Reading Dipesh Chakraborty's 'Provincializing Europe'- part I

Keynes once very sensibly observed that, Raj era, Indian Economics was shite because both the 'native' savant and the Mandarin 'Sahib' knew nothing of other comparable Economies and schools of Economic thought.

Dipesh Chakrabarty writing towards the end of the Century which provincialised Europe- indeed, which saw alien troops- including 'Negros' & 'Mongols'- garrison those parts of it which had little or no Colonial history- is striking evidence for a proposition wider than Keynes's- viz. that comprador class Historians or Social Scientists or Professors of Comp Lit whose epistemic orientation is towards Europe are utterly shite with respect to both Europe and their own benighted Babudom.

Why?

It's because they can't think as well as the most provincial 'chai-wallah' in their natal land.

Dipshit says-

The phenomenon of “political modernity”— namely, the rule by modern institutions of the state, bureaucracy, and capitalist enterprise—is impossible to think of anywhere in the world without invoking certain categories and concepts, the genealogies of which go deep into the intellectual and even theological traditions of Europe.

If this were true, how the fuck did Narendra Modi become Prime Minister of India? Perhaps, Dipesh is saying Modi's degrees aren't fake- he genuinely studied Poli Sci at Uni, albeit as an external candidate.

The problem with this view- other than that it legitimises and exalts Modi's techne- that Ghanchi's ability to extract the essence of the Western political episteme- above that of Brahmin prodigies like Dipesh himself- is that NaMo aint no Xi Jinping.  It is not his personality cult which has waxed as the collegial aspect of his Party has waned, but, rather, that the R.S.S has gained and its humble pracharak, or propagandist, Modi has become unanimous with its shadow as did Ayaz in the shadow of Sultan Mahmud.

No doubt, Dipesh could counter that Savarkar or Moonje or Hedgewar and so on were actually profound 'Europeanists'. Perhaps they were. What is certain is they failed. What about Deen Dayal Upadhyaya? Well, he did get a couple of degrees before the British left so, ok- but he too failed. Who succeeded? We don't know. They don't have names in our Histories. Good folk, no doubt, gratefully remembered by their families and neighbours and colleagues and so on. But we aren't speaking of anyone who incarnated 'History on horseback'- just that little old Gujerati man who stopped his tonga for me to clamber onto because, from my complexion, he deduced me to be either Untouchable or 'Madrasi'.  Or so I thought. It turned out the fellow was a retired School Teacher with a son in You Ess. He picked me up because he thought I was a Muslim (I had a thick beard) and we were in a Bihari pilgrimage spot and there had been a 'communal riot' in a nearby town. He was astonished that I was staying in a Jain Ashram and I was astonished that this beautiful, Gandhian, widower was a 'hard core' RSS 'bakth'. This happened around the time Dipesh was correcting the proofs for this-

Concepts such as citizenship, the state, civil society, public sphere, human rights, equality before the law, the individual, distinctions between public and private, the idea of the subject, democracy, popular sovereignty, social justice, scientific rationality, and so on all bear the burden of European thought and history. One simply cannot think of political modernity without these and other related concepts that found a climactic form in the course of the European Enlightenment and the nineteenth century.

These concepts are essentially contested not regulative. Most Europeans lived their lives without troubling greatly over them, preferring to hold, with Alexander Pope-

For forms of Government let fools contest

Whatever is best administered is best.

There was once a small Indian Liberal party but, as Ambedkar pointed out, it surrendered to Gandhi's atavistic nativism. It turned out that it was impossible for the great mass of the Indian people to 'think of political modernity' in the terms Dipesh mentions. Why? Because the terms assume the existence of an infinite source of power which can establish them in their ideal form. In India, there are obvious limits to power. 

It may be that Dipesh can't think of political modernity in any other terms than those of his profession- but his profession is without influence, indeed is widely despised, in his natal country. What he can't think isn't evidence of anything save his stupidity and the worthless nature of his subject.

Dipesh admits as much almost immediately.

These concepts entail an unavoidable—and in a sense indispensable— universal and secular vision of the human. The European colonizer of the nineteenth century both preached this Enlightenment humanism at the colonized and at the same time denied it in practice. But the vision has been powerful in its effects. It has historically provided a strong foundation on which to erect—both in Europe and outside—critiques of socially unjust practices. Marxist and liberal thought are legatees of this intellectual heritage. This heritage is now global. The modern Bengali educated middle classes—to which I belong and fragments of whose history I recount later in the book—have been characterized by Tapan Raychaudhuri as the “the first Asian social group of any size whose mental world was transformed through its interactions with the West.”

West Bengal had a Marxist Government dominated by Chakrabarty's class when Dipesh wrote these words. That administration fell and its goons have switched sides. One might plausibly find a European intellectual genealogy for Jyoti Basu or Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, but what about Mamta Bannerjee and her Trinamool goons?

The truth is that Bengal has been in continuous decline for as long as Dipesh has been alive. His class has emigrated in order to cling on to gentility. But they have no political or social salience with respect to India.

Postcolonial scholarship is committed, almost by definition, to engaging the universals—such as the abstract figure of the human or that of Reason—that were forged in eighteenth-century Europe and that underlie the human sciences.

That's why Postcolonial theory is useless.

Universals don't exist. You can't get engaged to them or marry them or have babies with them.

It was not just the Europeans, everybody everywhere decided a very long time ago that Philosophy was worthless. People who talk about the 'abstract figure of the human or that of Reason' are gibbering pedagogues whose job is to stop their young charges from copulating in public.

This engagement marks, for instance, the writing of the Tunisian philosopher and historian Hichem Djait, who accuses imperialist Europe of “deny[ing] its own vision of man.”

Europe may have retained enough power of force projection to grant or deny something to their near neighbours across the Meditteranean, but it has no power to do anything with respect to India. The penultimate Viceroy, the soldier Wavell, made it clear that Britain could not hold India. The best he could do was to evacuate the White population via the Muslim dominated regions. Dipesh knows this. Why is he sticking with a theory which consists of whining to Whitey to come back and fix things?

Fanon’s struggle to hold on to the Enlightenment idea of the human—even when he knew that European imperialism had reduced that idea to the figure of the settler-colonial white man—is now itself a part of the global heritage of all postcolonial thinkers.

Why? The French left Algeria within a few years of Fanon's arriving there. Okay there were White people in Rhodesia and Angola and South Africa. But no one needed to read Fanon in order to cut their throats, once it was safe to do so, so as to grab their property. It seems the global heritage of postcolonial theorists is useless. Why do they insist on handing it down?

 The struggle ensues because there is no easy way of dispensing with these universals in the condition of political modernity. Without them there would be no social science that addresses issues of modern social justice.

Economics is a Social Science. Incentive compatible Mechanism Design is needful for achieving Social Justice. This means having to learn Maths.  There are no 'Universals' anywhere. They don't exist. There is an easy way of dispensing with things which don't exist. Just stop talking about them. Simples.

But, says, Dipesh, these 'Universals' are taught in the Academy. Surely this means they are meaningful?

The answer is, no- University education is merely a screening or signalling device. The content of the course can be wholly worthless.

Faced with the task of analyzing developments or social practices in modern India, few if any Indian social scientists or social scientists of India would argue seriously with, say, the thirteenth-century logician Gangesa or with the grammarian and linguistic philosopher Bartrihari (fifth to sixth centuries), or with the tenth- or eleventh-century aesthetician Abhinavagupta.

Indian social scientists are shite. However, Hindus do use Niti Shastras when analysing social developments. This involves hermeneutic arguments in which Gangesa or Bratrihari might feature. To give an example, a person who opposes the 'beef ban' may quote Gangesa or Bhratrihari to show that there is no Scriptural warrant for it. However, the Beef Ban was explicitly introduced for 'Secular, Scientific' reasons and so this can't give rise to a legal argument.  I may mention, Abhinavagupta is particularly interesting. It is no accident that descendants of his School have played such a big part in modern India.

Sad though it is, one result of European colonial rule in South Asia is that the intellectual traditions once unbroken and alive in Sanskrit or Persian or Arabic are now only matters of historical research for most—perhaps all—modern social scientists in the region. They treat these traditions as truly dead, as history.

So what? These guys are brain dead and so everything is dead to them or dies the moment they get their grubby little hands upon it.

 Although categories that were once subject to detailed theoretical contemplation and inquiry now exist as practical concepts, bereft of any theoretical lineage, embedded in quotidian practices in South Asia, contemporary social scientists of South Asia seldom have the training that would enable them to make these concepts into resources for critical thought for the present.

But 'contemporary social scientist', in South Asia, means 'stupid jhollawallah talking bollocks while aiming for tenure at some cowbelt College'.

In America, the Hare Krishnas do spend a lot of time thinking about fundamental ideas in Vaishnavite philosophy. In India, every single sect possesses some thinkers of this sort. There are also some Indians who analyse Indian politics in terms of Niti Shastras. However, they are as shite as Dipesh's jhollawallahs because, as the Nalopakhayanam teaches, the Just King has got to learn Statistical Game theory to overcome his 'Vishada' or Hamlet like, Academic, indecision.

And yet past European thinkers and their categories are never quite dead for us in the same way.

Only if we're getting paid to pretend they are alive for the sake of a pay cheque.

South Asian(ist) social scientists would argue passionately with a Marx or a Weber without feeling any need to historicize them or to place them in their European intellectual contexts.

Nope, that's not what happened. At one time there were electable Marxist parties and so it was worthwhile to pretend to be engaging with Marx. Weber said some nasty things about us, so shitting on him is a reflex.

The fact that we don't bother to 'historicize' European figures shows they don't matter and are a fit subject only for magical thinking. I didn't 'historicize' Shao Lin Kung Fu when, as a kid, I pretended I knew the 'poison fist' technique and could kill my elder sister with a single blow.

By contrast, we are very careful to historicize businessmen whom we are seeking to emulate. We need to know not just how Steve Jobs gained his 'Reality distortion field' but under what circumstances it was successfully deployed.

Yet the very history of politicization of the population, or the coming of political modernity, in countries outside of the Western capitalist democracies of the world produces a deep irony in the history of the political.

What 'deep irony' can arise from mimetic diffusion? It is only that Time, which turns the father carrying his infant heir into a bag of bones being carried by his strapping son, causes a reversal of all roles. But History can't confine itself to Timeless Universals and so ought to stop gnawing the knuckles of amazement at 'deep irony'.

This history challenges us to rethink two conceptual gifts of nineteenth-century Europe, concepts integral to the idea of modernity. One is historicism—the idea that to understand anything it has to be seen both as a unity and in its historical development—and the other is the very idea of the political.

These are gifts? Fuck off! They are everywhere present. Sir William Jones referred to Nawadwipa as his third alma mater. Does Dipesh really believe that his own ancestors at that seat of learning did not know how property and customary rights had changed and were changing? Did they have no concept of the political? How is it that Indians could lobby Westminster in the Eighteenth Century using historical and political arguments if historicism and the 'idea of the political' were gifts of Nineteenth Century Europe?

What historically enables a project such as that of “provincializing Europe” is the experience of political modernity in a country like India.

Why? Suppose India had chosen not to subsidise degrees in worthless subjects, then Dipesh wouldn't be writing this. But, India only chose to subsidise degrees in worthless subjects so as to create a class of sycophants who, lacking any useful skills, would do what they were told while grinning obsequiously.

European thought has a contradictory relationship to such an instance of political modernity. It is both indispensable and inadequate in helping us to think through the various life practices that constitute the political and the historical in India.

Why is it indispensable? Dipesh and his ilk are immensely dispensable. They have hogged resources and set up their own little cliques but they have produced unreadable junk. India has pulled the plug on them. The peasant in the Punjab is clamouring for a seat in Medical College, or Engineering College for his son or daughter. He is prepared to sell land to pay the inflated fees. But Post Colonial Theory? Does anyone want their child to study that shite?

Exploring—on both theoretical and factual registers—this simultaneous indispensability and inadequacy of social science thought is the task this book has set itself.

Dipesh says 'social science thought' is inadequate by its very nature. We agree and have dispensed with it. It is true that Medical thought is inadequate but we haven't dispensed with it. Why? Because it is constantly improving. Social Science thought has not improved. It has degenerated into a schizophrenic word salad.

Is Dipesh saying that 'social science thought' can be rectified and put on an upward path? No. He makes no such claim. The task he sets himself is to explore a sterile moonscape of no use to God or man. Why? Well, twenty years ago, the Marxists were still well entrenched in Dipesh's Bengal which continued to decline as a result. But now the Bengalis have themselves rusticated those imbeciles so that a more naked type of hooliganism can prevail, Dipesh's project too should be rusticated. Drop Po-Co shite from the Curriculum already. Do it now. You know you want to