LokeshC wrote:I am all for digestion of whatever is "good" from WU. If there is anything good in it, we should not hesitate to make it our own by any means possible. Steal, loot and give no credit. I have no issues with that.
Hard Sciences and technology are an example of "good".
I sense a definitional discrepancy here. There is nothing good in "WU" i.e. Western Universalism.
There are systems of institutional organization, elements of knowledge, and individual discoveries currently prevalent in the West that are perfectly OK and indeed beneficial for us to adopt. That I have no argument with.
Rather than deliberately choosing to "give no credit", I would argue that there is no credit to give. In fact, free knowledge transfer between civilizations has been the norm for far longer in history than any notion of intellectual proprietorship will admit. If we adopt what is called today Western science and technology, well, it would never have evolved in the first place without our decimal number system, calculus and medicine. So... what "credit"?
The point I want to make is that none of these things constitute any part of Western
Universalism. I think we might need to be clearer on what, specifically, Western Universalism is, because it certainly doesn't include science and technology as currently practiced in the West, in and of themselves.
Let me illustrate with an example. Living in the West for many years as a single guy, I had to cook for myself quite a bit. Over time I learned a few recipes for European cuisine... Fetuccine, Bourguignon, etc... from friends, cookbooks, or the internet, and I've added them to my repertoire.
If I cook these things sometimes and enjoy them it is not Western Universalism. I am happy to admit that they evolved in their current form in Italy or France... my admission is not because I'm victimized by Western Universalism. I can still like them, and I can even invite my Western friends over to eat my renditions of them and give me honest criticism. That does not make me prone to Western Universalism. I know with total conviction that these items will never replace the Ghasshi and Kootu and Bendi of my grandmother in terms of being the best food in the world... and besides, I don't have to take the advice of my Western friends about my versions of Fetuccine or Bourguignon. It's my choice whether to take their advice or not. Just as it is my choice to add, say, harimirch to those recipes if I feel like it.
The point is that I'm in control... my kitchen, my tastebuds. I'm in control because I'm firmly grounded in who I am and where I come from. So I can like whatever I like even if it is currently associated with Western cuisine. There is no "Universalism" here.
So what, then, IS Western Universalism?
Let us imagine that the town I live in has one restaurant that is THE go-to, happening place to eat. Everybody who is anybody feels the need to be seen having a meal there. This restaurant, called "Le Frou Frou", makes what is authoritatively described as the BEST Fetuccine and Bourguignon in the whole world. Or at least, it is described as being the best, the only, the original by the gourmet writers and restaurant critics employed by every "important" media outlet.
The owners of all those media outlets happen to be college buddies with the proprietor of Le Frou Frou, but that is something you have to consciously dig around to find out. By default you tend to simply accept that it is the best, the only place to sample the "genuine" items. After all, in the lobby of Le Frou Frou there is a very ancient-looking piece of framed parchment describing how the owner's ancestor was a nobleman who came over to the United States as an aide to General Lafayette in the 1700s. You can't argue with history when it is presented so authentically, right there in front of you.
But I can't simply go to Le Frou Frou and order Bourguignon a la carte. They have decorum there, monsieur. You can only order the Menu du Jour, the courses they have planned for any given day. If I want Bourguignon I MUST also have the onion soup, rissoles, souffle and all kinds of things that I might personally not enjoy very much. But there's more. I am not allowed in Le Frou Frou unless I wear a jacket and tie. I have to make a reservation. I will be politely sneered at if I do not know the right fork to use with the fish or the salad, or what wine goes with what (even though I hate wine). For all this I am expected to pay through the nose when an astronomical bill is presented. Because Le Frou Frou is THE only place to eat, if you are anybody at all.
Moreover: experience shows me that if I go to Le Frou Frou as a brown man, with a brown family... then even if I have a reservation I will be seated in some sweltering hot corner near the kitchen. Other patrons in the main dining room might be upset by the sight of us... or more likely, the smell of us, because it is whispered that we smell of curry, which is supposedly distasteful. Le Frou Frou may have some brown employees, who will correct my French pronunciation when I place an order. They will sneer at the mess we leave at our table while carrying our plates away. But what to do? It is THE only restaurant in town that's worth going to, as everybody knows.
The problem worsens when many brown people like me, who have educated themselves and worked hard and done well at their jobs, want to feel that they have "arrived" in the town we live in... they will subject themselves willingly to the indignities of dining at Le Frou Frou just so as to gain acceptance from their colleagues and neighbours and bosses and friends. They will start wearing jackets and ties even in their daily lives, they will learn and recite what wine goes with meat or fish. They will correct my French pronunciation. They will laugh indulgently or look embarrassed if I bring up ghasshi or bendi or kootu. And they will spend ungodly amounts of money and time on bath products, manufactured by the sister-in-law of Le Frou Frou's owner, scrubbing away at every inch of their brown skin to remove every last trifling hint of that hated curry smell. They will even instruct their wives not to make "curry" (whatever the hell that is) at home.
So, high hopes for any Indian entrepreneur who wants to start an Indian restaurant. He will be lucky if he ever gets any custom beyond the ghetto taxi drivers... and his establishment can hardly be dignified with the term "restaurant". Is that stuff he serves really "food"? It "stinks". What valuable contributions could the Indians, who eat stinky curry, ever have made to global cuisine?
No, it is only the chefs of Le Frou Frou who have the superior culinary intellect needed to judiciously employ cumin or turmeric or cardamom in their bold, daring "multicultural" experiments with Nouvelle Fusion Cuisine. In time, with the Indians no longer making stinky curry at home, these spices will only appear on the shelves of Le Frou Frou's kitchen, and everybody will forget where they came from in the first place.
The reason for all this is what Rajiv Malhotra calls Difference Anxiety. The success of Western Universalism revolves entirely, 100%, on its ability to leverage the Difference Anxiety we experience (not just as Indians in the West, but also as Indians in India climbing ladders of aspiration positioned according to goals determined by the West). Malhotra has pointed out in "Being Different" that the West has a Difference Anxiety of its own, and that indeed the phenomenon of Difference Anxiety is endemic to their own worldview predicated on Synthetic Unity and History Centrism. We never exhibited this pathology in India, but like an infection, it spreads virulently from the Westerner to afflict all those he deals with.
You may think that I'm being facetious with food as an illustration here. But it's vitally important. It is with these most basic of cultural building blocks that the erosion begins, not with high-falutin' social theories or technological innovations-- those encounters come much, much later when our power to critique them has already been denuded by systematic demoralization.
And the ones most vulnerable, always, are our children-- whether in the West or crowding to Domino's Pizza in Pune and Chandigarh. Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City which Shiv often cites, describes the moment he decided to move with his family from New York to India. One day when his 4-year-old son was eating his khichdi in their apartment building garden, a white neighbour girl came up to him, pointed at it and said "yuck". That may seem like a trivial incident, but Mehta had the perspicacity to realize that it was the moment when his Indian child first encountered a fundamental, and nearly insurmountable challenge to his very identity. Having his people's food described as an object of disgust, especially to a child in his formative years, is no less than a traumatic, elemental reversal of every value he has spent his short life growing up with.
(ok, now I may get accused of being an Islamist!)
- and we Indians have swallowed this piece of fiction told to us by someone else and still disregard Indian texts and social memes that do exist or at least view them with suspicion since "real history" was recorded by the west. For us. This is now "universal knowledge"