Abstract
The book represents a novel academic project: it seeks to counter the erosion of the ‘sociological imagination’ in the universities that are not linked to the metropolitan academic centres of India. Vasavi addresses here the long noticed but neglected aspect of our universities, particularly our ‘moffusil’ universities, with their uninspiring syllabi and textbooks, political interference and indifferent pedagogic structures. In short, our social sciences teaching in these universities fails to ignite what C. Wright Mills calls the ‘sociological imagination’ that intellectually engages students with their societies and cultures. This book is a compilation of socially sensitive and relevant articles in Kannada written by some prominent intellectuals of Karnataka. Here is a bouquet of creative writing in Kannada with which students studying in Kannada medium institutions could easily engage because they are familiar with the events reported and the nuances of local culture. This book offers an ‘inner mirror’ to Kannada culture, according to Vasavi. I am a bit puzzled by this metaphor but with modern technologies, I suppose even mirrors deep inside could reflect to the world outside! These ‘inner mirrors’, she suggests, complement ethnographies and encourage students to develop fresh perspectives on society and culture. She quotes from the Sanskrit scholar Pollock who thinks that ‘vernacular’ literature—a very colonial expression—would combat epistemological determinism. She thinks that such writings would also work against essentialist trends of cultural studies that have become fashionable in the West. Like many sociologists who wish to differentiate themselves from postmodernist trends, she perhaps feels that sociology should pay closer attention to structural processes, a view that I endorse.
This book contains 15 essays plus Vasavi’s introductory chapter, which makes out a case for such a book. In her introduction, Vasavi reviews the academic scene in ‘moffusil’ universities and stresses the importance of drawing upon the wisdom, sensibilities and cultural memories hidden in local cultures to combat ‘epistemological determinisms’ and stimulate the growth of indigenous social science perspectives, theories and concepts. This book is part of the series titled ‘past continuous’ launched by the journal Book Review. The editors of this series offer a valid rationale for such compilations of translated articles: they hope local cultural perspectives enrich the disciplines of humanities and social sciences, and lead to the formulation of a theoretical framework based on such local diversities.
The first part of the book contains three essays on Kannada nationalism. This part begins with an essay written by D.R. Nagaraj, a distinguished Kannada thinker from the subaltern classes who unfortunately passed away at a young age. Nagaraj’s article, first published in 1997, adopts a universal perspective that recognises the creative potential of cosmopolitan Kannada nationalism even as it senses the danger of its morphing into a form of chauvinism and fundamentalism. The other two articles written around the same time as Nagaraj’s, reveal how the slippage from universalism to parochialism and even to communalism could almost imperceptibly happen. K.V. Narayana’s article complains about the continued dominance of English that stymies the development of Kannada and G. Rajashekar shows how a local Kannada newspaper amplifies seething anti-Muslim passions in the town of Puttur in coastal Karnataka, showing how Kannada nationalism is getting distorted. Moreover, while the dominance of English is seen as the bane of Kannada by the Kannada nationalists, Mogalli Ganesh’s article on dalits which is included in the section on caste extols the liberating value of the English language for the dalits.
The second part, devoted to the theme of religiosity, is by far the best in the book. I would commend especially the essays by Chandrashekar Kambar and U.R. Ananthamurthy as of immense value to social science scholarship. Kambar’s essay on the gods and goddesses of Shivapura is a lyrical ethnography of the moral and religious life of the village that rectifies recent distorted and motivated interpretations of Hinduism. U.R. Ananthamurthy’s essay is written in a confessional mode on his reluctance to side with the activists demonstrating against the ritual of the naked worship of Goddess Yellamma in Chandragutti, in the Shimoga district of Karnataka. He agonises over betraying his socialist and rationalist impulses because the worshippers may be superstitious, but on that sacred occasion, their nakedness acquires a mystical quality that the rationalist protestors cannot grasp. This essay draws out the subtle strands of the cultural sensibilities that cannot be pinned down by even the most sophisticated analytical frames in the social sciences. To demonstrate this, I quote below an intensely evocative and incisive passage from his essay:
We the modernisers, send our children to English medium schools and look for a day when the English translated wisdom of the Upanishads, the imported computers, the sitar music on video cassettes can coexist peacefully and can enrich our temporal as well as our spiritual existence. In the meanwhile there are going to be too many mouths to feed in this country and some of them defiantly walk naked to worship the goddess on a hill. And they fight back with tridents. Some political activists who have always been critical of police brutality ask angrily: ‘What were the police doing with their rifles?’ Alas, they do not examine self-critically the implications of what they ask. (p. 91)
Apart from this section, the last section on modernity and development is evocative and powerfully expressed, but the essays merely bemoan the inexorable churning of modernisation. They see no silver lining in the dark clouds of modernisation.
By compiling such essays and editing them, Vasavi breaks new ground in the social sciences. The older generation of sociologists merely complained of academic colonialism and offered empty programmes to ‘indigenise’ the sociology of India. Here is a brave attempt to push the social sciences in that direction.
I have a few complaints against this collection. One is its pessimism; where are the essays that stir revolutionary consciousness or identify the positive fallouts of modernity? Should I infer from these essays that Kannada sensibility shuns revolution? Another is that most of the essays, with a few prominent exceptions, make feeble attempts at deep reflection. This collection shows no evidence of leaning against epistemological determinism. While it is important to retain cultural memory as some of the essays point out, it is more important to anticipate future trends. Should we infer then that the Kannada cultural sensibility clings too tightly to its past?
It is difficult to argue that the authors in this volume represent authentic Kannada sensibility because they are also erudite scholars in English. For instance, it is difficult to tease out Kannadiga sensibilities from Ananthamurthy’s essay because of his vast erudition that ranges from socialism, postmodernism to Sanskrit scriptures. This remark applies to each of the authors in this book. And is the book free from essentialism? I doubt it, because the essays are basically essentialist reflections that bemoan the loss of Kannada cultural memory—whatever that may imply.