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The (Postcolonial) Marxist Shift in Response to Technology
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/the-postcolonial-marxist-shift-in-responses-to-technology
<b>In her previous post, Asha Achuthan discussed, through the Gandhi-Tagore debates, the responses to science and technology that did not follow the dominant Marxist-nationalist positions. Later Marxist-postcolonial approaches to science and responses to technology were conflated in anti-technology arguments, particularly in development. In this post, the fifth in a series on her project, she will briefly trace the 1980s shift in Marxist thinking in India as a way of approaching the shift in the science and technology question. This exercise will reveal the ambivalence in Marxist practice toward continuing associations between the ‘rational-scientific’ on the one hand and the ‘revolutionary’ on the other.</b>
<p></p>
<h3>The importance of the subaltern <br /></h3>
<p>Ranajit Guha, writing
in 1982, was the first to consider, within Indian Marxism, the
structure of subaltern consciousness. Questioning the incidental place given to
the peasant in what I have called Marxist-nationalist frames, Guha proposed a
re-cognition of the subaltern – here the local peasant – as political and
politicised, and not merely a cog in the wheel or an included member of a
revolution conceived of by the vanguard. In re-conceptualising or
re-discovering (it is not clear which) the political, the Subaltern School, up
until the time of Subaltern Studies IV, brought up an analysis of colonialism
that challenged early and neo-colonialist historiographies, as dominance <em>without</em>
<em>hegemony</em> in at least the first fifty years of its existence. This
suggested that colonial power had not only <em>not</em>
worked with the active consent of ‘the people’; it had placed everything before
colonial time in the zone of non-history, and by extension, in the zone of the
pre-political. Nationalist historiographies had followed the same patterns in
addressing the peasant, thus leaving out the 'politics of the people' (Guha 1982). The Subaltern
Studies School up until Subaltern IV, then –</p>
<p>1.
Raised the question of subaltern consciousness.</p>
<p>2.
Uncovered the 'role of the peasant in nationalist
movements' as the subaltern domain of politics – a domain separate from the 'elite' nationalist domain – rather than an un-political 'sticks and stones'
activity.</p>
<p>3.
Re-read colonialism as a discourse of dominance without
hegemony, that resulted in separate elite and subaltern domains of politics.</p>
<p>4.
Challenged existing ‘elite historiography’ - both
colonialist and nationalist.</p>
<p>5.
Made these moves through a different mode of
history-writing that took into account unconventional sources, and used
different methodologies, producing, on that account, a different history.</p>
<p>I will not go into
the two significant challenges to the Subaltern School<a name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span></span></a> that came up with Subaltern
IV. For my purposes, the early Subaltern phase, in its shifts from the
Marxist-nationalist moment, is important for the ways in which it aligns with (or rather, facilitates) various critiques of technology that permeate discussions around development today, and sometimes seek alliances with Gandhian philosophies in doing
so. Needless to say, all of these relied for their critique on the vantage
point of the subaltern. That subaltern was an empirical category or condition
as set out in Subaltern Studies.<a name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[2]</span></span></a> I examine here two of
three spaces where this shift from earlier Marxist to subaltern perspectives is
visible – the popular science movements, the post-trade-union movements, and
the critiques of technology available in the postcolonial school.</p>
<p><strong>People’s Science Movements</strong></p>
<div class="pullquote">The <strong>Science and Rationalists’
Association of India</strong> (name of the organization in Bengali is <em>Bharatiya
Bigyan O</em> <em>Yuktibadi Samiti</em>) established on 1<sup>st</sup> March
1985, our organization is made up of like minded people coming from different
professions. We are not affiliated to any political party. </div>
<div class="pullquote"><strong> <u>Our aim</u></strong> is to
eradicate superstition and blind faith, which include religious fanaticism, astrology, caste-system, spiritualism and numerous other obscurantist
beliefs.</div>
<p> </p>
<div class="pullquote"> <strong><u>Our view</u></strong> is that
rational way of thinking shall be spread among the people as against spiritual
or religious teachings, and that alone can bring about social change. </div>
<div class="pullquote"><a href="http://www.srai.org/sra.htm">http://www.srai.org/sra.htm</a></div>
<p>The <a class="external-link" href="http://www.mfcindia.org/intro.htm">Medico Friends Circle</a> was set up in 1974 at
a national level, to critically analyse the existing health care system in
India and 'to evolve an appropriate approach
towards health care which is humane and which can meet the needs of the vast
majority of the people in our country'. With an emphasis on
the necessary role of the state in providing such health care, it demanded 'that medical and health care be available to everyone irrespective of her/his ability to pay … that medical intervention and health care be strictly guided
by the needs of our people and not by commercial interests'; and asked for 'popularisation and demystification of medical science and … the establishment
of an appropriate health care system in which different categories of health
professional are regarded as equal members of a democratically functioning
team'. Alongside, it also decided to push for 'active participation by the
community in the planning and carrying out preventive and promotive measures',
for 'a pattern of medical and health care adequately geared to the
predominantly rural health concerns of our country … a medical curriculum and
training tailored to the needs of the vast majority of the people in our
country', and asked, further, that 'research on non-allopathic therapies be
encouraged by allotting more funds and other resources and … that such
therapies get their proper place in our health–care'. It also asked that we be attentive to the
role of 'curative technology in saving a person’s life, alleviating suffering
or preventing disability'.</p>
<p>Community Development Medicinal Unit, an independent
non-profit voluntary organisation, was set up in 1984, to 'achieve the
basic societal need of facilitating access to essential medicines', to 'provide
unbiased drug information to health professionals and consumers, to weed out
spurious and “irrational” drug combinations from the market through consumer
information and pressure on government, to “negotiate with the Government to
formulate people-oriented drug policies and weed out irrational and hazardous
drugs from the Indian market, [and to] … conduct community-oriented research on
drugs' (<a href="http://www.cdmubengal.org/aboutus.html">http://www.cdmubengal.org/aboutus.html</a>).</p>
<p>These were a few of the many organisations that grew in the
70s and 80s to nurture the ‘social’, ‘civil’, ‘cultural’ space. Alongside other
organisations like the Janakiya Samskarika Vedi in Kerala, these determinedly
claimed an autonomous, non-profit <em>guardianship
of </em>'<em>the people</em>', reacting as much
to the violence in the political life of the entrenched Left as to its
vanguardism.<a name="_ftnref3" href="#_ftn3"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[3]</span></span></a>
Their primary aim, therefore, was to increase access and availability not only
to the fruits of scientific knowledge, namely drugs and curative technologies,
but to that knowledge itself, so that programmes of ‘popularisation and
demystification’, rural needs, ‘alternative system use’, were incorporated and
taken up as the activities of local science clubs.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the
stress was on 'active participation', which did not need an unpacking of
knowledge systems or knowledge-making, but rather an involvement at the level
of knowledge-dispensation, as also an extension of the WHO slogan '(think
globally) acting locally'. But the stress itself possibly had other histories.
Autonomous or otherwise, these organisations came out of what Raka Ray has
called the 'hegemonic field' of the Left, in Bengal
and Kerala, among other spaces. In attempting to move away from the notion of
vanguard party and the ‘mass’, ‘the people’ of a democratic state became the
organising metaphor for these ‘movements’ that not only 'took science to the
villages', but also admonished technology for its inattentions to the people. Appropriate technology and best practices, then, were the logical next step, as
also the accompanying challenge to big dams – all manifestations of technology
that suppressed subaltern voice.</p>
<p>While the <em>Bigyan O</em> <em>Yuktibadi
Samiti</em> may be the most caricatural
version available today, most of the people’s science movements did rely on
associations between 'rationalist' and scientific ideas, using the one to
bolster the other, or, in the later turn to the PSM, accuse the one on account
of the other. In this later turn, the PSM share the philosophy of the
anti-development positions, in their attention to the vantage point of the
subaltern as an empirical identity from which to critique the existing
knowledge frames. Part of the expectation from such movements, that
they would eliminate 'nativism' and challenge 'fundamentalism', then, was
obviously not met in the later turn.</p>
<p class="MsoBodyText3">Why have PSMs not
taken the fight to the priests and the temples?</p>
<p class="MsoBodyText3"><em>I believe that the nativist
turn by an important segment of Gandhian social activists and intellectuals
made it unfashionable to question tradition and religion. It became almost
obligatory to defend the 'wisdom' of the masses, as opposed to the 'violence' of modern scientific ideas themselves. This kind of
thinking moved the focus to 'safer' targets, like big development
projects, MNCs and such in which 'modern' technology and modern institutions
were the main culprits and people's traditions the source of resistance (I am
not suggesting that the left should not oppose MNCs and big development
projects, as and when they need to be opposed. But they have to be opposed
while defending a progressive, secular worldview; not in order to defend the 'people's wisdom' which contains many inherited prejudices and
superstitions). Science movements imbibed the populism and cultural
traditionalism of leading Gandhian/postcolonial intellectuals who took a highly
anti-modernist position for nearly three decades, starting around late 1970s
(coinciding with Indira Gandhi's emergency).</em></p>
<p> (Nanda 2005:
http://www.sacw.net/index.html)</p>
<p>Nanda’s statement is at the cusp of
the postcolonial appropriation of Marxian terminology in its anti-technology
arguments. We will go into these in more detail in the next post.</p>
<div><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1">
<p><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span></span></a> Spivak
on subaltern agency (<em>Can the Subaltern
Speak?</em>), and Ajit K. Chaudhury on Subaltern Studies’ dismissal of Lenin’s
consciousness as ‘elite’ (<em>In Search of a
Subaltern Lenin</em>). In effect, both moves challenged the <em>empirical subalternity </em>on which Subaltern Studies perspectives
seemed to stand.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p><a name="_ftn2" href="#_ftnref2"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[2]</span></span></a> 'The
word "subaltern" … as a name for the general attribute of subordination in
South Asian society whether this is expressed in terms of class, caste, age,
gender and office or in any other way'. And the work of Subaltern Studies
therefore relates to 'the history, politics, economics and sociology of
subalternity as well as to the attitudes, ideologies and belief systems – in
short, the culture informing that condition' (Guha 1988: 35).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p><a name="_ftn3" href="#_ftnref3"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[3]</span></span></a> Another element of the organizational perspectives is a certain divide
between the political and ‘other’ activities that this period saw. Paralleled by the base-superstructure divide,
or the massline versus military line was this socio-cultural activity versus
political activity, a debate well demonstrated in the history of the Janakiya
Samskarika Vedi (Sreejith K., EPW December 10, 2005).</p>
<p> </p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/the-postcolonial-marxist-shift-in-responses-to-technology'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/the-postcolonial-marxist-shift-in-responses-to-technology</a>
</p>
No publisherashahistories of internet in Indiarewiring bodieswomen and internetmathemes and medicine2011-08-03T09:47:22ZBlog EntryRewiring Bodies: Technology and the Nationalist Moment [2]
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/technology-and-the-nationalist-moment-2
<b>This is the third in a series of posts on Asha Achuthan's Rewiring Bodies project. In this post, Asha looks at the Tagore-Gandhi debates on technology to throw some light on the question of whether there was a nationalist alternative to the technology offered by the West. </b>
<div style="text-align: left;" class="pullquote">'Pandit Nehru wants
industrialization because he thinks that, if it is socialized, it would be free
from the evils of capitalism. My own view is that evils are inherent in
industrialism, and no amount of socialization can eradicate them.'</div>
<div style="text-align: left;" class="pullquote">'Instead of welcoming machinery as a boon, we should look upon it as an
evil.'</div>
<div style="text-align: left;" class="pullquote">"Division of labour there will necessarily be, but it will be a
division into various species of body labour and not a division into
intellectual labour to be confined to one class and body labour to be confined
to another class."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;" class="pullquote"> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;" class="pullquote">But where am I among the crowd, pushed from behind, pressed from all
sides? And what is this noise about me? If it is a song, then my own <em>sitar</em> can catch the tune and I join in
the chorus, for I am a singer. But if it is a shout, then my voice is wrecked
and I am lost in bewilderment. I have been trying all these days to find in it
a melody, straining my ear, but the idea of non-cooperation with its mighty
volume of sound does not sing to me, its congregated menace of negations
shouts. And I say to myself, “If you cannot keep step with your countrymen at
this great crisis of their history, never say that you are right and the rest
of them wrong; only give up your role as a soldier, go back to your corner as a
poet, be ready to accept popular derision and disgrace.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;" class="pullquote">(Tagore 1921:
Chatterjee 56)</div>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent"> </p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">The Tagore-Gandhi debates – as a window on the
contestations between the ambivalent 'modern' somewhat removed from the
mainstream of nationalist politics, and the recalcitrant 'pastoral' within the
same stream – perhaps give a better idea of the responses to modernity and
science than the Nehru-Gandhi dialogues or the former's reading of the latter's
philosophy. In a series of letters exchanged between 1929 and 1933, and earlier,
in debates conducted in the pages of <em>Young
India </em>and <em>Modern Review</em>, Gandhi
and Tagore spoke to each other of rural reconstruction, of the possibilities
and limits of handicraft industries and the <em>charkha</em>
programme, of the discourse of science as opposed to that of religiosity.
Although a lot of the dialogue between them is neither direct nor addressing
the other’s concerns fully, both had blueprints for rural programmes of
self-sufficiency; both were opposed to heavy technology, both were opposed to
state views on education. For both thinkers, the anti-colonial struggle was
symbolised in the protest against foreign cloth, heavy technology, or
government-sponsored education. This protest, in the form of the call for
swaraj, differed in nuance in Tagore and Gandhi, but essentially it signified a
moral freedom from the West, a dignity of human labour, a protection of the
intellect from colonization. Swaraj would involve, for both, a reconstruction
of life – the moral as well as the material.</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">For both, the moral and the
material were inextricably linked; the difference seems to be in the stress on
attaining material freedom through the moral in Tagore, and on attaining moral
freedom through material activity in Gandhi’s thought. Nowhere was this more
evident than in the different systems of schooling, both outside the
state-sponsored system, that Gandhi and Tagore set up, in Wardha and
Santiniketan respectively. Both had different and powerful analyses of the
hegemony of western science, and consequently different views on the nature of
oppositional practice. A point Akeel Bilgrami has noted about Gandhi’s thought
may be true of both thinkers here, namely, the integrity of their thought, the
difficulty of picking strands of it regarding particular issues, or of separating
their political impulses from their epistemological ones. Let us, for our
purposes, however, force such an initial strand, and take up the programme/metaphor of the charkha as 'cottage machine'<a name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span></span></a>
to look at the debate around development and technology that ensued around it
between the two thinkers.</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">For Gandhi, the <em>charkha</em> programme was a
symbol for rural cooperation – a 'non-co-operation … neither with the English,
nor with the West [but] with the system the English have established' (1921,
‘The Great Sentinel’, addressed to Tagore). That system indicated the broad
sweep of Western materialism, expressed in hugely consumptive desires, and for
Gandhi, the charkha stood for a rejection of this exchange value for use value
– self-sufficiency. Gandhi’s early proposals around spinning the <em>charkha</em> offered an alternative programme
of rural construction, particularly the exercise of self-sufficiency. These
were followed up in 1921 in the laying down of 'indispensable conditions for
swaraj' (188-9). Later, he stood firm through Tagore’s qualified scepticism and
other critiques, moving from the larger programme to <em>charkha</em> as spiritual metaphor; 'To the perplexed', he said that 'I
do regard the spinning-wheel as a gateway to <em>my</em> spiritual salvation, but I recommend it to others only as a
powerful weapon for the attainment of swaraj and the amelioration of the
economic condition of the country' (Gandhi <em>Collected
Works </em>vol. 30, 450-1, 1958, quoted in Chatterjee 1986: 108). In response to
the poet’s chagrin at the requirement of all to spin, 'I do indeed ask the poet
and the sage to spin the wheel as a sacrament. ... The call of the spinning
wheel is the ... call of love. And love is <em>swaraj</em>. The spinning wheel
will 'curb the mind' when the time is spent on necessary physical labour can be
said to do so. ... I do want growth ... but I want all these for the soul. ...
A plea for the spinning wheel is a plea for recognising the dignity of labour.'
88-9. That growth of the soul, that spiritual salvation, the actual realisation
of swaraj, meant for Gandhi the rejection of the ‘system’ – the moral force
that made it irrelevant. That system included the railways and hospitals,
which, however, Gandhi was not 'aiming at destroying … though [he] would
certainly welcome their natural destruction … Still less … [was he] trying to
destroy all machinery and mills' (Gandhi <em>Young
India </em>26 January 1921, 33, Chatterjee).<a name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[2]</span></span></a>
For he made the conventional acknowledgement that '[m]achinery has its place;
it has come to stay. But it must not be allowed to displace the necessary human
labour ... I would welcome every improvement in the cottage machine but I know
that it is criminal to displace the hand labour by the introduction of
power-driven spindles unless one is at the same time ready to give millions of
farmers some other occupation in their homes'
(Gandhi 1925, 'The Poet and the <em>charkha</em>', Young India, 5 November, Chatterjee 125).</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Was Tagore too as clearly opposed to heavy
technology? The <em>yantra</em> <em>danava</em> is a recurring theme in his
poetry, and even at the time of his critique of Gandhi’s <em>charkha</em> programme, he was writing, in plays like <em>Mukta Dhara </em>and <em>Rakta</em> <em>Karabi</em>, searing
critiques of the effects of technology on people’s lives.<a name="_ftnref3" href="#_ftn3"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[3]</span></span></a>
As far as the rejection of the West went, also, he was with Gandhi, holding him
up as the 'Mahatma [who], frail in body and devoid of material resources,
should call up the immense power of the meek …' ('Tagore’s reflections on
non-cooperation and cooperation, <em>Modern
Review</em>, May 1921, Chatterjee 55), and reminding his readers that 'I have
seen the West; I covet not the unholy feast, in which she revels every moment,
growing more and more bloated and red and dangerously delirious …' (ibid,
55-9). His was not the mode of Non-Cooperation, however, for this movement,
with its 'noise', its particular strategems that instrumentalised, made 'barren
and untrue' the spirit of the Mahatma’s words, failed to provide for him the
‘melody’ he needed.<a name="_ftnref4" href="#_ftn4"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[4]</span></span></a> On the
yantra itself, Tagore clearly had ambivalent views, for on other occasions in his
poetry he offers what might be <em>homage</em>
– yantra namah.<a name="_ftnref5" href="#_ftn5"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[5]</span></span></a></p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">While the withering critique of railways, doctors
and lawyers in <em>Hind Swaraj</em>
exemplifies at least the early Gandhi’s views on these symbols of modernity and
the need for their unconditional rejection,<a name="_ftnref6" href="#_ftn6"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[6]</span></span></a>
Tagore reacted again and again to such a view, particularly to the moral
element shoring it up, complaining, for instance, about the principles of the <em>charkha</em> programme - 'economics is
bundled out and a fictitious moral dictum dragged in its place' (Tagore, ‘The
Call of Truth’). While being opposed to heavy technology, Tagore refused to
accede to the “magical formula that foreign cloth is impure” (Tagore, ‘The Call
of Truth’). 'Swaraj,' he says, 'is not concerned with our apparel only - it
cannot be established on cheap clothing; its foundation is in the mind ... in
no country in the world is the building up of swaraj completed ... the root of
such bondage is always within the mind. ... A mere statement, in lieu of
argument, will never do. ... We have enough of magic in the country ... That is
exactly why I am so anxious to re-instate reason on its throne.' [Chatterjee
82].</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">What, then, of his critique of Western materialism? 'You know that I do not believe in the material civilisation of the West just
as I do not believe in the physical body to be the highest truth in man. But I
still less believe in the destruction of the physical body, and the ignoring of
the material necessities of life. What is needed is establishment of harmony
between the physical and spiritual nature of man, maintaining of balance
between the foundation and superstructure. I believe in the true meeting of the
East and the West. Love is the ultimate truth of soul. We should do all we can,
not to outrage that truth, to carry its banner against all opposition. The idea
of non-cooperation unnecessarily hurts that truth. It is not our heart fire but
the fire that burns out our hearth and home.' ('Tagore’s reflections on
non-cooperation and cooperation', <em>Modern
Review</em>, May 1921, Chatterjee 59)</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">In this sense, there was an affinity between Tagore
and Nehru – with respect to desirable national attitudes to faith, unreason, or
imperialist policy. For Tagore, swaraj was, as he wrote to Gandhi, '<em>maya</em>, … like a mist, that will vanish
leaving no stain on the radiance of the Eternal. However we may delude
ourselves with the phrases learnt from the West, <em>Swaraj</em> is not our objective.' (Tagore 1921:)<a name="_ftnref7" href="#_ftn7"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[7]</span></span></a></p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">On the ability of the charkha to bring about rural
reconstruction, Tagore avers – 'The discussion, so far, has proceeded on the
assumption that the large-scale production of homespun thread and cloth will
result in the alleviation of the country's poverty. ... My complaint is, that
by the promulgation of this confusion between <em>swaraj</em> and <em>charkha</em>,
the mind of the country is being distracted from <em>swaraj</em>.' [Chatterjee
118]. 'One thing is certain, that the all-embracing poverty which has
overwhelmed our country cannot be removed by working with our hands to the
neglect of science. … If a great union is to be achieved, its field must be
great likewise ... the religion of economics is where we should above all try
to bring about this union of ours.' [Chatterjee 104-6-7]. What Tagore perceived
as happening in the charkha programme, on the other hand, was the 'raising of
the charkha to a higher place than is its due, thereby distracting attention
from other more important factors in our task of all-round reconstruction.'
[Chatterjee 112].</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Tagore had
other problems with charkha and its being tied to swaraj. For one, the ‘cult’
of the charkha would not work for swaraj because it is an “external
achievement”, apart from being a call to obedience that only recalled slavery
in its worst form.<a name="_ftnref8" href="#_ftn8"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[8]</span></span></a> For
another, the isolationism enshrined in the act of rejecting foreign cloth only
seemed to bring back the “sin of untouchability” in the guise of the charkha
versus ‘impure’ foreign cloth. Further, and here Tagore raises his most
eloquent objection, his failure to see a difference between the charkha and the
high machine that introduces repetitive activity, boredom, and alienation in
human labour. “Humanity”, he says, “has ever been beset with the grave problem,
how to rescue the large majority of the people from being reduced to the stage
of machines. ...” [Chatterjee 104-5]. The discovery of the wheel signified, for
Tagore, “[t]he facility of motion … given to inert matter [which] enabled it to
bear much of man’s burden … [and t]his was but right, for Matter is the true <em>shudra</em>;
while with his dual existence in body and mind, Man is a <em>dwija</em>. … Thus,
whether in the shape of the spinning wheel, or the potter’s wheel or the wheel
of a vehicle, the wheel has rescued innumerable men from the <em>shudra’s</em>
estate …” (“The Cult of the Charkha”, <em>Modern Review</em>, September 1925,
Chatterjee 104). In such a scenario, it may be argued that “spinning is … a
creative act. But that is not so; for, by turning its wheel man merely becomes
an appendage of the charkha; that is to say, he but does himself what a machine
might have done: he converts his living energy into a dead turning movement.
... The machine is solitary ... likewise alone is the man ... for the thread
produced by his charkha is not for him a thread of necessary relationship with
others ... He becomes a machine, isolated, companionless” (ibid). And why is
this? Tagore refers back, here, to the discus of Vishnu which signifies the
“process of movement, the ever active power seeking fulfilment. … Man has
[therefore] not yet come to the end of the power of the revolving wheel. So if
we are taught that in the pristine <em>charkha</em> we have exhausted all the
means of spinning thread, we shall not gain the favour of Vishnu … If we are
wilfully blind to the grand vision of whirling forces, which science has
revealed, the <em>charkha</em> will cease to have any message for us.”
(Chatterjee 104) Therefore we must realise that “<em>swaraj</em> will advance,
not propelled by the mechanical revolution of the charkha, but taken by the
organic processes of its own living growth” [Chatterjee 121].</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Tagore
refers, again and again in his polemic, to the dynamicity inherent both in the
truth of Vishnu, and in the progress of science, as against the dead burden of
“rites and ceremonials” that have produced in “India’s people” the habit of
relying on external agencies rather than on the self. The charkha embodies for
Tagore such an external object, static. Is he then subsuming the wheel and its
dynamicity in the discourse of science? A careful reading of Tagore’s polemic
seems to suggest that his point is rather in examining the nature of material
activity and making the connection, through dynamicity, without which neither
science nor the charkha might have any value.</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">There were other differences. Tagore recognized that
for Gandhi, productive manual work, such as that embodied in the charkha, was
the "prime means of intellectual training" (<em>Harijan</em>, 18 sep 1937). The sort of
oneness that such collective occupational activity may create for Gandhi,
however, fails to move Tagore, for whom the act is a performance of sameness
and stagnation. Charkha, he says, in one of his many tirades against the
programme, is “a befogged reliance on … narrow paths as the sole means of
gaining a vast realisation.” [Chatterjee
114]. As such, the philosophy of swaraj as it was being enacted, along with the
programme of Non-cooperation and rejection of the West, only produced an
isolation, a soliloquous discourse, a “struggle to alienate our heart and mind
from those of the West … [that could only be] an attempt at spiritual suicide …
India has ever declared”, he said, “that Unity is Truth, and separateness is <em>maya</em>.
This unity … is that which comprehends all and therefore can never be reached
through the path of negation … Therefore my one prayer is: let India stand for
the cooperation of all peoples of the world. The spirit of rejection finds its
support in the consciousness of separateness, the spirit of acceptance in the
consciousness of unity” (Tagore’s
reflections on non-cooperation and cooperation, <em>Modern Review</em>, May 1921, Chatterjee 62). More disturbing for
him was the violence enshrined in the principle of Non-cooperation. “The idea
of non-cooperation is political asceticism. ... It has at its back a fierce joy
of annihilation which at best is asceticism, and at its worst is that orgy of
frightfulness in which the human nature, losing faith in the basic reality of
normal life, finds a disinterested delight in an unmeaning devastation ...
[non-cooperation] in its passive moral form is asceticism and in its active
moral form is violence. ... The desert is as much a form of <em>himsa</em>
(malignance) as is the raging sea in storms, they both are against life” (Tagore’s reflections on non-cooperation and
cooperation, <em>Modern Review</em>, May 1921,
Chatterjee 57-8). Tagore was, perhaps, making a stronger critique, here, of the
violence embedded in political collectivities, and the moral questions
contained in non-violence as a practice.<a name="_ftnref9" href="#_ftn9"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[9]</span></span></a></p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Gandhi
responded to the polemic in several ways. At pains to explain to the poet the
relevance of the charkha, he reminded the latter, in some exhaustion, that “I
do not draw a sharp distinction ... between ethics and economics.” [Chatterjee 90]. Elsewhere he clarifies
in no uncertain terms – “I am always reminded of one thing which the well-known
British economist Adam Smith has said … he has described some economic laws as
universal and absolute. Then he has described certain situations which may be
an obstacle to the operation of these laws. These disturbing factors are the
human nature, the human temperament or altruism inherent in it. Now, the economics
of khadi is just opposite of it. Benevolence which is inherent in human nature
is the very foundation of the economics of khadi. What Adam Smith has described
as pure economic activity based merely on the calculations of profit and loss
is a selfish attitude and it is an obstacle to the development of khadi; and it
is the function of a champion of khadi to counteract this tendency.”
(Chatterjee 81) Further, “… I have asked no one to abandon his calling, but on
the contrary to adorn it by giving every day only thirty minutes to spinning as
sacrifice for the whole nation. … The Poet thinks that the <em>charkha</em> is
calculated to bring about a deathlike sameness in the nation and thus imagining
he would shun it if he could. The truth is that the <em>charkha</em> is intended
to realise the essential and living oneness of interest among India’s myriads
… All I say is that there is a sameness, identity or oneness behind the
multiplicity and variety. And so do I hold that behind a variety of occupations
there is an indispensable sameness also of occupation” (Gandhi 1925, “The Poet
and the <em>charkha</em>”, 124).</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Does
that involve a separation from the world, an isolationist discourse? Perhaps
not … for “the message of
Non-cooperation, Non-violence and swadeshi, is a message to the world
...[through] Non-cooperation [which] is a retirement within ourselves … [for
i]n my humble opinion, rejection is as much an ideal as the acceptance of a
thing. It is as necessary to reject untruth as it is to accept truth. ... I
make bold to say that <em>mukti</em> (emancipation) is as much a negative state
as <em>nirvana</em>. ... I therefore think that the Poet has been unnecessarily
alarmed at the negative aspect of Non-cooperation. We had lost the power of
saying 'no'.” [Chatterjee 66-7]. (“The Poet’s anxiety”. <em>Young India</em>, 1
June 1921). As to the rest of the world, “I want the cultures of all the lands
to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off
my feet by any ... Mine is not the religion of the prison house. It has room
for the least among God’s creation. But it is proof against insolence, pride of
race, religion or colour”[ Chatterjee 64]. (“The Poet’s anxiety”. <em>Young India</em>, 1
June 1921).</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Elsewhere, in response to alternative positions like
that of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, who believed the absence of cultural
attributes had resulted in India’s subjugation by the British, Gandhi spoke,
rather, of the disjuncture between the prevailing politics and the morality of
the community that had resulted in the same. Chatterjee presents the moment of
Gandhi in nationalist politics as the moment of manoeuvre, proposing that
Gandhi’s critique of civil society and representative democracy emerges through
his reworking of the relationship between the moral and the political. Without
going in to the merits of Chatterjee’s formulation here, we could try to
understand this separation that Gandhi makes, in order to better understand his
accompanying take not only on the value of science, but on a necessary
relationship between its use and the morality of the community.</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">Again and again, in response to industrialisation,
in response to the work of doctors of medicine, in response to “much that goes
under the name of modern civilisation” (quoted in Chatterjee 1986: 80), Gandhi
reacts. “I overeat, I have indigestion, I go to the doctor, he gives me
medicine, I am cured. I overeat again, I take his pills again. Had I not taken
the pills in the first instance, I would have suffered the punishment deserved
by me and I would not have overeaten again. The doctor intervened and helped me
to indulge myself” (Chatterjee 84). And so with history, and so with the law,
all of which are the record of visible illness rather than of the truth. In
Gandhi’s world, it would seem that “[t]rue knowledge [which] gives a moral
standing and moral strength” (Chatterjee 119), can be the only basis for any
politics. To that extent, Non-cooperation or satyagraha, as “intense political
activity” rather than passive resistance, but in the form of a negation of the
existing political frameworks, was born. The “disobedience” here was not only
of the British administration, but of existing modalities of resistance. The
positive content of the programme was that of rural construction through khadi
and the charkha programme, which for Gandhi would be the true method of
non-violent swaraj. This too, however, needed the abdication of the state from
responsibility. The collectivity that Tagore found so suspect in this regard
was for Gandhi an experiment in the modalities of non-violent mass resistance.
And to Tagore’s eloquent argument against the charkha on account of its
staticity, what more eloquent answer than this – “It is a charge against India that her
people are so uncivilized, ignorant and stolid, that it is not possible to
induce them to adopt any changes. It is a charge really against our merit. What
we have tested and found true on the anvil of experience, we dare not change”
(Chatterjee 96).</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">How does this otherwise rich polemic help us to
understand positions on science and technology? Is Gandhi a pastoral
philosopher or a peasant intellectual proposing a separate epistemic realm from
that of the West? Can he be labelled a Luddite? Is he caught, like the European
Romantics were, in the dilemma between Reason and Morality? Or is he making a
fundamental distinction between truth and the knowledge encompassed in
disciplines like science and history, suggesting that truth cannot but strike
elsewhere from knowledge? While the answers to each of these may be difficult,
while individual examples for each of these arguments may be found in Gandhi if
not seen as part of the integral picture, and while any attempt to
intellectualise his thought may be doomed from the start, I might perhaps
attempt to say that there is, here, a critique of existing knowledge systems,
of which scientific knowledge is one, that calls for a fundamentally new theory
of knowledge, a theory of knowledge inextricably linked with morality, rather
than a choice of alternate system from the ‘West’ or any other.</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent"> </p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: left;" class="MsoBodyTextIndent">In the next post, coming in a few days from now, we
will see how a peculiar conflation of these positions alongwith shifts in
Marxist thinking in India
helped to produce the classical responses to technology that then pervaded
feminist thinking and other paradigmatic frameworks on thinking gender and
technology.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<div><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1">
<p><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span></span></a> (Gandhi
1925, “The Poet and the <em>charkha</em>”, 125).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p><a name="_ftn2" href="#_ftnref2"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[2]</span></span></a> Gandhi’s
critique of these articles of faith of the scientific world, then, couched as
it was in moral language, was clearly outside the thematic of nationalist
politics, and more an attitude of selfness. While Nehru, for different reasons,
had ambivalent responses to nationalism as an ideology, his responses were
within the ambit of Enlightenment critiques of nationalism – a position Gandhi
was clearly out of.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p><a name="_ftn3" href="#_ftnref3"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[3]</span></span></a> <em>Mukta Dhara</em> – Free Current – on the
question of construction of a large dam as symbolizing ‘man’s’ desire to
control nature, or <em>Rakta Karabi</em> – Red
Oleander – the story of a cruel king who lives behind an iron curtain while his
subjects, working under terrible conditions in underground mines, suffer untold
cruelties meted out by him, speak of displacement, the facelessness of
technology, of power, of dehumanizing impulses in technology.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<p><a name="_ftn4" href="#_ftnref4"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[4]</span></span></a> Probably
the sentiment Tagore experienced when he expressed his abhorrence of an
instrumentalist view of satyagraha which he felt was being used as a “political
gamble [while] their minds [continued to be] corroded by untruth …” Tagore’s
‘Call of Truth’, <em>Modern Review</em>.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<p><a name="_ftn5" href="#_ftnref5"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[5]</span></span></a> I am
grateful to Prasanta Chakravarty for this useful insight.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<p><a name="_ftn6" href="#_ftnref6"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[6]</span></span></a> So that
Romain Rolland calls <em>Hind</em> <em>Swaraj</em> 'the negation of Progress and
also of European science.' [Chatterjee
1986: 85]</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<p><a name="_ftn7" href="#_ftnref7"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[7]</span></span></a> This, from a Tagore who consistently held an
anti-statist position, on the grounds that unlike in Europe, the State was
never a central entity in the life of the Indian nation, and that further, in
the present time, i.e. in British India, the state is external to society,
rather than a part of it. “Our fight” as he puts it, “is a spiritual fight … to
emancipate Man from the meshes … [of] these organisations of National Egoism …
We have no word for Nation in our language. When we borrow this word from other
people, it never fits us. For we are to make our league with <em>Narayan</em> …” (Tagore’s reflections on
non-cooperation and cooperation, <em>Modern
Review</em>, May 1921).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn8">
<p><a name="_ftn8" href="#_ftnref8"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[8]</span></span></a> Those for whom authority is needed instead of
reason, will invariably accept despotism in place of freedom. ... [Chatterjee
82].</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn9">
<p><a name="_ftn9" href="#_ftnref9"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[9]</span></span></a> Tagore
draws parallels with his reading of the negativity of Buddhism to make his
point – “<em>Brahma-vidya </em>(the cult of Brahma, the Infinite Being) in India has for
its object <em>mukti</em>, emancipation, while Buddhism has <em>nirvana</em>,
extinction. It may be argued that both have the same idea in different names.
But names represent attitudes of mind, emphasize particular aspects of truth. <em>Mukti</em>
draws our attention to the positive, and <em>nirvana</em> to the negative side of
truth.</p>
<p>Buddha kept silence all through his teachings about
the truth of the <em>Om</em>, the everlasting yes, his implication being
that by the negative path of destroying the self we naturally reach that truth.
Therefore he emphasized the fact of <em>dukkha</em> (misery) which had to be
avoided and the <em>Brahma-vidya</em> emphasized the fact of <em>ananda</em>, joy,
which had to be attained. … Therefore, the idea of life’s training was
different in the Vedic period from that of the Buddhistic. … The abnormal type
of asceticism to which Buddhism gave rise in India reveled in celibacy and
mutilation of life in all different forms …” (Tagore’s reflections on non-cooperation and cooperation, <em>Modern Review</em>, May 1921, Chatterjee 57).
A significant difference in Tagore’s and Gandhi’s approach to the ‘moral’ seems
to be in evidence here – while for the former it is a need for creativity that
will be stifled by subjection to any constraint like collective action without
the conviction of the reasoning intellect – be it ritual or any other
“unreasoned creed” (The Call of Truth), for Gandhi, it was about self-denial –
“Our civilization, our culture, our <em>swaraj</em> depend not upon multiplying
our wants – self-indulgence, but upon restricting our wants – self-denial”
(“The Conditions of <em>swaraj</em>”, <em>Young India</em>, 23 February 1921,
Chatterjee 189). More than a simple separation of reason-unreason between the
two thinkers as some commentators have made out, this may be read as a comment
on the political that was reiterated by Tagore again in his repeated references
to the separation between truth and the “barren stratagems of the political”,
and moreover, the violence constitutive of the latter. In that respect,
Gandhi’s later frustrations, and stepping away, from the movement, may suggest
a greater overlap between their positions.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/technology-and-the-nationalist-moment-2'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/technology-and-the-nationalist-moment-2</a>
</p>
No publisherashahistories of internet in Indiarewiring bodieswomen and internetmathemes and medicine2011-08-03T09:47:17ZBlog EntryRewiring Bodies: Technology and the Nationalist Moment [1]
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/technology-and-the-nationalist-moment
<b>This is the second post in a series by Asha Achuthan on her project, Rewiring Bodies. In this blog entry, Asha looks at the trajectory of responses to technology in India to understand the genesis of the assumption that the subjects of technology are separate from the tool, machine, or instrument. </b>
<p>The question
of technology perhaps arose in greatest relief in India in development and the
responses to development. In order to understand this, we need to understand
the pre-history of this activity in the nationalist moments.</p>
<p>A version of
Marxism pervaded Nehru’s nationalism – one that espoused the 'scientific,
economic sense' of progress. Some of the emphasis placed in the Indian National
Congress on economic issues, particularly during the 1937 elections, was the
direct result of Nehru’s urgings. This changed after 1937, but Nehruvian
socialism, inasmuch as it valued a materialist conception of history, or
considered the economic as important in the last instance, continued to pervade
nationalist agendas. Analyses of India’s
problems too were in this mode – 'Parties [in an independent India] will be
formed with economic ideals. There will be socialists, anti-socialists,
zamindars, kisans and other similar groups. It will be ridiculous to think of
parties founded on a religious or communal basis' (Nehru 1931: 284, quoted in
Seth 1995: 212).</p>
<p>Nehru’s stand on nationalism, by distinguishing between
oppressor and oppressed nations, also legitimised certain nationalisms, while
remaining critical of nationalism in general.<a name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span></span></a>
Needless to say, this vision of nationalism had as its underlying philosophy
rationalist Enlightenment thought, and was also tied to internationalism<a name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[2]</span></span></a>
and progress – a progress that would bring socialism as a 'saner ordering of
human affairs' rather than as a 'moral issue' (Nehru, Selected Works, 'Whither India': 8, quoted in Seth 215). To
that end, the scientific temper, as Nehru reiterates again and again, is the
requirement.<a name="_ftnref3" href="#_ftn3"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[3]</span></span></a>
And to realise that requirement, Nehru did, apart from his policy efforts, take
up the philosophical debate, pointing to 'the essential basis of Indian thought
for ages past … [which] fits in with the scientific temper and approach' (Nehru
1946: 526, quoted in Chatterjee 1986: 139). This temper informed, for this
version of nationalism, analyses of colonialism, cultural difference, religion,
and industrialisation; each of the first three were attributable to economic
backwardness and disparity, and the removal of these disparities, accompanied
by the development of ‘big’ science and technology, was the answer.</p>
<p>As far as
Nehru was concerned, the colonial state was the enemy of such
industrialisation, partly owing to its own selfish commercial interests, but
more importantly because such interests went against the universal models of
economic growth wherein developing nations also needed to grow in order to keep
the rich nations healthy. For his version of scientific socialism, then, a
critique of colonialism could not simultaneously be a critique of reason or
modernity – colonialism was ‘wrong’ primarily because it did not fulfil the
requirements of modern growth. Clearly, this also involved for Nehru certain
expectations of the national bourgeoisie who would provide political
leadership.</p>
<p>What confounded him, therefore, were the ‘spontaneous’ peasant
uprisings, as also the Gandhian philosophy of development that was singularly
in conflict with his own notions of progress. Both of these meant for Nehru a
shift not only from reason to unreason, but, in parallel, from the political to
the utopian. Chatterjee (1986) suggests that Nehru solved the problem by granting
to Gandhi a stage in the ‘passive revolution’ – an intervention – where, once
the stage had been set for the real political battle, the ‘masses’ could be won
over to the larger nationalist cause through faith, emotion, or other such
means both incomprehensible and vague of objective (to Nehru). The larger
nationalist cause was the promotion of large-scale industry over small-scale or
cottage industries, since 'the world and the dominating facts of the situation
that confront it have decided in favour of' the former' (Nehru Discovery of India,
1946: 414, quoted in Chatterjee 1986: 144). The ‘masses’, by whom Nehru usually
meant the peasantry, needed to recognize, like the rest of India, that
small-scale industry in these 'dominating facts of the situation' could only
function as a 'colonial appendage' (413). Industrialisation and expert
knowledge were what were needed for progress and a modern nation.</p>
<p>After
independence, this project of the modern nation was taken up by planning – what
Chatterjee calls the new systems-theorists’ utopia. In this scheme of things,
once political independence had been achieved and independent state control set
up, economic disparities would gradually disappear, for the only real problem
would be one of access, a technical rather than political issue. Planning, as
far as Nehru was concerned, would take care of this. Planning involved experts,
and an approach to individual concrete problems at a practical level, not a
political philosophy. 'Planning essentially consists in balancing ...'
(Nehru 1957: 51, quoted in Chatterjee 1986: 159) and 'co-operation in planning
was particularly soothing ... in pleasant contrast to the squabbles and
conflicts of politics' (Nehru 1946: 405, quoted in Chatterjee 1986: 160).
Further, '[s]cientific planning enables us to increase our production, and
socialism comes in when we plan to distribute production evenly' (Nehru 1962:
151, quoted in Chatterjee 1986: 159).</p>
<p>Socialism too, then, becomes, rather than
a system of thought or a violent class struggle, the pragmatic planning of a
national economy – one that, if adequately planned, would automatically produce
the 'classless society with equal economic justice and opportunity for all, a
society organised on a planned basis for the raising of mankind to higher
material and cultured levels, to a cultivation of spiritual values … ultimately
a world order' (Nehru 1936: 552, quoted in Chatterjee 1986: 161). For
Chatterjee, this selective appropriation of scientific Marxism was how the
reason-unreason binary was precipitated, giving rise to a different politics
for the elite and the subaltern in mature nationalist thought. In the next post
I will try to demonstrate how this formulation of Chatterjee’s was one of the
foundations from which the critiques of development too took off.<a name="_ftnref4" href="#_ftn4"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[4]</span></span></a></p>
<p>My point here is to cull, from among
these debates, both the routes taken in development thinking and the contexts
for postcolonial approaches to the science and technology question. Marxism, in
its early nationalist avatar, presented an approach to science that involved
its accurate interpretation, application and access, rather than any critique.
As is evident from the debates between Nehru and the CPI,<a name="_ftnref5" href="#_ftn5"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[5]</span></span></a>
and Nehru’s own writing on the subject,<a name="_ftnref6" href="#_ftn6"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[6]</span></span></a>
colonialism was equal to capitalism, the anti-imperialist struggle of the
Indian masses was the route to independence, and the change in forces of
production would needs must bring about a change in the means of production.
For Nehru then, the nationalist agenda consisted at least in part of bringing
to the third world access to technology and a transformation in the forces of
production that would address poverty and unemployment. In the
Marxist-nationalist space, the debate was about what would be the agent of
change – the nationalist bourgeoisie or the working class; also whether it
would be forces of production by themselves or the subjective sense of the
proletariat.</p>
<p>But both
third-worldism and Indian nationalism had other, powerful and different
approaches to the same questions – the analysis of colonialism and the required
response, the question of technology, the concept of the state/cultural
difference. Was there then a nationalist alternative to the technology offered
by the West? We will, in the next post, look at the Tagore-Gandhi debates
on technology to throw some light on this question.</p>
<p> </p>
<div><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1">
<p><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span></span></a> To
identify within oppressed nations overarching standpoints was also therefore,
in this frame, problematic, for, '[d]o we place the masses, the peasantry and
the workers first, or some other small class at the head of our list? Let us
give the benefits of freedom to as many groups and classes as possible, but
essentially whom do we stand for, and when a conflict arises whose side must we
take?' [4-5] Nehru, <em>Whither India
</em>1933]</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p><a name="_ftn2" href="#_ftnref2"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[2]</span></span></a> 'Differences
[in national realities] there are but they are chiefly due to different stages
of economic growth.' [ibid, 5]</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p><a name="_ftn3" href="#_ftnref3"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[3]</span></span></a> 'It is
better to understand a part of the truth, and apply it to our lives, than to
understand nothing at all and flounder helplessly in a vain attempt to pierce
the mystery of existence … It is the scientific approach, the adventurous and
yet critical temper of science, the search for truth and new knowledge, the
refusal to accept anything without testing and trial, the capacity to change
previous conclusions in the face of new evidence, the reliance on observed fact
and not on preconceived theory … not merely for the application of science but
for life itself …' (Nehru 1946: 523, quoted in Chatterjee 1986: 139).</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<p><a name="_ftn4" href="#_ftnref4"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[4]</span></span></a> Seth has
concluded, differently from Chatterjee, that this was not a simple
appropriation of scientific Marxism, leaving its political core alone.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<p><a name="_ftn5" href="#_ftnref5"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[5]</span></span></a> See
Palme Dutt and his efforts to bring together the communist movement, the
democratic camp and the nationalist movement. Nehru’s truck with the communists
more or less dissolved around the response to the August 1942 revolution and
the dissent over relations with the Muslim League.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<p><a name="_ftn6" href="#_ftnref6"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[6]</span></span></a> At his
second Presidential address to the Indian National Congress in Lucknow on April 12, 1936, Nehru repeated some of his
earlier commitment on this, 'I am convinced that the only key to the solution
of the world’s problem and of India’s problem lies in socialism, and when I use
the word I do so not in a vague, humanitarian way but in the scientific,
economic sense.' From Jawaharlal Nehru, <em>Selected
Works</em>, vol. 7, p. 180, quoted in Seth 1995: 222.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/technology-and-the-nationalist-moment'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/technology-and-the-nationalist-moment</a>
</p>
No publisherashahistories of internet in Indiarewiring bodieswomen and internetmathemes and medicine2011-08-03T09:47:03ZBlog EntryPleasure and Pornography: Initial Encounters with the Unknown
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/law-video-technology/xxx-files-initial-encounters-with-the-unknown
<b>This blog entry is the first in a series by Namita Malhotra on her CIS-RAW project that is about pornography, Internet, sexuality, law, new media and technology. She aims for this to be a multi media and research project/journey which is able to cite and draw on various sources including legal studies, film studies and philosophy, academic and historical work on sexuality, art, film and pornography itself. </b>
<p>There are few dilemmas that one is faced with when working on the vague and over extended category of pornography. The first is the very familiar feminist dilemma over pornography, and the position of radical feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon--pornography is violence or sexually explicit subordination of women. This is more popularly encapsulated in Robin Morgan’s words--pornography is the theory and rape is the practice. Even if this can be collapsed into the positions of pro-sex and anti-sex feminists, it does initially haunt any research agenda on pornography, especially for a guilty quasi-feminist like myself.</p>
<p>However, some of my previous writings have attempted to deal with the position of the women’s movement, specifically in India, on pornography (the details are given below) and here I hope to move beyond either the moral or feminist positions on pornography, to examine what the pervasive phenomenon does. One of the strands that I hope to continue to explore is the relation of body to film. Though film studies is mostly focused on the visual sense, few scholars have looked on film as a bodily experience and attempted to understand the mimetic relation between the body of the 'viewer' and the body of the film. A more tactile understanding of the experience of film and media would be a useful place to start exploring pornography.<br /><br />The second has arisen from many conversations that I have had – when I say I’m working on pornography, the response is either a withdrawal or over-enthusiasm bordering on insistence to share personal collections of erotica and pornography. Though these conversations are often insightful, I have now realized that it is hard for me to actually examine pornography in all its totality – from spliced moments in mainstream films in shady theatres to specificities of hentaii and tentacle porn. Personal tastes, preferences, and access make it hard to be able to be interested in everything. Which is precisely my fascination with pornography – that it is in fact an intensely personal relation or rather a space in which different people have kept very varied and specific material, words, and media--that it also is not entirely about the media/words themselves, but also about how and in what setting they are consumed, how they are bought, downloaded or searched for. <br /><br />The third is the legal conundrum posed by pornography – that it is not recognized in Indian law as a specific category but that there exist, nonetheless, stringent conditions for obscenity. Obscenity is determined on the basis of the Hicklin test, which originated in England in 1868 and has continued as an integral part of Indian law though it has been discredited in English common law and American law. Here, the legal scholarship of Nussbaum is an interesting starting point as it sets up a useful framework that refuses to look at the law as a rational system of rules that is devoid of emotions. Nussbaum analyses the cognitive content of emotions that work within law – in the case of determining obscenity, she points to how emotions of disgust and revulsion play a significant role (the other emotions that she examines in detail are shame, fear and anger in the law). In Nussbaum’s analysis of the cognitive content of disgust, she remarks that in most cultures, disgust is about discomfort humans have with 'our own bodies and decaying selves', and concludes that disgust is an unreliable indicator for obscenity. She refers to McKinnon’s and Dworkin’s work to state that the indicator should be harm done by the material, rather than disgust. I would disagree with Nussbaum on whether harm can be a useful indicator to determine whether something is obscene, but before that it is necessary to examine whether Indian case law actually relies on the notion of disgust. Within Indian law, there seem to be other factors at work including notions of cultural purity vis-à-vis contamination from Western culture. An interesting and rather progressive judgment to look at is the recent High Court judgment on Hussain’s painting of nude Mother India that held that the painting is not obscene. <br /><br />These are a few of the scattered aspects of this project and some of the strands that it will explore. I would also like to share two comics on internet pornography. The first is from the famou <a class="external-link" href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/rule_34.png">xkcd comic</a> series and the second from the relatively new comic series <a class="external-link" href="http://deviswithbabies.blogspot.com/2008/10/brown-girls-equal-opportunity-porn.html">Brown Girls</a>. Both capture how lusty desires will find their objects anywhere – in the explosion of the polymorphous perverse on the internet or presidential debates on television. <br /><br /><br /></p>
<p><strong>Previous material </strong><br /><a class="external-link" href="http://www.apc.org/en/pubs/issue/gender/all/world-wide-web-desire-content-regulation-internet"><strong>The World Wide Web of Desire: Content Regulation on the Internet</strong></a><br />This article attempts to understand the dynamics of pushing the child pornography question to the forefront of any debate around censorship and pornography, especially in contexts of internet regulation, both nationally and in international forums such as the Internet Governance Forum. This is often done at the expense of a more nuanced understanding that would be possible if the focus were on issues related to gender, the prevalence of draconian censorship regimes in most countries in Asia and concerns related to free speech.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.genderit.org/en/index.shtml?apc=r90501-e95021-1"><strong>Do Not Look at Porn</strong></a><br />This is a short video titled "Do not look at porn" which is a remix video or a collage of different materials taken from television and other videos, famous art works, photographs and books. The video is almost boringly pedagogic in its attempt to illustrate the slippery-slope argument which is that obscenity laws generally lead to the ban of progressive material rather than only offensive material. The video features Sarah Jones' song 'Your revolution will not happen between these thighs', and the popular Warcraft character based machinema video 'The internet is for porn'.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.genderit.org/en/index.shtml?apc=r90480-e95146-1"><strong>Search History: Examining Pornography on the Internet</strong></a><br />This article explores some of the dilemmas of the women's movement in India when faced with the question of pornography. It also is a very basic historical look at the category of pornography itself, as it emerged to describe the array of objects and artefacts discovered in the ancient city of Pompeii. These finds were kept at the Secret Museum; only men of a certain upper class were allowed and ‘trusted’ to have access to these objects, and not the ‘easily corruptible rabble or women’. Such distinctions would often arise in the case of pornography and be the reasoning behind censorship and regulation of many media in the next few centuries. Whether it was the birth of photography, cinema, video, and in recent times the internet and new media (CD,VCD, DVD), each technology has been greeted with suspicion of its possible harm to society. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/law-video-technology/xxx-files-initial-encounters-with-the-unknown'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/law-video-technology/xxx-files-initial-encounters-with-the-unknown</a>
</p>
No publishernamitahistories of internet in IndiaObscenityinternet and societywomen and internetresearchCyborgsdigital subjectivitiesHistory2011-08-02T08:37:27ZBlog EntryJustice and Difference - the first talk in 'the monster album of feminist stories'
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/justice-and-difference-the-first-talk-in-the-monster-album-of-feminist-stories
<b>CIS and 'the monster album of feminist stories', in relation to the Rewiring Bodies project by Asha Achuthan, hosted the first of a series of talks on cognizing feminism at the CIS premises on Cunningham Road on 14th November, 2008. </b>
<p></p>
<p>To give a brief introduction and explain why we call this the <strong><em>monster
album</em></strong>, we could repeat the tired old truism that feminism is being
crowded out, today, by ‘gender talk’, and, ironically, by the visibility now
available to women. While truisms cannot be challenged, the sense of denial of
space that this statement carries has today, perhaps, more to do with notions
of irrelevance or the anachronistic nature of the word ‘feminism’ rather than
the “backlash against women” so popularly and persuasively argued by Susan
Faludi at another point in time. In response to this sense of denial, those of
us who remain the irremediably converted have moved between defiance, defensiveness,
apologia, and, now a decisive, if quiet, digging in of heels, based on a
re-cognition of feminism itself--that is the work of the <strong><em>monster
album</em></strong>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Feminism as that liberatory, shade-giving mother, that warm
place of refuge, is not a workable thesis, and the question then is – was it
ever so? Or is feminism that monster, that unhappy moment of possession (not of an
identity but by a vision), that grows larger and larger, demands more and more,
not simply of the dominant but of the interrogator of the dominant? Does this
not render unstable each time what had seemed the ultimately radical, interrupt
each time a consolidation of identity under its own name, so that in response
to the rhetorical question “Who’s afraid of feminism?” the <em>feminist’s</em> answer would be – “I am”? At such
a re-cognition of feminism is where we are, with this talk as the first step in that exercise; it is perhaps a place that will
host instability and unpalatable porosities between categories of “dominant”
and “critical”. The <strong><em>monster album</em></strong> is related in indirect but hopefully productive ways to the work of the "Rewiring Bodies" project that is, in a nutshell, attempting to rework critical boundaries between women and the technological. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Prof Shefali Moitra's talk on
“Justice and Difference” offered a reading of the mainstream monologic
model of justice that follows the principle of impartiality, and that seeks to
incorporate context through representation. This was followed by a discussion
of the “ad-hoc” model that responds heavily to context, to the extent of
rejecting the monologic model altogether. Finally Prof Moitra spoke of what
she called a “hybrid model” – one that takes into account the principles of
impartiality and objectivity, and yet also takes into account context. A
version of the paper that formed the basis for the talk is put up <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/advocacy/floss/software-patents/blog/uploads/Justice%20and%20Differenceversion.doc" class="internal-link" title="Justice and Difference">here</a> for those wish to read it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center;"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The talk threw up a lot of speculation,
particularly regarding the ‘hybrid’ model. Considering that the prevailing
climate of critique – of justice, as also in other areas – seems more comfortable
with versions of the ‘ad hoc’ model as alternative, and any notion of impartiality
seems infected by sameness, violence, or exclusion, a model such as the hybrid
was bound to throw up such speculation and some confusion as well. But it is
the <em>possibility</em> of such a model, that
continues to talk of impartiality and objectivity, but that fails the normative
claims of the homogenous system, that was most interesting. We hope
to hear more from philosophers-practitioners on this. As for the <strong><em>monster
album</em></strong>, this could perhaps be one of the ways in which liaisons between
knowledge and critique might be explored.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/justice-and-difference-the-first-talk-in-the-monster-album-of-feminist-stories'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/justice-and-difference-the-first-talk-in-the-monster-album-of-feminist-stories</a>
</p>
No publisherashahistories of internet in Indiawomen and internetrewiring bodies2011-08-03T09:43:24ZBlog Entryof doctors and maps - Snippet two
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/of-doctors-and-maps-snippet-two
<b>This may seem like a careless swipe at the volumes of critique of technology. And yet ... I need to know ... </b>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>Where am I with respect to technology?
Represented in it? Protected from it? Accessing it? And is my doctor the knower who will use the instrument of technology to heal me?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Why then does he feel like an apologetic
outsider, unnecessary to this process, merely the public relations man as I lie
here, surrounded by the linear accelerator? Why do the women in the planning
room, wired through their scans with the accelerator, smiling benevolently at
him, seem more at home, more with me, within me?</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/of-doctors-and-maps-snippet-two'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/of-doctors-and-maps-snippet-two</a>
</p>
No publisherashahistories of internet in Indiarewiring bodieswomen and internetmathemes and medicine2011-08-03T09:45:22ZBlog Entryof doctors and maps - Snippet one
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/of-doctors-and-maps
<b>The clinic is not what it was. It is highly technologized, flooded with information systems. But what of the relationships it traditionally supported, between patient and doctor?</b>
<p>She was in the eye of technology. Cocooned in
the simulator. Surrounded by the linear accelerator.</p>
<p>While each act of swallowing became more conscious, more painful, each act of devising mathemes became more precise, more focal.</p>
<p>Yes, this is mathematicized medicine. This is where she was, while re-writing technology, mathematicization, mapping. Not ‘under’ the ‘gaze’ as she understood it.</p>
<p>She was one with the simulator.</p>
<p>The doctor did not even figure; the 'godhead', the 'male knower', the butt of criticism, had become irrelevant, an anachronism.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now what in the world does that mean?</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/of-doctors-and-maps'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/rewiring-bodies/of-doctors-and-maps</a>
</p>
No publisherashahistories of internet in Indiarewiring bodieswomen and internetmathemes and medicine2011-08-03T09:44:43ZBlog EntryResearchers At Work
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/cisraw-faq
<b>CIS-RAW stands for Researchers at Work, a multidisciplinary research initiative by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. CIS firmly believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and Society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. The CIS-RAW programme hopes to produce one of the first documentations on the transactions and negotiations, relationships and correlations that the emergence of internet technologies has resulted in, specifically in the South. The CIS-RAW programme recognises ‘The Histories of the Internet and India’ as its focus for the first two years. Although many disciplines, organisations and interventions in various areas deal with internet technologies, there has been very little work in documenting the polymorphous growth of internet technologies and their relationship with society in India. The existing narratives of the internet are often riddled with absences or only focus on the mainstream interests of major stakeholders, like the state and the corporate. We find it imperative to excavate the three-decade histories of the internet to understand the contemporary concerns and questions in the field.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/cisraw-faq'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/cisraw-faq</a>
</p>
No publishernishanthistories of internet in Indiainternet and societygeeksdigital subjectivescyborgscyberculturesarchivescyberspacespedagogyresearchwomen and internete-governance2012-01-04T05:27:06ZPageHistories of the Internet
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/histories-of-the-internets-main
<b>For the first two years, the CIS-RAW Programme shall focus on producing diverse multidisciplinary histories of the internet in India.</b>
<p><strong>Histories of internets in India</strong></p>
<p align="justify">The CIS-RAW programme is designed around two-year thematics. Every two years, we shall, looking at our engagement and the questions that are emerging around us, come up with new themes that we would like to commission, enable and encourage research on.</p>
<p align="justify">The selection of the theme of the History of Internet and Society is a unanimous decision made by our researchers in-house, the members of the Society, distinguished fellows, supporters, and peers who all gathered for a launch workshop for the CIS. There is a severe dearth of material on the histories of Internet and Society in India and we find it necessary to contextualise and historicise the contemporary in order to fruitfully and critically engage with the questions and concerns we are committed to. In the first two years of its programme, the CIS-RAW hopes to come up with alternative histories of the Internet and Society, which chart a wide terrain of the field that we are engaging with and produce one of the first such resources for researchers working in this field.</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Scope of the Theme:</strong></p>
<p align="justify">We are looking at a wide range of accounts of the different forms, imaginations, materialities and interactions of the internets in India. As we excavate its three-decade growth in India, it becomes increasingly clear that there is no homogenised Internet that has evolved in the country; Instead, what we have is a technology, which, through its interactions and intersections with various objects, people, contexts and regulation, has emerged in many different ways. The theme of 'Histories of internets in India' hopes to address these pluralities of the internets and how they have been shaped in the unfolding of these technologies.</p>
<p align="justify">We have collaborated on the following histories with different researchers in India:</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<ol>
<li> <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/rewiring-bodies/" class="external-link">Rewiring Bodies</a> - Asha Achuthan, Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore.</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/archives-and-access/" class="external-link">Archive and Access</a> - Rochelle Pinto (Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore; Aparna Balachandran, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore; and Abhijit Bhattacharya, Centre for Sudies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/law-video-technology/law-video-and-technology" class="external-link">Porn: Law, Video & Technology</a> - Namita Malhotra, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/transparency-and-politics/transparency-and-politics-blog" class="external-link">Transparency and Politics</a> - Zainab Bawa, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/the-last-cultural-mile/the-last-cultural-mile-blog" class="external-link">The Last Cultural Mile</a> - Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/revolution-2.0/revolution-2.0-blog" class="external-link">Using the Net for Social Change</a> - Anja Kovacs, (Research) Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore</li>
<li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/queer-histories-of-the-internet/queer-histories-of-the-internet-blog" class="external-link">Queer Histories of the Internet</a> - Nitya Vasudevan, Centre for Study of Culture and Society and Nithin Manayath, Mount Carmel College</li><li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/internet-society-and-space-in-indian-cities/internet-society-and-space-in-indian-cities-blog" class="external-link">Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities</a> - Pratyush Shankar, Center for Environmental Planning and Technology University, Ahmedabad</li><li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/gaming-and-gold/gaming-and-gold-blog" class="external-link">Gaming and Gold</a> - Arun Menon, Centre for Internet & Society<br /></li></ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/histories-of-the-internets-main'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/histories-of-the-internets-main</a>
</p>
No publishernishanthistories of internet in Indiainternet and societygeeksdigital subjectivescyborgscyberculturesarchivescyberspacespedagogyresearchwomen and internete-governance2015-03-30T14:15:10ZPage