Now we take up the next essay: DHARMA – UNDERSTANDING INDIA.  This is the sixth essay.

In his eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, Karl Marx had said: ‘philosophers have so far tried to interpret the world; the point, however, is to change it’. (watch the narration of India by a Canadian Professor – https://youtu.be/VSLVsLnBs?si=KiWO_PDWmyBtCDT )  This thesis when applied to India should be turned around. Reformers have so far tried to change India; the point, however, is to understand India.

Deepika: ok

Any attempt to enlighten and reform Indian society that was not rooted in a clear understanding of the issues with which it had for centuries struggled was doomed to failure from the very beginning.

Utilitarians and Evangelicals condemned Indian society as barbaric, irrational, superstitious, treating custom as a fetish, despotic, cruel and licentious.  Indian reaction to that portrait have been varied from strong defense to utter resignation.  Between these two extremes Indian society continued to be misunderstood.

Deepika: ok

The falsehood of the early English assessment and the inevitably one sided Indian response to it have alike prevented a proper understanding of Indian thought and life.  For that condemnation, most of it based on ignorance and prejudice, was not entirely without truth.  And the spirited Indian defense, when it began to take pace, was not without its untruth.

However, given the framework which existed then, and the English educated Indians becoming a part of it, both these were overlooked.  And so were the underlying problems of Indian society which, in actual fact, were much deeper and far more serious than either the English or the Indian reformers ever saw.  There are, however, certain very special difficulties in understanding Indian society.

Deepika: ok

The first one is that from the very beginning of their systematic thought, at least a millennium before Christ, Indian thinkers saw human reality as immensely varied and complex.  Indian thinkers were finding its expressions at different levels of consciousness.  Therefore, they saw the human situation with many eyes and spoke about it with many tongues.

Deepika: ok

This remained ever afterwards an essential characteristic of Indian thought as well as of Indian life. One of its many consequences has been that practically all statements about the Indian position on the issues governing human life would need to be qualified.

Even as the issues governing human life were qualified by ancient Indians themselves yet no sooner than they made them.  This puts a severe pressure not only on language but on human patience as well. The alternative is undoubtedly far less strenuous but thoroughly misleading.

The second difficulty arises directly from the first. The fact is human reality is exceedingly complex and has numerous levels of expression. This made the Indian philosophers to put aside as altogether inadequate the law of the excluded middle. (The law of the excluded middle states that for any proposition, either it is true or its negation is true, but there is no “third” possibility of it being neither true nor false. It’s one of the foundational principles of classical logic. It is a Hegelian principle – “The Law of Excluded Middle states that if a proposition A is not true then its denial “not-A” is true.”)

Deepika: ok

While that law made language intelligible, it falsified reality; For the truth per se is hardly anything of human reality that is susceptible to the logic of either/or. It was too restrictive a logical rule to have ever been an infallible instrument of thinking about man and his position in the world.

It is not that the law of contradiction was abandoned in India, but only that its value for making reality manifest was clearly seen as limited.  As a consequence, particularly in the higher reaches of Indian thought, one finds propositions that assert and deny a thing at the same time, or assert of a thing two opposite attributes simultaneously.

Deepika: ok

For example, we can and do prove that the world is real and as yet unreal. To anyone conditioned to the Aristotelian law of contradiction, such propositions would seem literally meaningless, for they would not be propositions at all.

Deepika: ok

Nor would human communication remain a cheerful activity if every statement were to be qualified, often by its opposite, no sooner than it was made. For then one would not be saying anything definite which could be assessed for its truth or falsehood.  In speaking about Indian society, one simply cannot avoid making precisely such statements. To avoid doing so may serve the purpose of clarity, but it would do so at the expense of truth.  This applies to human life as well.

Deepika: ok

What is the importance of communication among humans socially? There are benefits of ‘effective communication’.  In situations where conflict does arise, effective communication is a key factor to ensure that the situation is resolved in a respectful manner. How one communicates can be a make-or-break factor in securing a job, maintaining a healthy relationship, and healthy self-expression.

Deepika: ok

Given the idea of dharma on which is founded the whole of Indian culture, the question: ‘how does one understand one’s society?’, was of no particular relevance.  The question always was: ‘how does one order one’s life?’

Deepika: ok

The answers to this question were accepted mostly on faith, by the majority of people at any rate, though the answers were themselves based on close reasoning which was entirely secular.   For instance, if a person believes in the inherent goodness of human nature, then he may approach communication with trust and openness.

Deepika: ok

Acceptance, and not understanding, has been the main Indian social value for centuries together; whereas its very opposite, understanding and not mere acceptance, has been the main philosophical value in India.

Neither was always wholly true. To an Indian whose consciousness is conditioned by dharma, the question of understanding the universe is most natural, but the question of understanding his society very nearly meaningless.  The Dharmic tradition has undoubtedly been that, in order to understand his true nature, man must turn inwards.

Deepika: ok

But its reverse has been equally a Dharmic tradition. A person understands nothing of himself unless he first understands things which surrounds him his social traditions. It is these which form him, give him his perceptions, his language, with which he brings himself in relation with the world and with the others of his kind.

The ‘true nature of man’ is not entirely meta-historical; it depends also upon his roots in the specific ordering of his society.  His ‘nature’ is what his culture conditions it to be. At the same time, in the Dharmic view, man is not exhausted by his social context.

Deepika: ok

There is a part of him which transcends context and history. Dharmic culture did not posit any contradiction between the two. It is simultaneously rooted in history and in transcendence. The relationship between them, at all times uneasy, has been at the very center of the idea of dharma. Let me explain.

All through history Indian life was lived at several levels, not successively but at the same time, each level a world of its own. That meant the facility to speak with many tongues and to see with many eyes.

For example, at one level, reason was regarded as of decided value; at another level, of no value; at still another level, the talk of value and no value was itself considered meaningless. The failure to keep them distinct often produced confusion, and confusion a habit of muddled talk.

Each human faculty was investigated with scientific passion, and a high ideal set for the purity of speech, of hearing, of seeing, of touching, of doing; then at one level, all faculties were drowned in the frenzy of experience; at another level, subdued and transcended.

Deepika: ok

The two languages of experience and transcendence flowed into each other.  This Dharmic quest was more for completeness than for perfection. Just as thinking, feeling and doing were to be harmonized in a human completeness, so also man’s life was to be harmonized with the life of animals and of trees and plants. But the history of Indian life has been also one of fragmentation and’ breaking apart. It has been a history not of diversity alone but Of isolation as well.

Deepika: ok

There were innumerable instances in contexts of caste, of locality, or sect and cult, of philosophical world view all sought to be brought under a general order denoted by the word dharma, but in a sense each remaining isolated from the rest, even though isolation was looked upon as disorder and death.

Deepika: ok

To understand India is to understand the particular forms of Dharmic order and disorder.

An understanding of the cultural presuppositions of a people is what is involved in understanding, their social context and the individuals placed in it.  What is further involved is an historical search for the precise manner in which the social and political structures reflected those presuppositions, and each limited the other in turn.  It is only through grasping the inter connections between them that a full understanding of a people is possible.

Deepika: ok

It is an investigation into the kinds of questions that they have asked in their passage through history, into the uses to which they have put their language, into their social conflict and the outcome thereof, and so into the specific possibilities of their social context.

Dharma thus becomes the very heart of inquiry into India.