Historically Brahmins were grammarians, logicians, writers, poets, astrologers, and scientists. They were men of the mind, as these men still were. I had seen Brahmins performing religious ceremonies and reading their scriptures. That interested me less. But I found the sight of these men engaged in an ancient form of scholarship utterly compelling. How strange that it had been right here all this while. Strange, too, that no connection should exist between their world and mine—that India's intellectual past should play no role in engendering its present and future. A link had been severed, but I knew too little about what had been lost to feel the pain of it. What struck me hard that afternoon was how automatic my incuriosity about old India had been.
everywhere, at home nowhere." He wrote, "I am a stranger and alien in the West. I cannot be of it. But in my own country also, sometimes, I have an exile's feeling." Nehru no doubt felt a version of what the French intellectual Didier Eribon experienced in relation to class—"the discomfort that results from belonging to two different worlds, worlds so far separated from each other that they seem irreconcilable, and yet which coexist in everything that you are." That afternoon among the Brahmins of Benares, I knew an odd feeling of being impoverished by my exposure to other places. The legacy of British rule in India meant that I belonged to a zone of overlap that lay between East and West. It was what made it easy for me to go to college in America. The linguistic and cultural familiarity with multiple societies should have brought forth a rich
Like so much of the old non-West, India was an ancient civilization reborn as a modern nation, twice-born in another sense. But it was amazing to consider how long it had been trying to cure itself of the trauma of its second birth. A hundred years ago, in this very town, the Banaras Hindu University had been founded with the stated intention of closing the gap between East and West. At its inauguration, in 1916, a little-known leader, freshly arrived from his activities in South Africa, had caused "a beautiful scandal." "It is a matter of deep humiliation and shame for us," began Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi—addressing an audience comprising the viceroy, a pride of Indian princes, and Annie Besant, the leading theosophist and champion of self-rule for India—"that I am compelled this evening under the shadow of this great college, in this sacred city, to address mv councrvmen in a language that is foreign to me.
"But suppose that we had been receiving during the past fifty years education through our vernaculars, what should we have today? We should have today a free India, we should have our educated men not as if they were foreigners in their own land, but speaking to the heart of the nation..." Gandhi was responding to a process that had been set in motion a century before. The British administrator Lord Macaulay was roughly my age—in his midthirties—when, in
motion a century before. The British administrator Lord Macaulay was roughly my age—in his midthirties—when, in 1834, he was appointed to the Committee of Public Instruction. Macaulay had felt duty bound to create a "class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect." He envisaged an Indian elite that would gradually extend modern knowledge to the great mass of the population. But this is not what happened. Instead, the class of interpreters grew more isolated with every generation, and by the time Gandhi gave his speech, the distance between the two Indias had become the cause of pain and anxiety, both for those who felt talked down to and for those who had been colonized and now lived at a great remove from their country.
The image of the Brahmins of Benares seared itself into my mind. But I now also found it impossible to approach Tripathi with my original intention of learning Sanskrit. Mapu had spoken romantically of the relationship between guru and shishya. Perhaps he was nearer the life of tradition and could imagine himself immersed in it again. I, for my part, could not. Incredible as it was to glimpse the antiquity of a sacralized form of learning, to witness was not to participate. The induction into the ancient language was a ritual part of a traditional Brahmin boy's passage into manhood. The world of ritual was closed to me. To insinuate myself into it now would have felt like an unspeakable act of fraudulence. A break had occurred, and I was on the other side of it.
everywhere, at home nowhere." He wrote, "I am a stranger and alien in the West. I cannot be of it. But in my own country also, sometimes, I have an exile's feeling." Nehru no doubt felt a version of what the French intellectual Didier Eribon experienced in relation to class—"the discomfort that results from belonging to two different worlds, worlds so far separated from each other that they seem irreconcilable, and yet which coexist in everything that you are." That afternoon among the Brahmins of Benares, I knew an odd feeling of being impoverished by my exposure to other places. The legacy of British rule in India meant that I belonged to a zone of overlap that lay between East and West. It was what made it easy for me to go to college in America. The linguistic and cultural familiarity with multiple societies should have brought forth a rich
Like so much of the old non-West, India was an ancient civilization reborn as a modern nation, twice-born in another sense. But it was amazing to consider how long it had been trying to cure itself of the trauma of its second birth. A hundred years ago, in this very town, the Banaras Hindu University had been founded with the stated intention of closing the gap between East and West. At its inauguration, in 1916, a little-known leader, freshly arrived from his activities in South Africa, had caused "a beautiful scandal." "It is a matter of deep humiliation and shame for us," began Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi—addressing an audience comprising the viceroy, a pride of Indian princes, and Annie Besant, the leading theosophist and champion of self-rule for India—"that I am compelled this evening under the shadow of this great college, in this sacred city, to address mv councrvmen in a language that is foreign to me.
"But suppose that we had been receiving during the past fifty years education through our vernaculars, what should we have today? We should have today a free India, we should have our educated men not as if they were foreigners in their own land, but speaking to the heart of the nation..." Gandhi was responding to a process that had been set in motion a century before. The British administrator Lord Macaulay was roughly my age—in his midthirties—when, in
motion a century before. The British administrator Lord Macaulay was roughly my age—in his midthirties—when, in 1834, he was appointed to the Committee of Public Instruction. Macaulay had felt duty bound to create a "class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect." He envisaged an Indian elite that would gradually extend modern knowledge to the great mass of the population. But this is not what happened. Instead, the class of interpreters grew more isolated with every generation, and by the time Gandhi gave his speech, the distance between the two Indias had become the cause of pain and anxiety, both for those who felt talked down to and for those who had been colonized and now lived at a great remove from their country.
The image of the Brahmins of Benares seared itself into my mind. But I now also found it impossible to approach Tripathi with my original intention of learning Sanskrit. Mapu had spoken romantically of the relationship between guru and shishya. Perhaps he was nearer the life of tradition and could imagine himself immersed in it again. I, for my part, could not. Incredible as it was to glimpse the antiquity of a sacralized form of learning, to witness was not to participate. The induction into the ancient language was a ritual part of a traditional Brahmin boy's passage into manhood. The world of ritual was closed to me. To insinuate myself into it now would have felt like an unspeakable act of fraudulence. A break had occurred, and I was on the other side of it.
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