Kittu Reddy's militaristic advocacy as if he were the sole oracle

the argumentative indian and historical revisionism by Rich on Sun 12 Mar 2006 05:56 PM PST Permanent Link

Sen laments the fact that an India whose traditions which were mentioned by Marco Polo as one in which speaking the Truth was paramount: “they would not tell a lie for anything in the world and do not utter a word that is not true” has been superseded by the political rhetoric of the Hindutva in their revision of Indian history. It is therefore discouraging to see the attempt of those in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville to peddle as authentic Kittu Reddy's revisionist The History of India: a new approach. Reddy who is on record as calling for the military invasion and occupation of Pakistan both disparages the great tradition of diversity and tolerance in India and the name of Sri Aurobindo himself, with his revisionist interpretations of historical events.

The notion of a Hindu holocaust at the hands of various warlords and rulers of Turkish, Persian and Arabic origin, - many of whom themselves were fleeing the slaughter and destruction of their own homeland wrought by the invasion of the Mongol hordes -, is one of the more egregious offenses against historical scholarship which Reddy commits. The equating of hundreds of years of Islamic invasions and the looting and pillaging of Hindu India with the five year slaughter of millions of European Jews by Nazi Germany is misplaced and not even metaphorically correct.

Reddy also leaves out some pertinent facts in his account of Hindu victim hood in medieval Indian history. Among the many things Reddy overlooks is the culpability of some Hindus in these attacks. It is a fact that Hindus often served in the armies of the Muslim invaders and some were indeed high ranking officers...

The tracing of the invasion of Islamic armies from the Middle Ages to the present need to force Pakistan down in a military ambit as Reddy advocated in his article on the Kargil crisis is the outrageous consequence of his interpretive framework. That Mr. Reddy's attempts to stamp Sri Aurobindo's name as the authoritative source for his peculiar insights and interpretations of Indian history is the frightening result of his line of ideological thinking.

Mr. Reddy's militaristic advocacy of what course present subcontinent or world polity should take are certainly in conflict with much that is in Aurobindo's major treatises on social and political thought such as, the Ideal of Human Unity and The Human Cycle. To be sure Aurobindo advocated the unity of the subcontinent and believed in the renaissance of Vedic culture however, its renaissance like the greatness of Hinduism itself was seen in its wide embrace of life and transcendent realization of unity within multiplicity. In my reading, while Sri Aurobindo was not a Gandhian pacifist, and even advocated resistance by whatever means necessary to ensure truth and justice persevered in the evolutionary advance of the species, he was simultaneously integral and global in his thinking and envisioned the placement of all nations and cultures within a harmonious world order.

Mr. Reddy's source material for his militaristic interpretations are often suspect. The taking of statements which Sri Aurobindo made (outrageously often taken from conversations and unpublished letters), prior to his death regarding world events in 1950 as proclamations of eternal truths, and prescriptions for actions to be taken now, during current world crisis, is an affront not only to political science and hermeneutics but to Sri Aurobindo's skills as a critical thinker as well.

Such ideological interpretations attempt to turn Sri Aurobindo from an integral yogi into an integral ideologue. The support of such revisionist position by high level figures in the Ashram and even Auroville speak more to personal political agendas and lack of critical thinking skills than to the legacy of Sri Aurobindo's social and political thought. It appears odd that there is little formal debate within these institutions regarding such historical revisionism.

One does not openly find in these institutions any longer the vibrant tradition of argument and skepticism ( which certainly were present during Sri Aurobindo's lifetime) which Sen hails as having served India so well over the centuries in trying to arrive at a view of society that speaks to the grand tradition of pluralism and tolerance which has constituted Indian society for millennium; a tradition that eschews communal hatred. The choosing of revisionist sides in the history debate by the Ashram and to an extent in some Aurovillian corners places both institutions at risk of sliding back into a reactionary religiosity, rather than moving toward the integral spirituality it's founders intended.

by Rich on Mon 17 Apr 2006 06:01 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link The problem with interpretation in Reddy’s essay is that it fails to heed Sri Aurobindo’s own writings on history and the forces of prakriti and evolution which drive it. Mr.Reddy’s assumption that Sri Auroibindo would advocated the same geo-political stance today as in 1950 is seriously flawed as a hermeneutical strategy. Sri Aurobindo was adamant in his assertion that nature which shapes the forces of history are never static but are ever changing and often contradictory in their movement, often making a first move in one direction only to reverse course leaving undone what was the first intention. Good and evil themselves are said by Sri Aurobindo to be shifting qualities. In his militaristic approach Reddy’s view seems to assume that evolution itself should be viewed in a Hobbsian manner as the struggle for existence, and granted many in the Pakistani army may also share this view but Sri Aurobindo had a different idea...

It should be noted that Sri Aurobindo’s own retirement from Indian politics was the result of a “change of mind” regarding the need to continue active resistance against the British. In fact, Mother and Sri Aurobindo were open to changing points of view depending on the changing state of the world and even their views in the conditions necessary for the time and presencing of the supramental descent changed over time. (10,000 to 300 years, primarily individual to collective effort)..

Here Reddy’s own words and references undermine his argument for a military ambit which he of course attributes to Sri Aurobindo. Because after the historical changes which had occurred on the subcontinent since partition and Sri Aurobindo’s passing the Mother seemed to believe that the decline of Pakistan would be the result of its own internal dysfunction. And indeed that Pakistan did dissolve and now there is a country named Bangladesh and not East Pakistan means she certainly was correct; indeed the partition has become unraveled. Not only that, there is widespread internal violence inside today’s Pakistan daily between Sunnis and Shias and between the immigrant and the wider community. However, in his Kargil essay the Mother’s words seem not good enough for the author because he refuses to believe her, or rather he refuses to believe that circumstance in a world in evolution do change. Because he ends his essay advocating a military ambit and among the sources of authority he cites is an unpublished letter from Sri Aurobindo in 1950!?...

Interestingly, a certain Hindutva faction in the Ashram often makes use of a phrase taken from Sri Aurobindo’s radio message of Aug 15, 1947 that: The partition of the country must go! (and I would argue with the dissolution of East Pakistan it is certainly not the same partition as in 1947) but the same faction neglect to also mention that after the phrase the partition must go Sri Aurobindo says: “ it is hoped by a slackening of tension by a progressive understanding of the need for peace and concord, by the constant necessity of concerted action. Even of an instrument of union for that purpose. In this way unity may come about under whatever form – the exact form may have pragmatic but not a fundamental importance.”

by Rich on Wed 19 Apr 2006 01:09 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link The fact, that he cites Sri Aurobindo as the chief religious figure and authority to support his politics of resentment, which he hopes to prosecute with militaristic fervor, is exactly the same politics practiced by Jihadis who justify their religious crusade according to the fatwa or this or that Shaikh or of the words of the prophet Mohammed spoken 1400 years ago. Only in Reddy's estimation it is Sri Aurobindo who has issued a fatwa against Pakistan which the loyal sons of Bharatvarsha must now persecute...

Sri Kanth asserts: “Hindutva seeks to evoke Indian nationalism, demands that Christianity and Islam not convert Hindus against their volition, or by enticement or force, that Hinduism not be sacrificed at the western altar of secularism etc etc. the challenge of Islam must be strongly faced and met.”

If one changes the statement and substitutes the word Christianity for Hinduism and America for India it almost reads like a statement which Pat Robinson or Jerry Falwell of the far American Christan right could have made...

Finally the intolerance which the militant Hindus have displayed in the destruction of the Ayohdya Mosque, the Gujarat and Mumbai riots in which thousands of Muslims (the majority of whom were innocent victims of communal unrest) were killed, along with the well documented merciless slaughter of several Christian missionaries does not exactly encourage one to believe that the followers of militant Hindu Nationalism and the politics of resentment, practice the same religion of tolerance which has been the enlightened legacy of what is called Hinduism. rich

by Rich on Wed 19 Apr 2006 07:02 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link And it seems you have indeed missed the absolute major point of all my post. In point of fact Kittu Reddy can hold any chauvinistic view he chooses. Although I think them misguided that is not the point, my problem is with Mr. Reddy's using Sri Aurobindo's good name to couch his own agenda in. He certainly is free to interpret history as he chooses, however if he advocates military action in which many innocent people can be killed IMO he should have the moral courage to affix his remarks with "This I believe". Moreover, he certainly should not sell his work as if he were the sole oracle who can now convey Sri Aurobindo's intentions 56 years after his passing as he does in his Kargil essay. Rich