Sunday, March 31, 2002		Books

Strategic interests shape intellectual pursuits
Roopinder Singh

Five Decades of Indo-US Relations: Strategic and Intellectual
by Harinder Sekhon. UBSPD, New Delhi. Pages 229 Rs 395.

IT was the quest for a bagel in New York that brought fourth the question. "Why do I have to study about India?" asked the young girl behind the counter to an obvious Indian—turbaned and all.

Pragmatic as Americans are— after pragmatic philosophers such as Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Mead were all Americans—they have to have a reason for doing something—even the intellectual is shaped by the strategic. Of course, this generalisation excludes noble exceptions, in this case people who studied about India for India, and as I read this book, I thought I might find an answer to the bagel lady’s query.

Well, according to Harinder Sekhon, the US scholars had their reasons too. America’s interest in India was related to commercial quests. Direct Indo-US trade began in 1785 and it showed manifold increase thereafter, especially after the Jay Treaty of November 1794. There were contacts between peoples of the two nations at various points of history, however, Americans lived and worked in India in significant numbers during World War II.

American Indologists came in all forms—as missionaries of the American Missionary movement launched in 1810; as traders and as curious rich intellectuals. Indian studies in the United States formally began with Edward Elbridge Sailsbury (1814-1901) and were taken forward by his pupil, William D Whitney (1827-1894).

Early Indology was mainly concentrated on ancient Indian scriptures, law books, and selections from epics, myths, dream and poetry.

American interest in India surged around the time of World War II when India’s strategic importance was felt, and among the most prominent scholars of Indian studies was Professor W Norman Brown, Professor of Sanskrit, University of Pennsylvania, who had earlier headed the Indian branch of Office of Strategic Services (OAS), a precursor to the CIA. He was responsible for America’s abiding interest in India and the creation of the American Institute of Indian Studies, University of Chicago, which gave out long and short-term fellowships to American scholars. Other organisations that funded Indian studies include the Carnegie Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Fulbright Programme.

All this resulted in a lot of research. Expectedly, it was focused on certain areas and followed particular methodologies. Notable American studies on medieval India include those of Anne-Marie Schimmel, Robert Eric Frykenberg and Gavin Hambly. Some of the earliest contacts of the US were with the Deccan, and of course it was also studied by American scholars including contemporary ones like Frykenberg.

Punjab has also been interesting for American scholars, many of whom built on the excellent work done by their British predecessors, especially J D Cunningham. N Gerald Barrier’s role, in both propagating Punjab studies as well as his painstaking bibliographic works, is, indeed, commendable. He founded Research Committee Punjab in 1966 and has also played a major role in popularising academic interest in Punjab. Other prominent scholars would include Richard Fox, Paul Wallace ad W. H. McLeod.

Our knowledge about Modern India, especially during the time of the British rule, has been enriched by the works of Professors Robert I Crane, Anisle T Embree and Stanley Wolpert.

We must recognise that the organisation of our methodology also evolves with time. From narrowly focused linguistic studies through anthropological or sociological studies, towards postmodernism, there has been the awareness that nothing can be considered in isolation, that there is a deeper interrelationship between various facets of scholarship than had been presumed earlier.

The role of language and how it has been perceived has changed. Language was believed to be transparent—that words serve only as representations of thoughts or things. Thus reality was stable, may we say, even static. It could be studied with certainty.

In postmodernism, however, the idea of any stable or permanent reality disappears, and for postmodern societies, there are only surfaces, without depth.

This leads increasingly to much more subjective interpretations of history. Also, how can one ignore the watershed that Edward Said, one of the founders of the field of post-colonial studies, marked by describing orientalism and conceptions of "the Orient"as a particular discourse constructed by the West? Reality and its study is, indeed, complex. There is a new surge in American intellectual interest, in which Columbia and Berkley universities have played a significant role, especially in Punjab studies.

India did not receive much attention during the 1980s and the 1990s and perhaps now scholars would examine history with reference to these new paradigms.

The author is quite right in maintaining that there is a complex relationship between exploration in the intellectual field and the devising of new modes of strategic understanding. Sekhon has done a fine job of placing five decades of Indo-US relations in this context and this overview will be of definite interest to both scholars as well as regular readers interested in understanding the ups and downs in the relationship of the two greatest democracies. That she has not limited herself to only five decades is also helpful in gaining a proper perspective.

As for the bagel lady, the answer to her query would be, because we are so interrelated.