“Nationalist thought not historically sensitive to Dalit questions"
The concept of freedom in social and political thought in India becomes adequate only when it is able to accommodate untouchability or the case question as a social reality, Gopal Guru, Chairperson, Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, said on Thursday.
Delivering the Founder's Day lecture hosted by the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) as tribute to its founder Malcolm S. Adiseshiah, Prof. Guru said an alternative imagination of India to Jawaharlal Nehru's incredible India or Mahatma Gandhi's Ramrajya has its roots in the inadequacy of derivative thought to “escape the epistemological grip and gaze of the Western discourse.”
In fact, scholar Partha Chatterjee had quite tellingly observed that “nationalist discourse is historical in form but apologetic in substance,” Prof. Guru said.
As a political philosopher who is associated with theorising the Dalit experience, Prof. Guru pointed out that leaders like Jotirao Phule and Ambedkar were the first to provide articulation of the experience of untouchability on the intellectual imagination in 19th and 20th century India.
As reflective thinkers, these leaders sought to recast a particular reality into reflection, thus, elevating it from mere description to its universal abstraction, he said. Thus, in their alternative imagination of India, it was the India of mythological peasant king Baliraja for Phule while it was Bahishkrut Bharat for Ambedkar.
Significantly, this alternative thought operates through a negative language as an initial communication condition, according to Prof. Guru.
“It, thus, seeks to undercut the significance of canonised language as the only legitimate form of expression,” he said.
The negative language is important as much for its assertion that nationalist thought “is not” historically sensitive to the Dalit questions as for throwing up the distinction between nationalist thought and the social thought that foregrounds Dalit vision, Prof. Guru said.
MIDS chairperson R. Radhakrishna presided.
Source: The Hindu Dt 29.04.2011
The concept of freedom in social and political thought in India becomes adequate only when it is able to accommodate untouchability or the case question as a social reality, Gopal Guru, Chairperson, Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, said on Thursday.
Delivering the Founder's Day lecture hosted by the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) as tribute to its founder Malcolm S. Adiseshiah, Prof. Guru said an alternative imagination of India to Jawaharlal Nehru's incredible India or Mahatma Gandhi's Ramrajya has its roots in the inadequacy of derivative thought to “escape the epistemological grip and gaze of the Western discourse.”
In fact, scholar Partha Chatterjee had quite tellingly observed that “nationalist discourse is historical in form but apologetic in substance,” Prof. Guru said.
As a political philosopher who is associated with theorising the Dalit experience, Prof. Guru pointed out that leaders like Jotirao Phule and Ambedkar were the first to provide articulation of the experience of untouchability on the intellectual imagination in 19th and 20th century India.
As reflective thinkers, these leaders sought to recast a particular reality into reflection, thus, elevating it from mere description to its universal abstraction, he said. Thus, in their alternative imagination of India, it was the India of mythological peasant king Baliraja for Phule while it was Bahishkrut Bharat for Ambedkar.
Significantly, this alternative thought operates through a negative language as an initial communication condition, according to Prof. Guru.
“It, thus, seeks to undercut the significance of canonised language as the only legitimate form of expression,” he said.
The negative language is important as much for its assertion that nationalist thought “is not” historically sensitive to the Dalit questions as for throwing up the distinction between nationalist thought and the social thought that foregrounds Dalit vision, Prof. Guru said.
MIDS chairperson R. Radhakrishna presided.
Source: The Hindu Dt 29.04.2011
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