Modernity and Public Sphere in Vernacular
Purushottam Agrawal
This truth about Kabir and others did not descend on me from the heavens, but came as a heartfelt realization during my long, painful and adventurous journey in search of my own relation with Kabir and his times. This was also the search of the genealogy of modernity in India; and I now have some understanding of how what we call modern ideas – along with cultural forms and social institutions supporting them – functioned in pre- colonial India. The relationship, which most of the “modern“ scholarship has established with vernacular sources, not only in the context of Kabir but in general, brings to my mind a scene from the popular Hindi film Guide (1965), based on the novel by R. K. Narayan. One of the crucial scenes in the film goes much beyond the authorial intention of the director. The protagonist, Raju the guide, has earned the respect and reverence of the village-folks. The village priests feel threatened and are quite upset. In order to subvert Raju’s position, they implicitly challenge Raju to speak some Sanskrit, putting to him a question in that language. Obviously, Raju cannot take up the challenge–the priests are quite excited−“what can he say, has no Sanskrit.“ Raju’s reputation is at stake, so he starts speaking in English. Now the priests are at a loss, while Raju is triumphant−“what can they say, have no English.“ “Modern“ scholarship must realize that those with no command of Sanskrit, Persian or English do indeed have something to say. Listening to such people carefully, we can realize that Kabir was considered neither a failure nor as a marginal voice by his own society. We can also see that Kabir was not speaking to a decadent and stagnant community “waiting“ [so to speak] for the advent of colonial modernity for deliverance. It was a society heading towards its own modernity, if you will, by interrogating and transforming its tradition. It is important to understand that Kabir’s was not a lonely, whimsical or out-of-place voice in this process. A little later than him, we find a most articulate expression of the modern idea of Man in the poetry of Mirabai– a remarkable woman, who gave voice to a new subjectivity, resisted the temptations of starting her own sampraday (designated group or collectivity around an individual or deity) and declined invitations to join one. In a nutshell, I propose on the basis of my researches that Kabir and Mira in north India and Tukaram in Maharashtra seem “like moderns“ not because they were running ahead of their times, but because their times were witnessing the emergence of modernity in Indian history. Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |
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