Methodological questions about knowledge construction saw shifts in a colonially mediated modern India. Questions about an Indian way of thinking arose.  They emerged in India as it underwent sweeping changes both generally and in the intellectual world. With the arrival of new colonial masters, there were new configurations of knowledge and power. Ideas of validity became important methodologically. To be a knowledge, a knowledge system should follow “strict methodological principles and procedures” (Kaviraj, 2005). This idea of validation falls short of most traditional knowledge systems including traditional Indian knowledge. This paved the way for a situation of epistemic rupture which Kaviraj calls an “epistemic rupture on the vastest possible scale – one of the greatest known in history” (ibid).

In 1886 Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote Krishna Charita discussing the true nature of lord Krishna. He argued about Krishna’s representation as a childhood thief stealing butter, an adolescent who steals women’s clothes and the God who gets great warriors killed in Mahabharata by an act of cunningness. What he was trying to contend with was the emergence of a new legacy in the colonial era of criticizing Hindu Gods like Krishna by Brahmos and Evangelists. What Chattopadhyay did in his work is to re-represent the image of Krishna in the colonial world context. He can get validation as a figure nearer to God in the framework of the colonial knowledge system.

Let me elaborate my statement. Chattopadhyay states – “At the end, I want to state that this work is not written to represent the godliness of Krishna but to analyze his human character. The more one examines the character of Krishna in the Mahabharata, the more one realizes the quality of a man who was relentless in executing his will and a far-sighted politician. In all this, there is not even a trace of the pleasure-seeking young cowherd of Vrindavan” (Sen, 2011: 231). So he intended to present ‘his’ God as a great political leader which can be justified in the new modern knowledge system.

However, this wasn’t about the production of knowledge but the methodology deployed. To finally validate his produced knowledge, Chattopadhyay very clearly takes the historical approach and states that wicked representations of Krishna were of latter origin. He expresses his historical approach to validating the almighty by asking the question from the modern knowledge system perspective. What is the authenticity of Krishna’s existence? Where are the proofs that a person called Krishna had ever lived on earth?

His ‘Indian’ mind takes the Western approach to retrofit his knowledge in the new system of thought.

He states – “Information about Sri Krishna can be found in the following ancient books: Mahabharata, Harivansh and Puranas”(Sen, 2011: 18). This idea of historical analysis was introduced by the colonial system to deny the solidification of the Indian knowledge system and at the same time to establish the new modern knowledge system which allows the epistemic expansion of colonialism in Indian cognitive spaces. History would not merely comprise a distinct and honoured part of the curriculum in schools and colleges in India, but historical analysis became the principal method of teaching colonial subjects to identify errors in their own system of thought and simultaneously confirm Western principles of law, order, justice, and truth (Lal, 2003: 31).

This raises the question: was there any previous knowledge system in India before the establishment of the modern knowledge system by the colonial authority? And if there was, what was the nature of it? And did an Indian way of thinking exist in colonial times in any form?

Kaviraj asked the historical question of Intellectual modernity about how and why the traditional knowledge system collapsed. It was supplanted by the modern knowledge system. He mentions Gaston Bachelard’s theory of ‘epistemological break’ and Thomas Kuhns ‘paradigm shifts’, as possible ways of dealing with the death of Sanskrit knowledge. However, Kaviraj found the Foucauldian approach as a suitable solution, which explains that the “Sanskrit knowledge system could die so suddenly because, in intellectual terms, it was no ordinary death. It was caused by instruments – not of superior techniques of knowledge but of power” (Kaviraj, 2005, p 137). So basically it occurs due to the interplay of power and knowledge under colonialism.

The earlier knowledge system declined due to a lack of recognition from both the state and civil society. In such a context, religion tries to imitate and mould it into the methodological system of modern knowledge system. So it moves in two directions. First to validate itself either through the state or in the public sphere; and secondly, it moulds itself into a system which is validated by the authority, that is the modern knowledge system.

References:

Kaviraj, S. (2005). The Sudden Death of Sanskrit Knowledge. Journal of Indian Philosophy. 33(1): 119-142.

Chattopadhyay, B., and Sen, A. P. (2011). Bankim’s Hinduism: An Anthology of Writings by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Permanent Black.

Lal, V. (2005). The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India. Oxford University Press.

***

Ritwik Rathod is pursuing a PhD in History from Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU), Lucknow.