Not Invented Here - The Real Reason Non-Western Cultures Resent The Values Of The European Enlightenment

One of my friends sent me a link to a Twitter thread.

Journalist Sadanand Dhume (handle @dhume) had earlier tweeted:

Calm, dignified and hopeful address by Queen Elizabeth II. Commonwealth countries that have her as head of state are fortunate.

The response from Twitter handle @shrikanth_krish - one Śrīkānta Kṛṣṇamācārya (who seems to have given his name a deliberately hard-to-parse (although phonologically correct!) spelling as a personal symbol of cultural assertion) followed from there.

In case the link disappears, let me re-post the entire text below.

What @dhume is hinting at here is -

India should've opted for the British monarch as our ceremonial head of state in 1947

Instead of an indirectly elected Presidency we have today

Clearly that view stems from the massive chasm that exists between the Indian elites and the Indian masses

The old Anglophone elite has always retained an affinity towards Britain and the English speaking world

While the masses nurse deep ill-will towards Britain

India is not quite Australia.

Race matters.

In countries like Aus, NZ, the population was predominantly Anglo-Saxon. Their struggle was one for self-governance.

Not cultural liberation

In India, the revolt against Britain was not merely one for political independence or representation

That angle was predominant among the Anglophone moderates. The Dadabhai Naorojis and Srinivasa Sastris of the world.

But once the movement involved the masses (starting with Tilak and Gandhi), the revolt was in large measure a cultural one.

A movement to rid India of the foreign yoke.

To this day, I think the "elites" haven't quite understood this aspect of the "freedom struggle"

There is a tendency to regard the independence movement in purely political terms

Ignoring the racial, cultural element

In my view, Gandhian struggle was as much about "cultural liberation" as it was about "political independence / representation"

But once Gandhi passed on, and the narrative moved to the Nehru-led Congress post independence, the emphasis changed

Post independence, there was an attempt to underplay the "cultural independence" part - v much a part of Gandhi's movement.

Instead the "political freedom" angle was overplayed

The "cultural" conflict with British Raj became something that only the Jana Sangh/RSS picked on

So what was "mainstream" before 1947, became a right wing talking point post 1947

I think this hurt Indian politics

Instead of having a bi-partisan cultural consensus, and having the Right-Left division on policy issues, "Culture" became the bone of contention b/w Rght and Left

Now the retort to this would be -

Hey ...

Countries like Jamaica and Antigua have Queen Elizabeth as head of state

Why not India?

The answer is politically incorrect

The fact is -

India is not just a proud, and ancient civilization. But a world unto itself

Jamaica is not, with all due respect.

Deep down Indians do not believe the "Enlightenment" has all the answers to humanity's problems

They have a distinct religious and moral world view that is antagonistic to that of the West

The Caribbean nations lack such an intellectual counter-view. They're part of the West

I found the thread very enlightening, especially this one sentence:

Deep down, Indians do not believe the "Enlightenment" has all the answers to humanity's problems.

I believe the thread author has hit the nail on the head. This indeed is the core issue.

The European Enlightenment - a pivotal point in human history

As philosopher AC Grayling said, the 17th century was "the epoch in the story of the human mind". At the start of the century, the European worldview resembled its predecessors [I would add here that it also resembled its contemporaries in every other culture], but by the end of the century, it had become modern. "The Earth was no longer the centre of the universe; monarchy, disrobed and beheaded, was no longer sacred; and science – methodical, empirical science – was no longer in thrall to magic and superstition."

I can't find a source for this, but it's a pretty fair picture of the core components of the Enlightenment

All cultures and civilisations around the world started off being superstitious and feudal, and most were also extremely sexist. No ancient civilisation was free of gods, and even "democratic" Greece had slaves. I believe every civilisation needs to have an Enlightenment in order to cross the chasm from superstition, feudalism and sexism to a more progressive society.

Unfortunately, only Western civilisation has had an Enlightenment that is home-grown.

What we have seen in the history of the modern world is the Western-owned model of a progressive society being thrust upon other civilisations in the form of post-colonial constitutions, which don't resonate with the cultural soil of former colonies. This therefore leads to resentment against the basic values themselves, which is a pity.

I don't believe there is a real alternative to the values of the Enlightenment, because every "solution" offered by nationalist advocates is either a defiant return to regressive traditions or simply old Western wine in a new culturally-resonant bottle. Much as nativists may protest, I have simply not seen a real challenge to the values of the European Enlightenment.

For example, I've often heard the phrase "decolonise your mind" used in this context, but what does it really mean?

The following clip is a rather dystopian one - from South Africa, I believe. The objective of the meeting is laudable - to spark a genuinely native approach to knowledge that is not shackled by colonial modes of thinking. Then one of the speakers goes on to talk about witchcraft as an example of what science cannot explain. When a member of the audience protests that witchcraft isn't true, the panel triumphantly seizes on that objection both as a sign of a colonised mind and as a sign of disrespect for the native culture and the gathering. The person is forced to apologise.

If these are examples of "decolonised" minds, give me colonialism any day!

I believe there is no alternative to the values that the European Enlightenment was the first to discover. I've seen many of the putative alternatives, and they range from insufficient to unacceptable. I think non-Western civilisations are rejecting progressive values only because of their source, i.e., because those ideas were "not invented here".

And so, I'm forced to the conclusion that the only viable solutions are either to let non-Western civilisations meander through a few more centuries of ignorance and injustice until they arrive at these values through their own painful experience, or to somehow enable them to develop feelings of ownership over the values of the Enlightenment.

Because it's really all about a sense of ownership. The Enlightenment itself is just fine.