Is There an Indian Way of Thinking? by A.K. Ramanujan- Summary and Analysis

 Is There an Indian Way of Thinking? A.K. Ramanujan- Summary and Analysis

Stanislavskian Approach

In the first section of the essay, A.K. Ramanujan uses the Stanislavskian approach and asks a few questions emphasising on different words in each question. The first question is ‘Is’ there an Indian way of thinking? Here ‘is’ is given emphasis. The answer he gives is there was an Indian way of thinking, now there isn’t any. The thinking was there with pundits, the vaidyas and in the old texts. But he also states that on the contrary, India never changes according to the modern contexts. Indians are traditional by nature and they still think in terms of the Vedas.

In the second question, Is there ‘an’ Indian way of thinking? Emphasis is given to ‘an’. The answer is there is no single way of thinking in India. In fact, there are different ways. There are great and little traditions, ancient and modern thinking, rural and urban thinking, classical and folk thinking etc. So, under the apparent diversity, there is unity. Nehru calls this ‘unity in diversity’.

In the third question, Is there an ‘Indian’ way of thinking? The emphasis is given to the word Indian. Ramanujan answers that what we see in India is nothing special to India. India is a confluence of different cultures and traditions. Many new cultures came here and we received them and made it our own. There were a lot of borrowings in Indian culture. So, there is no Indian way of thinking.

In the fourth question, Is there an Indian way of ‘thinking’? the emphasis is given to the word thinking. The answer Ramanujan gives is Indians don’t think at all. The real thinking is in the west which is materialistic and rational. He explains that Indians have no philosophy, positive science or psychology but only religion. In India matter is subordinated to spirit and rational thought to feeling and intuition.

Thus, in the 1st part of his essay, Ramanujan states how India is perceived differently at different stages by different people and from different perspectives.

Instance from Personal Life

In the second part of the essay, Ramanujan uses a frame from his personal life which is about his father to show the inconsistency in Indian thinking. He states that his father’s clothes and life style represented his inner life style as well. He was a south Indian Brahmin and he wore dhotis and white turbans. But over his dhoti he used to wear western jackets and even used western shoes instead of Indian sandals. He wore his shoes to the university but took it off while entering the inner quarters of his house.

His father was a mathematician and astronomer but at the same time a Sanskrit scholar and an expert astrologer. He was visited by English mathematicians and American scholars but also by local astrologers and orthodox pundits. He talked religiously about Bhagavad Gita but with the same tongue used to talk about Bertrand Russell and Ingersoll, the modern philosophers. Ramanujan describes that such contradictions are at the heart of Indian way of thinking. It is both exclusive and inclusive.

Inconsistency in Indian Thinking

In the next part of his essay, Ramanujan points out that both English and modern Indians have been dismayed and angered by this kind of inconsistency. They agree on the Indian trait of hypocrisy. Indians do not mean what they say and say different things at different times. He uses the concept of ‘Karma’ to explain this hypocrisy. Sheryl Daniel found that Indians used Karma and Thalavidhi (Head Writing) as explanations for the events happening around them. Karma implies the self’s past determining the present. It is an iron chain of cause and effect. But Thalavidhi is one’s fate inscribed arbitrarily at one’s birth on one’s forehead. It has no relation to one’s prior actions. Some thinkers believe that it happens because Indians have not developed a notion of ‘data’ of objective facts. In India it is all about subjective facts. Henry Kissinger and Sudhir Kakar also alludes to this view.

Zimmer praises Indians for not spending much time on objectivity that distinguishes self from non-self, interior from exterior etc. Naipaul calls this as a ‘defect of vision’. Another proof of inconsistency is the ability to distinguish self and non-self. Ramanujan gives an instance from Manusmriti and Kantian philosophy. Manusmriti lacks universality. ‘Man shall not kill’ is a universal law. But Manusmriti suggests different punishments based on caste and jati. A kshtriya and vaisya can escape punishment by paying a fine while a sudhra shall suffer corporal punishment.

Context-Free and Context-Sensitive Cultures

In the next part of the essay, Ramanujan talks about context- free and context-sensitive cultures. In Indian culture context-sensitivity is the preferred structure. Baudhayana enumerates the context-sensitive nature of Indians. He explains that the Brahmins of the north and those of the south are different and have aberrant practices. In the north, the southern ways would be wrong and vice versa. For Indians, each addition is really a subtraction from any universal law.

The author states that he doesn’t know any Indian texts which discuss values like the works of Plato. For eg., in Plato’s ‘Symposium’, he talks about finding beauty in every object and not concentrating on only one. He tells that no Indian texts comes without a context, till the 19^th century. The work will tell the reader of all the benefits he or she will get after reading the text. In other ways, they contextualise it. He gives the example of ‘Nadisastra’, which offers anyone his or her personal history.

In India, texts may be date less and anonymous but may have explicit contexts. The Ramayana and Mahabharata open with episodes that tell us why and under what circumstances they were composed. Every story is encased inside a meta story. Within the text, one tale is a context for another. 

Even space and time, the universal contexts are in India not uniform or neutral, but have properties, that affect those who dwell in them. In India it is believed that the soil in a village which produces crops for the people, affects their character. The houses here have mood and character. It could change the fortune and moods of the dwellers. Time too has been separated in India. Certain hours of the day, certain days of the week etc are auspicious or inauspicious (rahu kala). Certain units of time (yugas) breed certain kinds of maladies. Eg; Kali yuga.

Arts in India even depend on time and obey time’s changing moods and properties. For instance, the ragas of both north and south Indian classical music have their prescribed appropriate times for recitation. Thus, all things, even so-called non-material ones like space and time or caste, affect other things because all things are ‘substantial’ (dhatu).

Ramanujan exhorts that contrary to the notion that Indians are spiritual, they are really material minded. They are materialists, believers in substance. There is a constant flow of substance from context to object, from non-self to self.

Contradictions

In the last part of the essay, Ramanujan states that all societies have context-sensitive behaviour and rules. But the dominant ideal in every society is to be context-free. Protestant Christianity believes both the universal and the unique and insists that any member is equal to and like any other in the group. Yet in predominantly context-free societies, the counter movements tend to be towards the context-sensitive situations. In traditional cultures like India, where context-sensitivity rules, the dream is to be free of context. So ‘rasa’ in aesthetics, ‘moksha’ in the aims of life, ‘sanyasa’ in the life stages, ‘sphota’ in semantics and ‘bhakti’ in religion define themselves against a background of contextuality.

The author points out that kama, artha and dharma are all relational in their values and they are tied to place, time, personal character and social role. Moksha is the release from all relations. If brahmacharya is preparation for a fully relational life, grahasthasrama is a full realisation of it. Vanaprastha loosens the bonds, and sanyasa cremates all one’s past and present relations. The last of the great Hindu anti- contextual notions, bhakti, is different from the above and it denies the very need for the context.

In conclusion, Ramanujan makes a couple of observations about modernisation. One might see modernisation in India as a movement from the context-sensitive to the context-free in all realms. It is an erosion of contexts in principle. Print replaced palm-leaf manuscripts, making possible an open and equal access to knowledge irrespective of caste. The Indian constitution made the contexts of birth, region, sex and creed irrelevant, overthrowing Manusmriti. But every context-free situation in India becomes a context in itself.