|
|
Traditional As Modern - Community, Discourse and Critique
In Jnanadev Part I of III |
|
|
|
|
|
- Jayant Lele
|
Two rather obvious questions were at work
behind the idea of examining the revolutionary potential
of Varkari Sampradaya:the fact of continuing and, perhaps,
growing influence of Varkari persuasion on peasants and
rural artisans, in spite of the rise of 'urban' institutions
and the fact that despite large scale bureaucratically
sponsored projects, no real enthusiasm has emerged in
rural areas for a cooperative effort: an effort such as
that foreseen in the ideology of Community Development.
In this regard anothor important technological fact should
also be noted. In India and particularly in Maharashtra,
prospects for large scale irrigation are severely limited
,which means that any significant rise in agricultural
productivity must come from massive, imaginative and yet
routine cooperative effort of peasants, labourers and
artisans. Thus indigenous and all pervasive economic development
demands precisely those impulses which have been conspicuously
absent so far.
|
|
Such self-generating
efforts within village communities cannot be expected to
arise without basic changes in rural man-land relations.
Even the largely symbolic gestures, in the form of tenancy
legislations, have been aborted in practicc by the same
class of rich fanners who control political and administrative
apparatus. Frustrated by lack of consciousness
about structural contradictions hidden behind the ruling
ideology of legal justice, freedom and indivdiaual rights
through parliamentary democracy,several young men and women
seem to be willing to dedicate part of their lives to this
task of raising consciousness. However, they usually go
into rural areas with a predetermined adverse orientation
to tradition, often imparted to them by their 'progressive'
teachers. Varkari Sampradaya, as an element of that tradition,
is also treated as an obstacle because they have found or
learned no other way of dealing with it. Consequently, they
become incapable of establishing a dialogue of shared meanings
with the rural masses because |
(a)
they have never before shared the life experience of oppression
in the rural context,
and
(b) they bring with them a hostile attitude towards tradition
which, paradoxically, is the only possible common bond between
them and the rural folk.
These considerations point to the need for exploring contemporary
relevance of tradition and for studying Varkari Sampradaya
in these terms. |
So far I have concentrated
on three major themes and explored them in a preliminary
way. They are:
1. Varkari Sampraday as a discourse on tradition.
2. Contemporary society and Varkari practice
3. Contemporary lack of appreciation of its revolutionary
impulses by intellectuals and activists. |
Study of the writings
and practices of Varkari poets along these lines reveals
a variety of directions from which dialectical growth of
tradition can be gleaned. However, in such a research effort,
criterion of successful social transformation, as a predetermined
outcome of this dialectic, is not available.Whether an impulse
was potentially revolutionary or not has to be judged in
terms of the nature of oppressive social practice and the
options open to a given society.The context of social and
material conditions of production has to be examined. Whether
a critical impulse can regain its potential in a changed
social practice cannot be detemined without such examination.
Even a superficial review of the social history of Varkari
Sampradaya suggests a possible critical approach. Varkari
insistence on the use of the language of the masses and
its open door policy with respect to all castes, including
the untouchables, are the first obvious critical grounds.
Similarly, the rise of linguistic nationalism under Shivaji
and Ramdas and corresponding disappearance of creative writing
by Varkaris, point to hegemonic approriation by the ruling
classes. |
My starting point
for a more detailed treatment of Varkari Sampraday as discourse
is the notion of 'potential community' which unites, dialectically,
the critique and ,its hegemonic appropriation. The notion
of potential community can be explored by contrasting it
to that of the actual community in ,which members live and
communicate on the basis of shared meanings. |
Community
in the latter sense is .living tradition. Family, village,
caste are various levels of such actual community in which
tradition remains alive and meaningful, for all members,
not only through language and rituals but through other
shared productive activities as well. Human communal existence
has three basic dimensions of the material world, the social
world and the world of the self. All of these dimensions
acquire substance through meanings that are intersubjective.
The necessity of having to regard others as subjects, as
having intentions behind their beliefs and activities, implies
that the latter can be brought into open and discussed as
to their validity within the community. In this sense an
actual community also implies a potential community in which
tradition becomes its own critique. It becomes a critique
of the validity of beliefs and activities in the three domains
of human social life. |
Potential critical
scrutiny of social practice, of beliefs and activities rests
on three standards that are basic for productive human existence;
truth , justice and freedom.In the actual community also
these principles operate. |
However, they receive
interpretations and meanings that seek to justify domination
of nature and man over man. Such interpretations negate
the potential community. However, they are available to
active subjects for critical discourse and for subsequent
acceptance as legitimations or rejection. Thus, seeds of
revolutionary transformation of a society remain embedded
in its tradition. In a genuine and successful revolution
these seeds germinate as critical reappropriations through
discourse and transform social practice. |
Tradition as it
remains alive in an actual community constitutes a hegemonic
moment, an ideology legitimizing domination. But it also
carries within it the opposite moment of critique: as a
reflection on oppressive social practice which distorts
the principles on which a potentially human community rests.
In more concrete terms this means that the other side of
tradition, the discursive, critical side, must become a
conscious activity of those who share basic productive tasks
even as they do so under conditions of domination. |
Our first task
in examining Varkari Sampradaya is to see to what extent
its initial efforts were directed towards widening the discursive
capability of productive subjects. By examining this impulse
in and through a dialogue with those who routinely uphold
only the hegmonic interpretations, one may contribute to
a theoretically guided, genuinely cooperative, productive
activity for a transformed society. |
Since most interpretations
of Varkari theory and practice conclude that it, has always
upheld Brahmanic social order, we. should illustrate how,initiallt
at least, it was a critical impulse with a potential for
creating revolutionary social practice. In this paper I
wish to do this in a limited way. I shall attempt a brief
examination of the writings of Jnanadev (1275-1296) who
is recognized as the founding father of the Sampradaya. |
Notions of community,
inter-subjectivity and domains of human social existence
appear in Jnanadev's commentary and are basic to his thought.
Through these vehicles Jnanadev develops a dialogue with
those who constitute his actual linguistic and potentially
human community. He elaborates on the differentiated unity
of knowledge, devotion and action of the three spheres of
human social existence and of the participants of a discourse.
For these reasons Jnanesvari is not merely a hermeneutic
on Gita but an original exercise in critical re-appropriation
of tradition. |
Note:
Excerpts from Jnanesvari are from Sree Jnanesvari, edited
and translated by M.S. Godbole. (Poona 30. Shri Vidya Prakashan,
1977).
All excerpts from Amrutanuhbhav are from Amrutanuhbhav
Bhavarth Manjiri
by Anant Damodar Athavale Dasganu. (Nanded, Vittha1 Yashwant
Marathe, Sak, 1851).
Excerpts from Changdeopasasti are from L.R. Panngarkar's
Shri Jnanadev Maharaj
Caritra ani Granth Vivecan
(Poona, R. Pangarkar, 1912).
|
|