Internal contradictions in traditional approach
First of all it must be said that the traditionalist thought is not a coherent body of ideas free from internal contradictions. In exploring the aims and methods of indigenous traditions, we come across several internal contradictions of “Indological” thought categories. Indologists claim that the problems of India cannot be solved in the Western paradigm. To find a right solution to India’s problems we need to go back to indigenous thought categories to be found in Indian traditions and texts. Let us begin with the writings of A. K. Saran, who is one of the most known proponents of the traditionalist discourse in India.
A. K. Saran and Gandhi
For Saran, “to be a Hindu is to participate wholeheartedly, in the prescribed manner and at the prescribed level, in a social order based on, and functioning in accordance with, the "Sacred" Sociology.”
He said (Saran, 1971):
What instinct is to the animal order (which is passive and non-self-conscious), tradition is to the human (which is active and self-conscious). Man too has instincts, but unlike animals, he cannot live by them alone. Tradition, then, is that by which man, qua man, lives. |
Yet A. K. Saran was not happy with the traditionalist response to Westernization. Commenting on the response of Hindus to changes brought about by new ideas of rationalization, secularization and development by the Englishmen in India Saran wrote:
The basic principle of the Hindu response to the challenges of Christianity and modernism (and secularism) may be called the Nilkantha syndrome. It is assimilation, synthesis, harmonious co-existence; this was the strategy the Hindus had unsuccessfully used earlier in their encounter with Islam. This period (1800-1947) has usually been regarded as a vital and creative period. It has been generally called the Renaissance of Hinduism. However, the fact that no advance was made beyond the untenable idea of assimilation and synthesis shows how deeply the Hindu consciousness had been falsified.. |
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