Western Views of India
A summary of the first lecture in the IK Foundation Lecture Series, Indian Culture in the Modern World. Delivered on February 27, 2002 by Prof. Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Academic Director, Oxford Centre for Vaishnava and Hindu Studies
Opening reflection
"Western views of India" is a large topic, and there was no way to handle it within an hour's time, so limits had to be introduced: 1. I focus mainly on traditional views, and do not attempt to summarize more recent, post-colonial and contemporary developments; 2. I focus mainly on religious and philosophical matters, not the wider array of social, economic, political, cultural concerns; 3. I consider mainly what Westerners have thought of "Hindu India," without much attention here to the Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, and other traditions; 4. I do not attempt to explain "the West," which too is of course not a monolithic world where everyone thinks the same way; 5. finally, I am of course limited to what I myself know and can present - and I speak with a realization that many of you can speak very eloquently of your own sense of how the West has viewed India.
For the sake of presentation, I have chosen five themes which are in many ways too general and largely inaccurate, and a mix of both positive and negative, but which may hold a grain of truth we need to attend to today. Each theme suggests a common claim that has been made about India and in particular about Hindu India over the centuries. Each was, I believe, intended as a positive claim often made by well-meaning and appreciative Westerners; but each is also a criticism which aims at uncovering how India is, unfortunately, unlike the West. None is clearly true or even verifiable as stated, in either its positive or negative aspects. Yet there is, I suggest, something to be learned from these Western (mis)perceptions.
1. Timeless India
People have often said that India is the oldest civilization in the world. There from the beginning, older than the oldest, India has been an unchanging civilization which keeps us all connected with the very beginnings of human civilization. Yet, it has often been added, this same timeless India is also out of date, lost in the past, unable to find its way in the modern world. Here is a quotation to ponder:
"If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began to dream of existence, it is India. Her unique privilege… has been that of a great elder sister, whose spiritual development, an autonomous flower continuously growing throughout the Methuselah-long life of the peoples, has never been interrupted. For more than thirty centuries the tree of Vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from that torrid land, the burning womb of the gods. It renews itself tirelessly, showing no signs of decay; all kinds of fruit ripen upon its boughs at the same time; side by side are found all kinds of gods from the most savage to the highest - to the formless God, the Unnamable, the Boundless One…. always the same tree." Romain Rolland, The Life of Ramakrishna, 1944
2. Fabulous India
People have often said that India is the most amazing place on the face of the earth, a land of amazing natural and social phenomenon, unheard of religious and personal achievements. Yet, they say, this same India is also prone to the bizarre, full of symbols and deeds and ideas simply out of proportion, not in keeping with normal human experience. In the religious context, missionaries sometimes objected to temple worship not because the worship was evil, but simply on the grounds that the images seemed grotesque and bizarre, disproportionate and ugly, possessed of no ability to tell us something about the divine. Here are two quotations to ponder:
"Among the Hindoos there is no such superstition so far as it presents an antithesis to understanding; rather their whole life and ideas are one unbroken superstition, because among them all is reverie and consequent enslavement. Annihilation - the abandonment of all reason, morality, and subjectivity - can only come to a positive feeling and consciousness of itself by extravagating in a boundlessly wild imagination; in which, like a desolate spirit, it finds no rest, no settled composure, though it can content itself in no other way; as a man who is quite reduced in body and spirit finds his existence altogether stupid and intolerable, and is driven to the creation of a dream world and a delirious bliss in opium." Hegel (1770-1831), 
Philosophy of History
"This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and the jungle, the country of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of all the rest of the nations - the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and food, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined." Mark Twain, Around the Equator 1887
3. Secret India
People have often said that India is a place where, regardless of external changes, a hidden and sacred treasure of wisdom has been passed down from generation to generation. One finds remarkably preserved in India secret treasures already lost elsewhere in the world. Yet, it is often said, this same India is also a divided world, where secret wisdom, if it is there, seems to be hidden by a vast materialism where people strive for pleasure, wealth, riches, power. The secret world of the spirit is a separate place, and it does not affect or interfere with the cruder realities of everyday life. Here is a quotation to ponder:
"That the West has little to learn from present-day India, I shall not trouble to deny, but that we have much to learn from Indian sages of the past and from the few who live today, I unhesitatingly assert. The white tourist who 'does' the chief cities and historical sights and then steams away with disgust at the backward civilization of India is doubtless justified in his depreciation of it. Yet a wise kind of tourist shall one day arise who will seek out, not the crumbing ruins of useless temples, nor the marbled palaces of dissipated kings long dead, but the living sages who can reveal a wisdom untaught by our universities… I admit that this wisdom hardly belongs to India's present, but to her past; that this guarded knowledge of Yoga flourishes little today when once it must have had worthy professors and faithful students. It may be that the secrecy in which it was carefully enshrouded succeeded in killing all spread of this ancient science; I do not know." Paul Brunton. Search in Secret India, 1934
4. Learned India
People have often said that India is the wisest, most learned civilization in the world, a vast treasure house of ideas and words about all kinds of subjects barely touched upon in other cultures. Yet, they say, this same India is also burdened with a learning that is tedious, needlessly complicated, and out of date in modern times. It is a kind of antiquarian knowledge that does not turn out to be useful in the modern world. Here are two quotations to ponder:
"If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow - in some parts a very paradise on earth - I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed the choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solution to some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant - I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thought of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more truly human, a life not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life - again I should point to India." Max Muller, India, What Can it Teach us? 1883
"I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia…. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England." Lord Macaulay, Minute on Indian Education,1835
5. Free India
People have often said that India is an amazingly free country, where people can do whatever they please. Every person is able to make his or her own choices, act out personal dreams and hopes without others wishing or being able to stop them from doing so. Thus those who know India are not surprised that the roots of democracy go very deep. Yet, they say, this same India is also chaotic, so individualistic that no one can really influence anyone else. There are no rules which govern how people should act or how people should imitate others. It is striking that great individuals - such as Mohandas Gandhi - are both revered and portrayed as entirely unique individuals: no one is the Mahatma, and so no Indian need try to live out his ideals. Here are two quotations to ponder:
"If there had been but one India and one language - but there were eighty of them! Where there are eighty nations and several hundred governments, fighting and quarreling must be the common business of life; unity of purpose and policy are impossible; out of such elements supremacy in the world cannot come. Even caste itself could have had the defeating effect of a multiplicity of tongues, no doubt; for it separates a people into layers, and layers, and still other layers, that have no community of feeling with each other; and in such a condition of things as that, patriotism can have no healthy growth." Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897
"For, deprived of infanticide, of suttee, and of her other native escape valves, yet still clinging to early marriage and unlimited propagation, Indian stands today at that point of social development where population is controlled only by disease, and by disease only… India has carried the principle of egocentricity and of a materialism called spirituality to a farther and wider conclusion than has the West. The results, in the individual, the family and the race, are all the more noteworthy. for they cast a spotlight on the end of that road." Katherine Mayo, Mother India, 1927
Concluding reflections
The five themes only touch the surface of a long and complex history of interrelations between India and the West. You will surely think of other examples, and also of more recent ones. As mentioned above, "India" is larger than "Hindu India," and a more complete reflection would also have to deal with the other traditions of India. Certainly, too, it would be good to have another lecture, "Indian views of the West."
So too, things continue to change today; India is quite different than it was 50 years ago, and the West too is undergoing great changes. "India" and "the West" can no longer be considered separately. Indeed, we need to remember the simple, obvious fact that many people from the South Asia live permanently in the West: to be British or American now includes many people of Indian origin, and new generations born in the West.
When people make judgments about us, particularly when they caricature us, they are often telling us more about themselves than about us. Much of what Westerners, from the Greeks to modern times, have said about India sheds light on how Westerners live and think, hope and dream, judge and condemn, project needs and fears onto India.
Yet nonetheless we do learn from what others say of us, and ought not to dismiss even criticisms without thinking about them first. So I conclude by posing for you these deliberately difficult questions. There can be no single right answers to them, but answering them is valuable.
Timeless India: Has India really changed over time, and can change be for the better? Do Indians think that history matters, or that progress is possible?
Fabulous India: Are there limits to the acceptable? Should the ways people believe and worship and act make sense?
Secret India: Do Indians integrate India's spiritual traditions with the wider, ordinary pursuits of life? Or do Indians keep separate their spiritual lives from their daily pursuit of wealth, comfort, material advancement?
Learned India: Is it important to know and understand the traditional intellectual systems of India, or is it true that it is simply not worth the time and trouble to learn them in today's busy world? Is the academic tradition of the West a help or a threat to Indian culture and religion in today's world?
Free India: Can Indians agree on a balance between individual freedom and the good of society as a whole? Can people be seriously told what they should do? Can family, regional, and class traditions be changed or even discarded, for the sake of the greater good in modern society?
The world is changing rapidly and neither "India" nor "the West" are what they were in the past (unless India is indeed unchanging and timeless!); the century before us seems rich in exciting possibilities that seem likely to challenge and change all of us. But even now we must look back as well as forward. We cannot afford to forget the past and the attitudes we have held toward one another over the ages; if we forget, then we may continue to bear the burden of those preconceptions even in the 21st century.

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