Debating the ‘Post’ Condition in India: Critical Vernaculars, Unauthorized Modernities, Post-Colonial Contentions

283 Pages·2018·1.036 MB·English

by  Makarand R. Paranjape

Debating the ‘Post’ Condition
in India
How was the post-modernist project contested, subverted and assimi-
lated in India? This book offers a personal account and an intellectual
history. Tracing independent India’s engagement with Western critical
theory, Paranjape outlines both its past and ‘post’. The book explores
the discursive trajectories of post-modernism, post-colonialism, post-
Marxism, post-nationalism, post-feminism, post-secularism – the rela-
tions that mediate them – as well as interprets, in the light of these
discussions, enduring postulates of Indian philosophical thought.
Paranjape argues that India’s response to the post-modernist project
is neither submission, willing or reluctant, nor repudiation, intentional
or forced; rather India’s ‘modernity’ is ‘unauthorized’, different, sub-
versive and alter-native. Thus, India is alter- rather than ‘post’ modern.
The book makes a forceful case for a new intermedial and integrative
hermeneutics. Combining the idea of an indigenous ‘critical vernacu-
lar’ with that of svaraj, it presents radical possibilities, beyond decolo-
nization and nationalism, of personal and political transformation.
A key intervention in Indian criticism and theory, this volume will
interest researchers and scholars of literature, philosophy, political
theory, culture studies and post-colonial studies.
Makarand R. Paranjape is Professor of English at the Centre for English
Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He was the
inaugural Eric Auerbach Visiting Chair in Global Literary Studies at
the University of Tubingen, Germany, and served as the first ICCR
Chair in Indian Studies at the National University of Singapore. His
latest works include C ultural Politics in Modern India (2016) and The
Death and Afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi (2015).
In his unique self-reflective style, Paranjape engages vast peripher-
ies and marshals a dazzling array of thinkers and creative artists in
attempting to describe alternative modernities shaped from India’s
revaluation of her own cultural imaginaries. In doing so, he offers new
and important perspectives on the meaning of decolonization.
Debashish Banerji , Haridas Chaudhuri Professor
of Indian Philosophies and Cultures and
Doshi Professor of Asian Art, California
Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS),
San Francisco, USA
To write about the ‘post’ condition in India as a theoretical problem-
atic requires a writer who comes to the subject matter with a mas-
tery of both Indian and Western traditions. Paranjape is among only
a handful of scholars of world literature and theory who has that
mastery. This book, written with a superb understanding of critical
and cultural theory, challenges generalist (both ‘grand’ and ‘minor’)
accounts of the ‘post’ condition in India by grounding texts in the real,
material conditions of Indian history. It is a path-breaking and chal-
lenging study which will become a touchstone for any future work on
Indian reflections on tradition and modernity.
Vijay Mishra, Professor of English
and Comparative Literature,
Murdoch University, Australia
Debating the ‘Post’ Condition
in India
Critical Vernaculars, Unauthorized
Modernities, Post-Colonial Contentions
Makarand R. Paranjape
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Makarand R. Paranjape
The right of Makarand R. Paranjape to be identified as author of
this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
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invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
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Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-138-20328-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-09960-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Hari Kiran Vadlamani Garu, who has worked so hard
and so selflessly to change the narrative.

Contents
Preface ix
Introduction – ‘post’ positions: a ‘selfish’ review 1
PART I
Critical vernaculars 19
1 Parampara 21
2 Gunas 42
3 Desivad 60
4 C riticism 82
PART II
Unauthorized modernities 99
5 Invasion of theory 101
6 Svaraj 129
7 Three states 151
8 Duality 168
PART III
Post-colonial contentions 185
9 Discontents 187
viii Contents
10 Alterities 202
11 Ends 220
12 Prospects 236
Index 261
Preface
This book is an account of India’s contretemps with ‘theory’, our engage-
ment with what might be called the ‘post’ condition. 1 By this is meant,
first of all, a complex set of circumstances and discursive practices medi-
ated by and constituted of several strands of post-structuralism, post-
modernism and post-colonialism, as also other ‘postal’ movements such
as post-Marxism, post-nationalism, post-feminism and post-secularism.
But more than just discourse, ‘post’ condition also refers to the chang-
ing reality of India since the late 1980s, subsequent to the eclipse of the
‘modern’, secular, socialistic, statist and, some would add, static phase of
Indian national life. This book, in other words, also maps India’s transi-
tion from ‘nationalist’ to post-national.
These two things – the discourse and the materiality of India – are
neither identical nor coextensive but intertwined and implicated in
the term ‘post’ condition. That is why it is important to avoid both
a reductive collapse of discourse into reality and the abstraction of
reality into ‘mere’ discourse. Rather, the r elations between the two are
the subject matter of concern. The discourse, with its own reality, and
the reality, producing its own discourse, neither identical nor entirely
separate, each impinging upon and forming the other, though differ-
ent, are interconnected dialogically. Often, the discourse must be read
symptomatically, viewed as a gesture, a performance, signifying some-
thing other than what it proclaims. Almost unbeknownst to the dis-
course, softly stealing up on it and overtaking it, is the huge economic,
social and cultural transformation of India whose ramifications are
yet to register fully.
At one level, this book is about the reception, relevance and response
to the discourses of the ‘post’ or what used to be called ‘theory’. This
rubric of intellectual cross-currents, mostly imported from the West,
but awash in India through the 1980s and 1990s, was hugely influ-
ential but problematic. 2 While ‘postal’ discourses shared a suspicion