Spritual Politics as Marriage of Opposites
Vasanthi Srinivasan Ananda Coomaraswamy, known primarily as an art historian, deserves attention also as a philosopher of spiritual traditions. As a keeper of the Indian collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts for three decades, he relentlessly espoused the spiritual basis of Indian, especially Hindu art. For him, spirituality was essentially about tuning in to the ‘true reality’ and the ‘one immortal source’ that manifested itself both immanently and transcendentally. Saying that ‘he never thought for himself’, he devoted himself to clarifying and expounding the metaphysics or first principles as articulated in different religious traditions. In his words, ‘philosophy or rather metaphysics represents a theory or vision and religion a way to the verification of the vision in actual experience.’ While philosophy was contemplative, religion was an active quest. But this did not mean that philosophical exegesis was only an academic exercise. For him, it prescribed the right order both within the soul and society. Consider the opening lines of his Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government: ‘It may be said that the whole of Indian political theory is implied and subsumed in the words of the marriage formula “I am That, thou art This, I am sky, thou art Earth” and so forth addressed by the Brahmin priest, the Purohita, to the King in Aitareya Brahmana. Focusing mostly on the ritual texts (Brahmanas), he sets forth a ‘traditional’ theory according to which right order requires that temporal power be guided by and subordinated to spiritual authority. According to him, the marriage formula invoked during the coronation rites, is uttered not so much by the king as is generally held but by the Brahmin priest thereby establishing the primacy of the contemplative over the active life. Given that the king is the feminine party in the marriage, he claims, it is ‘inconceivable’ that they could have been uttered by him. The king, in his turn, is the masculine party in the relationship towards the earth/realm. In this role, he is the ‘voice’ that gives effect to the purposes of spiritual authority. The marriage brings together “counsel and power, intellect and will, right and might. Through this marriage, the ‘purohita (priest) becomes the alter ego of the kshatriya (king)’. He insists that in this marriage, there is no reciprocal equality; the relation of the king to the priest is that of part to the whole. Underlying this relationship is a metaphysic that counsels the rule of the intellect over the emotional—a rule that implies right and proportional ordering of the emotional and erotic elements in the psyche and society. In ritual terms, this marriage re-enacts the sacred marriage of divine archetypes of priesthood and rulership namely Mitra and Varuna or Agni and Indra mentioned in connection with the Soma and fire altar sacrifices. This marriage of the priest and king, as a homologue of sacred marriages, brings about peace and prosperity to the realm. The priest supposedly mediates with and evokes intra-cosmic deities through his ritual expertise. Coomaraswamy also compares the priest to Plato’s philosopher-educator who ‘fathers’ strength and skilful speech in the temporal power through counsel. The priest seems to acquire wisdom through the study of scriptures and meditative reflection on the cosmic vision underlying them. Without priestly guidance, he insists that the ship of the state will destroy itself. Throughout, Coomaraswamy alludes to Plato, Neoplatonists such as Philo and Christian theologians in order to make his point about right ordering of the sacred and temporal powers. But it appears that the establishment of right order even in the cosmos involves considerable conflict and violence between naturally antagonistic principles. Coomaraswamy recognizes the references in the texts to the natural opposition between Mitra (representative of priesthood) and Varuna (representative of royal power). Further, the Satapatha Brahmana says “the ksatra takes no delight in the Brahma, nor does the brahmavarcasa delight in the ksatra. But he goes on to add that the marriage effects a reconciliation that reflects their ‘transcendental unity’. For him, this unity emanates from the common source of both which is Brahma; the latter is described as the Infinite that encompasses the finite. The Brahmin priest is apparently representative of this ‘infinite source’. But the texts do not unequivocally confirm the priority of the Brahmin priest nor do they identify him solely with the contemplative life over the passion-ridden active life or the masculine over the feminine. The Brhadaaranyaka Upanisad is quite ambiguous and mentions in the same passage that there is nothing superior to the ruling power and also that the priestly power is the womb of the ruling power and ought not to be harmed. Secondly, the priest is not presented as a benevolent philosopher guide. The ‘purohita is originally Agni Vaisvanara of the five wraths, and if he not be pacified and endeared, he repels the sacrificer from the world of heaven It has been noted that the priests did not just perform priestly functions but also warrior-like functions as charioteers and generals. Aitareya Brahmana, which he cites often, also presents the priest who, as a ritual expert is, ‘a receiver of gifts, a drinker of soma, a seeker of food and liable to removal at will.’ The king is provider of food for the Brahmin. Far from being independent, the priest was dependent on royal power and needed the protection of the latter. In the rajasuya, the royal consecration ceremony, the Brahmin pays homage to the Kshatriya from a lower position. Also, every sacrifice involved a fee and lavish bestowal of gifts. Coomaraswamy interprets this exchange from the standpoint of the priest; he claims that this patronage is only ‘proper’ to the king because he follows the path of action, a path that implies virtues such as generosity. Thus, royal bestowal of gifts should not be seen as one of gratitude for advantages or a fee for services. For that would compromise the superiority of the Brahmin. Rather, by receiving gifts, the Brahmin gives the king an opportunity
In Heidegger’s Hut
Amlan Dasgupta In 1966 or 1967 (the year is variously reported) the poet Paul Celan journeyed to a place called Todtnauberg , in the Black Mountains in Germany. He was visiting the mountain cabin, or as it is famously known, the hutte or hut, of the philosopher Martin Heidegger. Little is known of what transpired between the two that day. Heidegger had – albeit idiosyncratically – supported the Nazi regime, and had abandoned his major work on the Pre-Socratics to take up the rectorship of Freiberg in 1933. During the denazification years, he had increasingly withdrawn to his mountain retreat. Celan, survivor of the Nazi labour camp, was an unlikely guest, but there is no doubt that the two were drawn to each other intellectually, Heidegger to the poetry, Celan to the philosophy of language, which he commented favourably on several times and incorporated into his poetry. On this enigmatic occasion, Celan signed his name in the visitor’s book, and apparently went on a walk with his host. There are many reconstructions of this day’s events, some based on the poet’s later comments on the experience. More to the point is the poem that emanated from the encounter: one of Celan’s richest and most puzzling poems, one that teases the imagination and challenges hermeneutic skill. Todtnauberg Arnica, eyebright, the draft from the well with the star-die on top, in the Hütte, written in the book – whose name did it record before mine – ? in this book the line about a hope, today, for a thinker’s word to come, in the heart, forest sward, unleveled, orchis and orchis, singly, crudeness, later, while driving, clearly, he who drives us, the man, he who also hears it, the half- trod log- trails on the highmoor, humidity, much. Did then Celan first refresh himself with water from the well, washing the dust from his eyes, the water itself like the old remedies for failing eyesight, arnica and eyebright? But was he also struck by the star engraved on wood (star-die) on the top of the well: the star that must have reminded him of the yellow star worn by Jews in Nazi Germany. Heidegger is said to have commented on Celan’s knowledge of botany, and perhaps the two conversed on the flora of the mountain. Celan speaks of “a hope, today for a thinker’s word”; that word never came, the begegnung, encounter, remaining unproductive. The word encounter was favoured both by the poet and the philosopher, and Celan was later hurt at Adorno’s judgement that the word had been impossibly corrupted by its use by the Nazis. The two seemed to have walked casually and separately, (“orchis and orchis/singly”), the walk itself being interrupted and half finished. The thinker’s word does not come: Celan may have hoped for some formal word of apology or expression of grief from the philosopher, heute, today, on that day itself: a word bearing burning force in the poem. The moment of encounter – or failed encounter – remains uneasily in the relationship. For a relationship it was: Celan, retaining his interest in Heidegger’s thought, and the latter continuing to value the poet’s work openly. In a letter of 1971 to his friend Klaus Demus the old philosopher wrote warmly about a gift of an original manuscript poem by Celan that he had received. Demus had written that Celan had remembered Heidegger in one of their last encounters (Begegnungen). This had emboldened Demus to send him the poem. Heidegger responded with generosity and enthusiasm: When I opened your letter of Easter Sunday, my glance fell first on the sheet with the familiar handwriting of the “untranslatable” poem by Paul Celan that I know by memory, or more elegantly, par coeur. I don’t know how to thank you both for this valuable gift. After my death, it and your latter, as part of my posthumous manuscript papers, will go to the German Literary Archives in Marbach am Neckar. But even a detailed enquiry into the circumstances of the relationship between Heidegger and Celan, does not further clarify the event on Todtnauberg, the grimly and suggestively named location – Todt is death in German. What happened in the hut, and on the mountain, it remains in some sense unrepresentable, beyond representation. So much of Celan’s poetry grapples with the unrepresentable, and this is certainly a place where his engagement with Heidegger becomes particularly important. Two major valuations of Celan have come from two writers themselves deeply marked by Heidegger’s thought, Jacques Derrida and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. I will not detain you with summaries of these richly suggestive readings, beyond drawing attention to a place in the essay “ Shibboleth for Paul Celan” in which Derrida meditates on the word shibboleth, the word of life and death in the OT with which the inhabitants of Gilead tested the Ephraimites: Gilead then cut Ephraim off from the fords of the Jordan, and whenever Ephraimite fugitives said, ‘Let me cross,’ the men of Gilead would ask, ‘Are you an Ephraimite?’ If he said, ‘No,’ they then said, ‘Very well, say “Shibboleth”.’ If anyone said, “Sibboleth”, because he could not pronounce it, then they would seize him and kill him by the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell on this occasion. (Judges, 12) Derrida speculates on how the word (if it is one) names in the broadest sense the most insignificant and arbitrary mark – like the phonemic difference between Shi and Si – that becomes discriminative, decisive and divisive. For Derrida the difference, meaningless in itself becomes that essential property that one needs to inhabit a place – a hut, a mountain, a poem, a place of death – to be within, to be enclosed by the border, to have the right of asylum, the legitimacy of habitation. It is not enough to
Trysts at Midnight: Calcutta, Now
[The Bangla film Sthaniya Sambaad (Spring in the Colony, 2009) was recently released. The film, by way of mapping the diurnal workings of a refugee colony in contemporary Calcutta, asks important questions about the changing cityscape, of the new, emerging world of land grabbers and fly-by-night investors and of the bemused young and old who are outside of this world and yet are sucked within its machinations. This is a conversation about education, humanities and the nature of artistry in the age of modularization—between Moinak Biswas, one of the directors of the film (with Arjun Gourisaria) & Reader, Film Studies, Jadavpur University, Calcutta and Prasanta Chakravarty, Associate Professor of English, University of Delhi.] Prasanta: Your film got a commercial release finally, which is wonderful. Among the initial reactions, in reviews, internet discussions and so forth, one notices a lot of interest in the polyvalent nature of your craft. I would like to take one particular strand of the film and probe a little: that is, its quite sharp critique of the phenomenon of vocationalization of education. This is a constant and niggling thread, right? Now, one fundamental argument for modular training, especially in humanities and social sciences, at this point, is a democratic one: that it will provide competence to a large number of the unemployed, ensure jobs and help in national growth. Moinak: This argument has validity up to a point. But the plain chicanery of the private sector entrusted with this ‘national service ‘ is there for all to see. Institution after institution offer courses in mass communication, ‘media science’, etc., without any library, basic equipment and most importantly, without proper staff. The contractual and part-time minimal faculty is paid and treated badly; the students are made to pay through their noses for some absurd training. And typically, these campuses do not observe the basic democratic norms. They hardly allow any unions, some of them make the students wear uniforms, many have campus surveillance. This is expected. The moment you move out of the ambit of the public sector the Indian businessman will tend to abolish the basic democratic norms and will have the support of a large section of parents as a force against ‘politics’. In our film we were looking at a figure of an education entrepreneur who arrives at a moment when the narrative has left the realist mode and entered a delirium of sorts. This figure, Mr. Paul & Paul as he calls himself, is a criminal visionary of sorts. He builds high-rises, but his life is devoted to providing education to youngsters. The job that he finds for the two absurd thieves looking for vocational education in the film is of a shanty demolition. The dialogue and action are largely nonsensical at this point, but we felt there is a support of reality behind all this. It is chit fund, fishery and construction mafia that have become leading vocational institute builders here. Prasanta: This hide and seek between the obvious and the orthogonal, the realist and the delirious, is something that is woven into the film, right, to which I wish to come back soon. But if we think about the question of politics—where the familial (since you interestingly mention parents) and the entrepreneurial come together—it is a classic secretive pickle for ensuring security, mostly economic. Now what is interesting is that institute and nation building through vocational training seems something counter-intuitive even from a parental and business perspective to me. Why would you as a parent want your daughter to get a quick vocational training after Standard XII and get into an entry-level job and lose the benefit of being professional, if that is the aim of a ‘reformed’ India? Are captains of our industry so short-sighted that they will lure cheap labour through vocational training rather than look for more durable qualities in a job-applicant? What I mean is: we may be seeing across the political spectrum a lure for an easy and virulent strain of libertarian aims rather than liberal ones. The liberal entrepreneur will hire from classics departments and teach the communicative part in-house, if need be. But you are right in the sense that perhaps the parents, politicos and tycoons have lost faith, have really turned all together cynical about the public-sphere. We know that corporate social responsibility is often quite mythical and instrumental—at best paternalistic. The ethical paradigm shift of even some of the large business houses in India is astonishingly short-sighted, as some recent media unearthing portrays. And your film deals with the newly formed conglomerates, which we know are sometimes just cobbled up ventures. So, this vocational approach: is it a matter of myopic vision or a more concerted and well worked out argument is something I wonder. What kind of thoughts did you have even as you were structuring the film? Moinak: We were not exactly thinking of the structure of a political process while making the film. The tycoon character was there all along in the script. By the time the film went into production we could see that seeking education the two wandering ‘thieves’ could well arrive at an encounter with someone who is both a land shark and education Mafioso. Such characters had become quite visible in West Bengal (also) by then. One could see their faces smiling from huge roadside hoardings or newspaper pages, watching over the chaos. I cannot immediately comment on the political aspect you have pointed to. As far as I can follow this drama the politics of it has a few visible features. First, the destruction of the possibility of democratic initiation on campus (no union, surveillance, uniform, etc.). Second, a project of producing lower level ‘industry-ready’ professionals. Isn’t that exactly the point – not to produce too many people of rounded skills? A large part of the IT industry, for example, does not need anything more than BPO and sales professionals. Why should they inculcate a more comprehensive set of skills? Then there is