An argumentative Indian

In a political climate where questioning is often met with suspicion and sometimes equated with treason, a new book Ashis Nandy: A Life in Dissent celebrates the scholarly oeuvre of one of India’s last great public intellectuals. Over his prolific career, Mr Nandy has underscored the importance of the act of questioning in the pursuit of knowledge. He has been equally critical of missionary style modernism, as he has been of dogmatically ossified traditionalism; he has questioned the notion of a nation state while laying bare the deep psycho-sexual roots of the right-wing Hindu’s fear of emasculation in the hands of a virile Other. This compendium of essays, brought out on the occasion of his 80th birthday, has been penned by authors, philosophers, economists, historians and even a virtuoso Carnatic vocalist - all of whom have enjoyed long, what co-editor of the volume Ramin Jahanbegloo refers to as, “civic friendships” with Mr Nandy. Its cover, bearing Mr Nandy’s portrait painted by noted artist Manu Parikh, is distinctive.

In the introduction, Mr Jahanbegloo refers to Mr Nandy as having had a “non-dominative” influence on not only psychologists and political theorists, but freethinkers across the world. One of Mr Nandy’s most interesting writings to which a couple of essayists in the book (notably Richard Falk) refer demonstrate his lifelong spirit of dissent. This is his reflection upon Judge Radhabinod Pal’s sole dissenting opinion as a member of the Japanese War Crimes Tribunal. The judge refused to hold Japanese leaders and military men solely culpable for crimes during the war. Mr Falk writes that this was not only because of his unease with the idea of victors' justice. It also had to do, Mr Nandy reasoned, with the uniquely Indian concept illustrated by the final events of the Mahabharata that in all good, there is a modicum of evil, and in all evil, there are aspects that are good. It was an acknowledgement that the onus of war rested equally on both sides, not just on the losers.

This also illustrates, as several essays in the book have pointed out, how Mr Nandy has, unlike many psychologists, always kept the individual, society and the world closely connected. Tridib Suhrud, who translated Mr Nandy’s The Intimate Enemy (1983) into Gujarati, reflects on his reading of Gandhi, not as a saint but as a sharp, edgy politician. His Gandhi was not blandly loved by all, but was an astute man whose religious choices were perhaps governed, or at least influenced by politics. Mr Suhrud also stresses Mr Nandy’s hypothesis that those who killed Gandhi, and those who want to see him remain dead, share one political culture. They all have an unflinching faith in the modern state, share an uneasy relationship with the traditions they claim to uphold, and have a deep fear of cultural and political emasculation, which they hide behind a mask of hyper-masculinity. The Gandhi of Mr Nandy’s imagination, on the other hand, sought emasculation, was impatient with the idea of a modern state and did not hesitate to discard what others saw as valuable traditions.

The psychoanalyst in Mr Nandy looked at the deep psycho-sexual roots of our political histories - at colonialism, the “intimate” enemy that lives on in generations who have not necessarily experienced it first-hand; the resultant faith in western “science” and dismissal of folk wisdom; the deep need to subscribe to a chest-thumping allegiance to tradition, the absolute power of the patriarchal state and its hypermasculine leader. For example, in his analysis of the so-called “Authoritarian Personality”, he writes that societies in the throes of political and social change give birth to generations of individuals who feel disconnected with their roots and, therefore, insignificant. These individuals compulsively search for totalitarian ideologies and all-encompassing worldviews to reduce their sense of rootlessness.

This, in fact, connects well to the essay by political scientists David L Blaney and Naeem Inayatullah in the volume. The essayists write that many political scientists have drawn on Mr Nandy’s conceptualisation of international relations as a complex series of cultural encounters, or dialogues between the Self and the Other. For instance, Mr Nandy sees ‘development’ as a dialogue between the rural and urban, rich and poor. Often, it is visualised as the removal of poverty, which has become tantamount to the removal of the poor themselves. So development is essentially violent in nature.

Interestingly, in spite of the fact that

Mr Nandy has spent a life, so to speak, in dissent, most of the essays in the book come across as laudatory. Political scientist/philosopher Fred Dallmayr offers the rare challenge when he argues that Mr Nandy’s preoccupation with the cultural frames of social transformation, neglects to acknowledge the domain of economics. Co-editor Ananya Vajpeyi has written, as a birthday gift to Mr Nandy, a scholarly essay of Carnatic music, which he loves, but has never written about. This book offers a peek into Mr Nandy’s work, and also conjures up an engaging portrait of a wildly creative, irreverent scholar who despises hierarchies, loves good coffee and is passionate about classical music. Most of all, they are a tribute to an anarchist thinker, unparalleled mentor and an engaged, connected citizen — which is what all intellectuals in democracies must aim to become, but rarely do so!

ASHIS NANDY: A LIFE IN DISSENT

Ramin Jahanbegloo and Ananya Vajpeyi (ed)

Oxford University Press,

384 pages;

~750