Short read: East and West: Why we are what we are

“Why does Indian education focus on rote learning while foreign institutions prioritise critical thinking? How does the West, though stereotyped as an individualistic society, manage its public life with greater responsibility than the East? We talk of community first, but our classical music is focused on individual improvisation, while the ‘individualistic’ West has developed forms such as the symphony, involving complex individual parts harmonised for hundreds of musicians playing simultaneously?”

These are questions the author of this article in the Deccan Herald ponders about and finds answers to in a recent book ‘Beyond East and West’. It is the English Translation by NS Raghavan of Suchethana Swaroop’s Kannada work ‘Aa Purva Ee Paschima’, originally published in 2003. The book was an outcome of its author’s study of the epics on either side.

“…when he started writing on literature, he realised that Indian languages like Kannada had a wealth of writing but were not read as widely as works in English. He asked himself: How did English come to dominate the world? What led the Europeans to embark on long journeys and colonise so many parts of the world? Was their literature inspiring them to set sail? Swaroop turned to the epics for answers. The more he read, the more he began to see a pattern in how the East and the West had evolved. He learnt Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit to be able to read the original epics…

…It took Swaroop four painstaking years to turn his ideas into a book. He got down to studying the Greek poet Homer, the Roman poet Virgil, and Dante, the philosopher-mediator from Italy, to trace ideas that have fired the imagination of the West. On the Indian side, he devoured the writings of Vyasa, Valmiki and Kalidasa, and returned to his favourite Kannada poets Pampa, Ranna, Kumaravyasa and Basavanna.”

The article sights plenty of Swaroop’s compare and contrast of the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata with Illiad and Odyssey but reading between the lines:

“For Swaroop, epics serve as blueprints for civilisational values. More importantly, it is the way they were received and interpreted that determined their role in subsequent centuries. He argues that while Odysseus is mostly alone on his mission, Rama depends on Hanuman to cross over to Lanka, and then to get the Sanjeevani herb to save his brother Lakshmana’s life. Odysseus’s sense of adventure, Swaroop says, is a characteristic we see in Europeans. “They are truth-seeking with an unmistakable individuality,” he says. This characteristic, he posits, drove them to explore the world and make scientific discoveries. On the other hand, Arjuna seeks Krishna’s help, and Rama ropes in Hanuman, reflecting the Indian trait of working collectively. Swaroop doesn’t discount the adventurous streak in Indians but the instances were few and far between. In the medieval times, the Cholas captured parts of south-east Asia like Thailand and Cambodia. “However, these conquests were more on cultural and religious lines than political in nature,” Swaroop says. While the Greeks celebrated the destruction of the city of Troy, the Pandavas felt repentant after the Kurukshetra war. A nuanced depiction of the futility of war is seen in the concluding chapters of the ‘Mahabharata’. He believes, like other scholars, that they could be a later addition to the ‘Mahabharata’ by anonymous authors.”

Not just the epics, Swaroop compares the reform movements of the west and the east:

“Reform movements have worked better in the West than in the East, Swaroop says. A case in point is the vachana movement in the 12th century in Karnataka. It was spearheaded by the poet and reformer Basavanna. He challenged the caste system and inspired alternative literature. Akkamahadevi and Allama Prabhu were among the great poets he inspired, and the vachanakaras envisaged a new, less hierarchically divided society. Yet, the movement wasn’t as successful as the Renaissance or the Reformation in the West. Was the movement ahead of its time? Or did we feel the existing order was good enough and all the answers lay in the past? Swaroop says this is not to suggest that the lessons inherent in the ‘Mahabharata’ and the ‘Ramayana’ are not timeless — greed leads to bloodshed and ruin, causes an entire empire to collapse, and truth eventually prevails over falsehood. However, bolder reinterpretations always take a society forward, Swaroop says.”

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