Kalaa-Yogi Ananda Coomaraswamy – His Philosophy of Civilization

KALAA-YOGI ANANDA COOMARASWAMY–
HIS PHILOSOPHY OF CIVILIZATION

S. DURAI RAJASINGAM
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Has the West a Mission?

To people who are accustomed to idealize Western ways and living as representing all that is progress in the modern world, Ananda Coomaraswamy still offers an eye-opener in his book “Am I my Brothers Keeper?” The book, in fact, is a collection of six essays, written in his characteristically lucid and precise style, on the cultural relationship maintained between East and West for centuries; on the baneful impact of Western civilization on the Eastern world; and on the urgent need for the West to return to a traditional culture of first principles if it is to save itself from another major catastrophe.

Ananda Coomaraswamy minces no word in challenging the absolute validity of the “Superiority” of western civilization as characterized by its organisation, social, cultural and economic. As illustrating a philosophical attitude that is essentially hedonistic, he points out that references so often made by western tourists to some land as “unspoilt” are but “naive, and even tragic” confessions of failure. Particularly stimulating is his insistence on a reassessment of the values of life in the West which, it seemed to him, were warped to the extent of being grossly “quantitative and material”.

To him no civilization, can lay claim to anything but an economic stress, in which the finer virtues of man are subordinated to an increase of material wants through a process of self-appointed quest whether cultural or otherwise, for which an almost total loss if serenity is the inevitable price. “A more loveless and at the same time a more sentimentally cynical culture,” he writes in Am I my Brother’s Keeper than that of Western Europe it would be impossible to imagine.”

Yet Ananda Coomaraswamy is no bigoted decrier of Western civilization. His acrimony, on the first acquaintance, is but a provocativeness resulting from his reflections based on solid facts which have challenged him and must of necessity challenge others. Rather he questions the complacency of the West in its assumption of Eastern “wardness” because of its lack of a concomitant material development, and urges it to desist from its own “proselytizing fury.”

The synonymity of culture and literacy, so fallaciously premised by the West in its “civilizing mission,” is but one instance of such complacency which he delights in flaying. True culture, he points out, if not necessarily associated with one’s ability to read and write; but on the contrary, it has a long oral tradition in the history of mankind. For this reason he deprecates the trend of Western education which seeks, in the name of their preservation for posterity, to relegate native arts and crafts to museums, where their spiritual significance ceases to be a cogent force.

“It is in just the same way that music is thrown away; folk songs are lost to the people at the same time that they are collected and “put into a bag;” and in the same way the “preservation” of a people’s art in folk museums becomes a funeral rite, since preservatives are only necessary for the body when the patient has already died. Nor must we suppose that “community singing” can take the place of true folk song; its level will be no higher than that of the Basic English in which our undergraduates have to be similarly drilled, if they are to understand even the language of their elementary schools.”

In the matter of religion the same tendency to rationalize is even more patent in the persistent attempt by Western missionaries there is but one true religion–Christianity. Lack of adequate training in comparative religion accounts not only for the self-deception but in actual fact precludes a better understanding between the West and the East; the training of a missionary at best stresses his own religion while dismissing others as mere superstitions. Consequently nothing will do a greater disservice than an attempt to proselytize natives with such an ill-equipped intellect and uncatholic spirit at the outset. To Ananda Coomaraswamy all religions are in the words of Thomas Aquinas, “extrinsic proofs of the same Divine Father”: that among all races only forms differ but not essentials. In other words, they are as Anatole France propounds in his book The Monk’s Temptation, different aspects of the same truth.

And herein also is the difference between Eastern wisdom and Western knowledge–the former characterised by serenity and the latter mostly by self-destructiveness. For a remedy Dr. Coomaraswamy quotes Guenon: “It is the West that must take the initiative, but she must be prepared really to go towards the East, not merely seeking to draw the East towards herself as she has tried so far. There is no reason why the East should take the initiative, and there would be still none, even the Western world were not in such a state as to make any effort in this direction useless.......”

In his essay on Spiritual Paternity and The Puppet Complex Coomaraswamy suggests a re-orientation in the study of modern anthropology which at the moment considers more closely the social rather than the spiritual paternity of mankind. Such a trend, he considers, is neither in the interest of science nor that of humanity, which needs to be seen as a whole and not as an outlandish anomaly. Ananda Coomaraswamy, in this book as in others, has done a great service to the world, particularly to the West, by advancing his arguments based, not on personal animus, but scientific data and observations; for in reality, while criticising the West, his aim is to unify rather than diversify the cosmos.

A Philosophy of Civilisation

In a first lecture on the Religious Basis of the Forms of Indian Society Ananda Coomaraswamy points out the benefits and advantages of the much-abused caste system. He divides his lecture into two parts, viz., the religious basis of the forms of Indian Society and the Religious basis of the forms of Indian Life. His views on the so-called democracy of the West (“counting noses” as he facetiously describes universal franchise) are full of skilfully made points. A Westerner reading his lecture would think and most surely agree with the Earl of Portsmouth’s remark that “we have much to learn from the East, from high farming to high philosophies.”

In his lecture on Indian Culture and English Influence Western civilization receives another “slating” and Sir George Birdwood knew India so well is quoted as saying that: Western civilization is secular, joyless, insane, and self-destructive.” The hieratic system in India is held up in contrast as a thing which still continues to function successfully in competition with Western systems of social government and organisation. Professor La Piana of Harvard describes American civilization as “a murderous machine with no conscience and no ideals.” The disastrous effect of Western “civilization” on the Marquesas Islanders is quoted as an example of its destructiveness. Dinesh Chandra Sen describes the transition from the Hindu way of life to the Western way as “a descent as great as from the Himalayas to the plains.” British education is described as having destroyed the Indians’ “love of their own literature” and “disgusted them with their homes, their parents, their sisters, their very wives.” The method of education also has had a deeper effect in that it has turned Indians into an incoherent blend of East and West. There could be no better proof of all these things than is afforded by Jawaharlal Nehru’s pathetic and yet modest confession that “I have become a queer mixture of East and West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere.” Western Oriental scholarship, originally devised to attack and refute the “heathen doctrines” of the Indians is now playing a more useful part in that it is being used to compare the same ideas contained in Eastern and Western literature. He later elaborates on the theme of not being impressed by Vice-President Wallace’s promise that he would turn all of us into productive mechanics.

In his next lecture on East and West he discusses the cultural antithesis of East and West, contrasting the regular way of life in the East with the modern and irregular way of life now prevailing in the West. The Western idea of progress at great speed towards some unknown destination is pointed out. The “unprincipled man” is a product of the economic materialist trend in the West, where vocation is now a “job”, and where quantity has replaced quality in goods. The wars between the Christian races is pointed out and Japan is said to have pursued westernisation so successfully that she herself became involved in imperialist warfare. He expresses a desire for universal thought and discourse as a solution of the world’s problems.

Ananda Coomaraswamy has done a great service to both East and West in his expositions of the respective values of two contrasted ways of life. He speaks in his essays of the need for a “change of heart” and the replacement of the “law of the sharks” in the Western world: he points out the differences between the Eastern and the modern Western life, which, clearly defined by his analytical mind, show how irreconcilable the two are in fact, although on the surface this is not always so evident. His plea for a new literary movement studying Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin and the languages of India, in order that the wisdom of the ages both Eastern and Western, should be collated and compared is an idea which might, if pursued, have profound effects. By his treatment of the subject and his exhaustive knowledge of language we can see just how useful this knowledge has been in his own case.

­The learned doctor concludes this essay, “We must beware: for there are two possible, and very different, consequences that can follow from the cultural contact of East and West. One can “become a queer mixture of East and West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere;” or being still oneself, one can learn to find oneself, “in place” anywhere and “at home everywhere, in the profoundest sense a citizen of the world.”

The ideal Ananda Coomaraswamy puts forward in the booklet containing the essay on The Religious Basis of Indian Society–that theologians should be competent to speak of other traditions with the same knowledge with which they speak of their own–is one to which I adhere. While this means a recognition of a vast body of truth common to all traditions – so far as they are living and understood–it also means a very high degree of respect for points of unresolved difference. That these may ultimately be resolved in truth without loss of anything that has ever been truly known and understood anywhere and at any time is clearly implied. While Ananda Coomaraswamy was alive I believe that his work was principally directed to truth in the above sense.

Now that we no longer have his directing presence I think there is danger of partial enthusiasms dividing the body of truth against itself while all claiming–truly enough–to be inspired by Ananda Coomaraswamy. India is seeking to revive its spiritual life by throwing off Western materialism. So far this is nothing but good. But there is one consequence I can hardly support which is almost inevitable men being what they are–namely the revival of antagonism to the Christian faith.

To follow one’s own svadharma does not ever really imply taking up a false or merely distinctive position; and if all Christians in their influence on the East were really spreading the Gospel, or if all Indian people were angels of discrimination, there would be no problem. But people in the mass, as popular writing reaches them, are a very different thing; and a doctrine gets a popular following in the modern world very often by some unforeseen appeal to much lower motives than the doctrine itself teaches?

The East and America

What are the cultural affinities and differences between the East and America? To what extent is it possible for a reunion of these two hemispheres based on their cultures and civilisations? These are the main problems Dr Ananda Coomaraswamy sets out to survey in Understanding and Reunion; An Oriental perspective. To explore the possibilities of a reunion, Ananda Coomaraswamy premises understanding as the first prerequisite, which means taking into account differences which exist today in the modern world. Fortunately, these differences between the East and the West, he says, have been a geographic accident and that, so far as the “philosophia perennis” is concerned, a communal plane for understanding and consequent reunion already exists. Unlike the well-known wail “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,” his own vision bolds forth the hope that the twain can indeed meet–provided the initiative is undertaken by the West in a spirit of true humility.

Understanding, as he sees it, is at present obscured by the difference in values placed upon human progress. In the matter of art, too, the East stresses the vital role of persuasion which it plays in seeking to express truth effectively, while the West looks upon all art as something to appeal to the senses alone. In the one it seeks comprehension of meaning; in the other emotional experience for its own sake. Views as divergent as these can find no possible ground for compromise–except in the “philosophia perennis” pervading the religious life of both East and West. In short, the universality of God in his multifarious forms of human acceptance alone can make for world reunion.

For this reason Ananda Coomaraswamy envisages no gospel of hope in “scientific humanism”, in which metaphysical reality is merely considered in relation to sense perception. He urges a return to be pristine cultivation of what psychologists call the illative sense, which, like love, sees not with the eyes but with the mind. Nevertheless, it would be a fallacy to infer that, for a social coalescence between the East and the West, the West must turn to the traditional culture of the East and be carried away by its vortex. It would be as great a mistake for the East to attempt to proselytize the West as it is for the West to convert the East to its own way of thinking. To East however could serve as an object less on, as a reminder to the West of its own traditional culture from which it has wandered under the delusion of progress and upon which alone a structure of reunion can be successfully made.

In a chapter entitled What is Civilization? he deals with Albert Schweitzer’s quest for knowledge of what truly constitutes civilization. He accepts his dicta that the modern world in the West is a world of “Epigone”, i.e., inheritors. These are the races which inherit rather than create positive goods. A civilization is a very abstract thing to consider. It is rooted in the City–the home of the citizen. Man is divided into two types, the person and the animal man governed by lusts and passions. The person is distinct from the animal man by virtue of foresight and understanding. The age of the common man is too much for Coomaraswamy who says that he is much too common to be in control of a civilization. Rather would he see Plato’s wish realized that all states should be governed by philosophers, who governing, by necessity (necessitas infallibilitatis) and not by “desire” as do the present day politicians. The primary use of philosophers in society is that of a catalyst. So used however they are not sufficiently powerful; Hence the need for a philosopher-governed state.

In all these lecturecs Ananda Coomaraswamy has expounded his main theme which colours all his writings. That theme is the universality of thought. All men have the same fundamental and inherent ideas, which however, get cast in different moulds. All men’s social actions are “reflexes”–naturally thoughts become affected by environment, hence the apparent diversity in man’s thought, which, fundamentally, is the same in both East and West.

All these lectures are full of keen comment, apt allusions, and quotations, in the best Coomaraswamy manner. His style has lost none of its old charm and beauty.
21st December, 1973