Table Of ContentREFLECTIONS UPON CULTURAL EXPERIENCES:
INDIA AND BEYOND
DR KISHAN THINGBAIJAM
Reflections Upon Cultural Experiences:
India and Beyond
Dr Kishan Thingbaijam
Thoi Foundation
Imphal
2022
Reflections Upon Cultural Experiences: India and
Beyond
by Dr Kishan Thingbaijam
Thoi Foundation
Wangkhei Khunou Checkon Imphal East 795 005
(Manipur)
© Thoi Foundation
ISBN 978-81-956933-6-8
First Edition: April 2022
Price: ₹ 250.00
All right reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means without the prior permission of the author or
publisher except references in research works and
academic studies
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Translating Culture 07
Chapter 2 Roots and Routes 24
Chapter 3 Learning about India 32
Chapter 4 Re-reading a Poem 45
Chapter 5 Writing on Nature 54
Chapter 6 Interculturalism 64
Chapter 7 Lives Beyond Borders 74
Bibliography
Translating Culture
Chapter 1
Translating Culture
The assumed intellectual advancement of the West
over the rest of the world has a deep consequence in
the examination of other cultures. Edward Said's
Orientalism pursues this case effectively; opening up
new avenues of thinking in postcolonial discourses.
The appropriation of Karl Marx's statement by Edward
Said in Orientalism, "They cannot represent
themselves; they must be represented" succinctly
draws our attention to the Western understanding of
the East as intellectually inferior and therefore weak
to represent itself. The rationale is that if the East is
strong enough it will without any doubt represent
itself. It follows that the East therefore needs the West
to speak. An Orientalist, for Said, is a representative:
"Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the
Orient ‒ and this applies whether the person is an
anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist ‒
either in its specific or its general aspects, is an
Orientalist" (2). A whole range of writers has deep
conviction that for this task of representing, the East is
in fact indebted to the West. Rudyard Kipling, in his
work, writes of the "White Man's Burden" or "an
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Translating Culture
underlying air of patronage" (51) as George Orwell
aptly puts it. Interestingly, Edward Said draws his
inspiration from Karl Marx by citing Marx's sentence in
his epithet to Orientalism. Yet, Karl Marx himself is
unable to come out of the constriction of Orientalism.
His "The British Rule in India" shows that he ascribes
to the often made claims about India by the Orients.
Various critically unexamined statements and
prejudices mark his writing about India:
We must not forget that these little communities
were contaminated by distinctions of caste and
by slavery, that they subjugated man to external
circumstances instead of elevating man the
sovereign of circumstances, that they
transformed a self-developing social state into
never changing natural destiny, and thus brought
about a brutalizing worship of nature, exhibiting
its degradation in the fact that man, the
sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in
adoration of Kanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala,
the cow.
He goes to the extent of justifying the British rule in
India as "the unconscious tool of history in bringing
about that revolution [referring to the social
condition]" despite "the crimes of England". Karl Marx
considers British rule as responsible for the social
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Translating Culture
revolution which has rectified the social ills mentioned
in the passage cited above.
The assumption of civilisational superiority of the
West has induced Kipling and Marx to take that stand.
Lord Macaulay speaks in a similar tone about India
and its languages and intellectual position.
All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that
the dialects commonly spoken among the natives
of this part of India contain neither literary nor
scientific information, and are, moreover, so poor
and rude that, until they are enriched from some
other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any
valuable work into them. It seems to be admitted
on all sides, that the intellectual improvement of
those classes of the people who have the means
of pursuing higher studies can at present be
effected only by means of some language not
vernacular amongst them.
What then shall that language be? One-half of the
Committee maintain that it should be the English.
The other half strongly recommends Arabic and
Sanscrit. The whole question seems to me to be,
which language is the best worth knowing?
I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic.
But I have done what I could to form a correct
estimate of their value. I have read translations of
the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I
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Translating Culture
have conversed both here and at home with men
distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern
tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental
learning at the valuation of the Orientalists
themselves. I have never found one among them
who could deny that a single shelf of a good
European library was worth the whole native
literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic
superiority of the Western literature is, indeed,
fully admitted by those members of the
Committee who support the Oriental plan of
education. (348-349)
He articulates the cultural advancement of Europe in a
more concrete manner when he says that "the
superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely
immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say,
that all the historical information which has been
collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit
language is less valuable than what may be found in
the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory
schools in England '' (349). Similar perspectives have
been a rule rather than an exception among the
Orientalists. When the exploitation of the Indians
during the British rule has become hard enough to
deny, the Orientalists console themselves for the
"excesses of their own countrymen in India''
(Vishwanathan Masks 24) with an idea of a "welfare
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Translating Culture
and improvement" package, which inevitably also
furnishes, not by coincidence, a politically efficacious
situation to sustain their own control over the natives
‒ The 13th Resolution categorically stated that
England was obligated to promote the "interests and
happiness" of the natives and that measures ought to
be adopted "as may tend to the introduction among
them of useful knowledge, and of religious and moral
improvement." (Vishwanathan Masks 24 Italics mine)
The so-called "welfare and improvement" consist of
"raising Indians to the intellectual level of their
Western counterparts..." (6). Not only intelligence, the
issue gets shifted to morality which forms the other
dimension of welfare and improvement. It consists of
an attempt "to raise the reader (Indian) to a level of
morality" (6) that makes him capable of appreciating
"Western aesthetic principles". David C Somervell
rightly points out that imperialism's "foundations were
moral rather than intellectual" (English 186) which
means imperialism is more of a psychological
dominance over the colonial subjects through the
projection of a morally righteous figure to rule over
them.
The psychological impact of colonization over the
Indians has been discussed by the Indian sociologist
and cultural thinker Ashis Nandy. His argument is that
Britishers attempt to display a strong masculine side
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