India and Europe

INDIA AND EUROPE *

An Essay in Philosophical Understanding

Since almost the dawn of history there had been racial movements and material and cultural exchanges between the East and the West, especially Europe and India. The two Sanskrit words kirata (merchant) and Paulastya (family of Ravana of the Ramayana)are believed to have been derived from two of the Mediterranean peoples – Cretans and Palaesgians – both of whom were expert sea-farers. The fascination of the Classical Greece for India prompted the adventures of Alexander the Great and modern Germany produced a host of Indologists who undertook keen hermenuetical study of India’s cultural heritage. With that native ground, Wilhelm Halbfass, German Professor of Indian Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, is fully equipped and qualified for an exposition of the encounter between Europe and India, and the result is his book India and Europe – ­An Essay in Philosophical Understanding.

The book was originally written in German under the title Inden und Europa which the author himself has translated into English, having revised and updated. The book is not a mere “dry as dust “ historical narration of the encounter between the two lands but deals with images, projections, theoretical res­ponses and reflections in a comprehensive and scholarly fashion with an underlying sympathetic but critical appraisal and apprecia­tion. However some of the comments of the author and other European thinkers may sound offending to the nascent spirit of Hindu nationalism but they really merit serious thought and consideration. Real patriotism lies not in an unqualified glorifica­tion of one’s own past and blind hero-worship but in detecting the oppressive dead-wood in one’s heritage and finding ways of clearing it in the interests of speedy progress.

The book under review is in two parts: the earlier dealing with European reaction to Indian thought till about the 19th century and the second with Indian reaction to the Western impact in the modern period.

The sources available to the Europeans about India are incomplete and imperfect throughout and more so in the remote Classical Age. Basing on the accounts of visitors like Skylax and Megasthanes, 6th and 4th centuries B. C., respectively, India was looked upon by the Greeks as a land of fabulous wealth and mysterious ascetics. Still, unspoilt by regional chauvinism, the Greeks held India in high esteem as the original home of thought and learning par excellence. Though Pythogorus is believed to have coined the word philosophy, he is said to have studied psychological and soteriogical doctrines with the Indian Sramanas. Later, each of the Western philosophers understood and interpreted the Indian thought according to his own ideological framework – rational, romantic, idealist or materialist – depend­ing mostly on the accounts of Islamic writers, Christian missionaries and coloured administrative reports of colonial rulers.

It is indeed a paradox that Islam sprang up almost at the close of the Classical Age as a wedge between Europe and India but served also as a bridge between the two as Europe could learn about India only through the Muslim writers. The first important Muslim writer is Al-Biruni whose Kitab’ul Hind is more authentic than Classical Accounts as the author acquainted himself with original Sanskrit sources. Al-Biruni was open-minded and even sympathetic towards the Hindus. He could find mono­theism in the Hindu concept of Isvara and uniconic system in the early Upanishadic thought. But he compared Hinduism to diamonds mixed up with dung and remarked that the Hindus hold both in equal reverence. He found out and lamented that the Hindus were (are) ethnocentric (conceited) and that was the cause of their fall. All-Biruni notes several systems of Indian thought but nowhere he refers to Sankara’s Advaita, probably because it did not gain popularity by his time (A. D. 973-1048). The Kitab-al-Milal ofShahrastani (1086-1153) was more popular than Al-Biruni’s work. Shahrastani holds the Arabs, Persians, Greeks and Hindus as very important peoples in the history of religious and philosophical thought, but he gives credit to Pythogorean Greece as the birthplace of philosophy.

Christian missionaries started pouring into India when the Mughals were at the height of their power, following the dis­covery of the Cape Route (1497). The Jessuits and other Missionaries, no doubt, made a sincere effort at the study of the Indian systems of thought. But they were sent to India to destroy heathenism and not to appreciate and preach it in Christendom. Naturally, therefore, missionary approach to the Indian thought is characterised by airs of superiority, reflect­ed in dogmatism and fanaticism. Very frequently, they proclaimed that Hinduism represents religion in infancy and Christianity its fulfilment. Robert Nobili actually invited Brahmins to become his disciples to rediscover the lost meaning of Veda. J. Bouchet characterised the Veda as “Moses using the medium of Sanskrit.” Urquart says that Vedanta is the pre­paration for Christianity, whereas J. N. Farquhar would have us believe that Christianity is The Crown of Hinduism (the title of his book). While such discussions were going on, the Asiatic Society of Bengal was established (1784) and much of Sanskrit literature was translated for the benefit of Europe. The translations are no doubt sincerely and truly literal but it is doubtful whether they could convey the spirit behind the works and could relive the socio-cultural milieu of which they were the products. Even MaxMueller, who is held in high esteem for his services in discovering and proclaiming to the world the forgotten glories of India’s cultural heritage, is said to have kept constantly at heart the aim of finding out the elements common to Veda and Bible so that the proselytizing activity of the Christian missionaries could be facilitated. The administrative reports were prepared by the British officers with the arrogant misconception that nothing can be great in the culture of a conquered people. Halbfass totally ignores these reports which formed an important source of information all over Europe.

Such was the confusing picture of Indian thought which was assessed differently by different schools. Being strong critics of the doctrine and discipline of Christianity, the rationalists found an alternative in Veda which represented to them as the oldest and purest form of religion. Voltaire, a typical representative of the Age of Enlightenment, declared “the holy Christian religion is solely based upon the ancient religion of Brahma.” The Romanticists, Herder and Schlegel, too idealised the Indian tradition, but being faithfully Christian, held the view that man might have originated in Asia but attained adulthood in the Mediterranean lands, namely Greece.

Hegel, who continues to exert influence on human thought as the founder of the idealist school of history as the record of man’s progress, is a strong critic of the romanticists’ assess­ment of Indian thought. For him philosophy par excellence was born and developed in Greece and Greece alone. In India religion and philosophy are inseparable and hence there is no intellectual freedom essential for the growth of philosophy. Moksha, the cornerstone of Indian religio-philosophical thought, is a negative concept leading to self-negation, instead of to self-assertion ­finite losing itself in the infinite. “In other words, the absolute and the infinite is not put to work in and for the relative and finite; and the relative and finite does not affect the infinite and hence there is no possibility for historical progress towards the enhance­ment of man and the world.” In the present context of India’s struggle to move forward, Hegel’s assessment of Indian philosophy rooted in the concept of changelessness merits consideration (Duriug the days of anti-cow-slaughter agitation, an American economist remarked that India moves forward with her head turned wards!) but it is undeniable that Hegel’s views are based upon incomplete and biased accounts of Indian thought. Halbfass rightly points out that Hegel did not see the discussions between Buddhists and Hindus. Nor was he aware of the great intellectual ferment of the pre-Buddhist epoch when in the words of Rhys Davids there was unparalleled intellectual freedom, encouraged by the local rulers. It may further be pointed out that Hegel did not properly assess the philosophical importance of the Vaiseshika and Barhaspatya systems nor the significance of the rejection of atma by Buddha and his comparison of Dharma (Law) to Chakra (wheel), which symbolises motion or progress. The writings of Karl Marx, as Halbfass finds out, are mere journalistic exercises and suffer from all the above defects. Marx doubted whether India with its stagnant socio-economic system, centering round the idealised rural self-sufficiency, is capable of progressive thought. Under Hegellian influence, India was excluded from the history of philosophy. Soon Hegel came under severe criticism by Schopenhauer who goes into raptures about the Indian spiritual thought and its ennobling influence. Following him, there were intensified Indological studies and the resulting discoveries exposed the imperfections in the Hegellian views. After a discussion of the terms darsana and anviksiki, frequently used in Indian Texts, Halbfass comes to the conclusion that the existence of philosophy in India is no longer doubted and much of the intellectual activity in India conforms to what European philosophers were engaged in.

This brings us to the second part of the book, dealing with the Indian reaction to Europe. It is rather strange that but for a short appreciation of the Hellenic knowledge of astronomy by Varahamihira in his Brihatsamhita, Indian litera­ture is almost silent about the Greeco-Roman civilization from which India has drawn considerably (calendar, dramaturgy, coinage, etc.). This situation has prompted Halbfass to endorse the view of Al-Biruni that the Indians do not recognise the outside world. Still, it is an interesting fact of her history that whenever she encounters a vigorous foreign culture, India experiences an intellectual ferment and in the modern period Rammohan Roy was the harbinger of such a movement. Halbfass gives the correct picture of Rammohan when he describes him as a person who has placed the tensions between the origins and decay, between the past and the present at the focal point of his thought and activity, who faces the European as the interpreter of India’s past and simultaneously as the representative of the living present and one who has enabled India to shake off its ancestral inertia and proceed to a new stage of religious and philosophical consciousness. Waging a crusade against all that is putrified in Hindu system, Rammohan endeavoured to bridge the gulf between precept and practice and guide Hinduism into the open arena of the wide world. He was thus the Maker of Modern India in more than one sense. To describe the movement of which Rammohan was the Morning Star, Halbfass rightly uses the term neo-Hinduism in preference to the widely popular word renaissance. Renaissance was the movement in which Europe freed herself from the shackles of organised religion and made rationalism and humanism as the keynote of their enterprise and achievement on which the modern world of science, technology and secular democracy is built. On the other hand the leaders of the Indian movement find everything great, noble and progressive, including the latest marvels of technology and the key to world peace only in Hinduism - represented by Veda (Samhita)for Dayananda and by Vedanta (Upanishads) for Vivekananda. Vedic primitivism is the ideal state of Nature for Dayananda and he exhorts the Hindus to retreat to it. The observation of Halbfass that the work of Vivekananda “does not offer any really worthwhile tasks for historical research or philosophical reflection.........the tangible historical and practical success which Vivekananda met with may be questionable...” is a challenge posed at the growing orthodoxy in Hinduism. It is to be further investigated (i) whether Vivekananda’s effort to develop Hinduism into a missionary religion is to kill its spirit of catholicity for which it has been acclaimed all along and (ii) whether his call for Universal Vedanta is the Hindu counterpart of much despised imperialist slogan of “Whiteman’s Burden”.

This eagerness for self-assertion is an undeniable result of India’s encounter with the West, Karl Marx was of the view that British imperialism rendered signal service by pushing India out of centuries old stagnation, whereas the British histo­rian Persival Spear wrote that the Indian national spirit was the result of inspiration and irritation – both provided by the Westerner. Indians derived inspiration from the knowledge of their glorious past, unfolded by European Indologists and irritation from the vituperative Christian missionary propaganda and the administrative policy of racial discrimination. This self-assertion, whether by Vivekananda or by Sri Aurobindo or by Gandhiji or by Radhakrishnan is in the Western medium and technique and the Indian culture is sought to be reinter­preted with reference to Western categories. Not only intellectual activity but the entire life of the nation is dominated by science, technology and politico-economic ideas and institutions of European origin. The process is not limited to India. Entire world is face to face with it, Endorsed therefore by Indian writers like J. L. Mehta, Halbfass concludes that Europeanisation of the earth is inevitable and inescapable.

Three Appendices under the title Illustrations and Reflections form the third part of the book.

The book is a valuable contribution to the clear under­standing of the East-West Encounter. A critical understanding of the book is highly rewarding. The publishers deserve congratulations for having brought it out.

* India and Europe – An Essay in Philosophical Understanding: By Wilhelm Halbfass. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers P. Ltd., New Delhi-7. Price: Rs. 225.