contextures of Learning: Darshana and Theoria in Mnemopraxial Traditions’ was included as ‘Darshana and Theoria: Locations and Ends of Mnemopraxial Learning’ in the volume India and Civilizational Futures: Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics II, edited by Vinay Lal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019). I wish to thank Vinay Lal and Oxford University Press for permitting me to make use of my earlier version in this chapter. Many thanks are due to Dr. Shashank Shekhar Sinha and Antara Ray Chaudhury of Routledge for their unflagging support to this work and the series of which this forms a part. Having worked with Rimina Mohapatra earlier, I am aware how competent and professionally efficient she is. I wish to take this opportunity to thank her. Part of this work was developed in California when I spent a few months at my daughter’s place. Nikhita, her husband Pradeep, and their lovably mischievous toddler Gautam provided memorable and lucid moments of relief from the smithy. I thank them for all their support. Most of the ideas of this work in some form were discussed with my younger daughter Anvita. She is a calm and patient listener who would quietly shoot unexpected questions. I greatly appreciate her thinking along with me, on her own. Last but not least without my wife, Shobha’s unrestrained support – her patience with and toleration of my idiosyncratic tantrums – this work would not have reached this stage. Thank you Shobh. This work got forged as the pandemic raged and savaged. Covid 19 cost us heavy on relations. My eldest brother succumbed to the pandemic – and with him a deeper and endearing root of relations got snapped. The loss is irrecuperable. He would have felt proud of this work. Covid 19 kept us warm or cold even as it snapped and numbed relations in forgetful phobic limbo. Yet, it is in this very self-imposed quarantined warmth of the smithy that this work on relations got forged. I hope it relates to others too. xv

1 INTRODUCTION Genealogies of Euro-analysis

There is a living contradiction there, that Europe itself, yesterday and today: not only does it give itself weapons to use against itself and against its own limitations, but it gives political weapons to all the peoples and all the cultures that European colonialism itself has subjugated.1

Philosophical anthropology involves inquiry into what all exists from the standpoint of man and in relation to man. Man is the viewing point of explanatory accounts. It is from such a vantage point that even differentiation of one culture from another is undertaken. But can cultural difference be reduced to such anthropo-centred viewpoint? Is privileging of man and his discourse a cultural universal? How do cultures differ from each other? How do they articulate this difference? The aim of this book is to configure cultural difference between India and Europe from the complex conceptual and institutional scenario they are entangled in. Three specific tasks are undertaken in exploring the cultural difference here: (i) focus on certain essential conceptual categories that constitute European configuration of learning; these concepts are art, nature, the literary, world, action, community, the university, and the humanities. The inquiry here aims at showing the background source from which this conceptual grid emerges and consolidates itself. As this is not a historical work, it engages more with the specific ways in which certain major thinkers of Europe (Heidegger, Derrida, Agamben among others) grappled with these concepts and unravelled their reach and limits. (ii) Given the historical violence through which the conceptual apparatus was implanted across other cultures, this work enquires into the ways in which the grid has soaked into and determined the ‘native’ (in this context, Indian) efforts to ‘make sense of’ their cultural forms and practices. (iii) Drawing on specific resources from Sanskrit and Telugu languages, the work takes the risk of configuring the reflective coherence of Indian traditions of learning and tries to specify the profound difference that demarcates Indian reflective traditions from European theo-philosophical interpretations of the relation between being (in/of) and the world. 1

INTRODUCTION

The three tasks specified will unfold at two related levels: the general and particular. The general task is to risk suggesting reflective nodes within which more specific and extended work proliferates. Two such nodes invoked in this work are the well-known reflective tropes para (other) and apara (non-other) of the Indian traditions. It is within the ambiance of the nodes that these tropes compose, it is contended, that all the other very specific praxial reflective work of the Indian traditions unfolds, and it is this general ambiance that contributes to Indian cultural difference as well as coherence. The specific work explored in this book pertains to certain themes such as kala, sahitya, prakriti, karma, vidya, loka, and manas. This work contends that without such an inquiry into cultural difference, every culture will end up representing itself in barely thought European frames of conceptualisation in their contexts. The Indian intellectual scenario, especially the one that gets projected from the universities, is hardly attentive to the question of cultural difference. One insistent current of this work, as it emerges from teaching and researching in the Indian classroom, is to pulse towards critical humanities that weave together, through performative modes, the reflective voice and gesture, artefact, memory, and genos in order to rearticulate the received domain of the humanities beyond the colonial rupture. India, Europe affirms the need to sense the responsibility of the lively cultural memory that moved the human habitats for millennia. This work is ultimately about the problematic of relations at two levels: (i) relations across heterogeneous formations, be they human or non-human, what they bring forth, and their interface with hegemonic formations; and (ii) relations between reflective practices and explanatory systems. Consequently, the theme of cultural difference explored here is not aimed at isolating and immunising some pristine cultural wholeness from exposure to other cultural impingements. A  work on the question of relations cannot hope to do so. Focusing on cultural difference is not a defensive, hapless self-preservative gesture, only from a postcolonial or Europeanised context. Cultural difference is persistently and restlessly pursued and affirmed in the celebrated European intellectual history definitely throughout the modern period: it is done in the name of the cherished discourse of philosophy. Philosophical anthropology requires configuration of cultural difference. Needless to say that unifying and differentiating categories like anthropology and culture themselves are already rooted in a particular cultural thought about thinking and living as such in general. European intellectual history distinguishes and demarcates its identity in the name of a unique spirit, its ability to nurture questioning as the piety of thought,2 its self-conscious and self-critical reflexivity, its universality, its ability to birth the science of rationality, purvey democracy to the world, and achieve all these in the thinking of the human as such.3 Such is the autobiographical narrative of European sovereignty. This narrative continues to be hegemonic even in determining cultural differences.4 We are all variously caught in the webs of this narrative 2

INTRODUCTION

even when we risk configuring cultural difference of ‘India.’ The future of philosophical anthropology, contends S.N. Balagangadhara, depends on the questions that we forge about man from our ‘backgrounds.’5 Given the issues sketched here – about Europe, cultural difference, question of relations, and India – this chapter focuses on each of these themes in detail and provides the necessary background for the arguments developed in this book. For the purpose of a focused inquiry, this chapter engages with one of the most comprehensive and highly regarded woks on Europe, Europe, or the Infinite Task: A Study of a Philosophical Concept by Rodolphe Gasché.

Deracinated credo At the end of his monumental work on the philosophical conception of Europe, Europe, Rodolphe Gasché writes: ‘“Europe” signifies nothing more – but also nothing less – than the project of a world subject to the demand of universal intelligibility, public justification of all claims and deeds, and, hence, of an openness to, and responsibility toward all others.’ (Gasché, Europe, p. 342) The paragraph captures the essential thematics – universality of reason, demonstrable evidence for justification, transcending the limits of particularity, and bearing responsibility – that crystallised in the conception of Europe in the 20th century thought. Gasché offers a detailed engagement with four major thinkers of the 20th century – Husserl, Heidegger, Patocka, and Derrida – whose work persistently advanced these philosophical thematics. In Gasché’s Euro-analysis – philosophical conceptualisation of Europe – these themes can be more economically tagged as reason (universality, demonstrable rationality, self-criticism) and faith (transcending openness, responsibility, the other). These tenacious strands of reason and faith that configure Europe are deeply interwoven; they also serve as the temporalspatial and purposive markers – or, to use Gasché’s phrase they inscribe Europe’s archeo-teleological circle (Gasché, Europe, p. 323). In Gasché’s work one can see that not only each of these thinkers is at once deeply involved in the circle but each one also evinces a conscious move beyond the circle. In other words, in varied ways these thinkers affirm the essential sources of European philosophical identity in Greek reason and (Judeo) Christian faith on the one hand and at the same time, most vehemently advance their universality, on the other. In a word, reason and faith are of a very particular provenance but they ‘uproot’ themselves to become universal: ‘Europe’ and (Europe alone) is constituted by such a ‘double dynamic.’6 Gasché’s entire account is plotted on the articulation of this double dynamic. The double dynamic serves two specific purposes in this regard: (i) designation of a European ‘identity’ (notwithstanding whatever undecidability is attributed to it) and (ii) what can be called ‘cultural difference’ of Europe from its others (although this is designated as philosophy’s difference). It also serves to demarcate empirical descriptions form theoretical systems. The 3

INTRODUCTION

work of all the thinkers Gasché discusses is shaped by this double dynamic. Thus the Greece that figures in their work is real – historical – from preSocratics to Aristotle – and also ‘ideal’ – that which universalises its thought and is delivered ‘into more than one language,’ as Derrida affirms. Thus, Europe as Greek is an ‘unchallenged assumption’ among all these thinkers, says Gasché: the ideality of philosophy ‘exists nowhere else than in Greece,’ declares Derrida. What is philosophy that could only emerge in Greece first? Philosophy, enunciates Derrida, is ‘the universal project of a will to deracination’ (Derrida cited in Gasché, Europe, p. 291). Deracination is an uprooting from the originary sources so that the uprooted can transplant in another soil or it can travel or lend itself to translation indefinitely. Deracination is freeing oneself from the cocoon of a language, family, ethné, culture, territory, and nation – and setting one adrift who lives on a-destinally. One is impelled to ask in this context: Can the host soil receive and respond to the transplant? Can the transplant itself be sensitive to the host and can the host authentically deracinate what it receives (un-Greek the Greek in this instance)? This remains an untouched set of questions in the portals of philosophy. A similar set of questions can also be posed in the context of the domain of literature as well and the resounding silence can be felt easily. A century earlier, a college principal had said: Then again in the field of learning, how many of us have had distinctively Indian estimates of western literature and thought?… Our education has largely been imported to us through English literature. The Indian mind is much further removed by tradition and history than the French or the German mind from the spirit of English literature, and yet no Indian, so far as I am aware, has passed judgements of English literature that reflect his Indian mentality.7 The questions raised earlier and the observations made by the principal concern the much-admired concept of openness of ‘Europe’ to its others. It appears that the ideals of openness and responsibility to others (species and the absolute) evince more a ‘desire or wish for what Europe is or ought to be,’ says Gasché (Gasché, Europe, p. 330). One begins to wonder whether this ‘openness’ is not asymmetric in its relation. We will return to this theme. Greece and Europe are filiated with their will to uproot and deracinate. The uprooting is an act of violence, confrontation, and strife. In both cases the strife can be seen at two levels: internal and external. In the case of Greece, the strife is to set itself apart from its most formidable Asian force in antiquity: the Persian. The Greeks understood themselves to be a people situated between Asia and Europe. They did not consider themselves to be Europeans. For the Hölderlin-inspired Heidegger Greece was the Orient. The ‘Orient is not the “Asia”.’ The Greek-‘Orient’ ‘rose’ writes Heidegger ‘into the brief orbit of its historical uniqueness and grandeur.’ This was possible for the Greeks ‘only thanks to the most fierce but also most creative 4

INTRODUCTION

confrontation with what was most foreign to them and most difficult – the Asian [i.e., Persian],’ states Heidegger (Heidegger cited in Gasché, Europe, p. 97). Setting itself apart from this Asian milieu, and by overcoming it, Greece accomplished its crowning achievement in the thought of Heraclitus, says Heidegger. Comparable to what Heraclitus has achieved in overcoming Asia in antiquity, the German poet Hölderlin has achieved in modernity for Heidegger. ‘It comes therefore,’ writes Gasché, ‘as no surprise if the notion of destiny to be found in Hölderlin’s thought is also said to be “a creative overming of the Asiatic representation of destiny”.’ In the 20th century, Heidegger sees German philosophy alone in a privileged position to protect and save Europe from Asia: ‘“the European people have to be protected from the Asiatic”.’ (Gasché, Europe, fn. 7, pp. 364–365; the last quotation and quotation within Gasché’s statement earlier are Heidegger’s). The West’s vigorous effort to demarcate itself from the Asiatic and determine its specificity, observes Gasché, has ‘a long tradition.’ (Gasché, Europe, fn. 7 p. 364). If Heraclitus demonstrates the ‘first confrontation with the [external/foreign] Asiatic,’ and if this constitutes the originary source of Greek-European thought for Heidegger, one can notice that this originary event gets systematized through yet another, internal, confrontation and rupture within Greece. This rupture inaugurates the ‘first beginning’ of philosophy in Greece. The internal wrenching apart involved here is in the displacement of Homeric learning and overthrowing the bardic rendering of truth by the philosophical, rational mode, and its argumentative measuring of truth. Plato initiates this internal rupture: ‘It seems to me that [the old philosophers of being],’ declares Plato’s Socrates, ‘told us stories, as if we were children.’8 The Homeric legacy which lingered on among the pre-Socratic thinkers appears to fade out in the Socratic adverse thematisation and bracketing of it. Philosopher as the propounder and purveyor of truth through logical explanatory accounts about what exists gains ascendancy from this rupture. Heidegger thematises what is unique and unprecedented in the GreekOrient event as the history of Being. Being (the master concept-trope of Heidegger), simply put, is the source of all beings or what all exists as a whole. If the question of Being is first thematised by Heraclitus (thematised from the ‘primal history’ of ‘poetizing thinking’ of the poets – Homer to Sophocles), it receives a decisive resolution in the works of Plato and Aristotle. Being, in this resolution, gets determined on the basis of the visual presence of beings (as things appear). No wonder why Heidegger says that the grandeur of the Greek-Orient has only a ‘brief orbit.’ Plato’s resolution inaugurates a metaphysical tradition – which determines what is beyond the physical by means of the appearances of the physical. But the question of Being cannot be reduced to what it discloses as/in appearances, contends Heidegger. For, even as it opens up and lights up whatever comes forth, Being also at the same time, conceals and withdraws. The metaphysical 5

INTRODUCTION

resolution ‘forgets’ the concealing, withdrawing gesture of Being, argues Heidegger. The destiny – which is a ‘sending’ ‘from the [Greek] Orient into the [European] Occident,’ (Heidegger cited in Gasché, Europe, p. 96), is caught in the changing metaphysical determinations, contends Heidegger. Notwithstanding the internal twists that the Greek beginning faces, what is crucial here is the singularity of the Greek-Orient: its ‘sending.’ This sending is accomplished by means of rupture, deracination, and uprooting. Any other such postal communication between other cultures, the ‘other great beginnings’ (a curious sentiment devoid of substance repeats a few times in Gasché’s work – more a gesture of acknowledgement rather than any genuine opening) and Europe is conspicuous in its complete absence in the work of this celebrated tradition.

Irruptive identity If Greece shows a radical departure or break from its milieu in its reformation, Europe foregrounds even a more fundamental abandonment and parting with its roots. The name Europe was an outsider’s appellation to a landmass without a name. Gasché gives two sources for this appellation and provides a curious reading of the second – mythic source. The name Europe from the Semitic origins was first handed over to the Greeks by Phoenicians. It referred (from erebos – darkness) to a landmass in a darker region to the west of Greece where the sun sets. In the mythic account, Europa is the daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor; Zeus, in the form of a bull, abducts her to Crete. After her time with Zeus in Crete, Europa returns to Phoenicia (Asia). Thus, the name Europe is not a self-designation but other’s – Asia’s projection – observes Gasché. Gasché’s more involved reading of this myth conforms to the thematic of uprooting as the condition of distinctive identity or event: ‘Undoubtedly, what this myth suggests is that Europe constitutes itself by separating itself from and pitting itself against Asia, encapsulating itself in the same movement within itself by setting itself from its main other.’ (Gasché, Europe, pp. 10–11). Obviously, this is a rather exaggerated and interested reading of the myth. Clearly there is barely any relation between the myth and what the Greeks called Europe as the dark landmass on the western shore of the Aegean Sea (As Gasché certainly knows, Europa has little to do with darkness; her name refers to a face, eye, or a countenance). At a more obvious level, what the myth recounts is the circular traversal of the goddess. In all her rounded journey there is no mention of the landmass – she moves south from her country and returns to it. Europa’s traversal is between Crete and Lycia (or to Tyre, Phoenicia, to be more precise). Whereas what emerges from Gasché’s reading is a deliberate and violent act of self-formation which wrenches itself from its originary relation and consolidation of this formation actively and exclusively against the originary source. There wasn’t any tectonic movement here that wrenched apart the 6

INTRODUCTION

landmass of Europe from Asia to draw such implication from the myth (incidentally, as well known, it is precisely such a massive tectonic rift which literally drifted a colossal landmass from the supercontinent called Pangea, which the Greeks called India). The myth of Europa, even in the versions that Gasché draws on, does not lend itself to such a violent terrestrial tectonic upheaval. Gasché’s reading of the myth of Europa enacts a kind of heliocentric kidnap: ‘the tearing away from Asia…toward the West…[and the kidnap] carries the sun with itself, which rises, and then sets as well,’ ultimately in the West (Denise Guenoun cited in Gasché, Europe, p. 11). What appears to be at stake in this reading of the myth is a sedimented or symptomatic account, not so much about the landmass in question but about the origin of the cherished discourse called philosophy. Philosophy as such can secure its identity and distinction only when it violently wrenches itself apart from and opposes itself categorically to what it designates as myth. We have seen this moment as the internal rift within the dual formation of Greece earlier. The second, and once again a deeply entrenched, aspect of the reading at work here is the conflation of myth with Asia and identification of philosophy with Greek-Europe. Gasché here is only repeating a deeply inscribed narrative. ‘For the great beginning of Western philosophy, too,’ wrote Heidegger unequivocally, ‘did not come out of nothing. Rather, it became great because it had to overcome its greatest opposite, the mythical in general and the Asiatic in particular…’9 The structural or infra-structural violence that Europe as philosophy irrupts is literally in line with the first cartographer–philosopher of ancient Greece – Anaximander’s inscriptional demarcation that wrenched apart land from water, an originary geometric–geographic inscription inconceivable for Homer10. (We will return to this). It is the same categorical divide that gets reiterated with regard to Plato’s tearing apart of poetry/art from philosophy. Despite his restless questioning of the ‘first beginning’ of philosophy and his persistent unravelling of Platonism, even Heidegger’s reading of the relation between ‘poetizing thinking and thinking poetry in Greece’ (Gasché, Europe, p. 134) lends itself to Platonism. Plato contends that the rift between poetry and philosophy ‘is an old quarrel…the ancient antagonism’.11 Heidegger’s characterisation of the relation between the poet and the thinker is, if not that of an open rift yet, but surely that of constitutive dependence. The philosopher illuminates the poet (one cannot miss the Hegelian note here)12. The poet founds the world for a people, asserts Heidegger. The ‘primal history’ which the poetising thinking founds is neither archaeological nor historical, ‘neither half nor whole natural science, but, if it is anything at all, it is mythology’ (Heidegger cited in Gasché, Europe, p. 134). It must be noted in passing that all the discourses, including mythology, mentioned here from which the poetising thinking stands apart are the legacy of the first beginning of philosophy.13 Then, how is the philosopher to be related to the poet? ‘The current task of philosophy,’ states Gasché summarising Heidegger and thus reconfirming the distinctive 7

INTRODUCTION

but classical position of the philosopher, ‘is to elucidate in a thinking mode the only great poetry…’ (Gasché, Europe, p. 153); or, the thinker, declares Heidegger, ‘heeding the spoken word and thinking of it, so that it may be properly interpreted and preserved…[and thus] help the poet.’ Such a task of ‘assisting the poet,’ writes Gasché, ‘must also have its grounds in philosophical thinking’ (Gasché, Europe, p. 113). In the paradigmatic scene of the relation between the poet and philosopher, which Plato sketches in Ion, Socrates, through his persistent questioning demonstrates that the hapless rhapsode (a caricatured Homer) does not fully understand the import of his vocation or call; it is the philosopher alone who can clarify and interpret the creative act of the poet/ mythmaker.14 ‘The thinker’s task, then, is to come to the aid of the poet “by interpreting and grasping conceptually the relations” that constitute such poetic dwelling’ (quotation inside the citation is from Heidegger; Gasché, Europe, p. 190). Gasché goes on to clarify Heidegger’s credo: ‘The thinker’s task consists not only of spelling out what the poet left unsaid but also of illuminating through a lucidly conceptual presentation…’ (Gasché, Europe, p. 190). Poetising thinking appears structurally dependent upon and thus is determined or made intelligible by the philosopher’s conceptual en-lightening of the poet’s work. This structure of relation (of dependency) with the work of philosophy gets explicitly thematised and demonstrated in the work of Plato and Aristotle. The legacy of this structure continues to be dominant all over the world as it gets universalised through the university. The double dynamic of Europe reiterates itself. It must be said here that this structure of relation is a cultural peculiarity of Europe – taking root especially after the emergence of the discourse of philosophy. Metaphysics as the first philosophy (the first beginning) is quintessentially a product of this violent infrastructure of division and opposition. Mythology, poetry, and Asia are the decisive creations or forgings of philosophy and/as Europe. This infrastructure is formidable and it continues to be productive. Symptoms of irony and anxiety may be at work in shoring up this heritage of thought in the name of European ‘values.’ It is precisely this violent hierarchy, which paradoxically Heidegger’s ‘second beginning’ aims at overcoming. The second beginning (that of sensing the ‘truth of Being’ in its concealment and withdrawal) and the possibility of a transition to that which Heidegger envisioned seems to get forgotten in upholding Europe as philosophy as value of self-criticism. In the ultimate analysis, the anxiety of the cherished Greek-European self-plunging into a chaos (of myth and/as Asia) must be averted at any cost by adhering to the decisive Anaximandrian demarcation and division. As we noticed earlier, even Heidegger’s work is not free from this anxiety about Europe. ‘The myth of Europa is,’ reaffirms Gasché, ‘thus above all a myth of separation and hence coeval with the birth of philosophy as a generalized criticism.’ (Gasché, Europe, fn. 17 p. 350). 8

INTRODUCTION

Non-Europe or another Europe? Given the pervasive presence of ‘Europe’ on the planet, what is the place of the so-called non-European with regard to the operation of the double dynamic and the metaphysical as philosophical framework it sends off everywhere? How does ‘Europe’ relate to ‘non-Europe’ in the work of Gasché and the philosophers he discusses? From Gasché’s account explored so far, there are at least two Europes or two sides to the same thing called Europe. The first is the ideological side which aggressively expanded and imposed itself on the world – especially the non-European; this is a Europe that legitimised its deeds precisely on the basis of the much acclaimed exclusive values of its culture: universality, rationality, certainty of knowledge, and its moral (‘civilisational’) responsibility to the ‘world.’ This Europe often receives in varied ways much attention under the rubric of ‘Eurocentrism.’ Along with this violent and arrogant Europe, Gasché writes, there is yet another side which enabled Europe by using these very ideals/values that: served to justify and occlude the exploitation and humiliation of much of the rest of the world, these very concepts and ideas also have made it possible for Europe to question its own traditions and the crimes that have been committed in their name. This is the ‘unique feature of selfcritical evaluation’ – which must also be suspected, says Gasché. (Gasché, Europe, pp. 6–7) Despite nurturing some suspicion about celebration of such a tradition, Gasché asserts: ‘the fact remains that there is such a tradition and such a culture in Europe…such self-criticism is something quite unique that sets Europe apart.’ Rooted in the undoubtedly Western concern with universality, rationality, evidence and so forth, this self-critical discourse and practice is a definite feature that has profoundly shaped European history and culture…it is this very demand, to put it differently, of relating in a negative fashion to oneself and the ensuing openness to all others that is constitutive of a European ‘identity’…It is not simply ironic that all critique of Europe must ultimately seek its resources in the theory and practice of self-questioning that is itself characteristic of European ‘identity’. (Gasché, Europe, p. 7, italics original) In this critical configuration of Europe, non-Europe does not come across explicitly as the Asia of the ‘long tradition’ discussed earlier. Non-Europe is framed in Gasché’s work in two related ways: (i) one which is obliged to speak Europe even when it claims to depart from Europe and (ii) one which nurtures a ‘blind spot’ (about Europe) in its postcolonial criticism of Europe. 9

INTRODUCTION

The latter kind of criticism, Gasché writes, projects Europe and the West as ‘a homogeneous power of domination over the rest of the world.’ An ‘accusation’ which ignores the manifoldness of Europe – its internal differentiation, contends Gasché. Even when one respects the internal divergence of Europe, is such variation in any way heterogeneous to the identity of Europe as philosophy and as self-critical force? Is there a radical departure within the tradition from, say, Husserl’s declaration: ‘the idea of Europe is the idea of philosophy–an idea of a universal rational science congruent with ­philosophy’? (Gasché, Europe, p. 17, italics in the original). Heidegger certainly critiques Husserl’s identification of Europe with ‘rational science,’ but he would definitely defend Europe as philosophy. Heidegger unequivocally declares: ‘The often heard expression ‘Western-European philosophy’ is, in truth, a tautology. Why? Because philosophy is Greek in nature.’15 As we saw earlier, Derrida firmly endorses this assertion. For Derrida, writes Gasché, ‘any interpellation of the Greek by the non-Greek is possible only in the language of the Greeks.’ (Gasché, Europe, p. 295). The ‘“indestructible and unforeseeable resource of the Greek logos”’, writes Derrida in his early work on Husserl, ‘prevents it from being unseated by calling on the non-Greek, whatever the latter’s shape’ (the first part of the sentence is a citation from Derrida in Gasché, Europe, p. 295). The Euro-analysis, which is also an auto-analysis, can take place precisely because a configuration of Europe from its antiquity to modernity has been laboriously worked out (in the modern period); it is crucial to mention that such analysis takes place through differentiated genealogies: Greek, Judaic, Roman, and Christian (Catholic and Protestant). Each such genea-auto-analysis can claim ‘Europe’ as essentially marked by its particular genealogy. It would not be possible to pursue this important theme within the frame of this book16. As shown earlier such a configuration is made possible by the divisive metaphysical schema conjured up in European antiquity. Now to point a finger at the absence of such an auto-analysis – say, a Sino-analysis, an Indo-analysis, or an Afro-analysis – is to reinforce the paradigm of the ‘auto’ – and remain foreclosed towards any opening as to the status of such an auto in other non-European formations. ‘Undoubtedly,’ writes Gasché, ‘some other great world-cultures have raised themselves to the thought of universality…Yet only in Greece did thought develop in a way that had no likeness anywhere else…only in Greece that thought became defined as such’ (Gasché, Europe, p. 341). That is, the uniqueness of Greece is not just in thinking but essentially in thinking about thinking and providing an explanatory account of thinking: philosophy is such a self-consciously developed (auto-affective) system of thought. One wonders whether the emergence of questions – questions which precisely inquire into the apodictic claims of cultural universality of a set of ‘values’ (universality, certainty of knowledge, rationality, and the world) can wholly be reduced to a banal critique of Eurocentrism. Such a critique, as Gasché never fails to point out, ‘ironically’ ‘presupposes and participates 10

INTRODUCTION

in what one has denounced as the hubris of the logos, namely, in the very demand for universality’ (Gasché Europe, p. 8). Surely, such a critique may undo itself in its oedipal rage. But such a bracketing of the criticism of Eurocentrism can only be the result of the conviction that the only language of intelligibility is European – that ‘nothing’ can exist beyond the philosophical Europe – unless it speaks the European. Despite vehement differentiation of levels of the empirical and philosophical or transcendent, Europes seem to get conflated in such declarations. In a word, European philosophical heritage forecloses any ‘lighted’ ‘clearing’ (to use the cherished tropes of Heidegger) beyond the circumscribed region of ‘Europe.’ This is bound to be so in the European heritage. For, any configuration of the ‘real’ or what is as a whole, is contingent upon the envisioning eye, faith in the order, and reflective projection of the thinking/theorising subject – the auto of the agentive being. The relation to the ‘outside’ (‘nature’) or ‘inside’ (‘self’) – to what is – is entirely determined by what Heidegger calls the ‘inner drive’ of this subjectum17. It looks like more often than not what is called non-Europe is entirely a product of the metaphysical tradition of the West unravelled above. Wherever modern discourses of the West (the sciences and the humanities and their genealogical provenance of Trivium and Quadrivium) and the institution (the university) that implants these discourses take root – non-Europe gets formed. Non-Europe, in a word, is a tautological category: Europe speaks to Europe through a detour, a sort of philosophical ventriloquism (this might look like a parody of the account of Being that Heidegger provides, but such a parody is not intended here). It is rather unfortunate when accomplished intellectuals characterise the ‘non-European’ ‘critique’ of Europe as ironic and assert the inevitability of such a critique turning to European resources to sustain itself. Derrida once gravely declared that what globalisation of European thought has achieved could not have been done easily by any colonialism or imperialism: ‘globalization is Europeanization…[non-Europeans], while developing a powerful and indisputable contestation of Eurocentrism, are in the process of letting themselves be Europeanized far beyond the imperialist or colonialist forms we know.’18 Such claims foreclose any outside or opening beyond the closure of the European heritage. One cannot naively deny the truth of such realisms; one cannot fantasise a transparent ready-touse resource intact beyond Europe. But, even if this question sounds ‘ironic:’ can one abandon the destiny of heterogeneous planetary formations to the fraught determinations of a European heritage? The non-European is obliged to become intelligible only within the purview of Europe. Therefore, the task of inquiry from the enframed contexts of the so-called non-Europe is to be alert to the commingled layers of Europe – the violent, ideological, the valued universal rational, and the intimations of the non-metaphysical. But that is also the task of Europe as well. In such a context the manifold complex called ‘non-Europe,’ can perhaps be released as a decisive limit of the philosophical Europe. The limit is both the 11

INTRODUCTION

mark of closure and a threshold of opening: if the inside of the limit signifies order, the outside is deemed disorder or chaos. The limits open into the apeiron. As pointed out earlier, Anaximander inscribed the foundational line that continues to regulate the fundamental division between order and chaos. One can push the chaos of waters by claiming or reclaiming the order of land. The non-Europe is such a European reclamation. A plethora of European ‘discoveries’ and reclamations (for the Bible has already claimed them in a Judeo-Christian cartography) of lands (into order) from the late medieval period is an eloquent part of European history. But, all land – reclaimed or not – is always already exposed to the surging surrounding apeironal waters. Thus configuring and imposing inscriptional limits is securing order. The limits distance and differentiate chaotic waters from the ordered land; at least, they hope to do so. Whereas the apeironal waters inundate and erase all demarcations and clamations from time to time. In order to rethink or respond to this foundational inscription and division one can no longer speak from the ‘side of’ either land or water or from ‘Europe’ or ‘non-Europe.’ That would be to reinforce the very division that has been violently imposed and inscribed. Perhaps one learns to discern and seek a more originary mode of being which attunes itself to alternating rhythms of land and water – ‘order’ and ‘chaos’ (if one wishes to retain such terms – where neither of them exclusively gets celebrated (order) or castigated (chaos)). Such a mode of being is not compelled to take recourse to the ordering heritage of Europe by default. It is only in such a default heritage that chaos threatens from the rigidly demarcated borders. What could open up beyond these calculated borders are the incalculable confluences and dispersals of formations. ‘Europe’ compels these dances of formations to the schema of order and disorder. Non-Europe circulates largely as determined by this schema. But the complex of non-Europe (or even Europe, for that matter) cannot be exhausted by such calculated schemas. It should be possible to sense intimations of other modes and other rhythms of formations and relations vibrating in this complex. Heidegger was convinced of another beginning – other than the paradigmatic model inaugurated in the first beginning of Western thought. Even as it gets formed as the dissimilar twin, the non-Europe at the same time can also be said to delimit Europe. Inquiries into the significance of this limit and its status in the so-called non-European complex, to retain this historically violent appellation, are urgently needed. What is fascinating and at the same time intriguing in Heidegger’s extended meditation on Europe (and/as the question of Being) is that a very deeply riven antinomy constitutes his ideal Europe: Europe and non-Europe. The Greek-Orient is surely not the Occident-Europe; the former sets the limits of the latter. The latter must overcome the originary achievement of the former and yet be spurred by that very achievement. But the GreekOrient must also depart from its other – the Asiatic and so should the Occident-Europe. Yet, Heidegger would occasionally invoke the other ‘great 12

INTRODUCTION

traditions’ and refer to East Asia as promising other openings (most explicitly in his dialogue with a Japanese interlocutor in On the Way to Language)19. In all this charged drama of proximity and distance, what hauntingly seems to pulsate but gets disavowed is that the ‘non-European’ in question here is unmistakably the discredited ‘Pagan’ of (Judeo) Christianity. At every juncture of European thought, the Pagan seems to ‘return’ but every time gets disavowed. When Judeo-Christian thought turns to antiquity, the latter must be purged of its Pagan traits (Plato and Aristotle are such sanitised figures); and in modernity, from Leibniz to LeviStrauss and beyond, the Pagan non-European must be brought into the reigning philosophical–anthropological frame. For Jan Patocka, the other major thinker Gasché discusses, Plato must be appropriated without his Pagan orgiastic cultic baggage. Europe must be reclaimed as Christian with the idea of responsibility; responsibility to others is a generalisation or universalisation of the essential Christian dogma about the responsibility to the absolute other: God. Yet the ‘Pagan’ continues to set the limits to the advance of European order and gets disavowed in European terms. Hence the law of demarcation and opposition which alone constitutes the identity and security of ‘Europe’ and projects its non-Europe. Without indulging in the kind of ‘critique’ or criticism from the nonEuropeans and postcolonials, which Gasché foregrounds, and fully honouring the self-explorative discourse (philosophy) that Europe alone is seen to possess most uniquely, one can still risk asking a question in the context of the philosophical tradition which Gasché is immersed in: Has this tradition or anyone of the thinkers honoured in this tradition ever engaged with any non-European tradition with a comparable rigour and passion which they demonstrate with regard to the European heritage? Has ‘Europe’ ever moved out of its, in Gasché’s terms, self-encapsulation? After Hegel’s magisterial sweep of the non-European into the supervening metaphysical system one does not find any of the thinkers that Gasché engages with turning to, say, Indian or Chinese traditions. Only in Derrida’s work one finds sporadic allusions to Indian thought – but they remain entirely confined to parenthetical comments, asides, or footnotes – to, in a word, ‘margins’ devoid of any heterogeneity. But the other trajectory – of non-European thinkers engaging, without ironic and polemical indulgences (of the kind Gasché identifies as characteristic of non-European and postcolonial response,) with the critical knowledge of Europe – can only be reckoned as normal or normative, in Gasché’s account. From the vantage of the European heritage, the non-European would only have the status of a homogeneous totality, exposed to assimilative fold of the European double dynamic. One cannot help stating that Europe never risked non-Europe beyond its secure confines. When one exposes oneself to such risk one can begin to see that the thematic of ‘self,’ which is (in all its manifestations such as ego, subjectivity, person, consciousness, ipseity, sovereignty, I, mine, me, god, individual, and identity), for instance, so foundational to the European 13

INTRODUCTION

heritage, gets accorded a status which is radically heterogeneous to the European configuration of it in other (at least the Indian) traditions. All the distinctive modes and forms of articulating the thematic of self over millennia in what is only retrospectively labelled as India – have little to do with a unifying geographical or conceptual category. These articulations come forth in varied ways in the process of engaging in a more fundamental task of grappling with the question of relations.

The question concerning relations What are relations? Relations are connections between things and nonthings, among tangibles and intangibles. Relations bond components of a formation and incline it towards others. Relations identify and differentiate a formation from other formations. Relations incline and repulse entities and relations towards each other. It is the force of relations that appears to form and drive what all exists. What all exists, converges, circulates, and dissolves within the immeasurable ambiance of relations. Given that relations as such are not like tangible entities like ropes and chains, the questions arises: are they real or, are relations only mental projections? About two millennia of European thinking pursued this question and resolved it in a certain way. ‘In Plato and Aristotle,’ writes Rodolphe Gasché recounting the long history of the theory of relations in another important work, Of Minimal Things, ‘and throughout most of the philosophical tradition, relation is understood primarily from the object – that is, as an objective determination that the object possesses with respect to itself, or that is attached to it with respect another thing.’20 (Gasché, Of Minimal Things, p. 6) Thus, it is the object, thing, or foundation which is treated as essential and relation only as an accident. Aristotle accords lowest status to relations among beings. Medieval scholastic thought appropriates Aristotle’s hierarchic model of superior beings and inferior relation into its theological framework. The question of relation gets addressed in theological terms as connection (or absence of it) between God and his creatures. As relative things, the creatures are wholly dependent on the foundation, that is, God. They are less real than their foundation. Relation is different from the foundation. For Thomas Aquinas, for instance, relation itself is ‘the weakest or least real,’ of all categories (Aquinas cited in Gasché, Of Minimal Things, p. 3). Relations cannot exist without foundation – which is a perfect one for Aquinas. Relations, says Aquinas, have ‘least of all beings’ and their ‘ontological status is…one of minimal things’ (Aquinas cited in Gasché, Of Minimal Things, p. 3). As can be seen, philosophy and theology are more concerned with fundamental or foundational categories and relegate others (such as relations) to lower or minimal status. Gasché’s own meditation on relation inverts the minimal and renders it more elemental and foundational than all those 14

INTRODUCTION

things that are consciously formulated as concepts (Gasché, Of Minimal Things, pp. 4–5). Drawing on Heidegger’s inquiry into the relation between Being and beings, Gasché sees relation as resulting from the ‘prior opening’ of Being which makes possible the emergence of beings which comport towards each other. This comporting relation of beings is seen as the gift of Being (Gasché, Of Minimal Things, p. 9). In other words, Being is that originary opening for the coming forth of things that makes their appearance. Relation is the ‘donation’ of Being among (and as) things that appear. In this construal relation as a consequence of gift and donation of Being can be said to gain a positive value. It can provide an account of order of things and of their originary source. Such an account is designated as the first philosophy – the study of beings (as sourced) in Being. Despite Heidegger’s persistent effort to free his meditation from theological background, the language of ‘gift,’ ‘donation,’ ‘abandoning,’ ‘hidden,’ and ‘withdrawal’ (of Being) is intelligible only in a religious–theological soil. Being – in its singular–double articulation of disclosure and concealment, revelation, and hiding – appears to be an active ‘self-driven’ force: these movements are Being’s operations and occurrences.21 In contrast to the brief account about the problem of relations in the European tradition, if there is anything that is ‘central’ to Indian traditions, it is the question of relation (and not the question of Being as Heidegger tracked it from Greek antiquity in the European tradition). Yet these traditions offer no theory of relation at all. But, it might seem paradoxical to say that if there is one thing that persistently repeats across all Indian traditions and their cultural forms and practices it pertains to the question of relations. Indian languages have many terms which not only denote relations but indicate the nature of relation in general. Thus one sees, as in Sankara, Ko naama bandha kathamesha aagataha.22 What is a relation, bond/knot and how does it commence? And again: Mana eva manushyaanaam kaaranam bandha mokshayo (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, p. 21). The faculty of manas is the cause of binding and releasement of men. Nibadhnanti mahaabaaho23 (Received traits) Tie down, Oh! the long armed one. Says Krishna to Arujna in the Bhagavadgita. Such citations can be multiplied with ease because they are ubiquitous suggesting the prominence or gravity of the question of relations and their consequences. At random one can refer to multiple terms of relation as:

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INTRODUCTION

bandha (tied down), badhnaati (binding/bound), bandhu (relative, kin), raga (pull), anuraga (affective pull), karma (actional bond), and samsaara ([existence] that moves/flows together) and so on; these terms permeate most of the Indian languages. The question of relation as well evinces a double dynamic and it indicates the attention this question receives. On the one hand, relation gathers, combines, brings forth and brings together, forms and circulates any formation; on the other hand, relation binds, bonds, ties one down, knots one, entangles, imprisons, and reduces one to a machinic gyration and thus prevents transformation of it. As can be seen this understanding of relation is heterogeneous to the one that prevails in the long European tradition. Thus the terms that suggest the possibility of going beyond the dual dynamic of relation are of great significance too in the Indian traditions. Such terms one often comes across are: moksha (releasement), tyakta (giving up), tyaga (sacrifice), and viraga (freed from pulls). If existence, that is, everything and anything, is made possible by the double dynamic of relations and if no formation can be possible without the work of relations – it is from within that contrapuntal play of existence one is required to seek releasement from the binds and bonds of the dynamic. The disavowal of the task of seeking turns existence into an ocean of death says the Bhagavadgita: Mrutyu samsaara saagaraat (Bhagavadgita; 12.7, p. 617) It may be noted that the word samsaara, in addition to being a reference to the circulating entirety of existence at the same time also refers to a family unit; and as such samsaara is what one lives in, leads, endures, succumbs to, or releases oneself from. These two senses of the word cannot be rigorously separated.

The Apeiron of relations Existence can perpetuate itself in such a deadly way: existence is apeironal. Given that seeking releasement is carried out within the matrix of existence, from within the relational matrix, samsaara – and not through any strife for some transcendental realm – does such seeking suggest yet another relation to/in/of existence? What kind of ‘relation’ is that and how does this become possible for a formation which itself is the effect of the double dynamic of relation? This is quite a pertinent question, and it suggests the apeironal nature of relations. As discussed earlier above, the term apeiron was chosen by the pre-Socratic philosopher, Anaximander, in an effort to move away from the prevalent muthos-epos oriented Homeric learning about existence and the world to a ‘realistic’ grasp of the world. Apeiron as a term meaning indeterminability, pathlessness, and abyssal void replaces the archaic god Chaos as an unpredictable and incalculable force and the 16

INTRODUCTION

source of other primordial gods such as Gaia (earth), Tartarus (underworld), and Eros (love). If Chaos was the father god of the earth and others in Homeric learning – he (now, it) turns out to be an abstract unfathomable void and death-like disorder; apeiron now stands for such directionless dark ocean of void from which the earth must be secured into a world of order.24 Thus in the first map of the world that Anaximander draws, the land or earth gets demarcated from the apeironal waters of the ocean (which the Greeks called the river of rivers).25 Whereas in our invocation of the term apeiron here to figure relations, the more archaic and originary sese of the dual signification of relations is recalled. The apeiron in this context disregards any kind of rigid categorical division of order and disorder. Indeed such valued binary has barely any normative status in the context of Indian traditions (and also in the Homeric learning). More importantly, the term apeiron resonates euphonically and semantically very well with two crucial Sanskrit terms – para and apara – which we will be invoking to explore the question of relations hereafter. The Mundakopanishad sings eloquently with aphoristic force and this singing can capture most economically the volume of inquiry (pertaining to cultural difference) initiated here: Dve vidye Veditavye… Paraa chaivaapara cha (Know that there are only two forms of learning: para and apara)26 The singular source from which all relations and formations emerge is called apara (non-other) in Sanskrit. The apara as such is inarticulable and is itself devoid of form. It releases the primal condition (mahat) through which a whole set of primordial elements (mahabhutas) with definitive effects emerges. These effects can be specified as generative, differential, relational, individuating, and actional in their operation, and they are at work through the primal elements of sky, wind, fire, water, and earth. These elements are constitutively prone to commingling. Through their varied convergences come forth the tangible formations – ranging from worms, plants, birds, animals, mountains, to gods, planets, and stars. In a word, the formations cover all moving and stable (rooted) entities and their invisible but palpable relations. Thus every formation is brought forth by the elemental set and their distinctive effects. These formations differentiate, individuate, generate/mutate, relate, and act/respond in a relational matrix. They all, what exists in its entirety, are the loka – the spatio-temporal convergence and the matrix they weave is the samsaara. As each of these formations, and their primal elements and effects are themselves emergences, they are transient, transformative, and terminable. Thus this apeironal force of relations – this apara – unfolds finite infinity of formations and relations which are exposed to a machinic gyration. 17

INTRODUCTION

No wonder why Sankara describes apara as: Mahaadbhuta anirvachaneeya roopa (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 111, p. 166) Astonishing marvel of indescribable form. And the Bhagavadgita annotates: Bhoovagraamah sa evaayam bhootvaabhootvaa prateeyate raatryaagame vashah paartha prabhavatyaharaagame (Bhagavadgita, 8.19, p. 436) [Under the reign of apara] The entirety of formations keeps emerging from time to time. At night they dissolve and at dawn they emerge. Here one may be tempted to draw similarities between the apeironal apara and Heidegger’s reflections on Being as physis. Physis in its originary sense refers to the coming forth or emergence of what appears – something that comes into the visual circuit. Physis is Being’s unconcealment and opening. Physis as the ‘coming forth-into-an-appearance, and of beings holding themselves therein’ is the Being of beings; thus physis is ‘what is, as such and as a whole’ says Heidegger (Gasché, Europe, pp. 122; the second quotation is a citation from Heidegger). Yet Being cannot be reduced to what it opens up. For in the same gesture of disclosure Being also conceals, withdraws. The origins of human thought, in its singular Greek beginning, are traced back to the unconcealment of Being – to what physis brings forth into appearance. This origin – tracked in the work of Plato and Aristotle – aims at grasping Being on the basis of what appears (eidos) in the visual circuit – through beings. The origin here inaugurates, as discussed earlier, what Heidegger designates as the beginning of Europe’s metaphysical thought. Metaphysical thinking is based on an essential lapse, the lapse of forgetting. By only focusing on what appears to reckon Being, this tradition forgets the concealing, withdrawing gesture of Being. This originary forgetting, Heidegger states, has resulted in unleashing dangerous consequences in human history. This tradition subordinates and deems what all exists as a resource for the use and service of the all-seeing human. Heidegger’s extended meditation on Europe is also a concerned reflection on the relation between Being (and) the human. The meditation draws attention to two paths of this relation. He unravels the metaphysical tradition as providing the first (lapsed) path and seeks out and yearns for another possible path – that of another beginning. The latter extends caring attention to Being’s concealing gesture. Heidegger’s meditation does not seek to privilege the hitherto forgotten gesture of Being. The second or another beginning is possible only in the context of the first (metaphysical) beginning, states Heidegger.27 When we pay close attention to the relation of Being (and) the human without getting drawn towards Heidegger’s evaluation of the paths (or 18

INTRODUCTION

history of Being), one cannot help noticing that both the figures – Being and the human or the Being-human – ‘the uncanniest’ of all beings (Gasché, Europe, p. 175), come across as independent and self-driven: Being reveals and/as/or conceals on its own accord and the human sees or forgets on his own; or, both of them are mutually impacting each other: Being detours to itself through the thinking of the human.28 No wonder decisive and declarative epithets like choice and decision are prominent in Heidegger’s meditation on the question of relation between Being and beings. In either case (that of Being or of Being-human) the status of their sovereignty does not come under question. Throughout, both Being and the human come across as independent and deciding figures. It must, however, be pointed out here, although Heidegger does not directly discuss Being in terms of sovereignty, the implicit presence of this status of Being in the thought of Heidegger is difficult to ignore (We will return to this theme more extensively in the chapter titled ‘Inquiring Ethos’). For, Heidegger the ‘poetizing thinking and thinking poetry’ focused on the question of Being were free from all religious traces (Gasché, Europe, p. 134). Yet it is this factor (of the sovereignty of Being) which appears to filiate Heidegger’s thought with that of the Judeo-Christian theological tradition. A ‘“‘religious’ overdetermination,” owing to a type of Christianity,’ contends Marlene Zarader, ‘pervades much of Heidegger’s work’. In his language of unconcealment ‘something like the order of Christian revelation’ (an article of faith) and ‘perhaps even something of the order of Judaism, as Zarader intimates, permeates all of his work’ (Gasché, Europe, p. 136). A citation at random (since Contributions is more meditative gatherings of what opens up or comes to thought and not a work of thematisation, a book) can show the idiom: ‘In the essential occurrence of the truth of being, in the event and as the event, the last god is hidden.’ (Heidegger, Contributions, p. 21, italics original). Zarader contests Heidegger’s denial of religious thought (and especially the nonGreek Hebraic thought) on European heritage. Heidegger’s recourse to theological idiom cannot be missed even in his Contributions. Curiously, Gasché qualifies Zarader’s critique by stating that Heidegger’s claims about religious thought (and the absence of their impact on the origins of European thought) is ‘highly problematic, all the more so if Zarader’s hypothesis…should prove to be correct’ (Gasché, Europe, p. 128 emphasis mine). Does Gasché doubt Zarader’s reading of Heidegger? If there is a singular most significant concept that sets apart the Indian and European cultures it can be identified as the concept of sovereignty. Despite tempting similarities between Being/physis as originary source of appearances and the apeiron of apara as a force for releasing formations, they are incommensurable in their relation. For, apara as such is nothing – and cannot be a formation in itself, as such. The entire folding and unfolding of apara’s ‘activity’ can only take place within what is called para (other). These ‘two’ terms – no proper names at all, are everywhere part of the everyday language. Their simplicity is lucid and their reach disregards the duality of 19

INTRODUCTION

depth and width, temporality, and spatiality. Para stands for ‘other’ and apara for the non-other. Yet if one wishes to look for a shifting current which moves across all the varied Indian performative reflective traditions, this singular-manifold filament be the only one. It is this singular-manifold that raises the question of relations in the most insistent manner. The most fundamental of all such questions is: what is the ‘relation’ of apara with para? And this question gets reiterated in the context of every formation. The transformation of any formation is contingent upon the task of responding to this question, from within the formation one finds oneself in/with. Therefore, this problematic of relation cannot be reduced to the one that Heidegger formulates as the question of Being and (its relation to) beings. For, in the conception of Being, there still lurks the question of sovereignty. Whereas, in the Indian traditions, neither para nor apara has any such sovereign status. If para is other and apara non-other are they one and the same? No! ‘They’ are not. Then, are they different? Yes, if the formation is seduced by the effects of apara and deems the formation as an auto-immune and autonomous entity; and consequently, it ignores, disavows, or disregards the permeative para. Such a mode of response condemns formations to the machinic circulation of an existence called the ocean of death. No, however, they are not different as they have neither an origin nor an end, neither they have a form nor are they articulable. They are both described as avyakta – nonmanifest. In such a non-manifest state there is no difference between para and apara. Such a ‘state,’ if it can be called one, is pervasive without being present. Yet it is of this undifferentiable non-formation that the condition of formation seems to emerge from time to time. Such a condition has neither a cause, nor an agent nor is itself one such factor. This condition is also the primal difference – a difference that releases manifold differences through the heterogeneous formations. That primal condition of difference is the effect of what is described as apara. The condition of difference, it may be noted, comes forth in a pervasively indifferent non-present para which was no different from what turns into apara until the condition emerges. Para is neither the cause nor agent of such a condition – nor does it receive or respond to the impact of emergences or the differential conditions of/as para. Na cha maam taani karmaani nibadhnanti dhananjaya udaaseenavadaaseenam asaktam teshu karmasu (Bhagavadgita, 9.9, p. 460) All those differential actions and formations that emerge cannot tie ‘me’ down. For ‘I’ remain disinterested and indifferent among them. (Here the personal pronouns ‘me’ and ‘I’ allude to the ‘fiction’ of para – as if para were speaking).

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INTRODUCTION

But, given the pervasive reach of para, it surrounds and permeates all the effective formations of apara. That is, every formation that emerges from the primal condition of difference is permeated by para; and para pervades, surrounds and permeates, and inheres in every manifold manifestations of  apara’s effects. Thus apara’s formations are not just some valorised appearances but intricate heterogeneous complexes composed of differential but definitely exposed to the indifferential force. The question of relation is an essential praxial concern of each such formation and the formational in general: how to relate to the inhering indifferent, non-present in a way which does not reduce one’s mode of being to a machinic gyration, a routinised action, in a transformative existence? All the powerful and indulgent effects of apara’s force – generative, differential, individuative, relational, and actional – which bring forth formations require reorientation. For, in the ultimate analysis it is the ways in which the formation responds to these effects that determine discontinuously the emergence of formations. Given the in-differential relationship among the formational and the non-formational (apara-para) and given the absence of a singular decisive and determining source, agency, and norm of formations and modes of being, the terms para and apara cannot be conflated with either god or Being or any such sovereign force. Para neither appropriates nor expropriates: it is not propriative (and appropriable) at all. Consequently, it is not possible to find a conception of the human in these traditions that comes closer to that of European philosophical thought. Any such conception of self-driven subjectivity, Being or Being-human is treated as gestures of the arrogant and ignoramus (more on this in the chapter, ‘Inquiring Ethos’).

Pathmarks and passageways The European questioning – the question of Being – structurally takes the what and why form: what is Being? and why are beings? what exists and why (it) is? The classic form of this is in Leibniz’s question, ‘the founding event’ of Western philosophy: ‘Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?’ (Leibniz cited in Gasché, Europe, p. 108). Such an inquiry drives one towards the origin, essence, and the end or purposes of existence. Whereas, inquiries in the Indian traditions seem to prefer the how form of the question. Instead of pursuing ontological or epistemological questions, the Indian form lends itself to praxial modes of being: How does one sense this relation? How does one move from this relational bonding? This mode works within the finitude of existence and in the matrix of formation; this working is for a transformative orientation of whoever is spurred by the how impulse. Any discursive response to this mode is possible (one can compose how-to-do manuals) but is limited in its effect. The efficacy of the how mode is in the transformation of finite modes of being.

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INTRODUCTION

In contrast, the trajectory of why involves a ‘leap’ beyond, a ‘radical break,’ ‘radical rupture,’ an ‘overcoming’ of what one is/what is (beings) (Gasché, Europe, pp. 108–111 and also cf., fn. 8, p. 137 on the revolutionary novelty and the necessity of break to achieve originarity). The question of why involves ‘something extraordinarily strange,’ an uprooting, alienation, deracination. Consequently, such a trajectory keeps apart the ‘deracinated’ forerunners from the ‘homely’ the ‘familiar,’ the homogeneous (non-Europe) etc. This entire orientation of such disposition requires the institutional and infrastructural apparatus. No wonder why the university (after the Church) is so important in the European tradition and more so in the work of Heidegger and Derrida (we will return to this theme in ‘Contextures of Learning’). As with Plato’s academy, this infrastructure can create distinctive far-seeing, guardians, or architectons of the world.29 What does this model imply?: Demarcate and differentiate the distinguished seers. However, important and necessary such a ‘future ones’ (Heidegger’s phrase) are – the model by default implies a radical departure from what it has emerged from – the ‘homely’ (if there ever was one such untouched hearth). Whereas on the Indian ‘path’ it is an illusion to imagine that one can find an Archimedean space beyond and outside the seductive and disorienting entanglements of samsaara and that one can transcend into such a space. For samsaara is an origin and endless recurrence. In such a matrix one can only strive to live in its relational – enticing and distressing – binds and bonds non-relationally. Therefore, the path (if it is one) of how involves a responsive reception to/of the finitude of the given, a working through of cultivable endowments, a movement on the transformative passage; indeed a teertha (ford, passage, crossing), a yaana (traversal) across in the ocean of existence: the apara/apeiron of samsaara saagara. The teertha is indeed the ‘passage’ from the relational to the non-relational within the pores of samsaara. The how path involves mnemopraxial meditation on performative modes of being – a response to the interminable question of questions (which is not a question at all!): what do you do with what you have?! In the traditions of how, learning orients one towards such a mode of traversal. All traditions of liveable learning that proliferated in India impart praxial modes of being. There is neither a named vanguardism, nation nor region, nor a named national language that claims proprietorial control over such mnemopraxial traditions. The extended discussion of the Euro-analysis shows the mechanism of the double dynamic that operates by inscribing categorical divisions and oppositions, identity formations (‘Europe’ and ‘non-Europe’), and apodictic reiteration of idealities in/as the figure of ‘Europe.’ The basis of this dynamic is the principle of sovereignty; this principle manifested in different forms, such as ontology, god, subjectivity, consciousness, will, etc., in the European heritage. Despite the efforts of philosophers like Heidegger (‘the last god’) and Derrida (‘god without sovereignty’) the power and presence of the principle cannot be undermined. On the contrary, one wonders how their unequivocal affirmation of Greek-Europe as philosophy can escape the 22

INTRODUCTION

principle of sovereignty; on the contrary, such affirmations reinforce the demarcated singularity of the autonomy of ‘Europe’ as a distinctive thought (that is, philosophy). These idealities and their principle were conceived, institutionalised, and expanded over two millennia through Europe’s preferred inscriptional cultural technologies from scribal-writing to digital-coding systems. European cultural difference is an inscripted principle of sovereignty. Whereas the cultural difference of India cannot be obtained on the basis of the European trajectory thematised above. One strategic point of departure for undertaking this challenging task is to focus on the domain of cultural memory in Indian formations. Although memory is universal and exceeds far beyond the anthropocene to the planetary realm – cultures differ in different ways in putting to work their inherited memories. In other words, the notion of memory can be explored to configure cultural difference. When tracked across the planetary and anthropocene realms, the question of memory can be infinite and immeasurable; its origin and destination cannot be determined decisively. But at the same time memory per se, memory as such, is and can mean nothing. For, memory as such remains intangible. Therefore, our exploration, sketched within the measure of the impossible, strategically concentrates on the articulations of memory. That is, any inquiry into memory can only access it by means of the modes in which memory articulates or manifests itself. In other words, the technics of communication is fundamental to any access to or articulation of memory. For the purpose of managing this inexhaustible inquiry we can provisionally specify two distinct technics of memory: lithic and alithic. Both these modes and technics are effective in materialising memory. But they open up very different cultural and civilisational trajectories. The lithic technics prefers inscribing articulated memories in external retentional systems. Lithic memories require the inscriptional paraphernalia such as the substrates of stone (petroglyph, petrogram), clay tablet, metal surface, bone, glass, parchment, papyrus, palm-leaf, birch bark, wax, paper, and silicon chip, and tools such as bifaces, stylus, quill, chalk, pencil, pen, and keyboard. It also requires retentional apparatuses such as scriptoria, archive, library, museum, database, and data lake. In a word, the lithic memory is forever feverishly in search of surrogate retentional bodies; forever, it seeks to transcend, suspend, substitute and dispense with the performative body. In contrast to the lithic memory, the alithic memories perennially nurture and retain memory in the complex apparatus of the body in which they emerge. Although the alithic mode too externalises memory through certain technics – speech and gesture/performance – it prefers to kindle, succour, enhance, and disseminate its articulations only through the liveable or enlivened body. Alithic modes embody and enact memories through acoustic and gestural performative technics. In a word, they have no use for surrogate bodies of memory and their inscriptional paraphernalia. It must, however, be noted that the lithic and alithic technics of memory cannot be 23

INTRODUCTION

rigorously and absolutely categorised as incommensurable domains. Both the modes permeate and pervade planetary cultural formations – differentially. Cultural difference can be configured by focusing on the emphasis, preference that either of the technics receives in any cultural formation. In exploring the domain of cultural memory, this inquiry hypothesises that Indian cultural/civilisational formations over millennia preferred alithic mnemocultural modes in pursuing the question of relations; in the process they created and disseminated their enduring cultural memory through ­heterogeneous cultural forms of gesture and speech. Whereas the European civilisation remained deeply invested in lithic mnemotechnologies and expanded the lithic paraphernalia and prosthetic retentional systems; these systems like the subject that creates them race to affirm their own sovereignty. In a word, if India nurtured relational lively archives, Europe multiplied sovereign command-control surrogate retentional systems. What and why to think and how to think about memory, object, and meta-level inquiries into memory are all determined today by the domineering lithic modes of articulation. Consequently, the embodied and enacted modes of alithic memory, their deeper engagement with the enigma of the body, their cultivated indifference towards prosthetic storage systems of memory barely receive any attention. Is it an accident that from Plato to Stiegler (via the Abrahamic heritages including Derrida) European intellectual history should prefer to focus on inscriptional communication systems from the scribal to digital modes in their work of sovereignty? How come the alithic mnemocultural forms which continue to sustain themselves across the planet from immemorial times have no significant place in the cherished worlds of this (hegemonic) heritage? This fundamental question of cultural memory remains yet to be explored in contemporary intellectual inquiries.

Configurations of ‘India’ Despite the emphasis on the accents of mnemoculturality and relationality in figuring India, it is difficult to derive the ‘idea’ or ‘image’ of India on the basis of these accents directly from the ancient or classical resources of India; they are never explicitly thematised and explained in these traditions. These resources abound in specifying certain indefinite practices, certain modes of being and their relations, certain forms of articulating the practices and modes, poetic allusions, descriptions of a deeply variegated topography, flora, fauna, and cultural formations. But these practices, modes, relations, forms, and the topoi internally do not yield any unifying or totalising identitarian circuitry. There is no attempt for a synthetic crystallisation of the ‘thought’ of India. These coordinates draw their nurture from an impulse of differentiation. Perhaps, it is this persistent impulse of internal differentiation that evinced indifference towards unifying categorical abstractions, such as – race, people, community, religion, language, nation, 24

INTRODUCTION

family, and history and so on – in the extended Indian context. The coordinates without unifying categories can be said to suggest the possibility of differential togetherness of being (of any kind). The differentiated ‘togetherness’ is made possible by certain shared communication – certainly of mnemocultural technics and their imports. Yet the palpable currents of sharedness are not the result of either political or/and indeed of any philosophical system. All such systems seem to have emerged from the mnemocultural imports. What is at work here is the relational impulse: how to relate or not in modes of being. Such differentiated modes of going about articulate their memory in their preferred cultural media of gesture and speech and through embodied and enacted performative renderings. It is these mnemocultural technics and the permeative impulse of relationality which seem to weave the cultural difference of India. It is in the European epoch that these two kinds of cultural difference – of sovereign principle and the impulse of relationality and their cultural media – encounter each other and the encounter has decisive consequences for both. The ascendancy and expansion of Europe has forced the differentiating impulse to configure itself through abstract unities of categories and concepts indicated above. European resources, disregarding or suppressing the differential impulse, cultivated unifying identitarian consolidations (‘Hindu’ is one such ill-thought category). The ascendancy and expansion of Europe can be traced to this identitarian zeal. European universal expansion is accomplished through a double-pronged approach: religious and secular. If religion involved conversion of Pagans into Christians, secularity deployed essentially Christian theological ideas, as universally applicable concepts of humankind, to alter different cultures permanently. It is the latter – secularity – and its conceptual grid (state, literature, art, politics, law, history, economy, etc.,) which continues to have a seductive appeal across cultures. The grid gets internalised and institutionalised the world over. We are all, European or non-European, caught in this double bind variedly today. Identitarian and differential impulses, however, are not exclusive drives of any particular culture. It is the orientation that a particular culture inclines towards either of the impulses that differentiates or identifies a culture among other cultures. The idea of India therefore cannot be exclusively sought by means of either of the impulses. Yet one can risk a hypothesis that the differential impulse in the Indian context did not succumb to the force of identitarian consolidation for millennia. Any such effort to determine such an identity can be said to be derivative in nature from the encounter between India and Europe. In such an apparently fraught context it is worthwhile inquiring into the kind of response cultural difference that India or Europe has evinced in the wake of their encounter. More concretely, such an inquiry can focus specifically on the conceptual categories in configuring India. Disciplinary constructions of the idea of India – be they of the social or human sciences – are yet to grapple with this conceptual structure of thought. Colonial and 25

INTRODUCTION

postcolonial intellectual ventures – from Ananda Coomaraswamy’s theolisation of visual traditions to secular searches of art historians (B.N. Goswamy, Partha Mitter), from secular theologies of social scientists (state, constitution, law, rationality, science) to the conspicuous absence of conceptual inquiries in the human sciences (into literature, art and the university) – barely touch the depth of the crisis that the idea of India is exposed to. These ventures clash by day and night in false dichotomies (tradition vs. modern, secular vs. religious, rational vs. superstitious, etc.,) and valorise false exits. This malaise is spawned over 100 years at least. The alarming consequences of the malaise can be witnessed every day in the crumbling of the barely examined institutional (judicial, academic, political, medical) and (their) conceptual structures. The urgency of unravelling this structure of thought, now institutionalised cannot be overemphasised. Such an inquiry can begin wondering whether the deeply sedimented conceptual thinking is really a cultural universal. Do all cultures organise their ‘thought’ or ways of going about in accordance with such a model? More importantly, do all cultures privilege something called ‘thought’ understood in the sense of representation of the visible object to configure the truth or essence by means of linguistic propositions? If this is so, how does one explain, for instance, the stark absence of the concept, idea, or a systematic or system-building account of enduring visual and verbal practices – such as poetry/kavya, sculpture, temple-making, painting, music/sangeeta, and dance/natya, in the Indian context? This patterned absence can be witnessed in the domains systematised elsewhere as politics, ethics, and law, aesthetics, art, etc. Cultural practices in the Indian scenario appear systemic (some coherence of pattern) while being indifferent to system-building or theorising endeavours; they seem to proliferate over very long periods and extended contexts in reflective practices and liveable learning. Perhaps this impulse might find resonance across various Asian cultures and beyond. This peculiar dynamic of the systemic without system-building drive can be noticed in the conspicuous absence of the discourse of the addressee in all the practices and domains mentioned earlier. There is neither a systematic account of what a kavya or sculpture, painting, politics, ethics, or law is nor a systematic explanatory account of any example from any of these domains. What spurs such practices over such extended periods and spaces? There is no single work that addresses such questions in the Indian context. The domain specific works that emerged over the last 100 years (in the domains of literature, art, politics, law, ethics, etc.,) are driven by system-building conceptual assumptions while barely paying attention to the systematic absence of such determinative assumptions in the object (‘India’) of their inquiry. It may therefore be worth the while to inquire into the distinctive cultural difference that goes into the formation of the heterogeneous complex called India, to explore the peculiar dynamic that seems to differentiate India from 26

INTRODUCTION

the hegemonic thought frames of Europe as philosophy that continue to determine the conception of India. In order to unfold this reorientation two kinds of related but non-exclusive inquiries – domain specific and domain converging – are necessary. Domain specific inquiries, for instance, can examine the ways in which dominant conceptions of literature, art, politics, ethics, etc., have determined our approaches to the long-standing practices in visual and verbal formations; the inquiries can also focus on whether these practices can be easily made to conform to the concepts that categorise them. Domain converging inquiries, moving along and across specific practices, attend to the ways in which systemic pattern formations eschew systembuilding ventures and meditate upon the imports of such traditions of liveable learning. India, Europe combines these two approaches. It must be pointed out here that this work does not emerge from the professional fields of Indology and philosophy like those of Wilhelm Halbfass, J.L. Mehta, Sheldon Pollock, or S.N. Balagangadhara. Unlike the works by these important scholars, however, what is proposed here is not a work of professional philosophy or historiography. This work is more inclined towards reorienting praxial thinking through concrete practices of teaching and research in the domain of the humanities. This is an effort to explore the ways in which one can relate to the reflective praxial impulse of Indian traditions today. Hence its engagement with specific themes, works, ideas, and thinkers are not aimed at covering a disciplinarily carved out domain called ‘India.’

Passage work India, Europe is developed in three extended but related chapters apart from this introduction. The next chapter undertakes to sketch the distinct configurations and scenes of learning that form the basis of Indian and European traditions of thinking and being. The third chapter offers a more intense engagement with the singular concept of ‘art’ as it was conceptualised and institutionalised in the European context on the one hand and its impact on Indian thought in the last 100 years on the other. The fourth chapter opens up in a more ambitious way to grapple with the European concepts of the human and the humanities. While examining the cultural background which births such concepts, the conspicuous absence of such an overarching discourse in the context of Indian cultural forms is discussed. The inquiry is extended further to examine the emergence and status of forms and formations in general in the Indian context. This work emphasises the fact that the Indian cultural fabric and its difference cannot be traced without an intimate and affirmative exploration into the circulating mnemocultures or cultures of memory of India. The Indian cultural experience of living together differently – through diversified ways of being and multiple forms reflection and relation – can be the starting point of reorienting the European transplants of discursive and institutional formations. This sense of living together differently, emerging 27

INTRODUCTION

from a very extended and enduring cultural experience of heterogeneous biocultural formations (called jatis) of India, can be a critical praxial-reflective force, it is contended. Without such inquiring into and replenishing the differentiated cultural formations and their lively cultural forms one cannot think of something called Indian culture. Such a task would perhaps enable one to reconfigure philosophical anthropology from outside the ipsocratic traditions of Europe. Drawing on the differential background of Indian and European traditions developed in this chapter, the next chapter focuses on more specifically the ways in which the learning traditions of these cultures developed over several centuries. In the European antiquity Plato’s ‘constitutional’ treatise, the Republic, can be read as a philosophical defence of a new education, as a radical turn in the tradition of paideia. The traditional – that is, generationally imparted – Homeric learning aimed at cultivating the best in man beyond the transient allurements of wealth, fame, and power. Abandoning the Homeric mnemocultural modes, Plato configured Truth, Good, and Beauty as ends of learning and posited dialectics (dianoia against muthos) as the only means of attaining such ends. Judeo-Christian religion appropriated such configuration of learning for the spiritual foundation of man by means of the Word of God (Logos) and put an end to ancient Pagan traditions. Whereas over three and half millennia Indian traditions of learning have remained resolutely mnemopraxial: cultural memory was put to work in actional lives. All along, however, these traditions were neither drawn exclusively towards the dianoiac force nor the theological power of logos in their extensions and traversals. Despite protracted historical devastations (especially in the Common Era) these traditions survived over millennia and spread across as self-sustaining nodes in an extended network. The liveable learning they imparted persistently emphasised the articulation of modes of being and formations of learning; they stressed upon the filiation between the biocultural formations and differentiated cultural forms. Such a colossal network of mnemopraxial traditions was ruptured by the violence of European cultural invasion: Europe’s second genus-extirpative adventure. Working from within the violent institutional structure of the university, this chapter attempts to undertake two tasks: (i) configure the modes and means of mnemopraxial traditions of learning and their heterogeneous (discontinuous) dispersal and (ii) the genocidal (erasure of genus) implications of the epistemic rupture of these traditions unleashed today by the European invasion. It is a well-known fact that Indian performative traditions remained indifferent to incriptional literacy almost until the Common Era. Although writing was available by the time of Panini, the latter had no use for it. Similarly, ancient Indian cultural forms were more inclined towards gestural and verbal media than pigmental or pictorial inscriptional modes. Consequently, cultural forms like sculpture, painting, and architecture had 28

INTRODUCTION

a belated emergence in the Indian context – in the post-Ashokan period. In a word Indian lithic turn (to techics of writing, painting, and carving) occurred more than a millennium after alithic cultural practices deeply proliferated. Yet this sustained and deeply cultivated gap between alithic and lithic practices has never received attention in thinking about cultural forms of India in the modern period. On the contrary historical work searched for ancient ‘art’ works without attention to what such concepts stand for. The third chapter of the book delves into the consequences of the failure to reflect on the cultural difference of India and Europe in the domain propagated as ‘art.’ The concept of art circulates as an un-rethought philosopheme in the Indian context. In the absence of such inquiries unexamined conceptual determinations dominate the idea of art. Some such dominant determinations represent art (image/icon) as the interface between the divine and human, as the sensible manifestation of the intelligible, a representational technique, an illusionary or deceptive mechanism devoid of truth, an autonomous inscriptional form, or an effective emancipatory medium. These determinations emerge from theological and metaphysical background of European culture and they continue to enframe the destiny of ‘art.’ In this chapter the ways in which thematisation and unravelling of the concept of art within the European metaphysical tradition takes place is analysed. For the purpose of demonstrating the argument, the work of Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, Agamben, and Heidegger is examined. This chapter also aims at unravelling the ways in which, with complete oblivion of the European background of the concept, received concepts of art get internalised and projected onto Indian reflections and practices of plastic and pigmental forms. For this, the chapter engages with specific accounts of Indian ‘art’ developed in the last 100 years (the work of Ananda Coomaraswamy, Stella Kramrisch, and that of the IGNCA). The chapter takes the risk of initiating a more fundamental inquiry into Indian reflections on the question of the form in general. Such critical engagements are yet to emerge in the Indian context. This chapter is a preliminary and risky attempt to (i) trace the process of the conception and emergence of form (of being) in general in the Indian context and (ii) inquire into the ways in which such a fecund conception is put to work in the generation of distinct cultural forms (performative, musical, visual, literary). Perhaps what is most urgently needed but barely nurtured today is the ethos of living with difference. Ethos as dwelling must attune one to cohabit with the unlikely – be that the human or non-human. But difference is the poison/gift that can vitiate relations through rigidified divisions and rigorously opposed categorisations. Perhaps one way of sensing the vicissitudes of the impulse of difference is by exploring the relation between modes of being and forms of reflection that an ethos (dwelling) nurtures enduringly. While differentiating itself from another – an ethos can also enable reflections on the question of difference in general. What is called existence 29

INTRODUCTION

unfolds with(in) the background of an ethos. Indian reflective modes of being can be said to engage with the enigma of difference in the most sensitive and incisive but comprehensive ways. Indian traditions preferred nonconceptual and performative modes of articulating its reflective inheritance. The fourth chapter is a preliminary attempt to risk a double inquiry: (i) to specify certain non-conceptual figurations, such as prakriti, loka, jati, dharma, karma, kala, and para; and (ii)to show that these figurations cannot be conflated with, as is often done today, conceptual formations like nature, world, caste, religion, (sanctioned) action, art and sovereignty, respectively. The latter conceptual grid, which emerges from a metaphysical background and which has been pervasively ascendant, is alien to Indian reflective modes of being. The radical difference between these two sets of thought is discussed in detail in this chapter. This chapter aims at opening up the critical question: How does the Indian inquiry into the enigma of difference help us face the aporetic situation in which we exist today? This work affirms the possibility of ways in which enduring cultural difference can not only be nurtured, but indicates how inquiries into differentiated assemblages of people cohabiting and remaking the planetary loka that we find ourselves in; cultural difference, it is submitted, can help reorient our relation to the world and the formations that people it. India,Europe emphasises the urgency of relating to such sources and forces to reorient our modes of being and going about in the shareable habitat without aggressive rapacity. The concluding section of this work brings together the various threads with which the argument is developed in the chapters described above and indicates the possibility of reorienting the teaching and research in the humanities from the Indian context today in more practical and reflective ways.

Notes 1 Jacques Derrida and Elisabeth Roudinesco, For What Tomorrow…: A Dialogue, Jeff Fort (tans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, pp. 18–19. 2 Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology,’ in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, William Lovitt (trans), New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977, p. 35. 3 Rodolphe Gasché, Europe, or the Infinite Task: A Study of a Philosophical Concept, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009, pp. 1–20. 4 Such differentiation is what Jan Meulenbeld, exploring the medicinal traditions of India, calls the ‘demarcationist principle’ – which models scientific inquiry on the default European experience. Such an account contends that ‘Western science alone can be regarded as a system of knowledge based on rationality and directed at the structure of reality.’ Cf., Meulenbeld, ‘Reflections on the basic concepts of Indian pharmacology,’ in G. Jan Meulenbeld and Dominik Wujastyk (eds), Studies in Indian Medical History, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2001, p. 1. 5 ‘I beg, therefore, to submit to you that the future of philosophical anthropology does not lie in giving an Asian, African or an American-Indian answer to the western (religious) questions about man. Rather, the quest for man involves, in the first place, raising Asian, African, and American-Indian questions about

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‘man.’ To do so, I suggest, is what makes philosophical anthropology ‘topical’… Whether intellectuals from other cultures and groups are up to this task, however, is a totally different issue…’ Cf., S.N. Balagangadhara, ‘The Reality of Elusive Man?’, available at http://www.hipkapi.com/2011/03/05/the-reality-ofelusive-man-s-n-balagangadhara/, (accessed on 20 May 2019). 6 The idea of the ‘double dynamic’ is developed by S.N. Balagangadhara in his path-breaking work, ‘The Heathen in his Blindness…’: Asia, the West & the Dynamic of Religion, Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1994. In this work, Balagangadhara demonstrates how (Christian) religion through a dual process retains its specificity and also universalises or generalises itself. This double-pronged movement is said to occur through proselytisation and secularisation in this work. Cf., ‘The Heathen in his Blindness…’, pp. 434–438, 490–500. Balagangadhara, however, maintains throughout his work that religion only partially configures the Western/European identity. Perhaps, the other implicit but unspecified component that constitutes Europe’s identity is its scientific and reasoning capacity for theoretical knowledge: ‘natural sciences, [are] a species of knowledge that grew out of a religious culture.’ Religion, he goes on to say ‘was a necessary precondition for the development of scientific thinking…. In its [religion’s ‘root model of learning’] absence, as I here suggested, there would have been no science.’ (ibid., pp. 450–456). His entire project of building a theory of religion on the one hand and the proposal of a ‘comparative science of cultures’ on the other derive from this other, universalised part of European model of root learning. The merit of his proposal, Balagangadhara claims, is in its ‘philosophical and scientific approach;’ his proposal is ‘cognitively productive and heuristically fertile; it promises to deliver an empirically testable theory.’ (ibid., pp. 500–508). 7 K.C. Bhattacharya, ‘Svaraj in Ideas’ (this was a lecture delivered in 1928 but was written much earlier), in Indian Philosophical Quarterly, 1984, XI(4): 383–393. (The cited passage appears on p. 386). 8 Heidegger, Towards the Definition of Philosophy, Ted Sadler (trans), London: Continuum, 2008, p. 17. The parenthetical insertion in square brackets is in the original. 9 Heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, Joan Stambaugh (trans), Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1985, p. 146. 10 The first map was, writes the eminent classicist, Charles Kahn, ‘a precise geometric arrangement.’ But ‘nothing could be more alien [than such inscriptional geometry and cartography] to the poet’s [Homer, the bard] state of mind’, adds Kahn. Charles Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1985, p. 82. 11 Plato, The Republic, Richard W. Sterling and William C. Scott (trans), New York: W.W. Norton, 1985, p. 298. 12 Hegel famously declared that art remains a ‘thing of the past’ for Europeans because ‘Thought and reflection have spread their wings above fine art.’ Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, T.M. Knox (trans), Oxford: Clarendon, 1975, pp. 10–11. More about Hegel on art is in the third chapter of this book. 13 Heidegger, ‘The Age of the World Picture,’ in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, William Lovitt (trans), New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1977, p. 117. 14 Plato, Ion, Benjamin Jowett (trans), Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 1952. 15 Heidegger, What is Philosophy? Jean T. Wild and William Kluback (trans), Lanham: Rowman & Littlfield Publishers Inc., 2003, pp. 29–31. 16 Derrida’s, ‘Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, the German,’ Moshe Ron (trans), in Gil Anidjar (ed), Acts of Religion, New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 135–188, addresses this thematic of differentiated genealogies (though Derrida does not use this term).

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17 Heidegger, What is a Thing? W.B. Barton, Jr. and Vera Deutsch (trans), Chicago: Henry Regnery Company,1967, the phrase ‘inner drive’ occurs on p. 97; also cf., Heidegger, ‘The Age of the World Picture,’ in The Question Concerning Technology, op.cit., pp. 128–129. 18 Jacques Derrida and Elisabeth Roudinesco, For What Tomorrow…: A Dialogue, Jeff Fort (tans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, p. 178. 19 Heidegger, On the Way to Language, Peter D. Hertz (trans), New York: Harper SanFrancisco, 1971, pp. 1–54, but especially, pp. 8–26. 20 Rodolphe Gasché, Of Minimal Things: Studies on the Notion of Relation, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 6. 21 Jean-Luc Marion, ‘In the Name: How to Avoid Speaking of ‘Negative Theology,” and a ‘Response’ by Jacques Derrida; and ‘On the Gift: A Discussion between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion,’ moderated by Richard Kearney, in John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (eds), God, the Gift and Postmodernism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999, pp. 20–78. 22 Sankaracharya, Sri Vivekachudamani, Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (trans), Hyderabad: Samskruta Bhasha Prachara Samiti, 1995, 51, p. 82. 23 The Srimad Bhagavadgita, Krishnamacharyulu and Goli Venkataramayya (trans), Gorakhpur: The Gita Press, 2003, 14.5, p. 682. 24 For the myth of Chaos, cf., Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: 1, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984, pp. 1a, p. 27, 3a, p. 31, 4a, p. 33, 4c, p. 34, 11.1, p. 49. Also, cf., https://mythology.net/greek/greek-concepts/chaos/ (accessed on 25 March 2020). 25 For an insightful reading of the myth of the river from the sources of antiquity and an account of Anaximander’s cartography, cf., Dilip da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers: Alexander’s Eye and Ganga’s Descent, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019, pp. 45–54. 26 Mundakopanishad, B. K. Dakshinamurthy (trans), Hyderabad: Sri Seetarama Adi Shankara Trust, 2003, mantra 4: pp. 43–49. 27 Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu (trans), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012, pp. 7–21. 28 Heidegger, ‘Thinking accomplishes the relation of Being to the essence of man… Thinking brings this relation to Being solely as something handed over to it from Being. Such offering consists in the fact that in thinking Being comes to language. Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells.’ ‘Letter on Humanism’, in Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (trans), New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977, p. 193. 29 Derrida here discusses the hierarchic paradigm of theoretical knowledge subordinating practical skill from antiquity to modern times. ‘The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of its Pupils,’ in Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2, Jan Plug & Others (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, pp. 151–153.

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2 CONTEXTURES OF LEARNING Darshana and Theoria in mnemopraxial traditions

Thinking Pagan Cultures are said to differ in different ways. So should, it is logical to assume, cultural thinking. This throws up the inevitable question: how, then, should one think of cultural difference today? And the ‘today’ here can be configured as the aftermath of the Europeanisation of the world. But surely this event and process continues to be probed and questioned historically and theoretically? Postcolonial studies advanced themselves in this direction – (mainly in the US and other Western countries). But postcolonial studies, largely involved in bestowing agency to the native disavowed by Europe, sublimates the agentive colonised (or the migrant) as a radical signifier. Consequently, the question of cultural difference barely receives any serious and genuine attention in postcolonial studies. If our task is to explore what difference India can make today, one kind of inquiry that can, perhaps, configure such cultural difference is precisely an exploration into forms of creative reflection that cultures nurture and privilege. A deeper and more significant factor foreclosing inquiry into cultural difference appears to be the unexamined fear of replicating the supposedly European mode of ‘essentializing’ the native identity. Such an approach has not provided any possibility of epistemological alternatives to European modes of inquiry. Further, such an approach has barely even attempted to inquire into the theological-cultural sources of Europe’s thinking about itself and of others it (ef)faced. The so-called centres of higher learning – the universities – are barely in a position to grapple with the question of differential cultures of thinking today. In order to pursue the risky question of cultural difference the primary task perhaps is to examine how Europe thinks about itself and others. As is well known Europe’s distinction from other cultures is often traced back to the Greek ‘event’ – the event when thinking could think about itself: the emergence of thinking about thinking is seen as a singular event that is seen to have happened only in European antiquity. This mode of thinking can be set apart from a thinking that does not probe into the phenomenon of thinking and objectively formulate what thinking is; and which embodies and enacts thinking in its very modes of being or emergence. If the former 33

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posits objects of thinking for/by a subject, the latter displaces categorical thinking. If the former erects a hierarchy of forms of thinking (science, mathematics, philosophy/myth, poem, performance-theatre, art), the latter undermines hierarchies and confounds them. If the former ascends through institutionalisation and professionalisation, the latter disperses a-centrically (without a centralised commanding altar) and heterogeneously. If the former enframes and regiments the latter, the latter lives on indifferently; that is, the former invests in thinking about the latter, the latter moves on a-theoretically, a-conceptually (where terms are not abstracted from figurative uses, where metaphors are not turned into concepts nor are they categorically divided and opposed.) Such differences among forms of thinking can be further multiplied. But the question that needs to be faced is: how should reflective modes of being respond to the all-pervasive specialised forms of thinking about thinking now institutionalised? Every single concept that one is compelled to work with – concepts such as politics, religion, history, aesthetics, philosophy, law, science, literature, art, the university, and the state – is the product of the privileged pattern of thinking about thinking. But the institutions and the concepts they shelter and perpetuate hardly prepare one to receive and respond to the other reflective modes of being in the world – except as objects of a patterned representation. Thinking about thinking is a categorial thinking. Such a method involves comparative and contrastive procedures in demarcating objects of knowledge. Thinking about thinking consolidates itself through the method of demonstrative rationality and foundational inquiries. The greatest accomplishment of such object-oriented thinking is that it brings forth discursive knowledge (knowledge that is brought forth on the basis of a rational foundation where effects are prised open in search of their causes. Such knowledge can be authenticated by means of demonstrative procedures and which is open to contestation). Science and philosophy are said to exemplify this method of thinking about thinking and they are projected as the unparalleled signifiers of the ‘event’ – the Greek miracle. Plato is designated as the pioneering exemplifier of this discursive knowledge.1 At the very core of the object-oriented method of thinking seems to lurk the desire to determine the object of thought by means of some justifiable ground. The impetus for this method, however limited its reach might be, appears to be such desire. Consequently, this form of meta-discursive thinking advances by expanding its regimes of objects of knowledge. Such thinking can appropriate any other mode of thinking into its object-making apparatus. Pagan Greek thinking appears in such European enframing today. Can European enframings exhaust Pagan thinking? Can we categorise Pagan thinking of antiquity to the binary muthos vs. logos or the body and the soul? What is the place of reason in Pagan thinking? Can their inquiries be reduced to a foundationalist probing? What are the ends of Pagan modes of learning and how does this learning grapple with the question of being 34

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and going about in existence? Can one think of distinct Pagan trajectories for disseminating such learning? This chapter is an initial and risky attempt to address some of these questions from the very location of higher education – the university – which is a part of the problem. The chapter draws on the Greek, European, and Indian sources to focus on the ‘ends and locations of learning.’ It is not, however, claimed here that it escapes the irony involved in the mode of presentation it is constrained to use.

Primal rational The foundation of the institutions of higher learning in Europe (medieval or modern) – the university – is said to be in the ‘principle of reason.’ The principle of reason requires exploration of effects through recourse to their grounding, root causes. The principle seems to underwrite continuity between the first principle of reason, cause, and the subsequent action or effect. The emergence of science and philosophy in antiquity and the coming forth of technosciences and the institution of rational discourses (the university) in modern period are traced back to this ‘first’ principle. This ‘absolute predominance of the final cause’2 – the domination of the principle of reason postulates the essence of beings as objects before a subject (ego) which represents the objects for itself and for others (Derrida, ‘The Principle of Reason,’ p. 139). The modern university is built on the principle of reason. Such a grounding of the essence of being as the representable object ‘installs its empire,’ and covers up the question of being. Therefore, the question of the ground and being forever remain hidden in the empire of objectificatory discourse of knowledge, points out Derrida. We no longer inquire into the grounding principle in the house that it erects: the university. Why does such a ground, whence does such grounding come up? Generalising the impulse to search for the foundations, Heidegger avers that the quest for origins and ends is a universal human cognitive search, and it is the principle of reason that motivates such cognitive inquiries. The search for arché or determining causes appears to be a peculiarity of a theological heritage. For it seeks to provide the foundational basis on reason –whether divine or human. Theology (doctrina sacra) alone appears to provide unity to inquiries into nature and into human society; it provided the foundation for the order of things. Theology draws on the scripture to establish and justify the foundation of human reasoning and human relationship to the world on divine reason and plan. It is precisely such a heritage which appropriates the Pagan philosophia as contemplative/ observational reflective practice into propounding systematic accounts of divine reason. Philosophy was made to serve theology.3 The Pagan theoria was converted into Christian theory. The centrality of theology was displaced by human reason in modern society and the university represented this new avatar of reason. Needless 35

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to say that the displacement of the divine (the ‘death of god’) did not entail the displacement of reason. Faith in reason reinforced the explanatory accounts on the basis of presumed principles. Consequently, the theological institution drawing on reason now spawned multiple sovereign inquiries and thus postulated principles for each regional inquiry. The fundamental modern concepts of state, ethics, society, legal code, etc., derive from the theo-epistemic model.4 At the foundation of such (‘barely’) secularised categories is the concept of god as the foundation or principle of reason. The medieval theological concept of the ‘double truth’ paves the way for the filial linear bonding between the divine and human. The concept implies that the same phenomenon can fall into earthly and human domain or truth and at the same time that of the divine domain or truth.5 Thus the relationship between the state and individual is modelled on the relationship between god and man. The proclamation of the death of god in this context is the declaration of man’s usurpation of the position of god. Thus man’s explanatory systems – man’s inquiry/research – are modelled on the theological accounts about god’s achievements. Man can manipulate or redesign nature now.6 Humanism is fundamentally a theological concept – man’s murderous emulation of god. The university became a ‘multiversity’ of specialisations: ‘And yet without the all pervasive principle [of reason] there would be no modern science and without such a science there would be no university,’ proclaimed Heidegger.7 Given that the principle of reason is a universal cognitive necessity, Heidegger goes on to say: ‘only founded statements are intelligible and intelligent…[therefore] human cognition seeks… the first and last reasons’ (Heidegger, The Principle of Reason, p. 3). But is such a postulation of the principle of reason necessarily universal? Do all cultures originate and terminate their inquiry in finding/founding such a ‘principle?’ Doesn’t such a postulate ascribe to reason the status of sovereignty? Did Pagan Greeks accord such sovereign position to reason? Irrespective of the epistemic status of the principle of reason in Greek thought, the concept of sovereignty as the omnipotent entity appears more as a theological certitude. The cognitive inquiry of the Greeks does not appear to culminate in the search for and sublimation of the arché into a doctrinal principle. The search – theoria– seems to get reiterated more in praxial ethos than in an endeavour to normativise the relation between the principle of reason and beings and their actions and relations: that the action ought to conform to and abide by the principle seems alien among Pagans. Heidegger, however, sees the recognition of the principle in Greek antiquity. But it took 2300 years of gestation period for the principle to be so explicitly formulated, observes Heidegger. As can be seen here the Pagan and theological traditions are seen as continuous and the vantage for such a reading is provided by theological basis. Heidegger sees an explicit formulation of the ‘fundamental principle of all fundamental principles’ in Leibnitz’s axiom: Nothing is without reason: nihil est sine ratione (Heidegger, 36

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The Principle of Reason, p. 3). One wonders whether the latter isn’t just a dissimulated version of theological account of divine reason. Heidegger, however, goes on to launch a concerted critique of the principle of reason as it manifests today in the manipulative scientific-technological reason and its concomitant social order. In other words, the critique targets the fragmentation and regional calculative manifestations of the principle of reason. Derrida too moves in Heidegger’s pathway and designates it as the ‘first principle, the principle of principles.’ (Derrida, ‘The Principle of Reason,’ p. 152.) He sees the principle as a ‘requirement present since the dawn of Western science and philosophy,’ providing the impetus ‘for a new era of purportedly “modern” reason, metaphysics, and technoscience’ (Derrida, ‘The Principle of Reason,’ p. 137.) Like Heidegger’s Derrida’s reading too provides a continuist account from the Pagan antiquity to Protestant modernity. The principle of calculative reason – through its institutional spread can erect an empire and flourish even without inquiring into the basis or ground of such a principle. The institution, its progress, and growth are circumscribed within the regional confines of the disciplinary calculations of reason, contends Derrida. The triumphalism of the principle covers up in its progress the ‘abyssal question of being’ and ‘the very question of the ground, of grounding’ from its calculated inquiries, contends Derrida. The question – can the (‘forgotten’) ‘question of being’ escape the theological determinations of European heritage remains equivocally answered in the works of Heidegger and of Derrida. The recourse to a divine reason (Being/God) alone could provide an intelligible explanatory account of the order of things (beings) as a part of the justificatory plan of God. But in the modern context the regionalised principle can only purvey partial accounts of the (natural and human) order of things: the modern university can only provide partial and limited explanatory accounts and thus acknowledge the limits of reason. Yet, what is crucial here is that the deployment of reason here is seen as the projection of the thinking subject – man. Marking of the limits of reason, however, cannot be achieved by irrationalism, points out Derrida. For, irrationalism in its systematic denial of reason, is ‘symmetrical to, thus dependent upon, the principle of reason.’ (Derrida, ‘The Principle of Reason,’ p. 147.) Only god can be identified with reason, but he can also be projected as beyond reason (hence the non-representability of god). But that path only reinforces the theological ground. Reason is, Derrida notes, after all, ‘only one species of thinking.’ Derrida underwrites the need for a new articulation of responsibility in the very abode of the university – responsibility which would reach out to ‘what is beyond the principle of reason’ – even while working with the principle. Despite the risks involved (nihilism of reason and obscurantism of the beyond), thinking requires both the arché of the foundation and the ‘an-archy’ of the unfounded, he affirms (Derrida, ‘The Principle of Reason,’ p. 153). Curiously, one may note in passing that a thinking that does not emerge from the arché or theological foundation 37

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should be termed anarchic (without foundation) by Derrida. As discussed in the earlier chapter this relation between arché and anarchy is a repetition of the originary cut between the order and disorder (or chaos or apeiron). Only the ‘enactment of this thinking can decide,’ points out Derrida, the difference between thinking that privileges the calculative principle of reason and the one that works in the double bind of arché and anarchy. It is interesting to point out that the new responsibility of questioning the ground and the foundation, in Derrida’s account, comes out as a practitional one. It must be practiced by a ‘community of thinking,’ which while questioning the ground of reason is open to the beyond of reason; and it would not provide ‘discourses of knowledge’ as such but enact ‘performative discourses that produce the events of which they speak.’8 Such events overturn and displace the hierarchy of the conscious and the unconscious, constative and performative, theoretical and practical, philosophical and the literary, and subject and object. In order to show the limits of the principle of reason which (onto) theology privileged in the production of discourses of knowledge, Derrida suggests, following Heidegger, that the praxial thinking-community must engage with the literary fiction and poetry rather than informational value of language (Derrida, ‘The Principle of Reason,’ pp. 146–147). Once again we are turned towards the ‘event’ and the antagonistic hierarchy between muthos and logos.9 While working from within the theological heritage Derrida’s work here, however, appears to aim not at a simple inversion of the hierarchy and privilege the literary but bring forth (what can be called) a performative episteme that suspends the arché of theological foundation that supervened all the explanatory account/systems until now. It is in this context that, for Derrida, literature, fiction, and poetry appear either to suspend or function without the foundation of the absolute ground of their emergence. Literary work can perhaps be atheological. Therefore, from within the interstices of theological and theoretical, Derrida affirms, the possibility of articulating a new responsibility in the formation of praxial reflective collectivities. In this regard one can sense a gesture towards the Pagan traditions of performative reflection in Derrida’s work on the university. In contrast to theory, Derrida points out, for the Greeks, ‘theoria was the only highest form of praxis, and the mode, par excellence, of energaia’ (work) (Derrida, ‘The Principle of Reason,’ p. 153).

Configurations of learning Theoria for the Greeks is more meditative seeing or contemplative observation rather than foundational thinking. How one can reconcile the appropriation of Greek thought with this praxial mode of reflection into the Christian theological frame in Derrida remains barely explored in the context of his work. The possibility of such an exploration into European thought in general is opened up by the work of S.N. Balagangadhara in today’s context. 38

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While grappling with the theological basis of Western culture and thought Balagangadhara is precisely unravelling the aetiology of rendering account or rendering reason. In other words, he probes persistently into the ‘reason’ for the principle of reason – though he does not foreground, like Heidegger or Derrida, a particular formulation of the principle. Balagangadhara’s characterisation of religion – as rendering ‘explanatorily intelligible account’ – captures the urge to render an account or render reason. The difference between Balagangadhara and Derrida appears to be that the latter is involved in salvaging the concepts of the theological heritage (sovereignty, principle, etc.,); whereas Balagangadhara works on this heritage precisely in order to unravel their theological ground. For Balagangadhara there appears to be an outside to the theological enframing and that comes from his insight into (or theorisation of) ritual. But the question remains as to Balagangadhara’s own attempts at theorisation – which, as pointed out in the earlier chapter, he explicitly draws on the European heritage of scientific theorisation: does his position (even when he is theorising what is presumably alien to the theorisation paradigm) free him from being complicit with the heritage which he wishes to delimit and search for alternatives? In a major project with profound consequences, Balagangadhara persistently pursues the question of cultural difference: If cultures differ in their thinking how to configure cultural difference of thinking? In order to explore cultural difference Balagangadhara engages with the universalised dominant cultural thinking of Europe – which is rooted in Christianity in particular and Semitic thought in general – and sees immense possibility in demarcating this thinking from the kind of thinking that was/is at work in the Pagan cultures of antiquity and in cultures of Asia (India in particular). If culture is a configuration of learning, Pagan and Christian cultures evince two significantly different configurations of learning, hypothesises Balagangadhara. This path of inquiry significantly differs from the one we notice in European intellectual account discussed earlier.10 Foundationalist thinking or thinking that seeks originary sources and renders explanatory and legitimising accounts of/on such sources configures European cultural thinking, contends Balagangadhara. Such thinking can posit the foundation in either divine or human reason. Systematic accounts are advanced on the basis of such a pre-supposition of the ground as rational validations. Christianity advances itself as a rational religion (‘theology’) observes Balagangadhara.11 What sets apart Christianity from other cultures is its fundamental urge to offer ‘explanatorily intelligible account’ of the world and of itself. In contrast to the dominant European configuration of learning stands another cultural configuration where knowledge emerges from observational rendering of human practices, argues Balagangadhara. Such knowledge seeks coherence and compatibility of practices and alters or transforms practices on the run for the purpose of attaining such coherence. Here practices are not sought to be explained or legitimised on the basis of any 39

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pre-supposed rational foundation – divine or human. Pagan cultures move with such practitional topoi contends Balagangadhara12. The Pagan topoi form Pagan experience. Such praxial topoi have brought forth sciences in ancient Greece (hydrostatics, geometry, and medicine) and in India (the sciences of language, ritual, mathematics, medicine), contends Balagangadhara.13 When such topoi of common sense, shared ideas and practices crystallise, they evolve into theories, suggests Balagangadhara. But before such consolidation of topoi could be achieved, the Greek culture disintegrated and its praxial reflections got appropriated into European theology as instruments of reasoning. Encounter between the Greek, Roman Pagans, and the early church figures (Clement, Origen, Lactantius up to Augustine and from another tradition Philo) show the incorporation of Pagan philosophic topoi into European theo-logos. The rational and historical religion that Christianity claims itself to be conveniently owns up the Pagan insights (about god, the prime mover, forms, logos) as already anticipated pre-figurations of the arrivant (Derrida’s pregnant word from theological sources) – proper, true religion. Christian theology crystallises Greek/Roman topoi.14 Christian ‘apologetics’ of 2nd century appropriated logos as God and presented Christianity as ‘the philosophy,’ argues Pierre Hadot. Pagans, the apologetics argued, could only possess mere elements of the True Discourse of Perfect Reason – which is none other than the god and his word incarnated in Jesus. The ‘divine plan was the guiding plan of all our education,’ claimed Clement of Alexandria in the 3rd century.15 For Hadot this (theological) discourse and Greek philosophy are ‘incommensurable and incomparable.’ (Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? p. 172.) For, the discourse aims at establishing systematic accounts of the basic rational foundations, and seeks justification of practices by means of pre-supposed doctrines. Whereas for Hadot philosophy in antiquity was ‘a way of life’ – praxial mode of going about rather than a theoretical discursive enterprise. ‘Theorizing’ of philosophy is, contends Hadot, ‘the result of encounter between Christianity and philosophy.’ (Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? p. 276) Both Judaism and Christianity turned Pagan philosophy into a slave of theology. If Jews (with Philo of Alexandria) subordinated philosophy to the word of God as it was revealed to Moses, Christians (Clement and Origen) subordinated it to the word incarnate Jesus (Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? pp. 255–256).16 In reading European thinkers’ response to Pagan antiquity one often wonders whether their approaches can ever free themselves from their religious topoi and their domineering impulse of theo-logos. The Pagan modes of praxial reflection seem to generate irresolvable ambivalence in Judeo-Christian heritage. The ambivalence repeats in terms of devouring and assimilating the other on the one hand and spurning and throwing up the indigestible on the other. In the ultimate analysis, however, the ambivalence does not cease to conscript the Pagan in its cultural genealogy (Greco-Judeo-Christian.) Hadot’s work is not free from such ambivalence. On the one hand he wishes to exemplify Plato as the most outstanding proto-type of 40

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philosophy-as-praxis, exemplary of living and practising contemplative mind. Such a mode of being does not indulge in doctrinal conceptual pursuits through textual interpretations: theorising is alien to such a practitional reflective life. (Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? pp. 48–49, 75–77). But given that Christianity is an evolved religion it must assimilate what preceded it into Christianity’s genealogy. For Hadot the ambiguity which is internal to the word logos – word, discourse, logic – legitimates the appropriation of logos as divine – God as reason incarnate in Jesus. Despite the crucial differences between Pagan and Christian cultures (the absence of revelation in the former and the presence of sacred texts as sources for explanatory accounts in the latter), Hadot goes on to claim that an entire tradition of ‘systematic theology’ existed since Plato (Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? p. 240). This is the Greek-Platonic ‘religious’ tradition: thus ‘Greek philosophy served as a model for Christian philosophy’ (Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? p. 240.) In such theo-logic topoi religion becomes a cultural universal: every culture has a religion but Christianity is the only proper religion. Christianity’s proper model can incorporate and explain all other pre-existing religions as fore-runners predicted already in the Bible. While unravelling this theogeneo-logic, Balagangadhara contends that it was necessary for Christianity to assimilate the pre-Christian past. The assimilationist account was a calculated Christian response to the fundamental Pagan questions that antiquity posed to the Christians: What are your traditions? For, Pagans traditions are ancestrally imparted practices and they must be rendered in practice and not in legitimising discourses with pre-established foundations. In response to this question, Christianity dexterously incorporates Pagan traditions as a part of its own ancestry: to serve the theo-logic.17 As can be seen, Balagangadhara breaches an opening for unravelling the continuist accounts (between the Pagan and Judeo-Christian cultures) of major thinkers such as Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, and Agamben. If the Pagan Greco-Roman thought disintegrated at the beginning of the common era, the (other Pagan) Indian topoi dissipated with the Islamic invasions in the second millennium, speculates Balagangadhara. It is possible to find the Indian topoi beginning to get crystallised in the works of Sankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva – but the process got disrupted, he contends. Balagangadhara advances here (only) a provocative hypothesis and this cannot be refuted by means of ad hoc superficial historical accounts concerning Akbar and Dara Shuko’s ‘contribution’ or ‘cosmopolitanism.’ We are yet to initiate inquiries that meet the rigour and depth that Balagangadhara’s hypothesis demands. Here without rashly contradicting Balagangadhara’s hypothesis one may observe that unlike in the case of Greek-Roman Pagan topoi, the clusters of shared sense of human practices of Indian topoi have not completely disintegrated and been annihilated either during the Islamic or during later European invasions. Even if Indian topoi were threatened and continued to 41

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be vulnerable they can be said to be at work in actions and responses: the topoi continue to be filiated to what can be called Indian experience. Such an experiential topoi continue to be transmitted generationally in modes of being. How did such topoi receive the Semitic theologic and respond to it in the Indian context remains major task for inquiries today. Another task that awaits engagement is more challenging: is it possible now to elicit heuristic potential from these surviving topoi and experience and formulate an alternative (theoretical or not) to the dominant theo-logos of European culture? How does one meet this challenge? Balagangadhara (like Derrida, though differently) affirms such a possibility.

Cultivable locations Now, in order to engage with these challenging tasks even minimally, it maybe first necessary to inquire into the modes in which the experiential topoi were transmitted across generations. As is well-known the foundational narrative of the principle of reason in Europe was institutionalised very early (in the Common Era) and the explanatory accounts were transmitted systematically through the institutional structures of the church, monastery, monastic-cathedral schools, and universities. The Bible, the church, and its expanded institutions themselves required accounts, and the principle of reason provided such accounts in terms of histories, doctrines and personages, and discourses. Despite internal variations (say between the medieval universities and their modern counterparts) there is a continuity of rendering accounts of reason across all these institutions. MacIntyre’s work18 on the universities provides one such extended narrative. In contrast to the European narratives, the Pagan antiquity of Greeks and the millennially extended Indian cultural heritage do not have any such centralised institutions that imparted learning and contributed to the formation of cultural topoi of experience. None of the four types of schools of Greek antiquity (Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum, Zeno’s school of Stoa, and Epicurus’s Garden) was attached to any institution – either political or religious (if the word makes sense at all in the Pagan context.) Nor did the schools of Hellenistic period (of Pyrrho – scepticism – and of Diogenes the Cynic, Cynicism) had any dogmatic credo. What appear to be common to all these Pagan schools, although they differed internally (the Cynics refused to teach anything and carried on in their ways of living) are their praxial modes of being. These schools neither privileged texts nor exegesis of doctrines. All these schools were nurtured in a praxial topos. However, it is possible to indicate a modification within the praxial topoi between 6th and 4th centuries. Alteration in topoi can take two (non-exclusive) forms suggests Balagangadhara. It can alter the prevailing set of human practices: some of the inherited practices may be dropped and newer ones may be incorporated. Thus modes and forms of going about may change, and these changes 42

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are not subjected to the requirements of a legitimising narrative. Or, alteration in topoi can take the form of initiating heuristics for theoretical inquiries (Balagangadhara, ‘The Heathen in his Blindness,’ pp. 258–259 and 273). Perhaps, it is possible to show that between 6th and 4th centuries Greek topoi were modified in these two respects (in terms of practices and heuristics). The first sign of such modification is the institution of the ‘first’ school – Plato’s Academy – for imparting (‘new’) learning. (Compared to the schools mentioned above, Sophistic schools were ephemeral even if they were popular and powerful.) An upstart term, drawn from childrearing process, paideia gains prominence during the later part of this period. Paideia was ‘the centre of the entire struggle’ among thinkers in the 4th century.19 From the restricted – but related – activity of child-rearing, paideia comes to designate cultural training. As the topoi were undergoing changes during this period (one significant factor contributing to this is the emergence of inscriptional technics), the prevailing modes of cultural training were also exposed to questioning. The only source of cultural training until even the 5th century was the bardic compositions of Homer and Hesiod – and their modes were performative. The Muses bestowed Sophia on these bardic visionaries. Along with the king of justice and the oracular diviner the bards were regarded as the ‘masters of truth in archaic Greece.’20 Their modes of being and their forms of rendering truth quintessentially remained performative – embodied and enacted articulation of intimations. They were the guardians of mnemopraxial ethos. By the beginning of 4th century the guardians of praxial ethos were displaced and consequently the domain of cultural training became a contested arena: ‘Gone forever, perhaps, is the art of actually performing a composition for any given occasion;’ our inherited paideia has ‘permanently lost’ ‘the essence of performing song and poetry.’21 Paideia is an offspring of this contestatory terrain and Sophists appropriate it to design a new education – pedagogy. With the Sophists the preformative – visionary cultural learning and education of the bards gets constricted to eloquent and seductive speech-dialogue. The enacted melopoeiac training of the earlier practice gets narrowed down to charming rhetoric oriented towards pragmatic (political and monetary) goals (at least in Plato’s account of the Sophists). But the Sophists proudly claim the bardic tradition as their ancestry. Protagoras in his dialogue with Socrates states that Sophists often take the detour of story, music, poetry, and rites of prophecy rather than ‘reasoned argument’ in their teaching.22 But at the same time Sophists quickly turn to inscriptional technics (as in the Phaedrus where Phaedrus procures a written document from Lycias).23 Yet, Sophists may be venal but not doctrinal; they may be pragmatic but not dogmatic. Sophia, incidentally, in archaic Greece meant the skill to bring forth something after a long training or apprenticeship. Sophists gain their name from imparting such a skill to young people. (Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? pp. 18–20.) No wonder, as in 43

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comparison with Plato, they look more Pagan (without foundations). It is precisely in response to the Sophistic philologon (lover of speech) that Plato, drawing on yet another traditional source (like the Sophists) – advances philosophos. If Sophists sought the ancestry of the bards, Plato seeks the genealogy of Sophoi – the wise. Socrates, however, states that he was not a sage (wise man) but only a lover of wisdom; he is neither a sage nor a nonsage, he claims. (Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? p. 47).

Praxial turns As a lover, one relentlessly pursues wisdom. The ways of this lover are different from the mnemopraxial ethos enlivened by the earlier masters of truth. One can notice a double move in Plato/Socrates in this regard: (i) if wisdom is in the cultivation of the ability to live a virtuous life then the task is to figure out what virtue is and find ways to teach or impart it (more discursively rather than performatively). The inquiry into the ontological question (‘what is virtue?’) may appear to be a significant modification in the mnemopraxial topoi of the Greeks. (ii) Now the modification in the inquiry seems to initiate a different form of transmission of learning (pertaining to virtue.) Here too Plato/Socrates forges an alternative to the performativeimmersive modes of the bardic composers. A dialogue-argumentative form of inquiry into the question of ‘what,’ ‘why,’ and also ‘how’ (of virtue) is brought into practice. The bardic mnemocultures are more attuned to embodied and enacted modes of being and imparting these modes across generations; they do not evince any categorising impulse. The double move might suggest that there was a rupture or break in the inherited traditions of Greek topoi in the 4th century. The ambivalence of European approaches to the Pagan thought of antiquity capitalises on such an assumption of rupture. On the contrary, one may suggest two pointers for further inquiry: (i) Inquiry into the ‘what’ and ‘why’ (is virtue) questions only indicate a heuristic move – based on observations on the one hand and drawing on inherited learning on the other. The move in Plato never culminates in building definitive categorial theorisation of the components of virtue – such as Truth, Good, Beauty, Justice, and Courage. While the teachability of virtue is affirmed by Socrates (as in the Protagoras), the definition of the essence of virtue gets deferred every time (as in the Meno and the Republic.) Virtue does appear to be teachable but not definable, nor is it descursivisable. Virtue is knowledge (with cognitive imports) but not like the discursive knowledge that is ‘measurable’ (that which can be weighed, measured, and counted); it is non-objectifiable and incalculable. The efficacy of virtue is in living it rather than discursivising about it. At the end of the purportedly political treatise, the Republic, Plato invokes the inherited muthos, the Myth of Er, to reiterate the praxial nature of virtue. And such requirement is not justified in the recounting of the myth, on the basis or foundation of some rational dogma. Even the much emphasised 44

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(in European readings) rational part of the soul cannot guarantee the ‘right’ choice here: the principle of reason is not the regulative mechanism of modes of being in the world (we will return to this thematic). Modes of being do not require such a determinate regulative relationship, Plato’s account of the myth amply suggests. Now Plato’s heuristics, in emphasising the praxial-requirement of virtue, do not depart from the inherited topoi in any radical way; the ways of going about of the supposedly supreme exemplar of rational thought, Socrates, (even Nietzsche excoriates Socrates for his rational ‘aesthetic Socratism’)24 indicate the latter’s immersion in the mnemopraxial ethos. Among all the interlocutors in the collective of thinkers in the dialogues, Socrates is an outstanding renderer of Homer. Homer is always at the tip of Socrates’ tongue and pours out for commendation or approbation. Socrates has not been entirely severed from his bardic topoi. As if to pre-empt such an apprehension, Socrates repeatedly recalls in prison the dream voice urging him to practice music. Secondly, Socrates is acutely sensitive to the days of ritual festivities and the gods and goddesses associated with them. He can immerse himself in such festivities. Thirdly, he knows instinctively the mythical lore of local places and he would not hesitate to recall the lore and offer his respect for the deities and legends associated with the topos. (Plato’s Academy itself is a homage paid to a local legend – Academus; Plato locates his Academy in a ‘groove’ sacred to the hero.) He is well aware of the transgenerational haunting of debts and wishes to free himself from them in the very instance of his existence. Although he is a celebrated philologos, Socrates can at any time slip away into a catatonic trance and stand speechlessly staring at the sun or into the night endlessly; and as is well known, no one can excel him in wine-drinking – and of course the last drink, of hemlock. In all these and other such myriad modes Socrates comes across as a master of embodied existence. He persistently and unsparingly puts his body to work (walks barefoot among aristocrats) in living. Mnemocultures live in/on the body, and no surrogate body can severe virtuous life from embodied existence. Therefore, neither Socrates’ ‘theses’ (raising questions – such as ‘is virtue teachable?’ ‘is happiness the supreme good?’ or ‘how should one live?’) nor his ‘pedagogy’ can be said to mark any rupturing break in the cultural topos of the Greeks. There certainly appears to be a modification, an alteration in the practices of reflection, and the modification seems to circumscribe the praxial reflection among members of the school. Theoria is the philosopher’s vocation in search of happiness. The philologos takes over the task of imparting/teaching – paideia –of virtue from the bard.

Socratic lessons It is possible to show that the thinking at work in the Republic is not so much pre-occupied with the politics of the state as it is with the search for happiness. Throughout the Republic it pursues the questions: What gives 45

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happiness in the finite life (say, 70 years of existence) and beyond that? Can there be a lasting, eternal happiness that is not occluded by wealth, fame, and passions? The Republic seems to be more concerned with the states of beings than with the political states. Plato’s ‘political’ analysis really appears to be a by-product, an illustrative aside, of his central preoccupation with the questions of happiness for all. This search for happiness cannot be confused with the ephemeral pleasure which results when relieved from pain. Genuine happiness is beyond the dualities of pain and pleasure and uncontaminated by pain, says Socrates. For Plato, the philosopher can attain such happiness (and in fact he measures this happiness to be 729 times more than the happiness a dictator can enjoy). Such happiness, Plato suggests, is beyond politics of the states. All the five political systems (Aristocracy, Timarchy, Oligarchy, Democracy, and Dictatorship) he discusses are invoked to indicate how each one (emerging from an internal failure to temper individuated modes of being) contributes to the degeneration of happiness.25 Plato does not locate either the source of or solution to such degeneration in a political system directly. Existing forms of political systems can only precipitate the degeneration. Plato focuses on the character complex of the embodied being in existence to inquire into the source of and solution to degeneration of beings. The finite being is a strife-ridden entity as it (human and animal) is composed of three volatile elements: (i) passion/appetite, (ii) reason/discernment, and (iii) pride/virility. Each of the components is always in strife with the other; and the reigning element while subordinating the other, forges the character of the being and its modes of going about in existence (Republic, 435–445d, Book IV, pp. 129–139). Here the component of reason/discernment has the capability to nurture temperance and thus bring equilibrium in the striving being. For these components can discern virtue beyond the cravings of the other components. On the basis of such volatile elements of the human constitution Plato demarcates three kinds of biocultural formations as the guardians. Thus the biocultural formations that cultivate reason/discernment to temper and moderate the other elements belong to the formation called the guardians proper. The guardians proper, in Plato’s reckoning, have the capacity (arête) to seek happiness for all. In contrast, where the components of pride and virility supervene one gets the biocultural formation of warriors called auxiliaries. The auxiliaries with their valour, courage support the guardians proper in their search for happiness for all. Finally, where appetite and passion are at work, one sees the biocultural formation of guardians called workers. The workers with their capacity for rendering service with selfdiscipline tolerate the governance of the rulers. Plato’s tripartite formation approximates the tripartite composition of the being. It may be noted that as with other Pagan reflective practices, this tripartite heuristic too gets assimilated into the medieval Christian universities which completely function with the theological framework. The theological model labels them as Oratores (those who pray, clerks/priests of the 46

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church), Bellatores (those who fight – knights), and Laboratores (those who work – the lay).26 Plato’s heuristic model has no resemblance with the theological model of Christianity. The tripartite formation cannot be seen as impregnable categorical divisions. For, the degeneration of happiness can occur when the rulers undermine the elements of reason and discernment and unleash the rapacity of appetites and passions or pride and greed. The political system of democracy, for instance, for Plato, shows a complete disregard for any of the three faculties of being. It demonstrates the ‘freedom’ for anyone to do anything; it displays an utter lack of discipline and expertise (Plato, Republic, 555– 562a, pp. 246–253.). Such a system gives way to dictatorship – and lets loose the insatiable urge for base pleasure. Plato’s heuristic, however, cannot be reduced to the specific political cultural movement of the 4th century. It is with such heuristic about the state of being that Plato conceives of a pedagogical model for cultural training of the guardians proper. Such welltrained guardians as philosopher-rulers can attain happiness and strive to make it possible for all, Plato surmises. The 31-year long extended training unfolds in four phases. They incorporate training in language and the sciences (which soon get formulated into the domains of Trivium and Quardrivium dominated by logic and mathematics)27. Fourteen years (from 4 to 18) of early education in language (grammata/literacy, literary training, and grammar) is followed by 2 years of rigorous military training; the third phase forms the crowning part of education of the guardian; for, it is spread over 10 years of study of the sciences (the Quadrivium: arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music); then the fourth and final phase of training involves 5 years of solid study of dialectic. It is important to note that the telos of all this extended rigorous cultural training is not political rulership as such. For what follows the training is a phase of only 15 years during which the guardians will take up teaching and ruler’s positions alternatively. The fundamental aim of such training is to cultivate theoria – to lead a contemplative praxial life. The end of this Pagan paideia is not the erection of a sovereign state as such but to impart a liveable learning that practices virtuous modes of being. Doubts about the reality or plausibility of such a pedagogical model do not matter to Plato; it matters little even if such a model is possible only in heaven, says Socrates (Plato, Republic, 592b, pp. 283–284.) What is significant is that it is fundamentally a heuristic model deeply rooted in reflexive praxis. Plato has no anxiety about its universal validity and therefore does not endeavour to offer a legitimising narrative about it. Such a heuristic is extendable as a model for a cluster of finite beings: only in such a ‘community’ of contemplative thinkers he can, as a citizen, be a part says Socrates (Plato, Republic, 592b, p. 284). In the absence of such a community it can be practised as a mode of being by singular contemplative beings. Such reflexive praxis is not contingent upon the prior establishment of institutions. Although surrounded by Athenian aristocrats, Socrates does not subordinate his heuristic to the political cluster and plead for the establishment of such an institution. 47

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Plato’s heuristic is a turn within the (mnemo)praxial topoi. Such heuristic suggests the possibility or attempt at configuring, without abandoning the praxial matrix, what can be called a performative episteme – a shareable knowledge whose efficacy is in embodied modes of being. In moving towards such an episteme Plato does not turn to the cherished inheritance of bardic traditions. Plato’s gesture does not move from some unconscious poetic domain to some putatively conscious theoretical realm. Plato seems to think that the bardic mnemocultures are not indispensable for the formation of the performative episteme. On the contrary, he even seems to consider such modes of reflective composition occluding the contemplative mode of enlivening virtue in existence. For, Plato thinks that the bardic modes (of song-poetry, music, and performance) are prone to excesses and aggravate passions, resulting in the distraction of the being. Further, their mimetic technics forecloses the possibility of the indulgent moving beyond the appearances which only feed the insatiable passions. The vulnerable reasoning and discerning faculties must distance themselves from the passion-inciting mnemocultures; for, even the best too are seduced by the poet who stirs feelings. Therefore, even the best too need cultural training which prepares them to face the passional disturbance (love, grief) with equanimity. As the bardic-poetic compositions can only flourish on the passional upheavals, the poets and tragedians do not find the culturally trained ‘good men’ – who can bear devastation of existence with serenity and equanimity as worthy material for imitation. Even when such men are represented ‘especially at a public festival when a promiscuous crowd is assembled in a theatre’ such representations remain unappreciated, observes Plato. Virtuous existence is foreign to such crowds (Plato, Republic, 604e, p. 432)28. Therefore, such passion-provoking poetic-performative spectacles must be either exiled or regulated in the first phase of the cultural training of the guardians, Plato contends (Plato, Republic, Book II and III, 376d–403c, pp. 72–102).

Platonic torsions Although the major curricular reform that Plato proposes is a turn within the praxial topoi, his fervent wish to bracket the mnemocultural modes as unworthy means for configuring the performative episteme oriented towards seeking happiness, a critical question remains unaddressed and unanswered in the Republic. If the philosopher, through a protracted training, can obtain happiness by cultivating contemplative life, and such happiness is open for all, then, by what means or by what kind of cultivation can the genos (the multitudes) attain such happiness? If the bardic compositions offered cultural training for all, through the cultivation of mnemopraxial ethos so far, and if Plato’s heuristic aims at something accessible to all, how does he hope to impart such learning to all? Plato’s heuristics do not seem to factor in this significant issue – unless one reduces the essence of the Republic to politics. 48

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But Plato’s composition does not entirely disregard the mnemocultural ethos and modes which are accessible to everyone (even if in different ways). As pointed out earlier Socrates is deeply immersed in the mnemocultural topoi. Above all, the Republic, which offers an educational paradigm by displacing the pervasive muthos-oriented cultural training ends the composition with a seductive (if, for some, alarming) account of a wonderful myth. At the end of the work, the philosophos gives place to mythologos. Whether deliberated or not this mode of ending the Republic can be accessed by the entirety of genos who are nurtured in the mnemopraxial topoi. Socrates concludes the composition with the Myth of Er. The Myth of Er can be said to recount a non-theological culture’s experience of the formations, disappearances, and returns of the human existence. The repetitive process of such movements has neither an arché nor a telos. Consequently, it is not determined, commanded, and controlled by an omnipotent sovereign agency or Being as such. The challenge that the myth exposes one to is: how to live in such an immemorially relayed durational (and discontinuous) existence in a finite instance? In closing the composition, which throughout engaged the issue of virtuous living, Plato seems to reiterate the question in a varied way but in the form of an interminable riddle: what do you do with what you have?! What matters in the process is – how one receives and responds to the riddle in a praxial mode of being. In his most recent reading of the Myth of Er, Giorgio Agamben argues that the Republic (which for him is a book about justice and politics) ends with a myth that dramatises ‘pseudo justice’ and ‘pseudo choice.’ He begins his reading by addressing the place of myth in a work of dialectic. Countering the sedimented view of the supposedly antagonistic relation between muthos and logos (‘explanations through story and dialectical rigor,’ respectively), Agamben argues that they are not contradictory in Plato but are ‘mutually integrated.’29 It is true that his relationship between these two modes of compositions is complicated in Plato. But would the Myth of Er have any place in the Platonic-Socratic curriculum that is propounded in the Republic? Given the pointed argument against Homer and the tragedians in the Republic, and given the emphasis on avoidance of passions in the making of the philosopher-statesman, Plato forecloses any possible entry for such myth in the curricular model he propounded. Further, in Socrates’ commentary on the narrative of Er, he (one can’t say it was Er – because the language used is Socrates’) says about the lamentation of a soul that chose wrongly: the soul in its earlier form of life ‘had participated in virtue [that is why he could sojourn in heaven] through habit and without philosophy.’ (Agamben, The Use of Bodies, Plato cited, p. 252, emphasis mine). Then a moment later, reinforcing the thesis concerning the supremacy of dialectical rigor (dianoia) over ‘storytelling,’ Socrates Says 49

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However, if someone pursues philosophy in a sound manner…it looks as though not only will he be happy here but his journey from here to there and back again won’t be along the rough underground [Cthonian] path but along the smooth heavenly one (Agamben, The Use of Bodies, Plato cited, p. 253) Even while apparently taking recourse to myth, here too Socrates advocates dialectic as the only path to heaven. We must here remember that the thesis of the dialectic is advanced as a novel paideia aimed at undermining and displacing the Homeric praxis. In this passion for the dialectic, Socrates denegates the possibility of cultivating virtue (‘through habit’) even ‘without philosophy.’ Platonic paideia that wrenches out virtue from every other source to confine it to the ascendant domain of dialectic/philosophy seems to declare: Dialectic/philosophy alone cultivates virtue. Agamben does not attend to this wrinkle (and its deeper determination of the sedimented narrative about Europe/philosophy as it is opposed to myth/Asia) in the enfolding of myth by philosophy. The vision that Er invokes, observes Agamben, is not really that of ‘justice and harmony’ but a devastatingly bleak and horrifying spectacle. Here one may point out that justice and harmony cannot be normative codes deployed by some all-powerful sovereign here. In fact, when one pays close attention to the myth one notices that none of the Fates – Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos – has complete power over the movement and the destinies of the souls that pass through. What seems to lurk at the basis of the movement of the souls is the ‘choice.’ But this is no ‘free will’ of an autonomous being. In fact, what the movement of the souls indicates is the interminable but apparently continuous yet clearly discontinuous duration of their repeated existences – their modes of being. The apparent choice of the souls in any instant of existence is the effect of the extended modes of being. Every choice in any instant of existence is affected by the ways in which previous forms of life were put to work. ‘For the most part,’ says Er, ‘their [souls’] choice depended upon the habit of their former life.’ (Agamben, The Use of Bodies, Plato cited, p. 253). Therefore, the ‘choice’ involved here cannot be coded as a sovereign decision. Nor can it be reduced to some incorrigible fatalism or an imposition of some sadistic sovereign power. The choice here appears to be the effect of how one puts one’s mode of being to work in an instance of existence; it is the effect of what one does with what one has in a ‘given’ context. Agamben seems to misread the complex relation between choice and action. He terms the ‘choice’ as ‘pseudo–choice’ because this is determined by past behaviour ‘over which the agent no longer has any power’ (Agamben, The Use of Bodies, pp. 256–257). (It is precisely such a reading which is at work when Agamben turns a few years later to the Indian theme of ‘karma.’ We will return to Agamben’s reading in detail in the chapter on ‘Inquiring Ethos’). For, action – a mode of being, a way of putting to work a form of 50

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life – is available in an instance of existence but such action cannot completely decide the course and outcome of that particular enactment. Such a scenario acknowledges but at the same time limits the space of the agent. The ‘agent’ cannot be sovereign here; but s/he can put to work the entire inheritance which constitutes the form of life one finds oneself in or is endowed/cursed with (as effects of actions). Agamben contends that a work devoted to justice and politics ends up with pseudo-justice and pseudo-choice. But when one looks at the Republic as a composition pertaining to cultivation of a virtuous mode of being one can see the praxial thinking at work. Cultivation here involves putting to work one’s constitution – one’s given form or endowments of life. Here the ‘given’ cannot be exhaustively fathomed. Yet the ‘given’ is the effect and medium of cultivation. Agamben notices that choosing virtuous life (of the mean – avoiding extremes) ‘is not precisely a choice but rather a praxis.’ To choose the mean, he writes, does not mean to choose a bios [a form of life] but in the bios that has befallen us to choose, to be in a position to negotiate and flee the extremes through virtue… It is not a bios but a certain mode of using and living bios (Agamben, The Use of Bodies, pp. 256–257, emphasis of the word mine) But this can be seen differently: what has ‘befallen’ (the given) is the effect of our cultivation of our endowments; ‘negotiation’ here involves the possibility of altering a mode of being while living it through cultivation. Interestingly, although at the end of the book Agamben treats the Republic as a work about justice and choice, the running theme of Agamben’s book throughout shows that philosophical praxis as a contemplative life turns such life apolitical. Contemplative philosophers (‘bios theoreticos’) like Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus who exiled themselves into themselves could not be a part of Greek polis. Therefore, for ‘this reason modern political philosophy does not begin with classical thought,’ contends Agamben (Agamben, The Use of Bodies, Plato cited, p. 211). If this is the case, the status of the Republic as a political treatise (about justice and agency, freedom) becomes untenable. Balagangadhara contends in a related context that the concept of politics derives from the Semitic idea of the relationship between God and man (Balagangadhara, Pratyabhigyaana, ‘Politics’). Agamben’s argument that the sovereign alone has the power to alter life resonates with Balagangadhara’s insight. The Judeo-Christian theorisation of Pagan reflective modes of being occludes any other way of accessing the latter. Heidegger blames Latin for distorting European access to Greek thought. Latin appropriated Greek thought without a commensurable experience on its part, contends Heidegger.30 Perhaps it is more appropriate to say that it is Judeo-Christian 51

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religious thought that deliberately and calculatively distorts Pagan traditions to consolidate its distinction as the only and true universal religion and thought. For the Semitic thought disqualifies and disregards the experiential modes of being as proper ways of relating to the world (the divine order) and to the divine plan; or, more appropriately, it subordinates ways of life to the principles of religion: action must comport with the principle. As discussed in the previous chapter, European intellectual history shows an extended and concerted effort to demarcate the Greek antiquity from Asia (Persia) and filiate the former to its own genealogy. The grand continuist narratives woven from the early Judaic and Christian thinkers Philo and Clement to their repetition in the German intellectual histories of the 19th and 20th centuries (culminating in Nietzsche, Jaeger, and Heidegger) consolidate inexhaustible testimony to the distortions of the Pagan. No wonder at the end of his mangnum opus Philosophy as a Way of Life, Hadot can only grudgingly concede that ‘there really are troubling analogies between the philosophical attitudes of [Greek] antiquity and those of the Orient [Hadot means here Asia].’ Why are these analogies ‘troubling?’ Agamben too fervently engages (of course in a continuist narrative) with such praxial attitudes of antiquity, but he has nothing to say about the possible ‘analogies.’ Asia does not yet exist in Agamben’s work (until his more recent work on karma).31 Can Pagans learn to receive and respond to Pagans?

Liveable learning Indian traditions over millennia brought forth an education that can only be called a liveable learning. Liveable learning is in the service of life in existence; and existence itself, in this context, is without a primal cause or a final end; it is recursive in its formations and dissolutions, in its alternations and variations. In such an existence liveable learning intimates the embodied life form with the possibility of attaining happiness. For, embodied existence is perpetually exposed to strife and grief, death and deprivation, and surely pleasure and (which, albeit quickly turns into) pain. Desire is the dynamic of actional movement of life in such existence. Desire prevents one from discerning the difference between object or relation-oriented pleasure and object-less or relation-free happiness. On the contrary, it fixates one to the former as the only source of real pleasure. Now, in the former case when the desired object or relation becomes inaccessible or one is deprived of it, desire binds one to the animal actional existence. It is in such a context that learning (vidya) can help the releasement of the embodied being in existence: Karmanaa badhyate jantuh vidyayaa vimuchyate32 (actions bind animals and learning releases) 52

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The cognitive significance of such learning is that it can transform modes of being in existence; the test of this learning is in living it in the existence of life –the matrix of samsaara. Existence unfolds in terms of phenomenal entities, objectal formations, and relationships among them; and this relationship manifests in the way an objectal being relates internally to itself and to other phenomenal entities externally; and it is driven by the essential but subtle (and non-objectal) force of the impulsive desire; this force binds, unbinds, and repulses the objectal formations with themselves and with others. Learning must take into cognisance the perceptual gravity of the objectal circuit, and at the same time it must attend to the dynamic of volatile desire that binds one to this shifting and ephemeral ensemble of the machinic circuitry. The illusory gratification of ‘new’ objects and relations keeps the circuitry intact and reinforces the binding and the bondage of relationships. Therefore, the task of the liveable learning is to enable one to sense the double bind: the entanglement of the desire-driven objectal circuitry and the need to cultivate an object-free relation or non-relational partaking of the circuit one finds oneself in. The double task that is open to beings here, then, is: (i) within the perceptual-objectal circuitry one must learn of the dynamic of the heterogeneous ensemble of beings and their bindings and bondings; and (ii) at the same time suspend that learning and its effects within that circuitry itself. Here the most irreducible medium of learning is the perceptual-phenomenal body complex itself: the body complex is the effect of actional learning – resulting from the mutually constituted action and learning. Thus the body complex is the medium and also the end of liveable learning. As the body complex with its perceptual-desiring faculties and its web of relations is the apprehensive apparatus for the actional dynamic of the complex – the latter becomes the ultimate medium that requires transformation. The body is put to work to mediate its transformations. As medium and effect of desire, the body is simultaneously a part of the problem and a way out of the problem: as an objectal formation it occludes a non-objectal, non-relational intimacy in the ensemble of beings in existence. But as a heterogeneous complex it also contains yet another force that is irreducible to the force of desire which thickens the webs of binds and bonds as the only ends of existence. This other force at once inheres in the thickets of the binds but remains untouchable by them; it is at once proximate and remote from the complex. Although these heterogeneous elements can be designated as forces there is an irreducible and abyssal distance and difference between them. The desiring force forever attempts to homogenise the complex by projecting (adhyaasa) itself as the only driving dynamic and disavows the inhering other. Whereas the latter inheres in and witnesses indifferently in the goings-on of the embodied entities. The body complex has the propensity to assume all learning to be perceptual-apprehensive knowledge. In cultures where the body is seen as the means and the formation that requires to be transformed, the preferred 53

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modes of generating and transmitting such learning are verbal-acoustic and gestural-performative ones. These modes fundamentally require the body to be put to work. Such formations, which can be called mnemocultures – articulate memory through embodied and enacted modes. But when the ends of learning are reduced to mastering such technics, despite their significance, the body complex may remain ignorant or even disavow the other force inhering in the body. The Upanishads which intensively and extensively annotate the ends and sketch scenes and locations of learning impel attention towards such ignorance-inducing and pain-enhancing acquisition of learning and its technics, however revered they might be.

Scenes of learning Sanskrit traditions had no use for concepts that can be set apart from reflective practices. They worked with praxial epistemic technics (as the essential actional means) whose singularity is not contingent upon their definitional rigour but their interminable usability in life. Thus none of the notions such as atma, dharma, manas, ahankaara, buddhi, shareera, loka, karma, and the modes or technics (know-how and knowledge – what is learnt and the way it is learnt) of their symbolisation has any doctrinal (crystallised concepts/ideas that are contingent upon a determinate order or plan based on a priori foundations.) status. That is why no justifying accounts are advanced in the tradition. The poetic-narrative-performative compositions that are released by the reflective-imaginative trio Suta-Bharata-Seer33 persistently foreground how these technics are put to work and the consequences of their abuse in existence. They unfold instantiations of differentiated ways of being. It is an alien misreading of these compositions to treat them as illustrations of doctrines or dogmas. With their essential concern for how one moves about in the loka, the cultural forms of itihasa, purana, kaya, nataka, and geya are fundamentally oriented towards addressing the sadhaka – the seeker-practitioner and not a theologue or even a philosopher. Now subjecting these compositions to the original foundational-doctrinal and derivative-illustrational (narrative) schema is to impose a theological frame on them. Whether they take the narrative-performative form or non-narrative or dialogical form, these compositions come forth as practitioners’ modes of preparing practitioners. The question of what should be imparted does not get prioritised and segregated over how it should be taught. More significantly even this ‘how’ does not get wrapped up in any explanatory or justificatory account. The Upanishads embody and impart such technics of learning.

Other scenes of learning-I The learned Narada once approaches the sage Sanathkumara in a forest setting and bemoans that what all he has learnt has not freed him from sorrow, and he now seeks knowledge which gives him happiness. Sanathkumara 54

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asks him about what all he has learnt until then. Narada recounts about 22 subjects ranging from the Vedas, Puranas, the fifth Veda (the Mahabharata), the sciences of ritual, language, time, astronomy–astrology, argumentation, archery, and the performative forms (dance and music) and others. Narada’s subjects move beyond the ancient and medieval European disciplines of Trivium and Quadrivium put together. It may be noticed that all these domains of learning come forth in the form of enactable embodied knowledge. Yet, Narada complains: they have not freed him from pain; they have merely turned him into a reciter of efficacious utterances: ‘mantra videhaasmi.’34 All that learning has not made him into a ‘seer’ of the mantras (a mantra drashta). Now he seeks knowledge which goes beyond the apprehensive objectal learning of perceptualapprehensional-apparatus. He seeks to learn of the other inhering force that is heterogeneous to the calculative mastery of technics of formations. Narada refers to this other force as atma. Now the exegetical gloss on atma alludes to its perennial (non-relational) circulation within the extended circuitry of emergences and dissolutions of existence of beings in the loka: Atati samsarateetyaatmaa35 (the one that circulates in samsaara always) Atati shareereshu samvasateeti36 (the one that inheres in the bodies) That is atma says Amara. This incalculable and irreducible other can also be called para: para inheres and circulates in samsaara and shareera. Narada seeks to learn para-vidya (knowledge of the other). Now Sanathkumara does not discard the formations of Narada’s learning. The other of the perceptual/apprehensive is not posited as transcendental here. The teacher turns him around in what appears to be a graded circle. He calls all the learning that Narada acquired so far as the technics of naming (naama) and asks him to meditate upon para as the name. Here Narada’s competence as a reciter of utterances is reoriented to focus upon the inhering other that cannot be reduced to actional objectal-knowledge (whether verbal or visual). But Narada seems to operate with a hierarchy of learnables; he asks Sanathkumara whether there is anything superior to the naming mode. The teacher points to the acoustic utterance (vaak); vaak alone provides differential knowledge about the variegated objectal beings of the loka/existence, says the teacher and asks Narada to concentrate and meditate upon vaak as para. Narada seems to miss the point of the learning: any learning – any and every technics – can open up the passageway to ‘sense’ para if only one pursues that means with ardour and attention. Whereas Narada asks for superior means to learn further. In a series Sanathkumara mentions manas, resolve (samkalpa), strength, knowledge, food, water, memory, sky, aspiration, breath, etc., and ‘finally’ 55

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comes to a state of perpetual cognitive-awareness free from objectal fixation. (Chandogya Upanishad, 7.24–25, pp. 248–261). That state alone can bequeath happiness says Sanathkumara. Then he recalls, as if to dispel Narada’s deluded investment in the differential hierarchy, all the differently ‘graded’ formations and technics and tells the latter that para permeates and inheres in every apperceptual formation and technics and can be accessed through differential means. Narada’s mis-cognition was based on his fixation with the objectal which occludes the sense of the non-object, non-relational that inheres in the formational. A sort of screen of indolence comes in the way of sensing that difference within. Narada is said to have been eventually freed from the distorting screen (adhyaasa) by Sanathkumara (Chandogya Upanishad, 7.26.2. pp. 263–264).

Test drive Indian traditions open up a complex scenario. Here existence appears to be a ‘test drive’37 – one which is flagged off by a reoriginating/iterative force which neither determines nor regulates the drive. If existence is an ensemble of heterogeneous entities (animal, plant, stone, and human) – every single entity must expose itself to the drive – without terminus. On such drive without determination and teleological or terminal signposts, virtue lies in how best one navigates (in) existence. Here the trope ‘drive’ should not be confined only to mobile entities – formations that can move (from swimmers to crawlers and from quadrupeds to bipedals and their super jets or their teleporters.) Every non-moving entity (plant and mountain) is also exposed to the test: their endurance and faring in existence matter during the drive. There is also a drive or impulse for automobility with regard to their movement or endurance among all the entities of existence. Here one can lay stress on the Pagan prefix auto. Does faring well in the test depend on one’s own self (auto) or some other all-powerful determining agency? Cultures with theological heritage by default in the final analysis conform to the omnipotent sovereign (divine or human) force and its grace at work in their arché/teleological test drive. The Indian case provides an alternative to such determination of the test drive. Given that existence and the entities that compose it are always already reoriginary or reiterative in their movement [jagat is that which moves or is on the move – the players are (sthaavara – rooted – and jangama – the drifting)] persistently get reloaded into the circuit. Every iterated entity is composed (endowed/accursed) of the residues or effects of the modes and moves that that entity had made in its earlier manifest play drive. These residues are neither continuous nor determinable by any external agency – including the player him/her/itself. The player, neither determined nor controlled by any other, has no total sovereignty either. What seems to require attention in this relentless test drive of existence is the metonymic chain of modes and moves of the drive: and the chain is intractably 56

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transgenerational. No sovereign being can command and control such reiterated strings and fibers of existence. If the metonymic modes and moves alone drive the test in existence, how one plays them in the instance of one’s test-existence alone matters predominantly. In this entire theatre of testing, the reoriginary (or originless) force is very much a part of the theatre and remains untouched by it. The force has only a status of witness or spectator to the drama of testing. The force can even be said to appear differentiated into the theatre of testing and manifests in terms of heterogeneous entities on the one hand and at the same time remains immune to the effects of the theatre on the other. This witnessing but invisible, this proximate but remote (without control), this innate but pervasive force is what we pointed out as para.38 But para may be omni, that is pervasive, but non-potential (non-virile); para may be un-generated but imposes or bestows no sovereign power on any; para is non-agentive with regard to the repetitive emergences and dissolutions of entities in existence. A crucial aspect of the test is to drive without forgetting, without erasing and denying the fundamental difference between para and existence (or what we described in the earlier chapter as apara) in the course of the drive. When the drive indulges in itself, overtakes with impunity, ignores and disregards the non-assertive para recklessly, the narcissism of the drive compels one to repeat the test. In all this it is not the principles of driving as norms that matter but the performative learning of driving itself – where blinding narcissism does not delude one’s chance into proclamations of one’s abrasive autonomy (one’s ipseity) – becomes crucial. Here para has no theo-conceptual status of an omnipotent prime mover – but that of an uninvolved (‘apathetic’) unseen seer without power, lurking in a praxial matrix of existence. Para emerges from a tradition in which the grounding principle of reason is completely alien. The much coveted para-vidya is therefore not accumulation of explanatorily intelligible accounts based on foundational reason (be it theological or scientific); it is a liveable learning that unlearns explanatory justifications, if any. Indian traditions transmitted such praxial learning over millennia.

Other scenes of learning-II As every scene of learning is also a test arena, the learner is exposed to a series of ordeals (rather than discursive conceptual accounts.) An other scene shows the learning process in which the father Aruni tests his presumptuous son of his learning. In his learning from other teachers, asks Aruni, has Svethaketu (the son) learnt to differentiate between the ephemeral, unreal, and phenomenal entities from the eternal, imperceptible, and real that nestles in the multitude of beings? Svethaketu is puzzled and humbled by the question. As his teachers did not impart such learning, he begs of Aruni to teach him that. 57

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Aruni later tells him that all the differentiated life forms born of egg, womb and seed could not have come into existence without the non-existent real permeating and inhering in them and counsels Svethaketu to know the real nestling in the ephemeral. In a way existence is a transformative effect of the real, says Aruni. (Chandogya Upanishad, 6.2.3. p. 29) Svethaketu fails to grasp the import of the lesson. Aruni puts him through an ordeal to make him learn indirectly (and by way of negation) that the real cannot be confused with the existent perceptual apparatus and its projections. He asks Svethaketu to live without food but only on water for 15 days and asks him to recite the Vedas on his famished stomach. Svethaketu complains of the loss of memory – he can’t recall the Vedas. As the subtle part of food nurtures memory, the deprivation of food ends the life of memory; similarly the subtle part of water sustains life (breath) and the loss of which ends life. In contrast, the real is untouched by any of these nurturing or nurtured entities and conditions, says Aruni. The latter tries to make Svethaketu learn that the real inheres in his own body complex and make him learn this experientially – by putting his own body to work. But the latter fails to grasp once again. Aruni continues with several analogies, such as: how the divergence of flowers disappears in the honey that the bees gather and how the hydraulic cycle effaces the variety of waters in the sea (which turns into rivers through the rains induced by the heat and evaporation). Through such analogies Aruni tries to turn Svethaketu’s attention towards the common among the heterogeneous. Even after nine such attempts of ordeals and analogies Svethaketu fails to learn the lesson and gain ‘knowledge.’ The perceptual-phenomenal apparatus – the very means of knowing the formed and its relations and being in existence along with others – comes in the way of grasping the real that is the alien guest in body. Then, suddenly, for some inexplicable reason the narrateme of the ordeal of a thief who is asked to hold a heated rod to prove his innocence enlightens Svethaketu. He realises that the myriad afflictions that the body is exposed to cannot touch the embodied para (as was the case of the thief in the ordeal) when one senses the common real inhering in the differential entities. That mode of being can neither be reduced to nor exhausted by the embodied existence. Ignorance and disavowal occlude the experience of the real (para). But existence ‘flourishes’ precisely through such reigning occlusions. Liveable learning exposes one to ordeals and turns the double bind of life into a testing ground – an experimental–experiential chance for transformation of modes of being. Svethaketu learns this through multiple and repeated (with variation) instances – which are analogous to the reemergence of being in existence.

Other scenes of learning-III As we have seen there is no guarantee that the exposure and the teaching achieve their goal (-less goal) at once. The seductive power of ignorance is fed by the force of desire and at every turn the latter releases distortional 58

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screens. This is precisely what the ‘first’ teacher Prajapati-Hiranyagarbha makes his ‘first’ students Indra and Virochana learn. They both fail in the very first instance to sense the seduction of the occluding and occular screen. Inseparable cousins making each other with envious rage Indra and Virochana approach Prajapati to learn of para (atma, the real) in the singularity of its manifestations (vishesha rupam). After 32 years of studentship Prajapati tells them that the figure in the eye is para. Is the reflection that we see in water para, they ask. The figure in the eye sees in all directions and manifests in all, says Prajapati: Para is all seeing. But the mighty students mis-cognise this. They decide that the seen object of reflection is para; they conflate what is in the visible site with the real. They reduce the invisible and imperceptible to the object grasped by the sight. As in the other scenes of learning Prajapati, however, does not discard the sight. Here the seeing, perception is a detour through which para’s difference can be learnt. This is Prajapati’s test and both the students fail the test. Virochana goes back celebrating the perceptual body as atma and serves it. Whereas Indra wonders: if the perceptual body is prone to decay, if it is only a reflection of the perceptual, does atma too suffer from it? Then he turns towards dream state and surmises that one who circulates in the dream state is atma. But, on reckoning again, he realises that the being in dream state is also prone to afflictions of the world and doubts its status as atma and returns to Prajapati. Every visit retains him for 32 years. The first mis-cognition pertains to confusing the perceptual being in wakeful state with para; the second one results from confusing the perceptual (even if it is only a dream) being of dream state with para. The third one is where the being is in a dreamless sleep, freed from any apprehensions, and that must be atma, presumes Indra. But he doubts that too. In such a state the being can’t identify and differentiate himself from others; therefore, this cannot have been the singular form of atma, he thinks and goes back to Prajapati who in turn retains him for another 5 years. Then Prajapati tells him, solving the riddle of his enigmatic teaching: Syaashareera syaatmaanodhishtana maatto. (Chandogya Upanishad, 8.12.1, p. 382.) That mortal body is the sheltering abode of atma. The unreal, ephemeral, and afflictional circuitry cannot be discarded but must be attuned. The entire inquiry into the difference between real (sat) and unreal non-being (asat, finite) is initiated and is carried on in the pervasive context of the cognitive/perceptual complex (asat) in all the pedagogical scenes that we have seen so far. Asat perhaps is sat’s detour or test drive for everyone constituted by the cohabiting contraries: sat and asat real and existence respectively, para and apara-shareera.

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The entirety of the heterogeneous formation (srshti) is brought forth through such related (without relation) contraries composing the topo-temporal formations of apara. But the ‘success’ of the test cannot be measured by cognitive perceptual means. When there is a difference between the means and ends – the instrument and the goal – such means cannot teach of para. All verbal means of the Vedas have such an instrumental status (apara).39 The verbal means can only impart through negation of the instrumental by contrasting para with all the perceptual means and instruments. Cognitive perceptual means are ineffective in rendering the knowledge of para. But can para be posited as an object of knowledge at all? It can only be ‘sensed’ in the very heterogeneous modes of being – from the very formations of asat. The arena of the test is life itself; and the differentiation of sat/asat can only be sensed experientially. Such experience cannot be made present – discursivisd – by perceptual-cognitive means. This root model of sat-asat inquiry has no use for the hierarchic dualities of the body and soul/mind, intelligent/sensible, theoretical/practical, nature/culture, reason/emotion, empirical/transcendental, physical/metaphysical, phenomenal/noumenal, etc. The inquiry into the real-existence (sadasad vivechana) is not a pathos-determined inquiry. One is not in competition with any other in this inquiry. One’s formation of life is one’s testing ground where there is no normative authority adjudicating the measure of one’s success. The liveable learning one receives must be sensed in the embodied existence. But the body can also be mis-cognised as the end in itself. Such a mis-conception indulges it in the pleasures of existence gratificatory to the body itself. The apparatus is confused to be real. Another scene of learning focuses precisely on such a mis-cognition.

Other scenes of learning-IV Para permeates the entire formational existence says the learned Varuna and asks his son Bhrugu to know it. Food, life (breath), seeing eyes, hearing ears, manas, and utterance are all means of accessing para, adds Varuna.40 The son misses the point and focuses only on the phenomenal entities. He thinks since food is essential for the existence of every being, para must be food. But soon Bhrugu realises that this was inadequate for knowing para. Then Bhrugu focuses on life-breath (prana) as essential for existence and assumes that to be para (Taittiriya Upanishad, 3.3. p. 76) – but soon finds it to be incomplete. Like Narada earlier, he goes through these various testing turns and misses the import of Varuna’s counsel. Then the latter tells him to continue contemplative reflection (tapas) and after a few more turns Bhrugu contemplates on happiness (aananda) as para and learns that that is the source of all generativity – but at the same time senses that para cannot be reduced to what is generated. Liveable learning affirms the possibility of happiness in existence. When the desire-driven, strife-ridden body complex learns the possibility of being in existence, unperturbed by the raging upheavals of the passional existence that 60

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the real being in existence is indeed the undemanding and non-relational para, then happiness may ensue. But what comes in the way of sensing this being indifference is the seductive force of desire binding the being to objectal entities and relations. In such a framework the desire-driven being feels threat from other beings of the multitude and consequently indulges the path of domination as the only source of pleasure. Every other is seen as a subjugable object. Virochana’s termination of learning after the first counsel can turn him towards such indulgence in projecting himself as para. Such an impulse has the potential or urge to homogenise the divergent and unify them for subjugation. But crystallisation of such an impulse into an absolute model with continuities is difficult to find nurture from the liveable learning of Indian traditions.

Ends of learning The ultimate end of learning (if it can be called that) in these traditions is ‘knowing’ that that differential (para) other is (in) you. But here one must be cautious with regard to this pronoun ‘you:’ it cannot be designated as an object of perception; for the same pronoun can indicate a referent – an embodied entity or relation. The difference between them is subtle and this must be discerned in the singular but deeply resonant (with the ends of learning) term: tat-tvam: that you[(r)self]. This search for the ultimate learning (of the subtle but infinite difference between ‘same’ as heterogeneous) is not a peculiarity of the humans. Even gods too are in pursuit of it says Yama to Nachiketa when the latter asks him of the para-vidya and tries to dissuade the young learner from pursuing that path.41 ‘Knowledge’ of tattvam is eminently teachable – but it will be effective only when taught by a practitioner – the one who has put to work his learning. The paradox, in the case of the scene of learning in the Kathopanishad is that if the teacher must be such an enlightened person, why is Yama still at the position which is a part of extended samsaara/existence? (After all, both svarga (‘heaven’) and naraka (‘hell’) are part of the recursive circuitry.) One can suggest two answers: (i) Yama is only instantiating his actional effects – the results of his deeds and he is aware that his being will be open to transformation (which is akin to the function of the goddesses in the Myth of Er – processing the journey of the souls on the basis of the consequences of their actional life) – once he exhausts his endowments; (ii) Yama is in the same position as any practitioner-teacher and they all reinforce the singular crucial point: the test of the learning is in its praxial rendering in existence without pathos. In an existence deeply drenched in pathos (the afflictions of life: avidya, asmita, raga, dvesha, and abhinivesha42) one cannot but put to work one’s endowments. Any of the actional modes – recitation of the Vedas, rendering of rituals, examining multiple works other than the Veda, even listening to Upanishadic teachings several times (Kathopanishad, 1.2.23, pp. 178–181)  – has no power to impart the ultimate learning. The sole locus of such praxial learning is loka – the drifting-alluring-afflicting colossus of existence itself. The 61

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fact that there are learned teachers (such as Yama, Varuna, and Sanathkumara) still located in existence to impart such learning indicates that their actional modes may have, perhaps, transgenerationally indulged in the pathos of existence; they too may have been failed learners at some point. But what the delight or happiness that the learning entails cannot be confused with pathos of life: it is an apathetic delight which can regulate actional life without remainders. The teacher–student figures in these scenes of learning have little psychobiographical significance. They are eminently substitutable figures: Bhrugu can be Nachiketa or Narada or Svethaketu. They are all in search of the ultimate learning – para-vidya. They are all drawn first towards the pathosridden loka and as they persist in their inquiry they begin to differentiate the indulgent faculties of the body that come in the way of differentiating the other of the lively being. They are all taught to learn the need to temper the restive faculties (likened to horses in the Kathopanishad) and cultivate attentiveness of the vicissitudinal (formational and deformational) manas (akin to charioteer – the chariot being the body). That is, the entirety of the body’s resources (which can make and unmake the body and the loka) are to be cultivated in such a way that their effects and their reach can be discerned. Such discernment is crucial for distancing oneself from the pulls of pathos. Such a learning process – even when unfolded through singular (but repeatable) and celebrated figures – cannot be drawn on to exemplify some identity narratives. These figures circulate as narratemes – but whose elaboration has no telos of unfolding the meaning of a singular individual’s life story; there is nothing auto here about these figures. All the analogies drawn and ordeals specified in the scenes of learning reiterate the liveable learning concerning tat-tvam variedly. These analogies are pedagogical ways of reiterating the upadesha (praxial counsel). There is nothing in the context that distinguishes the particular instance (say, the thief’s ordeal) that enabled Svethaketu to understand the learning concerning the real (sat). In other words, analogies, narrative accounts, do not become privileged means of attaining the end and thus draw attention to their meaning exclusively. For upadesha is not fundamentally contingent upon meaning, requiring understanding first for attaining a desired end as such. The efficacy of liveable learning is not dependent upon its thematic/ semantic interpretative content but on its iterable practice – its embodied experiential rendering. No wonder why we do not get to hear how Svethaketu led his praxial existence after grasping it. For such existence has no use for narrative representations of it. What gets emphasised again and again is the necessity of attunement of embodied existence – persistent preparation of the faculties of the body for the embodied to sense or learn to differentiate the real from existence. In other words the ‘means’ – the faculties of the body – themselves are the ‘material’ – the sources to be put to test first. What is the status, then, of rhetoric here? Rhetoric understood in the sense of metrical/acoustic figural composition, woven with anecdotal episodes, and analogies can be said to have 62

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neither a persuasive nor an epistemological status here. It can’t be said that one episodic analogy (the thief’s ordeal compared to the sensing of the learned) was more appealing than the other one (the banyan kernel containing sat or the tree permeated by sat) in the case of Svethaketu. Conversely, even if the cognitive value of these elements of composition can be postulated in propositions, it remains ineffectual. For the ends of such compositions is to prepare pathos-free mode of being, a being which is cocooned in the cognitive perceptual modes of mis-cognition. That is, a liveable learning that attunes or prepares one for a praxial mode of being primarily and persistently tests the very means of learning – and delimits these (verbal/visual means) as ineffective ways of learning. Rhetorical and cognitive schemas seem to remain in the shadow of pathos. This suspicion of cognitive-perceptual means may be one reason for the absence of the emergence of Platonic agonism (between poetry and philosophy) in Indian traditions. This could also be reason why these traditions seem to have no use for literary interpretative or translational-comparatological schemas and privileged philosophical disquisitions, let alone a philosophical nationality.

Locations of learning Liveable learning as tattva-jnaana is open to all and it circulated for millennia in open, unarchitectural locations. The practice of this learning can be undertaken in a forest, cave or on the sand-bank; such practice makes the learning habitual says the Nyaayasutra.43 Learning shines forth when reflective-imaginative faculty (chitta) is refined and focused. Such refinement and focusing can be achieved through a series of bodily practices such as nonviolent mode of living, celibacy, tempering of internal and external faculties, and cultivation of contemplative reflection. With such refinement of the means/technics one may proceed to pursue the ends of learning. Para-vidya is eminently teachable. Hence the privileged place of the guru. But such teacher must not only be well versed in actional knowledge but also in its relationship (of non-relationship) with tattva-jnana. Since it is praxial learning, the teacher must be one immersed in such a learning. Upanishads proclaim praxial modes of being (not so much ‘understanding’ or ‘interpretation’) as the imperatives of learning: Esha Aadeshah Esha upadeshah (Taittiriya, 1.11, p. 30) This is the rule this is the import (counsel) The ‘first’ teacher of this mnemopraxial learning is Prajapati/Brahma/ Hiranyagarbha – the reoriginating ‘primal’ formational entity that can disperse itself into the multitude of objectal entities in/as existence. He imparts it to Manu (a Prajapati) who in turn passes it onto genos (jana/praja). 63

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(Chandogya Upanishad, 8.15.1, p. 424). This is a secret knowledge – but it is open to everyone. This is what the cultural forms of India have imparted to the genos over millennia in immeasurable diverse ways. At three different places, the Bruhadaaranyaka provides lists of (about 192) teachers who generationally imparted the liveable learning.44 Given that the material locations of learning were for millennia un-architectural sites, no historical search has revealed the material forms of the abodes of teachers (guru or acharya kulas). No ashrama sites that the Ramayana and the Mahabharata describe can be unearthed archaeologically. Such architectural absence does not negate the possibility that such teaching shelters associated with singular teachers were spread across the forest, village, town, and (less in) city. Yet, there was never a centralised institution that could bring all these diversified clusters of mnemopraxial learners and their locations of learning. Clusters of learning proliferated for long without the institutional and their architectonic structures. As the Buddhists were the first ones to take lithic (inscriptional) and iconic turn in Indian culture, they (along with Jains) also appear to be the first ones to take to building educational institutions and accumulating repositories of learning material. Asoka and Satavahana kings are credited with donating caves to Buddhists (and Ajivakas).45 By the time of the Common Era Buddhism spread across the Silk Route and Central Asia regions up to China. Large-scale organisation of education began with Buddhists and Jains (Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, p. 131). One of the earliest (Buddhist) educational centres identified is Takshasila (now in Pakistan). But by Fa-Hsien’s time (5th century. CE) this institution was in decline. Yet Buddhism continued to build other such institutions in Bihar, Bengal, and Gujarat regions after 5th century. Even before Fa-Hsien’s visit to India, 25 Buddhist bhikkus were believed to have been in China translating Buddhist works into Chinese.46 All the Buddhist centres of learning were located in viharas –and they were extensively spread across the country and beyond until about 15th century. Nalanda stands out as the model for all the major centres of learning for over 1000 years between the two millennia of the Common Era. Founded by non-Buddhist kings in the 6th century Nalanda was sustained by revenue from 100 villages granted to the centre. Two hundred householders (grhastas) from the villages attended to the daily needs of the centre. With four level teachers and three level students, severe processes of admission (two or three out of ten would get admitted and out of which only 20 or 30 per cent would pass out) and rigour of training, Nalanda exhibits a well-placed academic structure. Hiuen-Tsang and I-tsing celebrated the glory of Nalanda and reported that it flourished with thousands of students and teachers in the 7th century. The entire administration of the institution was vested with the teaching community and no king could interfere with it. Each of its four gates was controlled by a dvaarapandita (savant at the door-threshold), and he administered admissions into the centre. 64

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The language of learning, reflection, and exchange was entirely in Sanskrit at Nalanda. Hiuen-Tsang and I-tsing had to learn Sanskrit at Nalanda (Hiuen-Tsang eventually wrote two treatise in Sanskrit and one of which he dedicated to his teacher Shilabhadra.) The subjects taught ranged from Buddhism of 18 schools, Yoga, Tantra, Vedas, and some darshanas (Samkhya and Nyaya), science of utterance, linguistics, medicine, sculpture, painting, logic, adhyatma, and the 64 arts (chatushashti kalas).47 Curiously, Nalanda seems to have avoided the sciences of the Quadrivium (astronomy-astrology, geometry, were absent in the curriculum).48 Perhaps, Buddhism’s turning away from the ritual science of yajna (kalpa) could be the cause of their absence. Dharmasastras too were avoided: ‘there was almost total disconnect between Buddhism and dharmasastras…,’ points out Scharfe (perhaps alluding to the alleged anti-casteism of Buddhism.) (Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, p. 158). The immediate aim of such education was to make the pupil into a vidyapurusa (man of learning) (Misra, Nalanda, p. 255). Students were admitted to the centre at the age of six and were taught literacy, writing, taking dictation, and copying (Misra, Nalanda, pp. 251– 252; Pintu Kumar, Buddhist Learning in South Asia, p. 138). At the age of eight Panini was taught and they could continue studying Panini until they were 20, says I-tsing (Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, p. 161). The prominence of literacy contributed to the formation of major multi-storied repository buildings called dharma-ganja (‘libraries’). Nalanda is reputed to have had three such libraries with Buddhist manuscripts (Mishra, Nalanda, pp. 253–256; Pintu Kumar, Buddhist Learning in South Asia, pp. 151–153). A king of Java, Sumatra, gave endowment for copying manuscripts (Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, p. 159; Misra, Nalanda, p. 253). Nalanda set a model for institutionally organised centres for learning from 6th century. It was an international institution with students from China, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan; teachers from Nalanda moved to these places including Indonesia, Burma (Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, p. 160; Misra, Nalanda, p. 307). Following Nalanda a cluster of such centres emerged in eastern India: Vikramasila at Bhagalpur, Odantapuri at Magadh (Bihar), and Jagaddala at Malda in eastern Bengal (now in Bangladesh). On the western side emerged Valabhi (as a Yogachara rival to Nalanda’s Mahayana orientation) at Kathiawar (Gujarat). Nalanda also served as a model for Tibetan Buddhist institutions and elsewhere (Misra, Nalanda, p. 261). Nalanda and all the related institutions of learning were destroyed in the 12th century (at Vikramasila, everyone in the centre was killed) by the invading Afghan-Turk, Bhaktiyar Khilji (a bustling town named after the Khilji is an hour away from Nalanda today).

Heuristics of ‘seeing’ It is difficult to get insights into the nature and ends of learning practised at Nalanda from historical accounts. Hiuen-Tsang and I-tsing would not be of 65

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much help either – for they were only focused on Buddhism and would have no clue to the deeper extended traditions of learning within which Nalanda (and other such institutions) flourished. Scharfe’s work is already shaped by the colonial stereotype about Buddhism as anti-Brahminical – where Buddhists appear as reformist Protestants: ‘The Buddhists shared with Christian monks the desire to save the world (and of “compassion”) against the general Hindu concern with his own personal salvation. Hence Buddhists formed universities with universal appeal…’ (Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, p. 132).49 If the chief gift that a teacher can give in preparing the student is to train him to extinguish craving and suffering in existence; and if the Buddha saw existence (samsaara) as entwined with dukha (sorrow), it is odd to talk about ‘saving the world’ in the context of Buddhist learning. If the only thing that the Buddha wanted to learn from his two Brahmin teachers was to ‘follow the brahma-study’ (incidentally, cited by Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, p. 131), the quintessential Upanishadic Brahma or paravidya – it is difficult to imagine the great teachers of Nalanda from Vasubandhu, Dinnaga to Santrakhsita and beyond would have abandoned this learning to ‘save the world’ (whatever that locution ‘world’ might mean). Further the alleged difference between the catachrestic term Hindu and Buddhists, which Scharfe draws on, itself is made by Durkheim in his account of the evolution of education in Europe. B.N. Misra’s work is scrupulous in its ferreting of textual and archaeological evidence but does not move beyond offering a celebratory sketch of Nalanda (for him Nalanda existed from 6th century BC onwards as a site where communication between Buddha and Mahavira was sustained. (Misra, Nalanda, pp. 182–183)). It tells us little about the relation or difference between the Vaidika and Buddhist ends of learning. However, the details his work gathers can be drawn to examine this problematic issue of the relationship between Vaidika and Buddhist take on liveable learning. Despite the prevalence of writing, teaching in Nalanda as in the case of Pagan Greek traditions, did not become textual. No teacher seems to have turned to textual-philological-interpretative exercises. The typical scene of teaching is sketched by Misra this way: First students assemble and take their places and the teacher then comes to take his seat. He would first recite a sutra – then he would talk about any work and the talk is followed by discussion. Learning involved reception of upadesha (praxial counsel), listening to lectures, memorising them, and grasping the imports of Abhidhamma and other upadesha compositions. Teaching involved in handing down the traditions of different schools (of Nagarjuna, Dinnaga, Dharmapala, Gunaratna, Silabhadra) (Misra, Nalanda, p. 255). Nalanda does not appear to have been broken away from the millennial mnemocultural modes of learning; the essential tenets of a Buddhist learning, writes Pintu Kumar, were based on ‘the knowledge-generation activities like memorization, recitation and practices’ (Pintu Kumar, Buddhist 66

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Learning in South Asia, pp. 13–14). The Pitakas (Dighanikaya) were mainly recited at Nalanda. Once Panini is introduced at the age of eight the learner gets the entire Panini by-heart within 8 months (Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, p. 79). Even as manuscripts were copied and the art of copying was pursued and repositories were maintained, ‘At Nalanda itself, committing to memory a number of collections on the sutras and sastras was the usual practice’ (Misra, Nalanda, p. 256). Reiterating a familiar practice in China, I-tsing observes that ‘All these [compositions of praxial counsel] books should be learnt by-heart.’ (quoted in Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, p. 161). Buddhism and Nalanda received and responded to the traditions of liveable learning, and they cannot be said to have radically departed from them. The ends of learning in these traditions were fundamentally to explore the ways of terminating sorrow in existence through embodied modes of being and learning of Dharma. The Buddha himself was essentially a mnemocultural being – putting his own body complex to test – dedicated to impart mnemopraxial learning peripatetically without inscriptions and institutions. As in the case of Socrates/Plato who were nurtured in the Homeric mnemocultural milieu and turned towards philosophia, Buddhism (at least in the context of Nalanda) in its responsive reception to Vedic mnemocultures seems to have been involved in generating heuristics for systematic knowledge pertaining to the real (even when it is conceived as ‘empty’) and its (non)relationship to existence. This took the form of a rigorous inquiry into the means of knowing and ascertaining what is to be known. But Buddhism cannot be said to have begun such heuristic inquiry in a vacuum. Ways of ‘seeing’ the real and configuring its inherence in and its (non) proximity with existence were the sole concern of a range of internally differentiated inquiries called Darshana in Indian reflective traditions. Literally Darshana can mean meditative (non-perceptual) seeing. The Darshanic compositions – themselves formed in a chain of responsive reception to Vedic inheritance (Vedas, Upanishads) – do not, however exhibit a demonstrative rationality to postulate their seeing. They all share the common problem of inquiry: how to attain happiness in existence, how to differentiate existence from real and refining the means to access the real. Their modes of inquiry remained unequivocally mnemopraxial: the absolute effect and means of existence, the body complex, was the site and target of their inquiry. The mnemopraxial Darshanic inquiries seem to resonate with the other Pagan heuristic theoria of antiquity. They both reinforce the necessity of transforming the modes of being one finds oneself in. Buddhism marks an intensified pursuit of Darshanic inquiry. For this Buddhism draws on the resources, in particular (at Nalanda), of Nyaya Darshana (and at other places Yoga Darshana), even as they contested and departed from them. Nalanda (and also Vikramasila) excelled in advancing Nyaya inquiry and departing from it as a supreme form of inquiry (into the shared problematic.) Dinnaga whose work developed at Nalanda was the 67

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master of Buddhist logic. Dinnaga’s entire work was devoted to establishing a valid theory of knowledge based on proper sources of knowledge. Others like Dharmakirti who followed Dinnaga continued and developed this tradition with his work such as Nyaya Bindu, Pramana Vartika, Pramanavinischaya, Vada Nyaya, and Hetu Bindunamaprakarana.

Rational polemos Interestingly, among all the Darshanas it appears that it is Nyaya and Mimamsa which lent themselves to extended appropriations. These Darshanas formed the ‘intellectual heritage’ of the Buddhist epistemologists. Part of the reason could be that they open up systematic modes of inquiry, proof, refutation, argumentation, and adaptive exegesis – without, of course themselves forming into a system. In other words, Nyaya’s devotion to means of inquiry and procedures of demonstration/proof seem to have endeared them to opposing matas. Nalanda and its celebrated pundits (Dinnaga, Dharmakirti, Chandgragomin, Dharmapala, and others like Jnanasrimitra and Ratnakirti from Vikramasila) seem to have emphasised, enhanced, and questioned Nyaya’s logical disputational potential – and institutionalised them. Dinnaga is claimed to have founded the Hetu/Tarka vidya at Nalanda and this was mainly a method to unravel the differences between (intra) Buddhist and non-Buddhist traditions of inquiry; tarka was an integral part of curriculum at Nalanda (Pintu Kumar, Buddhist Learning in South Asia, pp. 137–138). It is with Dinnaga that an ‘epistemological turn’ in Sanskrit Philosophy is said to have taken place. Yet, it may be pointed out that the traditions of inquiry (Buddhist or Vaidka) did not share a ‘single philosophical system…[or] position but a set of building blocks and common textual sources.’50 Neither, did they evince a clear-cut telos of their exercises (of critiquing other traditions) nor did they thematise the value of such inquiry.51 For, Buddhism certainly discounted apodictic rationality as the path of experiencing dharma: ‘Dignaga (and the tradition before him) also points out, the real nature of dharma is not itself accessible to such [“philosophical”] analysis (atarkagocara).’ (Patil, Against a Hindu God, pp. 318–319 and 320–363). Yet the critical impulse to refine modes and means of inquiry endured (with internal differentiation) and brought forth Navya-Nyaya from Mithila first and Navadvipa later. But, it must be pointed out, that none of these centuries-long inquiring traditions consolidated or advanced themselves under one national language or genealogical or ‘racial’ or even disciplinary identity; terms like ‘Indian’ or ‘Sanskrit philosophy’ would be completely unintelligible in the context of these inquiries; these inquiries reinforced a teacher–student bonding devoted to performative inquiries into the question of the real/para/dharma. It appears that such an impulse seems to have extended even into the colonial/postcolonial periods as well; but here the impulse 68

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turned into a reactive response and contributed to championing a theory of rationality from the Indian past.52 Those enduring traditions of inquiry are now mustered to sustain turf battles in the universities. If the above sketch for an inquiry is even partially plausible, it provokes the following questions: (i) Why is it among all the Darshanas Nyaya and Mimamsa get this extended reception (if the reasons are apart from the ones pointed out above)? Is there something inherent in the Nyaya or Mimamsa sutras that provokes one to pursue this confrontationist path (as it unfolded for centuries from 6th to 16th)? (ii) If all the Darshanas – more appropriately if the entire Sanskrit vangmaya itself– are oriented towards overcoming the pancha kleshas [five afflictions: ignorance (avidya), delusion (asmita), affective binds (raga), animosity (dvesha), indulgence (abhinivesha)] and the arishadvargas [(the six types of internal enemies: desire (kaama), rage (krodha), miserliness (lobha), longing (moha), pride (mada), insolence (matsarya)] and, in a word, overcoming ignorance and suffering (avidya), does this tendency of Nyaya or Mimamsa to lend itself to logicistic-refutationist path prevent it from the necessity of overcoming raga-dvesha [affective-hostile pulls]? The confrontations of Buddhist and Vaidika logicians (children or detractors of Nyaya) bristle with animosities. Why does Nyaya (in particular) lend itself to such sharpshooters’ vocation? Given that Nyaya insists on contemplative seeing/learning as a habit of finding truth, can Nyaya’s teachings be reduced to some disputational valour? (iii) Given that such polemical confrontations were a part of Greek Sophistic tradition – was there any possibility that in the post-Alexandrian period Nyaya was impacted by Hellenistic animus? One can say this because Buddhists were the first ones to have met Alexander and the skeptical philosopher Pyrrho (who was in Alexander’s retinue) conversed with the Buddhists of Central Asia.53 And isn’t it the Buddhists who seem to push Nyaya towards the logicist-refutationist epistemology, perhaps distancing it from its more essential orientation of overcoming suffering/avidya? Modern scholarship is yet to reorient our attention from such partisanal disputations towards the shared problematic of these mnemopraxdial traditions (‘sensing’/accessing para or experiencing dharma). On the contrary, ill-thought partisanism appears to have been reinforced (in a completely different way from the earlier kinds of disputations) by the alien tradition of the principle of reason. Colonial and postcolonial inquiries seek to excavate a theory of rationality, epistemology, or cognition or consciousness from the Darshanic traditions (especially from Nyaya/Navyanyaya and Yoga) in quest for some putative ‘early modernity’ which is said to mark a ‘break’ with ‘ancients.’54 Such probes were alien to the mnemopraxial traditions. 69

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Although traditional centres of learning continued to exist (in whatever form) until the first quarter of 20th century (at Mithila and Navadvipa), they were already displaced as sources of learning by the new institutions established by the British. At Calcutta, Benares, Lahore, and Maharashtra traditional learning was offered with ‘a Western bent and with a large number of Western professors and principals.’ (Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, p. 192).55 If ‘colonial consciousness’ (to use Balagangadhara’s phrase to refer to internalised Europe-enframed understanding of India)56 impelled university teachers in India to force Nyaya and Navya-Nyaya to speak for a rational heritage of India, Buddhism was appropriated to bring up an anti-Vedic, anti-Brahmincal (Lutheran) reformism in India. If the former attempted at recovering an allegedly ‘lost age of reason,’57 the latter spawned victimhood narratives about oppression. Colonial consciousness – an instantiation of what Europe or America say about Indian traditions – continues to occlude us from reconnecting ourselves to the much endured traditions of learning which circulated in India over millennia. It would also foreclose the possibility of extending the heuristic inquiries into the question of existence and real that were sustained with vigour and vitality through our own responsive receptions of/to them. Our higher centres of learning – the centrally organised universities – are nowhere near sensing the problem. They carried the malaise from their inception – to stigmatise and disregard the praxial learning of the Indian traditions.

Metonymic dispersals No other alien invasion in the Common Era has ruptured and displaced traditions of learning of India as decisively as the one Europe has irrupted. Whereas during the period of Islamic invasions centres of learning have emerged, continued to sustain even after their displacement. It would be important to inquire (beyond spurious victimhood syndrome) why Buddhist centres of learning did not reemerge and sustain themselves in India after the 15th century. Interestingly, without such large-scale institutionalisation, the centres of (broadly referred) Vaidika and other traditions spread across and sustained over long periods in this country. Located in forest settings, guru-kulas, illams, ghatikas, mathas, salas, and tols these totally decentralised but palpably networked centres of learning invigorated (even if discontinuously) mnemopraxial learning for centuries. From Pallavas to Vijayanagara kings, from Zamorins to Sultanate kings, and from Kakatiyas to Nayakas a whole range of royal patronage contributed to the conditions of this learning to move on. Locations which look like dusty dots on the map today – such as Ennayiram, Thribhuanai, Kandalur, Sangamagrama, Kanchipuram, Gadag, Ballari, Shimoga, Haasan, Munganda, Gadvala, Kolachala, and countless other such places – sheltered such energetic nodes of learning. 70

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Ranging from different schools and branches of the Vedas, ritual sciences (grhya, kalpa), language sciences, Mimamsa, Nyaya, Vedangas (especially ganita-Jyothisha), Vedanta and other Darshanas, smritis, and kavya composed the subjects of learning in these centres. But all these disciplines of thinking were rendered performatively. The sciences of utterance (siksha) were essentially for learning how to recite/perform the Vedas; Vyakarana was to comprehend the appropriate compositional and generative dynamic of Vedic (Sanskrit) utterances; kalpa was to impart the science of rituals to render them with precision contextually; alamkara was to learn the acoustic figural potential of received language to generate unprecedented poetic compositions and discriminate defective uses of language. All such forms of learning are substantive and eminently impartable, and they are ultimately oriented towards refining modes of being. Consequently, the epistemic is not sublimated in an exclusively theoretical – normativeuniversal vocation. Manusmriti, for instance, which extensively annotates differentiated practices does not culminate into a jurisprudential discourse. It has no place for any normative authority either in the form of a god or a of lawgiver. Nor does Jyothisha establish mathematics as the mother of all knowledge. Tamil Country, Karnataka, Kerala, and Telugu regions remained hospitable to such centres of learning – whether Buddhist, Jain, or Vaidika. Interestingly, among the Vaidika centres of learning, unlike in the Buddhist ones discussed earlier, there is no explicit emphasis on literacy. Patha, for example, meant recitation of the Veda. Although ghatika refers to the potter’s jar in which Vedic utterances inscribed on bits of palm-leaves are placed – the purpose here does not represent a manuscript repository. The bits of utterance were used to test the student depending on the palm-leaf lot that he picks up from the ghata. Surely, some of the Vaidika learning centres attached to temples had ‘libraries’ – manuscript repositories. Thus we hear about Nagai in Gulbarga in the 11th century and in the Chidambaram Nataraja temple in the 12th century endowed with such repositories.58 But in all such centres ‘texts are usually learned by-heart by reciting them until they are fully mastered.’59 Learning was not contingent upon textualisation in such centres. On the contrary, putting the body complex to work was the imperative in this tradition of learning. Perhaps the most crucial factor that sustained their longevity and endurance even in adversity is their mnemoculturality. Mnemopraxial learning is not dependent upon surrogate bodies (scriptoria, library, museum, database, etc.); it circulates through the lively archives, ‘archives’ of learning embodied and enacted in contemplative and performative modes of being. Such learning does not come to an end with the destruction of surrogate bodies. Thus even though from the beginning of the second millennium centres of learning severely suffered but learning did not suffer annihilation. As the centres were invaded and devastated, the teaching families migrated 71

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to other places and ignited learning processes there. Thus we see such migrations from the Punjab to Kashmir and Kashi in the 11th century; from Nalanda and Vikramasila to Nepal and Tibet in the 13th century; from the Deccan to Kashi in the 16th century; and from Navadvipa to Puri in Orissa in the 16th century. Karnataka, Tamil Country, and Kerala did not record such devastations and migrations. What is remarkable – especially in the Vaidika learning tradition – is that these traditions of learning were not obliterated. One major factor for their survival and sustenance was that these centres were neither centralised with accumulations of institutional structures nor endowed with indispensable repositories of externalised-recorded tomes of knowledge. They were largely un-archival. As embodiments of lively archives the displaced teachers and students carried their millennially nurtured learning in the fibres and molecules of their body and disseminated it. Literacy, contrary to Plato’s fears,60 had not succeeded in erasing these mnemocultural learning processes in India. As discussed earlier, despite the lithic turn Buddhism had taken, Nalanda was not devoid of lively archives alongside manuscript repositories. Textless teaching sessions imparted learning to students. Without centralised instructional command-control systems, mnemocultural learning was disseminated in these traditions. It spread across diversified but interconnected networks of nodes in proliferated clusters. Thus even as their famed Buddhist centres were devastated, Mithila and later Navadvipa on one side and Varanasi on the other were vibrant with vigorous response to what they received from the Darshanic tradition and Buddhist receptions of it. Precisely such networked clusters disseminated this learning in Sanskrit across and beyond the Kham cultural constellation (into China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam) and Indonesian and Malaysian cultural formations in earlier centuries.

Mnemocultures of theoria Although they both pursue praxial paths of inquiry what differentiates the Indian mnemopraxial learning from Plato’s or Aristotle’s theoria is the persistence of mnemocultural modes of recitation, song, and performance in inquiring into the ends of learning in the Indian context. Plato treated the Homeric modes as impediments to gaining happiness by means of theoria – contemplative reflection. Even when they turned to heuristic inquiries, the Indian traditions have not shown any kind of antagonism towards the performative modes of purana, nataka, and kavya (Dharmakirti was, apart from being a logician, a practicing poet as well). Liveable learning can be generated, practised, and transmitted through immersive performative modes. In fact one of the strongest and most vibrant surviving manifestations of liveable learning can be seen in the song-performative traditions. Performative song genres like the Saman, stotra, stuti, prasasti, vaakh, geet, bol, bar-geet, kirtan, bhajan, vacana, tevaram, padam, 72

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paddana, padatattva, pata, abhang, and countless others permeate lively currents across the entire Indian mnemoscape. As discussed earlier, the ultimate learning is the learning of para-vidya (or dharma in the case of Buddhists). But this learning can be achieved only when one discerns what occludes such learning. The primacy or the only condition of this learning is that it has to be acquired/received solely in the context of biocultural existence. Now, one cannot assume that this mode of learning emphasises methodological individualism. Although this learning is open to everyone, everybody as a singular entity –it must be pointed out that forms of learning are differentiated in accordance with the formations of being. In the Indian context the formations of being are none other than internally differentiated clusters of biocultural entities called jatis. Thus even when overcoming of ignorance is common task of all beings, forms of liveable learning that impart the common task remain as divergent as the biocultural formations. Indeed the biocultural formations and the cultural forms of liveable learning are mutually co-constitutive modes of beings in the loka. One receives the learning as a member of a distinct cultural formation (clan, jati, varna, and jan-jati.) Consequently, the modes of receiving inescapably remain biocultural. The biocultural formations which are dynamic clusters without necessarily forming into consolidated unities with some identitarian essence – have enriched and disseminated the liveable learning across millennia. The sonic compositions of Tirumaymoli and Tevaram continue to reverberate in the temples of Tamil Country over a millennium (performed by specific biocultural formations). It is important to note that these mnemocultural currents moved along with (with and without filiation to) the other mnemocultural heuristics emerging from the Darshanic traditions. The Tamil Country song-cultural forms, like the Marathi Warkari creations and the Vchanakaras of Karnataka, resoundingly affirmed the possibility of grappling with the central question of the relation between existence and the real and accented sonic-perfomative modes for articulating ends of learning in existence. As is well known the great acharyas (Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva) braided the currents of heuristic inquiry with lasting acoustic measures. They reinvigorated the puranic-itihasic heritage and wove extended performative-recitational genres (let us recall Sankara’s Nirvana Satka or Dakshinamurhy stotra.) Jnaneswar forged new idioms and tunes and released haunting abhanga compositions. Only a few (academics these days) know the fame and glory of Gangesha (Mithila) or Raghunatha Siromani (Navadvipa) – but it is difficult to erase the memory of Vidyapati who emerged in Mithila between the times of the above-mentioned Nyaya-Navya-Nayaikas. The magnetic pull of his performative compositions attracted Sankaradev from Assam (Kamrup), Chaitanya from Bengal, and Ramanatha from Odisha over centuries. His idiom (evolved into Braj) unleashed a whole literary movement. Similarly it was not so much the Buddhist Valabhi that earned a cherished niche in Gandhi’s mnemopraxial existence but the glorious compositions of Narsimehta.61 73

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Annamaya to Tyagaraja, Lal Deg to Akka Mahadevi, Allama to Nayanmars and Abhinavagupta, Nanak to Narsimehta, Kanakadasa to Kabir, Purandara Dasa to Ramadasa, Meera to Lallan, and Chokha to Tuka the mnemocultural learning dispersed and communicated across clusters of networks. They had no use for literacy and its surrogate bodies. They carved their bodies into immersive acoustic media and groomed their tongue and throat to release haunting melodies. They live on by means of the strings and fibres of our embodied existence and they have nurtured and enriched the enduring alithic musical traditions of India immensely. In contrast to these melopoeiac traditions, the fate of Homeric mnemocultures was sealed by the Platonic heuristics on the one hand and more decisively by inscriptional theological cultures of Europe, on the other. As we know Homer survives today (if he does) embalmed in the inscriptional enterprises of theorising hermeneuts and philologists (let’s point to the famed work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord).62 If the Darshanic mnemopraxis turned towards (without, however, discarding or denying the other current) heuristic inquiries into the ends of learning and modes of being, how do the melopoeiac mnemocultures articulate these ends? Here by taking chances and the concomitant risk it is possible to suggest that their performative episteme relentlessly grappled with certain thematics. Deferring further elaboration what can be specified here are mere pointers as follows for further inquiry: (i) filiation between bioculturality (jati) and cultural forms in the recursive circuitry of existence; (ii) formations of ephemeral (with remainders) or finite embodied existence in the loka; (iii) heterogeneity of the body complex, the non-relational intimacy of apara-shareera and para; and (iv) cognitive-affective status of the visual/verbal signifier (nama/rupa). The entire literary-reflective-performative heritage of India can be said to be a persistent engagement with these thematics. This engagement brought forth immeasurable range of mnemocultural forms of the hetero-genos. Without these thematics one may not be able to configure the singularity of Indian experience. If such praxial ethos forms the genus of Indian cultural experience, European cultural invasion precisely targeted them and disrupted their lively currents.

Occluding present If culture is what we do and what we or others say about what we do, in the last 200 years what Europeans have said about the mnemopraxial modes of being and forms of articulation have become dominant in (post)colonial discourses and institutions: discursive thinking has displaced embodied reflection. These discourses have stigmatised the bioculturality of our modes of being and whipped up unexamined guilt among the educated. No writer or thinker in the Indian context today has been able to engage with these thematics of Indian experience beyond the symptomatics of colonial discourses. Irony, sarcasm, political correctness, and rage have taken the place of patient engagement with the lively mnemocultural formations of the millennial inheritances. They harbour genus-erasing or genocidal impulses. 74

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The Indian academy today is nowhere near to taking up the challenge or reconnecting to the clusters of cultural formations and their enduring cultural forms. Neither the discourse of philosophy nor that of literary studies has taken the risk to explore the ways of reconnecting to the most fundamental mnemopraxial inquiry brought forth by the Indian cultural formations: how to live the non-relational relationship between existence and real, apara-shaeera and para in loka? The crisis in higher education (in India) is neither due to economic nor political factors but mainly the result of crisis in thinking. If education is reception and response to generationally imparted learning, crisis sets in when there is a rupture in such generationally evolved responsive receptions. The rupture manifests in the form of radically altering conceptions of knowledge and learning and the modes of their articulation. In a word, this is a rupture between epistemic and performative modes. In the Indian traditions of learning epistemic-cognitive forms were never exclusively privileged over their performative rendering. The ultimate efficacy of the epistemic was measured only in the performative modes. The rupture wrenches apart the epistemic from the performative and privileges the epistemic. Thinking about takes over and displaces thinking in/as formations of modes of being. Such a hierarchic division has a long history in European culture and it is derivative of a theological heritage. Although Plato and Socrates are seen as the classical philosophical models, one can see Plato/Socrates’ difficulty/reluctance in configuring virtue as knowledge dissociated from a mode of being.63 As discussed in this chapter the Pagan heritage gets appropriated into the Christian past. Rupture erupts when such a theo-epistemic heritage is imposed on cultural traditions that do not share such a background. The deeper consequences of the rupture have barely received any attention in discussions about higher education. Conversely, the cognitive value of mnemopraxial modes of learning which have no determined conceptual categories have barely received attention in our universities. In such a context, the cognitive question – what is the value of overcoming ignorance (avidya/nescience) or the five afflictions or six enemies of existence can have no measurable discursive response. The effects of such overcoming will be incalculable. They can be effective in the very mode of being in the loka with others. Yet the nature of these afflictions and enemies and their calamitous effects can be economically (sutra form), elaborately (kavya, itihasa, purana, and natya forms) and copiously rendered. But the overcoming of them is deeply filiated to modes of being. Most crucially it must be pointed out here that such praxial overcoming has no telos of establishing an effective politics (or state). Here vidya has little to do with politeia. For the vidya (means overcoming) is open to everybody – not just to the conventionally identified rulers. The telos of such a learning is neither political-ethical nor aesthetictheoretical. Such a liveable learning affirms existence free of pathos, modes of being irreducible to sorrow/dukha. 75

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Now, it is certainly possible to discourse upon the modes of being on the one hand and thematise the context of their learning on the other; one can turn them into objects of discourse and talk about them. This is precisely what the institutions of higher education impel the heirs of ruptured inheritances to do. Our researches about liveable learning and their performative modes of rendering take the forms of information-retrieval, historical-philological, and comparative-theoretical accounts. The performative-epistemic forms and formations here end up being objects of representation and they may barely touch the investigator let alone transforming him/her. Whereas the efficacy of liveable learning is in transforming or changing the inquiring learner from a sorrow-filled, pathos-ridden mode of being into a seeker of happiness in existence.

Inquiring lives In contrast to such dominant modes of discursive thinking, precisely in a tumultuous period of extirpative cultural disruption that we see extraordinary responses emerging from figures like Gandhi, Narayana Guru, Ramana, and such others. These figures, drawing on the generationally imparted modes of liveable learning forged their responses as practitioners of reflection and inquiry. Their entire life was foregrounded as an ordeal of tests; they offered their bodies as grounds of inquiry and testing places. Gandhi’s silences, fasts, walks, bhajans, contextual responses, and numerous other ordeals of the body; Narayna Guru’s experiments (with deities, jatis, and the loka), wanderings, disappearances, plunges into the reflective poetic heritages, daring compositions in different languages, reinvigorating millennial recitational modes; Ramana’s silences and smiles, drifting, and searchings, conversations and conviviality, profundity, and simplicity: all these excruciating and enlivening modes of being as inquiry into the being in existence embody and enact a radically different mode of articulating living as reflective inquiry. Even when this mode involves thinking about thinking, the efficacy of the latter is tested only in praxial reflections – and not in discursive theorisations that set apart modes of being from abstract thinking. It is from these praxial reflexive modes that Gandhi experimented with figuring out an unprecedented polity and education in the most disruptive epoch. Guru reaffirmed the efficacy of the mnemopraxial modes precisely in times of calamitous upheavals. The most deeply shared impulse among these three (and such others), despite their different ways of responding to the catastrophic times, is the uncompromising articulation of modes of being and reflective inquiry. If one is convinced of the prevalence of such an impulse of praxial learning (for the purpose of further inquiries), and if one tolerates the suggestion that such an impulse is a millennially nurtured live current in Indian cultural formations – it has the possibility of opening up inquiries into different domains. Such inquiries (into the thematics specified above) drawing on 76

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the hypothesis of Indian cultural difference and Indian experience would go a long way in reorienting sedimented institutions and their professionalised modes of knowledge production. Such inquiries can be pursued at individual, collaborative, and institutional levels in and from the Indian contexts – and beyond that they may provide the possibility of communicating with other displaced, disavowed, and discarded Pagan mnemocultures of the planet. There is urgency for the mnemocultural inquiries to move at least in two related trajectories: i) unravelling the powerful ways in which European conceptual formations enframe other cultural experiences and practices and (ii) struggle to receive intimations from the resources outside European heritage and learn to respond to them. The rest of this work takes the risk of moving on these two trajectories rather unevenly; the unevenness is unavoidable as we are yet to find ways of responding to resources from ‘other beginnings.’ European conceptual enframing of Indian cultural forms progressed in a decisive way from the 19th century. Two areas of longstanding cultural practices that were forced into European conceptualisation pertained to verbal and visual domains. These domains were conceptually designated as ‘Literature’ and ‘Art,’ respectively, and they were institutionalised. Teaching, research, and even practise in these domains is deeply impacted by the conceptual framing. But there is barely any inquiry into the conceptual framing and its background in working in these domains in the last 100 years. The next chapter focuses specifically on the visual domain and examines the ways in which the unexamined concept of ‘art’ continues to determine the work in the domain.

Notes 1 Here among others I am drawing on Alan Badiou’s more recent retelling of this sedimented narrative about the ‘event.’ Badiou identifies the other mode of thinking with poetry and claims that Plato discarded the latter in advancing discursive thinking. For Plato the poem ‘ruins discursivity,’ points out Badiou. Alain Badiou, The Age of the Poets: And Other Wrings on Twentieth-Century Poetry and Prose, Bruno Bosteels (ed., trans), London: Verso, 2014, p. 31. As is well known this is a replay of the old agonism between muthos and logos. It must be pointed out here that Badiou’s effort is to make philosophy overcome the discord between the poetic and the mathematic (mythic and mathemic/ dianoiac) thinking, after Heidegger. This can be achieved, he contends, by ‘pairing’ (what were claimed to be opposed and hierarchised): the sensible and the intelligible, muthos and logos, good, and beauty, (Badiou, The Age of the Poets, pp. 50–54). As I try to show in this book, without directly focusing on Badiou, this is a deeply entrenched plot that European intellectual history has institutionalised. 2 Derrida, ‘The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils,’ in Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy vol. 2, Jan Plug and others (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, fn. 9, p. 293. 3 Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011, pp. 5–18. In the medieval universities, especially in Paris, E.R. Curtius

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points out, ‘sacerdotium had taken the possession of the studium.’ See E.R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, Willard R. Trask (trans), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953, p. 55. 4 Derrida, ‘Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of “Religion” at the Limits of Reason Alone,’ in Acts of Religion, Samuel Weber (trans), Gil Anidjar (ed), New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 63–64; S.N. Balagangadhara, Pratyabhigyaana: The Indian Renaissance, Ghent: Ghent University, 2014. This document develops a series of projects inquiring into the theological basis of concepts of politics, ethics, history, law, human rights, and religion. 5 Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Maurice de Montremy, My Quest for the Middle Ages, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005, p. 53. 6 Heidegger, What is a Thing? W.B. Barton, Jr. and Vera Deutsch (trans), Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1967, pp. 109–111. 7 Heidegger quoted in Derrida, Eyes of the University, fn. 11, p. 293. The passage appears in Heidegger’s book titled The Principle of Reason, Reginald Lilly (trans), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991, p. 24. 8 Derrida, ‘The University without Condition,’ Peggy Kamuf (trans), in Without Alibi, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002, p. 209. 9 It must be noted here that the overturning of muthos by logos in antiquity, as discussed earlier, for Heidegger was also at the same time the displacement of Asia (associated with myth) by Europe (filiated to logos). Cf., Heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, Joan Stambaugh (trans), Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1985, p. 146. 10 Balagangadhara’s magnum opus, “TheHeathen in His Blindness…”: Asia, The West and the Dynamic of Religion, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994, develops these arguments with rigour and analytic precision. 11 Theoretic rationality seems to emerge when the Pagan theoria is muted into theory in Christianity. Theoretical rationality is a unique feature of European culture, claims Charles Taylor. Such a claim is ‘as dangerous as it is powerful,’ warns Gayatri Spivak. Cf. Spivak, ‘Speaking for the Humanities,’ Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities 1, 2009, 1, http://occasion.stanford. edu/node/19 (accessed on 19 July 2014). 12 S.N. Balagangadhara, “On Topos,” unpublished paper written in 2000. 13 Incidentally, Frits Staal contends that the original home of the humanities is India; for, Staal observes, it is in India that the first sciences of language (vyakarana) and ritual (kalpa) – which configure human activities – were developed. See Staal, Rules without Meaning: Ritual, Mantras and the Human Sciences, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1996, pp. 350–71. Staal demolishes the ventures to impose the concept of religion on Indian traditions in a compelling chapter, ‘Religions,’ pp. 397–439. Balagangadhara builds his major work drawing on but going beyond Staal’s contribution. Despite Staal’s distinctive contribution it is difficult to accept that these sciences worked with any conception of the human. The concept of the human is deeply filiated to the concept of God, and the Indian sciences have little to do with the concept of god. 14 In an unravelling of the theological heritage that resonates and differs from Balagangadhara’s, Derrida too points out how Christian logic could a priori appropriate every other religion – Buddhism, Judaism, and so on. See Derrida, ‘Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, the German,’ Moshe Ron (trans), in Gil Anidjar (ed), Acts of Religion, New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 157. 15 Pierre Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy? Michael Chase (trans), Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Harvard University Press, 2004, pp. 278–79. 16 On the annexation of Pagan thought by early Judaic and Christian figures and the foundations of the liberal arts in these Pagan sources. Cf., E.R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, pp. 39–42.

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17 For an illuminating critique of the deeply interested misreading of the Pagan (Cicero’s) notion of religio as traditio by Lactantius, see Balagangadhara, ‘The Heathen in His Blindness…’ pp. 240–47. Curiously, for a continued interested reading of the debate in recent times, see, Derrida, ‘Faith and Knowledge,’ in Acts of Religion, pp. 72–75. 18 Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities. 19 Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (Archaic Greece, The Mind of Athens), vol. 1, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946, p. 4 and Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (In Search of the Divine Centre), vol. II, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1947, p. 9. 20 Marcel Detienne, The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece, Janet Lloyd (trans), New York: Zone Books, 2009. 21 Gregory Nagy, Homeric Questions, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996, pp.  5–8. 22 Plato, Protagoras, W.K. Guthrie (trans), London: Penguin, 1956, p. 47. The quoted phrase appears on p. 53. 23 Plato, Phaedrus, Benjamin Jowett (trans), Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 1952. 24 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, Ronald Speirs (trans), Raymond Geuss, and Ronald Speirs (eds), p. 62. 25 Plato, Republic, Richard W. Sterling and William C. Scott (trans), 545b–576b, Books VIII and IX, pp. 235–267. 26 Jacques Derrida argues that this medieval tripartite schema has shaped Kant’s privileging of philosophy (as emerging from the priestly craft) in the university that he envisaged Cf., ‘The University without Alibi,’ p. 229. 27 The actual terminology of Quadrivium (‘four roads’) and Trivium (‘three roads’) is attributed to Boethius (9th century). Cf., Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, pp. 36–37. 28 Plato, Republic, Benjamin Jowett, Benjamin Jowett (trans), Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952. 29 Giorgio Agamben, The Use of Bodies: Homo Sacer IV, 2, Adam Kotsko (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 255. 30 On the distortion of Greek thought by Latin, cf., Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Ralph Manheim (trans), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979, p. 13. 31 At the time of writing this chapter (in 2015) there were only stray parenthetical references to Asian (Indian) culture in Agamben’s work. Only in 2018, Agamben devotes a whole treatise on the theme of Karma cf. Karman, Adam Kotsko (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018 (we will attend to this work in the chapter on ‘Inquiring Ethos’). 32 Citation attributed to Vyasa, quoted in the commentary on Bruhadaaranyaka Upanishad, Suri Ramkakoti Sastry (trans), Hyderabad, 1989, 2.4, p. 72. It must be noted that animals are not deprived of access to such learning and happiness in Indian traditions. See Manusmriti, Saraswati Venkata Subbarama Sastry (trans), 1928; Madras: Balasaraswati Book Depot, n.d., 11.240, pp. 629–630. 33 Suta is the bard who renders the song (Vyasa here); Bharata is the source of the performing traditions – natya; and the sage is the ‘first poet,’ Valmiki. 34 Chandogya Upanishad, Rayasam Veerashwara Sarma (trans), Hyderabad: Seetarama Adisankara Trust, 2002, Ch. 7, p. 168. (The entire scene is sketched in pp. 163–267). 35 Amarakosamu, Saraswati Tiruvengadacharyulu (trans), 1859; Hyderabad: Jayalakshmi Publications, 2006, 1.4, p. 108. 36 Amarakoshamu, Part I, Chalamacharla Venkata Seshacharyulu (ed), Hyderabad: Jayalakshmi Publications, 1989, p. 201.

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37 Avital Ronell’s phrase. See her Test Drive, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. Although she passingly refers to Eastern traditions (especially yoga) as exemplifying the self-testing paradigm, her work is entirely focused on European–American literary–cultural life. Ronell, it may be noted, turned Derrida towards the end of his painful life to yogic meditation to seek relief from pain. 38 Cf. Ishaavaasya: tadejati tannaijati taddure tadvantike tadantarasya sarvasy tadu sarvsyaasya baahyataha (([Para] does not move but moves; it is remote and far away yet it is proximate; it inheres in every being and spreads across the entirety). Ishavaasyopanishattu, Kompella Dakshinamurthy (trans), Hyderabad: Seetarama Adisankara Trust, 2003, 5. pp. 63–65. 39 Mundakopanishad: Dve vidye vditavye…paraa chaivaaparaa cha (The learned say that there are two kinds of knowledge/learning: para and apara). See, Mundakopanishad, Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (trans), Hyderabad: Surabharati Publications, 1984, 1.4, pp. 137–138. 40 Taittiriya Upanishad, Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (trans), Hyderabad: Surabharati Publications, 1984, 3.1, pp. 71–73 (the entire pedagogical scene is in pp. 71–95). 41 Kathopanishad, Kompella Dakshinamurthy (trans), Hyderabad: Seetarama Adisankara Trust, 2001, 1. pp. 21–29, pp. 91–113. 42 Patanjali, Yogasutra, in Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, Madan Mohan Agrawal (trans), Delhi: Chaukhamba Sanskriti Pratishthan, 2001, 2.3, p. 231. 43 Gautama, Nyaayasutra, Samadhi Visheshaabhyasaat, (practice of meditation renders the knowledge of truth habitual), in Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, Madan Mohan Agrawal (trans), 2.38, p. 69,. 44 Bruhadaranyaka Upanishad, Brahmasri Suri Ramakotisastri (trans), Hyderabad, 1989, Part 2.6, p. 114; here Hiranyagarbha is said to have learnt directly from para; 4.6, 183–184; and 6.5. p. 63. 45 Hartmut Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, Leiden: Brill, 2002, p. 163. 46 B.N. Misra, Nalanda: Sources and Background, Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation, 1998, p. 307. 47 A.S. Altekar, Education in Ancient India, Benares: India Book Shop, 1957, pp.  328–331, also cf., Pintu Kumar, Buddhist Learning in South Asia: Education, Religion at the Ancient Sri Nalanda Mahavihara, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2018, pp. 162–164. 48 Some contend that astronomy was not only taught at Nalanda but an observatory was also available at Nalanda. Cf. Pintu Kumar, Buddhist Learning in South Asia, p. 175. 49 Pintu Kumar’s most recent historical work is confused in this regard. On the one hand, he argues that Nalanda institutionalised the pre- and non-Buddhist gurukula ‘unorganised teaching and learning’ into a more organised one and that there were deep continuities between them; and on the other, he contends that Buddhist monastic education brought the ‘revolutionary transformation in Brahmanical education, which emerged in the new formal way of monastic learning.’ This ‘new’ way was ‘supposed to fulfil the spiritual educational wishes of marginalised sections of the society.’ Nalanda, he adds, ‘democratized’ education. There is, however, nothing in the book to support the claim that he makes. Pintu Kumar, Buddhist Learning in South Asia, pp. 127–129. 50 Lawrence J. McCrea and Parimal G. Patil, Buddhist Philosophy of Language in India: Jnanasrimitra on Exclusion, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010, p. 4. 51 Parimal G. Patil, Against a Hindu God: Buddhist Philosophy of Religion in India, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, pp. 313–314 also p. 318.

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52 One thinks of the pioneering scholars in this area: Daniel Ingaals, Bimal Matilal, J.N. Mohanty, and more recently Jonardon Ganeri and others. 53 Christopher I. Beckwith, Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. 54 Ganeri, The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India 1450–1700, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 8–10. Incidentally, the much celebrated ‘epistemological turn’ of Buddhist thought appears to be an offshoot of what Heidegger has analysed as modern metaphysics. Modern metaphysics, Heidegger showed tirelessly, emerged from the work of Descartes and departed radically from the medieval and ancient metaphysics of Europe. It is in this epoch of modernity that one sees the privileging of theory of knowledge for obtaining truth (real/nature) –a form of theorisation which foregrounds the thinking subject as the source of knowledge. Cf., Heidegger, ‘The Age of the World Picture,’ William Lovitt (trans), in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977, pp. 115–154. 55 Scharfe, Education in Ancient India, p. 192. Also see Madhav Deshpande, ‘Pandit and Professor: Transformations in the 19th Century,’ Axel Michaels (ed), in The Pandit: Traditional Scholarship in India, Delhi: Manohar, 2001, pp.  119–153. 56 S.N. Balagangadhara and Marianne Keppens, ‘Reconceptualizing Postcolonial Project: Beyond the Strictures and Structures of Orientalism,’ Interventions 11, no. 1 (2009): pp. 50–68. 57 Ganeri, The Lost Age of Reason, p. 10. 58 Chitra Madhavan, Sanskrit Education and Literature in Ancient and Medieval Tamilnadu: An Epigraphical Study, New Delhi: DK Printwood, 2013, p. 127. 59 Saraju Rath and Jan Houben (eds), Aspects of Manuscript Culture in South India, Leiden: Brill, 2012, p. 4. 60 Plato, Phaedrus, Benjamin Jowett (trans), Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 1952, pp. 138–139. 61 Gandhi’s praxial insights are stunning. Commenting on the icon of the so-called Indian renaissance, Ram Mohan Roy, he says something penetrating: Roy, he said, sometimes appears as a giant; but sometimes he seems like a pigmy. For Gandhi, Roy becomes dwarfish compared to what Nanak and Kabir accomplished. (This comment is cited from memory and I cannot locate the reference. However, Gandhi did refer to Roy as a pigmy, not in comparison with Kabir or Nanak [which I saw in an article in a newspaper] but with regard to something else: ‘And when someone mentioned Ram Mohan Roy, I remember having said that he was a pigmy compared to the unknown authors, say, of the Upanishads.’ See Gandhi, ‘The Poet and the Charkha,’ Young India, 5 November 1925, available at http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/eduresources/article13.htm [accessed on 25 June 2018].) 62 Interestingly, it was precisely the Pagan mnemocultural Homeric impulse that the contemporary Albanian writer Ismail Kadare was trying to invoke at the time of the Kosovo massacres. He was appealing to a deeper European sense of genealogy (a retrospective continuist narrative now turning to the mnemocultural past that was never sustained). See Kadare, Elegy for Kosovo, Peter Constantine (trans), New York: Arcade Publishers, 2012. 63 Plato, Protagoras, W.K. Guthrie (trans), London: Penguin, 1956, pp. 99–100; Plato, Republic, 619a–621d, pp. 309–311.

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3 ALITHIC MODES AND LITHIC CONCEPTIONS Aporias of Indian cultural form(ation)s Verbal and visual There is not a single term in the Indian languages that is equivalent to the European term designated as art. The much-valued concept of art that continues to pre-occupy European intellectual history has no use in the Indian traditions over millennia. This seems astonishing and counter-intuitive. Surely Indian culture unfolded enduring cultural forms of dance, poetry, sculpture, architecture, music, and painting over centuries with vigour and vibrancy. True, these are the domains that a bevy of scholars (say of IGNCA and PHISPC)2 pre-occupied themselves with to build the edifice of Indian art (such as Kalamulashastra and Kalatattvakohsa of IGNCA and Aesthetic Theories and Art Forms of PHISPC). Some of these scholars have ferreted, not one but multiple words from the Sanskrit language to evidence and evince cognates of art in India. Some such terms are: chitra, rupa, kaaru, and shilpa. Scholars have busied themselves to forge an Indian aesthetic by excavating a ‘rasa theory’ or postulating a yoga-consciousness as the zenith of art experience in India. Spurning all these (‘oriental’) efforts others have rushed to assimilate themselves in the global art historical structures and embraced just every concept, category, monument, -ism, style, trend that the European pre-occupation with art has unleashed; they have moved stridently to demonstrate similarities between Indian and European art. Although seemingly divergent both these trends remain deeply determined by the European discourse on art. Such approaches have exhausted themselves. In the process there is barely any inquiry into the conspicuous absence of a unifying conceptual category called ‘art’ to bind and tether the various cultural forms of India mentioned above.3 What is the place of this concept and category called art in the cultural forms of the Indian reflective creative traditions? What is the relationship of these forms to other forms of creative reflection that do not necessarily take recourse to the modes and means that these specific cultural forms mentioned above emerge in? By inquiring into these internally differentiated but related cultural forms can one configure the very origination of form in general from the Indian traditions? This chapter makes a preliminary attempt at grappling with these questions.

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Culture can be configured as reflective modes of being and composition of varied forms of liveable learning which make a habitat. Liveable learning is a generationally imparted knowledge whose efficacy and ends orient one to live in the habitat as best as possible and accrue happiness. The relation between modes of being and forms of learning in India is not hierarchical but it reinforces practical-reflective, actional thought formations of being. The cultural forms that emerge and make such a habitat are predominantly performative; they are required to be received and responded to by means of the body. In the Indian context such cultural forms are broadly differentiated into two major domains. If one is called verbal performative learning (vidya) the other is visual actional learning (kala). The enumerative or digital (in the sense that which thinks in numbers) Indian imagination specifies 32 vidyas and 64 kalas. These classificatory sets, however, do not turn into rigorous categorical divisions. Consequently, the members in the lists of kalas and vidyas are not rigid and standardised. It is the classificatory differentiation into verbal and visual that seems more pertinent than either the actual number or forms themselves. The latter variation is contextually incorporated. Thus, no cultural form that is a part of shruti composition – due to its verbal performative salience – can be classified under kala. They are always designated as vidyas (trayi-vidya denotes the Vedas). It is only the cultural forms that emerge under what is called smriti domain that lend themselves to deeper classification into verbal and visual formations. Thus natya can be kala and vidya but kavya cannot be kala; sangeeta can be vidya but shilpa can be (ambivalently) kala (and vidya). As can be seen the classificatory imagination spurs observation and seduces one to enumerate and classify endlessly. As can be noticed, these verbal and visual divisions make use of the most originary communicational media in composing their formations. These are the immemorial media of speech and gesture. Although they are not exclusivised, each of the domains gives salience to a particular communicational medium (thus speech is vidya and gesture kala). If culture is here replenishable (and vulnerable) inheritance of memory, cultures that privilege these primal media in composing their cultural forms are called mnemocultures. India is one such longest-standing and enduring mnemocultural formation. The mnemocultural communicative media are alithic in the sense that they emerge and nurture themselves without taking recourse to or privileging inscription. In contrast, inscriptional media (from writing to digital technologies) are deeply dependent on lithic structures – hard surfaces which can take writing. If mnemocultural formations disseminate through embodied rhythms and accents, inscriptional cultures produce and accumulate surrogate bodies in the form of books, libraries, archives, databases, and museums. Mnemocultures seem to contend that the basis of visuality is neither the word nor inscription (as many art historians continue to hold forth) but gestural inflections (as Bharata enumerated on an extended scale). Mnemocultural formations can open up the possibility of thinking of the form in general beyond the restricted conceptual categories like art and aesthetics. 83

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Turns of the Pagan It is possible to recount the story of European intellectual history on the basis of the evolution of the concepts of art, theology, and philosophy. One can even economise this by indicating that the concept of art (like other concepts) is an offshoot of philosophical discourse. Similarly, it can be contended that the discourse of philosophy itself is shaped and contained by theology: ‘all that has theologian blood in its veins –our entire philosophy’ declared Nietzsche.4 Thus European intellectual history is rooted in metaphysical thinking; metaphysics here may take the form of ontological pursuit of originary foundations such as Idea or Being; or, it can take the theological track and posit the sovereign god as the source of everything. The theological track is so overpowering that it has advanced itself as the most robust and universal paradigm of thinking in general: theological thinking is the basis of conceptual thinking. One of the most fundamental ways in which the metaphysical operation of relating the originary source to entities that are in existence is through a structural division of the intelligible (noeton) and the sensible (aestheton). The first manifestation of this structure is often demonstrated through the work of Plato. Plato is said to relegate the entire domain of ‘art’ (which is not a Greek term) – composed of poetry, performance, music, painting, sculpture, etc., – to the (perceptual-sensuous) realm of aestheton. In this reckoning the relationship between the intelligible and sensible realms is neither direct and continuous nor transparent and identical. The sensible at the most can only be a copy or imitation of the intelligible. For Plato the intelligible provides the ideal forms which can offer models for the phenomenal materialisation of forms. In this transaction the ideal form in itself can never be materialised as such in the realm of the sensible. Consequently, art can only have derivative status which floats appearances as truths. Art is seen as deceptive since it only imitates appearances – the forms of nature that are in the realm of the perception. Even when such representation of appearances appears so real as to deceive even birds, art cannot be said to communicate the intelligible. Art objects are non-beings derived from Being; they are effigies of those who have withdrawn from life.5 In contradistinction to art, in Plato’s account of art, speech (logos, that is, freed from art) is accorded privileged access to the realm of the intelligible or the invisible. Speech with its lively breath goes beyond the cadaveric effigies of images and reaches out to or receives the intelligible. Philosophy as the system of logos can not only access the intelligible but has the capacity to explain the derivative entities of alogos – images and eidolon (Schmidt, Between Word and Image, pp. 18–19). Whether Plato anticipates Hegel or whether Hegel’s theorisation of art – as the thing of the past incapable any longer of serving the ‘highest need’ of the West – appears to be at work in this story of the Greek concept of art, itself requires a separate attention. Art gets to be seen as unsuitable to access and communicate truth: ‘This

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withdrawal of image from the realm of intelligibility is the first stage in the evolution of the philosophical conception of the image’ (Schmidt, Between Word and Image, p. 29). Whether the Greeks had evolved definitive accounts of truth or offered decisive and unequivocal conceptualisation of art is difficult to gather from their work. Whether ‘art’ was ever a ‘thesis,’ (a proposed topic for discussion and dialogue) in Plato’s academy or Aristotle’s Lyceum, is difficult to know. As discussed earlier, Plato does not rush to provide any final definitions or explanations about the most crucial notions such as the Good, Virtue, Truth, and Happiness in his dialogue with Glaucon in the Republic. Above all Plato’s dialogues can never be cleansed from the persisting and enduring intimations of muthos. Indeed, it is the pervasive domain of muthos in its performative play that seems to have sheltered and nurtured the whole range of cultural forms such as song, poetry, music, dance, ritual, painting, and architecture in Greek antiquity. The bard was said to be the master of truth, and he had no use for logical propositional demonstrations of the intimations of truth that he communicated. And logos (speech) and muthos were intimately braided in the performative locus. Surely, Homer and the tragedians cannot be said to have been under the spell of metaphysics. Their compositions can space and displace metaphysics (if any). Indeed, such dual pulls are not completely absent in Plato’s work too. In Plato’s dialogues the only one who has an extraordinary awareness and anamnestic access to Homer, the poets, and the tragedians is none other than Socrates himself. Similarly, both Plato and Aristotle draw on the poets and tragedians to refer to images. The non-inscriptional performative basis of cultural forms is vital enough to draw attention of these philosophers. In this regard one could say that the Platonic scene does not indicate a break or radical shift within the performative traditions of the Pagan Greece. The scene can be said to offer a varied rendering of the praxial ethos of theoria that enlivened Greek cultural formations in antiquity. The metaphysical schema appears to be more a determinative projection from a very different world view than a fully blossomed mechanism from the Pagan Greek ethos. It is difficult to know what paths the praxial tradition would have taken beyond Plato and Aristotle (who gets privileged in European heritage); for the Greek culture disintegrated (though one can see the praxial paths of reflection still at work among the Stoics and Cynics and others,) and we have no fully developed conceptual or historical account of what is called art from the Hellenic period.

In/visible economy For such a colossal theoretical and historical account of art, one has to turn to Hegel. Hegel’s thesis on art, observes Heidegger, is ‘the most comprehensive reflection on the nature of art that the West possesses – comprehensive because it stems from metaphysics….’6 Between the philosophers of late 85

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antiquity and Hegel there is a gap of more than two millennia. The metaphysical schema gets transformed and it becomes a more formidable mechanism of thought during this period. Christianity reigns among monotheisms and invades the thought of the world. Transformations in the history of metaphysics (that of the conception of what exists as a whole and the division between the intelligible and the sensible), wrote Heidegger, ‘are mirrored in the transformations in the history of art’ in the West: the essence of art gets determined by the essence of truth as configured by metaphysics (Heidegger cited in Schmidt, Between Word and Image, p. 75). In a word, the essence of truth unfolds itself in the ‘essential history of western art’ (Heidegger cited in Schmidt, Between Word and Image, fn. 22, p. 159). Metaphysics constitutes truth as a correspondence between the intelligible model or prototype and its copy. Such a formation does not quite elucidate how the invisible gets communicated in the visible copy. But when it gets absorbed into theological doctrines it provides the most tenacious link between the invisible god and the visible humans. It evolves as an explanatory system that shows the relation between the divine and the human, between the sacred and profane. As can be seen, the ‘place’ of the intelligible/ invisible is now occupied by the all-powerful sovereign god whose design manifests as the world of the humans. For Christianity, comprehending the invisible god is not enough which even the Jews did. Is there a manner in which we can see this absolute and transcendent god, asked Augustine? Augustine’s question crystallises not only a philosophy of the image but prepares the ground for iconicity. Patristic thought in the first millennium – especially during the Byzantine iconocratic struggles between 6th and 8th centuries – was passionately absorbed in theologising and justifying the concept of image and icon. The philosophy of the image, writes Marie-Jose Mondzain, has developed at the heart of Christian thought ‘far from Athens.’7 Christian theology develops a theoretical and historical (historical as theoretical) explanatory system by which it appropriates and subordinates all existing accounts of the world (if there are any). The world in this account is the design of the willing, agentive, sovereign but invisible god. The world occupies the saeculum – the time that spans between the fall and the redemption. In other words, the world is the sinners’ abode. But god is only a voice and he could only be heard; god is the Word (logos) – and remains invisible. This is what Judaism would also claim. But Christianity would advance over Judaism through its account of the double move of god. The god of Christianity in a compassionate move unfolds a plan to salvage the sinners and to demonstrate this he incarnates himself. God descends into the human flesh. Incarnation is the ‘god’s art for convincing and saving of humankind’ (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p. 11). This ‘art’ is what gets described in a whole range of patristic texts as ‘economy’ (a term theologised by St. Paul). Economy is the management of the relation between the invisible and the visible. The word economy circulated under various theological guises such as: ‘incarnation, plan, design, administration, providence, responsibility, 86

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duties, compromise, tie, or guile.’ (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p. 13, italics original). These terms refer to the strategic operation of the doctrine to convince and convert people to faith. ‘Economy’ spells out the logic of the visible especially in the context of belief. Christianity, unlike Judaism, reinforces beliefs through the logic of the visible, through the economy of the image; the recourse to the invisible by means of the visible is the quintessential metaphysical approach to what exists as a whole. The image in question in theology is none other than the god dividing himself into the Son (Christ). The Son stands for the natural image; Christ as the natural image (not to be confused with natural object) is at once visible and invisible; for he is the divine art/economy. As god he is invisible, but as human he is visible, and thus he is consubstantial with the invisible god. The relation between god and his incarnation is that of an eternal similitude; the image partakes of god. The double image of Christ (as divine and human) is the index of god’s plan for salvation of mankind. Only by being human (without sin, of course) Christ can uphold the salvational plan of god. Salvation is the promise of reconciliation between the human and the natural image (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p. 93). Now what makes the image (i.e., word made flesh) visible is the icon. The image is the supreme model for the icon. Thus, the icon is in an economic relation with the image: ‘visibility belongs to the definition of the icon and not the image’ (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p. 82). The icon is the memory of the redemptive image – Christ. The icon is not made of matter but of flesh – flesh before sin and after redemption (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p. 94). The icon reiterates the doctrine of incarnation not through consubstantiation though but through mimesis. Icon ‘is mimetic of the incarnation itself’ (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p. 89). In this visual theology the icon cannot be confused with the idol (it is such a fear that spurred Byzantine iconoclasm). Idols are icons without the image – that is, without the support of the doctrine of incarnation. In the absence of such support icons become idols or diabols that celebrate carnal body (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p. 178). The Christian icon, in contrast, is born of the union between the flesh and voice (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p. 108). It is not a material object to be looked at but the source of redemptive gaze; icon casts the gaze upon humans: ‘wherever there is an icon, the gaze of God is present’ (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p. 162). Unlike the god of the Old Testament who merely casts a shadow or provides a glimpse of a contour, the incarnate god is a symbol of effulgence. In Christian imagination redemption is configured in the gradations of colour – from the darkest to the transparent light. The exuberant play with colour and light in painting after the Byzantine struggle demonstrates the power of the ‘theocracy of the visible [which] becomes key to all authority’ in the Christian world (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p.166, italics in the original). Hegel bathes and tans in this doctrinal radiation. 87

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But it must be pointed out that the Byzantine conflicts and their extraordinary outcome are not confined to some regional sphere of clerical activity. Although iconological conflict (both of iconophiles and those of Byzantine iconoclasts) at a crucial level was a power struggle between the ecclesiastical representatives (clerics) and the emperor for temporal supremacy, they have deeper implications. The emperor (Constantine) wished to confine the power of the clerics to the Church and the Church itself within the body of the empire. But for the iconophiles, wherever the icon moved – wherever it ‘invades’ – that terrain ‘becomes saved and therefore the property of ecclesiastic power.’ This power – precisely through the invasion of the icon – gets globalised (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p. 162). But Christian visual theology’s more fundamental and unprecedented achievement (though culmination of a protracted struggle in the patristic tradition) is the transfiguration of the metaphysical schema. The quintessential aspect of this transfiguration is to filiate the intelligible and the sensible as the ‘economy’ of the invisible father and the visible son; this is to relate the divine and the human, and, in a word, the spiritual and the temporal worlds. This is the universalising thrust of Christianity. ‘Catholic thought… envisages no more and no less than the conquest of the world beyond the barriers of time, borders, and languages.’ The ‘theoretical energy’ of this thought derives from the iconic doctrine: ‘we are today heirs and propagators of this iconic empire’ (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p. 151).

Invasive schema If the metaphysical schema of the intelligible and the sensible has shaped the agonistic division between art and philosophy in Plato, the ‘theoretical energy’ of Christian theology evolved a colossal overarching thesis about the nature and destiny of art in Hegel’s West. Although this thesis first gets formulated in the 17th century, it is in Hegel that the schema of the intelligible and the sensible takes the most systematic articulation in the form of content and form or meaning and expression.8 This formulation (as a secular insight) permeates the entirety of the discourse of art in modern times. Here the vocation of art is to reconcile or filiate content and form. The meaning that requires presentation is called the Absolute Idea in Hegel. Writing in the wake of the 18th century rationalists who divide logical reason from perceptual (aesthetic) reason (perception/intuition from understanding/conceptualisation), for Hegel the Idea can manifest either in conceptual (abstract) form or imaginative (concrete) form. Unfolding his conceptual plan Hegel sees both the concept and imagination as the products of the human spirit and contrasts them with nature. Although nature too is god’s creation, the products of human spirit are superior to those of nature. The former alone can present the divine Ideal or intelligence. Man is the medium of Divine passage; hence man alone has the conscious and self-productive spirit. Nature is an unconscious medium.9 88

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Art is the economy between the intelligible spirit on the one hand and the sensible nature on the other. Art is the sensuous presentation of the abstract Idea, declares Hegel (Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 55). Concrete particularities, sensuously apprehensible must provide the means for expressing the abstract but the universal Idea of the spirit. Art must harmonise this duality of thinking and feeling into a totality. Although Hegel develops his grand theory as a philosophical enterprise its root model from theological sources is eloquent in his examples. In art the content must not be abstract says Hegel. To say that, for example, god is single and supreme being as such is to proclaim a ‘dead abstraction.’ Such a god cannot be apprehended in concrete truth and can provide no content for art, especially visual art, contends Hegel. As we can see, we are not far from the iconic and the incarnational doctrine and its claim for a superior mode of thinking in human history (though presented now apparently in terms of meaning and form). Hegel is more specific. The Jews and Turks, Hegel illustrates his point, can’t represent their god. Whereas in Christianity god is set forth in his truth, concretely as Subject, Person, and Spirit. Trinity is the concrete representation of the abstract Idea of god as one singular supreme being. The doctrine of consubstantiality unifies the concretely the three into a unified one. Belief can be infused not only through abstraction but also through the visual apprehension. Art is the name of this economy in Hegel. Christianity’s genius is in appropriation and assimilation of everything into its design; or, to put it in Hegel’s great conceptual coinage, Christianity is the economy of sublation (aufhebung) par excellence. Hegel can easily universalise his thesis: given that the effort to reconcile spirit and nature is universal every culture strives to achieve the same through its art. Hegel’s thesis has the explanatory power to incorporate most diverse cultures and their cultural forms into his schema. Art, he contends, is the repository of the richest ideas and institutions of a nation, presented sensuously. Every culture strives to express the ‘depth of the suprasensuous world’ through the senses and feelings. Every culture can be deciphered on the basis of the way it connects the spirit and nature. This does not however imply that all cultures are alike. They can be differentiated essentially on the basis of the kind of reconciliation they make between the spirit and nature. As pointed out earlier, although human alone is the effective medium of spirit’s manifestation, not all the humans are aware of the workings of the spirit. Thus, it is the spirit’s relation to consciousness on the one hand and the conscious effort of the individual spirit/culture in filiating spirit and nature on the other that differentiate cultures. Hegel’s thesis has great power to demonstrate what it says. It says that art is a sensuous/concrete representation of the intelligible. His work demonstrates copiously and concretely how particular cultures through their concrete creations (in plastic and verbal forms) work out the imports of his thesis.10 Hence the prominent presence of the Orient (India in particular) and other cultures in Hegel’s work. 89

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India is more a figure in a schema of thought rather than a verifiable referent (this does not mean cultures of the Orient do not exist) out there as such in itself.11 Hegel’s thesis on art moves on two trajectories: (i) analysis of concrete particularities of art forms of different cultures. The art forms (or arts) that receive attention are sculpture, painting, poetry, and music (the definitive absence of performative forms such as dance is conspicuous); and the cultures discussed are of Arabia, Persia, India, China, and Africa. (ii) the typology of art forms and their economic efficacy. As the inquiry into particularities is determined by the (prior) conceptualisation of art in general (on the basis of Hegel’s thesis) any attempt to examine the first trajectory must first explore the way the thesis is concretised in the second trajectory. Hegel makes a tripartite typological division of art forms – essentially on the basis of the manner in which the reconciliation of the spiritual/intelligible and the natural/sensible is achieved in each of the forms. Thus, the three types of art forms are the symbolic, classical, and romantic. The symbolic type shows an incongruity between the content and the form of expression. Surely the spirit is present in the symbolic art but the art is in an abstract and underdeveloped state, and it is yet to come to consciousness. The ‘symbolic art is not yet true art;’ it is ‘pre-art’ (Gasché, The Stelliferous Fold, p. 239.) Symbolic art is in fact the ‘threshold of art’ (Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 303). It does not yet know what its essence is. It has no sense of the beautiful yet. Consequently, it is yet to find an appropriate form for itself to manifest. Symbolic art shows a mismatch between the idea and its expression in concrete, sensuous material. Such a disjuncture between the spirit and nature results in disturbing nightmarish art forms such as Indian sculpture, argues Hegel. Hegel focused on the multiple limbs and heads of Indian gods as represented in sculpture as a sign of confusion resulting from the economic failure between the spirit and nature. The symbolic type is yet to configure an art proper. The symbolic can be described only as pre-art. In complete contrast to the discrepancy of the symbolic art, Hegel advances the paradigm of perfect art in the classical type. Here the spirit gains not just clarity but becomes aware (conscious) of itself and through its fuller awareness finds/forges the most appropriate forms of expression to manifest itself. The spirit transfigures itself onto the most conducive sensuous material to become visible. Such harmonious reconciliation of the spirit and nature finds expression in Greek sculpture for Hegel. In symmetry and proportion, in beauty and clarity Greek sculpture provides the perfect economy of articulation – the exemplar of perfected art. The centre of art is represented by Greek sculpture. From no art (or pre-art) to perfect art, Hegel’s trajectory moves towards the third type called the romantic. Here Hegel makes a major move which continues to pre-occupy (and provoke) thinkers of the West even today. For, it spells out the limits of art. The romantic type once again evinces a discrepancy between the spirit and nature. The spirit in the romantic type is so 90

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developed and conscious that it cannot find appropriate sensuous medium to manifest itself; it far exceeds the kinds of resolutions and reconciliations that were so far attempted for its sensuous appearance. The knowledge of the absolute that the spirit stands for here is yet to find an appropriate form for its articulation. Hence the return of the discrepancy between the evolved spirit and the available sensuous resolutions (Hegel, Aesthetics, pp. 76–81). The romantic appears to return to the symbolic once again in a circle as it were. Yet there is a significant difference and it is central to Hegel. The state of spirit in the romantic type cannot be identical to its counterpart in the symbolic type. In the latter the spirit is yet to become aware of itself and has not yet come before consciousness. Whereas the romantic is highly evolved and acutely conscious of itself. Such a supreme state of spirit could be seen only in the Christian views of truth, contends Hegel. As discussed earlier, the deepest comprehension of truth according to Christianity is configured in the doctrine of incarnation. It is the singular truth that at once reconciles the divine and human, spiritual, and temporal on the one hand and surpasses and sublates what precedes and follows Christianity, on the other. Even if such a truth can be copied iconically its effulgence can only be figured as the immaculate and transparent light of ascending Jesus. The ultimate truth of Christianity is the spirit’s absolute self-awareness of itself and its return to itself. No natural material can be adequate to express this truth. Hence the discrepancy between the spirit and its expression in romantic art.12

Fate of art Even when art has been accorded a ‘higher position,’ even when it is considered the ‘supreme mode of our knowledge of the Absolute,’ Hegel avers, it is necessary to remember that ‘neither in content nor in form art is the highest and absolute mode of bringing to our minds the true interests of the spirit.’ This is bound to be so because of art’s entire orientation towards its partiality towards particularities. Art is capable of representing only ‘one sphere and stage of truth.’ Art can only be a mediational vector but cannot present the supreme truth that Christianity advances. What the romantic-Christian phase proclaims is that art cannot any longer fulfil ‘our highest need.’ Even if art were to continue in future, as it would, and refine and achieve perfection beyond what others have done so far, art ‘remains for us a thing of the past,’ declared Hegel. (Hegel, Aesthetics, pp. 9–11): ‘the form of art has ceased to be the supreme need of the spirit.’ (Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 103.) What is needed, according to Hegel, is spirit’s self-presentation, presentation of the truth of spirit-to-spirit which art can no longer accomplish: ‘Thought and reflection have spread their wings above fine art.’ (Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 10). Hence the need for forms/expressions beyond art. Hegel’s account of the disjuncture between art and thought is a repetition of a sedimented ‘event.’ The end of art spelt out with such assurance by Hegel provoked many thinkers to respond and react. The responses continue unabated even to this 91

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day. Meditating on Hegel’s declaration, Heidegger asks in the Hegelian vein: ‘Is art still an essential and necessary way in which that truth happens which is decisive for our historical existence, or is art no longer of this character?’ (Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, p. 80). This Hegelian formulation itself has spurred scholars to demonstrate how artists themselves show the path of surviving by sensing and eliding, escaping the philosophical enframing of art. They offered more nuanced interpretative accounts of how art works can move beyond philosophical conceptualization of them on the one hand and how they even can open up ‘aesthetic paths of philosophy,’ on the other.13 In the process, ironically, they reinforce Hegel’s enunciation about the way thought and reflection have spread their wings.14 In response to his Hegelian question Heidegger meditatively murmurs: a decision is awaited. That is, the Hegelian challenge can be addressed only when a decision pertaining to the metaphysical conception of art is taken and when the latter is displaced: ‘Until then the judgment remains in force.’ For the judgement is sustained by the entire heritage of Western thought since the Greeks, points out Heidegger (Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art,’ p. 80). Given the fact that Heidegger has already glossed Hegel’s work as the most comprehensive reflection on the essence of art in the West from within metaphysics, a decision appears to be already in place in his thinking. Heidegger’s work – especially pertaining to physis (‘nature’) – opens up the relation between art and thought beyond the restricted economy of art determined by metaphysics. We will return to this. On closer examination of Hegel’s theo-philosophical thesis on art, one wonders whether it is not a repetition of the Platonic agonism or whether the latter itself the consequence of a determinative projection of Hegel’s thesis on Plato. In its entire existence the concept of art seems little more than a determinative effect of either theology or philosophy (with their complicity with each other). All the treatises on art that emerged from the 18th century were essentially the much-laboured work of the philosophers – philosophers who can barely be said to have parted company with the theological traditions of thought manifesting in the form of modern metaphysics. The meaning of art was fundamentally determined by the discourse about art. Between the art work and the viewer lies the overwhelming presence of the discourse about art. The discourse is not necessarily that of the spectator as Agamben contends.15 None of the major thinkers who reflected on art were art viewers as such. Kant barely refers to any works or analyses them; Hegel surely – during the decade-long lecture period on aesthetics – frequented some galleries (and was impressed by the Dutch masters); but he was no direct viewer of the oriental material that he theorised; Heidegger saw some Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Klee but that made him no great spectator. None of their thoughts (about ‘judgement,’ ‘art,’ ‘origin’) emerged from them as connoisseurs or lovers of art works. In a word, in their work, the essence of art was not to be found in ‘art’ thing or form as such but in the 92

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thinking about and in conceptualisation of art. Since art was a product of (a priori philosophical, theological) thought, they grappled more with philosophy rather than with art collections (with the exception of Heidegger, especially when we include poetry under art, who had sustained interest in major German poets throughout.) Hegel was most emphatic about the critical conceptual approach to art. He thought that the prevailing attitude towards art was no longer that of ‘immediate enjoyment’ of art work but to put the work to ‘judgment alone.’ That is, what gains prominence is the intellectual consideration of the work in terms of its content, its presentation, and their suitability to each other that art is accorded its status. His entire work reinforces this approach. Philosophy alone provides configuration and ratification of art: ‘philosophy of art is therefore a greater need in our day’ (Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 11, italics in the original). This conceptual analytical approach was not meant for ‘creating art again,’ but only for knowing what art is philosophically. For Hegel the work of art ‘belongs to the sphere of conceptual thinking’ (Hegel, Aesthetics, pp. 12–13). Nietzsche was acutely aware of the Hegelian drive. But he proceeded to invert symmetrically Hegel’s claim and confidence. If art no longer served the highest need of the West for Hegel, religion, morality, and philosophy too can no longer be the candidates for salvaging truth, declared Nietzsche. ‘Our religion, morality, and philosophy are decadent forms of man. The countermovement: art’, proclaimed Nietzsche.16 Art as the highest task of man alone can save life from the illusions of science and truth, enunciated Nietzsche: ‘We possess art lest we perish of the truth’ (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, p, 435). Nietzsche railed against the heritage of aesthetics for creating what he called ‘woman’s aesthetics.’ This is, for him, not without irony, the discourse created by passive experience of the beautiful by the ‘recipients of art.’ Such a discourse can no longer energise the artist to create. Hegel would confirm this in his project by pointing out that philosophy of art was not oriented towards ‘creating art again.’ ‘In all philosophy to date,’ observes Nietzsche, ‘the artist is missing.’ Nietzsche sets out to undermine the passivity of aesthetic discourse by proposing what he calls ‘masculine aesthetics.’ The virtue of the latter is that it is focused on the artist or more specifically it leads the artist to a state of ‘rapture’ – which alone enables the artist to create. Rapture is an ‘exalted feeling of power’ in the artist. It enhances the force and plenitude in the artist. The experience of art work must arouse the ‘artcreating state, rapture,’ in the artist, contends Nietzsche. Rapture in Nietzsche, writes John Sallis, ‘is form-engendering force.’ (Citations in this passage from Nietzsche are from Sallis’ Transfigurements, pp. 164–169). Should this force that engenders form be always confined to something called art? We will return to this question later. Symmetric inversions that Nietzsche’s work undertakes, however, do not displace the sedimented structures. They can only reinforce them otherwise. 93

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Thinkers of the West continue to circulate within this extended but paralysing triangular apparatus made up of philosophy, theology, and art. None of these concepts can be effective outside the circuit that the triangle establishes. Nietzsche’s vigorous contestations, passionate inversions are intelligible only in a context where the sedimented structures of philosophy, morality, and religion and aesthetics call the shots. It would seem misplaced outpourings in a context which is not riveted in or structured by such a triangle, that is, contexts that are outside the fold of the metaphysical circuitry.

The other heading In the aftermath of the Europeanisation of the world it would look totally preposterous and utterly counter-intuitive to risk suggestion that thinking in general is not necessarily contingent upon the triangulated concepts of art, philosophy, and theology. Thinking can sustain itself outside this autoimmune triangle. Art, philosophy, and theology are the peculiar creations of a specific cultural formation called Europe of Christianity. Heidegger was perhaps most acutely aware of this predicament, and the possibility of an outside, than any other thinker of the West (though his language for formulating the problem was different.) If Hegel’s thesis spelled out the end of art, Heidegger too announced the end of philosophy and the task of ‘preparatory thinking.’17 It is not possible to recount the story of Indian heritage on the basis of any of the discourses that formed the conceptual triangle of the West. What can be called the Indian thought can be said to have manifested through multiple creative reflective forms and traditions. Each of these salient forms – say of the Vedic collections (or shruti forms) and smriti forms (of sutras, darshanas, kavya, itihasa, purana, natya, etc.,) – has flourished over a millennium easily. But none of these enduring forms declares itself to possess privileged status to comprehend and represent the entirety of the Indian heritage: there is no such discourse, period! But each one – say, natya, darshana, itihasa, etc., – of them has evinced a robust reflective/performative impulse to emerge from and enhance what can be called the palimpsests of Indian inheritances. These forms cannot be considered as parts to be put together to make a whole; nor are they insular domains. To learn shilpa shastra one must first know dance, music, and song says one of the earliest compositions on the (plastic) visual cultures of India.18 Among all the vidyas, vyaakarana is the supreme vidya say literary inquirers like Anandavardhana.19 Even while acknowledging the significance of the other domains each one differentiated itself from the rest and moved on to generate an unprecedented domain (natya, shilpa, kavya, purana, etc., came forth as unsurpassed reflective creative cultural forms). Consequently, none (of the smrti forms) subordinated itself to any other form in enlivening the Vedic imports. In a word one can say that Indian heritage did not develop a general science of explanation – an explanation that can provide an effective account 94

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of each of the salient cultural forms or about the totality of them. In such a reckoning these cultural forms would then be regional sciences – confined to dealing with a specialised, demarcated field. But such a characterisation would be untenable as each of the domains/forms carries within itself reflective formulations of general import in aphoristic mode, and each one ennobles and incorporates the contours and imports of another form within itself. From among countless instances just to cite a few: Natyasastra’s formulations about the raging passions pushing one towards vulgar ethos (gramya pravrutti); Chitrasutra’s inaugural inquiry concerning giving form to the formless; formulations pertaining to actional existence, and the most commonly shared formulations pertaining to the relationship between prakriti and purusha. We will return to some of these shared thematics in the following pages. Such formulations even go to the minute level of glossing specific terms used in the account in such a way that the contextually relevant sense of the term from its generalisable range can be specified. In other words, there are only differentiating domains – each of which carries within itself the force of generality –and yet they all evince shared reflective currents. Consequently, such forms have no use for the divided oppositional categories such as the general/ restricted, universal/particular, and sensible/ intelligible. An exclusively overarching meta-level discourse has no use in such a reflective tradition.20 Now to force oneself to develop an overarching general discourse about the Indian heritage by privileging any particular domain – say that of kavya, shilpa, or bhasha – is to accord the domain the status that is accorded to such discourses in the West. (Philosophy is the only candidate for such a general discourse in the West.) In the Indian context, if there were to emerge a discourse of the general it would by default end up as yet another demarcated but related node. Therefore, the agonism and polemics that flare up in the heritage of Europe among the domains of art/religion/philosophy are conspicuous by their absence in the Indian context, for such domains themselves are absent. (As discussed in the previous chapter, the Buddhist polemics were of a different kind; they do not provide any totalising overview of what they do and what they unravel.) There is no privileged domain/node of truth that can subordinate and surpass other domains. As pointed out at the beginning, the varied cultural forms of Indian traditions proliferated as vidays and kalas and they are brought forth and disseminated in performative modes; they are deeply filiated to actional existence. They operate more as actional sources for enabling and reorienting actions and the ways to render action in specific contexts rather than explanatory or justificatory discourses about action. The earliest composition pertaining to performative traditions, for example, the Natyasastra, is entirely a compendium concerning how to render gestural and verbal articulations in the composition of an actional form like natya. It is not a treatise dealing with the essence of dance or on judging its relation to some putative truth. Nor does it circulate as the ultimate account concerning performance 95

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or affect. It was received across centuries and it evoked varied responses. Similarly, one of the earliest extant compositions on images (sculpture and painting) the Chitrasutra is more extensively devoted to the modes of making images, ways of installing them, and incorporating them in acts of ‘worship.’ In a word, the entire composition (the Vishnudharmottara itself, of which the Chitrasutra forms a small portion in the third volume) is engrossed in delineating ritual actional existence rather than in mustering some iconophilic justification or in advancing or crystallising some taste for images. Again, the Chtrasutra does not become a canonised source text for building some imagological discourse in the Indian traditions; no single composition in the verbal or visual domain was accorded such a canonical status for determining and regulating the domain. Similarly, the extended tradition of literary inquiries from Bhamaha to Jagannatha Pandita are more concerned with the ways of composing a kavya, the use of appropriate and inappropriate sounds, words, themes, and situations, than with judgemental or theoretical treatises. They are more observational and generative in their work. In other words, they are observations with minimalist demonstration (more particularly in the context of compositions of literary inquiries) which invite or provoke extended experimentation. Such experimentation emerges as a responsive reception to the observational inquiries on the one hand and other experimentations on the other. The entire verbal gestural language that Bharata experimented with continues with variations in myriad dance compositions even to this day.21 The literary compositions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other bhashas creatively internalise the reflective creative language unfolded in the literary reflective inquiries. What is distinctive in these compositions is that they were largely put together by the practitioners and poets themselves. Bharata not only put together the Natyasastra but also – in the very process – composed the first three dance dramas (Devasura Yuddham, Samudra Mathanam, Tripurasura Samharam). Literary inquirers like Anandavardhana and Rajasekhara were also renowned poets too. Abhinavagupta composed poetic reflective compositions along with independent works on tantra and creative commentaries on Bharata, Anandavardhana, and on the Shaiva tradition. Sarngadeva appears to be a musician himself. In other words, reflection and creation were intimately entwined, and reflective generation or generative reflection fecundated the diversity and range of cultural forms over millennia. Even commentatorial compositions emerged as reflective observational work rather than textual philological-historical analysis. One significant feature of these compositions is that the implied addressee is mainly the responsive practitioner – the one who draws on the entwined intimations of reflection and creation and forges his response in a novel composition. Reflective and creative currents do not get categorically and rigorously bifurcated and hierarchised in the Indian traditions. Rajasekhara places sahitya vidya among shastras and identifies sastrakaras who compose poetically (as ‘shastrakavi’).22 It is impossible to segregate reflection and 96

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imagination, shastra imports from creative composition in the Veda, Upanishad, itihasa, purana, and other such cultural forms. The singular term that can capture the confluence of reflection and imagination is tattva: that-there- thatness. The term has more than one meaning; it refers to the specificity of the thing or entity (tattva of an entity: heat of fire, brightness of the sun, smell of the earth, etc.,); it can refer to someone who probes into the essence of existence or who is engrossed in the thatness of being (a tattvika); it can indicate also compositions that poetically form the probing into the thatness of existence or being (tattvas or tattva padas). Tattva articulates reasoning imagination. Reason or reflection and imagination indicate the capabilities of two specific internal faculties. Reasoning is the discerning capability of the faculty of buddhi (observational, reflective, and orientational faculty); whereas imagination as a capability that can bring forth remote or proximate and even non-existent entities and relations beyond the protocols of verifiability. Such a capability is the endowment of the internal faculty called manas in the Indian traditions. Manas is also the abode of desire and memory – both of which kindle and propel reflective imagination. Cultural forms of India are nurtured in this interanimation of reflection and imagination – without, however, erasing the difference between them (we will return to the theme of manas in the next chapter more elaborately) nor by opposing them. Indian cultural forms emerge and proliferate across borders and in time and space as responsive receptions. They affirm what is already there in their reception of it. But what is received evokes response from the receiver and that response at once affirms and differentiates itself from what is received. This is the internal and implicit logic that connects and differentiates cultural forms across millennia. Given that predominantly these responses emerge from practitioners, we find the response of the spectator as such conspicuous in its absence in the Indian traditions. We do not find the discourse of the spectator per se here. Even though there are copious references to the viewer or listener as rasika, sahrdaya, bhavuka, etc., we find the possible response of the viewer systemically absent. (As the first spectators of Bharata’s natya in heaven, gods are said to have applauded and showered gifts on Bharata and his sons. But what they thought and said about what they saw has no place here.) And those who receive and respond never directly talk about what they saw or thought in descriptive or judgemental ways in detail. Their response to what they received (or saw) would be implicitly but subtly transformed through supplementation, condensation, selective elaboration, erasure, or elision and in many other intractable ways. But such a response ends up emerging as a novel composition rather than as discursive account about a particular work or set of works. It cannot be counted as the spectator’s discourse or a theoretical judgement. It would be erroneous and fanciful if one were to describe this systemic absence of the spectator’s discourse on the one hand and the prevalence of responsive creational compositions 97

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on the other in Nietzsche’s terms to point out that in Indian traditions only ‘masculine aesthetics’ flourished and ‘women’s aesthetics’ was absent. As pointed out earlier the relation between shastra and kavya was too intimate and co-constitutive to manifest in a dominating binary that we tracked earlier in the intellectual history of the West. One of the characteristic features of Indian compositions is that, despite their exhaustive voluminous range, they claim that what they offer is only a condensed version of what can be presented. Although vidyas can be numbered and enumerated (differently) each one of them is said to be inexhaustible. Can there be anyone who is capable of knowing their tattva and proceeding to see their ends, asks Bharata.23 Yet one hazards to communicate only ‘in brief’ the salient aspects of vidyas, observes Bharata. Vidyas and kalas are infinite and it is impossible to count them says the Shukraneetisara.24 One cannot hope to find a privileged vantage point or control-centre to grasp and measure such intricately meshed and widely spread network of cultural forms that proliferates into infinite nodes. Neither the shruti nor the smriti domains per se can be valorised as offering such command-control positions. One needs to grope in their thickets and follow the light from their nodes just to sense the magnitude of their rhisomic pulsations and weaves. Such a stelliferous universe of vidyas and kalas was forced under the scopic regime of the West in the colonial encounter with Europe. And the regime aimed at measuring, grasping, and altering permanently the oceanic network of Indian traditions with its triangulated apparatus of art, philosophy, and theology. Seduced and cowered by the apparatus we continue to spawn the perspectives that the triangle lets us generate. But how did we let ourselves get into this aporia, what passageways and siren songs allure us into the apparatus? Can the glimmers and the pulsations of our reflective apeiron still help us find a way-out of the aporia? What are the sources that we can draw on in order to reorient our own futures of the past?

Turning in the gyre European thinking impels one to respond to questions of essence and identity in a certain determined way. After pre-supposing the existence and identity of certain things, inquiry into the essence of such things takes place. In the domain of art, for example, objects identified as art are presupposed and then their essence is sought. A circle of thought maintains art as something created by artist and artist as someone who creates such objects; and art like the artist is supposed to exist always already (Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art,’ pp. 17–18). It is from such a circle of thought that the essence of art is metaphysically determined. It is precisely such circle(s) which began to forge identitarian objects and domains such as Indian art, Indian religion, Indian philosophy, and Indian literature during the encounter with European heritage. Given that such identitarian inquiries pre-suppose the existence of their objects – the most crucial method of that inquiry tends to be mainly 98

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historical. In the domain of art – even to this day the only flourishing ‘inquiry’ remains that of the historical kind. Art historical inquiry searches, retrieves, and classifies and garners objects determined as art.25 Predictably models for such object-retrieval searches came from European historical background. Such models (European searches into European material past – such as J.J. Winkelmann’s) and such searches cannot be expected to provide openings into cultural weaves of India which pursued neither conceptual-theoretical models nor animated historical retrieval searches, nor privileged a particular node for perspectivising the entirety of culture. The challenge of the cultural apeiron (non-totalisable as it proliferates or expands and non-perspectival with too many centrifugal and centripetal nodes) is either disavowed or forced into the invasive moulds and models. One such all engulfing mould/model, of course is religion. The validity of this concept outside the Semitic cultural history and the specific ways in which it gets deployed in the Indian context is barely explored, in art historical inquiries.26 But once this unexamined concept is internalised the search for the art objects moves by default on two paths: religious and secular. A reference to gods, says a learned scholar, makes art religious; and a reference to man makes it secular. In a laboured effort to differentiate sacred art – that which is determined by religion – from secular art – that which is free from religion, R.N. Misra states: the secular art is that ‘which asserted art’s freedom and autonomy despite its closeness to religion.’27 Although Misra makes a painful effort to establish through Sanskrit etymologies a concept of art in the Indian context, his endeavour proceeds firstly on the basis of the pre-supposition that ‘art’ objects as already there; and secondly, the entire effort does little to help think the non-conceptual of the Indian ‘terms’ beyond or outside the well-entrenched theological frame. His reading reinforces the theological metaphysical concept of art. Even to this day perhaps the most cogently and consciously developed ‘theory’ of Indian art remains that of Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy’s. He appears to be the guiding spirit for those who think it is necessary to provide an indigenous theory about Indian plastic arts in general. No wonder Coomaraswamy remains the undisputed intellectual source for Indian theory of art in the IGNCA venture. Coomaraswamy’s aims were more ambitious. Through his scholarship and training, his passion and position (as a curator at Boston museum and a well-connected metropolitan), he extended his vision to develop a theory of Asian art in general. Coomaraswamy was a self-proclaimed medievalist. Like Hegel he too announced the end of art, though in a different way. Coomaraswamy’s inspiration was not Hegel at all. Unlike Hegel who celebrated the supremacy of Christian spirit and thought which cannot be reconciled with art, Coomaraswamy thought that the genuine Christian art can no longer be found after the 13th century in Europe. For the former the Christian thought of the spirit surpassed art as a form of presentation; whereas for the latter Christian art simply degenerated after the 13th century. 99

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Hegel’s tripartite schema took pains to analyse particular art objects to demonstrate the power of judgement his schema proposed. But Coomaraswamy’s efforts appear more in putting together a (Catholic) Christian theory of art. The sources that engrossed him in crystallising such an effort spread from Augustine to Aquinas (Coomaraswamy was surely aware of the Byzantine controversy). For Coomaraswamy it was not art as a mode of presentation as such (as it was for Hegel) that was the problem – but it was certain specific tendencies that emerged in post-medieval art that caused the decay of European art. The tendency to present objects naturalistically and position them perspectivally in the Renaissance art and later, that initiated the decadence in European art, contends Coomaraswamy. For him there are two Europes in matters of art: one, Christian and the other modern or ‘personal.’ The Christian one is capacious enough to cover the primitive till the Byzantine period (even up to the 13th century); whereas the modern one begins from the Renaissance.28 Modern art has ‘altogether changed in essence,’ contends Coomaraswamy. The symbolic language of modern art is pervaded by ‘statements of observed fact and the intrusion of the artist’s personality’(Coomaraswamy, Coomaraswamy, p. 143). Coomaraswamy was convinced that Asiatic art cannot resonate with the art of modern Europe but it was ‘very like that of Christian Europe.’ Therefore, he averred, the discourse of the ‘principles’ of Christian art can be offered as adequate introduction to the art of Asia. He firmly believed that the principles enunciated in Christian art were very ‘near to those of the Asiatic art’ (Coomaraswamy, Coomaraswamy, p. 101). It should not surprise us, he said, ‘that the medieval Christian art should have been so much like Indian in kind’ (Coomaraswamy, Coomaraswamy, p.143). The dominant intellectual passion of the Oriental race, declared Coomaraswamy, was theology and theology dominated Oriental art (Coomaraswamy, Coomaraswamy, p.112). As he believed that art was a universal doctrine, he devoted his life to gather ‘correspondences’ between Christian theological (Scholastic-Thomistic) accounts of art and Sanskrit formulations pertaining to poetry and sculpture. Reading Coomaraswamy one cannot but end up reinforcing the idea that the concept of art is fundamentally a Christian theological formulation. This is precisely what his work and those who follow him reiterated. The idea of art that Coomaraswamy spreads evangelically is totally rooted in the doctrine of incarnation. Quoting Aquinas, he says, ‘The art of God is the Son.’ The genus of perfect form – the prototype – is the source for the species to imitate: ‘Similitude is with respect to form’ where the incarnate form has the relation of similitude with God.29 As is well known the economy of similitude is central in representing the relationship between the intelligible and the sensible in theological thought. Spurning the modern conception of art as an observed reality, Coomaraswamy states that the artist ‘imitates the filial image, and not a retinal reflection,’ or its memory. Drawn towards the ineluctable question of the essence of art (‘What does art mean?’), Coomarawamy by default as it were would answer: art embodies ‘always a 100

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spiritual meaning.’ (Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, pp. 39–40). One can reach the ‘first principles of art’ only by ‘the reduction of art to theology’ (incidentally, the phrase quoted by Coomaraswamy comes from the title of a book by St. Bonaventure – a 13th century Franciscan scholastic theologian from Italy) (Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, p. 41). Scholastic theological accounts and citations can be multiplied from Coomaraswamy’s work. The metaphysical division between the ‘actus primus’ (free, non-material, intelligible work/form) and the ‘actus secondus’ (a servile imitation to render the intelligible sensible) moves as the intellectual operation at work in artistic creation (Coomaraswamy, Coomaraswamy, pp. 131–142). The prototype artist as the Divine Architect and the human artist as the imitator; the idea of the dual truth – the absolute (divine) and the relative (human); paroksa (as angelic and ‘purely intelligible’), pratyaksha as the human, and sensible (‘rational’) have a determinative role in his work.30 Commoaraswamy’s entire theorsation of art in general or Indian and Asian art in particular is an involved repetition of the medieval theological dogma. Reading Coomaraswamy one cannot escape the feeling that his Sanskrit erudition, his elaborate and painstaking elucidation of terms and themes from Indian and Asian sources are all deeply determined and regulated by the medieval Christian doctrines. The style of his presentation eloquently demonstrates this self-involved plan. When scholastic doctrines are explicated, Sanskrit terms and phrases are either deployed in parenthesis or cited in footnotes to illustrate the explication and affirm their correspondence or similarity. When Indian (i.e., Sanskrit) themes are elaborated scholastic concepts are interspersed through citations and comparisons. Thus, his major ‘theoretical’ account, ‘The Christian and Oriental or True, Philosophy of Art’ is composed of over 88 citations and references and of which 18 references allude to Sanskrit material; and the latter are entirely in the service of establishing the medieval doctrine of art as incarnation (Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, pp. 53–60). Neither of these contexts (medieval and Indian) would warrant such a ‘method’ (Christianity distinguishes itself as an advancement over human achievement hitherto). But Coomaraswamy’s conviction about the universality of theological conception of art and life drives him to continue with his method. Coomaraswamy’s major claim pertaining to the origination of the image in the Indian context as resulting from dhyana sloka appears to be essentially regulated by the incarnation doctrine regarding the relation between the intelligible but invisible god and the sensible and visible icon. He claims that the dhyana sloka enables the artisan/artist to first visualise the invisible and thus materialise it in the artwork (icon/idol). None of the major works on the making of the vigrahas (Chitrasutra, Chitralakshana, Silpaprakasha, Samaranganasutradhara) mentions such a relationship between the mantra and the vigraha in their work, especially with regard to the artist or the 101

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artisan. Chitrasutra simply mentions that an image would enable one to focus and concentrate more in one’s ‘worship’ (puja) of god than the absence of it; yet it does not privilege image-based ‘worship.’ No reference to artist or artisan here. (Even Sarngadeva makes a similar point when he says that it is difficult to focus on anaahata (‘unarticulated’) naada and ‘worship’ it. Hence the recommendation of shruti-based aahata (articulated) naada which gives pleasure and releasement.31) Whereas Coomaraswamy’s exclusive privileging of dhyana sloka is more informed by the scholastic view regarding the relation between the prototype and copy: Mantra images the divine intelligible prototype and the artisanal creation is a copy of it. Similarly, Coomarswamy renders atma as the ‘spiritual essence’ where the term (spirit) is intelligible only in the doctrinal context of trinity. Spirit is seen as the Word of God whereas atma has little to do with such theological thinking (Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, p. 118). The spirit for Coomarswamy is the pure consciousness that can exist without and free from ‘substantial existence.’ It is this conscious spirit alone which is capable of seeing the Divine Architect and his art of creation: the spectator ‘is most perfectly and only perfectly realized in the Self, one Person, the single Self…’ (Coomaraswamy, Coomaraswamy, p. 93). The spirit or consciousness is the divine presence in the human form, and this also enables the visualisation of the intelligible image. Coomaraswamy sees such a process of the work of consciousness in dhyana and yoga. These Indian performative modes are interpreted as the essential means of invoking (materialising in the case of the human artist) and be one with or identify with the intelligible image (jnaana sattva rupa) (Coomaraswamy, Coomaraswamy, p. 85). This projective conflation of the presence of spiritual consciousness and the yogic state offered a ‘theoretical’ determination, for Coomaraswamy, of ‘Indian aesthetic’ experience. This is certainly the major legacy of Coomaraswamy, and it is deeply prevalent among many art historians of India. The legacy of Coomaraswamy’s ‘theoretical’ model of/for Indian art continues to guide conceptions of ‘philosophy of art’ in India, especially in the work organised by the IGNCA. Bettina Baumer, for instance, writes that in yoga and in art one has to identify/unite oneself with god the prototype Creator/Artist/Architect of the universe.32 The artist will have to share the ‘divine creative power.’ Now in order to consolidate this homoiotic conception of art as incarnation, Sanskrit terms are gathered and translated into theologemes: ‘Art is a reflection of the divine original [anukriti] and symbolizes it, by revealing its face [pratika], so to speak.’ A whole range of other terms such as pratirupa, pratibimba, and pratima are extracted from Sanskrit and appropriated into the doctrinal shade. Thus the Sanskrit pair – bimba-pratibimba is yoked by the iconic doctrine when bimba is glossed as ‘Supreme Reality’ or consciousness (‘reflecting object’) and pratibimba is physical empirical mundane world or universe.33 Art is seen as the imitation or copy of the divine world ‘a fascinating journey from the mundane to the 102

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philosophical world’ or the other way round as well.34 In the same vein, murthi is the form into which god descends and makes himself totally present and the murthi is most approximate to the divine form (Baumer, ‘Yoga and Art,’ p. 82). The image and the imager both are said to get involved in the process of transformation and transubstantiation into the divine substance. Yoga and art in India are believed to accomplish this (Baumer, ‘Yoga and Art,’ p. 83). Many Sanskrit terms such as chitra, rupa, karu, and shilpa convey contextually differing sense dealing with the activity of (wood) carving, fashioning a shape or shaping a form, piercing, tearing, etc. But many scholars knowledgeable in Sanskrit tried to elicit ‘aesthetic association’ of these terms even before inquiring into the very concept and discourse of the aesthetic. Thus, the term rupa is said to be a ‘word of limitless aesthetic significance.’35 But the idea of art that implicitly regulates the ‘aesthetic’ changes little of what has been bequeathed by Coomaraswamy decades earlier. Thus, the term chitra is seen to be ‘a reflection of the chitramula’ – the source of imaging; and the chitramula is upheld to be ‘incarnated light’ of which chitra is only a pratibimba (reflection) of ‘light incarnate.’ Chitramula is the aadarsha (ideal) and the reflection is its chaya (shadow). ‘Art’ is said to render the mula-prakriti into its ‘mundane counterpart.’ The reflection is a ‘simulation of identity’ between the ideal and its mundane practice (in stone, clay, or colour) (Pathak and Misra, ‘Word and Image,’ p. 288). Thus rupa (which has several meanings such as: to pierce, kill, charm, break, destroy, and shine) is eventually configured as the ‘reflection of the primal source…which it phenomenally signifies;’ a formal reflection of ‘immanence of essence:’ ‘whatever is created in the arts, has to be a counterpart of the archetypal form, rediscovered or reincarnated, as it were, in its formal materiality.’36 Confusion abounds in translating Indian terms into theologemes of art. Thus, in his paper on ‘Rupa-Pratirupa,’ Misra treats sometimes rupa as the original essence or prototype – a noumenal presence – the ‘causative property of its repository,’ which constitutes the empirical world (Misra, ‘RupaPratirupa,’ p. 121); and pratirupa as a copy of the prototype of rupa. But as seen above rupa itself is seen as a copy sometimes. In the ultimate analysis imitation appears to be the essence of Indian art. But such a claim, Misra feels, must be differentiated from a similar claim made in the West. In India, he goes on, imitation does not mean mere reflection or mirror or copy of the divine world: ‘It is implied here [in India] that the divine art has ascended [sic] into the material world.’ Yet in the same breath he goes on to say that the human effort is to imitate, portray ‘God’s creation. It is like a mirror of whatever is there above [sic] it’ (Misra, ‘Rupa-Pratirupa,’ p. 121). Such confused work abounds in the discussions of art in India. As is well known, Stella Kramrisch is a significant name in the context of discussions about Indian temple and sculpture. She devoted her life, like Coomaraswamy, to reflect and represent the ‘artistic’ traditions of India from the Western interpretive sources. Trained in Vienna under a renowned 103

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scholar of the Church art and the first chair of Oriental art in Europe, Kramrisch prepared herself to work on Indian images. With the patronage of Coomaraswamy and Rabindranath Tagore, she lived in India for years and devoted her energies to study Indian art on the one hand and exposed Indian students systematically (at Santiniketan) to Western art and art history, on the other. An interesting, if a bit odd anecdote seems to frame Kramrishc’s approach to Indian art. On her first visit to Bombay (from London) she rushes directly from the port to Elephanta caves to spend a day there. At the sunset as she comes out, mysteriously she finds a Jesuit golden cross glistening in front of her in the sand; she is fascinated by the vision. Intimations from the aniconic symbols of god are not too far from her response to Indian art. Indian art for Kramrisch represents ‘the subtle body of man’ which is a ‘transubstantiated form.’ This is pneumatic in its formation in which the pneuma cruises ‘through the vital centres of the living being, unimpeded by the gross matter of the actual physical body.’ This is the ‘living breath’ which fills the image created. The plastic image with its smoothened channels contains ‘an equivalent of the breath of God.’37 There is no need to belabour the import of the long heritage of such configuration of art. Here the theological seems to revert to the language of the Old Testament rather than that of Christianity: ‘In the Old Testament life is breath’ (Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy, p. 99). But nowhere do the compositions of Chitrasutra and Chitralakshana invoke this pneumatic configuration of sculpture. As it was for Coomaraswamy, for Kramrish too the Indian temple is the ‘home and body of god’ (Boner, Exploring India’s Sacred Art, pp. 21–22). The images and temples alone provide abodes for gods on earth, she states. They are ‘counterfeits in stone and bronze’ without which ‘gods have no existence on earth’ (Kramrisch cited in Boner, Exploring India’s Sacred Art, p. 28). Christian hermeneutics helped Kramrisch to build the theory of Indian art and evolve a unifying identity of Indian art from the Vedic to tribal visual cultures.38

Aesthetic flows If transfiguring Sanskrit terms into theologemes is one way of advancing accounts about Indian art, extracting an indigenous ‘aesthetic theory’ is another. Here the candidate is the much celebrated (‘the single most important’)39 notion of ‘rasa;’. Bharata devotes just a few lines for rasa in the Natyasastra. Let us see the fate of this notion inside and outside the art discourse. Citing a line from Viswanatha’s Sahityadarpana (a composition oft cited by him), Coomaraswamy contends that the line – ‘Vakyam rasaatmakam kavyam’ (a sentence infused in rasa is kavya) – provides a ‘clear and adequate definition of art’ not just of India but of Asia’s in general. He translates the cited line as: ‘Art as a statement informed by ideal beauty.’ Then Coomaraswamy offers his gloss over the line which instantly 104

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assimilates it into the overall theory of art that he has developed for Asia: ‘The statement is the body; rasa the soul of the work.’ What the soul does, its ‘spiritual activity or experience called tasting,’ Coomarswamy goes on to explain, is ‘indistinguishable from knowledge of the impersonal Brahman’ and it is an ‘intellectual ecstasy’ (Coomaraswamy, Coomaraswamy, p. 104). ‘The idea of rasa lies at the heart of Indian theory of art,’ enunciates the renowned art historian B.N. Goswamy. Echoing many others who wrote about rasa, Goswamy too observes that the ultimate rasa experience is that of ‘heightened delight,’ ‘the kind of bliss that can be experienced only by the spirit’ and refers to this experience as ananda.40 The ‘aesthetic experience’ of rasa, writes another scholar is ‘analogous to the yogic process of withdrawal of the senses from manifoldness of experience towards singleness of concentration. The experience of rasa is analogous to the yogic experience of Samadhi.’41 In this context the limpid but hesitant account of B.N. Goswamy’s must be mentioned. In two of his extended works on Indian art, Goswamy devotes space to provide an account of rasa as an indigenous source for approaching Indian art. One of his major catalogues is called Essence of Indian Art and the lead essay of the catalogue is called ‘Rasa: Delight of the Reason.’ The account that he elaborates here really is a succinct but most accessible summary of what Bharata says about the nature and number of rasas and how they get generated. Goswamy also briefly and selectively provides views of others in the tradition. Nearly three decades later in a more recent work titled, The Spirit of Indian Painting, Goswamy simply reproduces in an abridged form what he summarised in his earlier account. But he would nevertheless maintain the rasa theme as a theoretical development in the Indian context. Form this one gets the impression that the rasa account has now got more or less frozen and no newer insight into it can be advanced. No one seems to have taken the risk, that is, if they have not surrendered it to the theological framework, to inquire into what is ‘theoretical’ about Bharata’s observations and how and whether such reflections can provide a theory of Indian art. It is often claimed, mainly from the 20th century scholars that India has a well-developed aesthetic theory called ‘rasa theory.’ It is difficult to know how the extended discussions (before 19th century) concerning rasa led to such a theory only in the 20th century. Most of the modern discussions about this ‘theory’ simply end up repeating what various discussants in the earlier period have said. Underlying these (20th century) discussions is also the assumption that cultural forms (dance, music, poetry, performance, plastic creations) are already autonomous domains of art. Such an assumption does not open up the much-needed inquiry into the concept of art. Without initiating inquiries into the conceptual categorisation, one goes ahead to confidently talk about ‘rasa theory’ as the basis of Indian arts. If ‘theory’ is an explanatory system built on the postulation of a foundational reason and operating through propositions or hypotheses – in what 105

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sense would the discussion of rasa be called a theory? Bharata simply talks about rasa as a communicable effect/affect and specifies under what conditions such an effect gets generated. Bharata surely is not building a concept – a verbal formulation that is appropriate or adequate to a cognitive apprehension of an object being referred to. A concept emerges through a process of abstraction – abstracting a determined meaning from a varied and indefinite range of meanings a term/word may have. Such abstracted term gains a technical sense which designates the cognitive content of an object. Hegel’s (or Kant’s) contrasting of the abstraction to particularities derives from such a process of cognitive crystallisations. Surely Bharata makes no such formulation. The first thing he does, on the contrary, is to take recourse to analogy. The analogy comes from the gastronomic domain where what is being analogised defies cognitive/conceptual determination: the taste of a delicacy made of multiple ingredients. The savoured taste cannot be conceptually grasped and mastered and such an experience cannot be exhaustively captured in language.

Alithic modes Rasa was not a term that Bharata coined and it did not have just one meaning from a determined domain. The term was in circulation since the Vedic times. By the time Bharata used it, already medical and gastronomic domains contained the term. Bharata uses it to emphasise the communicability of savourable taste under certain conditions. Both the generative and receptive nodes must be attuned to rasa when it emerges. Thus, the entire discussion of rasa can be said to pivot on rasa as a generative disseminable savourable taste. As taste it is not a cognitive category, and consequently rasa cannot be said to have acquired a conceptual status through the analogy that Bharata brings in. The conspicuous absence of the discourse of the connoisseur reiterates the impossibility of measuring, verifying, or calculating the essence of taste in terms of quantifiable configurations and linguistic formulations. Although apparently the various cultural performative compositions such as natya, kavya, silpa, and sangita are all oriented to evoke actional effects (rasa) that spur the receiver attuned to such compositions – none of them encodes extensively the spectator’s/receiver’s response to what is received in cognitive discursive terms. There is no salient discussion of the addressee/receiver in these compositions. In this context it is worth discussing a scene which B.N. Goswamy sketches to present the Indian ‘aesthetic’ experience. Goswamy opens his Essence of Indian Art with this fascinating account. He evokes serenely the audience’s experience of listening to the unfolding of a raga in a musical performance. The evocation simultaneously sketches the gentle and elegant opening of the raga and its gradual and vigorous movements on the one hand; and the corresponding effect of that unfolding in the sway of gestures and bodily movements of the 106

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performer and the audience, on the other. What needs notice is specifically that both the audience and the singer evoke their response to the unfoldment of the raga by closing their eyes; the audience’s eyes glisten with moisture as the raga culminates. In the entire account, grippingly delineated by Goswamy, what is most remarkable – but does not receive attention is that the audience’s response (and the performer’s too) is not of speech but of gesture only. Although Goswamy does not say this – the experience of raga has not been valorised as a discourse – there is no discourse of the rasika about the raga here. Goswamy’s wonderful account has a paradoxical status: it is about the audience’s response but it could also be a verbal response of someone – a recapitulation of experience by someone who was in the audience. But such a discourse was conspicuous by its systemic absence in the tradition. But this evocative response – mainly articulated gesturally – barely can be said to contribute to consolidating a cognitive judgement on the ‘art of the raga’ (Goswamy, Essence of Indian Art, pp. 17–18). This strikingly sets the Indian scenario apart from that of Europe. The entire discussion/theorisation of the aesthetic (in the West), as we discussed earlier, is spectator oriented. Artistic/aesthetic discourse is the spectator’s theoretical account of what art is and what it does, whereas Bharata’s focus appears mainly to be on the evocation and communication of rasa rather than on evolving a conceptual account of it. In Bharata there is something more at stake. Bharata, for instance, makes his famous observation with regard to the generation of the rapturous actional affect called rasa in a pithy formulation called sutra as follows: Vibhaavaanubhaava vayabhichaari samyogaad rasanishpattihi. When supplemental conditions and their entailing affects along with transient (or flirtatious) emotions are fused emerges the actional affect. This sutra is not an axiom that founds a principle entailing propositions. This is more an experiential observation captured in an aphosristic formulation. The minimal elucidation that follows (Bharata offers this) does not focus on refining the verbal formulation but invites one to observe it on the basis of an inference (anumana). The analogy is, as mentioned above, the emergence of a potion when different liquids are mixed. The inference is that rasa is a juice/sap. This is further, again briefly, illustrated (drstanta) with an example. The example draws on culinary experience: when different varieties of condiments are mixed with jaggery, thereby emerges a delighting delicacy that can effuse different flavours. Rasa is akin to the experience of that delicacy. Rasa is an experiential delight (something not reducible to the preparation of the potion or delicacy or to the different ingredients). Now, this ‘method’ is far from a theoretical venture. Rasa has no properties, for it emerges from the confluence of all propertied substances; it emerges as a result of confounding all categories and 107

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properties. Rasa is not the property of the soul -as reason (understanding) and imagination (aesthetic perception) were the twin properties of the soul in Kant (Sallis, Transfigurements of Art, p. 58). Rasa has neither the soul nor the spirit as the determining source in its formation. If at all there is any, it is the very sedimented and transient actional sources (which Bharata enunciates in Chapter 6 of the Natyasastra succinctly before he provides the sutra mentioned above) that bring forth the rasa. They do so, however, not as they are in their distinct states – but only after their differentiated states are commingled and confounded does rasa emerge. It has no determinable origin excepting that its emergence is related to actional sediments (sthaayee bhavas). Rasa, in a word, is a conspicuous emergent in experiential existence. Bharata has no use for theoretical determination of this deeper insight. For such an emergent can only be experientially savoured and can’t be perceptually (or cognitively) apprehended (as we saw in Goswamy’s discussion). Here again what needs attention, more than the actual experience of rasa, is that rasa ensues from transmutations of actional sediments that such an emergent is communicable and in its communication it can in turn impact actional sediments. No wonder Bharata does not expend much space on the experiential savouring of the emergent – there is no point in discursivising it. Thus, all the talk about the ‘theory of rasa’ appears to be an unexamined obligation among the modern critics. What is more significant in Bharata’s teasing account is the communicability of the emergent and the actional circuitry it moves in. Characteristically, Bharata draws on the inferential analogy in emphasising the relation between them: the relationship between the actional circuit and the emergent is that of the seed and the fruit where the seed is the set of actional sediments from which emerges the tree called the form of life from whose flourishing comes forth the savourable fruit; and this fruit in its turn yields the seed for the recursivity of the forms of life. In Bharata’s performative context the inferential analogy works not through a circle but through a detour. As is well known the Natyasastra offers an exhaustive set of reflective observations on performative cultural forms. These forms emerge within an already well-developed performative milieu. Bharata is not the first one to inaugurate the milieu. He only moulds his responses within the larger and seasoned soil. Vedic ritual performances crystallised performative modes of being more than a millennium before the Common Era. While clearly acknowledging what he borrowed from the Vedas he enunciates that his composition emerges as the fifth Veda open (unlike the earlier ones) to the entirety of genos (sarvajana). Perhaps the Natyasastra is the first composition that helps us differentiate two broad divisions within performative traditions. One kind of performative tradition is that which yields results, effects, and benefits to the performer; it is performer-oriented in its entailment. The second one is that 108

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which, while accruing benefit to the performer reaches out towards indefinite receiver or the addressee in perpetuity. The performer-oriented tradition structures the everyday life of Indians from the Vedic milieu to acts of unforeseen generations of the future immersed in myriad ritual acts. The second tradition which Bharata exemplifies through itihasa themes to delight gods in their loka is conceived as a playable audiovision (kreedaneeyakamichamo drsyam srvyam cha yad bhavet) (Bharata, Natyasastra, 1.11, p. 60). The immortal tradition of the suta-bharata-seer has nurtured the second trajectory and disseminated it across biocultural formations (jatis) over millennia. Bharata, however, does not divide them either to oppose or to categorise them. Often Bhrata and the performative traditions run them together – though they do not collapse the difference between them. The suta renders his unprecedented itihasa accounts during the caesura of ritual performances; the work of this trio itself is replete with ritual performances; every dance performance begins with the performer-oriented ritual ceremonies – even to this day (various kinds of pujas are performed on the stage before rendering a given dance performance). It is precisely in the context of the other-oriented performances that the question of the communicability of the emergent rasa is located. The actors do not share the life of the characters whose life they enact. They are impelled to draw on their own bodily resources, that is, their own actional sediments to enact effectively. But these resources must not get entangled with their personal life story during the performance. Thus, the performative provides the space for the actors to distance themselves from their own actional life even if temporarily. In such state of uninvolved involvement in the actional life, as the actors intensely draw on their resources (actional sediments), it is there in that immersive virtual actional life that the emergent rasa comes forth. Thus, it is in the context of the actor that the actional sediments become the seed and enable the emergence of the savourable fruit as the actional tree flourishes. It is this savourable fruit that can be transferred or communicated to the able (but indefinite) receiver. Now as the fruit begins to be savoured it begins to play the role of the seed at the receiver’s end and it begins to stir up or awake the actional sediments submerged in the receiver. It is the experience of these animated sediments that evoke a delighting gratification in the receiver. As in the case of the actor whose actional sediments, distancing him from his personal actional life, brought forth the emergent, in the case of the receiver the stirred awoken sediments distance the receiver too from his personal actional life to enable him to savour the delight. The relationship between the actional sediments and the emergent actional effects is that of difference and distance. But they have the interminable power to reorient and disconnect actional life. Bharata brings forth this other-oriented performative tradition precisely to reorient actional life. Indian cultural forms come forth as fundamentally concerned with reorienting actional lives in existence; they communicate praxial imports, a liveable learning. 109

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Therefore, the exclusive attention to rasa in the reception of Bharata obscures the deeper and shared concern of the cultural forms of India. It would be a misplaced enthusiasm to look for a theoretical account about aesthetics in Bharata. Aphoristic utterances concerning rasa cannot be seen as aesthetic judgements; they cannot be mustered to forge some key concept to unlock the alleged enigmas of Indian cultural forms (no one has done such a thing in the Indian traditions, until the modern period). Rasa is not a hermeneutical device. No wonder the ‘device’ of rasa has not unleashed an extended ‘critical appreciation’ of ‘works of art’ for savouring the juices of them. What is significant in the context of divergent cultural forms of India is that there are no accounts that ‘apply’ the putative rasa theory to explain any particular form of any domain (including that of kavya and nataka). Such accounts are the hybrid progeny of the European interface. There is no discourse of the addressee in the context of these cultural forms for centuries.

Lithic pursuits Perhaps more than anyone B.N. Goswamy is most acutely aware of the difficulty of using the ‘rasa theory’ (which he subscribes to, though) to study the ‘arts’ of India. Hence the hesitation in his work in writing about the rasa theory. This hesitation shows his ambivalence towards the ‘theory.’ Although the idea of rasa is pervasive in the context of Indian arts, Goswamy observes, in the ‘visual arts, it [rasa theory] is not mentioned with as much frequency or self-assurance…not much has been written on it [rasa] with reference to visual arts’ (Goswamy, Essence of Indian Art, p. 21). But in the earlier work, the catalogue, he goes on to do precisely that: to ‘apply’ the rasa theory to the visual arts by gathering the idea from the verbal/performative domains. He undertakes to describe sculptural images by adducing to Bharata’s formulations about emotions (actional sediments). The images are deployed to illustrate the formulations. He is aware that the ideas of ‘rasa were scarcely ever applied in detail to sculpture and painting, and no treatise was devoted to the connection’ (Goswamy, Essence of Indian Art, p. 28). But was there ever such an applicational treatise with regard to any other domain? Was the Natyasastra itself such an applicational treatise? The search for applicational precedents points to the symptom of the problem. Given that the Natyasastra is assumed to provide a theory of art one is impelled to search for the application of this theory in the actual accounts of art; but one searches for them in vain. Goswamy repeatedly faces the impasse in writing about rasa and its relation to visual arts. He does not probe into the symptom; but he does not give up the received claim about the rasa theory either. In this matter Goswamy works under the shade of Coomaraswamy who enunciated much earlier that rasa theory is ‘immediately applicable to art of all kinds’ (Coomaraswamy cited in Goswamy, Essence of Indian Art, p. 19). Goswamy endorses the predecessor’s respected view that there is space for the appropriate and firm ‘applicability of the 110

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[rasa] theory to the visual arts as much as to the performing or literary arts’ (Goswamy, Essence of Indian Art, p. 28). Goswamy’s ambivalence continues to encircle his work. But he tries to find a way out. But this is not an alternative for the ‘theoretical’ pull and the ‘way out’ sought is not seen as in opposition to the pull. They don’t get discussed together at all. But this ‘way out’ is to build a systemically nonexistent discourse of the spectator. For understanding Indian painting, Goswamy observes, one must reconstruct views about the ‘patron, painter and technique.’ (Goswamy, The Spirit of Indian Painting, p. 44). For such accounts are very rare in the Indian context, points out Goswamy. In the absence of such accounts, one must have the ‘patience to piece things together, the willingness to construct a narrative, the imagination to flesh it out’. He sets out with the labour of love to search for the biographies, detailed chronicles among the scraps of information – often with frustrating results (Goswamy, The Spirit of Indian Painting, pp. 18–19). Yet, over the years Goswamy has offered the reading public delighting and luxuriant search-narratives informationally woven together. But such painstaking and elegant narratives leave us with questions that barely find addressed in the art historical world of India: (i) what does the systemic absence of spectator’s discursive accounts in the Indian context tell us about Indian reflective traditions? (ii) How do they help us to make sense of Indian observational reflections such as rasa or prakriti which have seminal role to play in the emergence and proliferation of forms in general and cultural forms in particular? (iii) Do such accounts move us beyond the originary object-retrieval and identity framing circle in which the metaphysical concept of art fixates us? Unfortunately, neither the rasa theory ventures nor the thick search-narratives pertaining to the pre-determined art objects and artists provides us openings to address such questions.

Haunting aporias Perhaps Heidegger’s observation pertaining to Latin’s distortive translations of Greek thought is more applicable in the context of European translations of Indian thought. European distortions of Indian reflective experience occur when the latter is communicated through European languages. For, these languages are deeply soaked in theological waters which shape European thought and experience. Now these languages bind one into the aporetic triangle that pervades the planet today. Caught in the metaphysical heritage that they are heirs to, European thinkers like Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida were acutely sensitive to the aporias that confronted them. Although he was inclined towards ‘far eastern’ culture as something that was free from the metaphysical thought, reflecting on the gravity of the situation Heidegger said once: my conviction is that only in the same place where the modern technical world took its origin can we also prepare a conversion (Umkehr) of it. In 111

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other words, this cannot happen by taking over Zen-Buddhism or other Eastern experiences of the world. For this conversion of thought we need the help of the European tradition and a new appropriation of it.42 None of the major European thinkers was inclined to find alternatives to European aporias in non-Western traditions of thinking and living and none opened up to engage with these traditions. They continue to struggle with the reflective integrity of European thought. Non-European intellectual inquiries are yet to configure the reflective integrity of their cultures on the basis of their inherited modes of being and forms of reflection to think in general today through these (crossed) resources. The one impassable aporia that we seem to confront in the Indian context is that its divergently spread cultural forms were conceived and nurtured over millennia in alithic and non-conceptual performative modes; and they are forced to conform to theological conceptual structures kindled and shaped in lithic apparatuses. The efficacy of the former is in praxial actional modes of being where the body is the quintessential medium and effect of existence. In contrast the latter invest in replenishing conceptual discourses and enhancing surrogate bodies (made possible by prosthetic technological means). If the former disseminate modes and reflections through lively archives of the embodied being, the latter advance and institute technological structures. But the aporia is precisely in sensing this alithic and lithic difference in the very testing ground spawned by the lithic heritage. The languages that we use, the institutions we work in and the surrogate communicational channels that surround and overpower us are too strong to be ignored. Yet one cannot assume that the future can come purely from the future – though the forces that surround us (may) package such futures for us. Given the sense of cultural difference that one can discern between conceptual and non-conceptual praxial modes of being, one may take the risk of plunging into the inheritances that have survived against calamitous adversities, and struggle to explore the possibilities of reorientation from within the paralysing context that we find ourselves in.

Force of the emergent The incarnation doctrine is of no use to reflect on the emergence of form from the Indian traditions. Incarnation, if we recall, presupposes a nonrepresentable sovereign power which alone makes the world in accord with its desire and will. But among all the forms that people the world the sovereign privileges the anthropomorphic figure of man. It is this figure made in the image of the sovereign who relates the divine and the human, the transcendent and the historical. The incarnation scene is for the redemption of the condemned or lapsed humankind. It would be an ill-thought projection to confuse incarnation with avatara in the Indian context. All those gods and demons and other myriad beings 112

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that people the Indian imaginary are quintessentially of the loka. Every entity formed of differentiated elements is subject to change and thus to the rhythms of emergences and effacements. They are all composed of differing attributes. Avatara or amsha only indicates modifications in the forms of existence – a reorchestration of elements and attributes – not devoid of them (as in the case of Christ – who had the flesh but it was free from sin – unblemished). The arena of all these transformations is the loka or samsaara alone. All lokas are made by the relentless rhythms of formations of elements, attributes, or effects of apara and their recursive movement. Whether it is the loka of gods or gandharvas or humans – all are bound by the drives of the lokas: Na tadasti pruthivyaam vaa divi deveshu va punah sattvam prakruti jairmuktam yadebhisyaat thribhirgunai.43 Neither on the earth nor in the sky nor among the gods nor in any other lokas can exist a being that is devoid of the three attributes that emerge from prakriti. Loka in general (irrespective of the number of lokas) is peopled by attributed beings. Therefore, whether it is Vishnu, Shiva, or any other god or asura, –once they have a name and form, they are quintessentially beings of the loka – shifting effects of apara; and as such they are exposed to recursive transformations. The basis of all the elements and attributes, the source of all change, all kinds of actional modes, their emergence, dispersal, and dissolution is the primal force which forms the loka and its beings and the relationships among them. Although this is the dynamic root of movement, this primal force itself cannot move unless it mingles with yet another primal force. The other force is in complete contrast with the earlier one but they both cohabit as radical heterogeneous forces. These two forces are specified in the Sanskrit tradition as follows: Prakritim purusham chaiva vidyanaadee ubhaavapi vikaaranscha gunaanschaiva viddi prakriti sambhavan (Bhagavadgita, 13.19, p. 660) Know that these two – prakriti and purusha – are devoid of beginning; [all entities as] derivative figurations and attribute-ridden emerge from prakriti. These primal forces can be together without interaction in an equilibrial state – which is simply a kind of stasis. In such a state there is neither emergence nor effacement of anything. Even in that state their heterogeneity is not erasable. But such a primal difference is of no direct consequence and it is yet to manifest. This is due to something which is common to them: they both are inarticulable (avyakta) and absolutely formless and as such do not ‘exist’ where existence is a formational process (srshti). This is entirely due to the effects that prakriti alone is capable of releasing. Thus, the difference 113

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is discerned rather retrospectively. In the primal heterogeneous complex, there is no strife but there is a possibility of play between the forces. Guna saamye layo jneyo vaishmye srshti ruchyate. When attributes are equilibrial, know that as stasis; formations of the universe are said to emerge from disequilibrium of the attributes.44 The primary effect of the play or mingling of the cohabiting of the heterogeneous is the release of very specific fundamental drives: differential, generative, individuative, relational, and actional. These drives, as discussed earlier, it must be noted, are entirely the effect of apara-prakriti from the play. It is these drives which in turn begin the activity of bringing forth elements from the subtlest to the grossest form, from the particulate to the galactic. In a word, the generic loka emerges through these drives. But given the fact that the emergences are the effect of prakriti’s interaction with parapurusha every element and entity that gets generated will have the heterogeneous structure from which they emerged. The primal heterogeneous structure permeates all the emergences. As prakriti forms the loka through its effects, through a detour as it were, purusha inheres in whatever prakriti’s effects bring forth. In a way the loka appears to be a varied rendering of the primal heterogeneous forces – with a crucial difference. As the primal complex has no use for attributes and substances, it is devoid of dualities; despite the primal difference, the terms indicate no sexual difference either; sexual difference is derivative of apara’s effects. Here one must hasten to point out that this account of primal heterogeneous forces is not aimed at giving yet another narrative about the origin of Indian art. On the contrary, one of the aims of this chapter has been to pursue the questions: what if Indian traditions had no use for any concept of art (and similar ones)? What if the discourse of art is not universal? The modest effort here is to explore Indian reflections on the emergence of the form in general and their implications for the emergence of what are called cultural forms and formations in particular. But even to pursue such questions, one might interject, isn’t this account postulating yet another metaphysical binary? Binaries emerge in hierarchical thinking; hierarchy moves on the structure formed of superior and inferior entities where the latter is seen as the derivative of the former. Whereas the primal forces discussed above indicate differential and not hierarchical relationship. They imply neither unified originary source (‘Being’) nor insist that they exist. Para (or Purusha) and apara or prakriti as such do not exist. This does not also mean that they are transcendent to existence. Transcendence is precisely what gets attributed to prakriti in some accounts, though. Jacobsen in his contribution to an IGNCA volume writes that prakriti is a ‘transcendent principle…containing the whole world in an undifferentiated state.’ In such an account para is yet 114

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another transcendent principle.45 As discussed earlier existence as a spectacle of myriad formations is an effect in the differential relationship of prakriti and para. This differential relationship is unerasable. Here the term exist (existence) must be understood in very a specific sense: that which can be perceived, cognised, discerned, and imagined by means of the faculties that relate the internal to the external and the other way round. In this sense para and apara-prakriti do not exist; the latter’s effects bring forth conditions for the existence of formations. Forces can circulate and impact without themselves being fashioned into forms. Further the relationship of the heterogeneous is not supplemental either [which is, in the context of the European metaphysical tradition, Derrida’s attempt to reconcile the binary of the intelligible and sensible: the sensible supplements the intelligible and thus makes the presence (trace) contingent upon the material (graphe, inscription, etc.,)]. For para is not conceived at all in terms of sovereign originary intelligible source of existence; it has no such presence. And it cannot be supplemented by prakriti – for that would erase the primal heterogeneity between them. It is precisely such a question of supplementation which inaugurates an inquiry into the formation of plastic figuration of para (purusha; it must be pointed out that para and purusha cannot be unified) in the Chitrasutra. It must, however, be noted that the inquiry does not focus on the legitimacy of anthropomorphising para. It draws on the differential drive involved in the generative thrust of image making. The king in his dialogue with the sage asks: Rupa gandha rasairheena shabda sparsha vivarjitaha purushastu tvaya proktas tasya rupamidam katham (Vishnudharmottara, 45.1, p.153) If purusha is said to be devoid of form, odour, taste, and free from sound and touch, how can you give form to purusha? In a word purusha cannot be accessed thorough perceptual senses. The differential drive is an effect of prakriti and para cannot be conceived in terms of such drives. The differential manifests in enumerative, classificatory modes in shaping the generative effects. But how do these drives unfold and bring forth the infinite range of forms?

Efficacious formations Perhaps the single most crucial term in Sanskrit that can be invoked here to refer to the entire process of prakriti’s double drive which results in the formation of entities is shilpa. Shilpa designates the act of shaping/making something; it is an act of bringing forth something verbally (a rhythmic, symmetric composition) or visually (an intricate gestural articulations in a measured dynamic of discretised bodily movements); it is a handiwork rendered on the already formed entities (stone, word, clay metal, cloth, leather, 115

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sound etc.). Shilpa is also a contextually rendered (ritual) performative act. In a word shilpa is embodied action of a formation in existence. No wonder it is listed as one of the 26 terms used to refer to action/karma: Sheelayateeti vaa silpam That which is repeatedly practiced is shilpa [such as the work of potter or carpenter]. Shilpa is that which is learnt through knowledge, practiced with concentration to sharpen or whet the effect of action.46 It may be noted that the entire action is conceived and rendered by means of the body here; shilpa designates alithic liveable learning. Bhavaprakasa’s definition of shilpa brings forth most succinctly and eloquently the performative nature of shilpa: Ekasthaiva padaarthasya naanaa rupa prakalpanam vaangmanah karmabhiryattachchilpam ityabhidheeyate Making or performing of one and the same thing in various forms through verbal expression (vaak), mind (mental action), and karma is called shilpa (cited in Misra, ‘Silpa,’ p. 127). Shilpa in Vedic context refers to recited shaastra or performative acts. Shilpa thus refers to both poetic performative as well as artisanal craftsmanship. A poet’s composition of song in the Vedic context is likened to a carpenter’s crafting of a chariot. This singular double aspect of Shilpa may resonate with the Greek poiesis and techné before they were bifurcated. Such a division can also be noticed in the Indian context (we will return to this). Fundamentally shilpa refers to action and what the process of action generates – it does not divide the means and ends. If the generative impulse is the potential, the differential drive shapes the generative impulse into varied elements which in turn multiply this mutually constitutive process/activity. Thus, the generative impulse differentially manifests in elements which in turn unleash the double drive in endless permutations and combinations and bring forth radically differentiated and individuated actional entities. Shilpa, Misra says, is not the ‘primal stuff from which phenomenal and non-phenomenal elements or objects derive’ (Misra, ‘Silpa,’ p. 197). Misra, whose account of shilpa is being focused on here, characteristically divides the activity of shilpa into divine and human dimensions. Shilpa in itself is not the centre or seed, he says. It requires an agent in ‘whom it turns itself as a key to the generative process…’ This agent is, Misra states, either Prajapati or Kasyapa.47 Surely shilpa as such is not the primal prakriti – for the latter cannot be measured or reckoned in terms of shapes and figures. Prakriti is not the sum of the things that emerge from its effects. But the double drive is entirely the effect of this mula-prakriti. Among the various formations that prakriti’s effects generate anthropomorphic figure is just one of the countless many. 116

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Even this figure emerges after a protracted process of shilpa. It is through differential and combinatorial processes that the generative drive brings forth a whole range of formations from the primal elemental ensemble and its effects to entities of colossal magnitude – oceans, mountains, lokas, kalpas, lively millions, and their effects. They are all the result of prakriti’s detour through shilpa. Prajapati, Kasyapa, or Brahma and every other such anthropomorphic figure is quintessentially the mediated effect of the double drive – released by prakriti. Gods are not outside prakriti’s release-effects. They are like the most ancient nimitta (incidental) figure of the potter – the efficacious medium that shapes clay dexterously into figures. Misra’s agent can only be seen as the potter rather than a sovereign commander-designer. For Misra himself goes on to say that prakriti ‘is essentially a potential which creates’ and not a sovereign agent. But Misra’s division between ‘divine’ and human and his thematisation of the latter’s activity as an ‘imitation’ and derivation can have misleading consequences (Misra, ‘Silpa,’ p. 198). He in fact lends himself to such readings. He sees the tradition’s focus on the divine realm as ‘ideological’ (Misra, ‘Art and Religion,’ p. 66) and any attention to human is designated as secular. Attribution of such an ‘economy’ between sacred and profane, religious/ideological and secular/historical is too well known a template to belabour here. Recourse to such a template by default happens when we fail to recognise that loka too in general (generically) is the dynamic effect and medium of the double drive of prakriti. As the differential drive is the constitutive impulse of lokas, beings in the lokas are bound to be differential; so would be the temporalities of their actional existence. Instead of deriving an isomorphic or empirically derivative relationship among determined lokas one must attend to the loka as the dynamic which transmutes entirely on the basis of actional process in a complex existence. When Bharata composed the first dance forms of gods’ deeds, was he simply imitating gods’ actions for gods? Even though Bharata says that the gods were pleased by the spectacle (and their raakshasa cousins resented), these playable audiovisual performances disclose something more radical, something which would throw into doubt the categorical hierarchical division of lokas. In the first place the necessity of such a cultural form arose in a certain differentiated temporal epoch as the inerasable set of emotions (actional sediments) played havoc – emotions such as: Kaamalobha vasham gate Eershaa krodhabhi sammudhe (Bharata, Natyasastra, 1.8–9, p. 60) Surrendered to lust and miserliness, jealousy, and rage. Such emotions captured and disoriented humans of Jambudvipa – especially when it was ruled by all the divergent creatures of different lokas (devas, raakshasas, yakshas, and gandharvas). The audiovisual performative 117

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was generated to reorient the actional impulses of such genos from such indulgences. Now against this background what do the itihasa themes of such first plays reveal? None other than the disorienting actional impulses leading to a colossal paradigmatic warfare among, after all, siblings (the war between gods and their cousins – the Devasurayuddha). Any loka is the sizzling complex of actional sediments which can be triggered off by the double drive in unpredictable ways. Whereas in Misra’s reading the loka of the humans is derivative of the loka of the gods – an imitational product. Bharata’s focus was intensely on how the minutest movements of the discretised body (eyes, eye-brows, chin, lips, fingers, hands collectively and individually) can generate actional effects which can trigger and animate actional sediments. Cultural forms in general aim at engaging with and reshaping the actional modes in existence. Shilpa configures this entire process of shaping of the forms and formations. Despite Misra’s ambivalences and inconsistencies in his account, even from his discussion of shilpa it is possible to gather that shilpa in essence is that which brings forth something, sustains it, and makes it shine – be it the elemental ensemble (sky, wind, fire, water, and earth and their effects): the bodies they make, the actional rhythms they render, the voices of recitation, gestures of performance, the sonority of musical accents, the patterns of images, and the abodes they shape and render visible and audible. Yet this very account suffers from Misra’s ‘interpretative’ reading. A major part of his account is in fact, as it painstakingly gathers Sanskrit resources for the purpose, written in lofty terms about the notion of shilpa. But towards the latter part of the piece what all he has described in exalted terms hitherto about the centrality of shilpa is now rendered as ‘orthodoxy.’ This alleged ‘orthodoxy’ is said to look down upon shilpa as hindrance to knowledge where it becomes a vritti (a mere vocation). But why/how does this ‘ideological rift’ come about? (Misra, ‘Silpa,’ p. 207). What are the reasons internal to the tradition for such a ‘rift?’ Has shilpa in its extended generative and differentiating power ceased to be efficacious for some reason? What has led to the reduction of shilpa to technical manual productions of material objects? The reason why Misra dubs this tradition of learning that worked with praxial efficacy of shilpa suddenly ‘orthodox’ is not clear. If the Vedic sense of shilpa was efficacious and illuminating then the non-Vedic (called in the account ‘Lokayata’) critique of the Vedic must be examined in the context of the term shilpa. Simple polemical plotting of the relation between the two, as Misra does, is unhelpful in understanding the said ‘orthodoxy.’ Throughout his extended account of the Vedic conception of shilpa, Misra never discusses shilpin as merely a craftsman. On the contrary his account was a more comprehensive treatment of the essence of shilpa as bringing forth (a poiesis of) something as creative and generative. Suddenly this entire account is opposed to the ‘unorthodox’ activity of engineering and technology as based on some ‘materialistic’ philosophical ground. The term Misra 118

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uses is symptomatic: ‘when shilpas were devalued their practitioners suffered the same [devalued] fate’ (Misra, ‘Silpa,’ p. 207). Who were the practitioners of shilpa(s) in Vedic account that he gave? Weren’t Prajapati, Kashyapa, and Indra said to be the ‘agents’ and shilpins throughout? When/how/why did shilpins turn into mere artisans? It appears that an unexpected account about ‘varna hierarchy’ stigmatised the practitioners of shilpa and relegated them to the Shudra rank. This statement is in consonance with the comment he makes in a paper he wrote jointly with V.S. Pathak on the image: ‘In Indian definition of art…technique does not seem to have always been treated as “consequential”’ (Pathak and Misra, ‘Words and Image,’ p. 285). That is, the Brahmin ‘orthodoxy’ undermined material and manual labour. This colonial sociology tells little about how and why the pervasive praxial sense of the shilpa got reduced to a determined conception. Misra sketches a sort of pedestrian account of ‘orthodox’ as opposed to ‘liberal’ account of the transformation of the notion of shilpa from Vedic to post-Vedic (Buddhist and later) times. However, in his account it is only the Buddhist texts that demarcate all non-Vedic learning as shilpa: shilpa ‘constituted all learning outside the Vedas’ (Misra, ‘Silpa,’ p. 213, also p. 205). But whether what is ‘outside’ the Vedas was entirely free from the Vedic praxial conception of shilpa is a question we do not see Misra pursuing. Whether this is a tenable division at all between the Vedic learning (called sikkam) and shilpa is not inquired into either. But we do not also get to know when and why shilpa turns into kala understood as ‘art.’ By the time we come to the end of the paper shilpa becomes interchangeable with art or arts. What binds all arts together, Misra asks. In other words his question really is: what is the essence of art? Citing Aiteraya Brahmana where shilpa is said to have been defined as anukriti (‘imitation’) ‘of the divine,’ Misra writes: The sanctity of the arts in the Indian tradition seems to lie…in the faculty to imitate, to reproduce what may not indeed be real but which at least stimulates the real. Imitation sanctifies and validates the manifestation so produced, whether in drama, or in silpa, or anywhere. Imitation of the seven lokas occurs in drama; as also in poetry (Pathak and Misra, ‘Words and Image,’ p. 215) Here ‘the real’ means empirically perceptible or cognisable. If shilpa is imitation and given that the entire discussion of shilpa has taken place in the realm of gods (Prajapati, Tvahtr, Kasyapa), what is it that the gods imitate? What is the ‘real’ that their shilpa simulates? Here the problem arises due to the conception of imitation as copy-making. This conception fundamentally goes against the account of shilpa as process and effect that Misra has delineated in the major part of his piece. Shilpa as imitation would only have an instrumental or vehicular activity in the sense of mere craft and it is then bereft of the praxial dynamic it shows in the performative mode: ‘The 119

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significance of shilpa (and all allied arts) lies in its propensity in manifesting the phenomenal objects in the image of their divine original which exists unseen’ (Misra, ‘Silpa,’ p. 216). The confusion that Misra’s concept of imitation shows is reinforced by his concept of loka as a transaction between divine and human worlds. We are back into the incarnation-doctrinal fold turning away from the insights the discussion of shilpa could open up.

Primal mediations Shilpa is prakriti’s detour. The detour seems to proceed on a curved path of contrariety. In all the extraordinary processes of action the differential impulse evinces the tendency to demarcate, individuate, delimit, and centripetally converge generative effects. Although this is a necessary and fruitful drive for the individuation and flourishing of divergent entities (species), the impulse can propel itself to the other extreme of denying difference and forcing generational effects into an untenable unity. If the generational drive disseminates and proliferates centrifugally, the differential drive while separating and individuating can also lend itself to consolidation and totalisation – and deny differential dispersion. Such homogenisation is death; it erases the possibility of play and consequently life itself. In other words, life which is the effect of differential articulations pushes itself to death – when that impulse seeks to erase difference itself. One can imagine the catastrophic consequences when one of the individuated primal elements like water, fire, wind, or the earth rages over and overpowers the others; similarly, one can easily sense when these individuated colossal forces are accumulated and kept in reserve in the hands of some self-consolidating human power (dams, nuclear estates, nutritional industries). But, as we have seen, in the context of the primal heterogeneous complex the duality of life and death has no salience. The equilibrial stasis can be called life as well as death at the same time but these cathected dualities make no sense in that context. Such dualities rage through the detoured formations of apara-prakriti. Prakriti apparently exposes one to a double entanglement precisely through its twin drives. Either one indulges in generational processes or one succumbs to the differential drive. In such a context it is not a choice between them that provides a way out but forging a mode of being that distances and differentiates one from the double drive and its effects in existence itself. It is precisely such a mode of being that designates what is called para (purusha) in Indian traditions: ‘purushaa loke…kootasthokshara muchyate’ (Bhagavadgita, 15.16. p. 722) [Purusha in the loka (inhabiting every form) is said to be uninvolved and impartial]. In its cohabitation with prakriti, para does not lend itself to the dual drives that articulate prakriti through the detour of shilpa. The differential drive may have a chance to sense para for it is this drive that has the potential to separate itself from others; but it cannot be confused or identified with para as the latter lends itself to no properties to perceive it nor does it succumb to any drive. 120

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The dynamic of shilpa works through prakriti’s twin drives and brings forth divergent formations. The essence of prakriti is to lend itself to such formations, to reveal itself through the detour. Concealment cannot be prakriti’s trace; it excels in bringing forth; it unleashes the generative impetus. Consequently, some of the formations that come forth in turn are driven by the differential generative impetus to birth and replenish biocultural formations (jatis.) Such renewed emergences may claim to reveal prakriti’s hidden secrets; but such claim cannot help but succumb to the double dynamic of prakriti. For all such claims are driven to bring forth further formations and differentiations between them. The double drive is not unidirectional in terms of bringing forth biocultural formations alone; but it is inherently oriented towards erasing these very formations as well. The erasure manifests in the transmutation of the differential impetus from being individuating to the totalising, self-consolidating drive. Prakriti’s detour weaves the circle of this double fate. The way out from this circle depends on the movement of the differential impulse. It can turn the double-fate into a single all-consuming black hole of sorrow and death; or, it can open up the possibility of happiness beyond the duality of pleasure and pain. This requires a reorientation of this drive to distantiate and differentiate itself from the seductive pulls of the circle and incline itself towards para. But this ‘way out’ of the circle is not aimed at abandoning the circle itself for some other transcendental promised plane as such; it will have to be shaped while being in the circle: that would be the state of ‘dvandvair vimuktaah’ (Bhagavadgita, 15.5. p. 712) [free from the dualities]. How to tune the twin drives of prakriti and attune them to sense the dualities and free oneself from their binds and bonds is the most challenging task that apara-prakriti itself seems to pose to beings or formations. When one ponders over this, one notices that prakriti seems also to push one to attain that radical ‘originary’ equilibrial stasis in loka in existence. In other words, prakriti’s challenge is: how do you reach the primal state of the strife-less cohabitation with the heterogeneous in the scenario entailing the play of these very forces? Perhaps that is one and the only supreme test one has to face in existence. Achieving such a state in existence is likened to some kind of sublime delight – sublime because the experience of delight is inarticulable and incalculable, and is without purpose. There is no other place than the loka in which sensing that other complex is possible. The loka alone is the time-space of existence where the heterogeneous modes of being must be lived beyond the pulls and binds of dualities. It must be noted that within the complex of the loka it is not possible completely either to suppress or erase the pulls and binds of these effects: Nahi dehabhrutaa shakyam tyaktum karmaanya sheshataha (Bhagavadgita, 18.13, p. 789) 121

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It is impossible to free the bodied one from actional modes without remainders. Every such foolhardy act will only reinforce the power of these effects. One can only, at the most, hope to suspend and give up the fruit that results from one’s actions; any active indulgence (or renunciation of them) in them will only strengthen the resolve of the twin drive. This is the inescapable double bind of existence. To discern and seek the primal equilibrial state among the cohabiting heterogeneous in the loka appears to be an impossible task. The only task that appears worthy in this context is possibilising this impossible state in the actional world. Uninvolved immersion in, cultivated in-difference to the actional work may possibilise the impossible. It is precisely such modes of being, very much circulating in existence, that are seen as valuable. Any amount of recounting or discoursing about such modes remains incommensurate with the actual modes of being. Thus in all the varied domains of cultural forms – such as performative traditions (kalpa-rituals), poetic traditions (literary inquiries), plastic arts (inquiries into the visual) –the profusion of compositions focus on how to rather than about or what (question about the essence) or why (about origin); their attentions is on praxial reflections rather than on ontological or teleological conceptualisations.

Reorientations In the Indian traditions every conceivable faculty that constitutes existence is the endowed effect of prakriti. While they constitute beings, the latter are also binding and determinative vectors that entrench the finite being in a machinic circuit. It is precisely in such a context the reorientation of modes of being must be taken up. Thus, the reorientation is yet another action (task), but it is an action which would bring forth and enact a non-relational relation to the actional existence and its bonding. This discernment of non-actional action within the pervasive circuit of actional existence is not a domain-specific insight as such; nor does it exclusively privilege any specific vidya or kala (as in the context of the triangulated relations between art, philosophy, and theology in the case of the West). It is of an extraordinary general import that must be discerned essentially in praxial-existence. This is the alithic dynamic. It is here that the Indian tradition foregrounds the biocultural formation (of plant, animal, and human), for the body alone can be the absolute material configuration in existence. Not any surrogate of the body in lithic forms gets valorised here. As the quintessential medium and result of the effects of prakriti the biocultural formation must move through the very (binding/bonding) effects to distance itself from them. In such a reflective-praxial tradition unprecedented performative cultural forms and biocultural formations can come forth and proliferate through the dynamic of responsive reception. Negation and critique are not the preferred mechanisms of this dynamic; it receives what is ‘there’ and in its very 122

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reception transforms the given which results in the emergence of the unprecedented (apurva). But the efficacy of the emergence and proliferation of cultural forms is not measured so much in terms of their evolutionary scale or their exemplary breakthroughs or as events as such. Every form and formation must renew the task in its own ways and in their distinctive modes of being in their context. The task remains that of the articulation of the actional and the non-actional within the actional existence. It is precisely within this fundamental praxial orientation of the tradition that symbolisation – reflective action – emerged through the countless cultural forms of vidyas and kalas. The paradoxes of Indian traditions are immense. The ‘way out’ of the binding and entangling matrix is not seen here as the redemptive act of some supreme transcendent power as such. Enabling and distancing from the bonds and binds of relations, and releasement of pursha while inhabiting the matrix is made possible by none other than a significant faculty generated by prakriti’s effects. Thus it is, after all, prakriti alone which has the capacity to bind and bond and at the same time enable releasement. In other words, it is the embodied entities through their differential ensemble of faculties that rivet one to the gyrational matrix alone can discern and strive towards releasment from the matrix. Why does prakriti indulge in such a paradoxical activity? It appears that prakriti has no other aim than Purusha vimoksha nimittam… pravruttih pradhaanasya.48 [For the releasement of purusha, the primordial (pradhaana) mode of being acts (its force).] Purushasya vimokshaartham pravartate tadvadyaktam (Ishvarakrishna, Samkhyakarika, 58, p. 51) [Only for the releasment of purusha that the inarticulable [prakriti] comports with.] In this regard even the praxial goal of releasement also appears to be the telos of prakriti. But that overwhelming power to do and undo existence accrues to prakriti only in its commingling with the other heterogeneous force of para. The Chitrasutra succinctly but pregnantly formulates the effects of the prakriti’s articulable powers. When asked why and how one can give a form to purusha devoid of attributes, the sage invokes the heterogeneous composition of (a)para (prakriti). As the inarticulable prakriti as such transmutes itself it comes forth as vikruti (derivative formation) says the sage. The entirety of jagat (that which moves) emerges as vikruti says the sage. Brahma is one such primal formation that emerges after a protracted permutations and combinations of elements that are differentially generated from 123

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prakriti’s effects. The primal figure is a colossal compendium of all formations of existence. Like the potter, he shapes forms entirely on the basis of the material that prakriti brings forth through its detour; he makes them as he was made. Forms come forth and lend themselves to other formations. The Chitrasutra captures a very complex reflective tradition in the account it gives in the iconography of the figure of Brahma. As the actional generative element (rajas) is predominant in him, Brahma’s colour is reddish – red as it appears at the edge of the lotus. His faces contain the Vedas, his hands the directions (disha). Given that all the moving and stable formations of the entirety of jagat are formed by water he carries the water vessel (kamandala) in one hand; as it absorbs all formational elements into itself time figured as a rosary is in another of his hands. As all actions are composed of refined and pious or unrefined and impious – the antelope skin that covers Brahma is filled with white and black spots. These spots are marks of such deeds (on the basis of which his formation of entities proceeds). The seven swans that carry him are the seven lokas which he peoples with his formations (Sri Vishnudharmottara, 3.46. 7–13, p. 154). In this remarkable iconographic detail this very animal skin (and not its spots) is treated as avidya and maya. That is both vidya and ajnaana (not knowing/ignorance) – indicated by the white and black spots are referred to as the two features/attributes of the same garment. The antelope skin is said to be between vidya and ajnaana. The colour of vikruta (the derivativeformations of prakriti) is dark. Vidyaa shuklaa vinirdishtaa Krishnam ajnaanamuchyate ajnaanavidyaa madhyasthaatva vidyaa parikeertita (Sri Vishnudharmottara, 3.46.5, p. 154) The colour of vidya is white; that of ajnaana is dark. Avidya is in the middle. Avidya straddles between them. What needs to be noted here is that it is not avidya to which vidya is opposed here but to ajnaana. Avidya is not a part of the duality vidya and ajnaana but its basis. Hence: Na krishnaa na tathaa shuklaa (Sri Vishnudharmoottara, 3.47.6, p. 155) [Avidya] is neither black nor white. Vidya and ajnaana are actional spurs that propel actional life in loka. It is through vidya the discerning faculty can pursue the path of releasement; whereas ajnaana would rivet one to the gyrational matrix. All these actional forays are the contrary play of prakriti’s effects. Vidya is often reckoned as superior to ajnaana: Tena vidyeya muttamaa (of them, vidya is noble). [Vishnudharmottara, 3.47.6, p. 155]. Yet that very learning through which 124

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the discerning faculty finds a way out can itself turn into a formidable entanglement. The ways in which the effects of prakriti (vikaaraanscha gunaanschaiva – [through derivative-formations and attributes]) can take the route of pleasure and jnaana as well: Sukha sangena badhnaati jnaana sangena chaanagha (Bhagavadgita, 14.6, p. 683) The associations of pleasure and learning themselves can bind one – O the noble one (Arjuna). In Chapters 47 and 48 of the Chitrasutra, while discussing the icons of Vishnu and Shiva, they are imaged and delineated as permeating the entire jagat only through the effects of prakriti as they give them forms. Nowhere does the primal heterogeneity of para is undermined. Thus the quintessential basis of the formation of entities in general is the differential and generative drives of prakriti; and these very drives are seen as the source of the formation of images. These drives bring forth, orient, disorient, dissolve, and bind and bond forms and relationships among all formations in existence. They determine modes of being and forms of reflection in/as the loka recursively. Prakriti’s drives are the only source we have in dealing with the paralysing aporias that encircle us in our contexts.

Pathmaking Confronted with the metaphysical heritage that determined the thinking of the West, Heidegger persistently unravels the roots of this thinking in the European heritage; the conceptual baggage becomes the resource and target for his unravelling. While dealing with the concept of art, he does not venture to offer yet another concept but instead scrutinises the routes through which such a concept got crystallised. Although he does not explicitly contradict Hegel’s announcement concerning the end of art, he certainly sees the exhaustion of the prevailing concept of art in the West. He searches for a current of reflection which would ‘liberate thought’ and reorient it towards the ‘unthought;’ for the magnitude of its import ‘for the history of occidental Europe and the global civilization that descends from it’ needs to be realised, enunciates Heidegger.49 The unthought lets itself be thought, discloses itself while withdrawing itself. As always, Heidegger turns to the Greeks to thematise this double dynamic of thinking. The name for the double dynamic in Heidegger is Being. In the thinking of Greek antiquity Being discloses itelf as physis, logos, and dike.50 Originarily these terms (and to be more precise, these actional nodes) had (along with another one called techné) shared sense. Heidegger’s work contains intense meditation on three of these crucial terms – physis, logos, and techné. Physis originally denoted a ‘self-blossoming emergence….opening up, unfolding.’ The unfolding of physis encompassed just everything that was brought forth: heaven, earth, stone, plant, 125

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animal, and gods: physis is the process of ‘a-rising, of emerging from the hidden’ and sustenance of what came forth just like the seed bringing forth the plant and letting it stand with sustenance; physis connotes that which emerges and endures. Physis is filiated to techné in the ancient thought. Techné did not mean simply technology or art there. It is a kind of knowledge of the basis or ground of ‘every act of making and producing.’ Techné is the awareness of the end of any making. It is, in other words, the knowhow of what emerges and its telos.51 Similarly logos too has the character of ‘making manifest’ and thus it is opposed to the hidden or concealed (Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 170). Heidegger contends that even before the incursion of Latinate distortions these related senses of self-emerging and unfolding that these terms indicated get vitiated in Greek thought. The secession of logos from physis (and this from Being) began to happen when logos got narrowed down to the notion of reason and being got predominantly named as idea (eidos).52 It is this idea that reduced physis to what is visible – what appears in material form, points out Heidegger. As discussed earlier in this work, the emergence of being as physis is reduced to the emergent, what has emerged. What has emerged is seen as a copy of the prototype – the Idea – the ideal model to which the emerged will have to conform. What appears is seen as a copy of the ideal model. Consequently, what appears is no longer physis – self-manifesting, emerging power of the appearance – but merely the emergence of the copy – ‘a mere appearance, actually an illusion, a deficiency’ (Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 184). The concept of the idea introduced the binary essence and appearance and the ideal and the visible. This transformation from physis to idea ‘gave rise to one of the essential movements in the history of the West, and not only of its art’ (Heidegger, An Introdution to Metaphysics, pp. 184–185). Thought in general gets determined by this metaphysical paradigm, explains Heidegger. Similarly, according to Heidegger, when logos secedes from physis as reason and circulates as a discourse of statements about visible things (essents), the core of being gets determined in terms of categories: properties, proportion, magnitude, and relations among them: ‘The goal of all ontology is a doctrine of categories.’ Being gets determined in terms of categories (Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 187). Thus, when idea and category become sovereign, the relation between statements and being gets vitiated; what is as a whole gets reduced to a correspondence between the statements and what appear as things. Being, as unconcealment, gets ‘forgotten,’ contends Heidegger. When this happens the ‘falling off’ of Western thinking begins. This takes the form of scientific mechanism that tends to view the hidden (the unconcealed) as the reserve to be excavated in accordance with the calculative apparatus unleashed by transformation of physis as eidos (idea) and logos as discursive determination. It is against this ‘fallen’ inheritance which now envelops everything into its fold that Heidegger recalled the essence of thinking (which also goes as 126

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essence of art) as the work of physis. In its self-emergence physis, observes Heidegger, lays claim on humankind; and human intellect and action are to respond to this claim to reveal a world unknown up to then; this is the ‘other beginning’ that we discussed in the first chapter. The work of art (and/as thinking) is an urge like the self-a-rising physis to bring forth the unknown. The work (of art) then is a perennial struggle to bring forth the concealed into the open to bring it into light; but it remains forever delimited (as with the world and entities that physis brings forth: physis ‘lets things emerge through their delimitation’ (Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art,’ p. 127)). For, the concealed cannot be exhausted by or reduced to the revealed or what is already thought: the work as a response to the call of physis, ‘as work, should point towards that which is not yet available to mankind, towards the concealed’ (Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art,’ p. 127). The provenance of art (and/as thought), Heidegger suggests, is in the ‘secret of the still unthought aletheia’ (Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art,’ p. 127). Viewed from this secret source ‘Art corresponds to φύσιν [physis] without, however, being a reproduction or a copy of what is already preset’ (Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art,’ p. 121). Does such a secret have any longer a chance of returning thought and art towards its source in a world which appropriates all ‘secrets’ through its calculative apparatus? ‘That we do not know’ states Heidegger; the secret of aletheia – self-concealed unconcealment – ‘remains inconspicuous and of no importance’ in a world of mathematical sciences (or modern metaphysics), he adds. Yet this very double dynamic of opening into light and withdrawal which ancient Greece has granted humankind is ‘more primordial and consequently more permanent than any work and construct devised and produced by the hand of man,’ observes Heidegger (Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art’, p. 128). Given the inexhaustible concealment (even as it discloses) of Being and given the perennial threat of the calculative nature of the ‘unconditional egoism of human subjectivity,’ (the sovereign power of the human,) can’t the destiny of the work (of art) be relegated to silence, asks Heidegger: Should the work of art not keep silent about that which remains concealed, that which as concealed awakes modesty in the human being, insofar as it here confronts whatever cannot be planned nor controlled, neither calculated nor manufactured? (Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art,’ pp. 126–128) But moving away from this hesitation, Heidegger chooses to affirm the necessity of truth as (concealed) unconcealment and endorses the poetic utterance which has the power (like that of physis) to determine life tearing it ‘from the depth of musing heart’ (Pindar cited in Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art,’ p. 128). This ‘powerless’ word – aletheia – powerless in the eyes of the ‘gigantic laboratory of science and technology,’ this work of physis still beckons the human to respond to its call: bring forth the 127

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unprecedented and incalculable. ‘Art’ may allude to the forgotten in the unconcealment of Being, but as we saw earlier, Heidegger sees the task of ‘thought’ (‘philosophy’) precisely as elucidation and conceptualisation of the allusions of art. It is this relation between ‘art’ and ‘thought’ that does not allow us to forget Hegel in Heidegger’s meditations on art.

Cultural difference If Hegel spelt out the end of art in a mould that was still designed by metaphysics, Heidegger seems to prefer a mode of thought-work that had no use for metaphysical conceptualisations. That mode with filiations of poiesis (physis), techné, and logos worked out another destiny for existence. What all this intense meditation alludes to, though Heidegger does not say this, is that the ‘Pagan’ modes of being and forms of reflection have the potential to limit the aggression European metaphysics – if only the Pagan were to relearn to listen to the intimations of his/her heritage. The Indian thinking pertaining to the emergence of form in general from the effects of prakriti here differs significantly from Heidegger’s thinking about art and thought through the resources of physis/Being. Physis/Being has the double power or is a dual dynamic. It unfolds itself and comes forth as much as it conceals and withdraws. One does not exhaust the other; on the contrary they seem to reinforce each other through their exclusive togetherness. Thus physis is Being’s unfoldment in terms of delimited essents. But the essents of Being cannot exhaust the essence of Being. For revelation/unfoldment reiterates the concealment and withdrawal of Being. It is precisely in this dual dynamic that Heidegger sees the call of physis to human intellect to bring forth the unprecedented, to raid on the concealed and unfold or disclose it in history. Although Heidegger is acutely aware of the fate of physis and its disclosure of essents – in terms of scientific technology’s reduction of physis to exploitable resources at hand – he still sees the call of physis for productive unfoldment as the only and authentic response to the essence of Being. He sees this as the task of human work: ‘The work, as work, should point towards the concealed’ (Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art,’ p. 127). The concealed, what withdraws, is the essence of thought and its food for thought says Heidegger (Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, p. 25). A-letheia is the only mission that he sees as the appropriate response to the call of physis. Caught in the effects of the primal heterogeneous forces, entities circulate in the actional struggle – they are all actional beings; and none can escape actional circuits. Here, in the thinking of India, the focus is not so much on work/action (for the complicity between actional modes of being and existence is irreducible) but on the effects and relationships one nurtures towards these effects of actions. If action is ineluctable and if it can take place only within the matrix that prakriti entails, then one must be attentive to 128

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the relation that one nurtures with regard to the actions and their effects. Actions and their effects bind and bond one to the machinic circle of existence. The way out is not – as Heidegger’s response to physis’ call indicates – bringing forth, unfolding, and disclosing the concealed. The actional impetus propels one to do this in existence (whether mere repetition or presumed invention – all are actional modes) anyway. The ‘call’ of physis and the necessity of decision, as discussed earlier, and the whole dynamic of revelation and concealment, is in the shadow of the theological idiom. The difference in the actional world does not seem to entail from different types of action as such – but eschewing the danger of investing in the effects of action. Such a relationship of passional possessive unification with the effects of one’s actions can only reinforce the path of strife leading towards relentless sorrow. It is precisely in this context that nurturing distance from the effects of one’s immersive action is seen as a possible way out within the actional matrix of existence: to be able to give up the effects of one’s actions rather than murderously protect them as one’s own extensions. Here it should be clear that one does not find a withdrawal (or renunciation) from the actional world (which is impossible) and seek some transcendental realm. The critical difference between Heidegger’s thematisation of Greek thought and what the Indian traditions embody is not so much with regard to work (actional modes of being) as such but essentially with regard to a relational attunement towards the effects of actional modes: the discerning capability to give up the fruit of action and not any indulgence in the actional world for further bringing forth the concealed nor renunciation of it. These very different orientations, perhaps, can help us configure the cultural difference between India and Europe and enable us to think of our (un)common destiny beyond Europe and ‘Europe’s’ India.

Destitute present Something has snapped, said V.S. Naipaul in a painful tone, years ago reflecting on the stagnation of Indian creative dynamic. ‘Since the schools of Kangra and Basholi, Indian art has been all confusion,’ he added.53 In painting ‘there is no longer an Indian tradition, India is dependent on Europe,’ for nearly a century, he observed a few years later, after lavishing praise on Indian sculpture of the past: ‘Indian sculpture once it has begun to yield its meaning can have the effect of undermining one’s faith in the art of Europe… sculpture is a living, almost elemental art of India… [It is] the iconographic treasure of an old many-layered civilisation.’54 But India’s ‘vital sap has at last failed,’ he declared (Naipaul, An Area of Darkness, p. 222). He finds the reason for the rupture in the British: ‘With the British, continuity was broken. And perhaps the British are responsible for the Indian artistic failure’ (Naipaul, An Area of Darkness, p. 222). Something has snapped: Shiva has 129

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ceased to dance, Naipaul said. Even decades after independence, India has no autonomous intellectual life, he observed.55 Surely Naipaul is a writer and no authority on art, one could say. But no art historian has been able to write with the pain and involvement about Indian creativity and its stagnation as Naipaul did. Unlike Naipaul who attributed this failure to the British rule, B.N. Goswamy’s recent work suggests more technically the beginnings of variations (or divergence) between the long continuous tradition of painting across (what is usually classified as) Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain art and Islamic (Sultanate and Mughal) period. Painting was not an organised activity in Rajasthani, Deccani, Pahari traditions, as it was in the Mughal courts. Painting halls, workshops, and ustads organised and controlled painting in the latter scenario. They introduced different kinds of visualisation such as observed landscapes, perspectivised images, ‘naturalism,’ portraits – especially of patrons, representation of time, celebration of visual glory of royal power (as in Byzantine period, though Goswamy does not say this) (Goswamy, The Spirit of Indian Painting, pp. 30–45). Even when the painters were Hindu, they were compelled to abide by the command of the ustads of the atelier who were all Muslims (Goswamy, The Spirit of Indian Painting, p. 29). But from these learned technical details we barely can find a more comprehensive inquiry into the reflective creative currents of the Indian tradition. Goswamy’s work is meticulous and elegant but is information and periodbased and investigative. His work is lapidary but he takes no risks in envisioning a novel approach to suturing the ruptured creative fabric nor even configuring it. The contrast and difference between Coomaraswamy and Goswamy can’t be more eloquent. Though the latter admiringly cites Coomaraswamy he does not venture to take the risk of configuring cultural difference. Coomaraswamy’s risk (to offer a theory) ends up being a repetition rather than a novel opening to explore the difference. Yet they both, in different ways though (Goswamy through sociological-historical-informational mode and Coomaraswamy through the Christian theological path), remain in complicity in embracing the passages that the West has bestowed upon us. But the art historical discourse in recent times has moved on in more strident ways to ‘internationalize’ itself. Its stridency appears to be in inverse relation with the insights it can offer in reorienting approaches to the past. Postcolonial intellectual destitution continues to foreclose risky inquiries into our ‘multi-layered’ inheritances. Modernism, avers Partha Mitter, can be said to have entered in India in December 1922 (a ‘convenient entry point’). That’s the year when Tagore, soon after his return from Europe, arranged an exhibition of the Bauhaus art works including those of Kandinsky and Klee in Calcutta. Modernism is here seen as a ‘stylistic’ revolution and its syntax can be used ‘decontextually’ by anyone, says Mitter. The Indian artists adopted ‘the new language of modernism’ due to changes in the ‘artistic imperatives’ in a globalised world. With this adaption, the

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Indian taste is said to have graduated from ‘Victorian naturalism to nonrepresentational’ Cubist modernism.56 The ‘triumph’ of the new that Indian art discourse wishes to celebrate ironically ends up glorifying the Western concepts and movements of art. Gita Kapur’s account of the moment of ‘modernism’ literally turns out to be a roll-call of Western events and names: Indian artists from time to time derived their inspiration from (‘adapted’ to use Mitter’s epithet) a Parisian aesthetic, ‘hegemonic American notions of freedom, a liberationist rhetoric, magical realism of the Latin world, an anti-aesthetic or a postmodern stance.’ This narrative of stylistic (or revolutionary, subversive) transformations in the Western art history are couched in a political–economic language to show the relationship between ‘material and cultural worlds.’57 As India, Kapur contends, precipitates itself into the international economic circuitry, Indian artist too seeks to be a part of the art international (Kapur, When was Modernism, p. 299). As she prefers ‘political’ rather than ‘counter-metaphysical’ critique (as if the concept of the political is free from the metaphysical) the concept of modernism gets adapted even without a minimal reexamination: Modernism ‘is a[n “incomplete”] project figuring subjectivity as a locus of political consciousness.’ This rather derivative textbook version of the concept of subjective consciousness as inaugurating a new departure (‘break’) in Western intellectual history gets assimilated to advance the story of Indian modernism (Kapur, When was Modernism, pp. 307–308). Quite often in cultures that are yet to find their bearings in the aftermath of colonial rupture, contexts of production of ideas and concepts from elsewhere receive more attention and prominence than the contexts into which they are received. The legacy of such asymmetric relation can be seen to regulate our accounts of our situations even today. Partha Mitter legitimises his free adaption of European ideas, concepts, and trends in the Indian context by means of rightful ‘decontextualization:’ ‘styles past and present can be taken out of their original context for entirely new modernist projects’ elsewhere (Mitter, The Triumph of Modernism, p. 27). Here the ‘artistic imperative’ to adapt modernism apparently urges him/her to decontextualise. By default, the ‘styles’ and concepts gain their prominence and receive much attention due to their ‘original’ context (though, Mitter is critical of the idea of the original and ‘pure’ – but his entire work is deeply dependent upon what was achieved in the intellectual and creative history of the West). The context of reception (here, India) gets projected as ‘pluralizing’ (or ‘parallel’ for Gita Kapur) modernism. As we have seen above, for all analytical purposes the concept and its substance remain firmly tethered to the ‘original’ context and the distinction of its reception elsewhere, the locations into which they invade or get ‘received,’ is not probed through any serious engagement. Consequently, the context which ‘adapts’ the ‘new’ appears as passive and the necessity to inquire into what is received or imposed upon it is barely addressed. The Western ‘device’ of style, Mitter goes on, yielded ‘rich new crop in the Indian context’ (Mitter, The Triumph of Modernism, p. 27). We 131

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never get to know what the context (beyond superficial geographical or politico-economic indicators) is; apart from simple roll-calls of artists, their work, and their exposure to Euro-American ‘movements’ we never get to know what reflective space modernism as the emergence of subjective consciousness can have in the enduring Indian traditions that persistently undermined such ipsocratic (epistemic sovereignty) drive. The glaring absence of such basic inquiry into the relationship between what is borrowed and the (alleged) context of borrowing gets betrayed in unexamined confessions such as: ‘Cubism was merely a passing phase in India’ (Mitter, The Triumph of Modernism, p. 27). But it turns out from Mitter’s and Kapur’s accounts that the entire project celebrating the ‘triumph’ of modernism is patched with such passing phases. The new phase, according to Mitter, that replaces Cubism is ‘primitivism.’ But this new ism (primitivism or ‘ruralism’) is also seen as the reaction-formation to yet another passing ‘new’ phase which simply borrowed ‘artistic styles’ and trends of the West. In actuality ‘primitivism’ in India as the ‘most compelling voice of modernism,’ Mitter’s account reveals, appears to be little more than treating the local peasant or tribal figure in painting. But, confesses Mitter without any embarrassment, primitivism too like Cubism ‘did not spawn [sic] any devoted followers’ despite the fact that Tagore and Amrita Sher-Gil were said to be the key primitivists of India (Mitter, The Triumph of Modernism, p. 227). If Calcutta turned to Paris for inspiration, Bombay sought out Viennese refugees to become the international modern. In the meanwhile, the shadow-boxing of the discourse of art moves on deflecting the necessary work of thinking. After providing a celebratory account of modern Indian art scenario, Gita Kapur is besieged by a self-doubt. It is ‘worth asking,’ she says in a confessional mode, ‘if all questions of aesthetics [the roll-calls and name droppings that compose the account] might not be mocked out of discussion at the level of ground realities….’ But then the ‘ground realities’ she turns to are still part of the received politico-economic and technological talk. Pointing to an asymmetric scenario, she avers, we do not have ‘command of technology and media and of international market…we do not have the beckoning of the historical avant-garde that Europe conceived….’ (Kapur, When was Modernism, p. 320). Her concern about ground realities gets once again formulated in the languid account of the hierarchic relation between material and cultural worlds. No wonder Gita Kapur’s reference to ground realities even for a second turns her to see the need to reflect on the question of the place that the concept and discourse of art may (or may not) have in the deeply spread out and widely enduring modes of being and forms of reflection that brought forth Indian cultural forms and formations. It does not turn her towards the necessity to configure cultural difference on the basis of reflective integrity that Indian traditions have sustained over a very long period. In a word, there is no rethinking about the very notion of the context of reception and 132

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the need to undertake the risky thinking concerning the possibility of the latter’s reflective integrity. Such questions and inquires can contribute to rearticulating the notion of being human in the relentlessly ravaged times and contexts in which we live, think, and relate to others. But such inquiries get foreclosed in the trendy ‘internationalized’ narratives of politico-economic or art-talk structures (while denying their significance) and their conditioning of barely rethought discourse of art, artist, and art work in the Indian context. Such discourses and narratives have failed to open up new passageways to reorient our approaches to our pasts. On the contrary, ironically, these failures and foreclosures have spawned and fattened the virulence they fear: they forebode ominous times in the present. At least 100 years of disorientation has pushed us into strangulating conceptual triangles and paralysing aporias. Intellectual destitution is a situation in which we do not know what questions we should ask and what kind of inquiries we should pursue. Our ailing institutions of higher learning are barely in a position to plunge into the crisis and weave resources for reorienting ourselves. But it is precisely from such abyssal crisis one should grope for intimations that would help us clear the path of our inquiries. On this interminable trajectory art is just one domain; but there are others. Given the double bind that structures our lives of the mind, one move in our situation could be to actually strategically unravel the very conceptual grid (the triangle) that enframes our disciplines, discourses, and institutions. But this unravelling can be undertaken only as we learn to listen to the intimations that our ‘multi-layered civilisation,’ our enduring mnemocultural inheritances release from our very existence. The starting point of our inquiries could be none other than the biocultural formations that continue to form us even in skewed ways. Such inquiries must move on individually and collectively across all kinds of constraints and risk the much-needed rethinking and reorientation of ourselves from our contexts. There appears to be a much deeper infrastructure to the triangle that we see in the (Hegelian) discussion of art, the triangle formed of philosophy, art, and religion. The deeper one implicit all along in the European heritage seems to get more explicitly thematised in the 17th and 18th centuries. In other words, modern metaphysics renders the deeper foundation into an object of knowledge. The deeper triangle is formed by the conceptions of God, the World, and Man. Each of these expressions became a domain of knowledge in the age of reason. ‘God as the creator,’ wrote Heidegger, ‘the world as the created, man and his salvation; these are the three domains defined by Christian thought within what is, as a whole.’ – that is, metaphysics. In the age of reason, these domains are, under modern metaphysics, turned into theology, cosmology, and psychology – each one reconfigured by means of rationality of ‘pure reason’ (Heidegger, What is a Thing?, pp. 109–112). What place does such a triangle and its rational lines of thought have in other cultures? How does this double dynamic of reason and faith work in other contexts? The next chapter engages with the most seminal 133

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themes of this triangle (the world, ‘nature,’ and man) in the context of Indian reflections on loka in relation to modes of being through an inquiring ethos implicit in Indian traditions.

Notes 1 Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking? Glenn Gray (trans), New York: Harper and Row, 1968, p. 6 (italics in the original). 2 IGNCA is the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts established in Delhi which ‘concentrates on the theoretical and textual traditions of Intellectual discourse in the Indian arts.’ The Centre brought out a series of volumes pertaining to ‘Indian arts’ since the 80s. Cf., Pervasive Terms: Vyapti, Kalatattvakosha – vol. 1, Bettina Baumer (ed), Delhi: IGNCA and Motilal Banarsidass, 1988, p. v. The Centre’s project developed under the leadership of Kapila Vatsyayan. Similarly, the Project on the History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization (PHISPC), aims at ‘discovering the main aspects of India’s heritage.’ Under this project several volumes have been brought out under the stewardship of D.P. Chttopadhyaya. 3 It is a mystery that the multi-volume lexicon that IGNCA produced under the name kalatattvakosha, has no entry on the very source term called kala. 4 Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ, R.J. Hollingdale (trans), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,1990, p. 131. 5 Plato, Republic, Robin Waterfield (trans), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 232–245; Dennis Schmidt, Between Word and Image: Heidegger, Klee, and Gadamer on Gesture and Genesis, Bloomington: Indian University Press, 2013, pp. 28–35. 6 Heidegger, ‘Epilogue,’ in ‘The Origin of the Work of Art,’ in Poetry, Language, Thought, Albert Hofstadter (trans), New York: Harper& Row, 1971, p. 79. 7 Marie-Jose Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy: The Byzantine Origins of the Contemporary Imaginary, Rico Frances (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005, p. 2. For the Augustine question, pp. 23–24. 8 Heidegger, What is a Thing? W.B. Barton, Jr. and Vera Deutsch (trans), Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1967, pp. 109–110. 9 Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, T.M. Knox (trans), vol. 1, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010, pp. 29–30. 10 It is this a priori formulation of the thesis or theorem which is the essential peculiarity of modern metaphysics, contends Heidegger. Cf., Heidegger, What is a Thing? pp. 92–117. 11 Cf., Rodolphe Gasché for a stimulating discussion of this issue in his critique of Said’s Orientalism in ‘Hegel’s Orient, or the End of Romanticism,’ in The Stelliferous Fold: Toward a Virtual Law of Literature’s Self-Formation, New York: Fordham University Press, 2011, pp. 231–246. 12 In the critique of Said’s Orientalism mentioned earlier, Gasché offers an insightful commentary on Hegel’s tripartite account and the place of the orient in this conceptual schema. While discussing the romantic phase Gasché sees the discrepancy between the spirit and expression leading art to return to its pre-art phase of the symbolic. As is well known in the romantic phase the spirit extricates itself to present itself to itself. It indicates a sort of withdrawal of spirit into itself. Gasché contends that the final blossoming of the romantic can be seen in the immersive relation to the object – where objects are dealt with entirely contemplatively. The best example of the romantic that Gasché goes on to offer in this context (from Hegel) is problematic. The best exemplification of such (romantic) art, for Hegel, states Gasché, comes from Arab and Persian work. Such ‘an

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absorption in the life of its object [poetry] and the sentiment it inspires, so that selfishness and egotism are utterly banished.’ This may be so in Oriental poetry. But how would Gasché (or Hegel) reconcile such an exemplar with the supreme Christian truth which Hegel definitely denied to Islam? What would be the implications of such an exemplification to the postulation of the symbolic? If such a state can be achieved in the symbolic phase why advance the romantic as a different type? If the oriental and the occidental can be reconciled in the return of the romantic to the symbolic how would one explain the powerful formations of iconocracy and ipsocracy in the sovereign thrust of Europe? Gasché does not broach these questions and underplays the theological imports of Hegel’s thesis. ‘Hegel’s Orient,’ in The Stelliferous Fold, pp. 231–246. It is possible, however, that there may be some inconsistency in Hegel’s account itself. It has come to light in the recent years that Hegel’s lectures were collected from two sources – his notebook and his students’ notes. These latter contributed to some discrepancy in the reception of his lectures on aesthetics. This was drawn out in an extended discussion of Sallis (showing the inconsistency in Hegel’s praise of the Dutch Masters and their use of colour on the one hand and his account of the end of art on the other). Cf. John Sallis, Transfigurements: On the True Sense of Art, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008, pp. 74–104. 13 The phrase quoted is from the title of Allison Ross’s The Aesthetic Paths of Philosophy: Presentation in Kant, Heidegger, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Nancy, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. 14 Cf., For instance the very engaging readings of some of the post-Hegelian artists in the recent works of Denis Schmidt, Between Word and Image; and John Sallis, Transfigurements. 15 Agamben argues that the domination of the idea of ‘aesthetic taste’ as the perspective of the ‘disinterested spectator’ has had detrimental effect on Western culture. Nietzsche sought to overturn this by bringing in the artist’s or creator’s view. Cf. Agamben, The Man without Content, Georgia Albert (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, pp. 1–3. 16 Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (trans), New York: Vintage Books, 1967, p. 419. 17 Heidegger, ‘The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,’ Joan Stambaugh (trans), David Farrell Krell (ed), in Basic Writings, New York: Harper & Row, 1977, pp. 178–179. 18 This is a composition of primal significance in the context of the visual ‘arts’ of India – a text celebrated as the encyclopaedia of Indian painting – the Chitrasutra (Aphorisms of the Visual), more specifically, the third khanda (part) of the massive Sri Vishnudharmottara Mahapurana, K.V.S. Deekshitulu & D.S. Rao (trans), P. Seetaramanjaneyulu (ed), Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arshabharati Trust, 1988. 19 Anandavardhana, Dhvanyalokamu (with Lochana), Pullela Sreeramachndrudu (trans), Hyderabad: Sri Jayalakshmi Publications, 1998, 1.6, pp. 209–209. 20 Even when India develops or deals with ‘universal categories,’ observed Charles Malamoud, (categories such as continuity/discontinuity, repetition/difference, principal/remainder, perishable/permanent, immediate/deference, fullness/emptiness etc,) they ‘come to be arrived at in the course of speculation on the sacrificial act.’ Sacrificial acts are very particular actional modes of being, rendered in precisely demarcated time and space or situations. Actional modes of being articulate thinking and not semantic theorisations preceding and regulating actions as legitimising accounts. Cf., Malamoud, Cooking the World: Ritual and Thought in Ancient India, David White (trans), Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 4. 21 Mandakranta Bose, Movement and Mimesis: The Idea of Dance in the Sanskritic Tradition, Delhi: DK. Printwood, 2007, pp. 13–107.

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22 Rajasekhara, Kavyamimamsa, Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (trans), Hyderabad: Sri Jayalakshmi Publications, 2003, 2.5, p. 13. 23 Bharata, Natyasastram, Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (trans), Hyderabad: P.N. Sastry, 2014, 6.7, p. 209. 24 Shukraneetisara, K.A. Singaracharyulu (trans), Nalgonda: Sahity Sanmana Samithi, 2003, 4.3. p. 286. 25 Cf., Doris Meth Srinivasan (ed), Mathura; The Cultural Heritage, Delhi: Manohar, AIIS, 1989; Susan L Huntington with Contributions by John C. Huntington, The Art of Ancient India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2014; Partha Mitter, Indian Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; Stuart Cary Welsch, India: Art and Culture 1300-1900, New York: MOMA and Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985; Tapati-Guha Thakurtha, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India, Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2007. 26 S.N. Balagangadhara, ‘The Heathen in His Blindness…’: Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion, Leiden: Brill, 1994. 27 R.N. Misra, ‘Art and Religion: A Study of Relations in Early India,’ in B.N. Goswamy (ed), Indian Art: Forms, Concerns and Development in Historical Perspective, Delhi: PHISPC, p. 60. 28 Aananda Coomaraswamy, ‘Introduction to the art of East Asia,’ Roger Lipse, (ed), in Coomaraswamy: Selected Papers: Traditional Art and Symbolism, vol.1, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series LXXXIX, 1977, p. 101. 29 Coomaraswamy, ‘Christian and Oriental, or True, Philosophy of Art,’ in Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, New York: Dover Publications, 1956, pp. 32–34, and fn. 28 p. 56. 30 Coomaraswamy, ‘Paroksa,’ in The Transformation of Nature in Art, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1974, pp. 123–132. 31 Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnakara, R.K. Shringy and Prem Lata Sharma (trans), vol.1, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2007, pp. 90–104. 32 Bettina Baumer, ‘Yoga and Art: An Indian Approach,’ Indian Art, p. 79. 33 Pushpa Tiwari, ‘Bimba-Pratibimba,’ in Kalatattvakosha, vol. vi, Delhi: IGNCA and Motilal Banarsidass, 2008, pp. 161–162. 34 Anamika Roy, ‘Anukarana/Anukriti/Anukirtana,’ in Kalatattvakosha, vol. vi, pp. 67, 72, 83. 35 V.S. Pathak and R.N. Misra, ‘Words and Image in Reference to Technique in Indian Art,’ Journal of Asiatic Society of Bombay (JASB), 1981–1984 [56–59], pp. 281–282. 36 R.N. Misra, ‘Rupa-Prtirupa,’ Kalatattvakosha, vol. v, pp. 78, 116. 37 Kramrisch cited by Alice Boner in her introduction to a Kramrisch collection, Exploring India’s Sacred Art: Selected Writings of Stella Kramrisch (ed), Barbara Stoler Miller, Delhi: IGNCA and Motilal Banarsidass, 1994, p. 4. 38 In the footsteps of Stella Kramrisch, Alice Boner too sees the Indian temple as a ‘universe of effigy’ incarnating gods’ presence. The temple is a ‘manifested divinity’ serving the ascensional and descensional movement of the divine into the phenomenal. Cf., Boner’s Introduction to Silpa Prakasa by Ramachandra Mahapatra Kaula Bhattaraka, Alice Boner and Sadasiva Rath Sarma (trans), Delhi: IGNCA and Motilal Banarsidass, 2005, p. 14. 39 B.N. Goswamy, Essence of Indian Art, San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 1986, p. 19. 40 B.N. Goswamy, The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close Encounters with 101 Great Works, 1100-1900, Haryana: Allen Lane, 2014, p. 20. 41 K.A. Jacobsen, ‘Prakriti,’ Kalatattvakosa, vol. iii, p. 38. 42 Heidegger, ‘Only A God can Save Us: The Spiegel Interview,’ William J. Richardson (trans), Der Spiegel, 1976, [23], 62.

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43 Srimad Bhagavadgita, Krishnamacharyulu and Goli Venkataramayya (trans), Gorakhpur: The Gita Press, 2003, 18.40, p. 819. 44 Sri Vaayumahapuranamu, Mulampalli Chandraseharasarma (trans), Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arsha Bharati Trust, 2003, vol. 1, 1.5.9, p. 30. 45 Jacobsen, ‘Prakriti,’ Kalatattvakosa, vol. III, p. 2. 46 R.N. Misra, ‘Silpa,’ Kalatattvakosha, vol.1, pp. 193–194. The quoted line is from a commentary on Nighantu. ‘Sheelyate abhyasya ta iti shilpam’ – that which is practiced, says a gloss in Amarakosamu. Cf., Amarakosamu, Ch. Seshacharyulu (trans), Hyderabad: Sri Jayalakshmi Publications, pp. 614–615. 47 In this context it may be mentioned that Malamoud’s work on the sacrificial origin of existence and thought is quite significant. Although he is, more than any other scholar, aware of the remainder status of existence – existence as a non-originary repetitive emergence, he continues like other Indological scholars to privilege the sacrificial figure of Prajapati (Hiranyagarbha). Malamoud points out that the sacrificial rite is not a secondary one in contrast to some primary raw, natural word as such. The entirety of existence comes forth, Mamaloud observes, as already cooked (by the sun); the sacrifice merely reckons it. In his account, however, Prajapati is the primal sacrificial victim and performer of sacrifice and it is from his sacrificial dispersal of himself that the multi-fold world emerges. But how does this sacrificial Prajapati figure itself come into existence? Does the sacrificial model explain the emergence of this figure? When we don’t pursue this question further, we may end up privileging anthropomorphic origination story of the world. In such a context the reflection pertaining to the heterogeneous forces of prakriti and purusha advances the experience that the anthropomorphic entity is just one form – a belated arrival – among the countless forms and denies the latter any sovereign status. Secondly, this account provides the very basis of actional existence (which is not reducible to human action/sacrifice alone though this gets foregrounded in human existence.) Malamoud’s work does not turn towards this equally Vedic reflective account in relating ritual and thought in the Indian context. Cf. Malamoud, Cooking the World, pp 23–51. 48 Isvarakrishna, Samkhyakarika. R. Koteswarasarma (trans), Hyderabad: Arsha Vijnana Trust, 1996, 57, p. 50. 49 Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art and the Destination of Thought,’ Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2013, 44[2], 126–128. 50 Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Ralph Manheim (trans), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979, p. 164. 51 Heidegger, ‘On the Essence and Concept of φύσιν [physis] in Aristotle’s Physics B 1’ in William McNeil, (ed., trans.), Pathmarks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 192. 52 Incidentally, Heidegger traces the concept of idea to vidya; only the phoneme v is dropped from the word idea, he says. It is doubtful whether Heidegger ever continued to meditate on the divergence of these terms in any sustained way. Cf. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars: Protocols-Conversations-Letters, Franz Mayr and Richard Askay (trans), Medard Boss (ed), Evanston: North Western University Press, 2001, p. 158. 53 V. S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness, 1964; London: Picador, 1995, p. 222. 54 V.S. Naipaul, ‘Art and its Illusions,’ New York Review of Books,1979 [22], p. 9. 55 V.S. Naipual, A Writer’s People: Ways of Looking and Feeling, London: Picador, 2007, p. 191. 56 Partha Mitter, The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922–1947, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 9–15. 57 Gita Kapur, When was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practices in India, Delhi: Tulika, 2000, p. 298.

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4 INQUIRING ETHOS AND THE ENIGMA OF DIFFERENCE Broaching the mnemocultures of humanities Constitutive contradictions The discourse of the humanities emerges where the human as such gets configured; where the human is the object and subject of reflection and representation of the human: ‘[M]an and, in general, every rational being exists as an end in himself…’.1 Concepts such as the humanities ‘become meaningful within the occidental orb of metaphysics or philosophy…’ (Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, p. 112). In cultures that faced colonialism such a discourse is an illegitimate legacy of Europe; illegitimate, because the colonised were not the intended direct addressees of the humanities and their institution called the university. Whether such a human-centred discourse is intelligible among the unintended addressees is still a barely addressed question from these locations. The humanities teacher/student remains contradictorily constituted in such locations: an alien discourse whose roots are in a metaphysical-theological cultural heritage on the one hand and the experience of lively cultures of memory which cannot be easily subsumed under the pervasive alien and inimical discourse of the humanities on the other. The contradiction is blatant when such cultures of memory are impelled to reflect on their situation from within the dominant discursive frame. There is no easy way out of such a predicament. One tends to learn that the way ‘home’ (if there is one) is roundabout and that the way out (if there is any) is only the way through: one moves in the double bind persistently, restlessly. To address oneself to the other in the language of the other is both the condition of all possible justice, it seems, but, in all rigor, it appears not only impossible (since I cannot speak the language of the other except to the extent that I appropriate it and assimilate it according to the law [loi] of an implicit third) but even excluded by justice as law, inasmuch as justice as law seems to imply an element of universality, the appeal to a third party who suspends the unilaterality or singularity of the idioms.2 The language of the other suffers a double impossibility, a double denial in this conception: it must be translated into the ‘neutral’ language which (the

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‘implicit third’) may be universal but which erases the singularity of the accent and idiom of the other. The language of the universal systematically forces the language of the (‘particular’/empirical) other into an appropriative and assimilative discourse. This asymmetric structure continues to determine Europe’s relation to Pagan non-Europe. In antiquity and in modern times, however, Pagan can be said to spell the limit of Europe’s invasive thought. But disregarding the limit, Europe advanced to appropriate and assimilate the Pagan into its structure of thinking. The work of Heidegger and of Derrida thematises in different ways the place of the Pagan (though they do not take recourse to this term) in limiting European thought. If Heidegger is more explicit and direct in sensing the Pagan, Derrida is more oblique and appears rather equivocal. This chapter, emerging from the double bind of the domain of humanities continues the inquiry into cultural difference initiated in this work. More specifically, this chapter focuses on the deeply sedimented concepts of the West like the ‘world,’ ‘nature,’ ‘action,’ and the ‘human’ in relation to the cultural background that generates such concepts. As a part of the exploration this chapter makes the risky attempt to figure out the background that sustained the enduring continuity of Indian traditions. The work here takes a more contrastive trajectory than a comparative one. The term ‘Indian’ traditions, as I have used in this work so far, is not meant to refer to some homogeneous lot already fully formed: tradition is a task to be undertaken. This contrastive engagement emphasises the necessity of reorienting learning and inquiry in the discursive and institutional contexts today.

Differential horizons Perhaps what is most urgently needed but barely nurtured today is the ethos of living with difference. Ethos as dwelling must attune one to cohabit with the unlikely – be that human or non-human. But difference is the poison/gift that can vitiate relations through rigidified divisions and rigorously opposed categorisations, which can whip up passions. Perhaps one way of sensing the vicissitudes of the impulse of difference is by exploring the relation between modes of being and forms of reflection that an ethos (dwelling) nurtures enduringly. While differentiating itself from another – an ethos can also enable reflections on the question of difference in general. What is called existence unfolds with (in) the background of an ethos. Indian reflective modes of being can be said to engage with the enigma of difference in the most sensitive and incisive but comprehensive and exhaustive ways. An intra-differential trait like ‘cultural difference’ of India can perhaps be configured by means of the modes of figuration and articulation of its reflective formations and practices. The planet that we inhabit is composed of ‘a differentiated ensemble’3 – heterogeneous clusters of co-habiting entities: biocultural formations, their traditions of learning, and media of transmission. If there is one persistent current of Indian reflective formations across millennia, it concerns the 139

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question of how to live with the heterogeneous – with something very unlike oneself: tangible/intangible, life/death, thing/no-thing, human/non-human, and so on. In any attempt to address this question (of difference) one is required first to sense what is common, if any, to all the infinitely varied formations. What strikes one as common here are the notions or ‘facts’ of form and relation across all these formations. What is the reflective-performative status of form/relation in the heterogeneity of Indian formations? It appears that there is no essential or ontological difference among the infinity of differentiable forms, be they rooted or moving, divine or human, dead or alive, oneiric or perceptual/cognisable. The impulse of differentiability in Indian traditions is seen as the effect of what is called prakriti (the bounteous generative force); consequently, all forms are exposed to the recursivity of finite emergences. The differentiable, however, is a recursive emergence of/from the undifferentiable; and it opens up repeatedly a double difference: within the differentiables and between the differentiable and the non-­ differentiable. The latter is radically heterogeneous to the former. The emergence and articulation of differentiables, however, always implies a median instant: vyakta madhyaani.4 Form in general is an instantial medium that surges up from and submerges into the undifferentiable which is quintessentially inarticulable. But the pervasive undifferentiable and inarticulable inheres (that is, ‘related’ to) in every singular formation of the medial instantial emergences. If prakriti brings forth differentiations and formations, para (the non-formable) circulates as the radically nondifferentiable ‘relation’ within the formed entities: Ahamaatmaa goodakeshaa sarvabhutaashaya stithah ahamaadishcha madhyancha bhutaanaamanta evacha.5 (Bhagavadgita, 2003, 10.20, p. 533) ‘I am’ in all the elements, ‘I am’ in at the origin, middle, and end of all the elements, O vanquisher of sleep (Arjuna) (‘says’ para). In the Indian context, the inquiry into the question of living with radically different seems to emerge from this structural ‘relation’ between the differentiable and non-differentiable. Every instantial medium, every formation is thus exposed to inquire into and sense the enigma of the undifferentiable/ inarticulable from within the disseminated singularities of every formation. The emergent formations have the capability to sense, learn, and know. But this capacity is vulnerable; it tends to get obsessed with the differentials and reckons the instantial medium as an end in itself. Such capability indulges in serving itself and forces other formations to surrender to and serve this capability. It views the entirety of the differentiable regime as self-serving arena of differential beings. Consequently, such capability disregards or fails to see the decisive limits of the differentiable and the heterogeneous inherence of para. Such an indulgent capability is suicidal, for it condemns itself to the machinic gyrations of the differentiable circuit. 140

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Contrary cohabitations Primarily, form can be understood as a perceptible spatio-temporal unit with or without any objective correlatives. Such an understanding, for instance, differentiates forms of dream and wakeful states. As states and relations, however, even these very modes are also part of the differentiable formations. The understanding that entails these states and relations can perceive and access only that which has a form and which can be related. Thus, by definition, any and every unit that emerges cannot perceive para – the unformable. For, the latter cannot be circumscribed by the perceptual and spatio-temporal factors which are constitutive of any formation. But at the same time, para cannot be designated as the super-sensuous, beyond (meta) the physical; for it inheres in the formations of the physical, perceptual, and relational. Similarly, the form or formation cannot be described as the perceptualisation of the imperceptible. In other words, there can be no continuities between the non-formational para (the other) and the formational apara (non-para or prakriti). Therefore, one cannot assume any kind of derivational or mimetic or incarnational relation between apara and para. Such relations are completely unintellibigle in the Indian context. What is of utmost importance in this case is: the cohabitation of the heterogeneous. Such cohabitation is recursively co-emergent and co-terminous with the emergences and formations of the differentiable instants. Indeed, it is the instantial formations alone that imply the possibility of ‘sensing’ para through the differentiable folds of apara. The transient emergences of instants alone provide the possibility of the peculiar relation between the heterogeneous pair: it is a relationship of non-relationship. Para’s inherence cannot be measured and figured out spatio-temporally; para’s a-topality makes possible its dispersal from subparticulate (anoraneeyaam) to galactic formations (mahato maheeyaam). In other words, in the very interstices of the vulnerable, selfserving, disavowing, autonomy-claiming, and mastery-seeking differential formational apparatus resides and circulates para (samsarateetyaatmaa)6 as the non-sovereign, un-masterable, immeasurable, and ungraspable force which reiterates the limits of the apparatus. The a-topal para infinitely intersperses with the finite formations. How to live the aporia of the heterogeneous remains the most challenging praxial task of the Indian traditions. What occludes the discernment of limits and prevents the sensing of para is none other than the transient finite apparatus itself, which shelters that which far exceeds the shelter. In a way apara as the condition of possibility of access to para can also turn into the condition of impossibility of such reach. As formationality in general, apara is both enabling and paralysing; it enables learning and access to para as long as it works in the absolute medium with limits; when the effects of apara are seen as the ends in themselves and disregard the limits of their finite instantiality, they paralyse the possibility of learning and sensing of para. Formations of apara whirl around in a machinic circle. With its perceptual seductions and gratifications apara can possess anyone as a spectral force (maaya); it binds and 141

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bonds entities to formations and relations. As it forecloses learning and access, it is a form of nescience. The spectral force of nescience covers up para with formations the way the sun and moon are covered up in an eclipse: Raahugrasta divaakarendu sadrusho maayaa samaachaadanaat7. Under the spell of this force one gets caught in binds and bonds both in dream and in wakeful states and views the universe only through such seductive relations: Svapne jaagrativaa…maayaa paribhraamitaḥ…vishwam pashyati. (Sankara, Dakshinamurthi, 8, p. 15 – the line order of the verse is slightly modified). There isn’t any difference between dream and wakeful state as long as both simply reinforce the enticing knots of relations and overwhelming formations as ends in themselves: Samsaarah svapna tulyo hi raagadveshaadi samkulah8 The whirligig of existence surfeit with longing and repulsion is similar to dream. Thus, apara as the mediational absolute of what is called life or existence can be a nescient alley or a passageway for releasement from its very limits. The aporia of apara can be said to be the single most seminal issue of Indian praxial reflections. The singular most pregnant term that designates these extended reflections in Sanskrit and other Indian languages is called tattva(m). The two syllables of the term most economically but most comprehensively weave the aporia of the heterogeneous. The first syllable tat refers to that (para), and the second one tva(m) refers to thine, that is, the being of the formation in question (apara). Thus, the bare minimal term in a breath of an utterance figures out the contrary coherence of the heterogeneous.9 Any amount of learning and practice will remain futile if they do not enable the sensing of this praxial reflective possibility in existence: Avijnaate pare tattveshaastraadheetistu nishphala.10 Without sensing para any amount of learned thought is futile. Kimu vedaishchashaastraishcha kimu mantraih kimaushadhaih. (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 63, p. 99) [When the snake of nescience bites, without the medicinal para] What is the use of the Vedas and shaastraas, what is the use of mantras and medicines? Such discernment must emerge from the very formational existence – an emergence often likened to waking up from a dream state. But if both these states indulge in the terminal alleys of relations and formations, this 142

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emergence must traverse both these states to access the heterogeneous. In this regard the apparent variations of lokas (spatial formations), states, formations, beings, and epochs will barely have any difference as long as they reinforce the seductive occlusive relations and formations. Such replications, reinforcements, and proliferations cannot be free from the aporetic structure that enables their emergence primarily. They can force the medium into a deathly terminus of machinic repetition; but they can also make possible the emergence of discerning sense.

Formations of limits As every formation is the effect of prakriti’s unfolding – every formation is exposed to the binds and bonds of relations. Thus, every form that the human formation (which is just one among extended lively millions of formations) in turn generates – be it visual, verbal, musical, and performative in particular and the symbolic systems in general (from oral to digital media) – constitutively forms and is itself formed by binds and bonds of affective relations. These forms are countless and inexhaustible: Ananta shaastram bahuveditavyam… (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, p. 109) Shaastraas are infinite and what is to be learnt is endless. Vidyaa hyanantaashcha kalaah samkhyaatum naiva shakyate11 Recitations, gestural articulations, and handiworks are infinite and counting or reckoning them is impossible. But the heterogeneous impulse (para/apara) makes them (formations) also recursive. Thus, every form is composed of a dual articulation; one (apara) is the physical perceptual shape formed by the respective material substance – be it mud, metal, glass, skin, wood, colour, sound, or stone; the second (para) is that which is irreducible either to the shape or substance, which articulates the formation at one level. The shaped form can be dissolved into its original substance – such as the pot to mud, idol to stone or metal, and so on – but that which heterogeneously inheres in the form cannot be dissolved. Discerning or sensing of that un-dissolvable depends on the relation one extends towards the form that one receives or finds oneself in or surrounded by. Thus, for instance, for the vegetable vendor in the street the weighing machine and the weights are something more than the iron object of use; the more inheres in the formed iron. Whereas for the customer they are pieces of iron equipment; the customer may notice the seller’s relation to the inhering excess, whereas for the customer his bicycle or scooter may evoke the kind of relation that the weighing machine does for the vegetable vendor. So are the cases of the barber with his razor and scissors, the public transport drivers with their buses or trains, and the 143

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farmer with his plough, bulls, or tractor. So is the case with substantial formations, stable or mobile, like mountains, rivers, earth, trees, fire, sky, the sun, the stars, the directions, humans, animals, birds and diseased or living kith and kin: any kind of heterogeneity of formations occasions a relation of contrariety. Whether already formed or remediated (like the weighing machine or plough), every substantial formation evokes the dual response. Although all these formations are instantial and dissolvable, each one of them can open up the possibility of sensing the excess and forming another relation that exceeds the machinic relation to the transient substance. The eternality or no-thingness of para exceeds in the formation and its access is contingent upon the opening emergence of the finite formations. Para pervades all formations unobtrusively and inheres in them non-invasively and imperceptibly. Thus there is no rigid or rigorous categorisations between stable and mobile formations – be they generated by the differential effects of prakriti or reformed by (and from) the formations of prakriti (like the machines, buildings, images, and savouries – in short, entities formed of any prevailing substance and relations). For nearly two millennia before the Common Era such reformed entities (plastic artefacts) were very limited, in the Indian cultural formations; there were no images, idols, or architectural structures that could be accorded any monumental status. Such absence was not ordained by any injunction against graven images. The visual intimations (spurs/sphurana, pulsations) in verbal formulations did not lend themselves to plastic or pictorial translations and their material formations. The prevailing formations of the elements (the sun, water, sky, plant, fire, wood, directions, and so on) induced and attracted relations. The lithic turn, the durable material formations, that occurred closer to the Common Era, unleashed the remediation of prevalent material forms. Differential formations multiplied and proliferated with the lithic turn, but the structuring heterogeneous impulse of the formations in general constitutively circulates even in their context. As the lithic was on the ascendancy, the question of the relation between the formational and the non-formational, apara and para, gets explicitly articulated. One of the earliest compositions, as pointed out in the earlier chapter, on bringing forth material formations offers this in a dialogic form: Rupagandha rasairheena shabda sparsha vivarjitaha purushastu tvaya proktas tasya rupamidam katham.12 That which is devoid of subtler elemental effects of perception – such as form, smell, taste, sonority, and touch – how can such para be turned into a form? [asks the king, desiring to know why and how images should be brought forth]. From the undifferentiable, says the sage in response, emerges the differentiable formation, and it is through such formation that one can focus on the ‘difference’ of para. (Vishnudharmottara, III 46.2–3, pp. 153–154). 144

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But para, the sage continues, must be meditated upon only as devoid of form: Atmanah paramam dhaama rupaheenam vichintyayet. (Vishnudharmottara, III 46.16, p. 154) The heterogeneity of nescience and absence of discernment on the one hand and the sensing of para on the other must be played out in the loka of existence alone. This is the liveable learning that the Indian traditions transmit across generations.

Retentional transmissions The liveable learning is generationally imparted through the most primordial communicational media such as gesture and speech. Cultural memory gets articulated and disseminated essentially through these alithic (noninscriptional) modes of symbolisation in India. Whereas the lithic or inscriptional modes accumulate memories generated by any and every communicational mode/medium – be it gestural, speech, scribal-orthographic, print, audiovisual, telegraphic, or digital. Such accumulational impulse turns memory, modes/media, and their retentional systems into instruments – available on demand to serve a purpose, as it were. Emergence of inscriptionality (writing system) is ‘an extraordinary leap in the history of life,’ said Derrida. It is extraordinary because during this extended time (of 3000 or 4000 years) life was ‘not accompanied…by any notable transformation of the organism.’13 In the context of any formation of any extended period of time, the Indian traditions tell us, once again the seminal question of how one relates to such (surrogate) formations returns (or haunts, even the highly ‘advanced’ manipulative mechanisms and apparatuses of memory). Once again, the ineluctable issue of the vulnerability of formations in general insistently returns. As pointed out earlier, formations are vulnerable to self-serving ends, disavowing tactics, and domineering impulses. In contrast, the preference for alithic articulations of memory inescapably foreground the primal formation called the body. Speech and gestural modes inevitably bring forth embodied and performative articulations of memory. The body will have to be persistently at work for generating these symbolising formations of memory. Surely these articulated forms of speech and gesture can be abstracted and wrenched away from the body or their performative mode can be cryogenically captured. But in the process, they may not even address, or may ignore or disavow the original question of the heterogeneous impulse and the imminent vulnerability of non-organic formations in general. In the context of mnemocultures such a cryogenic urge merely reinforces the nescience that indulges in the presumed immortality of formations. In contrast, mnemocultures seek the efficacy of their articulations in the embodied and performative modes. The body will have to 145

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instantiate itself every time when the memories it receives and in turn it responds to memories. In such a praxial-reflective living, where modes of being articulate thinking and inquiry, symbolic substitutive formations have no privileged status. As they nurture, replenish, and disseminate memory through the primordial formations of the body, mnemocultures generate lively archives. It is these biocultural formations of the lively archives that at once generationally impart inheritances and at the same time persistently expose the embodied genos (the jana – people) to the heterogeneous impulse of the formational (the aporia or tattva of para and apara). Every emergent formation exposes itself to the double bind of existence. It is through the embodied modes that one must learn to respond to the double bind. But the tendency of the body is to deny its limits, and thus deny the inhering para, and claim itself as itself for itself: Aham mameti pratitham shareeram mohaaspadam sthulamiteeryate budhaih. (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 74, p. 114) This formation of gross body known for its seductive longings proclaims itself as me and mine, observe the learned. (Alternatively: The formation that is obsessed with, indulges and longs for, itself and what is of itself is called the body.) But it is precisely in every such formation inheres what cannot be terminated or assimilated into the formation: Samam sarveshu bhuteshu tishtantam parameshwaram vinashyatsva vinashyantam ya pashyati sa pashyati. (Bhagavadgita, 13.26, p. 670) The one, who sees among all the dissolving elements the inhering and undissolving para with equanimity, is the real seer.

Biocultural communications In the Indian traditions the formulation and thematisation of the relation between para and apara are not the peculiar prerogative of any particular cultural form (‘art,’ ‘literature,’ or ‘philosophy’) of any single biocultural formation (a particular ‘caste’). An entire range of cultural reflective forms of Indian traditions can be said to have emerged from a focused attention on what is heard and recalled, and thus imparted across generations. The fecundity and generativity of this entire process of liveable learning is inexhaustible. As it receives the heard and recalled, the focused attention kindles response to them and such response rearticulates cultural inheritance and disseminates it across indefinite addressees. The singularity of the addressees’ responses is that it does not categorically divide and bifurcate their 146

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response into thematised formulations on the one hand and performative articulations on the other. On the contrary, one may say that the performative plays with thematisation and generates cultural forms that cannot be fitted into rigorously differentiated categories of the ‘art’ and ‘conceptual’ domains, respectively, where the latter explains and systematises the former and itself; where the conceptual/thetic provides an explanatory system about the performative. Liveable learning, on the contrary, has no use for a learning that is segregated from the articulations of living. Modes of being and forms of reflection must emerge as embodied articulations. The nescience of the emergent formations may delude one to treat explanatory accounts as autonomous and as such unified and perceptually and cognitively graspable. Such mis-cognition remains violent in its disavowal of the constitutively non-formable that dispersively inheres in the emergent formation. Such an aporetic relation also cannot lend itself to conceptual propositional forays to systematise the heterogeneous pair of para-apara. Conceptual investigations aim at grasping cognisable aspects of a demarcated object through the determination of verbal postulates. Such propositionally determined aspects or properties become rationally demonstrable and verifiable. Concepts delimit and abstract a specific denotation of a term from its range of connotations and uses to which such a term could lend itself. Conceptual ventures are essentially concerted efforts to gain mastery over formations through verbal (or mathematical) determinations in such a way as primarily to know what is before us, and eventually to manipulate and control the formations. Concepts aim at forming systematic explanation of physical reality. Conceptual exercises invariably advance through ‘systematic and systembuilding way of forming ideas’ and theories. Modern science is unthinkable without such conceptual adventures. A significant part of Heidegger’s work unravelled how Greek thinking was systematically forced into the conceptual apparatus of Western-European theoretical heritage. A whole range of pregnant resonant terms of Greek language – such as physis, techné, poiēsis, logos, and Eon – gets distorted with their luminous salience severely reduced and gets forced to serve an alien system of thinking, contends Heidegger. This violent process advances from the advent of Latin appropriation of Greek heritage and through the medieval and modern philosophical system-building, says Heidegger.14 Conceptual thinking aims at grasping and pinning down to hold something: ‘to assault upon it.’15 Through rules of logic concepts are related together; this is a calculative thinking by means of a method, argues Heidegger. What is thought becomes subservient to the method. Science, philosophy, and metaphysics have governed thinking so far in this conceptual mould; the latter determined the former (that is, thinking). An alternative to conceptual thinking is non-conceptual thinking, which, for Heidegger, was prevailing in Greek thought. ‘At the pinnacle of the initial unfoldment of its nature, thinking knows no concept.…This great thinking of the Greek thinkers in its 147

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entirety, including that of Aristotle, thinks without concepts’ (Mehta, The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger, p. 60 [Ellipsis in the original]). The history of Western metaphysics separates and opposes thinking and Being and treats the latter as the object of the former. Whereas the PreSocratics moved into the ‘original unity of Being and thought’ – where Thought is an intrinsic aspect of Being (not opposed to it). Heidegger launches an attack on the ‘fundamental [metaphysical] position and attitude of the Western spirit…’ (Mehta, The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger, fn. 92, pp. 60–61). The conception of thought at the basis of traditional logic rests on the separation (falling apart) of thought and Being, contends Heidegger. Metaphysical thought is plotted on grasping essences of objects proposed in the statement ‘What is….’ Such essence gets expressed through the concept, ‘a representation by means of which we grasp and put at our disposal what something is.’ In contrast, non-conceptual thinking brings forth what is thought; it does not indulge in representing what is present before us (Mehta, The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger, p. 61). European conceptual inquiry advanced through the postulation of categorically differentiated and hierarchised dualities. The structure of this duality consists of a plethora of particular entities, on the one hand, and the generality of the source of the particulars, on the other. Thinking, in this template, ascends from the conceptualisable particular to the general of beyond. Thus, the inquiry postulates the essence of the particular in the beyond of the particular – in the general. The categories of particular (‘beings’) and general (‘Being’) are also topologically segregated in this thinking. Hence the conceptual nomenclature – metaphysics – for this categorised duality of thought. The foundation of metaphysical thinking derives from the unthought duality (of beings and Being), contends Heidegger. The problematic of ‘distinctive duality’ (Heidegger What is Called Thinking?, pp. 221–227) can be said to relate to the general on the basis of and in terms of the particular, and determines the essence of the particular in the general; the essence of the particular is beyond the particular. The general appears to be some kind of supra-mundane, intelligible, and transcendental, in a word, a Platonic repository of essences which can be related to their terrestrial particulars (as prototypes to copies). Whether it takes the Platonic metaphysical form or Christian theological route, or the modern method of science, this problematic and resolution of duality can be said to have little in common with the central pre-occupation of Indian traditions: how to live the aporia of existence – a pre-occupation more tacitly sensed in modes of being than in the linguistically proposed or postulated. To be sure, in Indian traditions too the problematic of ‘duality’ seems to manifest in terms of the heterogeneous para and apara. But as could be seen in the earlier discussion, even though there is an irreducible difference between para and apara they are not segregated categorically. They both are originless; but only that which is formed is transient and recursive. Since para is no-thing, unformable, and undifferentiable, it 148

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neither emerges nor dissolves like that which is formed. Only in their coconstitutive co-habitation – which is only a sigh of a caesura between immeasurable silences  – one has the chance of sensing the limits of the emergent formations and their spectral force. Existence is the one and only scenario for playing out the aporia of the heterogeneous. Neither metaphysical nor categorical conceptual apparatuses are of any significance in the enactment of the play of living. As para’s silent and inarticulable performance implies the possibility of interrupting and limiting apara’s formational stride, any attempt at systematising and conceptualising of the finite formations gets staggered and overwhelmed by the performative articulations of inheritances.

Roots/routes of reflection Perhaps cultural difference can be inferred from the two kinds of orientation of thinking-being: conceptual and non-conceptual. The conceptual thinking consolidates thinking about thinking that differentiates the agent from the object of thinking; the non-conceptual forms of reflection embody and enact thinking in their very modes of being and emergence. If the former divides, categorises, and hierarchises binaries, the latter undermines and confounds them; the former enframes and theorises the latter, and the latter lives on indifferently and heterogenously. The former valorises inscription and surrogates retentional systems, while the latter replenishes and proliferates lively archives; the latter embodies differential thinking performatively. The former transforms praxial-contemplative theoria into theory as foundational conceptual reasoning; with the latter, theoria, spreads performative epistemes. The former seeks Platonic roots; the latter disperses through mnemocultural routes. The work of memory (like dream work) can only be non-conceptual – which, though, can be incorporated into conceptual thinking. Despite the immeasurable magnitude of formations of modes of being and praxial forms of reflection, Indian traditions do not privilege system building sciences of the natural, human, and social kind. Even the very determinative concept of the sciences of ‘nature,’ ‘human,’ and ‘social’ is conspicuous by its absence in the Indian reflective traditions (before the colonial period). Neither the biocultural formations nor their irrepressible cultural forms can be decisively categorised and conceptually systematised in the Indian context. Foolhardy attempts at systematising Indian cultural formations such as jati as ‘caste system,’16 or cultural forms – heard and recalled – such as the Veda, itihasa, and purana as ‘religion’17 in the last two centuries betray the violence of the alien enframing conceptual-theological apparatus of European culture. Such imposition does not prepare one to inquire into the nature and origin of even the invasive metaphysical-theological grid.18 Consequently, the institutionalised pervasive thinking of the sciences obfuscates and blocks access to the formations of mnemo-praxial modes of being and reflection that Indian traditions nurtured with vigour. 149

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No wonder no serious inquiry into why pregnant terms such as prakriti, loka, jati, dharma, karma, sahitya, and kala, cannot be conflated with concepts like nature, world, caste, religion, (sanctioned) action, literature, and art, respectively. For the cultural ideational background, the reflective foundation from which the latter grid of concepts crystallised is decisively thematised and internalised in the European tradition over the last two millennia. It is the profoundly sedimented Judeo-Christian background which created the conceptual superstructure: ‘all our thought is Christian through and through. Through and through and entirely, which is to say, all of us, all of us, completely.’19 European cultural thinking is dominated by Christian theology. Theology is a theorisation of the almighty who is the sovereign master, who creates out of nothing, remains outside his creation, and masters and regulates what all he creates per his wish/intention/will/ plan and purpose; and this structure now pervades the entirety of the globe and determines the configuration of the background of other cultures. The European background serves as the conceptual reference for building systemic explanatory accounts even in the context of other cultures. Here, first of all, it may be noted that even this very urge to configure something called culture (hence the absence of the concept of culture in the earlier mentioned list of terms) and its background itself may be entirely alien in many cultures that are outside the invasive fold of European framework. Indian languages have had no such term (culture) for centuries; perhaps this may be the case with other Asian formations as well. These traditions reinforce the impulse that the emergence and proliferation of cultural formations and cultural forms are not contingent upon (prior) configuration and conceptualisation of their ‘background’ – if there ever were such a ‘ground’ at the ‘back’ at all. Surely, formations are the articulative effects of the processual medium – called existence, of which every formation is an effective part. Formational media bring forth mediational formations: vyakta madhyaani bhaarata. In such a relentless process, to divide and sequentialise formations into ‘background’ and ‘foreground’ categories is to orbit within the spectral circuit of formations. Such seductive orbiting invests in one (back)ground to impose an explanatory bind on the other (fore)ground. The spectral circuit instantiates existence; neither the circuit nor its instantiations as such has a definitive origin or decisive terminus. Therefore, there can be no archè or telos to these instantiations of existence as such. The instantiated formations of existence, however, emerge from intractable transgenerational intimations – intimations that result from the patterned actions one lends oneself to in existence. The transgenerational durationality ciphers itself into instantial existence. Hence no linear temporal pipeline sequentialises the existence into the depth of duration and the surface of instance. This absence of linearisation of the temporal often gets dubbed as the lack of historical depth. On the contrary, the instantial is such an extraordinary palimpsest of accents that at any of the inflected accents, wormholes of the transgenerational may open up and respond to the unforeseen intimations. 150

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One cannot calculate and command such openings into/of the palimpsests. But the transgenerational intimations/spurs find their articulation only through the instantial formations; they affect the orientation of modes of being in existence. The cultural form called itihasa synchronically weaves such durationally transmitted intimations into the existence of instantiated lives. Itihasa has no use for temporal ‘historical depth;’ nor does it exemplify nostalgia or mourning for the dissolving formations. Even countless number of Indras and Brahmas come and go: why wail for the death-bound, asks the Bhagavadgita in the Mahabharata: Gataa soona gataa soonscha naanu shochanti panditaha. (Bhagavadgita, 2.11, pp. 81–82) The learned do not mourn the dead and the death-prone.

Coherence sans concepts Among the roots and routes of Indian traditions, the vigour of the interface between the heard and recalled, the fecundity of the compositional elements such as narrative and non-narrative, have not accorded any celebrated space of status for exclusively abstract conceptual thinking. The immense aphoristic energy of the Sanskrit language morphed what might appear abstractions (non-narrative formation) into maxims of reflection and woven them into narrative, dialogic (samvaada), figural, performative, and dramatic compositions. The force of that energetic weave does not privilege any crystallisation of the difference between the abstract and instantiated formations. Literary inquiries such as Kavyamimamsa of Rajasekhara recall and reflect on the nature of such weave and instantiate how such energy can be put to work. He indicates perfomatively how cultural forms – like shaastra (which includes Vedas), kavya, itihasa, purana, and others and a whole range of perfomative forms – cross-hatch and interweave with intensity and vigour.20 Similarly, inquiries into the figural (plastic and pigmental) compositions such as Citrasutra of the Vishnudharmottarapurana, unequivocally emphasise the originary interface between the figural, the performative, and the acoustic (verbal and non-verbal) compositions (Vishnudharmottara, 3.2.1–9, pp. 4–5). Preceding all the above and breaching the path for others, the performative inquiries of Bharata weave the multiple strands of itihasa, poetic, musical, linguistic, figural, and the status of the addressee and bring forth an unprecedented meditation on the perfomative possibilities of the body ranging from the minutely discrete to the spectacularly comprehensive levels.21 It must be noted that all the above compositions are eminently devoid of thematically unified narrative, compositional elements. They are all interspersed only with narratemes (condensed but narratively elaboratable verbal allusions) and they open up in a dialogic mode. 151

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Each and every cultural form has unfolded through such interanimative play of compositional elements in varied ways. However, the persistent circulation of the non-narrative element even in prominently narrative or dialogic compositions staggers and interrupts any seamless culmination and unification of the narrative strand in these traditions. At the centre of what is viewed as a narrative colossus, the Mahabharata, emerges the essentially non-narrative Bhagavadgita (and it is reiterated in varied ways across different narrative or dialogic convergences – as Vyadhagita, Viduragita, Bhismagita, Brahmanigita, and other such compositions) and staggers any narrative consummation. In almost all the narrative episodes of the Upanishads (as we examined earlier, Chandogya, Katha, Brhadaranyaka) one can track, none gets rounded off into a coherent sublimation; the aphoristic energy of the non-narrative limits and displaces the narrative stride. Similarly, the force of the non-narrative surges up in music and overwhelms even the minimal narratives it receives by means of incalculably rendered ragas; music discretises the narrative elements into musical narratemes or transforms the narrative morphemes into the radically improvisable sonic currents of acoustic breath; music can completely dispense with narrative in virtuoso compositions of alap (musical mode devoid of content). In natya (musical drama), nrtta (performative without content) punctuates and discretises narrative elements through micrological articulations of the somatic movements. In a way, each of the formations ‘contains’ within itself something that exceeds, limits, and remains indigestible within the formation. In other words, what is para in the context of apara formations is the non-narrative in the context of verbal and visual compositions: their relation remains heterogeneous. For para cannot be apprehended by the formational faculties and their apparatus – even as it inheres in that apparatus. The only difference between them, however, is that para cannot be a formational element whereas non-narrative is still a compositional element.

Heterogeneous ethos In contrast to the Indian traditions, what is narrative to the literary, the conceptual is to the philosophical in European heritage. The literary and the philosophical are the conceptual markers of the categorically bifurcated domains. In contrast, the symbolising languages that emerge and proliferate among the Indian formations do not exclusively valorise any totalising, systematising conceptual frames. Thus, none of the terms referred to earlier (prakriti, loka, etc.,) can be conflated with the conceptual categories into which they are often forced. Let us focus on some of these diverging routes of reflection. The concept of the world, for instance, stands for a systematised thinking converging on and consolidated into a category of thought which hence forth circumscribes its referent. There was no such concept in Greek antiquity. The concept of the world is said to have emerged from imperial Roman Empire to refer to subjugated regions and people. More than these political 152

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and historical sources, the essence of the concept of the world is derived from the Judeo-Christian theological thinking. Primarily, the concept in Judaic tradition indicates transcending of the local (cultic worship rooted in a place). With Christianity the concept gets sublated to signify the unity and totality of the faithful. In this conceptualisation, the already available senses of the world as the totality of the subjugated (imperial Rome) and that of the chosen (Jewish) people get transmuted into the pan-imperial religious unity of one single world.22 Christian theology figures the world as the postlapsarian creation; the world is the sinners’ shelter– a saeculum spread between the fall and salvation. The dogma of incarnation makes Jesus into the worldly being – he gets worldified. The death of Christ unifies the community of the faithful through the commensal rite of the Eucharist, where the dead body (flesh and blood of Christ) is transfigured, internalised, and digested by the community of the faithful. Only Christian theology forges such a world of Christian community or ‘communionism’ (Guenoun, About Europe, pp. 167–172). The concept of the world gets severely restricted to affairs of man; the destiny of the world is to serve man. The concept of the world emerges, writes Rémi Brague, only when the totality of what exists is thematised for/by and unfolds before a subject. The subject in question here is obviously man. Such an exemplary thematisation of the conception of the world is first achieved in the Bible, contends Brague23. In Heidegger’s work there are at least two different senses in which the idea of the world gets formulated. Primarily and predominantly, Heidegger thematises world as what all that is, that is, the entirety of existence (existents). But this entirety itself is conceived, in this thematisation, essentially in relation to man as the subject. The subject in question here is a free person, liberated from the obligations of Christian revelation of truth concerning man’s salvation. The emancipated subject emerges by spurning the certainty of revealed truth and affirming the certainty of self-determined truth. The world for this subject is what is seen, ordered, and arranged by man in accord with his reason and law. The world is thus what lies before, set before the man for his representation – ‘which demands mastery’24. The human capacity is conceived as gaining mastery over all that is, the entirety of what exists (Heidegger ‘The Age of the World Picture,’ p. 132). The world thus is the object posited before the all-determining subject: ‘the way in which he himself conceives and wills himself.’ (Heidegger, ‘The Age of the World Picutre,’ p. 152). The world is a ‘picture’ for seeing and representing by man; the world is picturable. The conception of the world as a picture and the concept of humanism are co-originary, states Heidegger. The concept of the world, in this regard, marks the transition in European history from the religion of god (revealed truth) to the ‘doctrine of man’ and truth as the result of certainty of man’s knowing. This doctrine of man is designated by Heidegger as anthropology: ‘that philosophical interpretation of man which explains and evaluates whatever is, in its entirety, from the standpoint of man and in relation to man.’ 153

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(Heidegger, ‘The Age of the World Picture,’ p. 133). The idea of the ‘world view’ represents this anthropological standpoint of the Western subject. In complete contrast to the modern anthropological concept of the world as a picture or view, Heidegger provides yet another, more originary account of the world. Here, in the ancient conception, the world is explicitly figured as ‘ever-nonobjective’ openness, never under the command and control of the subject but that which clears the broad paths for the destiny of a people. The paths enable decisions but these decisions are based on something that cannot be ‘mastered, something that is concealed, confusing.’25 The world as an openness is in constant strife with something that is concealed. Decisions emerge from the uncertain and incalculable relation between the concealed and the unconcealed – where neither of which is completely transparent or predictable. On the contrary, they can be pronouncedly dissembling. The self-disclosing openness of the world is contrasted with the self-secluding closedness or concealedness of the earth. The earth lends itself or juts itself into the world but remains excluded and concealed in itself from the world. The world opens and clears itself but grounds itself in the earth which in turn shelters the world. What is common to these heterogeneous phenomena is the dissembling unconcealment, their emergent or generative impulse. But that impulse never erases the difference between them: the openness of the world and the concealed nature of the earth. Though the world draws the earth into openness and sets the earth to work (as in a temple with stone and painting with colours), the earth excludes itself and remains undisclosed in the work of the world (the stone remains stone and the colour, colour – refusing disclosure despite any kind of fragmentation of the earth). It is in this primal strife of these radically contrary poles of the pair of the world and the earth that Heidegger sees the human possibilities and fiascos played out – in short, it is from the strife that the human destiny is (un)formed. The strife of the world and the earth as disclosure and concealment appears to be another iteration of the originary articulatin of Being in Heidegger’s work. This account of the world, however, can be seen to displace the humanist ontology of modern metaphysics fundamentally. But Heidegger sees this strife entirely as confined in its effect to the human destiny exclusively. Heidegger explicitly denies the openness of the possibilities of the world to non-human entities: ‘A stone is worldless. Plant and animal likewise have no world.’ (Heidegger, ‘The Origin,’ p. 45) These non-human entities may exist in a relational environment but they are denied openness. This assertion by force circumscribes the primal strife of the world and earth to the human destiny alone. In this strife it is the human who can become the god or animal but no other formation has such a possibility.26 We are not too far away from the Bibilical thematics. In complete contrast to the concept of the world, the term loka intimates a very different kind of reflection in Indian traditions. Although the Latin locus is said to derive from a common root, the Sanskrit loka is never circumscribed by any cultic locale. The loka is in essence a scene of formations. 154

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Loka is a spatio-temporal complex which unfolds the play of formations. As such loka, can be figured only on the basis of the assemblage of formations it brings forth along with itself. Thus, one can refer to Bhu, Bhuvar, Suvar, (and other) lokas, where each loka is the abode of formations differentiated on the basis of their cultivable endowments. The Bhuloka has lively millions of varied formations among which the human is just one such formation; the Bhuvarloka has multiplicity of other formations such as Yaksha, Rakshasa, Kinnera, and Kimpurusha – all siblings of gods mostly descended from a common father (sage Kashyapa). Similarly, the Suvarloka is the exclusive abode of gods. However, all the formations of the lokas are permeable on the basis of the orientation of the cultivable endowments of the formations that inhabit them. One can move from one to another loka by reorienting one’s endowments (more about cultivable endowments later). The task of orientation results in terms of boons and curses. The task is an interminable and recursive one for all formations – including those of gods; for the formation in general is a transient emergent. Thus, the accursed gods and rewarded formations of the other lokas (humans, animals, birds, raakshasas, and others) can move across their respective lokas and live the consequences of their actional orientations. In essence, only as formations they become a part of the spatio-temporal scene (which itself too is a formation) of loka. No god – including the ‘creator’ god, Brahma, or Prajapati – can at will command or control the lokas and their formations. Consequently, the apparent superiority of the Suvarloka, on closer examination, turns out to be little more than a transient emergent too – constituted (like all other lokas) by heterogeneous impulses that structured all formations and exposed them to the task of reorienting the consequential endowments that form the entities. The actional orientation of the formations and the endowments that constitute them are not necessarily in continuity; for mere continuity of any kind is not beneficial to the formation. Hence the focus on the task. Firstly, the task must first recognise the relation between actional orientation and the cultivable endowments; then, secondly, the formation must act in such a way that the endowments of boon or curse, which are themselves the effects of actional orientation in a prior instant, are sustained or redressed or transformed, as the case may be respectively. Finally, the ultimate task is that of sensing the heterogeneous impulse that is at work in the emergence of formations and discerning the limits of the formations on the one hand, and their abode of the loka itself, on the other. The scene of the tasks and its effects remains the loka itself. If actional orientation is determinative of modes of being in the loka, forms of reflection render the transactions of the loka through verbal and visual symbolisations. Thus Bhrata, for instance, says: Yaani shaastraani ye dharmah yaani shilpaani yah kriyah loka dharma pravruttam tannaatyamiti samjnitam. (Bharata, Natyasastra, 25.125 p. 771) 155

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Any emergent (cultural) form – be it a shaastra, dharma, shape, action that is rendered on the variedly repeated or enacted scene of the stage – it becomes natya. Natya is the recursive scene for rendering actional tasks variedly. Here the relation between loka and natya cannot be deduced as mimetic. For, natya does not render exact replication of formations and actions of loka, but repeats the tasks that every formation is exposed to undertake in existence. More importantly, if the transformational jagat (that which moves)/loka itself is a spectral conjuration of the inarticulable force, natya like all other cultural forms (symbolisation in general), too, is a reenactment of the spectral play. Existence in essence is relentless reiterations of such conjurations. The spectral nature of existence, however, does not imply that beyond the loka’s existence lives the stable real, free form any conjurational play. Such a division between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ is alien to Indian reflective traditions. The concept of the world takes recourse to such a division – of the ‘real’ (the earthly existence) and the ‘ideal’ (heavenly existence), between the way the world is or exists and the way it ought to exist. Such a division is essentially a part of theological thinking which structurally divides the world into the kingdom of God (heaven) and the kingdom of man (earth), of transcendental and mundane, and of normative and factual realms. In such a structure, God is the sovereign of heaven and man, of the earth. In complete contrast to this conception, the figure of loka has little to do with such a structure. Wherever something is claimed to exist it cannot escape being a part of the loka. Thus, gods too are inescapably formations of loka. Yet unlike the concept of the world, loka does not, or rather cannot, totalise (whether such totalisation is political or religious as was the case with the West). This is not so because of the inexhaustible spectral conjurations. The non-totalisability or un-unifiability of the loka results from the heterogeneous impulse that constitutes every formation in existence. The double articulation of the impulse of the non-formational and the formational cannot be unified into a cohering whole. The efforts to forge such a unified totality indicates the urge to command and keep under control what has been formed. Such an urge is at work in the conception of the duality of the world as heaven and earth, which are under the control and command of God and man, respectively. Loka, however, cannot be said to be entirely free from such an urge. It only indicates that every manifestation of such an urge merely multiplies the emergence of formations, where every formation brings forth its limits – its transient existence. Existence is a perpetual, if discontinuous, play of the formational and the unformable forces – and loka is the scene of such play. Loka thus embodies and unfolds varying recursive articulations of modes of being and reflective forms of (in)finite formations.

Spectral formations Like the term loka, the other most significant and pervasive term of the Indian traditions which has no parallel in European heritage is prakriti. 156

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Prakriti is the bounteous force of all formations and relations among formations. But unlike the formations – which are perceptual, tangible, and differentiable entities – prakriti too as such is, like para, no-thing and inarticulable as such. Prakriti is one of the two primal forces, the other being para. Their apparent duality or heterogeneity is the instantial condition of the emergence of formations and relations – an instance preceded and followed by the stasis of the non-formational (apeiron). The durationality of ‘their’ inarticulable ‘togetherness’ is without beginning and end; neither the term difference nor unity makes sense in the stasis of their non-articulate cohabitation. Prakritim purusham chaiva vidyanaadi ubhaavapi. (Bhagavadgita, 13.19, p. 660) Know that these two – prakriti and (para) purusha – are without any origin. Perhaps prakriti can also be seen as para’s projection – as one finds oneself projected in a dream. It is this projective relation that triggers the recursive instant and the immense generative impulse which in turn brings forth the infinity of differentiated transient formations of existence. Like a dream, the projective instant is an incalculable emergence; as the dreamer is a part of the dream, para too inheres in the projection, but para can neither control, regulate nor master the projection and its effects. Prakriti is the projective emergence of existence. It is a manifestation of para’s force but para itself is devoid of any force in the projective formations of prakriti. In a way prakriti is the perennial possibility of para’s projectability – para’s play. As the entire durational and instantial alteration of stasis and projection is without a celebrated origin, it has no consummational telos or terminus or purpose either. Para is a force without form, and in its projection the force lends itself to prakriti, which forms with force. They ‘both’ are thus the ‘same’ but differentiable – para heterogeneises through projection: no wonder the common epithet - para - designates both: para prakriti and para purusha (purusha is the one who inheres in/inhabits the pura – the formation). In the projectional emergences prakriti goes by multiple epithets: avyakta (inarticulable), apara (non-other), avidya (nescience), maaya (spectrality), pradhana (primality), kshetra (field/arena), samsaara (recursive emergences and dissolutions): Avyakta naamni paramesha shakti anaadyavidyaa trigunaatmikaa para karyaanumeya sudhiyaiva maaya yayaa jagatsarva midam prasooyate (Sankara Vivekachudamani, 110 p. 165) Named inarticulable, force of para, originless nescience, apara of the three traits, perceivable through effects only by the discerning as spectral – this one alone births the entirety of this jagat (moving ‘universe’). 157

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As such, inarticulable and no-thing, prakriti as projectional force unleashes its generative impulse. This impulse conjures up inexhaustible plethora of formations and bonds them with seductive relations. Prakriti conjures up such a spectral complex (loka) by means of substanceless, but ineliminable set of tripartite but interwoven traits: satva (serene), rajas (passional, generative), and tamas (dark, indolent). These core traits are actional spurs; they incite actions among the formations – actions which tether the existents to the shifting, mutating transient formations in a machinic circuit: Naanyam gunebhya kartaaram yadaa drashtaanu pashyati. (Bhagavadgita, 14.19, p. 695) The traits alone impel action and the discerning senses this. There is no formation on the earth, sky, or even in the abode of gods which is not made of the three traits (Bhagavadgita, 18.40, p. 819). But the spectral force indulges formations into the seductive circuit. Thus, the spectral work of prakriti as projective force involves generative, actional, relational, formational incitement: Maaya kalpita desha kaala kalanaa vaichitra chitreekrutam (Sankara, Sri Dakshinamurthi, 2, p. 7) Maaya shakti vilaasa kalpita mahaa vyamoha… (Sanakra, Sri Dakshinamurthi, 5, p. 11) The projective spectral force of para conjures space and time and forms ­wondrous figures. Its playsome conjurations seductively capture [everyone]. The universe is such a figural conjuration of the projective force, apara. Any figural formation simply reinforces the generative and differential force of the spectral play. In this context cultural forms of any kind (song, dance, temple-building, image-making, idol carving, drawing, and so on) can only be varied reiterations of prakriti’s generative impulse – bringing forth wondrous formations. Prakriti, says Sankara, can only be figured as: Sannaapya sannaapyubhayaatmikaano bhinnaapya bhinnaapyubhayaatmikaano saangaapya saangaapyubhayaatmikano mahaadbhutaanirvachaneeyarupa. (Sanakra Vivekachudamani, 111, p. 166) The spectral force has neither essence nor is it devoid of essence – nor can it be seen as a combination of both: essence and non-essence. It is neither differentiated nor undifferentiated – nor is it a combination of both. Similarly, it is neither limbed nor devoid of limbs – nor is it a combination of limbed and non-limbed form. The spectral force is the most wondrous and indescribable emergence. 158

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The spectral projective force cannot be reckoned with the binaristic logic of opposed or even mixed categories. Consequently, its effects – the formational universe it conjures up cannot also be judged in accord with that logic (real/unreal/real-unreal/unreal-real) – though it tempts one to deploy such logic of (mis)cognition. All such judgements end up as effects of the spectral force itself. One cannot choose between action and non-action or a combination of them in such a play. Yet there is another mode of being outside (from) within this scenario. In the entirety of the energetic play and its discontinuous effects, para inheres unaffected by the seductive conjurations. Though the seductive force is the spectral matrix appearing to envelop the heterogeneous para, the latter remains irreducible to its projective force. Here one must notice the apparent aporia. Prakriti is after all para’s internally differentiated projective force. As long as the spectral projective force is at work the heterogeneity appears to divide the two – para and apara-prakriti. It is in this aporetic predicament (avastha) that one must learn to discern both the heterogeneous and the non-heterogeneous valences of the force. After all, the play unfolds the existence and emergence of formations in an instant. ‘Before’ and ‘after’ the instant there is neither projection nor play: Avyaktaadeeni bhutaani vyaktamadhyaani Bharata avyaktanidhanaanyeva tatra kaa paridevanaa. (Bhagavadgita, 2.28, p. 96) O the descendent of Bharata! (Know that) all the elements have no existence before their emergence and no more existence after their dissolution. Their articulate existence is only between their emergence and dissolution. Why wail over them? At the end of the (endless) instantial spectral play all the formations of existence – in a word the projective force of prakriti dissolves into para – only in order to recur as an other instant, another spectral play with neither a beginning nor an end: Sarva bhutaani kaunteya prakritim yaanti maamikam kalpakshaye punastaani kalpaadyau visrujaamyaham. (Bhagavadgita, 9.7, p. 458) O son of Kunti all elements end in ‘my’ prakriti with the dissolution of kalpa and emerge with the kalpa again. Kalpa thus would be an instance for the emergence of formations (though this ‘instant’ runs into billions of human years, within each of which the relentless process of emergences and dissolutions is fractally at work). In such a spectral instance, if para’s predicament (if one can put it that way – but this occurs only to entangled purusha) appears to be entangled by the binds and bonds of apara – the way out is to sense the limits of the 159

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enveloping matrix, to discern the radical difference of para that is not amenable to the formational. The instance is the chance to discern the in-differential within the thickets of the differentiated, it is to wake up in dream to sense the apparitions of dream and sensing one’s difference from it, on the one hand, and also to learn it as one’s own projection, on the other. The entire repertoire of tropes of play, projection, scenario, dream, spectrality, and all the emotions, knots, and ties that go with it is surfeit with what can be called fictional/literary or even cinematic splendour. Can one infer from this that the Indian reflective traditions privilege the ‘poetic’ literary/cinematic imagination? Can prakriti’s derivative-formational play lend itself to conceptualisation of ‘art?’ As discussed earlier, the questions concerning art or philosophy are intelligible only in the context where such a conceptualisation is forged first. ‘Art’ is said to demarcate and oppose itself from what is called ‘nature.’ Such conceptions (nature/art) themselves are said to be indications of a decisive rupture in/with a tradition within the West. In contrast, in Indian reflective practices concerning prakriti where existence is conceived as a spectral play of heterogeneous forces – conceptions of art and truth as rigidly opposed categories; art as untruth incapable of dealing with truth or art as the only saviour of life in a world obsessed with truth27 have little salience. If art and truth are reflective formations (structurally, not derivatively, one with the colossal ensemble of jagat/loka), it would appear delusional to prioritise one over the other, oppose one to the other, and hope to choose one without the other. For such deliberative choices and determinative discourses do not seem to engage with the structural heterogeneity of all formations of existence, be they natural-­ biological or cultural-scientific (a division salient only in the West).

Ruptured resonance The concept of ‘nature,’ Heidegger contends, is a mistranslation of the Greek word physis; so was the case of the concept of ‘art’ with regard to what the Greeks called techné/poiēsis. In the predominantly non-conceptual (archaic) Greek thinking the terms physis, techné resonated with each other. Physis referred to bringing forth something that had not existed earlier; it is the event of the emergence of something from concealment to unconcealment. Such emergences become part of the visual circuit as the mountains, trees, rivers, humans, and so on. Physis, at the same time, implies the emergence of psychological, ‘spiritual,’ and other such non-physical features. Similarly, the term techné referred to the emergence of the unprecedented – the coming forth of something that was unavailable so far. Both these terms also resonated with another crucial notion of Greek thought: poiēsis. Poiesis and techné referred to the emergence of any kind of entity, be it an artisanal work or a poetic composition. In this regard they originally evinced the unconcealing energy of physis/Being. With the Latin and Christian appropriation of Greek heritage the reflective resonance of the terms got severed from Greek thinking and the terms 160

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were circumscribed by conceptual system-building endeavours. Thus, when the term physis was transformed into ‘nature’ the latter involved in fracturing physis into physical and non-physical; nature hence forth referred only to physical objects that are before us. Physis in its novel version – as physics – is bereft of the original eventualising energy of unconcealment; it refers only to the objects already visible before us. Perhaps, even the Greek term metaphysics already indicates the process of fracturing of physis. Meta referred to something beyond the physical (in the sense of material entity) – a connotation which had no place in the original thinking concerning physis. Consequently, nature designates all objects – inert by definition which could be brought into existence only by some ‘creative’ ‘intelligence’ or ‘spirit’ which is beyond the merely physical things. Such a metaphysical spirit can create, control, and manipulate the materiality of the object at will or by design or intention. Theological-humanist determination of thinking privileges god or man as the creative commanding intelligence of nature and culture, respectively, in this frame of thinking. The ‘opposed’ categories of nature and culture form the most powerful conceptual pair which repeats itself in various other conceptual dualities such as nature-history, nature-art, nature-technology, nature-reason, bodymind, and so on; the repetition reinforces the creator/created metaphysical structure. Here one can say that Edmund Husserl’s critique of what he called ‘natural attitude’ is at once an attack on the fractured understanding of physis but at the same time a kind of repetition of it.28 Heidegger unravelled this complicity. Every ‘naturalism,’ to bring in a word relevant in this context into Heidegger’s observation,29 ‘is metaphysically an antrhopologism, and as such subjectivism.’30 Anthropologism and subjectivism are one with humanism and their grounding is in metaphysics. (Heidegger ‘Letter on Humanism,’ p. 202) Humanism ‘turned the essence of god into the essence of man…’ (Nancy, Dis-Enclosure, p. 19) Such a division and the determining force of a sovereign power it pre-supposes are alien to Greek and Indian practices of thinking. It is precisely such a divided structure which is said to have determined the Western-European thought. In the non- or pre-metaphysical thinking of the Greeks, Heidegger observes, several pregnant terms such as physis, logos, being, techné, aletheia, and dike, alluded to shared effects with each other. They all emphasised the self-emergent unconcealment of something that discloses itself enduringly. (Heidegger, An Introduction, p. 170) The disruption of their resonance occurs when physis is reduced to nature, logos to reason via Latin ratio; and techné to calculative knowledge to master, and when being is restricted to ‘idea’ or eidos – that which is in appearance or a form/shape. The concept of idea represents what is already visible, what we confront (eidós) in appearance. Appearance refers to a copy of a prototype – the invisible ideal model. Thus, the concept introduces the division between essence and appearance and the ideal and the visible. Consequently, physis no longer intimates the ‘act of self-unfolding emergence,’31 but only ‘mere 161

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appearance,’ of a visible physical entity – ‘actually an illusion, a deficiency.’ (Heidegger, ‘On the Essence,’ p. 184 emphasis original) This pair of copy and prototype already indicates a mimetic relation between the metaphysical and the physical and it reduces everything to what is in the visual circuit, what appears in sight. With the disruption of the resonance, logos loses its original sense of disclosive emergence and comes to designate the existence of apparent entities in terms of measurable, weighable, and countable categories. Properties, magnitude, and relations determine being. Logos posits ontologies through verbal/conceptual categorisation. The idea as visible entity and category as the calculative account become sovereign source of knowledge and make the break with the pre-metaphysical Greek thinking decisive. (Heidegger, ‘On the Essence,’ pp. 180–191) Heidegger’s work unravels the ascendancy and the power of this blinding paradigm of thinking and gropes towards what limits this paradigm: the Pagan other.

Entrapments In a recent treatise, curiously titled Karman32 Giorgio Agamben offers an intensive meditation on the concept of action. The curiousness of the title lies in the brevity of space provided to the notion of ‘karman [sic]’ in the treatise (a little over six pages pp. 26–28, 77–79; 84–85). But the reflection developed across these scattered pages has a profound implication for the substance of the inquiry developed in the treatise. The reflection on karman, though more descriptive, marks the radical limit of the thought of the West on the concept of action. For this reason, the title makes an unusual gesture in contemporary Western thought. The concept of action, contends Agamben, ‘stands at the foundation not only of law, but also of the ethics and religious morality of the West.’ (Agamben Karman, p. 29) In an extended trajectory from classical Greek philosophers (Aristotle, mainly) through stoics, patristic, and scholastic theologians, to philosophers of modernity, with great economy and elegance, Agamben tracks the enduring conceptual determination of action. The conceptual paradigm that defines and determines action draws essentially on the idea of the relation between intention/will and authority/subject. Thus, the action that is foundational to the Western ethic is the concept of ‘sanctioned action.’ Sanctioned action is at once action that is permitted but prohibited, volitional but imputable, allowed but commanded and condemned. Thus, the action that is sanctioned has the status of crime. The sanctioned action – or, crime – is intelligible only in the context of the injunctions that are first put in place. The aporias of sanctioned action (apparent ‘freedom’ to ‘choose’ but condemnable, innocence of action and determinative force of injunctions, transgressive possibility but retaliatory violence of law/sanction) pre-occupied the thinkers of the West for millennia. Action (conformative or transgressive) is obligated to sanctions. 162

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The essence of the juridical norm is in the sanction, and sanction turns the law inviolable and holy. Criminality and culpability are constituted by the ‘pronouncement of a sanction’ (Agamben, Karman, pp. 12–13). The conditions of possibility of action are intention and authority; without these conditions, actions have no ethical political status. Consequently, there is, observes Agamben, an ‘incurable split inherent in the very idea of a sanctioned action’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 33). For it splits action into imputable and innocent deeds. The more one probes in order ‘responsibly [to] seek to get to the bottom of their [actors’] own acts’ the more incurable becomes the split (Agamben, Karman, p. 34); for the capacity to act is fundamentally premised on the obligatory injunction. Two related consequences seem to ensue from the relationship between the ‘capacity’ and ‘sanction:’ (i) criminality, culpability, and guilt entail this relationship and (ii) the ethical and political principles result from this relationship. Agamben unveils the different avatars in which this relationship manifests from the classical (Pagan) philosophers to Christian theological thinkers. This rather ontological inquiry comes forth as deeply humanist in Agamben’s account; and it is seen to run continuously across the Pagan and Christian epochs.

Freeways Like many other European classicists (such as Jean-Pierre Vernant whom he cites), Agamben sees the Greek tragic drama as expressing the human capacity against the prevailing powers of gods. The tragic hero affirms his capability and thus his actions become imputable. In the history of ethics and politics of the West, argues Agamben, the tragic drama provides one of the two paradigms; the other is that of knowledge and contemplation (of theoria). The tragic paradigm which Agamben tracks in Aristotle’s critique of Plato (who stands for the second – theoria – paradigm) ‘situates the essence of the human and the proper place of politics and ethics in action and praxis’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 35). For Aristotle ‘the human being as such is devoted to praxis, is a man of action’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 64). But this action is aimed at, for Aristotle, achieving the good – the highest good of happiness to people. Thus, happiness is the object of political action (Agamben, Karman, p. 64), and it can be achieved only through ‘responsible action’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 37). Happiness or unhappiness, for Aristotle, results from not just action but from ‘acting in a certain way.’ It is the characteristics or traits that qualify people and reveal the choice to act in a certain way; for Aristotle, writes Agamben: ‘character, together with reasoning, is “the cause of actions”’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 39). It is this acting in a certain way through the ‘ethos’ and reasoning, in Agamben’s reading of Aristotle, that seems to determine the agentive responsibility of action. Agamben traces the idea of securing the ‘paternity of action and knowledges to a subject’ in Aristotle’s division between potential and action (work) – between dynamis and energeia– the 163

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capacity to do and not to do: ‘one of the most striking achievements of Aristotle’s philosophical genius’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 44). Agamben sees the provenance of subject’s agency in the operation of these tendencies – an indication of the subject’s capacity to master and command. This capacity, however, is ‘split’ or suspended between potentia and impotentia. This division sets the human against the ‘work’ of nature. Aristotle formulates this division in terms of ‘natural, alogical potential…and the logical potential, proper to human techniques….’ which are doable and also not doable (Agamben, Karman, p. 45). Intriguingly, the metaphysical nature of this division (nature/ technique, nature/culture) does not receive any comment from Agamben here. Curiously, Heidegger is conspicuous by his complete absence in Agamben’s reading of Aristotle in particular and in the entire treatise in general. In Aristotle’s solution to the apparent aporia of dynamis/energeia Agamben locates the modern concept of will. How does potential turn into action, what drives one to act and bring out one’s potential? According to Agamben, Aristotle postulates that it is desire which impels one to move from one to the other and transform potential into action. Agamben proceeds to show continuity between Aristotle’s solution and theological thought in this matter. The church fathers translate Aristotle’s idea of the potential into ‘free will.’ It is the ‘laborious elaboration of the concept of free will in Christian theology’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 29), which forms the ethical foundation of sanctioned action: the desire to do/act ‘freely’ opens itself to imputation and obligation. Desire as will, contends Agamben, is the ‘“sovereign principle”’ that ‘decides between doing and not doing, potential and impotential (or potential not to)’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 46). In this extended but economically woven treatise, the transition from the ‘ancient world’ to modernity – or from Pagan to Christian culture of thought – is configured as a passage from potential (the capacity to do) to will (the capacity to intend) – from ‘I can’ to ‘I will/I must’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 49). What was thought among the Greeks as a division between potential and act is ‘now [in Augustine] thought solely in terms of will and command’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 54). Whether such a seamless transition between the Pagan thought (which had no concept of will, let alone freewill) and the Christian doctrine is possible, whether Aristotle’s aporetic pair (potential and action/work) would have unilaterally dominated or become the sole key to understanding the ancient Pagan culture, whether Plato’s meditation on theoria had no salience at all: these issues emerge as impelling and demanding questions which Agamben’s treatise gives rise to; but it is the Christianised Aristotelian ‘paradigm’ that receives Agamben’s thematisation of the ethical political foundation of Western thought. Modern ethics inherits the Christian concept of the will, states Agamben (Agamben, Karman, p. 50) – by appropriating the ancient Pagan thought, one could supplement. If the concept of sanctioned action as the foundation of ethical political domains derives from onto-theology, what are their ends, their telos? What 164

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is the place of action with regard to their telos? If, in Christian theology, salvation is the end for which the world was created, what are the ends of ethics, politics, and law? The question of ends inevitably brings in the problematic of means into the picture. In all this, is action a means or an end in itself? Agamben invokes Aristotle once again to address the question of means and ends. If the aim of action is to achieve highest happiness, action itself cannot be advanced in ways that are contrary to happiness; therefore, praxis is action whose end is in action itself. In contrast, for Aristotle, Agamben argues, the Greek term poiesis refers to action that becomes a means to bring forth something. The end of poiesis is to create an object. Once again one notices that this divisive reading of the Greek terms is strangely silent about Heidegger’s extended meditation on poiesis as aletheia – the act of unveiling, the energetic work of unconcealment and concealment. In Heidegger’s meditation on poiesis, the attention was more on the very generative act rather than on the finished product. Agamben’s avoidance of Heidegger in this context remains rather intriguing. Agamben’s general thematisation of sanctioned action as the foundation of ethics and politics in the West, however, is not hampered by his avoidance of Heidegger. But it would certainly frame the problem that Agamben is thematising as onto-theological or metaphysical. The essence of the argument, however, reiterates the ideas of human action evincing human capability, intention, and authority – ideas that are profoundly rooted in Christian theology. This celebration of human essence resonates with what Derrida – in an intimately related context – thematised as ipseity in the Western heritage. Derrida, however, does not derive the provenance of this exclusively in Aristotle’s opposed pairs (potential/action, poiesis/praxis). He traces it to Plato (we will return to this). The ultimate goal, Agamben’s thematisation surmises, of the apparatus of sanctioned action is to create a ‘subject for human action’ – that is, a subject that is intending, willing, and capable of rendering sanctioned action. (Agamben, Karman, p. 77) The aporia of freedom and culpability are deeply inscribed in this conception of the subject and the action that the subject is obligated to render.

Encroachments Agamben’s thematisation shows how the concept of the subject is deeply rooted in Christian theology. If the concept of sanctioned action, writes Agamben in the second chapter of the treatise, ‘should fail for some reason, the entire edifice of morality would collapse irrevocably.’ Therefore, he emphasises, it is ‘all the more urgent to test its solidity.’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 29) The conclusion he seems to move towards as he thematises the trajectory of the concept, and especially the gesture towards a ‘new relation’ or ‘non-relation’ between action and the supposed subject that he senses in Indian (Buddhist) thought clearly indicate not only the cultural particularity of the concept of sanctioned action but its fragility and exhaustion: ‘The 165

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politics and ethics of the West will not be liberated from the aporias that have ended up rendering them impracticable if the primacy of the concept of action – and of will, which is inseparably jointed to it – is not radically called into question.’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 60) Agamben proceeds to take up precisely this urgent task. Although Agamben does not ask whether the Western conception of sanctioned action, of the subject and of law, ethics, and politics are cultural universals, his interrogation of these concepts and his inclination towards another way of being suggests the limits of these universalised concepts. But his ambitious suggestion for reconstructing ‘something like the foundations of an Indo-European ethic’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 29) draws him to indulge in a philological conflation of Latin crimen and Sanskrit karman (Agamben uses the vocative rather than nominative karma here). ‘It is certain, however,’ writes Agamben, ‘that the pairing of crimen/karman corresponds to a conceptual proximity so strong and forceful that it is surprising that it has not been taken into consideration by historians of law and religion.’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 27) Even Emile Benveniste is curiously silent about this correspondence, observes Agamben. Drawing on a mid-19th century work on the Indo-European origins, Agamben relates the root of crimen and karman. It may be noted here that contemporary etymological dictionaries trace the roots of karma and crime to very different IE sources. Karma is said to emerge from IE kwer (to do, to form) and crimen from krei (to sieve, and thus to discriminate, distinguish).33 Although both the words may imply work, the latter refers more to a particular, discriminated, judged (from the Greek krinein), and differentiated work/action – often related to legal domain. Yet, despite the varied roots and based on just one patristic source, Agamben affirms and extends the theological conception of sanctioned action to incorporate the Sanskrit notion of karma. It is unclear why Agamben chose the vocative karman as the title – where the nominative karma would have served the purpose. Perhaps, one could speculate: this may be to combine both action and actor in general in one word, perhaps modelled on the Latin-based English word criminal (from crimen); or, perhaps the treatise is addressed – through the invocative (such as Hey Karman!) – to the man of action (though such an address is not maintained in the treatise). Drawing on the Indological authors, without doubting their possible Christian theological interpretative framework, Agamben endorses their account of the crucial Sanskrit terms: dharma and karma. If dharma, in the source that Agamben draws on, is ‘unquestionable, is a natural law,’ ‘karman’ is the ‘intention of volition’ rendered ‘consciously that determines the action itself.’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 27) His own commentary on this theologically enframed explication extends this reading further: the ‘very possibility’ of the ‘doctrine of karman’ ‘rests on the fact that karman means crimen, which is to say that there is something like an imputable action that produces consequences.’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 28) Since the concept of sanctioned action requires the corollaries of intention or will, Agamben goes 166

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on to affirm: ‘It is not surprising, therefore, to find also among Indian theorists the proviso, which is familiar to us, according to which action, in order to be imputable, must be intentional or willed.’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 28.) As with the Pagans of antiquity, whose language was appropriated into theological apparatus (potentiality as will, for example), in the case of Sanskrit too Agamben (like other Indologists) is led to follow the same operation. The Sanskrit word he renders, drawing on Indologists, into the theologeme of intention is chetana. If anything at all, chetana can be a nonagential force, a non-formable ‘element’ which affects all formations without itself being affected by them. In contrast, intention/will requires an intending, willing agent/subject. Agamben, however, adds that intention in this context does not mean ‘the simple act of decision in itself but…what puts the action in motion and joins it to the result.’ (Agamben, Karman, pp. 28–29) But can there be a non-agentive, subject-less intention? Given the thematisation of sanctioned action developed in the treatise, the place of the onto-theological subject cannot be eliminated from Agamben’s account. Chetana has no such formations. Chetana is akin to light/spur which makes objects visible – without being itself related to or affected by the objects it affects without returns. Thus, for example, the non-formable and non-existent para says of the differentially forming elements in the Bhagavadgita: bhutaanaam asmi chetana (Bhagavadgita, 10.22, p. 535): ‘“I am” the “force” among the [differentiated] elements’ (and this affects the faculties called indriyas which are the extensions of elements). Chetana is not part of the formations that it affects. For chetana is the force of para, and para can have no predicates of self or subject that can take form or relation. As discussed earlier, para is the tat (that) of tattva(m). Chetana is thus that which cannot be reduced to an intentional/intending form. As in the case of other terms we examined earlier, the imports of karma cannot be reduced to the concept of sanctioned action. For neither the idea of an imputing authority, nor a paternity of action and knowledge, nor a sovereign, nor the consequential guilt has any privileged status with regard to reflections on karma in Indian traditions. Indian traditions do not institute normative injunctions. The pervasive occurrence of permissions and preventions in the overwhelmingly performative modes of Indian traditions – does not turn into normative law guarded by an individual or institutional authority.34 Every permission and every prohibition spaces itself with alternatives – with the possibility of rendering actions otherwise than the way they are done in specific situations. Notwithstanding the inexhaustibility of Indian ritual-performative actional domains, the core of Indian reflective traditions has devoted itself to reflect on the question of action as such – action as ineluctable and action as the motor of existence. If action is inescapable in/for existence, it is naive to fixate oneself on sanctioned actions – for it severely constricts the reflective modes of actionality in existence. The problem/task that karma engages 167

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with is not so much a retributive (sanctioned) action but with the very nature of action, which has a tendency to reassert or reiterate itself – a reiteration which binds and bonds one in actional circuit from which one seeks releasement. How to render action that does not turn itself in the circuit but renders it (action) without returns while occurring in the actional circuit itself? Restricted/sanctioned action may have a (regional) place in this general inquiry into karma, but the latter cannot be determined by the particularised action. Hence the absence of any salient status for the subject (sovereignty) and law (normative sanction) and of course, tragic drama (which is said to uphold individual’s chosen actions) in the Indian traditions.

Enactments Gahanaa karmano gatih. (Bhagavadgita, 4.17, p. 233) The path of karma is (an) impenetrable (forest or cave.) In engaging with the question or task of how to relate to actions – actions which one is drawn to render in existence, Indian reflective practices with regard to karma move far beyond the constrictive concept of sanctioned action. In this regard, they have no use for the Aristotelean pair potential/ work (energeia) (as interpreted by Agamben) – a conceptual pair which is the provenance for configuring agentive intentional (willed) action. Therefore, it is not the question, as it was emphasised by Agamben, of how one moves from potential to action that receives attention here; such an emphasis frames action only as a physical, objective work. Whereas Indian traditions specify three different kinds of action: actions of manas (the complex of memory and desire – this theme will be taken up later), of utterance (vaak), and of the body (kaaya). Karmanaa badhyate jantu: says the Mahabharata35 Action binds the animal [human being is one such animal]. Vidyayaa tu pramuchyate adds the source: learning releases the animal from the binds. What kind of learning is needed, then, with regard to actions? Karmanyakarma yah pashyedakarmani cha karmayah sa buddhimaan manushyeshu sayuktah krutsna karmakrut. (Bhagavadgita, 4.18, p. 234) Sensing non(relation to) action in action and (indulgent/interested) action in non(relational) action is the discerning one among men; such a being will render all actions. 168

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Given the fact that existence involves one in actions, one cannot not render actions; there is no easy way out between indulgence and escape. Thus, the question of relating oneself to action becomes central to existence. Actions can be rendered indulgently, spectacularly, and passionately. Such a relation binds one to the machinic routine of animal life (where animal is not ontologically set apart from man: man is a pashu (animal) among pashus (animals). Non-actional relation to action becomes possible when one renders actions without investing in programmed returns from action; one relates to them non-relationally. But even this non-relational relation to action (akarma) is also vulnerable. Declarations of non-actional actions, proclamations of one’s indifference with regard to actions, and their returns once again reinforce the indulgent binds and bonds. Clearly, what this meditation on the enigma of action – relation and non-relation – hints at is the seductive urge of agentive role in rendering actions. It can surface and take over the actional and the non-actional scenario and rivet one in the actional circuitry. Therefore, all actions must be burnt down in the fire of learning, says the Bhagavadgita: jnaanagni dagdha karmaanaam (Bhagavadgita, 4.19, p. 236). It is such a discernment that is at work in the radical formulation of the mightiest royal personage – Bhishma – in his counsel to the despondent heir of a kingdom who has just won a catastrophic war: Tyaja dharmamadharmancha ubhe satyaanrute tyaja ubhe satyaanrute tyaktvaa yena tyajasi tam tyaja (Srimanmahabharatam, 331.44. p. 1010) Release (yourself) from dharma and adharma, also from both truth and untruth; after releasing from truth and untruth free yourself even from the faculty (tvam) (that aided your relief). Once again it is not choosing from the binaries nor passing from one to the other pole with agentive or subjective intention but it is the very binaristic actional matrix itself one seeks relief from; but one seeks release from, above all, even from the very discerning impulse that helps one free oneself. Most importantly, all these actional, non-actional moves must be rendered while inhabiting the actional matrix itself. Indian reflections on karma are not caught in the duality of dynamis/energeia, or constricted to sanctioned action. All the potential or reserve, like bee’s wax or spider’s silk, can bind oneself and others in the wax cells or silk webs one spawns. Karma draws one to transact with this essential generative impulse itself. In the Indian traditions these transactions predominantly come forth and proliferate (indeed get generated) in performative modes. The absolute medium and effect of these articulations remains the performative body. The body is the formation – a generative effect – that receives and responds, renders, and bears the acts and effects in existence. Hence the pervasive spread of performative mnemocultural forms across India over millennia. Yet, as 169

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shown earlier, the performative body is no homogeneous biological entity as such in these reflective practices. It is a complex of heterogeneous forces that we discussed earlier as para and apara (we will return to this). Agamben’s entire thematisation of (sanctioned) action as the basis of the politics and ethics of the West is aimed at questioning this formation. His questioning takes the form of seeking out a certain kind of action which goes beyond the aporetic pair of making and acting, of poiesis/praxis, of potential and work (dynamis/energeia), or between means and ends. Agamben identifies such action beyond the dualities of means for an end and end in itself in the performativity of gesture – especially gesture rendered in a ‘play’– a theatrical action. The gesture in play is neither a productive work nor a negation or abandonment of work. On the contrary, performativity displaces the structure of duality (Agamben, Karman, p. 67). Gesture, while appearing to surge forth – as in a dancer’s performance which is both activity and potential – renders works ‘inoperative’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 84). Although Aristotle gets foregrounded throughout in the thematisation of action in the treatise, Agamben tacitly seems to incline towards Plato at the end in his path to move ‘beyond action.’ Plato too, even as he rejected and abandoned taking part in politics and public affairs and preferred contemplative philosophy (Agamben, Karman, p. 35), brought forth the ‘paradigm of a happier politics,’ observes Agamben (Agamben, Karman, p. 67). In this ‘politics’ of life Plato relates human actions to gestures of a marionette – a ‘divine puppet’ enacting beautiful games in a divine play. Even though this is god’s play, the god here has neither will nor purpose, and the play is not designed to save the players as such (Agamben, Karman, p. 67). For Plato the just way of acting in this ‘playful politics’ of life is: ‘One should live by playing some games… celebrating rites, singing and dancing…’ to propitiate gods and drive away the enemies (Plato quoted in Agamben, Karman, p. 68). Clearly, Plato has not yet been terminally wrenched away from mnemocultural performative ways in reflecting on modes of being (acting) in the world (although, as we discussed earlier, he sought another praxial path to the Homeric one).

Discernments It is precisely the mnemocultural modes of embodied and enacted gestures (though, obviously this is not the idiom of Agamben’s thematisation here) that incline Agamben towards Indian (Buddhist and Saivite) traditions. And he sees from these traditions ‘thinking in a new way the relation – or nonrelation – between actions and their supposed subject’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 78). If action-intention-authority configured the onto-theology of Western ethics and politics, the ‘doctrine of karman’ appears to correspond to the concept of action only to a limited extent. For, in the Indian traditions the ‘wheel of co-production’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 78) implicates one in the machinic circuit (not Agamben’s phrase) only when overpowered by the 170

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‘“bond of Maya’” (Agamben, Karman, p. 78). Only in this spectral play, as discussed earlier, does one delude oneself as an agentive self. Consequently, one’s actions tend to reinforce the interminable wheel. Here Agamben draws on the figure of Shiva as (para) inhering in every entity (formation) irreducible to the formational attributes. Those who (the ‘awakened’) discern this heterogeneous structure of binds and bonds and the inhering other can take part, like the ‘“performers in the theatre of the world,”’ in the spectral play without attachment and relation to the roles they co-produce (Vasugupta cited in Agamben, Karman, p. 79). As discussed earlier, spectrality itself is para’s playful projection and para inheres in its projections as an uninvolved and unaffected witness. According to Agamben if it is ‘ignorance and imagination’ (in Sankara’s composition: maaya kalpita…anaadyavidya) that seems to cathect the ‘subject as responsible actor,’ only as ‘an appearance’ in the thought of karman, such a ‘pretence [is] produced by the apparatuses of law and morality’ in the West (Agamben, Karman, p. 78). If the edifices of law and morality are the spectral conjurations, who is likely to play the role of para or Shiva in dispelling the spectrality of these formations with their onto-theological ground in the case of the West? Without the sovereignty of the theo-humanist subject, can the edifice of ethics and politics of the West remain intact? Here Agamben has affirmed the necessity of radically calling into question the ethico-­ political foundations of the West. Agamben’s gesture need not, however, be seen as a step outside the West but more as a move to fundamentally delimit the supervening paradigm of politics and ethics of the West. It is in Buddha’s silence to a question about whether Atman (para) that Agamben discerns a gesture that makes ‘inoperative’ the inherited binaries of means and ends, merit and demerit, and guilt and accusation that determine action. For it suggests the suspension of the ontological status of subject either as an agentive effect of actions or as an entirely free and sovereign agent. The gesture does neither imply yet another kind of action beyond the instituted ones, nor project another world beyond the dualities. The gesture suggests quietly a mode of being in an instant of existence – existence formed of dualities – a mode that is open to every being and action, a mode that has overcome dualities of para-apara. It is the mode of nirvana, observes Agamben. As it sees and overcomes dualities in the instance of existence, Agamben senses this gesture as ‘a politics of pure means.’ (Agamben, Karman, p. 85) It is in these Pagan reflective modes of being – whether of Shiva, Buddha, or Plato that Giorgio Agamben seems to sense the limits of European paradigms of politics and ethics of action. At the end of the treatise, it appears that Agamben seems to be like one of those students who ‘listened’ to the other Shiva (as the supreme teacher) in the formation of Dakshinamurthi: Gurostu maunam vyaakhyaanam shishyaastu chchinna samshayah. (Sankara, Sri Dakshinamurthi, 3, p. 3) 171

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The teacher’s silent commentary smashed all the doubts of students. Thinking, observed Heidegger, is the element of Being; it is an ‘engagement by Being for Being.’ (Heidegger. ‘Letter on Humanism,’ p. 194) The ethos (dwelling) of this activity of emergence is language. Language is the gift of Being for man to relate the essence to Being. (Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism,’ p. 197) But when the luminous resonance of a language is disrupted and the shared sense of its elements is fractured, thinking accrues a technical interpretation. The root of such technicisation of thinking derives from breaking the originally shared sense of techné with poiesis – elements that disclosed the activity of the emergence of something unprecedented or unavailable. With the disruption of the shared sense, techné comes to designate purposive, calculative deliberated process. Thus, in the technical interpretation of thinking the latter appears as a reflection oriented to serve ‘doing or making:’ reflection and action get separated, and the former (‘thinking’) serves and guides the latter. (Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism,’ p. 196) Such a categorical division results in the separation of theory (theoretical thinking) from practice – of poiesis from praxis – of episteme from techné; episteme originally was the effect of theoria (contemplative seeing). Systematic thinking or system-building theorisation emerges from such division. Thus, emerged for the first time, Heidegger observes, in Greek thought disciplines such as ‘logic,’ ‘physics,’ and ‘ethics.’. Thinkers prior to Plato ‘knew neither a “logic” nor an “ethics” nor “physics”. Yet their thinking was neither illogical nor immoral. But they did think physis in a depth and breadth that subsequent “physics” was ever again able to attain.’ (Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism,’ p. 232). Moving beyond the conceptual system-building thinking, Heidegger at times, pushed thinking beyond even poetry and song: ‘But thinking is composing, in a deeper sense than the composition of poetry and song. The thinking of Being is the original mode of composing….Thinking is the primal creative composition (Urdichtung), which is prior to all poesy.’ (Heidegger cited in Mehta, The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger, p. 63) It is such a primal composition he searched for in ‘art’ which was, for him, dominated by metaphysical thinking. For Heidegger ‘art’ is still a desirable creatable work – though it need not be reduced to artefacts of human fabrications. For him ‘art’ still retains the non-metaphysical response to the call of physis: the call challenges human intellect and action to bring forth the unprecedented.36 The provenance of art, Heidegger surmises, is the ‘secret of the still unthought aletheia.’ (Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art,’ p. 127). In searching for a way to overcome the sedimented metaphysical calculative thought of Europe, Heidegger focuses on Pagan Greek terms which have no use for opposed categories of metaphysical thought (such as conscious/ unconscious, sensible/intelligible, subjective/objective, and so on). For in the Greek terms such as physis he sees the double valance of concealment and unconcealment, manifestation/un-manifestation, arising/withdrawing,  etc. 172

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Such valence cannot be subordinated to the egoity of human thought for Heidegger: ‘It remains necessary to realize that thinking is not a sovereign act.’ (Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art,’ p. 126). Thinking in the sense Heidegger conceives of it essentially designates certain acts of unconcealment, to bring forth the unavailable. What is of critical importance here is that thinking here alludes to the very act of emergence more than what is brought forth (the essent). Heidegger also suggests that thinking is mainly thanking, recall, and memory: ‘Thinking is thinking only when it recalls in thought the ἐὁn [being], That which this word indicates properly and truly, that is, unspoken, tacitly.’ (Heidegger, What is Called Thinking? p. 244). But what is the place of art in thinking about the provenance of thought? Heidegger contends that like the prevailing thought, the calling to which contemporary art responds, derives from the scientific world – the world of mathematical physics. His work does not indulge in valorisation of what are designated as the works of art. He pursues the provenance of such works: ‘The work, as work [of art/thought], should point toward that which is not yet available to mankind, towards the concealed…’ – and must avoid repetition of what is already there, the mimetic reproduction. (Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art,’ p. 127). As could be seen, both Heidegger and Agamben, in different ways, unravel the exhaustion of European paradigm of thinking and grope towards what limits this paradigm: the Pagan other.

Countersigning inheritances If thinking emerges from the bounds sketched out by tradition, how does Derrida receive and respond to the heritage of Europe? If Heidegger saw the rupture temporally with the pre-metaphysical ethos, how does the Pagan figure, if at all, in Derrida’s work? Derrida too sees the European tradition of metaphysics as all pervasive – even in critiques or attempts at ‘destructions’ of it. There are, Derrida insists, only different ways of responding to it – but there is no outside to it: ‘no one can escape’ it. What matters is the rigour with which one can measure the quality and fecundity of a discourse in its relationship to the history of metaphysics and to inherited concepts of thought, contends Derrida. The ‘problem of economy and strategy’ confronts one in dealing with tradition.37 Derrida identifies two paths or manners of critiquing the receptions of and response to heritage. The limits reached by a heritage may provoke one to question systematically or rigorously the history of the concepts imparted by the heritage. Such a critique is neither philological nor historical. It is ‘probably the most daring way of making the beginning of a step outside of philosophy.’ This first path of decentralising the founding concepts of philosophy may possibly have ‘sterilizing effects.’ (Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 284) The second path is that of tracking the old concepts in the empirical history and using and abandoning them when they do not work. Here method and truth are separated. Derrida prefers the first path 173

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to elicit the a priori condition at work rather than get into ‘the difficulties of an empirical deduction;’ (Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 111) but from this path he unravels the anomalies of the second path. What is important here is not just the disclosure of the functioning of a priori but the specific manifestation of it in particular instances or uses of it. Derrida advances a priori propositions and states: ‘How one passes from this a priori to the determination of empirical facts is a question that one cannot answer in general here…because, by definition, there is no general answer to a question of this form’ (Derrida Of Grammatology, p. 108). As is well known, this intense inquiry into the reception and critique of tradition unfolded in his engagement with Lévi-Strauss’s encounter with the Pagan Namibikwara Indians of Brazil. Derrida shows how Lévi-Strauss’s inherited conceptual tools find their limit in his account of the Nambikwara. But one wonders: aren’t both the forms of inquiry that Derrida identifies here – that of the passage from the empirical to the essential or a priori to the empirical – the species of the same forked genus:conceptual/philosophical/theoretical/scientific as opposed to the empirical? Isn’t it only in such a hierarchy of opposites that the empirical is seen as a menace exacerbating anxiety and desire of the conceptual/scientific? (Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 288) Derrida points out that for philosophers the difference between the structure of the essence and empirical affect is a ‘major rule’ and that none of the philosophers ever would derive the essential from the empirical: the empirical can in no way be the premise of a proposition (Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 117). The point here, however, is not how to derive the essential from the empirical (derivation of the empirical from the essential is also not that easy as Derrida himself pointed out). The point is that the very division between the empirical and essential itself is a schema that has emerged from an empirically designated culture: the modern metaphysical West. Derrida’s turn to the a priori can be seen in his examples of the Nambikwara he focuses on: (i) proper name as improper and (ii) writing as violence. On the basis of the a priori proposition – a system of differences undermines invested privileging of certain elements of the system (naming as erasure of the proper, representation or iteration as the obliteration of the absolutely pure idiom/essence, classificatory differentiation as the originary violence) – Derrida shows the way even the Pagan Indian world too instantiates these a priori premises. But precisely this is the scene (as Derrida himself acknowledged), the encounter with the Pagan Indians, for dislocating a heritage that cathected the proper as the metaphysics of presence. That is to say, Derrida’s recourse to the a priori appears to result from a particular resolution of the relationship between the universal a priori and a particular culture’s reception of it: it helps to build systematic or system-building accounts. Such an a priori may be irrelevant in the contexts where the metaphysical longing for presence has no place. Derrida’s reading of Lévi-Strauss is a double move: to show the limit of the Western heritage at the Pagan horizon; and at the same 174

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time breach another path (of the a priori) that would incorporate the Pagan in its theorisation (based on the division between the a priori and the empirical) from within the heritage.38 Consequently, the possibility of the Pagan response to the Western heritage remains foreclosed – unless the Pagan speaks this universal language of the a priori. But such a manoeuvre or stratagem may also have paralysing or proselytising effects. If one claims that some Pagan cultural formation – say the Suya of the Pacific or Nelike of Tulunad – does not evince such a resolution, then one condemns oneself to be doing ethnology, which is a systemic discourse. On the contrary, if one hazards the a priori proposition of a different kind – say that the division between the a priori and the empirical itself is delusional privileging of a priori and consequently a prey to its own critique – then one is already converted into the philosophising vocation. How can one get out of this paralysing dead end? Metaphysical conceptual systems entrap thinking into double binds. After all, this privileging of a priori reflection is little more than the reflective subject’s projective plan, for which the thing out there is not essential. According to Heidegger, such an epistemic turn is the quintessential feature of modern metaphysics (Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” pp. 125–127). Derrida’s critique of Lévi-Strauss’s reading of Pagan Indians lends itself to this overpowering protocol of playing which enervates and entraps any attempt to countersign his work. If the nature/culture conceptual binary which Lévi-Strauss uses reaches an impasse in the Pagan milieu of the Nambikwara, wouldn’t this oppositional pair a priori/empirical also reach such a limit? Derrida, like Heidegger, is surely not unaware of this. What limits the metaphysical heritage is seen as the unthinkable – which is the ‘condition of their [binaries] possibility’ (Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 283); what precedes the paradigm of the binaries is unthinkable in terms of the paradigm. The entire philosophical conceptualisation leaves in the domain of the unthinkable what makes the conceptualisation possible; but it may be said that even this postulate of the ‘unthinkable’ itself is something intelligible only in the context of what is designated as paradigmatic thinking. Here, though, Derrida focusing on what confounded Lévi-Strauss, mentions the specific thematic of the incest prohibition: what is at stake is the non-binary, the non-conceptual, the nonphilosophical constellation of existence and the limits of the universalisability of the conceptual. Derrida is not unaware of the danger of the metaphysical impulse resurfacing in the binary of conceptual and non-conceptual; therefore, he underwrites the necessity of displacing even this binary (we will return to this later). (Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, p. 329) Derrida devotes his time and energy to unravel the discourses that result from the foreclosure of the unthinkable (or those that assimilate the latter into the paradigm). He turns to the ‘well’ thought, rather; that is, the established, and leaves the unthinkable as an enigmatic trope. Here Heidegger plunges into the Pagan antiquity and risks thinking differently from the 175

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metaphysical heritage of his inheritance. Agamben has shown the gesture of such a move for the first time in turning to Indian (Buddhist) thought. Derrida’s critique opens up two possibilities: ethnology – which records accounts of European exposure to other (Pagan) cultures – which had the potential to dislocate/decentre and even destroy the European heritage of metaphysics and ethnocentrism (Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 282); for the existence of other cultures and communities ought to dispel one’s own community or culture as the sole privileged owner/centre of the earth. But it failed to do so because the sclerotic conceptual grid regulated Europe’s experience of other cultures. Here Derrida proceeds to show how the exemplary work of Lévi-Strauss, failing to grapple with the a priori condition, confuses the conceptual and empirical on the one hand and feels scandalised by the modes of being of the ‘empirical’ other (the Nambikwara Indians), on the other. In pursuing the second path in responding to the heritage mentioned earlier, Levi-Strauss advances bricolage as his method. Bricolage is the ‘use of means at hand’ – and it underwrites ‘the necessity of borrowing one’s concepts from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or ruined…’ (Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 285). In contrast, for Lévi-Strauss the work of the ‘engineer’ is more original and creative. The latter is assumed to create something out of nothing. Derrida contends that the contrast between bricoleur and engineer is classical and metaphysical. But the sedimented conceptual tools which Lévi-Strauss deploys to study the Nambikwara too become unintelligible in the context of the latter’s Pagan practices. Such an encounter can barely provide a systematic general account that can overcome ethnocentrism, observes Derrida. The paradigmatic conceptual pair universal as natural and cultural as particular gets scandalised in Lévi-Strauss’s attempt to inquire into the modes of being of these Pagans. But the sense of scandal is intelligible only within the conceptual system within which Lévi-Strauss functions, argues Derrida (Derrida Writing and Difference, p. 285). Neither such concepts nor their rigid bifurcations make any sense in the ‘Indian’ context. The ‘scandal’ that Lévi-Strauss discovers is a powerful instance of the limits of European metaphysical grid. The Pagan mode of response ‘certainly precedes’ the binary and ‘probably as the condition of their [binary concepts] possibility,’ but also even erases or questions such a binary (Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 283). That is, the Pagan set of practices might make it possible for metaphysical conceptual pairs to come forth but they do not themselves succumb to metaphysics. Derrida sees the entire philosophical conceptualisation as systematically related to the nature/culture opposition. Such a system is ‘designed to leave in the domain of the unthinkable the very thing that makes this conceptualization possible: the origin of the prohibition of incest’ (Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 284). Derrida seems to be drawn more to the sources of discourse formation – albeit the source might undermine the discourse. 176

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Lévi-Strauss’s second path – the bricoleur’s method – tries to turn its discourse into the object it describes, contends Derrida. Lévi-Strauss calls his work mythopoetic – akin to the mythological work. Derrida questions this. How does such a work differentiate one discourse from another discourse on myths, or, how does one differentiate intra-discursive accounts? Are all discourses on myth equivalent? Such a classical question cannot be answered as long as ‘the problem of the relations between the philosopheme or the theorem, on the one hand, and the mytheme and mythopoem, on the other, has not been posed explicitly, which is no small problem’ (Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 288). It is important to pay attention to Derrida’s specific formulation here. He does not ask what is a philosopheme and what is a mytheme – but his concern pertains to ‘the relations between’ the philosopheme and the mytheme. This would imply that they are not to be treated as exclusivist but always related. Yet the difference between them must be explicitly and rigorously spelt out (which is no small matter), says Derrida. The division that Derrida invokes here, however, appears to be a variation of deeply sedimented paradigmatic conceptual pairs, which fundamentally constitute ‘Europe:’ truth/ metaphor, constative/performative, rational/emotional, muthos/logos, and so on. But isn’t such a formulation intelligible only in a philosophical discourse? Wouldn’t taking recourse to such exercise reinforce the episteme (after the latter’s severing from techné)? Derrida’s insistence on the explicit (indeed conceptual) differentiation, however difficult it may be, of the philosopheme and mytheme can be asked only in a culture which has divided them into one and the other in the first place. Perhaps the question that could be asked is (of course, only in this kind of context): is such a division a cultural universal? Do all cultures necessarily bring forth their modes of being and thinking through such a division? Lévi-Strauss’s Pagan Nambikwara experience shows the contrary. Derrida’s question is a legitimate one but seems to remain ethno-epistemecentred. Pagan cultures have no use for such questions, a point Derrida’s own critique of Lévi-Strauss elliptically indicates. Yet, all these pairs and their paradigm derive from the common onto-theological genus of European response to, and appropriation of, Pagan cultures: a European failure to sense its limits. Lévi-Strauss’s ‘anthropological discourse is produced through concepts, schemata, and values that are, systematically and genealogically, accomplices of this theology [of the fall, of degeneration from the original purity] and this metaphysics’ (Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 135). Derrida’s critique too becomes intelligible only within such a heritage even when it aims at deconstructing it. The metaphysical inheritance and its conceptual grid appear to be the result of a foreclosure of non-metaphysical formations of being or appropriations of the latter into the former. The grid is the result of the foreclosure. The other of Europe, consequently, appears to remain the unthinkable for Europe (This unthinkable seems to resonate with the chaos/apeiron 177

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configured by Anaximander and sustained metaphysically in the heritage of Europe). Therefore, ethnological accounts only reiterate/illustrate the determinations of the European grid. Derrida demonstrates this in his reading of Lévi-Srauss’s accounts of the Indians. The Pagan is unthinkable and inoperative. The Pagan - like myth and the Asia remain out there in the abyss of apeiron and these configurations remain the a priori formulations of Europe. The second possibility which Derrida’s engagement opens up rightly then is to scrutinise the operations of the effect of the foreclosed: engaging the binaristic heritage. Derrida turns to this second path and we need to pay attention to how he does this. He stresses time and again that the critical rigor, systematicity, and explicitness must be at work in such engagement. ‘Critical relation’ and critical responsibility get emphasised with force in this reckoning. Not all engagements with the heritage are important but only those that practise the ideals ones mentioned above are pertinent. Such ‘deconstructive’ work is ‘probably the most daring way of making the beginnings of a step outside of philosophy (Derrida, Writing and Difference, pp. 282–284).39 This critical vigilance and the demands for clarity and rigor will turn their gaze inside into the epistemophilic edifice of Europe and unravel its narcissistic-oedipal (ethnocentric or eliminating the preceding authority) claims. In the process, it is impelled to pursue one of the pointers of the forked heritage – that of the scientific/philosophical even while being genuinely and intensely aimed at undermining and displacing the division itself. Derrida’s identification of the Pagan as the limit of the European turns him more into the European but not towards exploring the unthinkable that enabled such forked European heritage to emerge. This is not to criticise Derrida. On the contrary, one admires the integrity, attention, and restlessness with which Derrida unravels and countersigns his heritage from within its limits and its presumptive expansions. The question that one is then impelled to face is: Can Derrida’s critical productive stratagem open passageway for sensing the enduring Pagan modes of being and forms of articulation beyond the metaphysical a priori model? Wouldn’t Europe (even in its countersigned avatar) continue to configure the destiny and destination (if any) of the Pagan? How can the Pagan overcome and move beyond, without rancour or rage the (narcissistic-oedipal) forked heritage of Europe and its derivative colonial institutions of, among others, university and its discourses? Derrida’s addressee is essentially the European (of metaphysics). In the context of Derrida’s filiation of writing in the narrow sense with science, it is possible, as was discussed earlier, to look at the relation between speech and gesture in a different way from Pagan mnemocultural background. The generativity of the speech/gesture is the quintessential effect of the demarcated biocultural formations (surely an instantiation of classifiable differential formations). They are deeply nurtured in singular but heterogeneous modes of being. Privileging the prosthetic inscriptional signifier (graphein in the narrow sense) is ironically in continuity with the reduction 178

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of the absolutely fundamental condition for the generation of the symbol: the body. Instead of taking recourse to the privileged propositional a priori, one may naively ask the question: how do cultures articulate the relation between biocultural formations and modes of symbolisation? Do they incline towards surrogation and prostheticisation of the symbol, or do they prefer embodied praxial modes of disseminating biocultural symbolisation? And if they incline towards the latter, what does such bioculturality communicate in general? Here it must be noted that we are not involved in the forked bifurcation of theorisation and empirical manoeuvre. Our concern is with the biocultural articulation of symbolisation. Even when the symbol is an irreducibly prosthetic supplement to the biological (hence our reference to the biocultural), the question we are interested in is: given the absolute irreducibility of the biocultural formation called the demarcated body, what is the place/status of such a formation in practices (generation, mediation, and dissemination) of symbolisation? When language is seen as the epochal problematic (which became the paradigmatic model for theorisation), Derrida focuses on the linguistic signifier as the grapheme – the irreducible material, and irruptive trace (whether speech or writing). Consequently, the absolutely differentiated and demarcated biocultural entity called the body and its relationship to the generative effect called the symbol (speech, gesture, mythogram, etc.,) does not become the focus of attention. It is the privileged problematic of the exclusivisable prosthetic symbolic apparatus (that which can be separated from the articulative body) that receives attention in Derrida’s work. As a result, the biocultural body gets displaced by the prosthetic body called the gramme or graphein – the inscriptional symbol per se and its conceptualisations among the celebrated philosophers and thinkers of the West secure the attention. Surely one can argue that the body itself can be designated as a graphein, a mark intelligible in a system of marks (species). Indeed, then the question that needs addressing is the relation between this mark (the body) and the other radically differentiable graphein called the symbol (be it gestural, acoustic, or graphematic). Derrida’s devotion to bring forth rigorously another, ‘new’ ‘concept of writing’ ‘with the old name of writing’ (Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, p. 330) cathects on the prostheticisable symbol than the biocultural marker in its modes of being. Derrida is critical of Heidegger for disregarding as derivative the ‘technical dimension of sending…techniques of transmission, of emitting and receiving.’40 But we barely find any such interest in Derrida’s work with regard to the ‘technical dimension’ of enactive and embodied transmissions (without the alphabetic prosthetic) among the Pagans of antiquity and the Nambikwara of the modern period: the body as a medium and effect of biocultural transmissions is conspicuous by its absence in Derrida’s work. Typically, Derrida confines himself to the inscriptive ‘postal service’ (drifting graphic signs). Apparently, the reawakening of the graphein is an implicit subversion in a culture that is believed 179

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to reduce the body, the material entity as evil, sin, and death, exterior to the soul/spirit. Such engagement, admirable though it is, may be effective within the bounds sketched out by the heritage which it tends to critique: that of Judeo-Christianity.

Unthinkable abstractions The Pagan sets limits to the heritage of Europe. The ‘Problem of Paganism’ haunted Europe from Philo and Clement to Leibnitz and beyond. The Pagan became a special subject of study in the classical universities of Europe41. Yet, Europe’s exceptional ‘double dynamic’ of conserving itself and selftranscending in its encountering of others – Europe’s resilience to be itself in particular and its expansive power to universalise itself – is claimed to sublate or supersede the Pagan into its heritage. The problem of Paganism finds resolution in such superseding sublations or rejections. A Pagan Asian cluster of clusters of cultural formations called India, for instance, arguably has not sublimated any forked heritage of philosopheme/ mytheme, propositional a priori/empirical-deductive, theoretical/practical, and universal/particular binaries. Shastra and kavya, for instance, can be differentiated in different ways, but they cannot be rigorously set apart (no one treats the Veda and the Prasthanatraya42 in terms of such binaries exclusively – excepting, of course, under the spell of the European discourse called Indology). Similarly, a whole range of millennially circulating idiomatic notions of everyday language such as jnana, dharma, karma, jati, samsaara, loka, vidya, tattva, and kala are used in most specific concrete instantiations (traversals) of existence. At the same time, they can be indicators of abstract and general reflection. The entirety of internally differentiated vangmaya (the universe of pervasive utterance) is composed of such distinctly singular and profoundly general radial resonances. Thus, samsaara or loka, as shown earlier, can be specific instances of a micro unit of a familial and topo-temporal existence. But these notions can also be apeironal markers of recursive appearances and dissolutions of interminable durational existences. No centralised figure or narcissistic-oedipal ipseity (‘agency’ or ‘subjecthood’) controls the apeironal drift of the durationalinstantial existences. European thinking, contended Heidegger, which is dominated by the method of the knowing of modern science, precisely in order to reflect on science, must prepare itself for a ‘dialogue with Greek thinkers and their language.’ That dialogue is yet to begin, he adds, and Europe is scarcely prepared for it at all. Such a dialogue, observes Heidegger, ‘itself remains for us the precondition of the inevitable dialogue with the East Asian world.’43 Heidegger’s persistent engagement with the Pagans of antiquity has much deeper import. Although Derrida does not explicitly pose and engage with the ‘Pagan problem’ (the term Pagan has no analytic status in his work), his entire oeuvre, in persistently unravelling and countersigning the European 180

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heritage, deeply cherishes and replenishes the double dynamic of Europe. In the process he pushes the thought of Europe to the horizon of the ‘unthinkable.’ Consequently, Derrida’s work seems to expose the Pagan to a terminus without chance: the Pagan turns into a mute abstraction of the unthinkable or circulates as an entity succumbing to the sublations of European heritage. The Pagan seems to get commemorated and put under erasure at the same time. Derrida’s admirable countersigning legacy from the European context does not appear to be free from its ‘sterilizing’ or ‘paralyzing’ effect it may generate elsewhere.

Sovereignty of the rational Confronted with the all-pervasive power of the metaphysical tradition, Heidegger senses the possibility of the prevalence of a thinking that is prior to (‘another beginning’) metaphysical structure of duality. Derrida does acknowledge that coherence in thinking is ‘not and has not always been systemic’ (Derrida, Rogues, fn.4, p. 171) – that is, based on theoretical reason. He also spaces non-conceptual thinking as a significant postulate. Derrida, following Heidegger, traces the break within Greek thought – to be precise, in Plato’s work. A formidable common root has nourished and strengthened the concept of power and knowledge in European heritage, contends Derrida. The root is designated as reason (logos), and it is opposed to something considered as non-reason (alogos). Reason is celebrated for its autonomy, its radical capability to determine without itself being determined, for its non-derivative power to decide and state; in a word, logos evinces radical sovereignty in the pursuit of knowledge. Precisely, it is this autonomy and sovereign capability for mastery that have defined the political power in the West. The king as the sovereign is absolutely powerful and autonomous in deciding and implementing his decisions – making and unmaking of the law. Both the sovereignty of knowledge and sovereignty of (political) power are the systemic manifestations of the sovereignty of logos. Whether the systems of knowledge consolidate themselves either as science (technology) or philosophy or as political systems such as dictatorship or democracy – both the logos-based systems are rooted in the claim for sovereignty. The concept of sovereignty is quintessentially rooted in European religion. Judeo-Christian theology identifies its god as the only true and omnipresent sovereign figure. He wills and designs the world and the place of man in it for the salvation of the latter. Man in turn proclaims his own sovereign status on the basis of his capacity to reason, propose, decipher, discover, design, and master. The essential concept of the subject is filiated to man. The name of man, says Derrida, is the name of that being who ‘dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of play.’ (Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 292). The ‘essential predicates’ of this man-subject are: ‘identity to self, positionality, property, personality, 181

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ego, consciousness, intentionality, freedom, humanity, etc….The virile strength of the adult male, the father, husband, or brother…belongs to the [“fraternal”] schema that dominates the concept of subject.’44 Further, Derrida observes (and this resonates with Agamben’s account discussed earlier) that the foundation of ethical, juridical, and political structures ‘remain[s] essentially sealed within a philosophy of the subject.’ Such structures are fragile when subjectivity arrogates to itself supreme power in the name of the collective will called the state (Nancy , Who Comes After the Subject?, p. 4). From early on in his work, Derrida tracked the humanist valence and its complicated political equivocation in Heidegger’s work. Heidegger’s seminal notion of Dasein, man’s Being, contends Derrida, ‘though is not man, is nonetheless nothing other than man.’ Heidegger defines Dasein, points out Derrida, ‘as the zoon logon ekhon – as that living thing whose Being is essentially determined by the potentiality for discourse.’ Heidegger’s radical critique of metaphysics and humanism ‘remains as thinking of man. Man and the name of man are not displaced in the question of Being such as it is put to metaphysics.’ (Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, pp. 127–128; emphasis in the original [the second quoted passage is Derrida’s citation of Heidegger]). The basis of European politics and law derives from this relationship between god and man – the paradigmatic sovereign power to rule and judge. The concept of sovereignty is constitutively related to the assertion of a virile agentive self-hood, declaring its capacity to master everything for the benefit of man. Every existent of the habitat that comes under the sovereign gaze of man is subjugated to the powers of man in his sovereign avatar in the name of man. Such arrogations of sovereignty in terms of power and knowledge can have suicidal consequences. Rationality can be suicidal to reason itself, states Derrida in his defence of reason. Today conceptions of man, the discourses of man (humanities and social sciences), of politics, law (norms to abide by), nation, nature (as an appropriable resource), state, and the institution (university as the abode of reason) are all profoundly determined by the sovereignty of logos. This grid of conceptuality is fundamentally alien to Indian reflective traditions. Reason reasons by dividing itself from what it designates and excludes as non-reason; reason, in the process lends itself to rationalisation and justification of its acts in the name of reason. In other words, reason (like any other impulse to act) lends itself to indulgence; that is, reason is prone to indulgence in rationalising itself. Apparent irony seems to haunt reason’s rationality – though what is involved here is something more than mere irony. Reason’s concerted advancement of itself makes it vulnerable to and exposes itself to the pull of passion which logos aimed at excluding itself from. Logos as rationality seems to be haunted by that which it hoped to surpass and overcome. Rigid or rigorous categorical divisions and oppositions in the name of desired determinations appear to be exposed to such 182

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ironic fate. Interestingly, Indian reflective traditions do not exclusively privilege any such category called logos. It is difficult to find an equivalent term (with its conceptual weight) for this category in the Indian languages.

Valencies of manas In the Indian reflective traditions, it is not the faculty of intellection – if there is any – that gets emphasised. The term that is often translated as intellect is buddhi.45 Buddhi is more an internal discerning faculty that works on the actional prompts processed and received from external faculties. What is transmitted through the processing of external faculties is in turn further processed and impacted by yet another sensitive but volatile faculty before buddhi enters the scene. The drifting faculty that operates between the external and internal processes is called manas. Manas works as the sensor that relates the external and internal prompts and incites action. In this regard, although buddhi appears to be above all among the hierarchy of internal and external faculties, it is manas that is accorded a more pivotal position than buddhi in Indian reflective traditions. Now manas is no simple emotion as opposed to buddhi as intellection. All the faculties (whether external or internal, subtle, or gross) are actional sensors that form and operate the body’s actions. Manas is a part of the matrix of the faculties, but it exceeds the matrix in a way. For, manas is the abode of desire and memory – the two most resilient and intractable forces of existence. Sankara says that manas is the fire that burns the loka (the abode made of five elements): Manomayognir dahati prapancham. (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 170, p. 250). Bringing together various traces of prakriti, maaya, and nescience, Sankara composes: Na hyastyavidyaa manasotiriktaa Manohyavidyaa bhavabandha hetuh Tasminvinashte sakalam vinashtam vijrumbhatesmin sakalam vijrumbhate. (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 171, p. 251) There is no other nescience that is contrary to manas: manas is avidya; for manas is the source of all binds and bonds of existence; when it loses (or is defective), everything is wrecked;when it rages, everything [in existence] rages. But at the same time Sankara also clarifies that like the wind that brings together and disperses clouds, manas too binds and releases one from bonds of existence: it is ambivalenced. (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 174, p. 254)46 Manas can forcefully bind one to a reductively finite atomic existence or at the same time wormhole one into transgenerational intimations. It may dangerously individuate one or enable one to sense what surpasses and 183

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constitutes the individuated. Manas can expose one to the beehive of passions – but it alone can enable one to contain the prompts of passions: Mana eva manushyaanaam kaaranam bandha mokshayoh bandhaaya vishayaasaktam muktyai nirvishayam smrutam. (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, p. 21) Manas is the source of man’s binds and release. Indulgence in seductive issues binds and bonds; freedom from issues releases from binds. (Thus manas and maanava are deeply filiated). The reorientation of manas in existence apparently comes across as an extremely ‘individual’ way out. Runa mochana kartaarah pitussanti sutaadayah bandha mochana kartaa tu svasmaadanyo na vidyate. (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 53, p. 87) Release from one’s debts can be rendered by father, son, grandson, or other kin, but releasement from one’s binds and bonds can be attained by none other than oneself. But when we look at it more closely, we notice that such a reorientation must be undertaken only in existence, it inevitably turns one to attend to the task of relating oneself to other existents in the loka/habitat. The task fundamentally relates to the question of being with others in existence. The other existents in question are not humans alone but the entirety of differentiated entities formed by the bhutas (elements/entities). This includes not just the lively millions and the so-called entities without life – all the mahabhutas and what they contain and form: in a word, formations in general. This relationship must be discerned with equanimity with all these entities on the one hand and daya and kshama (concern, forgiveness, and compassion) towards all entities in existence, on the other: Adveshtaa sarva bhutaanaam maitrah karuna eva cha nirmamo nirahamkaarah samadukha sukhah kshamee. (Bhagavadgita, 12.13, pp. 626–627) The one who nurtures friendship without rancour, and compassion towards all the elements and formations, who is devoid of possessivity and egoity but full of forgiveness and endures pain and pleasure with equanimity [is dear to ‘me’ – ‘says’ para]. These intimations of affect are not reducible to the binds and bonds that seduce one into machinic existence. They suggest yet another kind of relation to affect – and it is this discerning non-relational affect that must guide actions and relations in the loka. These gestures cannot be measured in logical (calculative) terms – they are not the privileged relations of the logical realm. Once 184

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again the dynamic faculty of manas comes into play in this context – and it is this faculty that one must learn to deal with – or it must deal with itself. Every action is contingent upon this interminable act of tending of manas. Manas is ambivalently forceful. One may have buddhi – capacity to discern – or one may not have it. But none can not have manas; it can entrap one and enable one to free oneself from binds and pulls; it is a resolving and dissolving force which no sovereign power can regiment; and it is too varied to function as sovereign by itself. Reason/rationality does not appear to be a special privileged category in Indian thought. Any and every faculty – be it buddhi, ahamkara, or manas – internal/external faculties – can reason and rationalise its acts. They are all exposed to the dynamic of desire (kama, kankṣa, trushna, moha, raga, dvesha). Manas is the arena through/on which the dynamic operates. Manas as the complex of passions is not quarantined in the Indian traditions into some displaced or discredited domain of muthos or poetry. It is therefore not with reason but with this ambivalent faculty of manas (which can enable and also cripple) that one must learn to negotiate. It is indeed through manas alone can one learn to sense para that inheres in every entity that exists: manasaivaanu drashtavyam;47 manasai veda maaptavyam48 (only by means of focused attention of the manas can one know para). Among the three most cherished modes of learning in the Indian traditions - shravaṇa (hearing/listening), manana (recalling/remembering), nidhidhyaasa (focused/meditative attention) - it is manas that occupies the central position and relates the first to the third. As suggested earlier, manas can converge with any of the faculties. If such convergences are oriented towards valorising only the finite particularity of an existent, then manas leads to the destruction of the entity. When it is contained and cultivated to move beyond particularities of existence (needless to say in existence, for manas is a faculty of the body which itself is a confluence of elements and the abode of endowments and the bhutas), it can enable one to sense the inhering para across all finite entities. How does this orientation of manas take place? Given that manas is the only faculty/ sensor that can align and distance, articulate and disarticulate the external and internal – it alone can differentiate the seductive and destructive from the enabling and enduring; manas can cultivate or pervert its orientation. But the essential ambivalence of manas does not guarantee that manas can be definitively programmed. As it provides the impetus for actional existence, manas can be said to be at work in the emergences and dissolutions of existence. Manas is atemporal and atopal (transgenerational and untimely, formless, and non-spatial), and its force can be reckoned only in the actions it induces, in its effects. Among the three major channels of action, manas figures prominently; the other two are that of speech and the body: mano-vaakkaaya. These actions are intricately related where the first one induces the actions of the latter two. It may be noticed that buddhi is conspicuous by its 185

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absence in this set – indicating its limited salience. As manas’s dynamic is ambivalent, it cannot be identified or reduced to any of its indulgent convergences; for all such convergences can be potentially destructive. Therefore, one cannot find a systemic convergence of manas and ahamkaara in the Indian reflective traditions. On the contrary, there is a persistent warning, not so much about any particular convergence in these traditions, but the root of all convergences: the passions (of want, envy, rage, longing, etc.) generated by the trait of tamah (darkness or indolence): Tamastajnaanajam viddi mohanam sarvadehinaam. (Bhagavadgita, 14:8, p. 685) Indolence incites longing and occludes discerning among all formations [bodies]. Smṛti49 compositions provide innumerable instances where the disorientation of manas has led to destruction. In fact, (and in essence) the Bhagavadgita refers to the loss of its very counsel in the course of time among the kings to whom it was imparted generationally. These kings, writes Sankara in his commentary on this verse (4.2), were ‘durbalaan ajitendriyaan praapya nashtam yogam imam:’ the kings who indulge in the disorientation as durbala (devoid of power/strength) and ajitendriya (who fail to overcome the pulls of indriyas – actional impulses) caused the loss of the imports of the Bhagavadgita. (Sankara, Sri Bhagavadgitaa, pp. 212–213) The Arthashaastra of Kautilya which deals with (among others) the constituents, formation and training of a kingdom and a king, refers to (and names) numerous kings who suffered precisely due to such debilities.50 Perhaps the conspicuous absence of any celebration of a consolidated power or crystallised intellectual system can be traced to the drift of manas’s ambivalence; also, perhaps, to the manas’s ultimate orientation towards para – which can never be equated with either power or knowledge. The maxim – might makes right – that recurs through the political philosophy of the West appears from the Indian traditions as the perversion of existence (an indication of durbala). Virility in this regard looks like debility. The kings who are celebrated (like Janaka) and the learned (jnaani) who are valued (like Suka) receive attention not due to their physical or rational powers – but precisely due to their cultivation of manas to reorient it in their actional existence. In all this, what is crucial is how one can (re)orient one’s actions in existence in containing the dynamic of manas. The most learned and the ubiquitous guardian and teacher of the remembered verbal universe – Suta – is portrayed (in stark contrast to the kings mentioned earlier) as follows: Sarva shashtraartha tattvajnam sarvavedaanga paaragamJitendriyam jitakrodho jeevanmukto jagadgurum.51 186

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Knower of the essence of the import of all the shaastras, learned in all the Vedas and the limbs of the Vedas, freed of the pulls of all faculties and rage, this teacher of the universe lives on in releasement in existence.

Cultivable endowments Culture is a generationally transmitted sense of relation to and feeling for entities, events, memories, and actions pertaining to them. Culture sustains itself through salient practices and accounts that can be imparted, replenished, and changed in the process. Culture is a cultivable endowment that nurtures coherence among assemblages of existents (events, entities, and memories) and through them forms and sustains a locus or habitat. These endowments are the means and effects of actions; one’s life is shaped by these endowments and the mode of being in turn affects the endowments: modes of being and endowments are mutually constitutive. But endowments are vulnerable; they are perennially exposed to negligence and ignorance; hence the necessity and possibility of their cultivability. Depending on our sense of relation to the endowments, they can be either reoriented and changed or distorted and perverted. When the relation indulges in appropriative or rageful passions and denies space for other existents of the assemblage and the loka, the endowments get perverted and the habitat suffers. When one senses the dynamic and intricate relation between passional actions and endowments, and learns to cultivate the endowments while sensing the conjuring of passions, such endowments may replenish the habitat and enable cohabitation with the others who are unlike oneself in the loka. Such cultivation has the possibility of bestowing happiness on the existents (the lively millions) of the habitat. The ultimate mode of being in existence that a culture can strive for is the alleviation of suffering and attainment of a state of happiness beyond the shifting dualities of pleasure and pain. Such modes of existence are precisely what the Indian traditions have affirmed and imparted over centuries. In the Indian context, culture as a cultivable endowment oriented towards such a state has sustained and replenished the order and coherence even in times of adversity. Given that inquiries into the work of culture are largely undertaken in the domain of the humanities, an inquiry into the critical status of Indian cultural endowments today, which have been vulnerably exposed to invasive alien cultural determinations, is not inappropriate in this context. Endowments are the constitutive traits which propel action among existents in a habitat. They are endowments because the traits are the gift/curse of the bounteous force, apara-prakriti, in Indian reflective traditions. Gift and curse are actional prompts and effects. As shown earlier, prakriti is elusive as it is inarticulable and untraceable as such; but at the same time it is delusive as its bounteous traits bind and entrap one in actional passions. The traits are the actional effects which prakriti conjures up in the 187

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formation of existents. The (d)elusive bounteous force thus puts to work a machinic process – actional traits incite actional passions leading to indulgent actions which leave residual effects, which in turn replenish the traits. The entirety of the assemblages of existents and the loka they bring forth is the colossal effect of this machinic process. As the habitat comes forth through the heterogeneous actional effects – actionality is ineluctable for existents. The habitat (loka) is not just a passive effect, though; it is also a dynamic medium for reorienting actions of existents; the habitat is the chance to play with the endowments of gift and curse. This does not, however, mean that the existents can design and determine their traits at their will as such. The existents can only work with/on the ‘given’ endowments – but their work will have consequences for the cultivable endowments in terms of what they receive in their reconstitution. Thus, culture as cultivable endowment is perpetually open or exposed to reconstitution and reorientation. However, this reconstitution is without a prior governing normative constitution as such. Similarly, the reorientation is without a definitive terminal as such. Even the state of happiness that a culture strives towards is not entirely free from the actional circuit. That state involves another kind of relation to actions – a non-passional or non-relational relation: Sama dukhah sukhah svastha sama loshtashcha kaanchana tulya priyaapriyo dheera tulya nindaatma samstuti. (Bhagavadgita, 14.24, p. 700) The discerning one will endure the dualities of pleasure and sorrow, iron, stone and gold, abuse and praise, and dear and repulsive with equanimity of relation.

Actions sans agents The point that the endowments are constitutive and given may lend itself to two apparently opposed but in fact related conjectures: (i) that the traits fatalistically determine the existent’s destiny, implying an all-powerful determining agency and (ii) if the existent works on the ‘given’ and the traits are cultivable then the existent can at will alter, determine the actional traits, and proclaim its determinative, agentive power. Such conjectures are at the back of Agamben’s conflation of crimen and karman discussed earlier (also in his reading of the Myth of Er). But the idea or concept of the all-powerful, self-determining agency is completely alien to the culture of cultivable endowments. For the concept of sovereignty as all-determining omnipotent power has no place in the Indian traditions of learning. Neither the elusive bounteous force nor the other (para) that is radically heterogeneous to, but which inheres in the effects of, the bounteous force (apara) nor the existent can be identified with a wholly determining power. 188

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The heterogeneous forces (para and apara-prakriti) and the ‘given’ that emerge from their projection of coming together have neither a beginning nor an end. They are always already there; only the assemblages and the habitats (lokas) that the bounteous force brings forth emerge and dissolve relentlessly: they articulate and disarticulate the actional effects. The cultivable endowments as actional effects have transgenerational residues; they are intractable and undeterminable: in a word, non-programmable. The actional ambience of the loka may lend itself to the delusive claim about agentive determinations. All such claims and declarations can only be presumptive assertions of agentive arrogance; such exhibitions of virility and determinative mastery can alter the endowments in the least. Only the ignoramus indulges in such assertions and sovereign endeavours: Ahamkaara vimudhaatma kartaaha miti manyate. (Bhagavadgita, 3.27, p. 185) The arrogant and ignoramus presumes: ‘I am the doer’ [agent]. The work of the bounteous force cannot be undone by assertive decisions. The Bhagavadgita clearly spells out the futility of such external or internal agentive command-control ruses: Sadrusham cheshtate svasyaah prakruteh jnaanavaanapi prakrutim yaanti bhutaani nigrahah kim karishyati. (Bhagavadgita, 3.33, p. 192) Even the learned goes about in accord with his endowments. [All the lively millions accrue the very traits that they cultivate.] What can resistance against the endowments accomplish? The cultivable endowments are subtle and enigmatic. One requires enormous amount of patience and imperturbable attentiveness to sense the workings of what one is endowed with. The Indian reflective traditions persistently reiterate the protracted but unavoidable workings of the cultivable endowments in modes of being in the loka. In fact, the major task of the king was to safeguard the conditions to nurture varied cultivable endowments in the habitat. Like the other existents and the primal heterogeneous forces (para/apara-prakriti), the king is no sovereign capable of either determining or altering the endowments of entities of the assemblage in a habitat that he happens to govern. It must be noted that while every existent is gifted/cursed with distinctive endowments; all existents and assemblages of a loka cannot have common endowments. Endowments are after all actional effects or residues. Hence the variation of traits within and across clusters and assemblages of cultural formations which form a habitat. Every existent is required to put to work the lot of endowments that one accrues and induces. Given that each existent is impelled to act with one’s endowments, each existent might appear to be functioning as a completely 189

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insular atomistic entity. One of the essential features of culture as a cultivable endowment is that it fundamentally reinforces the dynamic of relation. Cultivable traits are transgenerationally formed; clusters and assemblages of existents are genealogically bonded. But these formations and bonds are discontinuously woven. Given the magnitude of the invisible but formidable filaments of relational bonding of endowments, one cannot dispense with the bonding of endowed traits and embrace at will someone else’s endowments and crave to tether or plume oneself with alien endowments. What is implied here appears to be: given that one’s relation and endowments are the effects of transgenerational actional existence – one cannot filiate or appropriate or bond oneself with a relational chain that one has not genealogically and generationally striven for. Such wilful agentive determinations can only have dangerous and terrifying consequences, says the Bhagavadgita: Shreyaan svadharmo vigunah paradharmaat svanushtitaat svadharme nidhanam shreyah para dharmo bhayaavahah. (Bhagavadgita, 3.35, p. 196) Even if lapsed in practice, one’s cultivable endowments are commendable than the fully rendered alien endowments. Death in rendering one’s given endowments is nobler than turning to frightful foreign endowments. Such impulsive ventures of embracing the alien distort or destroy the meaning of relation and thus result in the destruction of the discerning faculty of the existent (or the cluster of existents). Even if there are limitations to the lot that one ‘receives’ or is endowed with or effected through one’s actions, one must learn to respond to it from within the lot; one must learn to put the ‘given’ to work in order to reorient it through one’s actions. One’s cessation in the process is worthier than a wilful filiation with alien endowments; for such actions will have residues in the formation of one’s traits. Habitats may be singular but every habitat is constituted by the actional circuitry; habitats unfold the actional dynamic. The actional circuitry itself is propelled by the cultivable endowments. The endowments are inherently vulnerable to passional indulgence which may result in wilful abandonment of the endowments. Actional existence hinges on the double bind of cultivable endowments. If culture nurtures coherence among the assemblages of existents, Indian reflective modes of being have been violently disrupted by the conceptions of existence, habitat, relation and, actional beings in the last two centuries. These conceptions are alien and inimical to the reflective modes of being intimated in the Indian reflective traditions. The alien conceptions (of existence, habitat, and agency) forged formidable accounts of culture and institutionalised them. Any reckoning of culture henceforth is required to turn to these accounts and conceptions for reference; and all such accounts (discourses) have emerged largely from the institutions founded by the thinking that is alien to the Indian traditions. 190

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Consequently, what we do and what we say about what we do get represented by what others say about our actions and accounts about them (as we saw in the accounts about the Nambikwara by Lévi-Strauss and Derrida earlier). In a word, the traits of a particular assemblage (the metaphysical West) have been propagated as the most covetable and ultimate endowments of everyone (human existent, cluster, habitat with other entities and relations). The dominant accounts about India and the institutions that forge them are deliriously eloquent today about their capitulation to the traits inculcated in another habitat. Indians are neither alive nor dead with regard to the cultivable endowment of ‘our’ traditions; nor are they in a position to sense the fear that the fatal embrace of alien traits entails; these traits seem to have immunised them from the sense of fear, and on the contrary, instilled a dubious confidence in one’s capabilities, one’s assertive virile agent-hood: it has unleashed a ‘million mutinies’ – mutinies programmed to enslave today.

Sovereignty in question If culture is a cultivable endowment, then it can be pointed out that Europe has crystallised its endowments in the internally connected systems of knowledge and power. Power and knowledge are the traits that have been systematically developed and zealously guarded in European/Western heritage. Logos or reason as the dynamic root of this heritage seems to expose itself to an aporia. Derrida traces this aporia to the work of Plato. Plato’s work evinces two very contrary orientations which are designated as hypotheton and unhypotheton in Plato’s work. Hypotheton involves theoretical reasoning, propositional assertions, and system-building ventures – that is, the metaphysical system. The unhypotheton is that which escapes the reach of the manoeuvres of the hypotheton. Both these orientations, Derrida shows, are the articulations of logos. Confronted with such divided and opposed orientations, Derrida explicitly states that responsibility in this context involves ‘deciding between two just as rational and universal but contradictory exigencies of reason as well as its enlightenment.’ (Derrida, Rogues, p. 158) But can it any longer be a matter of a choice between the two? For, precisely it is the valorisation of the hypotheton (a priori/rational proposition/condition for theorising/logos) – to the exclusion of the unhypotheton (unconditional and indeterminable and non-theorisable/alogos/chaos or apeiron)52 – that consolidated the ipsocratic power-knowledge paradigm in the West. It is a paradigm that reiterates the supremacy of man’s capability to master, control, and determine. It is precisely the ‘crisis’ of this paradigm that has impelled Derrida to trace the incalculable unhypotheton in his yearning for a new enlightenment or reason-to-come; Heidegger searched for an ‘another beginning.’ Derrida may not be unaware of the problem (is it a matter of choice?), after all. He cautiously suggests the need to invent ‘maxims of transaction’ 191

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to negotiate between the aporetic poles. Derrida suggests that one must invent in each situation stratagems of action. (Derrida, Rogues, 158) These maxims resemble poetic inventions and they are idiomatic (iterable but almost unrepeatable and untranslatable). They cannot be systematised but they respond to or are sensitive to systematic pulsations (necessities of generality). But there is no guarantee or certainty that such poetic inventions – or maxims of transaction – are free from appropriability. The a-systematicity of the unhypotheton can be seen as a provocation or challenge to explore and appropriate the yet to be known – through precisely the ever innovative drive of science morphed into technology (or vice versa). Hence the figure of monstrosity as the possible invasive future, Derrida reminds one in the same breath (animal or god, says Heidegger). But at the same time he also seeks out a vulnerable, suffering, but singular and unforeseen (‘what’/‘who’?) that would remain heterogeneous to the monstrous. This is the god without sovereignty that Derrida says we are waiting for. (Derrida, Rouges, p. 114) The temporal markers and the idiom of this yearning – the wait, the tocome and more importantly the trope of vulnerability and of the suffering god – make one wonder whether this theological idiom can really free itself from its Judeo-Christian particularity. Can the yearning move beyond its Europecentred matrix of reason/logos (as the word of God and the medium of relation between man and God)? How can it open itself to or ‘transit’ (as Heidegger would say) to and ‘transact’ with the non-conceptual Pagan who stands on the horizon of the metaphysical world which Europe has universalised?

Reflective Relations It is indeed in the above context that one can see the intimations of a very different opening that the manas-based reflective traditions provide. First of all, the ambivalence of manas is never plotted as an aporetic terminus. Although there is no guarantee to it, manas is always orientable and cultivable. Manas is essentially open – to external and internal flows and drifts, indulgences, and seeing (drishti). Therefore, the question of transacting between indulgence and seeing does not arise in the work of manas. But what manas enables one to ‘see’ is radically heterogeneous both to manas and the circuit of faculties of which it is an inescapable part: the body complex. But that radically other – para – is always already there inhering in every entity, everybody, in existence; it is deeply proximate and profoundly remote to each of the assemblages of existence. It is from the finitude of existence that one must learn to see/sense para, which cannot be measured or grasped by the faculties of existence. In such a context it is only the dynamic drifting faculty of manas that can have the possibility of sensing (neither of grasping nor appropriating) para. For manas is the connective filament in existence, and its capacity to connect to or severe the remotest and unforeseen is unique to it. No wonder para is alluded to in the Bhagavadgita as manas: indriyaanaam manaschasmi (Bhagavadgita, 10.22, p. 535). 192

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Even in the context of the assemblage of the heterogeneous, the relation between manas (and metonymically the assemblage of the body with all the faculties) and para is not seen as an aporia – contradictory but necessary categories. Para is the inappropriable other that inheres in the appropriative complex (the body). It neither controls nor is controlled, neither affects nor is affected by, neither binds nor is bound by: para is anything but the allpowerful commanding and controlling sovereign. The ultimate task that this co-habitative scenario of the appropriable and inappropriable sets is that one must learn to cultivate inappropriable modes of being in appropriative existence. It is not a question of choosing between the heterogeneous. For the challenge of para is entirely related to the finitude of iterable existence. Any attempt at grappling with the assemblages or clusters of existence (of relations, entities, happenings) can lend itself to the indulgent pulls of manas. In other words, our actions in the world are persistently exposed to the vagaries of manas – when the desirable can turn into the destructive. The inappropriable (non)presence (without being present) of para as such in the context of existence provides the chance of relating oneself to the clusters and reorients one’s cultivable endowments. Such an orientation may help one live with the upheavals of happiness and suffering without indulging in either of them.

Breaching pathways Culture as a cultivable endowment sustained and replenished modes of being and forms of reflection in the Indian context over centuries. The generationally imparted endowments were put to work persistently by the radically varied cultural forms and biocultural formations across the Indian subcontinent and beyond. These forms and formations impinge on us through immeasurable ways in our everyday lives in our habitats. But the dominant response to these intimations is covered by the discourses and institutions consolidated by another cultural background. Neither entirely alive nor entirely dead, postcolonial Indians are enveloped by the traits of a habitat that is alien and inimical to the endowments that sustained cultural formations of India over a very long period. Perhaps it is still possible to rekindle the cultural dynamic when we recall that the endowments are after all cultivable and are open to reorientation despite the magnitude of adversity. But the endowments are no constitutional privileges to be safe-guarded by the institutions of judiciary – the politico-legal apparatuses of the invasive alien. But how can one access or sense these endowments today? There is an urgent need to figure out ways in which to configure and reorient our inherited endowments to contribute to coherence and reasonable habitat for living with others today. This risky task must be undertaken from wherever we are: from within the context of the existing institutions and discursive structures. One domain in which this task can be urgently 193

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initiated is that of the higher education. Given that we are concerned here with culture as a cultivable endowment, the specific area of higher education that requires reorientation is what has been designated as the humanities; for the disorientation and distortion of the endowments were initiated through the domain of culture and culture is mainly probed by the discourses of the humanities today. The risky task can be initiated under the rubric of critical humanities. This task unfolds in two related ways: (i) it critically unravels the discourses of the humanities emerging from the rational-theological concept of sovereignty and (ii) it is concerned with the cultivable endowments of critically surviving human assemblages, their relations, and their ethos (dwellings) that are pushed aside by or appropriated into the march of sovereignty. Without the relentless work of the diverse cultural formations (jatis and jan-jatis), culture as a cultivable endowment could not have formed or flourished in India. Each of these formations brought forth countless number of cultural forms as they received and responded to their respective endowments. Despite the measureless diversity and limitless expansion of these forms and formations, it should be possible to discern the relations of coherence that weaves them in their proliferation. What relates and differentiates cultural formations can be sensed by means of the endowments that existents and clusters are ‘given.’ The articulations of these formations, that is, their responsive receptions of what is given, can be related and differentiated in terms of (i) verbal learnables (vidya), (ii) visual or performative learnables (kala), and (iii) the knowable-liveable relation between the endowments and the other (para) that heterogeneously inheres (tattva) in and implies the limits of the earlier two generic (vidya and kala) forms. These cultural forms have emerged and proliferated as liveable learning across the subcontinent and beyond. A liveable learning is a reflective-experiential articulation of a mode of being whose efficacy is in performative, embodied actional existence. A liveable learning is a generationally imparted reflective actional competence that enables one to partake an inheritance and relate oneself to the cluster, assemblage, and habitat (loka). Given that the liveable learning emerges as a responsive reception, it is open to improvisation. Today the inheritors of these liveable traditions of learning populate the institutions of higher education as distinct cultural formations (jatis and jan-jatis). But their inherited learning is covered up and stigmatised by the cultural programming designed from a different cultural background inimical to the former. The difficult task of reorienting ourselves towards the inherited traditions of liveable learning must begin in the very arena which became the conduit for cultural disorientation and distortion over the last two centuries. But given the inexhaustible generative and proliferative capability of these forms and formations, it may seem impossible to reorient and cultivate these inheritances. Yet such impossibility can be turned into

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possibility when we learn to attune ourselves to the dynamic of the relational endowments that brought them forth in the first place. Neither the cultural forms nor formations can be rigidly circumscribed by the space or time – let alone territories and temporalities of a nation or a state. In their extended existence and proliferation these forms and formations have not produced any positive sciences (of the ‘social’ and ‘human’ kind). They overlap and transgress spatio-temporal orders. The relative assemblages of existents into clusters, formations, and habitats are the result of the unregulatable (transgenerational) flows across time and space. Internally varied cultural formations assemble into clusters and proliferate; multiplicity of such clusters in a demarcated but related locus can form into a constellation. Inexhaustible range of cultural forms and formations emerged and dispersed vertically and horizontally across and beyond these clusters and constellations. The enduring paths of the Silk Route and the Spice Route – apart from other passageways – disseminated these cultural intimations beyond the habitats of Asia and impinged on the world of Europe. Instead of rushing to erect a grand story of cultural inventory – which is relatively easy and predictable – one must explore the ways in which the generative dynamic responded to the double bind of the endowments and their limit (through the heterogeneous para tattva) in bringing forth improvised cultural forms and differentiated cultural formations. In other words, there is a need to learn to sense the ways in which the traditions of liveable learning relate and articulate the endowments and contribute to the reorientation of one’s partaking of actional existence. Such is the immensity and the urgency of the task that awaits those who are interested in responding affirmatively to the inheritance of Indian cultivable endowments to reorient actional existence today – especially from the context formed by the intimating and intimidating culture of Europe. This is precisely the task that the inquiring impulse of critical humanities embraces from the horizon that limits the European advancement. Such an impulse nurtures the possibility of living (on) with the unlikely, without recourse to what ‘Europe’ identifies itself with/as philosophy as a ‘sovereign knowledge as such’ (Heidegger, Contributions, p. 38) – but with the ‘heterogeneous’ where the so-called human happens to be just one among the lively millions.

Notes 1 Kant cited in Derrida, ‘Ends of Man,’ in Margins of Philosophy, Alan Bass (trans), Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982, p. 111. 2 Derrida, ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority,”’ Mary Quaintance (trans), Gil Anidjar (ed), in Acts of Religion, New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 245. 3 Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005, p. 11. 4 The Bhagavadgita, Krishnamacharyulu, and Goli Venkataramayya (trans), Gorakhpur: The Gita Press, 2003, 2.28, 2003, p. 96.

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5 The Bhagavadgita, like the enigmatic para, nestles in the centre of the Mahabharata. Eminently, it is a song composition which enacts the play of para – as if para were directly articulating its radical difference from within the formations of existence. This play is irreducible to the binary – fiction and real; it confounds such divisions. 6 Atati samsarateetyaatmaa(the one that circulates in samsaara always)That is atma (para) says Amara.Amarakosa, Saraswati Tiruvengadacharyulu, (trans), 1859; Hyderabad: Jayalakshmi Publications, 2006, 1.4, p. 108. 7 Sankaracharya, Sri Dakshinamurtistotram, Tattvavidananda Saraswati (trans), Secunderabad: Brahma Vidya Kuteer, n.d., 6, p. 6. 8 Sankaracharya, Atmabodha, Tadimalla Jagannatha Swami (trans), Hyderabad: Ramakrishna Matham, 2010, 6, p. 7. 9 In fact, all the 18 chapters of the Bhagavadgita are said to deal with this very term. The first six chapters (forming the first kaanda/part) are said to offer reflections on tvam; the second kaanda (of six chapters) with tat; and the third one meditates on the coming together of tat and tvam. Cf., Sri Bhagavadgitaa Saankarabhaashyam, Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (trans), Hyderabad: Arsha Vijnana Trust, 2001, p. 37. 10 (Attributed to) Sankaracharya, Sri Vivekachudamani, Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (trans), Hyderabad: Samskruta Bhasha Prachara Samiti, 1995, 61, p. 95. 11 Shukranitisara, K. A. Singaracharyulu (trans), Nalgonda: Sahity Sanmana Samithi, 2002, pp. 284, 286. 12 Sri Vishnudharmottara Mahapuranamu, K.V.S. Deekshitulu & D.S.Rao, (trans), P. Seetaramanjaneyulu, (ed), Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arshabharati Trust, 1988, 46.1. pp. 153-54. 13 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, Gayatri Spivak (trans), 1976; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, p. 131. 14 Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking? Glenn Gray (trans), New York: Harper & Row, 1969, pp. 210–213; cf., also, Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Ralph Manheim (trans), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959, p. 185. 15 Heidegger cited in J.L. Mehta, The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971, p. 60. 16 Martin Farek et al. (eds) Western Foundations of the Caste System, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 17 S.N. Balagangadhara, ‘The Heathen in His Blindness’: Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994. 18 It is pertinent to refer here to Heidegger who contended that the modern European thought decisively occluded access to Greek thinking even for Europe. Heidegger, What is Called Thinking? p. 211. 19 Jean-Luc Nancy, Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity, Bettina Bergo et al. (trans), New York: Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 142. Nancy’s thesis in this work is that the singularity of Christianity is that it is inherently deconstructive – that it persistently unravels and overcomes itself, and goes beyond the constraints from which it emerges. In a word, Christianity is identified here with this radical impulse of de-Christianising of itself. Nancy’s account about Christianity resonates with Gasché’s account about Europe (and its double dynamic) which we analysed earlier. It must be noted here that this impulse is throughout designated by Nancy as Christian. 20 Rajasekhara, Kavyamimamsa, P. Sreeramachandrudu (trans), Hyderabad: Sri Jayalakshmi Publications, 2003, pp. 4–14. 21 Bharata, Natyasastram, Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (trans), Hyderabad: P.N. Sastry, 2014.

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22 Denis Guenoun, About Europe: Philosophical Hypotheses, Christine Irizarry (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013, pp. 160–164. 23 Remi Brague, The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought, Teresa Lavender Fagan (trans), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 11–13. 24 Heidegger, ‘The Age of the World Picture’, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, William Lovitt (trans), New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977, pp. 148–149. 25 Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art,’ in Poetry, Language, Thought, Albert Hofstadter (trans), New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1971, p. 55. 26 Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012, 8, p. 24. 27 Nietzsche’s well-known words come to mind: ‘We possess art lest we perish of the truth.’ Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (trans), New York: Vintage Books. p. 435, (emphasis original). 28 Edumund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, W.R. Boyce Gibson (trans), New York: Collier Books, 1962. 29 Heidegger’s phrase is: ‘Every nationalism.’ 30 Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism,’ in David Farrell Krell (trans, ed), Basic Writings, New York: Harper and Row, 1977, p. 221. 31 Heidegger, ‘On the Essence and Concept of φύσιν [physis] in Aristotle’s Physics B 1,’ in William McNeil (trans, ed), Pathmarks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 195. 32 Giorgio Agamben, Karman: A Brief Treatise on Action, Guilt, and Gesture, Adam Kotsko (trans), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018. 33 https://www.etymonline.com/ (accessed on 9 May 2018). 34 S.N. Balagangadhara, ‘Comparative Anthropology and Action Sciences: An Essay on Knowing to Act and Acting to Know’. Philosophica, 40 (2), 77–107. 35 Sri Manmahabharatam, Kandadai Ramanujacharya (trans), Hyderabad: Arsha Vijnana Trust, 2006, Shantiparva, 241.7, p. 78. 36 Heidegger, ‘The Provenance of Art and the Destination of Thought’, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2013, 44 [2], 121. 37 Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, Alan Bass (trans), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, p. 282 (emphasis in the original). 38 Cf., For a sustained critique of this ‘method’ of science and its penchant for ‘rigor’ in Heidegger’s critique of it in Heidegger’s ‘The Age of the World Picture,’ pp. 118–128. Here Heidegger perspicuously shows the fundamental difference between the Pagan Greek theoria and scientific theorisation. 39 One may perhaps hazard an observation here that Derrida’s early works are more Husserlian than Heideggerian. It is the Husserl of ‘rigorous science’ that appears to guide Derrida’s unraveling of the heritage here. The pervasive presence of terms like ‘rigor,’ ‘a priori,’ reasoning, science, systematicity, and conceptuality, in this work exemplifies the privilege accorded to theoretical reason here. Derrida’s entire critique of Lévi-Strauss hinges on the question of critical rigor (which the latter’s work is shown to lack). Also, Derrida filiates writing entirely in the narrow/colloquial sense (especially alphabetic writing) with the achievement of science and its truth: ‘only with writing,’ in the ‘narrow sense,’ ‘the criterion of historicity or cultural value’ are possible: ‘there is no science without writing.’ Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp. 121–133.. Husserl’s presence is everywhere (even when Derrida departs from him) here. 40 Dominique Janicaud’s interview with Derrida, Francois Raffoul and David Pettigrew (trans), in Heidegger in France by Dominique Janicaud, Bloomington: Indian University Press, 2015, p. 359.

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41 John Marenbon, Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. 42 The term literally refers to ‘three paths/modes (of the journey)’ as shown in the three major compositions of ancient India: the Upanishads, Brahmasutras, and Bhagavadgita. 43 Heidegger, ‘Science and Reflection,’ in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, pp. 157–158. 44 Derrida, ‘Eating Well: An Interview,’ Peter Connor and Avital Ronell (trans), Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor and Jean-Luc Nancy (eds), in Who Comes After the Subject? New York: Routledge, 1991, pp. 109–114. (emphasis in the quotation is original). See also, Jean-Luc Nancy, ‘Introduction,’ ibid., p. 4. 45 Incidentally it may be observed that the Sanskrit root of buddhi – dhi/dhee – may have some relation to the root of the privileged term of Heidegger’s work: thinking/thought: thinking/thought may have emerged from dhee (to reflect or discern). However, etymology of think, it may be noted, is traced to the IE *tong. Cf., https://www.etymonline.com/word/think?ref=etymonline_crossreference (accessed on 9 May 2018). 46 Sankara devotes over 16 verses to delineate the ambivalences of manas. Cf., Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 169–185, pp. 247–285) 47 Bruhadaranyaka Upanishad, Suri Ramkakoti Sastry (trans), Hyderabad, 1989, v.v.19, pp. 136, 138. 48 Kathopanishad, K. Dakshinamurty (trans), Hyderabad: Sri Sitarama Adi Shankara Trust, 2001, 2.4.11, p. 270. 49 The entirety of Indian verbal universe of compositions (vaangmaya) is differentiated into the heard (shruti) and the remembered (smriti). The latter emerges as a responsive reception of the former and the entirety of this universe invites the focused/meditative attention. 50 Kautilya, Arthasastram, Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (trans), Hyderabad: Sri Jayalakshmi Publications, 2004, 1.3.8, pp. 23–25. 51 Sutasamhitaa saarah, Swami Tattvavidananda Saraswati (trans), Secunderabad: Brahma Vidya Kuteer, 2006, 6.1, p. 41. 52 Derrida traces these conceptual (hypotheton/hypothesis/theoretical reason) and non-conceptual (un-hypotheton) notions to Plato and elaborates his thesis in defence of reason. Cf., Derrida, Rouges, pp. 135–142. It must be noted that if the early Derrida was more inclined towards the ‘rigor’ of Husserl, this later (in fact Rouges is the last book published before Derrida’s death) Derrida, precisely in his return to Husserl, invokes the unhypotheton. The unhypotheton here resonates with the ‘unthinkable’ that Derrida elliptically invoked in his critique of Lévi-Strauss.

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Mlechcha shaastram pathishyanti sva shaastraani vihaayate Abandoning one’s own learning (jana, people) will study Mlechcha disciplines or discourses (Mlechhas are people with unrefined or un-distinct speech [Brahmavaivartamahapurana, 1.2.7.25, p. 169]). In a matter of fact way, so declares the Brahmavaivartapurana. The locution ‘one’s own learning’ was never sublimated in the name of an individual, a group, nation, or even culture in the Indian Vaangmaya. Forms of learning or liveable learning were never unified into a totality and were accorded an identity in the millennial heritage of India. The learning imparted across cultures and among learners from very different and divergent countries and languages across Asia from the centres of Nalanda and Vikramasila was simply called Dharma or Shaastra. Such liveable learning did not have to declare itself to be ‘open’ to others and defend or justify itself. For such learning did not entail any genus-extirpating violence. India, Europe has shown no interest in scapegoating an alleged enemy or whipping up victimhood narratives with domestic returns. Mnemocultures do not indulge in nostalgias and utopias. They are not inclined towards the paths of rage or mourning. Every loka for them is a recursive spatio-temporal convergence of assemblages in an instant. They long for neither the lost Golden moment of mother’s womb nor yearn for the pleasures of a transcendental father’s celestial abode. Every fractalic element of every assemblage of every constellation has to learn to tend the ‘given’ instant and therein abides the trans-formative destiny of the recursive occurrences. These occurrences are discrete but they are related. India, Europe attempted to give a sense of the accents and rhythms of relations of these occurrences from the performative reflections of Indian traditions. India, Europe is not a historical work – nor is it a theoretical treatise. Emerging from the fraught context of teaching and learning, India, Europe turns more towards praxial reorientation of the ‘given.’ Such a reorientation is critically required today in the domain of the humanities. As we move on with this work, one might think in a more Puranic vein, let’s figure 199

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the contours of an inquiring learning which, perhaps, might move us beyond the interface of the ruptured inheritances of India and Europe. Given the powerful presence of European modes and forms of thinking, it is imperative to understand the legacy of Europe which continues to haunt so pervasively all cultures like the Indian which were at the receiving ends of European expansion. Therefore, any attempt to envisage an educational endeavour is impelled to be sensitive to three critical issues which this work engaged with: i) How does Europe configure its heritage? ii) How does this heritage configure non-European cultures? iii) How to reflect on the non-European inheritances beyond European enframing of them? Inquiries into such issues can be done in many ways. But for the present purposes, of conceiving a new or different learning, one can think of two critical paths which require to be brought together to see whether we can go beyond these paths in realising a different vision of culture, education, the futures of the gift of life and living together differently. One of these paths, which is now dominant, has been developed from European culture for Europeans by Europeans. But this has been turned into a universal model (through violence and persuasion). The second one is developed over millennia from India but which is only available now more or less experientially (in our practices, festivals, languages, manners, etc.); or, it is available among the experts as academic disciplines in modern universities. But the second path has not been seen as a viable source to reflect on being human and living with others – despite differences of ways of living and thinking. Over the last 100 years (some contend, over the last 1000 years) we have been distanced from this reflective source. Now is the time to think together these two strands/paths (along with the Islamic) and see how they fare in a renewed interface. Today it is precisely in the context of these configurations of Europe one must risk initiating a conception of India which is sensitive to or wary of but irreducible to these configurations. Such an initiative may help conceive of a liveable sharable future from common resources beyond the circumscriptions of the established configurations – be they European or nonEuropean. Hence the need for an inquiring learning which prepares one to bring forth such a future of the past from across liveable traditions and heritages. Such an inquiry is required to show how different cultures live and think differently. What can be drawn from the Indian traditions to bring forth a form of inquiring learning which can address, even when its orientation is not reducible to the telos of European tradition? But what is the telos of Europe in the first place? Can one fixate a telos of an entire civilisation, which is internally varied? The risk I have taken in this work is to hypothesise that ‘sovereignty’ is the telos of European heritage. Sovereignty is the affirmation of radical 200

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autonomy or independence, the claim to will, determine, intend absolutely, and non-contingently. The sovereign, as shown in the work, is the originary cause who/which is independent of what it/he causes, but continues to determine and regulate what it/he has caused to create. Sovereignty is the declaration of one’s capability (ipseity) to do and undo what one has done (promulgate laws and suspend them, induce the anthropocene, and evoke negenthropocene). This telos of Europe can be said to manifest in two deeply sedimented forms: ontological and theological. In the context of such ‘sovereignty in question,’ India, Europe tried to show that, without privileging any a priori formation as determinative, the Indian traditions open up and invite engagement with the question of formation or formation as such in general: how does a form get conceived? What is its provenance? Why does it come forth? How does its mechanism function? How does the formational relate or tend its compositional elements? How does it relate itself to itself and to its others? Thus, the Indian traditions seem to be more inclined to explore the ‘logic’ or ‘process’ of the formational and its radical limit than towards any agentive or determining singularity as such. It is important to note that such an engagement itself is seen as one of the ways in which the formational unfolds in a fundamentally relational matrix. Here it may be noted that the orientation of the Indian inquiry and the set of its questions outlined here pertaining to the formational gets addressed, if it does so, in the European tradition in onto/theological modes through inscriptional technics. Whereas in the Indian context the formational must be engaged in performative reflections in relation to what is called the non-formational through mnemotechnical media of utterance and gesture. The non-formational cannot be approximated by the resources of the formational. The non-formational ‘is’ but does not exist. Therefore, from the vantage of Indian traditions onto/theological determinations are the deeply entrenched formational calculations claiming to configure the real. The journey of thought of Europe is paved in the vicissitudinal paths of the onto-theological desire – the desire to determine the origin, source, essence, and evolution as the telos of inquiry. The cultural-knowledge forms that emerge from such an orientation reinforce the desiring telos. It is this orientation that has led the fields of cosmology, philosophy, and biology to project the so-called ‘plural reality’ today. It is perhaps the absence or nonprivileging of such orientation or anxiety or curiosity to desire determination that prevents Indian performative inquiries from configuring the ‘other’ (other cultures, etc.,) on onto-theological lines. India, Europe tried to configure the cultural difference between Europe and India on these two salient patterns of their orientations: i) The sovereign/onto-theological trajectory of the European West ii) The inquiring ‘path’ of the relation of the formational (apara) and the non-formational (para) opened up in India. 201

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If such a hypothesis were the basis for an inquiring learning, it may provide us a chance of examining, questioning the trajectory of European heritage and intimating another cultural mode of liveable learning in a ‘common’ habitat. It also can suggest the possibility of openings from other (nonEuropean) cultural resources. Here it may be pointed out that each culture will have to reckon its interfaces with other cultures in its formation. Thus, India will be required to inquire into its 1000-year-long interface with Islam (Persia, Arabia, Turkey, and Africa). Given the lasting impact of the European interface, the educational endeavour here focuses the rupturing interface between Europe and India. The deeper but implicit current of such an endeavour is to displace the dominance of any culture of reference. Cultures can be seen as deeply woven nodes in an immeasurable network of assemblages and constellations where no single command-control referential authority lasts. The inquiring learning can be conceived in terms of a scalable curriculum formed of two sets of cultural forms as follows: a) Vidyas and Kalas (speech and gestural cultural forms; here one can think of ten major domains of learning: Shadangas, Shatdarshanas, Purusharthas, Itihasa, Purana, Kavya, Natya, Sangita, and Chitra). b) Trivium and Quadrivium (forms of logos and graphos; here apart from the seven classical subjects or domains of inquiry, three other domains like Physis, Techné, and Psuché can be incorporated). European pedagogy in its antiquity (but more so in the Common Era) was centred on the Judeo-Christian heritage – a heritage which appropriated the Pagan past of the Greeks and Romans. It did not have to take into account the salience of other cultures in configuring itself. But when it encountered other cultures, the already established European understanding of the world based on European experience determined its accounts about other cultures (Mayan, Chinese, African, Indian) – in a word ‘Pagan.’ European pedagogy in modernity continues to configure other cultures on the basis of its own understanding of its heritage. There is no significant instance of European heritage deeply revamped or reshaped by other cultural understanding. The European West seeks forever ways to reinforce its intellectual cultural heritage and hegemony. Such a self-immunised (‘self-encapsulating’ to use Gasché’s phrase) vantage point of perspectivising the world should no longer be possible. But it continues to do so. The non-European cultures cannot project such an insularised perspective. This does not mean that these cultures can no longer discern any reflective coherence or integrity of their cultures. Perhaps this may be so in the contexts of many cultures that have been extirpated by the European expansion. Yet the search for such coherence can be risked and inquiries can be undertaken from the surviving cultures that faced colonialism. Such inquiries, however, shall not be impervious to the European 202

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perspective – but can discern the contours of its limits. Therefore, the European heritage – its salient patterns – becomes part of the inquiring learning initiated here. Here one privileges neither arché nor banishes anarchy/chaos or apeiron as the ‘unthinkable.’ One learns to discern the limits of the arché and the myriad ways the non-formational (para) permeates the infrastructure of the arché and undermines its sovereignty from within. The figment of new learning outlined above might look outlandish; million questions will plague it. But what the figment risks putting forward can be explored only as a common task: a task which the striated assemblages that compose the unit of the oval formation cannot escape – the task of living together (with) in the ethos of apeironal difference. As we move on, we need to recall that such a task must be articulated with the interminable question pertaining to immemorial heritages (if this is a question): what do you do with what you have?!

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GLOSSARY OF SANSKRIT TERMS

Adhyaasa  mis-cognising projection Adhyaatma  individuated discerning faculty Ahankaara  individuative and arrogative faculty Ajnaana  bereft of awareness/‘knowledge’ Amsha  aspectual emergence Anukriti  making after Anumana  inferential measure Anuraga  affective pull Apara  formational force Asat  unreal formation Ashrama  shelter, abode, state of formation Atma  inherence that circulates across formations Avatara  manifest emergence Avyakta  inarticulate, unmanifest Badhnaati  binding, bound Bandha  tied down Bandhu  relative, bonding-kin Bhuloka  geo-spatio-temporal formation Chatushashti kalas  64 visual-performative forms Chaya  shadow, figure Chetana  actional spur Bhakta devotee Bimba figuration Buddhi  faculty of discernment Chitra  visual formation Darshanas  disciplines of ‘seen’-learning Deha  of the body complex Dharma  cultivable endowment, contextually performative act Dhyana   attentive concentration Drushtaanta  illustrative example Dvaarapandita  experts at the door, threshold Geya song Gramya pravrutti  vulgar ethos 204

G lossary of S anskrit terms

Hetu/Tarka  reasoning, sourcing strategy Indriyas  faculties of the body complex Itihasa  composition recounting evental occurrences Jagat  moving or circulating formation Jangama  drifting formation Jati  cultural formation Kala  visual learning Kaaru  formation of wood Kamandala  water vessel Karma bonding-action-effect Kavya  poetic composition Loka  spatio-complex of temporal formations Manas  faculty that combines memory and desire Mantra  iterative verbal utterances Mantra drashta  exemplar of verbal utterances Mlechcha  humans with indistinct (unrefined) or unclear speech Moksha releasement Murthi  manifest figure Natya  Performative drama Nrtta  performative without content Para  the non-formational other Paroksa  /oblique/indirect viewing Prakriti  primal actional formational force Pratibimba  iterative figuration Pratima formation Pratirupa  iterative formation Pratyaksha  that which manifests Purana  composition which renders old as event-wise novel Purusha  primal being, subtle being that inhabits the gross formation Rasa  savourable flavour Raga pull Rasika  savourer, rejoicer Rupa formation Sahitya vidya  learning pertaining to being-together Samsaara  [existence] that moves flows together Shareera  facultative abode body complex Shaastra  verbal performative disciplines of learning Shaastrakavi  poet of verbal performative learning Shilpa  act of making Srshti  formational process Shruti  heard utterance Smriti  recalled memory/utterance Sutra  thread, aphoristic composition Tattva that(you)ness Tyakta  giving up Tyaga sacrifice 205

G lossary of S anskrit terms

Upadesha  praxial counsel Ustad  master expert Vidya  verbal learning Vidyapurusa  being of verbal formation Viraga  freed from pulls

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INDEX

Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes numbers Abhinavagupta 96 Absolute Idea in Hegel 88 actions sans agents 188–191 adharma 169 aesthetic flows 104–106 Agamben, Giorgio 29, 49–51, 79n29, 135n15, 163–167, 169–171, 176, 182, 188 ahamkaara 186, 187 Aiteraya Brahmana 119 ajnaana 124 akarma 169 alap 152 aletheia 127 alithic dynamic 122 alithic memory 23–24 alithic modes: anumana 107; cultural performative compositions 106; drstanta 107; itihasa 109; Natyasastra 108; rasa 107, 108, 110; rasika 107; ritual performances 109; sutra 107 alogos 84, 181 ananda 105 Anandavardhana 135n19 Anaximander 12, 16, 17 ancient ‘art’ 29 anoraneeyaam 141 anthropologism 161 anukriti 119 apara 17–21, 60, 113, 142, 143, 158, 159 apara-­prakriti 114, 115, 120, 187, 189 apeiron 12, 16–21, 99, 203 a priori condition 174–176, 178, 179 Aquinas, Thomas 14

arché 203 Aristotle 5, 8, 14, 51, 163, 164 Arthashaastra of Kautilya 186 articulations of memory 23 artistic imperatives 130 Asiatic art 100 assemblages 199, 203 Atmabodha 196n8 autoimmune triangle 94 avatara 112, 113 Avidya 124 Balagangadhara, S.N. 3, 27, 38–42, 51, 78n12, 136n26, 196n17, 197n34 Baumer, Bettina 102 Benveniste, Emile 166 Bhagavadgita 151, 152, 167, 186, 189, 190, 196n5 Bhuloka viii, 155 bhutas 184 Bhuvarloka 155 The Bible 41, 42 bimba-­pratibimba 102 biocultural communications 146–149 biocultural formations 46, 73, 178, 179 “bond of Maya,’ 171 Bose, Mandakranta 135n21 Brahmavaivartapurana 199 Brahmin ‘orthodoxy,’ 119 breaching pathways 193–195 bricolage 176 bricoleur’s method 177 buddhi 183, 186 Buddhism 64, 66–68 Byzantine conflicts 88

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INDEX

caste system 149 chetana 167 Chitralakshana 104 Chitramula 103 Chitrasutra 95, 96, 102, 104, 123–125 Christianity 13, 25, 39–41, 46–47, 86, 87, 89, 91 Christian theology 40, 86, 150, 153, 164, 165 classroom teaching xii, xiii cognitive inquiry 35, 36 cognitive schemas 63 coherence xii coherence sans concepts 151–152 colonial consciousness 70 colonialism 11, 138 communionism 153 ‘community of thinking’ 38 conceptual exercises 147 conceptual thinking 26, 147, 149 constitutive contradictions 138–139 contextures of learning: actional modes 61–62; cognitive schemas 63; configurations 38–42; cultivable locations 42–44; discourses and institutions 74–76; entity/relation 61; heuristics 65–68; inquiring lives 76–77; lessons 45–48; liveable learning 52–54; locations 63–65; metonymic dispersals 70–72; mnemocultures of theoria 72–74; Pagan thinking 33–35; praxial turns 44–45; primal rational 35–38; rational polemos 68–70; rhetorical schemas 62–63; scenes 54–61; test drive 56–57; torsions 48–52 contrary cohabitations 141–143 Contributions 19 Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish 99–105, 130, 136n30 counter-­metaphysical critique 131 countermovement 93 crimen 188 critical humanities 2, 194–195 Cubism 132 Cubist modernism 131 cultivable endowments 187–189 cultivable traits 190 cultural configuration 38–42 cultural difference 23, 24, 39, 128–129 ‘cultural difference’ of India 139 cultural forms 54, 202 cultural forms and formations 114 cultural forms of India 27, 28, 64, 97

cultural history ix, x cultural memory 24, 27, 28 cultural practices 26 cultural training 47 culture 150, 188 Dakshinamurthi 171 Darsanas 67, 69 Dasein 182 dead abstraction 89 demarcated body 179 deracinated credo 3–6 Derrida, Jacques 3, 4, 10, 11, 22, 30n1, 37–39, 77n2, 139, 173–182, 191, 192, 196n13, 197n37, 198n52 desire 52–53 dharma 166, 169 dhyana sloka 101, 102 discernments 170–173 disciplinary constructions 25–26 discipline xi, xii discursive formation 27–28 discursive knowledge 34 domain converging inquiries 27 domain specific inquiries 27 double dynamic 3–4, 13, 31n6 ‘double truth’ 36 dvandvair vimuktaah 121 economy 86, 87 educational endeavour 200 enactments 168–170 encroachments 165–168 entrapments 162–163 Essence of Indian Art 105, 106 ethnology 176 ethos 139, 152–156 Euro-­American movements 132 ‘Eurocentrism’ 9–11 Europe 3 European conceptual inquiry 148 European configuration 1 European heritage 11, 13, 19, 22, 37, 39, 133 European intellectual history 2–3, 24, 52, 84 European metaphysical tradition 115 European tradition 201 Europe of Christianity 94 faith 3 Farek, Martin 196n16 fate of art 91–94

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INDEX

fraternal schema 183 freeways 163–165 Gasché, Rodolphe 3–11, 13–15 Goswamy, B.N. 105–107, 130, 136n39 gramme/graphein 179 Greek cultural formations 85 Guru, Narayana 76 habitats ix, 190 Hadot, Pierre 40, 41 Halbfass, Wilhelm 27 Haunting aporias 111–112 Hegel 29 Hegel’s theorisation of art 84, 85, 89–91, 93 Hegel’s tripartite schema 100 Heidegger, Martin 3–8, 10–13, 15, 18–20, 22, 29, 31n8, 31n9, 36–39, 51, 85, 86, 92, 94, 125–129, 133, 134n1, 148, 153, 154, 160, 172, 173, 179, 180, 182, 196n14, 197n24, 197n25, 197n26 Heraclitus 5 Hesiod 43 Hiuen-­Tsang 65–66 Homer 43, 45, 49 human-­centred discourse 138 Husserl, Edmund 3, 161, 197n28 hypotheton 191 idols/diabols 87 IGNCA venture 99 ignorance and imagination 171 imperialism 11 impulse of differentiation 24–25 incarnation 86 incarnation doctrine 112 Indian configuration 24–27 Indian context ix, 1, 28–29 Indian heritage 94 Indian sculpture 129 Indian traditions x, 1, 2, 13, 14, 30, 98 Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) 134n2 inscriptional media 83 institutional formation 27–28 intellectual destitution 133 intellectual ecstasy 105 ‘internationalized’ narratives 133 irruptive identity 6–8 itihasa 151 I-­tsing 65–66

Jacobsen, K.A. 114, 136n41 jagat 156, 157 Jains 64 Janicaud, Dominique 197n40 jati xi, xii Judeo-­Christianity 13, 19, 28, 180 Judeo-­Christian theological thinking 153 Judeo-­Christian theology 181 ‘justice and harmony’ 50 kala xiii, 2, 30, 83, 119, 122, 134n3, 150, 180, 194 Kalamulashastra 82 Kalatattvakohsa 82 Kalpa 159 Kapur, Gita 131, 132 karma 16, 50, 54, 166–169 Karman 162–163, 166, 171 karman 170, 188 kavya 96, 180 Kavyamimamsa 151 Kramrisch, Stella 103, 104 Kumar, Pintu 66–67 language 172 law and morality 171 learning centres 33 Lévi-­Strauss 174, 175, 177, 191 lithic memory 23–24 lithic pursuits 110–111 liveable learning 52–54, 83, 147 logos 28, 38, 41, 162, 181–183 logos (speech) 85, 126 loka 113, 118, 121, 122, 134, 154–156, 187–189 MacIntyre, Alasdair 77n3 mahabhutas 17, 184 mahato maheeyaam 141 malaise 26 manas 2, 15, 55–56, 62, 97, 168, 183–187, 192 manasaivaanu drashtavyam 186 manasai veda maaptavyam 186 Manomayognir dahati prapancham 183 Marenbon, John 198n41 Mondzain, Marie-­Jose 86–88, 104, 134 masculine aesthetics 93, 98 McCrea, Lawrence J. 80n50 Mehta, J.L. 27, 148, 172, 196 metaphysical inheritance 177 metaphysical schema 84–86

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INDEX

metaphysical thinking 18, 148 metaphysical tradition 5–6, 18 Misra, R.N. 99, 117, 118, 120, 136n26, 137n46 Mitter, Partha 26, 130–132, 136–137 mnemocultures 27, 44–46, 48, 54, 67, 72–74, 77, 83, 138, 145–146, 199 modern art 100 modern university 37 mula-­prakriti 103, 116 multi-­layered civilisation 133 murthi 103 muthos 34, 38, 44, 49, 85 Myth of Er 44, 49

object-­oriented thinking 34 Of Minimal Things 14–15, 32 onto-­theology 164, 170 Orient 89, 90 orientalism 134n12

passage work 27–30 pathmaking 125–128 pathmarks 21–24 Patil, Parimal G. 80n50, 80n51 Patocka, Jan 3 pedagogy 43, 45 philosophical anthropology 1–3 philosophical conceptualisation 3, 176 Philosophy as a Way of Life 52 physis 18, 19, 125–129, 160, 161, 172 Plato 5, 7, 8, 28, 29, 34, 41, 44, 46–49, 51, 72, 75, 79n25, 84, 85, 170 Platonic agonism 92 Platonic torsions 48–52 Plotinus 51 poiesis 116, 118, 128, 147, 160, 165, 170, 172 political system 46, 47 politics ix Pollock, Sheldon 27 postal communication 6 postcolonial studies 33 prakriti 2, 30, 113, 115–117, 120–123, 125, 128, 140, 143, 144, 156–160, 187 pratirupa 103 pratyaksha 101 pre-­Socratics 148 ‘primal history’ 7 primal mediations 120–122 primal rational 35–38 primitivism 132 ‘principle of reason’ 35–38 problem of economy and strategy 173 ‘Problem of Paganism’ 180 provenance of art 127 ‘pseudo choice’ 49–51 ‘pseudo justice’ 49, 51 Puranas viii, ix, 55 purusha 95, 113–115, 120, 123, 137n47, 144, 157, 159

Pagan culture 139, 164, 174–178, 180, 181; components of virtue 44; cultural configuration 38–42; Judeo-­ Christian theorisation 51–52; schools 42; thinking 33–35 Pagan problem 180 paideia 43 para 19–21, 55, 57, 59, 60, 143–145, 148, 149, 157, 159, 160, 189, 193 paroksa 101 pashu 169 passageways 21–24

rajas 124 Ramana 76 Rasa 82, 104–111 rasa theory 82, 104–106 reason 3 reflective-­praxial tradition 122 reflective relations 192–193 religion ix, 24, 25, 28, 30, 31n6, 31n16, 34, 39–41, 52, 78n4, 78n10, 78n13, 78n14, 79n17, 80n47, 80n51, 93–95, 98, 99, 117, 133, 136n26, 136n27, 149, 150, 153, 166, 181, 195n2, 196n17

Naipaul, V.S. 129, 130, 137n53, 137n54, 137n55 Nambikwara 174, 177, 179, 191 naturalism 161 nature 88, 160, 161 natya 83, 152, 156 Natyasastra 95–96, 104,108–110, 117, 136, 155, 196 Natyasastra’s formulations 95, 96 Nietzsche 29, 79n24, 84, 93, 94, 98, 134n4 nimitta 117 nirvana 171 non-­conceptual thinking 149 non-­European complex 12 non-­European tradition 9–14 non-­Vedic learning 119 nrtta 152 Nyaayasutra 63

210

INDEX

religious thought 19 reorientations 122–125 Republic 28, 44–46, 48, 49, 51 retentional transmissions 145–146 rhetorical schemas 62–63 roots/routes of reflection 149–151 Roudinesco, Elisabeth 30n1 rupa 74, 82, 102, 103, 115, 116, 136n36 ruptured resonance 160–162 saeculum 86, 153 Sahityadarpana 104 Sallis, John 93, 108, 135n12, 135n14 samsaara 16, 17, 22, 53, 55, 61, 66, 113, 142, 157, 180, 196n6 Sanathkumara 54–56 sangeeta 83 Sanskrit xi, xiii, 1, 17, 54, 65, 68, 69, 71, 72, 80n42, 81n58, 82, 96, 99–104, 113, 115, 118, 135n21, 142, 151, 154, 166, 167, 198n45 Sanskrit etymologies 99 Sarngadeva 96 Scharfe, Hartmut 64–67, 70, 80n45, 81n55 self-­criticism 8–10 Shastra 180 shilpa 94, 115–121 shruti-­based aahata 102 shruti composition 83 Shukraneetisara 98 Singaracharyulu, K. A. 196n11 smriti domain 83 Smṛti 94, 186 Socrates 43–45, 47, 49–50, 75 Sophists 43, 44 sovereign principle 22–23, 25 sovereignty 181–183, 191–192, 200–201 spectral formations 156–160 sterilizing effects 173 Stiegler 24 subjectivism 161 Suvarloka 155 symbolic art 90 systematic thinking 172 system-­building theorisation x, xi, 172 tamah 186 tattva 97, 98 tattva(m) 142 techné 125, 126, 160, 172

Tena vidyeya muttamaa 124 theocracy of visible 87 theological guises 86 theological model 46–47 theology 35, 38, 40, 41 theoretical energy 88 theoria 35, 36, 72–74, 149 theory of relations: apeiron 16–21; European tradition 15–16; Indian traditions 15–16 trinity 89 truth 5 unhypotheton 191, 192 university xii, xv, 1, 8, 11, 22, 26, 28, 30n1, 30n3, 31n9, 32n18, 32n20, 32n21, 32n25, 32n27, 32n29, 34–38, 42, 70, 77n2, 78n4, 78n5, 78n7, 78n8, 78n9, 78n15, 79n21, 79n26, 79n29, 79n30, 79n31, 80n37, 80n50, 80n51, 81n53, 81n54, 134n5, 134n7, 134n11, 135n12, 135n13, 135n15, 135n20, 136n25, 136n28, 137n50, 137n51, 137n52, 137n56, 138, 178, 182, 195n3, 196n13, 196n14, 196n19, 197n22, 197n23, 197n26, 197n31, 197n32, 197n40, 198n41 unthinkable abstractions 180–181 upadesha 66 Upanishads 54, 63, 67, 81n61, 152, 198n42 ‘values’ 8–10 vangmaya 180 Victorian naturalism 131 Vidya xii, xiii, 2, 52, 55, 68, 75, 83, 94, 96, 98, 122–124, 137n52, 143, 180, 194, 196n7, 198n51, 202 vigrahas 101 vikruta 124 vikruti 123 virility 186 Vishnudharmottara 96, 115, 124, 135n18, 144, 145, 151, 196n12 visual theology 87 vyaakarana 94 vyakta madhyaani 140 vyakta madhyaani bhaarata 150 woman’s aesthetics 93, 98 Zarader, Marlene 19

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