Re: Aryans, Jews, Brahmins, by Dorothy M. Figueira
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2021 4:43 am
PART II: Who Speaks for the Subaltern?
CHAPTER 5: Rammohan Roy
READING REFORM
In 1828, Raja Rammohan Roy (1774-1833) founded the Brahmo Sabha. Later renamed the Brahma Samaj, this organization sought to effect a purification of traditional Hinduism by promoting the values deemed operative in Vedic times: belief in the unity of God, absence of idol worship and unnecessary rituals (Collet 1962: 220-24). The Raja based his reform on a reading of "Vedic" scripture, believing that its wisdom, once available to all, would effect the rejuvenation of Hinduism. The role of the Brahma Samaj in the social and religious conditions of early nineteenth-century Bengal has been the subject of several fine studies and continues to inform critical assessments of Indian social history.
In The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (1983), Ashis Nandy examines the Raja's relationship to colonialism as the flip side of a theory of progress. His identification with the colonial aggressor is presented as an ego defense mechanism. Nandy likens Roy's reform efforts to the response of a child in confronting the inescapable dominance of physically more powerful adults enjoying total legitimacy. First, Nandy reconstructs a psychological sketch of the Raja's relationship with his mother as the sub text for reform. He then posits the "unbreakable dyadic relationship" that ensues from such an identification as the sine qua non of colonial culture. Nandy views Roy's introduction of ideas such as organized religion, a sacred text, monotheism, and a patriarchal godhead as a response to the colonial subject's alienation from an older lifestyle and its values. Nandy also sees Roy's reform as a reaction to the colonial incursion into eastern India and an attempt to confront domination by redefining masculinity, traditionally based on the demystification of womanhood, and shifting the locus of magicality from everyday femininity to a transcendent male principle. Nandy's analysis, while brilliantly performative, lacks sufficient grounding in textual specificity, a defect shared by the feminist conflation of Rammohan Roy by Lata Mani.
In Mani's article, Rammohan Roy's appeal to scripture is attributed solely to a purported colonial institution of scriptural normativity. The privileging of brahmanic scripture and the equation of tradition with scripture are presented as an effect of the "colonial discourse" on India, where colonial power underwrites official discussion and ensures scripture's increasing normativity (Mani 1988: 91). Colonial authorities alone institutionalize assumptions by making texts the basis of law. Only under colonialism is scripture seen as the locus of authenticity. For this critic, there exists no positioning of scripture within the brahmanical tradition, as if scripture had not always been normative and privileged in the history of Sanskrit literature. Not only is the colonial subject's relation to a text completely disengaged from any Indian exegetical tradition, but Rammohan Roy, as colonial subject par excellance, can only stand in relation to a text in light of the colonial experience. Any call to textual authority becomes a strategy of colonalism. Colonial subjects, we are told, would not even believe their own pandits, were it not for the British making them do so (Mani 1988: 102). While these arguments are absurd within the historical and religious framework, from a critical vantage point we must pause. They suggest a logic wherein texts can only function as "forms of cultural coercion" in which an ideology (in this case, colonialism) can be "naturalized and skillfully upheld" (Fluck 1996: 219).
Let us descend from the artful argument of Mani's critique to touch down in the realm of exegetical reality. The privileging of brahmanic scripture and the equation of tradition with scripture is not an effect of colonial discourse on India. The colonial subject is not solely constituted by colonialism, nor is it the only form of discourse that really matters. Other inventories and traces occur beyond the archive of the postcolonial critic. Other competing traditions of protest existed.1 The colonial subject did, indeed, have a voice that was not wholly contingent upon the colonial experience2 and was textually audible without need of the critic's intervention.3 However, to hear this voice, one must engage texts and cultural specificity. Both Nandy and Mani represent a trend in theory that views textuality as little more than a rhetorical tool in the interest of ideology and form as a deceptive promise of the possibility of individual agency (Fluck 1996: 225). A theoretical posture that minimizes the formal elements of literary representation, since texts only reveal manifestations of power relations, obviates the task of detailed reading and simplifies the demands placed upon the reader. It does not necessarily bring us any closer to engaging cultural complexities as mediated through language and other cultural translations. In the following analysis of Rammohan Roy's translations and exegetical writings, we will challenge the critical approach that seeks to reveal textual complicity without recourse to text or context. We will examine how Rammohan Roy used various literary strategies to set the groundwork for reform structured on a myth of an Aryan Golden Age. We begin the discussion by contextualizing Rammohan's work as an outgrowth of his cultural encounter with Europeans and critique of Indian traditionalism.
THE COMPLEXITY OF THE COLONIAL SUBJECT
Rammohan Roy's oeuvre defies simple categorization. It is misleading to view him as enacting a debate between liberalism and conservatism, East and West, modernism and tradition (Kopf 1969: 204-5). The tradition/modernity polarity, so optimistically accepted by mythographer-critics of the Raj, positions an image of primal precolonial innocence as the alternative to the victimized or collaborationist colonial Other. The tradition/modernity polarity diffuses specifics; it blurs the fact that variants of the concepts with which many anticolonial movements worked have often been products of the imperial culture itself and that these movements also pay homage to Indian cultural origins.
Rammohan Roy was the first Indian to establish his own press and publish newspapers, books, and pamphlets (Pankratz 1998: 335). In so doing, he was the first Indian distributor of Hindu and Christian texts. Roy was motivated by the belief that these two religions held similar traditions despite their formal diversity. In keeping with this universalist credo, Brahmo worship included public readings from the Bible in addition to selections from the Vedas, Upanishads, and the Brahmasutra (Collet 1962: 224-26).4 Furthermore, it embraced other "Christian" elements such as prayer, sermon, and hymn as integral parts of its service.5 Underlying this attempt at synthesis was Roy's belief that all major religions were equal in value and only needed to substitute rational faith for the meaningless rituals, myths, and superstitions prevalent in popular practice. Christianity, he felt, had much to offer India. Utilitarianism, in particular, offered a vision of theistic progress, wherein human perfectibility could be best achieved by joining social reform to rational religion. In Utilitarianism, he recognized a Christianity purified of miracles and devoid of theological "rust and dust." Yet, this search for a purer form of Christianity was of secondary importance to Roy's primary goal of rehabilitating Hinduism by proving that Sanskrit scripture espoused monotheism and rejected idol worship.
Toward this immediate pragmatic end, he fashioned translations and commentaries of the Vedanta and five principal Upanishads (the Isa, Kena, Katha, Mundaka, and Mandukya). These translations served as a defense of Hinduism against the pernicious assault waged by Trinitarian missionaries, in particular Alexander Duff and his followers. Roy answered Trinitarian attacks on Hindu superstition by establishing that Christianity also had its share of foolishness. Such a claim simply enraged Roy's missionary opponents, most notably Joshua Marshman of the Serampore Mission, who could not conceive of an Indian challenge to the hallowed inconsistencies of Christianity or faith in the Trinity (Kopf 1969: 202). Rammohan established his first journal, the BrahmunicaL Magazine (1821) with the expressed purpose of defending his belief in a monotheistic Hinduism against the critique of polytheism launched by the Serampore Missionaries.6 Rammohan Roy's relationship to Christianity was, therefore, not uncritical. Although he had great respect for ethical Christianity, this esteem did not blind him to its doctrinal inconsistencies or deter him from challenging its abuses.
His relationship to Sanskrit learning was equally complex. Because he had studied in Benares and was not formed by Orientalist scholarship, his knowledge of Hinduism was greatly valued in his time (Kopf 1969: 59). Even though he did not garner his knowledge of the Sanskrit tradition from Western scholars, his quest for a purified Hinduism was considerably influenced by their utopian vision of the Aryan past. However, it also reflected the work of eighteenth-century pandits. Just as the pandits essentially "rewrote" the shastras for the benefit of the East India Company judges, Roy "rewrote" them for the Indian intelligentsia. He differed, however, from the eighteenth-century pandits by relying on English translations as much as on the Sanskrit texts themselves Goshi 1975: 145). For this reason, Roy's version of the Aryan past also owed much to the prejudices of Sir William Jones and H.T. Colebrooke.
Colebrooke's essay on the Vedas proved particularly significant in its attention to discrepancies between ancient textual requirements and contemporary practices (Kopf 1969: 198). Colebrooke first suggested that objectionable religious practices resulted from a misunderstanding of texts (Colebrooke 1802: 196). Roy adopted this strategy in his own readings. He also followed the Orientalists' preferance for the Vedantic period as the authentic model for Aryan theology, law, and literature (Roy 1906: 573). He shared their devaluation of post-Vedantic Hinduism as well as their identification of idolatry, sati, and polytheism as medieval excrescences. Although ideas regarding monotheism and the symbolic nature of idol worship had previously been discussed by learned Hindus, particularly the eighteenth-century poets Ramprasad and Bharat Chandra, Roy followed Western critics in their direct attribution of the degeneration of Hindu society to these customs (Roy 1906: 574-75). As did Jones and Colebrooke, the Raja likewise blamed the brahmins for social and religious decay, since they plotted to conceal the truth of the Vedant "within the dark curtain of the Sanskrit" (Roy 1906: 3) rather than disseminate it to the people in the vernacular languages. It was to undo religious degeneration and counter the brahmin hegemony over Hinduism that Roy chose to translate scripture into the vernacular (Roy 1906: 199). Here too, Roy continued an age-old struggle between Sanskrit and vernaculars that had previously found expression in the works of Eknath (Ranade 1902: 219).
Quite simply, the strategy arguing for social reform in terms of scriptural authority existed in India outside the colonial era and did not depend on "the emerging dominance of an official Western discourse on India" (Mani 1988: 114). Before we accuse Roy of collaborating with colonial administrators by prioritizing smrti (with Manu as foremost among smrti texts), we must first question whether there existed a colonial discourse with respect to scripture that differed from brahmin orthodox policy.
SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY AND THE HERMENEUTICS OF SATI
In orthodox tradition, Manu was a standing source of authority and not just a text that was malleable to colonial administrative designs (Manu 1992: xviii) and, by extension, Roy's need to imitate his colonial masters. It was the subject of nine complete commentaries and more frequently cited than any other dharmashastra. In theory, Indians have always taken Manu very seriously. Whether its privileged status extended to actual use in legal courts is another matter. Some historians have claimed that, before colonial rule, Manu had been used by jurists (Manu 1992: ix). Orientalism did not give Manu its authority.7 Manu was the absolute authority of both Vedic knowledge and Vedic practice (Manu 1992: xli-xlii). In other words, there existed a noncolonial precedent for Roy's reliance on Manu. Roy (and the colonial officials) diverged from this exegetical tradition, however, in an important respect. After identifying original authoritative sources, they felt it their duty to correct these texts of the accretions suffered with the passage of time. Whatever truth claims scripture originally held had been contaminated by centuries of ignorant and sometimes wild accretions.
The Raja thus posed a serious challenge to scriptural inerrancy and canonicity. A scriptural canon was established as original and authentic. However, in order to prove valuable for Roy's larger project of reform, it had to be corrected. For his needs, Roy gave centrality only to those texts that could be read to support universalist and modern interpretations (Nandy 1983: 194). Toward this end, the Raja drew primarily from those texts that easily lent themselves to reinterpretation suiting his immediate concerns for social reform (Heimsath 1964: 154). His reliance on the Upanishads, the Vedanta Sutra, and Manu as sufficiently vague and complex authorities stemmed from this same need for adaptability.
Roy based his vision of the Aryan Golden Age on a "Veda," constructed to provide ample opportunity for self-realization. As a guide, even this extensive canon could not sufficiently reinforce the ethical basis that Roy felt lacking in Hinduism. Moral precepts that he found present in his "Veda" appeared only in scattered form. Since he felt Christian ethics presented the same system of morality in a manner better suited for the discharge of social duties, Roy incorporated the precepts of Jesus into his canon as a basis for teaching morality. He continued to champion the validity of "Vedic" texts, but acknowledged the unacceptable errors that they had accrued over time, clouding their moral focus.
It is important to remember that in his definition of the canon, Roy was guided both by the Orientalist reception of the "oldest" texts and method of reading as well as by the Indian normative view of a "Vedic" canon and tradition of interpreting it. Although eternal and immutable, this Veda could be employed to explain a process of change and provide a fluid sacred authority upon which an interpreter could impose a personal thematic. Canonical gerrymandering and free translation techniques restructured the authoritative texts. They could now be read "objectively," that is, to support the pillars of Rammohan's reform: the condemnation of sati and polytheistic idolatry (Roy 1906: 5).8 The Raja read and sometimes rewrote the "Vedic" canon to depict an ideal Aryan past where these practices did not exist.
Of all the contemporary practices that diverged from ancient sources, sati was considered by Rammohan Roy to be the most destructive force threatening society: engendering prejudice, superstition, and the total destruction of moral principles. In the Conference between an Advocate for and an Opponent of the Practice of Burning Widows Alive (1818), Roy presented his textually grounded condemnation of sati in the form of a debate. The opponent of sati claims that it is suicide and, as such, forbidden by the various shastras. The advocate for sati, however, cites the Rig veda in support of the ritual.
The opponent's response to Rig Vedic authority relies on a fundamental thesis of Roy's commentaries and translations: pure religion degenerated into cultic practices that aimed at accommodating less gifted adherents. Citing the Bhagavad Gita, the opponent claims that even a Vedic passage may be superceded, if it is directed toward readers who are occupied with or trapped within sense desires. Thus, the Rig Veda passage, the ultimate authority condoning sati, can be discounted as a lesser authority intended for lesser minds.
The opponent/Roy also points to the obscurity of the Rig Vedic passage and questions its authenticity (Roy 1906: 367-72). He notes that it does not specifically enjoin women to sacrifice themselves and contains no reference to women performing voluntary death with their husbands' corpse. The phrase "these women" can only be taken to refer to particular women and not women in general. Roy adds, moreover, that no commentary has ever given this passage the interpretation of commending widows to burn themselves on their husband's pyre. In a gesture of overkill, Roy has now both rejected as an invalid authority the Vedic passage cited in favor of sati and called into question its reliability.
He next questions whether support for this problematic ritual has ever been found in smrti, texts which rank second to the Veda in authority. Among smrti, Manu is the most authoritative. Roy claims that Manu, by enjoining the widow to live a virtuous life, is decidedly against concremation. Although contradictions to Manu can be found, Roy rejects them for the same reason that he discounted the Rig Vedic passage -- their promise of future carnal fruition (Roy 1906: 368). In addition to the Gita's injunction to discount texts that promise reward, he cites Manu and modern law experts who also discredit behavior done in the hope of future gains. Roy's condemnation of sati rests, therefore, upon three claims of validity. Passages are first assessed according to intent. A text, whatever its status, that promotes superstition, idolatry, or the promotion of selfish ritual must be discarded. Secondly, passages are judged by authenticity and reliability. These factors are judged by corroborative textual evidence. Thirdly, corroboration is sought in the most authoritative text. Barring Vedic corroboration, it is to be found in the next most authoritative source. Roy reads Manu as inviolate and claims a text valid only insofar as it agrees with Manu (Roy 1906: 343). Manu, therefore, can overrule all other lawbooks and, in this case, the Veda itself. At the expense of the Rig Veda, Manu is deemed truly "Vedic." As such, Manu's assessment is deemed valid and original. Roy reads Manu's enjoinder for widows to live virtuous lives as the legitimate condemnation of the rite. The condemnation of sati thus pivoted upon the rhetorical use of scripture, its shifting authority, and conflicting truth claims. Rammohan Roy's critique of idolatry further developed this line of argument.
MISREADING MONOTHEISM: IDOLATRY AND BRAHMIN PERFIDY
By shifting scriptural authority and translating select Upanishads and the Vedanta Sutra into vernaculars ("Hindoostani" and Bengali) and English, Roy did not merely construct a specific normative reading. By making the texts available, he prioritized scripture as it had never been before, substituting the texts themselves for the priest as the ultimate source of authority and, thus, subverting the traditional hermeneutic process. In this manner, Roy created a vision of the Vedic past wherein objectionable aspects of modern Hinduism were absent, since they existed only through misreading and abuse of textual authority.
In the introduction to his translation of the Kena Upanishad, Roy asserted that in India, no less than in the West, there had developed a notion of monotheism (Roy 1906: 35). In subsequent epochs, this belief had degenerated into idolatry for two reasons: believers are often ignorant and priests are often liars. There exist many who are incapable of grasping higher truths, yet are entitled to religious principles lest they remain in a primitive state. For the sake of those who possess limited understanding, worship of figured beings is allowed. This rationale explains how an infallible text such as the Veda can appear paradoxical; it is so by design, with the interest of the common man in mind. Where the Veda suggests a tolerance for idolatry, it actually reveals a strategy for accommodating the unsophisticated (Roy 1906: 23).9 Subtleties in Vedic rhetorical style aimed at providing divine access to all persons, including those incapable of subtlety who may choose lesser paths.10 Roy thus delimited a subtext within the Veda, a meta-Veda, that demanded an allegorical reading aimed at an alternative audience. As a literary device, however, allegory proved baneful, since Indians showed themselves to be particularly skilled in this art. When literature and philosophy subsequently decayed, clever allegorical representations were misinterpreted to condone idolatry as the foremost and preferred form of worship.
The prevalence of Hindu idolatry, therefore, should be seen as an error in interpretation. Different genres coexisting within a single scriptural text presented different claims to authority and validity. To decipher Vedic truth, one must determine which passages should be read as scriptural injunction and which as poetry. The Raja could then, having established rules for textual validity, dismiss the poetic (and symbolic) passages that had been "misread" and correct those "excrescences" that had led to "exceptionable practices," depriving Hindus of common comforts and bringing about societal ruin. Rather than anything intrinsic to Hinduism, it was the Indian genius for allegory and democratizing scriptural strategies of revealing God to all, the gifted as well as the unsophisticated, that led to confusion. The reader's inability to judge the respective truth claims of poetry and scriptural injunction enabled the practice of idolatry to flourish. Roy's translations and commentaries aimed at enabling Indians to cast aside prejudice and release themselves from the fetters of accumulated misreadings.
In addition to misreadings stemming from interpretive misperceptions, Vedic wisdom was also undermined by a well-organized brahmin conspiracy.
Roy directly accused the brahmins of keeping the true scriptural knowledge concealed from their brethern (Roy 1906: 66) by permitting "themselves alone to interpret or even touch any book of this kind" (Roy 1906: 3). Roy claimed that textual inaccessibility had allowed religious practice to stray from orthodoxy to the point that it stood at a considerable distance from precept. Brahmins read the Vedas in support of ceremonial observance as necessary for the acquisition of divine knowledge in order to monopolize profits from the rites and festivals of idol worship (Roy 1906: 93). Zealous brahmins thus sacrificed scriptural authority for "the preservation of their fertile estate of idolatry" (Roy 1906: 108, 118). They were fully aware of the absurdity of idol worship (preface, Isopanishad, 1816), yet they nevertheless encouraged its practice since it provided their fortune and comfort. Their motives as promoters of image worship were, therefore, base, shameless, and mercenary (Roy 1906: 114, 116). These self-interested guides, motivated by vulgar caprice (Roy 1906: 71), conducted believers to the temple of idolatry (Roy 1906: 73). They succeeded in promoting idol worship only because the average Hindu was unversed in scripture and believed that religion really consisted in the observance of rituals and rules of caste. Whereas the worship of idols had existed in other civilizations (notably Greece and Rome) in equally "impure, absurd and puerile" forms, the Hindu variety was far more pernicious, since it was perpetrated by trusted authority figures "hardly deserving the name of social beings" (Roy 1906: 120), who destroyed the comforts of life and the very texture of society.
Rammohan believed that idolatry ultimately effected the total destruction of morality. As an external form of ritual palpable only to gross instincts, it countenanced criminal intercourse, suicide, female murder, and human sacrifice. All prejudices and superstitions derived from it, since the worship of objects resembling one's own nature deadened the senses and led to grosser abuses (Mu1J4aka Upanishad, 1819). He laid the destruction of society's moral fabric directly at the feet of the brahmins, who acted as false guides and consciously defied scripture. Roy chided traditional brahmins for distorting scripture and withholding religious truths. But he primarily blamed "modern Brahmins" for sanctioning the practices of sati, child marriage, dowry abuses, and Kulinism.11 They promoted "the most heinous crimes that would make even the most savage nations blush to commit unless compelled by most urgent necessity" (introduction, Katha translation).
In his translation of the Katha Upanishad, Roy elaborated upon his condemnation of self-interested brahmin leaders who foster superstitions. He accused them of actually fashioning scripture to suit their greed and selfish aims. Roy exhorted his readers to use common sense, follow reason, and put faith only in those who translate scripture for them out of disinterested motives rather than those who conceal truth, demand goods, and require obeisance. In contrast to the traditional (and flawed) interpreter, the Raja positioned himself as the ideal reader committed to reason and not motivated by greed. His desire to reform Hinduism, however, conflicted with his ideal of objectivity. Although he claimed to translate the Upanishads faithfully (Roy 1906: 63), his renditions differ considerably from the Sanskrit texts, particularly in those passages (noted in italics) that he added to the original to "facilitate comprehension." Upon closer inspection of Roy's translations, one realizes the extent to which he editorialized scripture to promote his reform agenda. In the interest of space, a representative example of Roy's creative emendations should suffice.
The attributeless God of the Upanishads becomes in Roy's translations a patriarchal deity viewed as "spiritual father" and parent (Roy 1906: 39, 42). This was a difficult divine image for the Raja to have extracted from the attributeless Brahman of Vedanta or the monism of Advaita. Nevertheless, he read into Shankara's commentary a revival of monotheism and evoked a patriarchal God who was "the author and governor of the universe" (Roy 1906: 174). He is a God who rewards the faithful and bestows grace upon them in the form of knowledge (Roy 1906: 58) and faith (Roy 1906: 26). Unique and paternal, God responds to those who rationally approach Him. Although human forgetfulness allows for the identification of this God with a multitude of celestial representations (Roy 1906: 12), no competing divinities really exist. In the Isa's invocation of the Sun (verse 16), Roy supplements the text with the comment that such prayers are "meaningless since the sun is the same as He who possesses Divine Nature." Throughout his translations, Roy consistently explains away multiple gods and promotes a vision of Vedic monotheism. The Raja reads the text to say that idolatry is as much an error as is ritual excess.
Roy introduces the subject of ritual into texts (Roy 1906: 26, 76) where it does not appear. A passage from the Isopanishad is literally translated as:
Rammohan Roy rendered this passage in the following manner:
Here as elsewhere (Roy 1906: 47, 51-52), the Raja introduced the subject of ritual into the text only to condemn it as a false goal of worship, motivated by vain desire of future gain, a form of superstition (Roy 1906: 15), or something purely optional. Ritual is equated with religious ignorance. Demons are likened to the multiple gods worshipped by lesser minds. In this manner, he rewrites the Upanishadic text to condemn both ritual and idolatry.
These polemical works and translations show that the Raja fully recognized the authority wielded by the "Vedas" as absent texts and the abuse of authority exercised by their brahmin "readers."13 Rammohan Roy's entire project was directed at making present these texts and wresting power away from their custodians. In his polemical works, Roy developed strategies to alter the canon so that it supported his arguments. With his translation of principle portions of the "Vedas" and the Vedanta, authority came to rest solidly on a tangible archive. Here the canon, now fixed, underwent rewriting. Through the manipulation of his canon, Roy set about redressing errors concerning the nature of the "invisible Supreme Being" and suggesting models for "pure worship" untainted by idolatry. The condemnation of idolatry ultimately rested on the conflicting truth claims of poetry and divine injunction.
RAMMOHAN ROY'S SYNCRETISM AND ITS CHALLENGE TO POSTCOLONIAL THEORY
Christophe Jaffrelot has identified two theoretical positions that historians generally use to describe the origin and development of ethnic movements in India: the primordialist and the instrumental. The primordialist position maintains that cultural specificities lead to ethnic consciousness. The instrumentalist position holds that cultural identities are malleable and can, as symbols, be manipulated by elite groups to mobilize a given community. Jaffrelot suggests a third perspective, what he terms "strategic syncretism." He terms this position syncretic because the content of ideology is taken from the behavior of groups deemed antagonistic to a given population. The syncretism is strategic in that it aims, through psychological and mimetic processes, to dominate those same antagonistic groups (Jaffrelot 1993: 519).
We have tried to show how Rammohan Roy constructed a canon and used it in a manner consistent with what Jaffrelot has termed strategic syncretism. He borrowed from the Orientalists a preference for Vedantic texts. He shared their devaluation of modern Hinduism. Here, he was less motivated by the missionaries' contempt for a debased faith and more from belief that it did not suit the social needs of the population. However, he shared their distrust of brahmin power. Rammohan Roy took what he liked about Christianity, borrowed the methods wielded by missionaries and Orientalist scholarship, and devised strategies, based on traditional Indian normative approaches to textuality (that is, that texts need interpretation), to challenge scriptural inerrancy and canonicity.
He waged a battle on two fronts, one against the heavy-handed techniques of Christian missionaries (a problem that does not seem to go away, as witnessed by recent events in India with American Baptist groups) and another against brahmin power. His reform was strategic in the sense that it sought to dominate both missionary and brahmin discourse. Through the evocation of a Vedic Golden Age constructed out of alternative readings of canonical sources, he condemned those very practices that had elicited the scorn of Christian missionaries. By evoking a monotheistic Vedic Urreligion, he placed Hinduism on equal footing with Christianity. By exposing the idolatrous nature of the Christian Trinity, Roy silenced any critique of Hindu polytheism.
However antagonistic the Trinitarians might have been as a group and however necessary it was to neutralize them, the enemies who existed closer to home were far more daunting opponents. To combat them, Rammohan Roy waged a battle of literary proportions. By prioritizing textuality over and above priestly exegesis, the Raja dealt a severe blow to brahmin authority. If there was a brahmin conspiracy, wider accessibility to authoritative texts would do much to countermand it.14 By grounding his reform in the reinterpretation of sacred texts and appending onto these texts core values borrowed from the rhetoric of Christianity, Roy legitimized his arguments according to existing Indian concepts of scriptural sacredness. He sought to establish a means whereby Hinduism, whose conventional sacred duties had been confined to ceremonial rites and offerings, might be transformed and brought into the service of the community. He expressly sought to promote the comfort of his people and unite them by reviving the "Vedant" and disseminating religion in book form.
In this study of the Aryan myth as it expresses itself in the literary consciousness, it is our intention to stress at all times the hermeneutic event, the individual's relationship to inherited tradition and the specific experience of encounter. Rammohan Roy's translations of the Upanishads brought into focus a fundamental disagreement over man's natural capacity to understand religious truth. This hermeneutic problem stemmed from the hierarchization of Hindu social and religious life founded on the premise that significant differences in capacity and competence exist between individuals. Rammohan Roy seriously challenged this adhikarabheda tradition when he translated the texts. He asserted that all but a very small minority could understand the basic teachings of the Upanishads. He did not expect all to benefit fully from these teachings, but the success rate would be proportionate to one's state of mental preparation (Roy 1906: 133).15
There was even another level of syncretism in his work-his promoting Christian precepts grounded in Western rationalism. He did not see contemporary Hinduism as permanently inferior to Semitic-based creeds, but as a once great but now fallen religion which still had possibilities. His efforts at reform were motivated by a desire to improve the lot of his countrymen and modernize their faith. In his harkening back, via a "Veda" that could wield authority in India's present-day malaise, Roy sought to reconstruct a purified Hindu community and a sense of history for that community (Nandy 1983: 103). To borrow Jaffrelot's terminology, we may say that his syncretism was strategic in the sense that the resulting neo- Hinduism originated out of a purely indigenous golden age that depicted a unified religion and a single cultural strain (Nandy 1983: 193). By revealing the essential truth embedded in scripture, Rammohan Roy sought to separate scriptural authority from the false accretions of time and the literal teachings of idolatrous, self-promoting brahmins who continued to practice a socially destructive system. His methodology provided a powerful tool of social engineering to the next generation (Nandy 1983: 193). His efforts represent far less the colonial's intellectual dependency on the Western Other and need to mimic his values, and far more an individual interrogating his own tradition and wielding the tools of Western religion as they are useful to him. In Rammohan Roy, we find the "voiced" subaltern.
No one doubts the acknowledged limitations of nationalism within the colonial context, nor the influence of nineteenth-century intellectual models upon nationalism. Colonialism does define, limit, and distort contact between cultures. However, it does not follow that a weak and dependent intelligentsia's admiration for its master's civilization is exclusively a result of dependency (Sen 1978: 4). The hermeneutic possibilities of cross-cultural encounters are simply not exhausted by identifying a "drive" in the European psyche suffering from ego-anxiety or its aggressive objectification of the other in order to constitute its own coherence (Said 1978: 72). Quite simply, we must question the dynamics involved in Eastern appropriations of Western constructs. Indian responses to specific elements in British culture, for example, were not necessarily linked to colonialism, even though responses may ultimately have reinforced imperial dominance (Raychaudhuri 1988: 5). The oppressor/victim binary of colonial discourse analysis does not account for patterns of admiration and positions adopted within the receiving culture. Dominance can provoke revulsion and rejection as well. While negative responses are frequently interpreted as ambivalence, they might also be explained by the fact that particular components of the cultures involved determine what is admired or rejected. Ideally, theory should explain how appropriations are rooted in the specific cultural traits of the receptor society and its literary tradition. Equality and inequality are not the sole determinants of cultural encounters.
Encounters are determined from the evolving values of a people and their specific historical situation. Rammohan Roy lived at a time when one could envision incorporating the ideas of science, history, and progress as forces of criticism within Indian traditions. He was a product of an age which was culturally self-confident (Nandy 1983: 101), when individuals thought themselves capable of self-definition. Rammohan's political consciousness was based on a good deal of self-esteem and autonomy. As recent assessments of Rammohan Roy have shown, directing our theoretical task to unmasking his complicity in colonial rule limits any need or desire to engage in more nuanced literary or philosophical investigations of his work. It is important to stress the power of ideas themselves acting as autonomous forces and as catalysts (Sen 1978: 5). It is important to avoid complacently dismissing Indian responses to the West as motivated either by slavish admiration or xenophobic rejection. Epistemological binarism is problematic in itself. In this particular instance, structure and history collide.
Since structuralism, critical theory is largely based on some idea of structural power that determines all behavior, both political and personal. To this fundamental systemic feature, the critic questions whether there can, in fact, be a true representation of any thing (Ahmad 1994: 192). The desire to know the world and the claim that it is open to rational comprehension can then be dismissed as contemptible attempts to construct "grand narratives" and totalizing (totalitarian?) knowledges.16 In Orientalist and postcolonial criticism's narratives of oppression, complex subjects such as Rammohan Roy tend not to exist. Representation is always already misrepresentation; human communication is "a ruse of illusory subjectivity [that] precludes the possibility of truthful statements on the ground that evidence that ... writing, is always already prejudiced by the very nature of language itself" (Ahmad 1993: 194).
On a historical level, such theory gives colonial discourse a status that it did not possess in the world as power. If colonial discourse as knowledge had the power ascribed to it, colonialism would probably not have been overthrown. There would have been no room for local power elites to collaborate with colonialism or synthesize their own form (Clark 1996: 29). By replacing reading with theoretical strategems intent on shaping the contest over decolonization, colonial discourse analysis can overlook areas of response that are not wholly determined by relationships of colonial power and undervalue causal links in areas such as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century nativist concerns. It can neglect those positive responses to specific elements in an alien culture that are not necessarily linked to dominance, even though the latter may reinforce them (Raychaudhuri 1988: 5). It can dismiss most claims of individual agency. It can refuse to acknowledge textuality as anything but a representation of inner contradictions of systemic violence. Theory prioritizes itself as the necessary device with which one can decode how textual inconsistencies and contradictions reenact or deconstruct the power relations of a system.
It allows us as readers to embrace the rather shallow critical assumption that all human communication is deceptive. The notion that systemic limits determine all struggles for self-realization stems from the belief that the individual is always subject to forces beyond his or her comprehension. If texts are considered mere effects of systemic violence, if representation is conceived as already an attempt to impose boundaries, then promises of reform ultimately reveal themselves as shrewd strategies of containment. This critical position points to reactionary and self-serving impulses dominating literary theory today. As we have seen in the case of Rammohan Roy, it has little basis in fact when actually applied to the production of any number of colonial subjects. In the following chapters, we might want to ask ourselves what politics of projects foreground the theoretical dependence on epistemic power and the rejection of intersubjectivity.
CHAPTER 5: Rammohan Roy
READING REFORM
In 1828, Raja Rammohan Roy (1774-1833) founded the Brahmo Sabha. Later renamed the Brahma Samaj, this organization sought to effect a purification of traditional Hinduism by promoting the values deemed operative in Vedic times: belief in the unity of God, absence of idol worship and unnecessary rituals (Collet 1962: 220-24). The Raja based his reform on a reading of "Vedic" scripture, believing that its wisdom, once available to all, would effect the rejuvenation of Hinduism. The role of the Brahma Samaj in the social and religious conditions of early nineteenth-century Bengal has been the subject of several fine studies and continues to inform critical assessments of Indian social history.
In The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (1983), Ashis Nandy examines the Raja's relationship to colonialism as the flip side of a theory of progress. His identification with the colonial aggressor is presented as an ego defense mechanism. Nandy likens Roy's reform efforts to the response of a child in confronting the inescapable dominance of physically more powerful adults enjoying total legitimacy. First, Nandy reconstructs a psychological sketch of the Raja's relationship with his mother as the sub text for reform. He then posits the "unbreakable dyadic relationship" that ensues from such an identification as the sine qua non of colonial culture. Nandy views Roy's introduction of ideas such as organized religion, a sacred text, monotheism, and a patriarchal godhead as a response to the colonial subject's alienation from an older lifestyle and its values. Nandy also sees Roy's reform as a reaction to the colonial incursion into eastern India and an attempt to confront domination by redefining masculinity, traditionally based on the demystification of womanhood, and shifting the locus of magicality from everyday femininity to a transcendent male principle. Nandy's analysis, while brilliantly performative, lacks sufficient grounding in textual specificity, a defect shared by the feminist conflation of Rammohan Roy by Lata Mani.
In Mani's article, Rammohan Roy's appeal to scripture is attributed solely to a purported colonial institution of scriptural normativity. The privileging of brahmanic scripture and the equation of tradition with scripture are presented as an effect of the "colonial discourse" on India, where colonial power underwrites official discussion and ensures scripture's increasing normativity (Mani 1988: 91). Colonial authorities alone institutionalize assumptions by making texts the basis of law. Only under colonialism is scripture seen as the locus of authenticity. For this critic, there exists no positioning of scripture within the brahmanical tradition, as if scripture had not always been normative and privileged in the history of Sanskrit literature. Not only is the colonial subject's relation to a text completely disengaged from any Indian exegetical tradition, but Rammohan Roy, as colonial subject par excellance, can only stand in relation to a text in light of the colonial experience. Any call to textual authority becomes a strategy of colonalism. Colonial subjects, we are told, would not even believe their own pandits, were it not for the British making them do so (Mani 1988: 102). While these arguments are absurd within the historical and religious framework, from a critical vantage point we must pause. They suggest a logic wherein texts can only function as "forms of cultural coercion" in which an ideology (in this case, colonialism) can be "naturalized and skillfully upheld" (Fluck 1996: 219).
Let us descend from the artful argument of Mani's critique to touch down in the realm of exegetical reality. The privileging of brahmanic scripture and the equation of tradition with scripture is not an effect of colonial discourse on India. The colonial subject is not solely constituted by colonialism, nor is it the only form of discourse that really matters. Other inventories and traces occur beyond the archive of the postcolonial critic. Other competing traditions of protest existed.1 The colonial subject did, indeed, have a voice that was not wholly contingent upon the colonial experience2 and was textually audible without need of the critic's intervention.3 However, to hear this voice, one must engage texts and cultural specificity. Both Nandy and Mani represent a trend in theory that views textuality as little more than a rhetorical tool in the interest of ideology and form as a deceptive promise of the possibility of individual agency (Fluck 1996: 225). A theoretical posture that minimizes the formal elements of literary representation, since texts only reveal manifestations of power relations, obviates the task of detailed reading and simplifies the demands placed upon the reader. It does not necessarily bring us any closer to engaging cultural complexities as mediated through language and other cultural translations. In the following analysis of Rammohan Roy's translations and exegetical writings, we will challenge the critical approach that seeks to reveal textual complicity without recourse to text or context. We will examine how Rammohan Roy used various literary strategies to set the groundwork for reform structured on a myth of an Aryan Golden Age. We begin the discussion by contextualizing Rammohan's work as an outgrowth of his cultural encounter with Europeans and critique of Indian traditionalism.
THE COMPLEXITY OF THE COLONIAL SUBJECT
Rammohan Roy's oeuvre defies simple categorization. It is misleading to view him as enacting a debate between liberalism and conservatism, East and West, modernism and tradition (Kopf 1969: 204-5). The tradition/modernity polarity, so optimistically accepted by mythographer-critics of the Raj, positions an image of primal precolonial innocence as the alternative to the victimized or collaborationist colonial Other. The tradition/modernity polarity diffuses specifics; it blurs the fact that variants of the concepts with which many anticolonial movements worked have often been products of the imperial culture itself and that these movements also pay homage to Indian cultural origins.
Rammohan Roy was the first Indian to establish his own press and publish newspapers, books, and pamphlets (Pankratz 1998: 335). In so doing, he was the first Indian distributor of Hindu and Christian texts. Roy was motivated by the belief that these two religions held similar traditions despite their formal diversity. In keeping with this universalist credo, Brahmo worship included public readings from the Bible in addition to selections from the Vedas, Upanishads, and the Brahmasutra (Collet 1962: 224-26).4 Furthermore, it embraced other "Christian" elements such as prayer, sermon, and hymn as integral parts of its service.5 Underlying this attempt at synthesis was Roy's belief that all major religions were equal in value and only needed to substitute rational faith for the meaningless rituals, myths, and superstitions prevalent in popular practice. Christianity, he felt, had much to offer India. Utilitarianism, in particular, offered a vision of theistic progress, wherein human perfectibility could be best achieved by joining social reform to rational religion. In Utilitarianism, he recognized a Christianity purified of miracles and devoid of theological "rust and dust." Yet, this search for a purer form of Christianity was of secondary importance to Roy's primary goal of rehabilitating Hinduism by proving that Sanskrit scripture espoused monotheism and rejected idol worship.
Toward this immediate pragmatic end, he fashioned translations and commentaries of the Vedanta and five principal Upanishads (the Isa, Kena, Katha, Mundaka, and Mandukya). These translations served as a defense of Hinduism against the pernicious assault waged by Trinitarian missionaries, in particular Alexander Duff and his followers. Roy answered Trinitarian attacks on Hindu superstition by establishing that Christianity also had its share of foolishness. Such a claim simply enraged Roy's missionary opponents, most notably Joshua Marshman of the Serampore Mission, who could not conceive of an Indian challenge to the hallowed inconsistencies of Christianity or faith in the Trinity (Kopf 1969: 202). Rammohan established his first journal, the BrahmunicaL Magazine (1821) with the expressed purpose of defending his belief in a monotheistic Hinduism against the critique of polytheism launched by the Serampore Missionaries.6 Rammohan Roy's relationship to Christianity was, therefore, not uncritical. Although he had great respect for ethical Christianity, this esteem did not blind him to its doctrinal inconsistencies or deter him from challenging its abuses.
His relationship to Sanskrit learning was equally complex. Because he had studied in Benares and was not formed by Orientalist scholarship, his knowledge of Hinduism was greatly valued in his time (Kopf 1969: 59). Even though he did not garner his knowledge of the Sanskrit tradition from Western scholars, his quest for a purified Hinduism was considerably influenced by their utopian vision of the Aryan past. However, it also reflected the work of eighteenth-century pandits. Just as the pandits essentially "rewrote" the shastras for the benefit of the East India Company judges, Roy "rewrote" them for the Indian intelligentsia. He differed, however, from the eighteenth-century pandits by relying on English translations as much as on the Sanskrit texts themselves Goshi 1975: 145). For this reason, Roy's version of the Aryan past also owed much to the prejudices of Sir William Jones and H.T. Colebrooke.
Colebrooke's essay on the Vedas proved particularly significant in its attention to discrepancies between ancient textual requirements and contemporary practices (Kopf 1969: 198). Colebrooke first suggested that objectionable religious practices resulted from a misunderstanding of texts (Colebrooke 1802: 196). Roy adopted this strategy in his own readings. He also followed the Orientalists' preferance for the Vedantic period as the authentic model for Aryan theology, law, and literature (Roy 1906: 573). He shared their devaluation of post-Vedantic Hinduism as well as their identification of idolatry, sati, and polytheism as medieval excrescences. Although ideas regarding monotheism and the symbolic nature of idol worship had previously been discussed by learned Hindus, particularly the eighteenth-century poets Ramprasad and Bharat Chandra, Roy followed Western critics in their direct attribution of the degeneration of Hindu society to these customs (Roy 1906: 574-75). As did Jones and Colebrooke, the Raja likewise blamed the brahmins for social and religious decay, since they plotted to conceal the truth of the Vedant "within the dark curtain of the Sanskrit" (Roy 1906: 3) rather than disseminate it to the people in the vernacular languages. It was to undo religious degeneration and counter the brahmin hegemony over Hinduism that Roy chose to translate scripture into the vernacular (Roy 1906: 199). Here too, Roy continued an age-old struggle between Sanskrit and vernaculars that had previously found expression in the works of Eknath (Ranade 1902: 219).
Quite simply, the strategy arguing for social reform in terms of scriptural authority existed in India outside the colonial era and did not depend on "the emerging dominance of an official Western discourse on India" (Mani 1988: 114). Before we accuse Roy of collaborating with colonial administrators by prioritizing smrti (with Manu as foremost among smrti texts), we must first question whether there existed a colonial discourse with respect to scripture that differed from brahmin orthodox policy.
SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY AND THE HERMENEUTICS OF SATI
In orthodox tradition, Manu was a standing source of authority and not just a text that was malleable to colonial administrative designs (Manu 1992: xviii) and, by extension, Roy's need to imitate his colonial masters. It was the subject of nine complete commentaries and more frequently cited than any other dharmashastra. In theory, Indians have always taken Manu very seriously. Whether its privileged status extended to actual use in legal courts is another matter. Some historians have claimed that, before colonial rule, Manu had been used by jurists (Manu 1992: ix). Orientalism did not give Manu its authority.7 Manu was the absolute authority of both Vedic knowledge and Vedic practice (Manu 1992: xli-xlii). In other words, there existed a noncolonial precedent for Roy's reliance on Manu. Roy (and the colonial officials) diverged from this exegetical tradition, however, in an important respect. After identifying original authoritative sources, they felt it their duty to correct these texts of the accretions suffered with the passage of time. Whatever truth claims scripture originally held had been contaminated by centuries of ignorant and sometimes wild accretions.
The Raja thus posed a serious challenge to scriptural inerrancy and canonicity. A scriptural canon was established as original and authentic. However, in order to prove valuable for Roy's larger project of reform, it had to be corrected. For his needs, Roy gave centrality only to those texts that could be read to support universalist and modern interpretations (Nandy 1983: 194). Toward this end, the Raja drew primarily from those texts that easily lent themselves to reinterpretation suiting his immediate concerns for social reform (Heimsath 1964: 154). His reliance on the Upanishads, the Vedanta Sutra, and Manu as sufficiently vague and complex authorities stemmed from this same need for adaptability.
Roy based his vision of the Aryan Golden Age on a "Veda," constructed to provide ample opportunity for self-realization. As a guide, even this extensive canon could not sufficiently reinforce the ethical basis that Roy felt lacking in Hinduism. Moral precepts that he found present in his "Veda" appeared only in scattered form. Since he felt Christian ethics presented the same system of morality in a manner better suited for the discharge of social duties, Roy incorporated the precepts of Jesus into his canon as a basis for teaching morality. He continued to champion the validity of "Vedic" texts, but acknowledged the unacceptable errors that they had accrued over time, clouding their moral focus.
It is important to remember that in his definition of the canon, Roy was guided both by the Orientalist reception of the "oldest" texts and method of reading as well as by the Indian normative view of a "Vedic" canon and tradition of interpreting it. Although eternal and immutable, this Veda could be employed to explain a process of change and provide a fluid sacred authority upon which an interpreter could impose a personal thematic. Canonical gerrymandering and free translation techniques restructured the authoritative texts. They could now be read "objectively," that is, to support the pillars of Rammohan's reform: the condemnation of sati and polytheistic idolatry (Roy 1906: 5).8 The Raja read and sometimes rewrote the "Vedic" canon to depict an ideal Aryan past where these practices did not exist.
Of all the contemporary practices that diverged from ancient sources, sati was considered by Rammohan Roy to be the most destructive force threatening society: engendering prejudice, superstition, and the total destruction of moral principles. In the Conference between an Advocate for and an Opponent of the Practice of Burning Widows Alive (1818), Roy presented his textually grounded condemnation of sati in the form of a debate. The opponent of sati claims that it is suicide and, as such, forbidden by the various shastras. The advocate for sati, however, cites the Rig veda in support of the ritual.
O Fire! let these women, with bodies anointed with clarified butter, eyes coloured with collyrium and void of tears, enter thee, the parent of water, that they may not be separated from their husbands, but may be in union with excellent husbands, themselves sinless and jewels amongst women. (Roy 1906: 327)
The opponent's response to Rig Vedic authority relies on a fundamental thesis of Roy's commentaries and translations: pure religion degenerated into cultic practices that aimed at accommodating less gifted adherents. Citing the Bhagavad Gita, the opponent claims that even a Vedic passage may be superceded, if it is directed toward readers who are occupied with or trapped within sense desires. Thus, the Rig Veda passage, the ultimate authority condoning sati, can be discounted as a lesser authority intended for lesser minds.
The opponent/Roy also points to the obscurity of the Rig Vedic passage and questions its authenticity (Roy 1906: 367-72). He notes that it does not specifically enjoin women to sacrifice themselves and contains no reference to women performing voluntary death with their husbands' corpse. The phrase "these women" can only be taken to refer to particular women and not women in general. Roy adds, moreover, that no commentary has ever given this passage the interpretation of commending widows to burn themselves on their husband's pyre. In a gesture of overkill, Roy has now both rejected as an invalid authority the Vedic passage cited in favor of sati and called into question its reliability.
He next questions whether support for this problematic ritual has ever been found in smrti, texts which rank second to the Veda in authority. Among smrti, Manu is the most authoritative. Roy claims that Manu, by enjoining the widow to live a virtuous life, is decidedly against concremation. Although contradictions to Manu can be found, Roy rejects them for the same reason that he discounted the Rig Vedic passage -- their promise of future carnal fruition (Roy 1906: 368). In addition to the Gita's injunction to discount texts that promise reward, he cites Manu and modern law experts who also discredit behavior done in the hope of future gains. Roy's condemnation of sati rests, therefore, upon three claims of validity. Passages are first assessed according to intent. A text, whatever its status, that promotes superstition, idolatry, or the promotion of selfish ritual must be discarded. Secondly, passages are judged by authenticity and reliability. These factors are judged by corroborative textual evidence. Thirdly, corroboration is sought in the most authoritative text. Barring Vedic corroboration, it is to be found in the next most authoritative source. Roy reads Manu as inviolate and claims a text valid only insofar as it agrees with Manu (Roy 1906: 343). Manu, therefore, can overrule all other lawbooks and, in this case, the Veda itself. At the expense of the Rig Veda, Manu is deemed truly "Vedic." As such, Manu's assessment is deemed valid and original. Roy reads Manu's enjoinder for widows to live virtuous lives as the legitimate condemnation of the rite. The condemnation of sati thus pivoted upon the rhetorical use of scripture, its shifting authority, and conflicting truth claims. Rammohan Roy's critique of idolatry further developed this line of argument.
MISREADING MONOTHEISM: IDOLATRY AND BRAHMIN PERFIDY
By shifting scriptural authority and translating select Upanishads and the Vedanta Sutra into vernaculars ("Hindoostani" and Bengali) and English, Roy did not merely construct a specific normative reading. By making the texts available, he prioritized scripture as it had never been before, substituting the texts themselves for the priest as the ultimate source of authority and, thus, subverting the traditional hermeneutic process. In this manner, Roy created a vision of the Vedic past wherein objectionable aspects of modern Hinduism were absent, since they existed only through misreading and abuse of textual authority.
In the introduction to his translation of the Kena Upanishad, Roy asserted that in India, no less than in the West, there had developed a notion of monotheism (Roy 1906: 35). In subsequent epochs, this belief had degenerated into idolatry for two reasons: believers are often ignorant and priests are often liars. There exist many who are incapable of grasping higher truths, yet are entitled to religious principles lest they remain in a primitive state. For the sake of those who possess limited understanding, worship of figured beings is allowed. This rationale explains how an infallible text such as the Veda can appear paradoxical; it is so by design, with the interest of the common man in mind. Where the Veda suggests a tolerance for idolatry, it actually reveals a strategy for accommodating the unsophisticated (Roy 1906: 23).9 Subtleties in Vedic rhetorical style aimed at providing divine access to all persons, including those incapable of subtlety who may choose lesser paths.10 Roy thus delimited a subtext within the Veda, a meta-Veda, that demanded an allegorical reading aimed at an alternative audience. As a literary device, however, allegory proved baneful, since Indians showed themselves to be particularly skilled in this art. When literature and philosophy subsequently decayed, clever allegorical representations were misinterpreted to condone idolatry as the foremost and preferred form of worship.
The prevalence of Hindu idolatry, therefore, should be seen as an error in interpretation. Different genres coexisting within a single scriptural text presented different claims to authority and validity. To decipher Vedic truth, one must determine which passages should be read as scriptural injunction and which as poetry. The Raja could then, having established rules for textual validity, dismiss the poetic (and symbolic) passages that had been "misread" and correct those "excrescences" that had led to "exceptionable practices," depriving Hindus of common comforts and bringing about societal ruin. Rather than anything intrinsic to Hinduism, it was the Indian genius for allegory and democratizing scriptural strategies of revealing God to all, the gifted as well as the unsophisticated, that led to confusion. The reader's inability to judge the respective truth claims of poetry and scriptural injunction enabled the practice of idolatry to flourish. Roy's translations and commentaries aimed at enabling Indians to cast aside prejudice and release themselves from the fetters of accumulated misreadings.
In addition to misreadings stemming from interpretive misperceptions, Vedic wisdom was also undermined by a well-organized brahmin conspiracy.
Roy directly accused the brahmins of keeping the true scriptural knowledge concealed from their brethern (Roy 1906: 66) by permitting "themselves alone to interpret or even touch any book of this kind" (Roy 1906: 3). Roy claimed that textual inaccessibility had allowed religious practice to stray from orthodoxy to the point that it stood at a considerable distance from precept. Brahmins read the Vedas in support of ceremonial observance as necessary for the acquisition of divine knowledge in order to monopolize profits from the rites and festivals of idol worship (Roy 1906: 93). Zealous brahmins thus sacrificed scriptural authority for "the preservation of their fertile estate of idolatry" (Roy 1906: 108, 118). They were fully aware of the absurdity of idol worship (preface, Isopanishad, 1816), yet they nevertheless encouraged its practice since it provided their fortune and comfort. Their motives as promoters of image worship were, therefore, base, shameless, and mercenary (Roy 1906: 114, 116). These self-interested guides, motivated by vulgar caprice (Roy 1906: 71), conducted believers to the temple of idolatry (Roy 1906: 73). They succeeded in promoting idol worship only because the average Hindu was unversed in scripture and believed that religion really consisted in the observance of rituals and rules of caste. Whereas the worship of idols had existed in other civilizations (notably Greece and Rome) in equally "impure, absurd and puerile" forms, the Hindu variety was far more pernicious, since it was perpetrated by trusted authority figures "hardly deserving the name of social beings" (Roy 1906: 120), who destroyed the comforts of life and the very texture of society.
Rammohan believed that idolatry ultimately effected the total destruction of morality. As an external form of ritual palpable only to gross instincts, it countenanced criminal intercourse, suicide, female murder, and human sacrifice. All prejudices and superstitions derived from it, since the worship of objects resembling one's own nature deadened the senses and led to grosser abuses (Mu1J4aka Upanishad, 1819). He laid the destruction of society's moral fabric directly at the feet of the brahmins, who acted as false guides and consciously defied scripture. Roy chided traditional brahmins for distorting scripture and withholding religious truths. But he primarily blamed "modern Brahmins" for sanctioning the practices of sati, child marriage, dowry abuses, and Kulinism.11 They promoted "the most heinous crimes that would make even the most savage nations blush to commit unless compelled by most urgent necessity" (introduction, Katha translation).
In his translation of the Katha Upanishad, Roy elaborated upon his condemnation of self-interested brahmin leaders who foster superstitions. He accused them of actually fashioning scripture to suit their greed and selfish aims. Roy exhorted his readers to use common sense, follow reason, and put faith only in those who translate scripture for them out of disinterested motives rather than those who conceal truth, demand goods, and require obeisance. In contrast to the traditional (and flawed) interpreter, the Raja positioned himself as the ideal reader committed to reason and not motivated by greed. His desire to reform Hinduism, however, conflicted with his ideal of objectivity. Although he claimed to translate the Upanishads faithfully (Roy 1906: 63), his renditions differ considerably from the Sanskrit texts, particularly in those passages (noted in italics) that he added to the original to "facilitate comprehension." Upon closer inspection of Roy's translations, one realizes the extent to which he editorialized scripture to promote his reform agenda. In the interest of space, a representative example of Roy's creative emendations should suffice.
The attributeless God of the Upanishads becomes in Roy's translations a patriarchal deity viewed as "spiritual father" and parent (Roy 1906: 39, 42). This was a difficult divine image for the Raja to have extracted from the attributeless Brahman of Vedanta or the monism of Advaita. Nevertheless, he read into Shankara's commentary a revival of monotheism and evoked a patriarchal God who was "the author and governor of the universe" (Roy 1906: 174). He is a God who rewards the faithful and bestows grace upon them in the form of knowledge (Roy 1906: 58) and faith (Roy 1906: 26). Unique and paternal, God responds to those who rationally approach Him. Although human forgetfulness allows for the identification of this God with a multitude of celestial representations (Roy 1906: 12), no competing divinities really exist. In the Isa's invocation of the Sun (verse 16), Roy supplements the text with the comment that such prayers are "meaningless since the sun is the same as He who possesses Divine Nature." Throughout his translations, Roy consistently explains away multiple gods and promotes a vision of Vedic monotheism. The Raja reads the text to say that idolatry is as much an error as is ritual excess.
Roy introduces the subject of ritual into texts (Roy 1906: 26, 76) where it does not appear. A passage from the Isopanishad is literally translated as:
Those who are covered in darkness and who despise the Self die and become demons.12
Rammohan Roy rendered this passage in the following manner:
Those that neglect the contemplation of the Supreme Spirit either by devoting themselves solely to the performance of the ceremonies of religion, or by living destitute of religious ideas, shall after death, assume the state of demons such as that of the celestial gods, and other created beings, which are surrounded with the darkness of ignorance. (Roy 1906: 76)
Here as elsewhere (Roy 1906: 47, 51-52), the Raja introduced the subject of ritual into the text only to condemn it as a false goal of worship, motivated by vain desire of future gain, a form of superstition (Roy 1906: 15), or something purely optional. Ritual is equated with religious ignorance. Demons are likened to the multiple gods worshipped by lesser minds. In this manner, he rewrites the Upanishadic text to condemn both ritual and idolatry.
These polemical works and translations show that the Raja fully recognized the authority wielded by the "Vedas" as absent texts and the abuse of authority exercised by their brahmin "readers."13 Rammohan Roy's entire project was directed at making present these texts and wresting power away from their custodians. In his polemical works, Roy developed strategies to alter the canon so that it supported his arguments. With his translation of principle portions of the "Vedas" and the Vedanta, authority came to rest solidly on a tangible archive. Here the canon, now fixed, underwent rewriting. Through the manipulation of his canon, Roy set about redressing errors concerning the nature of the "invisible Supreme Being" and suggesting models for "pure worship" untainted by idolatry. The condemnation of idolatry ultimately rested on the conflicting truth claims of poetry and divine injunction.
RAMMOHAN ROY'S SYNCRETISM AND ITS CHALLENGE TO POSTCOLONIAL THEORY
Christophe Jaffrelot has identified two theoretical positions that historians generally use to describe the origin and development of ethnic movements in India: the primordialist and the instrumental. The primordialist position maintains that cultural specificities lead to ethnic consciousness. The instrumentalist position holds that cultural identities are malleable and can, as symbols, be manipulated by elite groups to mobilize a given community. Jaffrelot suggests a third perspective, what he terms "strategic syncretism." He terms this position syncretic because the content of ideology is taken from the behavior of groups deemed antagonistic to a given population. The syncretism is strategic in that it aims, through psychological and mimetic processes, to dominate those same antagonistic groups (Jaffrelot 1993: 519).
We have tried to show how Rammohan Roy constructed a canon and used it in a manner consistent with what Jaffrelot has termed strategic syncretism. He borrowed from the Orientalists a preference for Vedantic texts. He shared their devaluation of modern Hinduism. Here, he was less motivated by the missionaries' contempt for a debased faith and more from belief that it did not suit the social needs of the population. However, he shared their distrust of brahmin power. Rammohan Roy took what he liked about Christianity, borrowed the methods wielded by missionaries and Orientalist scholarship, and devised strategies, based on traditional Indian normative approaches to textuality (that is, that texts need interpretation), to challenge scriptural inerrancy and canonicity.
He waged a battle on two fronts, one against the heavy-handed techniques of Christian missionaries (a problem that does not seem to go away, as witnessed by recent events in India with American Baptist groups) and another against brahmin power. His reform was strategic in the sense that it sought to dominate both missionary and brahmin discourse. Through the evocation of a Vedic Golden Age constructed out of alternative readings of canonical sources, he condemned those very practices that had elicited the scorn of Christian missionaries. By evoking a monotheistic Vedic Urreligion, he placed Hinduism on equal footing with Christianity. By exposing the idolatrous nature of the Christian Trinity, Roy silenced any critique of Hindu polytheism.
However antagonistic the Trinitarians might have been as a group and however necessary it was to neutralize them, the enemies who existed closer to home were far more daunting opponents. To combat them, Rammohan Roy waged a battle of literary proportions. By prioritizing textuality over and above priestly exegesis, the Raja dealt a severe blow to brahmin authority. If there was a brahmin conspiracy, wider accessibility to authoritative texts would do much to countermand it.14 By grounding his reform in the reinterpretation of sacred texts and appending onto these texts core values borrowed from the rhetoric of Christianity, Roy legitimized his arguments according to existing Indian concepts of scriptural sacredness. He sought to establish a means whereby Hinduism, whose conventional sacred duties had been confined to ceremonial rites and offerings, might be transformed and brought into the service of the community. He expressly sought to promote the comfort of his people and unite them by reviving the "Vedant" and disseminating religion in book form.
In this study of the Aryan myth as it expresses itself in the literary consciousness, it is our intention to stress at all times the hermeneutic event, the individual's relationship to inherited tradition and the specific experience of encounter. Rammohan Roy's translations of the Upanishads brought into focus a fundamental disagreement over man's natural capacity to understand religious truth. This hermeneutic problem stemmed from the hierarchization of Hindu social and religious life founded on the premise that significant differences in capacity and competence exist between individuals. Rammohan Roy seriously challenged this adhikarabheda tradition when he translated the texts. He asserted that all but a very small minority could understand the basic teachings of the Upanishads. He did not expect all to benefit fully from these teachings, but the success rate would be proportionate to one's state of mental preparation (Roy 1906: 133).15
There was even another level of syncretism in his work-his promoting Christian precepts grounded in Western rationalism. He did not see contemporary Hinduism as permanently inferior to Semitic-based creeds, but as a once great but now fallen religion which still had possibilities. His efforts at reform were motivated by a desire to improve the lot of his countrymen and modernize their faith. In his harkening back, via a "Veda" that could wield authority in India's present-day malaise, Roy sought to reconstruct a purified Hindu community and a sense of history for that community (Nandy 1983: 103). To borrow Jaffrelot's terminology, we may say that his syncretism was strategic in the sense that the resulting neo- Hinduism originated out of a purely indigenous golden age that depicted a unified religion and a single cultural strain (Nandy 1983: 193). By revealing the essential truth embedded in scripture, Rammohan Roy sought to separate scriptural authority from the false accretions of time and the literal teachings of idolatrous, self-promoting brahmins who continued to practice a socially destructive system. His methodology provided a powerful tool of social engineering to the next generation (Nandy 1983: 193). His efforts represent far less the colonial's intellectual dependency on the Western Other and need to mimic his values, and far more an individual interrogating his own tradition and wielding the tools of Western religion as they are useful to him. In Rammohan Roy, we find the "voiced" subaltern.
No one doubts the acknowledged limitations of nationalism within the colonial context, nor the influence of nineteenth-century intellectual models upon nationalism. Colonialism does define, limit, and distort contact between cultures. However, it does not follow that a weak and dependent intelligentsia's admiration for its master's civilization is exclusively a result of dependency (Sen 1978: 4). The hermeneutic possibilities of cross-cultural encounters are simply not exhausted by identifying a "drive" in the European psyche suffering from ego-anxiety or its aggressive objectification of the other in order to constitute its own coherence (Said 1978: 72). Quite simply, we must question the dynamics involved in Eastern appropriations of Western constructs. Indian responses to specific elements in British culture, for example, were not necessarily linked to colonialism, even though responses may ultimately have reinforced imperial dominance (Raychaudhuri 1988: 5). The oppressor/victim binary of colonial discourse analysis does not account for patterns of admiration and positions adopted within the receiving culture. Dominance can provoke revulsion and rejection as well. While negative responses are frequently interpreted as ambivalence, they might also be explained by the fact that particular components of the cultures involved determine what is admired or rejected. Ideally, theory should explain how appropriations are rooted in the specific cultural traits of the receptor society and its literary tradition. Equality and inequality are not the sole determinants of cultural encounters.
Encounters are determined from the evolving values of a people and their specific historical situation. Rammohan Roy lived at a time when one could envision incorporating the ideas of science, history, and progress as forces of criticism within Indian traditions. He was a product of an age which was culturally self-confident (Nandy 1983: 101), when individuals thought themselves capable of self-definition. Rammohan's political consciousness was based on a good deal of self-esteem and autonomy. As recent assessments of Rammohan Roy have shown, directing our theoretical task to unmasking his complicity in colonial rule limits any need or desire to engage in more nuanced literary or philosophical investigations of his work. It is important to stress the power of ideas themselves acting as autonomous forces and as catalysts (Sen 1978: 5). It is important to avoid complacently dismissing Indian responses to the West as motivated either by slavish admiration or xenophobic rejection. Epistemological binarism is problematic in itself. In this particular instance, structure and history collide.
Since structuralism, critical theory is largely based on some idea of structural power that determines all behavior, both political and personal. To this fundamental systemic feature, the critic questions whether there can, in fact, be a true representation of any thing (Ahmad 1994: 192). The desire to know the world and the claim that it is open to rational comprehension can then be dismissed as contemptible attempts to construct "grand narratives" and totalizing (totalitarian?) knowledges.16 In Orientalist and postcolonial criticism's narratives of oppression, complex subjects such as Rammohan Roy tend not to exist. Representation is always already misrepresentation; human communication is "a ruse of illusory subjectivity [that] precludes the possibility of truthful statements on the ground that evidence that ... writing, is always already prejudiced by the very nature of language itself" (Ahmad 1993: 194).
On a historical level, such theory gives colonial discourse a status that it did not possess in the world as power. If colonial discourse as knowledge had the power ascribed to it, colonialism would probably not have been overthrown. There would have been no room for local power elites to collaborate with colonialism or synthesize their own form (Clark 1996: 29). By replacing reading with theoretical strategems intent on shaping the contest over decolonization, colonial discourse analysis can overlook areas of response that are not wholly determined by relationships of colonial power and undervalue causal links in areas such as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century nativist concerns. It can neglect those positive responses to specific elements in an alien culture that are not necessarily linked to dominance, even though the latter may reinforce them (Raychaudhuri 1988: 5). It can dismiss most claims of individual agency. It can refuse to acknowledge textuality as anything but a representation of inner contradictions of systemic violence. Theory prioritizes itself as the necessary device with which one can decode how textual inconsistencies and contradictions reenact or deconstruct the power relations of a system.
It allows us as readers to embrace the rather shallow critical assumption that all human communication is deceptive. The notion that systemic limits determine all struggles for self-realization stems from the belief that the individual is always subject to forces beyond his or her comprehension. If texts are considered mere effects of systemic violence, if representation is conceived as already an attempt to impose boundaries, then promises of reform ultimately reveal themselves as shrewd strategies of containment. This critical position points to reactionary and self-serving impulses dominating literary theory today. As we have seen in the case of Rammohan Roy, it has little basis in fact when actually applied to the production of any number of colonial subjects. In the following chapters, we might want to ask ourselves what politics of projects foreground the theoretical dependence on epistemic power and the rejection of intersubjectivity.