Ritwik Agrawal

On 5 October, Kafila.org published a post by Nivedita Menon, guest authored by Susmita Dasgupta, which argued that Nirmohi Akhara is not a “Hindu” sect and that Ram was a fictional hero not backed by Puranic texts and therefore worshipped only by those on the margins of society.

Almost every line of the original post leaves the author and her hypothesis vulnerable to being taken apart. For instance, the author contends that Krishna-worshippers traditionally believed themselves to be non-hindu. At some time, krishna-worshippers could “climb into the Hindu fold because Krishna has a Puranic backing”. It is curious why those who defined themselves as “non-Hindus” would want to climb into the “Hindu” fold. Maybe there are lots of details and resultant complex analysis involved in this picture, which the author hasn’t had the time or effort to look into, eager as she is to wade into murky waters to serve one or the other political project. If such service is to be done at the expense of the truth or academic method, then so be it!

I shall not dwell any more on the factual inaccuracies and logical inconsistencies which are scattered all over Susmita’s post and her response to comments. Indeed, certain commentators, like “BC” and “suresh” have already raised some extremely probing questions to which Susmita has (wisely) chosen not to respond.

Having read the post soon after it was published, and having found it legitimately funny [though such an outcome was probably not foreseen by the author or her promoters], I had submitted the following comment to Kafila:

My heartfelt thanks to Susmita and Nivedita for providing some much needed comic relief in the midst of an overheated debate on Ayodhya.

Susmita, in the course of your researches (?) did you bother inquiring from the Nirmohi Akhara as to their religious persuasion? Specifically about whether they consider themselves within or without the fold of hindusim.

Even though it was the first serious engagement with Susmita’s post, this comment was not approved by Kafila’s extremely enlightened moderators – the flimsy reasons cited by them [only on my prompting via this blog] can be read here

My comment was not made in jest. It’s tone was somewhat dismissive because I think indulging in long debates with people who cannot respect academic rigour or method and for whom facts are but inconvenient obstacles in the way of ideology, constitutes a waste of time. Indeed, there would be some justification in labelling the Kafila bunch, barring some honourable exceptions like Rohini Hensman and Jairus Banaji, as extremists [glib ones, though] for this very reason.

The second part of my comment [about asking the Nirmohi Akhara] involves a serious question of methodology. It is alright to to go back to Rabindranath and Saratchandra and other Indian and Western scholars, however did the author bother to ask the present followers of the Nirmohi Akhara about their religious persuasion? Isn’t it extremely condescending for all of us, far way from ground realities and communicating in a foreign tongue, to be passing judgement on the religious beliefs of a set of people without even bothering to consult them about it? Forget about involving them as actual participants, in this instance English speaking “scholaraship” has failed to even use the “subject of study” as a “native informant” !

Such methodology brings to mind the following passage by the brilliant social theorist Achille Mbembe:

On key matters, the Hegelian, post-Hegelian, and Weberian Traditions, philosophies of action and philosophies of deconstruction derived from Nietzsche or Heidegger, share the representation of the distinction between the West and other historical human forms as, largely, the way  the individual in the West has gradually freed her/himself from the sway of traditions and attained an autonomous capacity to conceive, in the here and now, the definiton of norms and their free formulation by  individual, rational wills. These traditions also share, to varying degrees, the assumption that, compared to the West, other societies are primitive, simple or traditional in that, in them, the weight of the past predetermines individual behaviour and limits the areas of choice – as it were, a priori. The formulation of norms in these latter societies has nothing to do with reasoned public deliberation, since the setting of norms by a process of argument is a specific invention of modern Europe.
(Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony,2001)

If, in the above, we replace Western/European by English-speaking/convent-educated and take other societies to mean non-English speaking sections of India, then we see that the kind of attitude adopted by Susmita Dasgupta and other writers at Kafila is precisely the kind that Mbembe bemoans and rejects in Western discourses about Africa [and by extension, other colonized societies]. Somehow, in their keen-ness to emancipate the masses by “representing” their interests, some people forget or fail to take into consideration the masses own feelings on the matter.  In doing so, they end up behaving like arrogant white masters in a colony instead of equal participants in a democratic set up. In the present instance, the Nirmohi Akhara should be consulted about their own religious beliefs. The fact that they may not speak English, or refuse to participate in coffee table discussions should be immaterial. Please note that my question, was and is, one of methodology. I am not presupposing Nirmohi Akhara’s response [or lack thereof] if a query over their religious beliefs is indeed posed to them.

By censoring out my comment, Kafila doesn’t muzzle me since I am still reaching a audience similar to theirs through the same medium, but by muzzling the Nirmohis on a matter inextricably linked to them, not only does Kafila show intellectual arrogance, but a rather unfortunate sense of cultural and linguistic superiority which is a relic of the colonial episteme. Kafila should know that if they open their eyes to this, they can discard what we can call, the Educated Brown Man’s Burden, and this will enrich both their understanding and analysis.