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Inventing the Aryan Race

Jayakumar S. Ammangudi jkumar64@sbcglobal.net via yahoogroups.com

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Excerpted with permission from Malhotra, Rajiv and Aravindan Neelakandan, “Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines,” Amaryllis Publishers, Delhi, 2011

Chapter: 3- Inventing the Aryan Race

Pages: 12-14

Footnotes and Bibliography Included

Chapter 3: Inventing the Aryan Race

Upon announcing his ‘discovery’ of Sanskrit, Sir William Jones wrote to his fellow Europeans in 1799, that:

The Sanskrit language . . . is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity . . . than could possibly have been produced by accident. [i]

This statement is typical of the tone for the idealized and romantic view of India, that was prevalent in Europe in most of the 18^th and early 19^th centuries. This chapter explains how the West’s interpretation and treatment of the Indic materials shaped the study of Sanskrit and churned out the ‘Aryan’ racial construct, which itself would undergo dramatic transmutations in the Western psyche. The coming chapters will demonstrate how these colonial constructs justified and aided the Western dominance of the colonized states.

Of particular importance is the legacy of how they continue even today to extract a heavy price through ethnic conflicts and genocidal wars in former colonies. This examination looks at the constructs themselves as devolutions of European needs and politics, rather than the result of an objective academic study of the ‘Orient.’ The next chapter will elaborate on these constructs and trace their use among European scholars. Subsequent chapters explore how these dated and largely discredited ideas still affect modern India.

Fig. 3.1 presents the ‘Study of India’ as influenced by European Romanticists and colonial Indologists. It encapsulates the following stages of European intellectual history concerning India, and how these ideas shaped European superiority:

· European Romanticists needed a historical basis to escape the rigid framework of Judeo-Christian monotheism that was already in crisis as a result of new challenges from the modern period. There was a fierce search for a spirituality that could be made to fit their own history, so they could trace their romanticist view in their own past. India was discovered, and quickly became the premier vehicle for this search for their own golden origin.

· Indologists historicized classical India in a way that served colonial needs as well as the needs of the emerging nation-states in Europe. They created the notion of Aryans as harbingers of civilization to all humanity. A glorified European ancestry was traced to these idealized Aryans. The European Aryans were seen as racially pure and blessed with the spiritually superior Christianity, whereas the North Indian Aryans were of mixed breed resulting from European Aryans mixing with inferior natives, resulting in idolatry, polytheism and racial impurity.
· A Master Aryan Race was then constructed out of the broad Aryan category, largely by German nationalist thinkers. Nascent Race Science was invoked to lend credibility to this fabrication. European anti-Semitism used the Aryan construct to separate Europeans from Jews. The notion of ‘Aryan Christ’ became popular in Europe.

The nationalistic pride created by the Aryan master-race theory in Germany played a significant role in the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. After the Second World War, European academic and social institutions made a great effort to exorcize the Aryan race theory from the European psyche, but they still continue to apply these ideas to the study India.

This chapter traces how the Aryan race theory was molded by deep-rooted European needs, and how eventually it brought disaster down upon Europe. Subsequent chapters will examine the impact these racial stereotypes are still having on the colonized societies.

[i] (Jones 1799)

Jones, William. ‘On the Hindus: The Third Discour.’ Asiatic Researches 1 (1799): 422-423.

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Chapter: 9 – Propagation of ‘Dravidian’ Christianity

Jayakumar S. Ammangudi jkumar64@sbcglobal.net via yahoogroups.com

Excerpted with permission from Malhotra, Rajiv and Aravindan Neelakandan, “Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines,” Amaryllis Publishers, Delhi, 2011

Chapter: 9- Propagation of ‘Dravidian’ Christianity

Sections: 2000: Seminar on ‘Dravidian Religion to Eradicate Casteism’ , 2001: India Declared the Mother of International Racism, 2004: ‘India is a Dravidian Christian Nation, and Christians Made Sanskrit’

Pages: 125-129

Footnotes and Bibliography included

Chapter 9: Propagation of ‘Dravidian’ Christianity

Since 2000, the St Thomas Dravidian Christianity hoax has been taken to the public square of Tamil Nadu and has received support from international forces that are tangibly hostile to India. This chapter traces this development through a series of conferences that served to forge close collaborations between India-based and foreign-based interests. Fig. 9.1 shows the major milestones these collaborations have achieved thus far, which are as follows:
• All caste problems in Tamil Nadu were blamed on a Brahmin-Aryan conspiracy and Dravidian Christianity was offered as the solution.

• Once caste was explicitly conflated with race, proponents of Dravidian Christianity wrote to the Durban anti-racism conference that India was the mother of international racism.

• Propaganda materials were published declaring India as a Dravidian Christian nation.
• American evangelicals began to exploit the opportunity to evangelize the Tamil diaspora by establishing a positive association between the Dravidian identity and Christianity.
• Conferences in 2007 and 2008 went several steps further by claiming that Dravidian mysticism, literature, sculpture, and dance were really manifestations of Christianity and were rooted in the work of St Thomas.

These developments will be elaborated in this chapter.

2000: Seminar on ‘Dravidian Religion to Eradicate Casteism’

The Institute of Asian Studies under John Samuel has transformed itself into a nodal point for promoting Deivanayagam’s thesis. In 2000, Deivanayagam and the Institute organized a seminar in Chennai with an innocent-sounding goal: How to eradicate caste and religious clashes in India, and restore India’s peace and social harmony. It was heavily attended by Dravidianist political leaders and served as a watershed event to cement the relationship between Dravidianism and Christianity. The seminar ended with a declaration that may be summarized as follows:
1) Dravidians should realize their historical greatness if they want to free themselves from the ongoing Aryan oppression. They should shed off their inferiority complex by realizing their universal spiritual excellence, which can be traced through historic evidence.
2) When Dravidians are called upon to declare their religion, they should opt to declare it as ‘Dravidian Religion’ or by some other acceptable term, which has a historic basis. They should shun Hinduism, which has been harmful for the great Dravidian identity[i].

2001: India Declared the Mother of International Racism

At the United Nations World Conference against ‘Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerance,’ held in Durban, South Africa, activists continued to develop the theme that a conspiracy by Hinduism, Brahmins, and Aryans was responsible for virtually every social problem worldwide. Deivanayagam and his daughter Devakala distributed their book, titled International Racism is the Child of India’s Casteism. [ii]

. They explained their conclusions as follows:
• Sanskrit came after Christianity, and it was created by Dravidians (p.9). William Jones was fooled by the similarity between Sanskrit and Greek/Latin into thinking that it was ancient. (p.10)
• Thomas brought early Christianity to India, but the crafty Brahmins, particularly Adi Sankara, perverted it by introducing casteism into it. (p.15)
• Racism was originated by the Aryan Brahmins of India, and it penetrated Christianity, which was already under the control of White Europeans. This happened because the Europeans were made to believe that they were also Aryans by race. (p.14)
The conflation of Aryans and/or Brahmins with the Whites, and of Dravidians with the Blacks, has deepened and merged with the Afro-Dalit movement that conflates Dalits with Africans. The mission of this movement is to bring together Dravidians and Dalits, representing them as the oppressed ‘Blacks’ of India. This will be explained further in chapter twelve.
Deivanayagam’s book called on the UN to put an end to racism everywhere in the world. Though an altruistic demand, his methods primarily consist of a vicious attack on a core Hindu institution: the Shankara Mutts. These are monastries established in the ninth century CE by the legendary Shankara, a South Indian saint. Although these four Matts or religious institutions are located geographically in the four corners of India and are heralded as a symbol of India’s cultural unity, Deivanayagam attacked them as the historical source of all racism ‘throughout the world’, demanding their closure.
“To eradicate racism from the world, casteism should be removed from India. As casteism is linked with manipulated religious beliefs, hereditary privileges and rights given to religious heads i.e., Sankara Mutts should be removed. When hereditary privileges given to religious heads will be removed India’s casteism will be abolished. When casteism will be abolished from India, racism will be eradicated from the world. If this does not happen . . . it will not only maintain racism throughout the world, but also it will spread the cancer of casteism all over the world by manipulated religious beliefs and will destroy world peace.” [iii]

In another pamphlet, Deivanayagam explains that:
Aryan Brahmins captured the religions of the Dravidians, namely, Buddhism, Jainism and Vaishnavism. They took the monotheistic concept of Saivism and Vaishnavism from the Bhakthi movement of Tamil Nadu and twisted it into monism (I am God); thereby claiming that Brahmin is God. . . . The Brahmins established Sankara Mutts in the 9th century AD all over India to maintain racism and casteism . . . [iv]

2004: ‘India is a Dravidian Christian Nation, and Christians Made Sanskrit’

In 2004, Devakala published a 400-page guidebook for field missionaries and evangelical institutions, titled India is a Thomas-Dravidian Christian Nation . . . How? [v] The book is filled with hatred such as:
Dravidian rulers were cunningly cheated by Aryans through women, diabolic schemes, drugs, and denial of education. The idea of ‘Aham Brahmasmi’ was another evil atheist idea brought by Aryans. Originally Aham Brahmasmi meant ‘God is in me’ but Shankara cunningly twisted it as ‘I am God’. [vi]
The book makes some ridiculously misinformed claims in the question-answer section meant for training missionaries, such as:
Question: What is the period of Sanskrit?
Answer: Sanskrit belongs to 150 CE. It originated after Jesus.
Question: What seven languages form Sanskrit?
Answer: Tamil, Pali, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Persian and Aramaic.
Question: Who created Sanskrit language?
Answer: Thomas Christians created Sanskrit language. The purpose of Sanskrit was to help spread Christianity to other parts of India where Tamil was not spoken. [vii]

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i (Tamil.Net 2000)

Citation: Tamil.Net. Dravidian Religion. May 2000. http://tamil.net/list/2000-05/msg00387.html(accessed August 21, 2008).

ii (Deivanayagam.M and Devakala.D 2001)

Citation: International Racism is the Child of India’s Casteism. Chennai: Dravidian Religion Trust, 2001.

iii (Deivanayagam.M and Devakala.D 2001, 23)

Cited Above

iv (Deivanayagam.M and Devakala.D 2003, 10-11)

Cited Above

v (Devakala.D 2004, 400)

Citation: Devakala.D. India is a Thomas-Dravidian Christian nation . . . How? : Manual for Evangelism (Tamil). Chennai: Meiporrul Publishers , 2004.

vi (Devakala.D 2004, 230-1)

Cited Above

vii (Devakala.D 2004, 255)

Cited Above

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Atrocity Literature as a Genre

Jayakumar S. Ammangudi

Excerpted with permission from Malhotra, Rajiv and Aravindan Neelakandan, “Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines,” Amaryllis Publishers, Delhi, 2011

Chapter: 11.

Western Discourse on India’s Fragments

Section: Atrocity Literature as a Genre

Printed Pages: 182-185

Footnotes included

Atrocity Literature as a Genre

The control over discourse by supplying meta-narratives serves as a part of political control. In support of colonialism, there developed a genre of literature in the West that became known as ‘atrocity literature.’ Over the past four centuries, a corpus of academic and fictional writings that have been adapted into Broadway plays and Hollywood movies have portrayed Western encounters with other cultures, such as Indians, Native Americans, Blacks, Mexicans, Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, Haitians, Cubans, Vietnamese, and Arabs – reinforcing the idea that the rest of the world is inferior to European/American culture and must be won over for their own good. Only then can John Wayne fade peaceably into the sunset on his horse.

Atrocity literature was integral to portraying other cultures’ strangeness and exotica by emphasizing the dangers they posed. One way to understand the power of atrocity literature is to examine it in the context of American history since the early 1600s, where it played a role in every episode of prejudice, territorial acquisition, and economic expansion.[i] The process may be briefly stated as follows:

As European settlers in America expanded westward across the American continent, they pushed the natives ahead of them along an ever-shfting frontier, which was understood as a demarcation line between civilization and savagery.
The myth-making consisted of painting a vivid picture of the native American as being ‘dangerously savage’—a people who were a threat to the innocent, God-fearing Christian folks. The imagery sometimes suggested that America was the Biblical Eden, now belonging to European colonialists, and it was being violated and threatened by evil savages from the frontier. This notion of the ‘frontier’ came to represent the collective rest of the non-Christian, hence ‘uncivilized’ world.
The natives were typically depicted in scenes of ‘idol worshipping’, replete with grotesque divinities, as opposed to the one true God of Western Christendom. These ‘others’ were packaged to appear primitive: lacking in morals and ethics, and prone to violence. This trio—lack of aesthetics, lack of morality, and lack of rationality—is found over and over again in atrocity literature.
When conflicts erupted, the Whites, as civilizing people, were depicted as responding legitimately and dutifully to the actions of savages. Thus the brutalities by the colonizers were depicted as justified and reasonable measures.
The savage cultures were also shown to victimize their own women and children. Therefore, the violent civilizing mission of the Whites seemed to be in the best interests of the savage societies at large.
This kind of atrocity literature gave intellectual sustenance to imperialist doctrines like Manifest Destiny, White Man’s Burden, etc.
It also offered an emotional hook. The exciting adventures of frontiersmen, including explorers, soldiers, and cowboys generated even more such literature.
This genre of literature thrived on half-truths, selecting items from here and there, and stitching themes together into a narrative that played on the reader’s psyche with pre-conceived stereotypes.[ii] It sought to create a sense of heightened urgency in dealing with savagery.
The non-Western cultures portrayed in this way may or may not have committed the alleged atrocities attributed to them. The truth, in all probability, was not as one-sided as depicted. Typically, conflicts were exaggerated and sensationalized in order to make an ideological point.

In contrast to the approach towards non-Western civilization, the social ills and atrocities in Western societies are characterised as aberrations: racism, colonial genocide, the two World Wars, the Holocaust, sexual abuse, etc., are considered as isolated acts that deviate from the true Western character.

As Western colonization expanded worldwide, the myth of the frontier proved successful in subduing the natives of America , Africa and Asia . It was compatible with other forms of European expansionism. Now the frontier could be anywhere outside of western civilization.

Once established in the popular mind, atrocity literature was often used to justify the harsh subjugation of the people on the frontier. The same myth that excused genocide of Native Americans later excused large-scale violence such as the Vietnam War and the Iraq War.

In every era of Western expansion, many scholars naively participated in producing such atrocity literature without taking into consideration how the material would eventually be used. Once a target culture is branded and marked in this way, it becomes the recipient of all sorts of untoward allegations. It becomes impossible for the leaders of any such branded culture to defend themselves against the bombardment of false charges and depictions. In order to defend oneself, one has to first acknowledge the false allegations, which legitimize them and make a victory for the other side. Anyone effectively criticizing the Western powers is quickly put on the list of suspected dangerous savages and stigmatized. One thing that atrocity literature insists is that savages almost always lie. Therefore, normal rules of evidence and fair representation no longer apply, and another ‘savage culture’ is neutered.[iii]

Footnotes

[i] Atrocity literature has been used by the American Government to justify its interventions in a ‘guilt-free’ manner. For a historical analysis of atrocity literature and its devastating effect on non-White cultures encountered by White Americans, see: (Malhotra 2009) . For a theoretical framework of cultural violence, see (Gatlung 1990) . He defines cultural violence as ‘any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural forms.’

[ii] A very good example of the power of atrocity literature manufactured by colonialism in Indian context is the phenomenon of Thugs. Researcher Martine van Wœrkens in a detailed analysis of the Thug phenomenon reveals in the seminal work ‘The Strangled Traveler’ that while it is true that ‘many different groups of Thugs actually did exist over the centuries the monsters the British made of them had much more to do with colonial imaginings of India than with the real Thugs.’ (Wœrkens and Tihanyi 2002)

[iii] Many Americans criticized their government for using such propaganda tactics to build up the public frenzy prior to attacking Iraq in order to frame it as ‘savage war.’ Human rights scholars, compiled the atrocity literature about the plight of Arab women and other citizens, even if the condition of Arab women was far direr in other Arab countries than it was in Iraq., The propagandistic roll of these scholars has not been widely acknowledged. This significant service to propaganda paid by scholars and the media should serve as impetus for further scholarly introspection in to roll of academia and the news media in the creation of atrocity literature that directly influences American foreign policy This should serve as reason for other scholars to introspect. Importantly, throughout the debates on what to do about the savages, there took place an intellectual game the purpose of which was to show that a fair and equitable due process was being carried out. Marimba Ani, a black scholar, calls this ‘rhetorical ethics’ – a form of ethical hypocrisy that it is not meant to be carried out; it’s a mere pretence of carrying out complex procedures.

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Superpower or Balkanized War Zone?

fromJayakumar S. Ammangudi jkumar64@sbcglobal.net reply-tobreakingindia@yahoogroups.com
todateTue, Jun 7, 2011 at 9:52 PMsubject[breakingindia] Superpower or Balkanized

Excerpted with permission from Malhotra, Rajiv and Aravindan Neelakandan, “Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines,” Amaryllis Publishers, Delhi, 2011

Chapter: 1. Superpower or Balkanized War Zone?

(In its entirety.)

Printed Pages: 1-7
Footnotes included

Chapter 1

Superpower or Balkanized War Zone?

A civilization provides a shared identity composed of the images that we have of ourselves, as a people, with a collective sense of history and a shared destiny. It gives a positive sense of who ‘we’ are, and ensures a deep psychological bond among ourselves, along with the feeling that the nation is worth defending. Without this bond, who is the ‘we’ to be defended and what are the sacrifices for? Breaking a civilization is, therefore, like breaking the spine of a person. A broken civilization can splinter, and the balkanized regions can undergo a dark metamorphosis to become rogue states – transforming an entire region into a cataclysm of gigantic proportions.

Is the spine of Indian civilization vulnerable to such a rupture? And what forces, if any, are attempting to do this? Are they external or internal, or both? Where do they originate? How do they evolve? How are they managed?
This book addresses these questions with specific reference to Dravidian and Dalit identities and the role of the West in exploiting them.

India’s centripetal forces—economic growth, corporate and infrastructure development, and improved national democratic governance—bring the nation together. Much is being written about these positive forces. What is less often discussed and seldom studied in detail, are the centrifugal forces, both internal and external. The internal ones include communalism and socio-economic disparities of various kinds. The external forces that bring divisiveness among Indians, are more complex, and these have linked up with India’s internal cleavages. This shows how various global nexuses with their own agendas now control these internal forces to an unprecedented degree. Yet, this book is not screaming a doomsday scenario, but rather, an original analysis of the danger the nation is facing.

It is not just Pakistan stirring up disruptive forces in India, or China linking up with Indian Maoists, or the evangelical churches of Europe and North America stirring up separatism. It is all of these and more. These centrifugal forces are deep, subtle, complexly interlinked, and operating as loosely coupled multinational networks.

The nexus this book uncovers might seem far removed from the visions of violence and chaos conjured up by the notions of ‘secessionism,’ ‘insurgency,’ and ‘rebellion.’ Yet, it establishes that certain academic centers of the West control or at least heavily influence the socio-political discourse on India. These are coupled with political think-tanks, church activism, and social organizations that feed the centrifugal forces in India. They invent new fault lines and nurture existing ones. There is surprisingly little counter-discourse on the side of India’s unity.

India’s Built-in Tendencies to Fragment

While it is tempting to blame all problems on outside forces, one must come to terms with India’s own weaknesses and centuries-old tendencies to fragment. This troubling side has not received enough attention by those enjoying the successes of the newly vibrant economy. Some of the hard realities are as follows:

India has the largest number of poor citizens in the world, the largest number of children without schooling, a serious and growing shortage of water that is required to sustain life in the hinterlands, and conflicts across its many groups.
There are social injustices that are partly historical and partly modern. Some have originated within Indian society, while others are bred and fed by foreign influences to gain leverage in India.
The trickle-down effect of economic success has not adequately filtered to the lowest strata, where it is needed with the greatest urgency. While millions of Indians enjoy careers based on a technical education subsidized by the Indian public, a much larger number have not received even a basic education. The middle class, aspiring to modernize or Americanize, boasts of the new automobile infrastructure, yet the investments made to farming and water infrastructure are dismal. India’s public health system is atrocious. [i]
Separatist movements threaten normal civilian life in Kashmir, parts of India’s northeast, and in numerous Indian states afflicted with rural Maoist terrorism. There are sporadic Islamist terror-attacks in various parts of India, and there have been eruptions of Hindu-Muslim violence. Separatist movements by Dravidians and Dalits create violence across the South, and these are the topics of this book.
Even cyberspace, which was seen as an Indian haven, has become India’s vulnerability. A recent highly publicized study on cyber espionage terms India as the ‘most victimized state’, whose sensitive defense networks, embassy communications, in India and around the world, have been highly compromised by Chinese espionage agents.[ii] Vital information thus obtained by the Chinese can then be passed on to the Maoist insurgency raging at the mineral-rich heart of India, where a vicious cycle of state apathy, foreign interventions and Maoist terrorism is bleeding India.
India is surrounded by unstable and radicalized nations, including those that are becoming failed states; and cross-border violence is being exported into India, tying up crucial economic and military resources.[iii] The Indian experience of democracy has led to a very large number of political parties, thereby fragmenting vote banks and voices in the social mosaic. This has brought opportunism and shortsightedness, with long-term policy compromises and vacillations. One wonders if India has too much democracy – or, at least, too little governance.

Yet India’s resilience is also remarkable. For example:

While the US has become highly militarized to protect its homeland against terrorism, India has not done so to the same extent, despite having been attacked by terrorists far more frequently and for many more years. There is no ‘Fortress India’ mindset. After the terror-attacks killed several people in Mumbai in 2008, trains started to run, shops reopened, and normal life resumed within a few days.
India has the second largest Muslim population in the world, and a vast majority of its Muslims remain well grounded in local, native cultures, and are integrated into Indian society with their Hindu neighbors. Insofar as it has resisted attempts to be co-opted into international pan-Islamist programs, Indian Islam offers a model for inspiring Muslims worldwide into cultural syncretism and harmonious co-existence with other religions.
India’s resilience is partly based on its civilization’s strength of accommodation and flexibility, but also on hard policy-choices implemented by its leaders since independence from British rule in 1947. Thus, India’s version of affirmative action—known as ‘reservations’, and implemented by successive governments for over 60 years—has brought remarkable advancement in the plight of the impoverished Dalits (the former ‘untouchables’) and other disadvantaged groups. But given the scope of the problem, this is too little and too late. Many worthy Indian NGOs (non-government organizations) have filled the vacuum left by the government and provided assistance successfully.

External Forces

India’s internal performance must be judged on how it benefits its least privileged citizens, and it certainly deserves harsh criticism. Yet if the nation-state were severely undermined in its external capacity to deal with other forces, the result could invite invasions, re-colonization, cultural and psychological imperialism, and other unwanted interventions. This has happened numerous times in India’s history; for instance, when the British used human-rights cases as pretexts to act against many Indian rulers.

Ironically, the British committed many horrible acts while justifying them by compiling what is known as atrocity literature[iv] to depict the savagery of Indians. They claimed that their own acts were designed to help bring about ‘civilization’ for Indians. For example:

The Criminal Tribes Act was passed in 1871 and made it lawful to perform genocide against a list of Indian tribes who were deemed to be ‘criminals,’ including every member of these tribes right from birth. Many tribes were condemned in this way not because they were ‘criminal’ (even if there is such a things as a whole tribe being criminal), but because they were fighting against the British destruction of their jungles and other habitats. The Thugs were one such group that got so badly maligned via atrocity literature that their name has entered the English language as being synonymous with crime.
Atrocity literature played its part in downgrading women’s rights. Veena Oldenburg’s seminal book, Dowry Murder, gives details on how the British encouraged the Indians to dish out cases of atrocities that could then be blamed on the native culture.[v] They systematically compiled these anecdotes, mostly unsubstantiated and often exaggerated and one-sided. This became a justification to enact laws that downgraded the rights of common citizens. The book shows how the dowry extortions that have become so common in middle-class India today, were actually started when women’s traditional property rights were taken away by the British through convoluted logic.
Nicholas Dirks is one of many scholars who have shown how the British used atrocity literature in order to exacerbate conflicts between the jatis in order to ‘solve’ their problems by intervening. This helped the British to gain further power and extort Indian wealth.[vi]
Claims of atrocities against workers were used to outlaw various Indian industries, including textiles and steelmaking, in which India had a lead over Britain. Meanwhile, the British started their own Industrial Revolution to supply these goods to India as a captive market, turning Indians from world-class producers and exporters into importers and paupers. According to British author William Digby, between 1757 and 1812, the inflow of profits from India into Britain was estimated at between 500 million pounds and 1 billion pounds.[vii] The value of this sum in today’s purchasing power would be over a trillion dollars. A more recent study by economist Amiya Bagchi establishes that the British imposed a drain on India, equivalent to 5-6 percent of current GDP <check>.[viii] The British were very diligent in documenting alleged cases of atrocities against workers by the Indian manufacturers who were their competitors, and then outlawed many Indian industries on the charge of violating workers’ rights. The massive poverty and unemployment that resulted, only made the workers’ plight worse.

In his landmark monograph written a century ago, Hind Swaraj, Gandhi discusses how the Indians working for the British Empire were unwittingly helping to sustain it. They imagined themselves as being patriotic Indians because they were unaware of the larger picture, and of the British aims that they were serving. A hundred years after Gandhi wrote his famous diagnosis of the colonized Indians, we need to introspect:

Whether the West has become even more sophisticated in its nurturing and deployment of Indian sepoys than its British predecessor. It co-opts Indian intellectuals at various levels, ranging from lowly data-hunter-gatherers, to identity-engineering programs in the murky backwaters of NGOs, to mid-level scholars in India, all the way to Indian Ivy League professors and award-winning globetrotters.
What the civic society’s and government’s relationship is to Western churches.
The role of the human rights industry as a ‘fifth column’ to selectively target and undermine political opponents.
In what ways the leading private foundations—Ford Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Luce Foundation, Pew Trust, Templeton Foundation, to name just a few—serve as vehicles for the US government and billionaires to collaborate on fulfilling what many Americans have seen as their manifest destiny.

This book shows that Indian centrifugal forces have not only up-linked with the international forces, but also have strategically interlinked among themselves for greater synergy. What, then, should be the proper definition of a ‘minority’ when such a group now functions as part and parcel of a global majority? Specifically, this book exposes the formation of Dravidian and Dalit identities over nearly two hundred years, and the role played by Western nexuses.

Footnotes

[i] In his article of Oct 19, 2006, Suman Guha Mozumder quotes the well known journalist P. Sainath who told an audience in New York that while food courts are springing up almost everywhere in India’s big city malls catering to the palates of well off Indians, ‘The average rural family today is eating nearly 100 grams less of food grains than six or seven years ago and the average per capita availability of food grains has declined sharply. In 1991, when reforms began, availability of food per person was 510 grams, today it has fallen to 437 grams.’ He said, ‘At a time when people of our class are eating foods like we never had in our lives before, India’s agriculture sector is in the midst of a collapse.’ He said that while India has eight billionaires and hundreds of millionaires, the country ranks 127th in the Human Development Report Index. ‘So, on the one hand we have this incredible emerging tiger economy. . . (on the other hand) it should be remembered that the incredible tiger economy produces a very shameful kind of human development indicators,’ Sainath said. ‘The life expectancy of average Indians is lower than people in Mongolia or Tajikistan.’ He said the Vidarbha region in Maharashtra has seen 968 suicides by farmers, including 120 on an average every month in the last three months. In March, 2006, Parliament was told by Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar that in the last ten years over 120,000 farmers have committed suicide in India. ‘Suicides by farmers today are actually a symptom of a much wider crisis in India’s farm and agricultural sector,’ Sainath said, that this was the result of a systematic and structured move to shift to corporate farming from small family farming practices as well as mindless deregulation that has ruined the farming community. He said, ‘The claims that India is shining are true. I believe it, although it is happening for just the ten percent of the population.’ (See: http://ia.rediff.com/money/2006/oct/19bspec.htm )

[ii] (Information Warfare Monitor and Shadowserver Foundation 2010, 43)

[iii] In fact almost all nation states surrounding India have been listed as within the first 25 of the Failed State Index 2009 released by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Afghanistan is ranked 7; Pakistan 10; Burma 13; Bangladesh 19; Sri Lanka 22; Nepal 25.

[iv] Atrocity literature is a technical term referring to literature generated by Western interests with the explicit goal to show that the target non-Western culture is committing atrocities on their own people, and hence in need of Western intervention. This will be elaborate in a later chapter.

[v] (Oldenburg 2002) Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. Dowry Murders: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

[vi] For example see (Dirks 2004) Dirks, Nicholas. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2004.

[vii] (Digby 1969, 33) Digby, William. ‘Prosperous’ India: A Revelation from Official Records. New

Delhi: Sagar, 1969.

[viii] (Bagchi 1984, 81) Bagchi, Amiya. The Political Economy of Underdevelopment. Cambridge

University Press, 1984.

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For purchasing elsewhere, visit Breaking India

Overview of European Invention of Races

Jayakumar S. Ammangudi

Excerpted with permission from Malhotra, Rajiv and Aravindan Neelakandan, “Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines,” Amaryllis Publishers, Delhi, 2011

Chapter: 2. Overview of European Invention of Races

Printed Pages: 8-11

Chapter 2: Overview of European Invention of Races

Western Academic Constructions Lead to Violence

In the past five centuries, European nations colonized many regions of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. These Western powers variously imposed a Eurocentric worldview on the colonized cultures. The histories of the local cultures as well as a global historic narrative were constructed to justify colonization. Today, even though many of these biases have been exposed, they still wield power in the academic and socio-political discourses. In the next several chapters, we see the forces that led to these colonial constructs, and explore the reasons for their continued existence. With reference to fig. 2.1, a brief outline of each of its components is given next.

Europe

In the eighteenth century, when the traditional religious edifice of Europe was threatened by the Enlightenment, Europeans looked for a golden past. Many hoped they could find it in India, which had been the source of much of Europe’s imports for centuries. In this search for identity, they began to hypothesize and construct an idealized ‘Aryan race’ through a distorted reading of Indian scriptures. Fed by virulent German nationalism, anti-Semitism and Race Science, this manipulation led ultimately to the rise of Nazism and the holocaust.

India

In the late eighteenth century, the Indologist Max Müller proposed the Aryan category strictly as a linguistic group, but it got soon transformed into the Aryan race by colonial administrators who used Race Science to make a taxonomical division of traditional Indian communities. The castes designated as ‘non-Aryan’ were marginalized or excluded in depictions of Hindu society. In parallel, the Church evangelists working in South India constructed a Dravidian race identity. They de-linked Tamil culture from its pan-Indian cultural matrix and claimed that its spirituality was closer to Christianity than it was to the Aryan North Indian culture.

Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, the Buddhist revival spurred by the Theosophical Society also spread ideas of the Aryan race theory. Bishop Robert Caldwell and Max Müller categorized Tamils as Dravidians and Singhalese as Aryans. This division was encouraged by colonial administrators. Gradually, many South Indians who had assumed a Dravidian identity adopted this division and turned it into antagonism toward the so-called Aryans. The result has been the deadly ethnic civil war that continued in Sri Lanka for a few decades.

Africa

The Hamitic myth of the Bible in which the descendants of Noah’s son Ham were cursed, was used by slave traders and slave owners to justify slavery. Hamitic linguistic groups were identified and separated from the rest of Africans. African civilization’s contributions were explained as the work of an imaginary sub-race of Whites invading and civilizing Africa. Western classification of traditional African communities into races led to bitter rivalries, including genocide as in Rwanda.

The following six chapters will go into details of how the present Dravidian identity came about in a period of less than two centuries.

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For purchasing in Houston, visit the bookstore @ Arsha Vidya Satsanga
For purchasing elsewhere, visit Breaking India

Christian Denigration of Indian Spiritual Dance

Breaking India Excerpt 02

Excerpted with permission from Malhotra, Rajiv and Aravindan Neelakandan, “Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines,” Amaryllis Publishers, Delhi, 2011

Chapter: 8. Digesting Hinduism into Dravidian Christianity

Section: Christianizing Hindu Popular Culture

Sub-section: Christian Denigration of Indian Spiritual Dance

Printed Pages: 113-120
Footnotes included

Christian Denigration of Indian Spiritual Dance

From the 17^th century onwards, Christian missionaries made scathing attacks on the Indian classical dance form seeing it as a heathen practice. This was often expressed by attacking the devadasi system on the grounds of human rights. The devadasis were temple dancers, dedicated in childhood to a particular deity. The system was at its peak in the 10^th and 11^th centuries, but a few hundred years later, the traditional system of temples protected by powerful kings had faded away under Mughal rule especially since the Mughals turned it into popular entertainment devoid of spirituality. The devadasi system degenerated in some cases into temple dancers used for prostitution, although the extent of this was exaggerated by the colonialists.

Many of the English educated elites of India accepted the colonial condemnation of their heritage and apologized for its “primitiveness.” Some of them turned into Hindu reformers, and found the devadasi system detestable for moral and even social-hygienic reasons.[1] However the devadasis saw their very existence threatened and sent handwritten pleas to the colonial government explaining the spiritual foundation of Bharatha Natyam. They quoted Siva from the Saiva Agamas saying, “To please me during my puja, arrangements must be made daily for shudda nritta (dance). This should be danced by females born of such families and the five acharyas should form the accompaniments.” Since these Agamas are revered by every Hindu, the devadasis asked, “What reason can there be for our community not to thrive and exist as necessary adjuncts of temple service?” They opposed the proposed draconian punishment for performing their tradition, calling the legislation “unparalleled in the civilized world.” [2]

Instead of abolition of their traditional profession, they demanded better education to restore their historical status. They wanted the religious, literary and artistic education as in the past, saying, “Instill into us the Gita and the beauty of the Ramayana and explain to us the Agamas and the rites of worship.” This would inspire devadasi girls to model themselves after female saints like Maitreyi, Gargi and Manimekalai and the women singers of the Vedas, such that,

“we might once again become the preachers of morality and religion… You who boast of your tender love for small communities, we pray that you may allow us to live and work out our salvation and manifest ourselves in jnana and bhakti and keep alight the torch of India’s religion amidst the fogs and storms of increasing materialism and interpret the message of India to the world.”[3]

Despite such attempts, the missionary influence continued to dominate Bharata Natyam came to be seen as immoral and facing almost certain extinction. For example, a Dravidianist supported by missionary scholarship called the dance “the lifeline that encourages the growth of prostitution.”[4]

However, Hindu savants worked tirelessly to remove the Christian slurs cast on this art form. Chief among them was Rukmini Devi Arundale (1904-1986) who protected and revived this dance by founding the Kalakshetra Academy of Dance and Music in 1936. She made it an acceptable norm for girls (and even boys) from middle class households to learn Bharat Natyam. Though operated like a modern institution, it functioned as a traditional gurukula with prayers before the deity Ganapati, vegetarianism, and a guru-shishya relationship. Throughout Tamil Nadu the guru-shishya form of decentralized one-on-one learning spread in various ways as part of this revival. Thus, far from being dead as intended by missionaries, colonialists and their Indian cronies, Bharat Natyam again became well established as a spiritual art form in South India, and started to achieve acclaim throughout India and abroad. Kalakshetra grew into a university with a large campus in Chennai.

Strategic Shift: Subtle Christian Appropriation of Hindu Dance

In recent years, missionaries are again targeting Bharat Natyam. But this time as a takeover candidate for digestion into Christianity. This reversal of strategy is in response to the growing enthusiasm for Bharat Natyam, including among many Western feminists who see Indian dance as a valorization of feminine sexuality.[5] Westerners took up this dance initially showing respect for Hindu practices and symbols, and studied under Hindu gurus who naively welcomed the Christian disciples. Each of the individuals who are at the forefront of Christianizing the Bharata Natyam today was initially taught by Hindu gurus.[6] In India there are many unsuspecting, or perhaps opportunistic, Hindu gurus who take this genre of Christian students under their wings. These Christian disciples worked very hard and many became exemplars, dancing to Hindu themes and enthralling the media and audiences.

However, they ran into conflicts between traditional Hindu art and Christian aesthetics and dogma. Father Francis Barboza, a prominent Roman Catholic priest and dancer of Hindu art forms, confesses that “the main difficulty I faced in the area of technique” concerned what is Indian classical dance’s unique feature, namely, the hand gestures (hasta) and postures. He confesses:

I could use all of them in the original form except for the Deva hasta [hand gestures], because the nature and significance of the Bible personalities are totally different and unique. Hence, when I wanted to depict Christ, the Christian Trinity (Father, Son and the Holy Spirit), I drew a blank. I realised that I had to invent new Deva Hasta to suit the Divine personalities and concepts of the Christian religion. This was a challenge to my creative, intellectual and theological background. Armed with my knowledge of Christian Theology and in depth studies of ancient dance treatises, I then introduced a number of Deva Hasta to suit the personalities of the Bible. These innovations succeeded in making my presentation both genuinely Indian and Christian in content and form.[7]

Dr. Barboza has Christianized the Bharatha Natyam by inventing the following Christian Mudras: God the Father; Son of God; The Holy Spirit; The Risen Christ; Mother Mary; The Cross; Madonna; The Church; and The Word of God, as well as two postures, Crucifixion and The Risen Christ.[8] This strategy is strikingly similar to the development of “Christian Yoga” and “Jewish Yoga” by western practitioners who take what they want from yoga but reject or replace any symbols or concepts that are too explicitly Hindu.

Another example is the Kalai Kaveri College of Fine Arts, founded by a Catholic priest in 1977 as a cultural mission. He received patronage from various sources and sent out priests and nuns to learn from unsuspecting Hindu gurus. The college claims to be offering “the world’s first, off-campus degree program in Bharathanatyam,” with another program in South Indian classical music (both vocal and instrumental). Its website’s home page shows Dr. Barboza’s “Christian mudras” using the Christian “Father Deity” as the Bharata Natyam mudra replacing thousands of years of Hindu mudras.[9] Kalai Kaveri is backed and funded as a major church campaign. The Tamil Nadu government is also actively funding and promoting it.[10]

Kalai Kaveri also has overseas branches. Its UK branch with Lord Navnit Dholakia as its patron, ”administers performances and educational workshops in the UK by the dancers and movement instructors from Kàlai Kàviri College in south India.”[11]Its website contains a passage from its 25^th Anniversary handbook, Resurgence, which reveals the time tested Christian technique of first praising Indian spirituality and then mapping it to Christian equivalents, such as the subtle the use of the phrase “holy communion” which has specific religious importance to Christians that might not be noticed by others. It starts out with respect for the Vedic tradition:

“Music and dance when viewed in Indian tradition are fundamentally one spiritual art, an integral yoga and a science of harmony…. According to the Vedas, the Divine Mother Vak (Vag Devi) sang the whole creation into being. God’s eternal life-force, Para Sakthi, entered or rather assumed the perennial causal sound Nada through the monosyllabic seed-sound Om (Pranava). Thereby the phenomenal world with its multiple forms evolved. This process of physical, vital, mental and soul contact or holy communion with God aims at complete harmony, perfect integration, and absolute identification with God, in all His manifested as well as unmanifested Lila (divine play and dance) at the individual, cosmic and supra-cosmic levels of existence.”[12]

But the article continues, the mapping turns more explicitly Christian:

“Therefore it is possible to trace each human sound or word back to its source by retracing step-by-step to the positive source, until the body of Brahman called Sabda Brahman is reached: ‘In the beginning was Prajapathi, the Brahman (Prajapath vai idam agtre aseet) With whom was the word (Tasya vag dvitiya aseet) And the word was verily the supreme Brahman’ (Vag vai paraman Brahman). This Vedic verse finds parallel in the fourth Gospel of the Christian New Testament: ‘In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.’ (John 1.1) The ‘Word’ referred to here is the primal sound or Nama. It cannot be the spoken word, and hence it is the creative power of God. The mis-named Odes of Solomon, which are probably from 2nd century Christian Palestine or Syria convey the same truth metaphorically: ‘There is nothing that is apart from the Lord, because He was before anything came into being. And the worlds came in to being by His word’ (Ode XVI:18 – 19).[13]

Father Saju George, a Jesuit priest from Kerala, is a Kalai Kaviri celebrity who learned from various Bharat Natyam gurus. He performs both Christian and Hindu themes. Kalai Kaveri boasts that, having also danced before Pope John Paul II in New Delhi, he has thus raised Bharathanatyam to the realm of Christian prayer and worship…Here is a rare opportunity to experience a new flowering of an ancient vine. In the concerts, imageries of Radha Krishna share a platform with the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.[14]

Blatantly Rejecting Hinduism while Christianizing the Bharat Natyam

Rani David, the founder of Kalairani Natya Saalai in Maryland, USA, (strategically located right next to a prominent Hindu temple) is even more blatant about Christianizing the Bharata Natyam. Her website does not hesitate to reveal her disdain of Hindu symbols that are a part of Bharatha Natyam, and her vow to remove them from the dance. She wants to make Bharat Natyam non-Hindu:

At one of the elaborate ‘Salangai poojai’, in spite of her conviction, she was embarrassed because her Christian values would not permit her to bow down before a statue, whether one of Nataraja, Mary or even Jesus Christ. It was then that she vowed to herself that one day she would fashion this beautiful art into one that could not be exclusively claimed by any one religion. That vow began its fulfillment at Edwina Bhaskaran’s arengetram in ’92 when a patham on Christ, ‘Yesuvaiyae thoothi sei’, was included.[15]

But her initial posture of pluralism leads to an exclusively Christian dance as an “innovation,” of which she is proud:

Edwina’s grandfather, Elder Edwin, congratulated Rani and inquired, ‘can you stage a full program with only Christian items?’…. Consequently, ‘Yesu-Yesu-Yesu’ a two hour program on Christ was innovated and staged first in Maryland and then taken on tour to many parts of USA..[16]

Rani David is also proud of her collaborations with Father Barboza and other Indian Christians. In an article tellingly titled, “The Concept of Christianizing,”’ she begins by comparing the problems of Bharata Natyam with similar problems supposedly found in the Bible, making her assessment seem even-handed:

History of Bharatanatyam reveals that it was misused by religious people and became a social stigma. Likewise, the word ‘dance’ itself in the Bible has had two bad ‘sinful’ references: once with the Israelites and the golden calf and the other by Salome who danced before Herod. [17]

In the next sentences this facade of equal treatment is replaced by focusing on the positive aspects of dance only in the Bible. Citing particular verses that mention dance, she concludes:

… dance is strongly implied to be present in God’s Kingdom. But is there an unquestionable support? Yes, in Psalms 149:3 and 150:4 there are definite commands to include dances in the praising of God! One can hardly get any more definite than that![18]

In other words, when dance is condemned in the Bible, it maps onto the Hindu nature of Bharatha Natyam and both share the problem equally; but when dance is positively depicted in the Bible it is solely a Christian phenomenon without Hindu parallels.

What is neatly glossed over is the obvious fact that Bharat Natyam was developed, institutionally nourished and theologically refined within Hinduism precisely because it is a tradition of embodied spirituality that valorizes the body—both male and female, and even animal—whereas the Abrahamic tradition, precisely because of its obsession with sin and fears of idolatry, has stifled the possibility of such bodily representation as a divine medium.[19]

Rani David then explains the challenges in trying to make Hinduism and Christianity co-exist in the dance. She states that there are

two major differences that we cannot overlook. Hinduism is liberal and will accept anything ‘good’ as sacred. Christianity, on the other hand, is based on a ‘zealous’ God who commands you cannot worship any other gods. Christian form of worship is simplicity; that is why you see Christians dressed in white when they go to church. But a Hindu devotee believes in elaboration in worship. The more you beautify, the more acceptable! So where does one bring in Bharatanatyam? It is not an easy task to merge the two worlds.… it was the Catholic Priest, Father Barboza, who laid down some definite mudras which you see displayed on this page. With the idea of making a universal adaptation, I have used some of these mudras in my choreography. [20]

Anita Ratnam, a prominent dancer, goes even further and claims in her 2007 event in Maryland: “Rani David laid down facts and demonstrated that Christianity existed along with Bharatanatyam and Sanga Thamizh, but history lost in time has given Christianity a western outlook.”[21]

It is interesting to note how self-conscious and strategic the various Christians are when engaged in this cross-religious activity. Their Christianity is very explicitly present in their minds and they are deliberate in making their strategic choices. On the other hand, Hindus engaged in such cross-religious activities are easily lost in ideas of “everything is the same” and “there is no us and them.” One side (i.e. Christian) has a strategy and is constantly reworking it and perfecting it, in order to expand itself. The other side (i.e. Hindu) is naively unconcerned, and unwilling to see this is a competitive arena.

[1] One of the most vocal champions for the abolition of the system was Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy, (1886-1968) the first female doctor of Madras Presidency, an advocate for women’s rights, as associate of Mahatma Gandhi, and a member of the legislature who worked for the abolishment of the devadasi system in 1929.

[2] Quotes excerpted from (Hinduism Today Archives 1993) . It is true that with the loss of royal and other forms of social patronage dating from (in many areas even before) British times, many of these institutions had sunk to a depraved level indistinguishable from prostitution (with possible elements of coercion given the patriarchal social structure). However, this was part of a more generalized decadence that could be seen also in the greedy behavior of temple priests at pilgrimage sites due to the same loss of patronage. Just as Bharata Natyam has long since regained its status worldwide, so too well-trained priests have now regained their status in the temples of the Hindu diaspora and in the better maintained temples of India,

[3] (Hinduism Today Archives 1993) .

[4] (Rao, Ramamirthammal and Kannabirān 2003, 210)

[5] For example, Western anthropologists (like Frédérique Appfel Marglin) have not just learned Hindu classical dance (the closely-related Odissi form) but have also lived with and given very sympathetic accounts of the daily lives and values of the devadasis. The Tantric inspiration behind these dance traditions, which were earlier the object of so much Christian-inspired censure, has become a badge of honor.

[6] Dr. Francis Barboza, who later invented Christian Mudras in Bharatha Natyam, was instructed in the dance form by two Hindus, Guru Kubernath Tanjorkar and Prof. C.V. Chandrasekhar. (Barboza 2003) Father Saju George, a Jesuit priest, was instructed by Sri K Rajkumar, Khagendra Nath Barman, Padmashri Leela Samson, Nadabrahmam Prof. C V Chandrasekhar (all from Kalakshetra, Chennai) and Padmabhushan Kalanidhi Narayanan and Kalaimamani Priyadarshini Govind. Of these Gurus, Leela Samson is a Christian. (Kalai Kaviri 2006) Leela Thompson was instructed by the very founder of Kalakshetra Rukmini Arundale and Sharada teacher, another talented Bharatha Natyam Guru of Kalakshetra.Rani David, daughter of an evangelical fundamentalist, was instructed by Shri Shanmugasundaram in the Tanjore style and later by Smt Mythili Ragahavan, a direct disciple of Smt. Rukmini Arundale of Kalekshetra. She later studied Nattuvangam under Shri Seetharama Sharma and Shri ‘Adyar’ Lakshman. (R. David 2004:Dead Link )

[7] (Barboza 2003)

[8] (Barboza 2003)

[9] Gesture presented as representative of Bharatha Natyam in (Kalai Kaviri 2004) to be compared with “Christian gesture innovated” in (Barboza 2002)

[10] (Tamil Nadu Govt 2003-2004)

[11] (Kalai Kaviri 2004:2005)

[12] (Stephen.A 2004)

[13] (Stephen.A 2004)

[14] (Kalai Kaviri 2006)

[15] (Arangetram Brochure 1999)

[16] (Arangetram Brochure 1999)

[17] (R. David 2004:Dead Link)

[18] (R. David 2004:Dead Link)

[19] Thus, Sufi-inspired syncretism in India has focused on rasa and dhvani theory as applied to poetry and music rather than to dance, which had to be ‘secularized’ into Kathak to enjoy widespread patronage (the trance-inducing sama dances have little of the representational or aesthetic dimension of Indian classical dance). However, many among the Muslim audiences and patrons (e.g., in Awadh) could appreciate (at least at the aesthetic level), and despite the apparent contradiction, the backdrop of Hindu mythology with its various deities (esp., the already ‘secularized’ Krishna). Because of this acknowledged incompatibility, there has been no attempt to Islamize (as opposed to ‘secularize’) Kathak.

[20] (R. David 2004:Dead Link)

Since the middle of 2009 the website has expired. However the pseudo-historic narrative attempted by Rani David for Christianizing Bharatha Natyam has been approvingly displayed in a prominent Indian dance portal, www.narthaki.com, which is run by a prominent dancer named Anita Ratnam.

Christianizing Hindu Popular Culture: The Leela Samson Scandal

from Jayakumar S. Ammangudi jkumar64@sbcglobal.net reply-tobreakingindia@yahoogroups.com
toBreaking India <breakingindia@yahoogroups.com>
dateFri, Jun 3, 2011 at 4:31 PMsubject[breakingindia] The Leela Samson Scandal – Extract from “Breaking India”

Excerpted with permission from Malhotra, Rajiv and Aravindan Neelakandan, “Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines,” Amaryllis Publishers, Delhi, 2011

Chapter: 8. Digesting Hinduism into Dravidian Christianity

Section: Christianizing Hindu Popular Culture

Sub-section: The Leela Samson Scandal

Printed Pages: 120-123
Footnotes included
The Leela Samson Scandal

Rukmini Arundale, a guru who rescued the dance form from the era of colonial evangelism, speaks of dance as ”Sadhana which requires total devotion.”[1] Kalakshetra, the institution she founded to specifically stress the Hindu spiritual roots of Bharata Natyam, was recently captured by Christian evangelists led by Leela Samson. Samson started her connection to Kalakshetra as a high school student and went on to a career as a dancer and teacher. Rukmini had reservations about admitting Leela Samson, according to a contemporary guru who knew Rukmani:

Leela Samson a senior artist today, came to Kalakshetra as a young girl. Because of her Judeo Christian background she had not had much exposure to traditional Indian culture. [Rukmani] was therefore hesitant about including her as a student. However on examining her on various related aspects we found that she had the attributes of a good dancer. I then persuaded [Rukmani] to give her a chance and she did so, but with some reluctance.[2]

In 2005, Samson was appointed as the new director of Kalakshetra. In 2006, she provoked a media storm by justifying the elimination of the spiritual roots of Bharata Natyam. Trouble started in 2006 when Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the head of “Art of living” meditation, expressed his concern over the attempt of Leela Sampson to thwart the participation of Kalakshetra students in the inaugural function of a “Health and Bliss” religious course being conducted by him in Chennai. According to Ananda Vikatan, a popular Tamil weekly, the most disturbing aspect was the reason cited by Leela Samson. She explained: “This function is concerned with Hindu religion. So Kalakshetra students need not participate in it.”[3]

This was soon followed by an article that appeared in Hindu Voice, a magazine run by Hindu nationalists, which claimed that under the Samson tutelage at Kalakshetra, most of the Vinayaka images for which regular poojas had been historically conducted by the students were removed. Only after a lot of criticism did she replace one image but not all. Samson ordered all prayers to the deity to be stopped, and the clothes adorning the deities were removed.[4] As this progressed into a major controversy, Samson was forced to react but denied all the charges. She made the claim that “Kalakshetra never had idols that were worshipped. A lamp was all that was lit in every place we worshipped, according to Theosophical principles and the highest philosophical principles upheld by our elders.”[5]

Whereas Siva’s Nataraja form represents the Cosmic Dancer, the dancing form of Ganesha has customarily been invoked by Indian dancer and worshipped before a performance. The suppression of these “idols” by Leela Samson was an attempt to detach Bharat Natyam from its traditional roots under the guise of secularization, and then remapping it within Christian theology and symbolism. Her response against “idol worship” contradicts her mentor and the institution’s founder, Rukmini Arundale, who had defended the Hindu worship of various deities’ images:

All the songs we dance to are of Gods and Goddesses. You may ask, “Why so many Gods and Goddesses? The only reply I can give is, “Why not so many Gods and Goddess?[6]

Rukmini did not support a vague notion of a “universal religion” and in fact specifically critiqued this sort of generic spirituality, saying:

Some people say ‘I believe in universal religion’, but when I ask them whether they know anything about Hinduism, they answer in negative. They know nothing about Christianity, nor about Buddhism or about any other religion either. In other words, universality is, knowing nothing of anything….Real internationalism is truly the emergence of the best in each….But in India when I say India I mean the India of the sages and saints who gave the country its keynote, there arose the ideal of one life, and of the divinity that lives in all creatures; not merely in humanity.[7]

In the morning assembly, Samson allegedly told the students and teachers that “idol worship” is superstition and should be discouraged at Kalakshetra. There were complaints that her hand-picked teachers explained the Geeta-Govindam in denigrating tones. The certificate that was designed by Rukmini Arundale with Narthana Vinayakar had the emblem of Siva on it. The present certificate has been changed and is without any Hindu symbols.[8]

Samson has been criticized for undervaluing the Hindu stories and symbols to the point of ridicule, comparing them with Walt Disney’s characters, Batman and “the strange characters in Star Wars.”[9] In contrast, Rukmini explains the deep meaning of symbolism in the ballad, ”Kumarasambhava”:

Why does the story of Kumarasambhava please me? It is because of the symbolism. Finally what Parvati wins is not passion but the devotion and sublimation of herself. Parvati wins Siva and she becomes united with Him, because she has discovered the greater, indeed the only way of discovering God. This is very beautiful symbology. Siva burnt to ashes all that is physical. So must a dancer or musician burn to ashes all thought which is dross and bring out the gold which is within.[10]

She speaks of the Ramayana and Mahabharatha as the “essential expressions of Indian dance.”[11] Far from being manmade stories as Leela Samson considers Indian narratives to be, Rukmini Arundale speaks of Sri Rama, Sri Krishna and Buddha in the following manner:

Why was India a world power? Because Sri Krishna had lived in this country, Sri Rama had lived here and so had Lord Buddha. It was their Teaching that made India a great world power.[12]
Where Leela Samson sees the equivalents of Batman and Mickey Mouse characters, the founder of Kalakshetra sees great world teachers and symbolism of the most sublime kind. In Sampson’s appropriation, Bharata Natyam was denied its vital spiritual, devotional, aesthetic and pedagogical dimensions, and dragged down to the fantastic garish mass level of cartoons. Thus in Leela Samson’s own words the process of usurpation can be seen in its crucial stages: initially de-Hinduising and secularizing the art form and then Christianizing it.

[1] (Arundale 2004, 20).

[2] (Sruthi (Jan 1996) 2005, 56)

[3] (Anantha Vikatan 20-Dec-2006)

[4] (Deivamuthu.P 2007)

[5] (Prakriti Foundation 2006)

[6] (Arundale 2004, 185)

[7] (Arundale 2004, 148-9)

[8] (Deivamuthu.P 2007)

[9] (Samson 2004)

[10] (Arundale 2004, 186)

[11] (Arundale 2004, 117)

[12] (Arundale 2004, 147)