Pitfalls of hollow hope

The single, raw impulse at the origins of the 'political psychologist' Ashis Nandy's complex career has been the desire to recover indigenous systems of knowledge in Southasia that have perished under the onslaught of colonial modernity. From the very beginning, this undertaking has been one of excavation. One of Nandy's first books came out in 1980, entitled Alternative Sciences: Creativity and authenticity in two Indian scientists. This was an attempt to uncover the deepest cultural impulses of the two early scientists, Jagadis Chandra Bose and Srinivasa Ramanujan, whose work, on the surface, appeared to be thoroughly modern. Though Nandy convincingly demonstrated that the two were not blind imitators of the West, and indeed struggled to reconcile traditional paradigms with modern science, the two worlds remained incommensurable and their projects ended in failure and tragedy. The sympathetic reader is inevitably overwhelmed with a sense of loss and futility in reading this account; the old worldviews seem irretrievable, unable to withstand the pressures of modernity.

Conscious that by confining himself to digging he would remain a mere purveyor of nostalgia, over time Nandy developed an unsystematic but comprehensive critique of the worldview that originated in the European Enlightenment and was then assimilated, in myriad ways, by the non-West. This included all of history, science, the nation state, secularism and theories of progress. By exposing how catastrophic the introduction of these ideas had been to non-modern societies, he hoped to enable the recuperation of the 'non-modern'. And, if this could not work as a complete alternative, it could at least offer an opposition.

In 2002, Nandy came out with a collection of essays, Time Warps: The insistent politics of silent and evasive pasts. Both that volume and the new Time Treks are in many ways a synthesis and distillation of the entirety of his work to date. The previous volume, Nandy writes, "remains an adventure in one kind of time travel – the sort in which one mainly uses or invokes the past to try and intervene in the present." Time Treks, on the other hand, "reverses that journey. It mainly deploys ideas of the future to redefine and intervene in the present."

However clear this distinction may appear, it is disingenuous. Both volumes are in fact collections of essays that Nandy wrote over long periods of time, and themes inevitably overlap. By collecting these essays into book form, and then writing prefaces to tie them together, Nandy is giving them a retrospective coherence they did not originally possess. A more accurate (though perhaps more pedestrian) description of the difference here would be geographical focus. While Time Warps was concerned particularly with Indian modernity and the re-introduction of traditional modes of knowledge into Indian public life, Time Treks focuses on modernity in general and the resuscitation of all of the world's non-modern cultures. This represents a change of direction in Nandy's ambition: to be a global thinker rather than a Southasian one.

Unfortunately, the subtlety and wit present in his careful explorations and analyses of Indian modernity is not present in this new critique of the entire modern worldview. Nandy's arguments here are painted with broad, encompassing brush strokes that hide as much as they reveal. Although Time Treks is more ambitious, Time Warps is the superior volume.

Modern evils
Time Treks seeks to illustrate how the Enlightenment-influenced worldview is at its core tremendously destructive. Because this worldview continues to cause unjustified violence and suffering, Nandy suggests, it needs to be supplanted with a radical alternative. Unlike most other critics of modernity who, in an effort to appear reasonable, take pains to emphasise both its enslaving and emancipatory aspects, Nandy is unrelenting in his condemnation. "The most consequential feature of the [20th] century," he writes, "were not the ravages of the two world wars or the myriad of new technological marvels – from aeroplanes to antibiotics to computers – but a new style of violence symbolized by nuclear weapons and concentration camps."

Such a hectoring, accusatory tone – used to condemn science, development and the entire 20th century – would easily become exasperating if the reader remained unaware that Nandy's bravado is a form of clowning. This needs to be understood as intemperate jeering at the powerful by one who, at all times, is fully conscious of the marginality of what he advocates. As always, Nandy's provoking is intermixed with important elements of instruction and entertainment. In one particularly insightful essay, he suggests that the internalisation of modern notions of the nation state by the middle classes of India and Pakistan is responsible for the absurd paranoia with which they view each other.

Likewise, after sharply denouncing the modern conception of history for 'historicising' old modes of knowledge out of existence, the author quickly offers examples of how myth – which he defines as the selective interpretation of the past in accordance with changing human aspirations and needs – can be rehabilitated to heal societies torn apart by communal violence. Nandy is able to imbue well-known stories with new significance, and retrieve discarded stories and provide them with new meaning.

As promising as this sounds, however, as a general theory the distinction between history and myth remains ill-formed and unclear. History as a discipline is more complex than Nandy allows. And though at times it may have been responsible for pernicious, straight-jacketed interpretations, the best historians have always interpreted the past in accordance with the needs of the present – what Nandy seems to think is solely the province of myth. In addition, the examples of modern myths that he offers owe much more to empirical reality than to the fantastical stories of the non-modern – and thus owe much to history.

Modern shamans
At the very end of Time Treks, Nandy offers a method by which to introduce the worldviews of those dispossessed by modernity into the edifice of global knowledge. But while this could well be the first time that he has suggested anything as concrete as a formula for political action, his suggestion is by no means straightforward.

As a symbolic and political model, Nandy evokes the figure of the shaman, a "more modest symbol of resistance against the dominant politics of knowledge". In this usage, the shaman is to be thought of as marginalised, one whose categories do not make sense within current systems of knowledge. But his marginality does not concern the shaman, Nandy explains. Rather, his adherence is to a vision that relies on alternative traditions, which resonate with other marginalised individuals and cultures. He represents "the utopian and transcendental aspects of the child, the lunatic, the androgynous and the artist" – all aspects of the self that were prominent in non-modern cultures, but which have been repressed in the modern world. While the 'third world' may not be able to resist the intrusions of modernity, its task, like that of the shaman, is to keep alive the cultural worlds and thought systems of the disempowered.

Nandy's solution is a "protest of the non-protesting", a passive but perpetual assertion at the sidelines by those whose traditional worldviews have been rejected by history. But this prescription is at odds with the urgency of Nandy's plea for restoring the non-modern. In fact, more than a call for action, this is a call for patience. Those whose lifestyles and knowledge systems are being rapidly demolished by an intruding modernity are expected to exist in the vague hope that the dominant culture will, someday, realise that "the insurrection of the little cultures may have to be taken seriously."

Who exactly are the inhabitants of these 'little cultures', who constantly seek to resist modernity's encroachment upon their lives? At the extreme, there is the Adivasi dispossessed from his land and livelihood by a large dam, or some other such development project. This Adivasi may desire nothing more than the recovery of his lost way of life. (Though, even in this case, Nandy's call for patience is unlikely to offer any succour.) But what about those whose exposure to modernity is not as stark? Do they perceive the world in the simple binary that Nandy gives us: between benign tradition and an awe-inspiring, destructive modernity?

Among Nandy's most vehement opponents are Dalit intellectuals, who have taken deep offence at the author's refusal to face up to the inequities and oppression of pre-modern India. In Time Treks, Nandy blithely responds to them: "Hostility towards one's own culture and vocation [is] inculcated in the Dalits over generations. Hence, no rhetoric of recovery of indigenous cultures or protection of artisan skills goes far among them. The Dalit commitment to modernity may sometimes be fuzzy and uninformed, but it is usually total." In this, there is no attempt to understand or empathise with the Dalits' rejection of the past. Rather than acknowledge historical inequities, Nandy quickly dismisses them – by simply insisting that the central reason for the lack of the Dalits' continuing deficiency in self-esteem is due to their inability to appreciate and value their culture.

There are certainly many interesting arguments in Time Treks. At the same time, however, there is the sense that Nandy's views have become a bit outdated – stuck in the rut of an inaccurately painted world order, in which societies are starkly polarised. His categorisations of societies into the 'modern' and 'non-modern' are crude and simplistic, and fail to take into account the more nuanced complexities that colour the world in which we live.

Exposure to modernity releases complex and contradictory feelings. Admittedly, the erosion of traditional ways of life and the declining relevance of traditional skills releases fear and resentment. But the perception of a vaster and more potent world, one capable of releasing submerged potentialities within the self, also arouses temptation and expectation. At a time when the global is penetrating societies at an unprecedented rate, and communities are constantly being uprooted and forced to adopt other modes of living, any guide to political action has to offer more than patience and a hollow hope; it has to offer more than the promise of the eventual recovery of old ways of living. Such a guide has to be more alive to the opportunities of the modern, and offer radically reworked modes of working, thinking and feeling.

~ Aditya Adhikari is a political analyst with the Carter Center Internation Election Observation Mission, in Kathmandu.