DISKUS Vol.1 No.2 (1993) pp.31-54

INDIVIDUALISM IN ITS INDIAN CONTEXT

Ian Harris
St Martin's College
Lancaster
UK




Rudolf Bultmann once complained that the majority of biographies of Jesus were characterised by an 'intolerable flatness'. If I understand Bultmann correctly his objection was to biographical writing too tightly determined by doctrinal inflexibility. It is not that the details contained in any example of the genre are incorrect, but rather that the material presented fails to exhaust and vivify its  complex subject. In many ways the same charge can be levelled against the current discussion on the status of the individual in Hindu culture, a discussion which owes its form and context to the seminal work of Louis Dumont, begun some thirty years ago.

For Dumont the individual is a central figure on the stage of modern European society. We shall not expect to meet with his like in a Hindu context for the characteristic features of this culture, most notably caste, hierarchy and strong familial bonding, tend to render Indian culture infertile with respect to the growth of the individual. The effect of the Dumontian discourse is to devalue the culture and institutions of India in relation to those of the West, for it is inclined to take the notion of the individual as normative. Since India has a lack of the necessary conditions in which the individual may flourish it may be viewed as having a lack of many other things besides. Now this is a rather contentious interpretation of Dumont and his followers, but I hope to show that it can be adequately sustained by a careful reading of the evidence for there is little doubt that the Dumontian stand has made remarkably uniform progress in the field of dogmatic anthropology from the sixties to the present. Its paradigmatic status is further attested by its undoubted impact on related fields of study, particularly in social psychology,<1> where supporting evidence continues to mount in a convincing fashion.

It must be said at this point that a general demolition of the Dumontian position is out of the question, for it certainly possesses some explanatory power. However that power may turn out to be rather narrowly circumscribed for, as Collins has already noted, Dumont makes "very large claims: the canvas is being painted with large brush-strokes."<2> In fact many features of Hindu culture, both historical and contemporary, pose a serious challenge to the general lineaments of the Dumontian position. This article will seek to examine some of these and will conclude by suggesting fruitful ways in which subsequent research  on the problem of the individual in the Indian context may proceed.


The Dumontian Problematic

The concept of the individual is notoriously difficult to define. It is one of the great abstractions of modern political and social thought. It is not generally considered as a given of human nature but is held to arise as the result of definite historical conditions.<3> Scholars variously identify specific periods in European history in which the individual can be said to come to life. Perhaps the individual has his origin in the fourteenth century nominalism of William of Ockham,<4> or would it be more appropriate to fix his arrival on the world stage at some time in the sixteenth century with its growing insistence on religious self-scrutiny, a phenomenon particularly associated with the name of John Calvin?<5> These are only a handful of the options available in the historical debate, but one thing is certain; no matter what view is ultimately taken, the fact remains that the individual has his origin at some specific point in the historical process. This is not all; the individual also possesses a strongly determined geographical range. The place of birth is equally the subject of dispute. It could be as specific as the Sorbonne, with the Geneva of the reformers another common location. Some scholars are more vague, quattrocento Italy being fairly popular, but it is likely that it will be somewhere in mid-to Western Europe, though some voices discern dim echoes of the individual in "our classical as well as our Judaeo-Christian heritage".<6> We have here a highly determined category and one with a great and glorious history, for without it the modern world could not fully have come into being. It is perhaps then not really surprising that, with the apparent collapse of modernity, the individual is beginning its journey back to the relative obscurity from which it came. Certainly thinkers as diverse as Habermas <7> and Derrida <8> are reluctant to assign to it the prominence it attained in the writings of earlier generations.

One thing is clear from the foregoing summary. It will be difficult for an historicist to admit the presence of the individual outside its modern European habitat for it is too highly determined as a category, and as such is only likely to flourish within clearly defined parameters. The orient, and India in particular, can hardly be expected to provide the conditions necessary for its survival, for here we have a culture constructed in a quite different manner. The alien and unfamiliar character of Indian society acts as a barrier to the transplantation of defining cultural ideas for:

"...the understandings of others ...(are) self-contained, incommensurate, ideational universes (ie. paradigms): across these universes there is no comparability, no common standard for rational criticism".<9> 

It seems to me that an acceptance of this relativist position is axiomatic in the work of Dumont and his conscious and unconscious imitators. Taking this unbridgeable gulf as a starting point, the familiar dichotomies of the anthropological literature are set up one after another. Thus Western society is described as a mere agglomeration of self-contained and bounded entities, conveniently labelled individuals, "free to undertake projects of personal expression",<10> and held together only by the centripetal forces of self-interest and the like. This cultural model is juxtaposed against societies, like India, in which wholism is the governing principle. Here the interests of apparently discrete members of society are thoroughly subordinated to the collective will. Western egocentrism then, with its defining "struggle against nature" <11> is  pitted against a sociocentric cultural entity in which freedom from the natural world is an undesirable and impossible ideal.<12> There is more than a whiff of romanticism here. In the Indian context we have a so-called "field society" <13> where humans are supposed to be somehow integrated into the cosmic order. This ordering of things is opposed to the more particulate cultures familiar in the West. The metaphor appears to be particularly well-chosen for, in as much as Indian society possesses the capacity for change, this is deemed to take place organically.

For Dumont historical progress is more appearance than reality. Indian society is not open to the revolutionary convulsions that take place from time to time in the West. In consequence changes of the type that ushered in the age of the individual in Europe are not conceivable in India. Though change undoubtedly takes place, it must be seen as quantitative rather than qualitative change, for under the conditions prevailing within the culture structures remain essentially unaltered, merely replicating themselves vegetatively ad nauseam. This monist reduction of Indian history to a single unchanging point has been identified by Inden <14> as a feature of the orientalist discourse. In this way the Indologist is able to impose an "orderly facade" <15> on the bewildering diversity of Indian life. Apparent variety then is reduced to a single organising principle, in our case that of organicity. Everything that happens in Indian culture can been explained with this principle as its root. The problem here is that a good deal of unhelpful data may need to be suppressed in favour of  higher-order generalities. As Shweder and Bourne note:

"The 'higher-order' sphere is all too often a higher-order of vacuity, the air gets very thin."<16>

Inden traces this tendency, as it affects Indological studies, back to Hegel. Hegel's denial of human agency negates the possibility of organised political action, and hence a proper basis for the Indian State. In effect he displaces the culture from the historical process. For him civil, or caste society stands "fully formed before and outside of India's history".<17>


History and Time in India

Now, it has regularly been observed <18> that, despite a considerable variety of extant genres, historical writing is noticeably absent from the classical Indian literary tradition. An interest in history seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon. Dumont makes much of this fact and goes so far as to suggest that:

"Indian culture has not lived self-consciously in time as we do now ..."<19>          

It seems that Indians have never learned to reflect on the past, or for that matter to think in a linear fashion, for one of the cardinal features of their culture is a "conscious devaluation of time".<20> Some support for this view may certainly be found when the ancient Upanisadic notions of karma and rebirth are interpreted in specific ways. It can also be argued that classical Puranic cosmologies, with their stress on the cyclic progression of creation and destruction ad infinitum, serve to subvert a Western conception of history, based as it is on a Judaeo-Christian understanding of time. However, this can never be more than part of the picture. The ubiquitous influence of astrology is itself proof, in a general sense, of the hold that time, and its passage, hold for the average Hindu. More specifically, mention must be made of the importance of the concept of auspiciousness (suddha) which, for Madan, is "an absolute value which manifests as a quality of events in the lives of human actors (patra) and involves the dimensions of time (kala) and space (sthana)".<21> It is interesting that anthropological orthodoxy has neglected this fruitful area of study, preferring instead to concentrate attention on purity and the like, but here I anticipate myself. Suffice it to say that the overwhelming bulk of scholars have felt comfortable in assigning Indian culture to the ahistorical. Kakar is a good case in point. For him:

"The awareness of the movement and direction of time in the West...the sensitivity and sometimes obsessive attention to its passage, is not shared by Hinduism to the same degree ... Relatively speaking, time for a Hindu does not have the impersonal and objective (nor the sometimes driving, coercive) quality it has for the average Westerner ... The Hindu time sense is more psychological than historical; it has the dream-like quality of timeless time as it exists in the human unconscious."<22>  

The first impressions, always so formative, of the casual European visitor to India will, more than likely, confirm this view, but will he be justified in concluding that Indian civilization as a whole is characterised by only the vaguest grasp of the historical process? I think that he will not. Indians clearly do not live in some mystic eternal now, attractive though this romantic vision may be. Kakar is probably correct in assigning a more psychological, less objective, structure to time in the Indian context, but coercion remains nevertheless. Pilgrimages are conducted, festivals celebrated, and samskaras performed at their appointed times. On a more secular note Indians manage to vote in elections on the correct day and railway trains run tolerably to schedule. In fact, most of what is said of Hindus in the foregoing quotation can also be said of British Rail. One can almost imagine Kakar's statement, suitably amended, featuring as part of a leader in one of our popular papers, yet the majority of readers will take it as a consciously rhetorical posture, not as a serious statement of fact.

If we probe Dumont more closely we discover that his position is a little more subtle than I have so far allowed. He is happy to endorse the view that Hindus consciously recognise the chronological passage of time <23> but reluctant to admit their possession of a concept of history, for:

"...if we accept the habitual conception that history and the individual are inseparable, and combine it with the recognition of the absence of the individual in traditional India, we are obliged to admit, with others, that India has no history, Indian civilization being un-historical by definition."<24>

A priori reasoning of this order will obviously  prevent Dumont from taking on board any empirical data prejudicial to his case, for it is already proved before investigations begin. However, it is fairly clear why Dumont wishes to maintain this position.  He wishes to retain, as an axiom, a radical dichotomy between East and West. Here is an excellent example, if Inden is correct, of Hegelian-inspired orientalist discourse at its most perplexing, for Dumont's account:

"...represents the Other (ie. India) in commentative terms as radically different from the Self (ie. the West). It is a gross distortion of the Self or the opposite of the Self ... It is necessary for the Other to be the way he/she is because ... of its (inferior) place on the evolutionary scale. It does this by hierarchizing the Others of the world, by placing them in a spatial, biological, or temporal scale of forms, one which always culminates in Homo Euro-Americanus."<25>

Now it could be objected that Dumont is far too sophisticated and sympathetic an observer of things Indian to fall into line with a project of this kind for he is a relativist, not an evolutionist, Yet relativism has its own, often unforeseen, consequences. A good illustration of this fact is provided by examination of post-Independence India. Independence brought with it a democratic form of government and democracy is generally thought to be intimately associated with the political individualism <26> characteristic of modern Europe and America. How, then, should we account for the presence of democracy in India? The customary answer is that it is a foreign import, laid down over indigenous political forms by an alienated, predominantly Western-educated elite in the vanguard of the independence movement. There is much sense in this view, but, from our perspective, its obvious attraction is that it preserves two of the dominant motifs of indological discourse. Firstly, significant social and political change is precluded within the boundaries of the traditional, ahistorical culture, and secondly, any element of individualism is regarded as an extraneous thought form. As Shweder and Bourne point out, any change of "...ideational worlds...can only be explained by the relativist, in terms of domination, force, or non-rational conversion".<27>

Although some writers are able to reconcile the traditional Indian thought universe with democracy and egalitarianism, Beteille <28> being perhaps the most prominent example, by far the majority of observers continue to see mass political change as a result of adventitious influences. For them Indian democracy fails to provide any key to the understanding of the culture for it represents a radical deviation from traditional cultural norms. In this way powerful empirical data which threatens to disrupt the indological consensus is dismissed as irrelevant for it tends to confuse the issue and lead away from the "...pristine Indian world, a world without cross-influences, that has never existed".<29>  

Though not explicit in Dumont's own published work,<30> this position may be regarded as the prophetic fulfilment of the axioms which give form to a wide range of indological writings. Here we find confirmation of the status of Indian thought as a naive or subjugated knowledge,<31> a way of dealing with the world which falls well short of the standards expected of a sophisticated and scientifically advanced culture. As we have already noted the idea of India as essentially ahistorical has its origins in Hegel's philosophy of history which is, in part, a way of classifying and hierarchically sorting cultures and is itself contemporaneous with the rise of indology as an academic discipline.

Another prominent name in the world of Indian sociology is McKim Marriott. In many respects his work reinforces the insights of Dumont. His concept of the "dividual self" is particularly important in this regard. For Marriott the Indian person is a "dividual" and as such stands at the opposite pole to that occupied in the West by the individual. Marriott sees individualism as intimately associated with the philosophic notions of dualism and universalism and characterised by an "assumption of the easy, proper separability of action from actor, of code from substance..., that pervades both Western philosophy and Western common sense".<32> In contrast the dividual is transactional and transformational. He/she represents an indivisible union of code and substance such that dividuals are continually engaged in a steady state type relationship with others. In this relationship they transfer a wide range of coded substances, eg. food, the soil, alms and the like. This results in the South Asian person developing in a manner quite at odds with the normal course of development met with in the West. The South Asian person, the dividual, is highly fluid,<33> not the narrowly bounded and particulate character familiar to Western social theorists. The Hindu vision of the person, then, stands in opposition to that of the West and the reason for this, according to Marriott, is:

"...the systematic monism and particularism that pervade Hindu
sociology".<34>

The dividual is a social manifestation of the philosophical monism that apparently underlies "Indian civilization's fabled diversity".<35> Marriott's scepticism concerning the level of diversity in Indian society is not shared by all commentators. Beteille, for instance, adopts a perspective more in tune with common sense observation. For him:

"The most striking feature of Indian society today is the co-existence of divergent, even contradictory, beliefs and values."<36>

It strikes the present writer that this observation need not be confined to the present but holds good for all stages in India's historical development. In fact "the myth of complete and uniform culture-sharing within communities" <37> has recently been described as one of the more glaring examples of anthropological dogmatism for it represents a tendency to disregard specific and problematic data in favour of generalised likenesses. I do not wish to underestimate the differences that are likely to exist in the ways that concepts of self and society are culturally constructed, but the almost mathematical preciseness with which Western dualism and Indian monism are held as opposite poles seems rather contrived.

Perhaps Indian culture does not easily shift from one historical phase to another, in the manner that Kuhn would have us believe happens in the West, but this fact alone is not sufficient for us to conclude that it possesses no coherent history. On the contrary, some scholars have maintained that a process of "accretion, aggregation and inclusion" <38> may be a more appropriate metaphor with which to characterise Indian history. To this way of thinking new ideas and social forms are laid down within the culture like geological strata. They may compete with earlier notions but never achieve the revolutionary power to undermine and set to nought that which has gone before. In effect the repertoire of ideas simply gets larger with nothing discarded. If we look at Indian history from this perspective it will certainly be difficult to identify specific periods crystallizing around a cluster of dominant ideas in the Western manner. However, at any given moment the total available store of concepts within the thought universe will be extraordinarily rich - a veritable stew simmering away quite happily until the next batch of ingredients are thrown in. In this situation, in which no one idea can come to dominate a period of history, Indian society has a multivalence denied, perhaps, to the West. Now clearly, in the Indian context, it will be difficult to identify the point of origin of any of the major cultural ideas, or for that matter their chronological sequence, for all ideas seem to compete against an enormously complex background. The problematic of Indian history, well understood by students of Indian philosophy, is the difficulty involved in bringing any idea sufficiently into focus, but to conclude from this that there is no historical development is patently false. True, the individual cannot step out into the light of the Indian day at a specific time, but to hold that his existence is necessarily excluded as a result seems eccentric to say the least.


Hindu Diversity

Far from being monolithic, Indian society is exuberantly diverse. The extraordinary range of religious traditions maintained in the present period, and loosely designated as Hinduism (a convenient fiction which itself aids the reductive tendencies in indology), surely testify to this. The philosophically monist Advaita Vedanta is quite definitely a significant presence within the overall tradition, but Indian religious thought is very far from exhausted by it. However Advaita Vedanta has come in for such detailed treatment by Western scholars, poets and the like, that it is hardly surprising that amongst the uninstructed it is often the paradigm of Indian thought, with Sankara, its intellectual progenitor, regularly described as India's greatest thinker. Could this singling out, and promotion to the highest echelon, of one important school of religious thought be at least partly explained by the fact that it aligns itself so conveniently with the monist tendencies of indological discourse? Advaita Vedanta, of course, represents only one of the ways in which the ancient Upanisads may be read, for other schools of Vedanta stress a dualistic interpretation. Dualism is comparatively well attested amongst Indian philosophical systems. Samkhya/Yoga is, of course, the most prominent system in this category yet this is an inconvenient detail generally ignored by those who stress the monism of Indian thought forms.<39> Acknowledgement of this fact opens up new vistas in the interpretation of Hindu culture and, though these interpretations may prove to be less elegant, for they are unlikely to resolve themselves into a few neat formulae, they need not exclude the possibility of the existence of individuals a priori.
 
The enormous range of religious belief and practice within the Hindu tradition seems to point to an equivalent variety of character types. The determination of character has an ancient lineage and may be accomplished through astrological, or other divinatory means. It is, for instance, common for a guru to determine the character of his close disciples, perhaps by the use of insight, though texts which may aid this process are known from relatively ancient times.<40> Again, the tradition, as is well known, manifests a continuum of attitude towards caste as both social fact and ideology. Some significant groups are openly hostile to caste, while others vigorously guard it from any dilution. There is a good deal of grey ground between these two extreme positions. One would expect groups which benefit from the status quo, ie. higher castes and particularly the brahmans, to be in the latter group, with low caste groupings tending to the former. This is only partially the case and religious affiliation particularly amongst the devotional sects (bhaktas) may give little indication of caste status, though research amongst present day Ramanandis indicates that sub-groups, some respecting caste boundaries and others doing the reverse, may coexist in the same religious organisation.<41> This situation is further complicated by the fact that Hindus on joining a group hostile to caste are likely to be ostracised by fellow caste members. In time the group, comprised of heterogeneous social elements, may of necessity be forced to develop its own caste-like structures and institutions. The Sikhs may be regarded in this light. The history and significance of caste is still a matter of considerable debate, but whatever the case, it is difficult for us to maintain that the Hindu person is determined solely by his caste and its associated institutions. That caste is of first-order importance in Indian society there can be little doubt, but attempts to delineate the nature of Indian personhood in a rigidly theoretical manner using caste as the sole determinant makes little sense.


Indian Individualism

If we are prepared to accept the heterogeneity of Indian culture we shall have little difficulty making similar adjustments in our appreciation of the Indian person. Caste will of course be a major determinant of personhood but it is perhaps unwise for us to assume that its influence is so overwhelming that no additional factors are present. In fact, a growing body of empirical evidence has emerged in recent years to suggest just this. Mines <42> has observed that the methodological assumptions of Indian anthropologists have often inclined them to place greater reliance on texts than on interviews with contemporary informants. This is particularly so when the investigator turns his attention to an ideological devaluation of Indian individualism. It is clear, from our earlier discussions, that the texts employed are likely to be those that confirm the assumptions of indological discourse. Mines' work represents an attempt to break out of this vicious circle. In an analysis of the life histories of twenty three informants Mines demonstrates that as Hindus age, personal autonomy becomes an increasingly prominent theme in their lives. While individuality is generally subordinated to familial and caste influences throughout early adulthood, anecdotal evidence suggests that increasing seniority in years enables Indians to:

"...frequently depict themselves as active agents, pursuing private goals and making personal decisions that affect the outcome of their lives".<43>

Dumont would probably accept this but wishes to see this move to greater autonomy shifting in an increasingly outworldly direction. With advancing age the orthodox Hindu achieves a modicum of individuality through religious asceticism, for the structure of the Hindu social environment is such that individuality cannot be developed from within. Here is another of Dumont's stark dichotomies: the individual-outside-the- world opposes the man-in-the-world.<44> In line with Mines' criticism, Dumont's picture of the world renouncer is strongly based on an oddly selective treatment of sacred texts,<45> and this is curious given the priority placed on fieldwork in his substantial studies of caste. However when we consider that texts, on the whole, tend to stress a monist transformation or loss of self as the renunciatory journey proceeds, we begin to see their attraction for the social theorist. Dumont's individual-outside-the-world is a strange beast indeed. In his quest for extinction of the empirical self, destruction of particulate boundaries, wholistic decentring and the negation of emotion, judgement and action are the consequences. The depersonalised Indian renouncer achieves, in effect, the very opposite condition from that customarily assumed by Western thinkers, such as Geertz,<46> to be the hallmark of the individual. 

However paradoxical this may seem, it corresponds very well with an exceptionally ancient opinion, going back to at least the time of Alexander the Great,<47> that the Indian hero par excellence is the renouncer or gymnosophist. The European hero, the prototype of the individual, is a man of action and affairs standing firmly within the world. The Indian hero, by contrast, renounces action and embraces Brahman, in which all distinctions are void. Here is another nice example of the Hegelian Self/Other distinction mentioned above.

Now this is all very interesting but it is worth pointing out that the ideology of renunciation, though held in high regard by Hindus,<48> has never been more than a minority interest in practice.<49> Sanderson shows very clearly that the Brahmanic ritualists of the Mimamsa school experienced no problems in seeing themselves as the most individual of individuals for they possessed "a self that was not only real but also absolutely self-determining".<50> The work of T.N.Madan <51> eloquently reinforces this point and also indicates some of the ways that Western commentators have tended to overestimate the significance of renunciaton, perhaps in the wake of the Greeks.  Yet again, Mines' suggests that autonomous decision making, with an individualistic colouring, is quite likely to be channelled into directions which do not necessarily tally with the ideology of renunciation. On the contrary:

"The older a person gets, the less compellingly specific are the cultural guides to tasks for his or her stage of life. As a result, the person increasingly finds room for the pursuit of his or her own interests."<52>

These interests will, probably, find their expression in a this-worldly domain. As the Indian psychologist B.K.Ramanujam notes:

"Once (the householder)...has fulfilled his obligations to the family and jati he can aspire to his own perfectibility."<53>

This quest for perfection may take a variety of forms, many of which parallel the kinds of careerism, economic possessiveness and general forms of self-development met in the West. Recent anthropology of the agricultural sphere underlines this fact with the view that Indian "villagers have more to worry about in their daily lives than matters of caste and ritual, narrowly construed".<54>

Fieldwork suggests that the paradigm of classical renunciation can develop in an unexpected fashion. The revaluation of the traditional ideal as a this-worldly asceticism, as observed by Khare <55> amongst the Lucknow Chamars, is a case in point. Similarly, Parry's studies in Benares reveal the unsatisfactory nature of Dumont's straight-forward distinction between man-in-the-world and the ascetic ideals of the world renouncer,<56> in that the funeral priests of Marnikarnika ghat seem to share, with the renouncer, "...a common ideal of independence from the material and social order".<57>

In line with his general essentialising tendency Dumont sees renunciation itself as a coherent and stable ideal, but this myth of uniformity is partly undermined by empirical data. We know, for instance, that warrior ascetics acting alone, or as part of an organised group, are a feature of Indian history from about the time of the Dehli sultanate until the consolidation of British rule.<58> Ascetics are also known to have acted as traders, moneylenders and dacoits throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many are reported to have generated considerable personal wealth.<59> This hardly seems a way of life overly determined by detached, out-worldly sentiments. Contemporary examples are no less difficult to find. The Ramanandi sadhus based around the sacred city of Ayodhya, and particularly the subgroup of nagas, or fighting ascetics, "who are organised in regiments (akhara) and armies (ani)",<60> are a prominent case in point. Their cooperation in the campaign of political agitation against a mosque, supposedly standing on the birth site of Rama (Ramajanmabhumi), has all the hallmarks of religious intolerance and nationalism which characterised the great age of European individualism ushered in by the Reformation. 

The recent history of reform movements within the subcontinent are littered with examples of reformers who stress beliefs and practices heavily laden with the language of individualism. Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933), the most prominent nineteenth century Theravada Buddhist reformer taught his lay followers to adopt a life style which combined the traditional discipline of the monastery with a concern for "meaningful worldly work".<61> He seems to have regarded his countrymen as being afflicted by laziness and superstition, though he refused to admit that this condition was constitutional. On the contrary his writings and speeches are littered with exhortations to "thrift, saving and hard work",<62> so much so that he is often regarded as the founder of "protestant Buddhism", a term coined by Obeyesekere and now much in use. However, his message is anti-Western and anti-Christian in tone, and assertively nationalistic. It is therefore too simplistic to see Dharmapala's teaching merely as the Christianisation of a traditional Buddhist ethic, and this despite his own early education in church schools. It is part of a wider, indigenous pattern of agitation, drawing in no small part on the ideology of renunciation reformulated to fit new circumstances. It could be said that the dominant influence here is not so much Western individualism as the individualism typified by the warrior ascetics of the past. 

An interest in a Buddhism transformed by purging it of outworldly forms is also a feature in the late career of Dr. Ambedkar (1891-1956) for here we discover a powerful mixture of caste agitation, moral improvement and this-worldly spirituality. Ambedkar's thoughts on religion contained in the Conversion Speech (1936) are replete with quasi- individualistic language. Thus:

"If you want to gain self-respect (Marathi: manuski), change your religion. If you want to create a cooperating society, change your religion. If you want power, change your religion. If you want equality, change your religion."<63>

The twenty two "Buddhist Oaths" which, in part, comprise the Mahar conversion ritual give much the same impression. Of course, many contemporary regional reform groups, such as the anti-Brahmanic self-respect movement of Tamil Nadu,<64> share some of the principles encountered in the teaching of both Ambedkar and Dharmapala. The most likely explanation of this is that all groups draw on indigenous models of protest characterised by a high level of individuality. This way of doing things is to be seen as intrinsic to the culture and not the result of external influences. As Thapar observes:

"The joining of an order by the renouncer often brought him back into performing a social role. This ... also involved him in trying to change the social order. It is not accidental that socio-political reformers in India have frequently appropriated the symbols of the renouncer".<65>

We have already had occasion to note that the Dumontian is inclined to view movements of this kind as untypical from an Indian perspective. Since they have their roots in the traumas of adaption experienced by Western educated inhabitants of the subcontinent, they can give no real insight into the pristine nature of the Indian self. Again the socio-political message of change extolled by the reformers is excluded, by definition, from the repertoire of indigenous thought forms. At best, the various forms of this-worldly asceticism current today are to be regarded as the monstrous offspring of essentially incompatible parents. This inability to accept any meaningful and enduring social phenomenon which falls between the twin poles of caste and family determined activity on the one hand, and world denying individualism on the other has a certain elegance, though it clearly clashes with a growing body of ethnographic research that suggests the situation is rather more fluid. Evidence exists to suggest that rural Hindus regard the dichotomous categories employed quite happily by Dumont as unintelligible. In a culture where men and gods intermingle "distinctions such as sacred and profane, spirit and matter" <66> make little sense. By pushing this notion a little further we may, without doing violence to the facts, add that an analogous continuum may also be found between the so-called in-worldly and out-worldly personality types encountered in the anthropological literature.


The Individual and the Economy

Dumont holds that Western individualism implies an "autonomy of Economics and Politics".<67> We have already seen that political activity is consistent with Indian forms of individualism in a way that Dumont would wish to deny. What of economics? Ethnographic research amongst Indian tribal communities has revealed a considerable level of what could usefully be described as economic self-interest, particularly amongst hunter-gatherers. In these communities there is "...egalitarianism...a normative stress on self-sufficiency ... (and) a general looseness of social ties, so that the camps are 'shapeless,unstructured aggregations' of related kin, there being no corporate groups of any kind".<68> But what of orthodox Hindu society? Does it provide the scope and opportunity for free enterprise? Dumont argues that it does not, and in this he follows Marx who describes Indian agricultural life as being:

"...as little detached from the umbilical cord of the tribe of community as the individual bee is from the swarm of bees".<69> 

In such conditions private ownership of the means of production are unimaginable, for everything is held in common. As a result economic activity remains stagnant for all time. This is the so-called Asiatic Mode of Production, a doctrine which even staunch Marxists have had some difficulty in comprehending. Nevertheless, in one form or another, the flavour of this assessment of Indian economic capability has remained alive. Weber, for instance, is of the view that the religious outlook of the Hindus prevented them from developing:

"...an ethic that endorsed and encouraged the life of rationally oriented business activity".<70>

To this way of thinking Indian culture possesses a childlike lack of "world-ordering rationality" and fails to produce the tenacity and end-directed discipline characteristic of Western labour.<71> The Indian worker then is ill-disciplined. If Weber is correct we would not expect complex city environments, which for him are the hallmark of business activity, to arise on the subcontinent, yet we know that they have existed since ancient times. Not only that, but the city is represented in a positive light at quite an early stage in their historical development.<72>

There is little need to subject the theory of the Asiatic Mode of Production to further scrutiny - this has been done many times before <73> - but I do wish to dwell for a short time on the notion of ownership. An unquestioned axiom for  a wide range of writers is the idea that classical Hindu society is devoid of the principle of private ownership. However, examination of Sanskrit law books shows that this may not be fully the case. Dharmasastra in fact distinguishes between two kinds of property. The first is, as one would expect, joint family or ancestral property which must be passed on down the male line. The second category is more surprising since it constitutes separate or self-acquired (svarjita) property. Vijnanesvara, an 11th century commentator on Yajnavalkyasmrti, allows six differing kinds of self-acquired property,<74> the sixth being property gained as earnings from the practice of learning or science (vidyadhana).<75>  

Kane believes that the legal recognition of independent property, such as this, is probably quite ancient.<76> Despite some authoritative textual evidence to the contrary, vidyadhana property was given full legal standing in the Hindu Gains of Learning Act (Act XXX) in 1930. In effect the possessor of self-acquired wealth may dispose of it how he chooses and is not bound "by even a hundred texts" <77> to keep it within the family or caste. There is then some scope for economic individualism in the legal traditions of Indian both ancient and modern. Support for this view may perhaps be gained from Derrett's interpretation of Vijnanesvara's position on property. He argues <78> that Vijnanesvara considers the acquisition of wealth as an essentially worldly (laukika) activity. This is also the view of the Prabhakara.<79> It seems that the regulations covering this area of law are not particularly clear-cut. Though self-directed and self-motivated economic activity may be enlightened by religio-legal considerations, it is an essentially deregulated arena of personal existence, for in contrast to the sector of life determined by caste and familial obligations, here we have a space in which scope for individual enterprise may flourish. This insight is confirmed by recent ethnographic data related to Indian agriculture,<80> and even in the strictly religious field ample opportunity for private production and commerce may present itself to those motivated by an entrepreneurial spirit.<81>

Obeyesekere has recently entered the argument in support of an indigenous Indian economic individualism. He strongly repudiates the notion that Indians must first "develop a Western empirical self before they can produce economic development".<82> Confirmation of this view comes from an unlikely source. Japanese society in many respects parallels that of India. Competent authorities describe it as placing a good deal of stress on societalism, with a corresponding devaluation of self-oriented activity.<83> Nevertheless Japan has, in recent years, produced a vibrant and thriving industrial economy which now outstrips the efforts of the West. Now, some commentators are of the opinion that in the last two decades Japanese society has shifted considerably in its position on the continuum between societalism and individualism, in the latter direction, and that in consequence the moral cultures of Japan and America are converging.<84> Be that as it may, there can be little doubt that in the early, and therefore formative, period of Japan's economic growth transformation took place against a background still heavily determined by strong familial bonds, a factor regularly cited as a significant disincentive to personal autonomy and entrepreneurialism in the Indian context.

The presuppositions underlying the supposed differences between Americans and Japanese have recently been exposed by McIntyre. He points out that studies on this topic are far from culturally neutral but, on the contrary, represent "...one specifically American way of understanding the differences between Americans and Japanese, so that the Japanese are represented on a scale that makes them more-or-less-like-Americans".<85> In other words the distinction arises from an acceptance of modern individualism as normative. McIntyre ably shows that this normative position is actually untenable, for the contemporary American self no longer manifests the freedom, abstraction and structural integrity expected of it by the ideology of individualism. Perhaps it never did! The contemporary American self is, in fact, marked by an "unacknowledged incoherence" situated as it is "in a moral culture in which radically individualistic modes of thought and action are both systematically practised and praised and yet also systematically put in question".<86> This incoherence is very well illustrated by the regular coexistence in the same person of, on the one hand, a quest for rootedness in a traditional sociocentric ethnic past, and on the other by a vigorous preference for self development. If this is so, then Mcintyre's unstable American self has some of the fluidity often attributed to persons in Indian. Could it be that the differences between East and West are, in this regard, not as great as so often assumed? Although McIntyre's programme of moral regeneration is peculiar to himself, on this matter of the incoherence of individuality he is in line with the thoughts of Habermas and Derrida, mentioned at the beginning of our discussion. Looked at in this way, Dumont's distinction between the person as empirical agent, the subject of speech and thought, etc., present in all societies and the person as "...independent, autonomous moral being ... found first of all in our own ideology of man and society",<87> looks a trifle over-optimistic.


Conclusion

Dumont realizes the danger inherent in imposing the characteristics of one society upon another, but his solution to this problem is to regard Indian and European cultures as intrinsically alien to one another. This paper argues for an abandonment of this position. In its place both cultures must be judged as occupying a place on a continuum which stretches from complete individualism, in the one direction, to perfect societalism in the other. As macro-conditions vary, so may the gap between cultures wax and wane. It is perhaps not inconceivable that their relative positions with respect to the two extremes may switch around, but it is fairly certain that the situation will not remain static.

Despite doubts raised at the end of this paper concerning the actual presence of the individual in modern Western life, individualism as a theory remains a bench mark by which societies may be usefully compared. However, the individual is the work of many hands and, as such, was painstakingly constructed by generations of scholars working to mutual advantage in law, political theory, philosophy, art, religion and related fields. Only by a parallel recognition of the complex nature of Indian literary and artistic genres can a satisfactory attempt be made to establish indigenous models of the Hindu person. Such models will confirm or deny the picture achieved on the basis of ethnographic studies. It may perhaps be impossible to reach a unified position here, but until the task is complete how are we to know whether indigenous models of the person are congruous with those supposed to hold good for the West? This paper represents an early phase in the journey.


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Drs. Francesca Murphy, John Shepherd and David Smith for their helpful suggestions made at various stages on the way to the final draft of this paper. The presence of any inaccuracy or mystification remains, of course, the responsibility of the author.

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NOTES

1. This will be the topic of a forthcoming article.

2. S.Collins (1988) p.102

3. P.F.Strawson regards the concept of the person as a commonplace. As such it constitutes part of "the massive core of human thinking that has no history." (Individuals. London, Methuen, 1959 pp.104 & 10-11) Dumont accepts this but wishes to contrast this person as empirical agent with the historically conditioned normative individual. (cf. 1970 	p.134-5)

4. cf. D.Knowles & D.Obolensky  The Middle Ages (The Christian Centuries Vol.2). London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1969 p.445f

5. cf. Lukes (1973) p.95

6. Dumont in Carrithers et al (eds.) (1985) p.93

7. For Habermas fundamental elements in the make-up of the individual are increasingly at odds with "objective realities of systematic functioning under the advanced organisational principle." (Sampson (1989) p.3ff) At this late stage in capitalist development the bourgeois individual is null and void.

8. Derrida's deconstruction of psychology's subject makes it no longer "possible to adhere to the notion of the individual as embodying some ideal pre-given essence." (R.Coward & J.Ellis  Language and Materialism. London, RKP, 1977 p.3-4)

9. Shweder & Bourne p.165

10. ibid p.192

11. Dumont (1970) p.142

12. My 'How Environmentalist is Buddhism?' Religion  21 (1991) p.101-114, is an attempt to show the fallaciousness of the notion that Indian culture must necessarily be "close to nature."

13. Ramanujan (1986) p.7

14. cf. Inden (1990)

15. Inden (1986) p.414

16. op cit p.161

17. Inden (1990) p.70ff 

18. cf. Bechert p.1 & Brown p.20ff. Brown does see some sign of historiography in ancient India, particularly amongst Buddhists and Jains. Kautilya, for example, lists historical writing (itihasa) as of high importance (p.24). For further information on Buddhist historiography cf. Bechert (1978) and Tambiah (1988) p.316-7 

19. op cit p.147

20. ibid

21. T.N.Madan  Non-Renunciation: Themes and Interpretations of Hindu Culture. Dehli,Oxford University Press,1987 p.58. Madan makes an impressive case (cf. Ch.4 'Auspiciousness and Purity') for regarding time bound conceptions of the auspicious as being just as significant as caste oriented and essentially timeless notions of purity and pollution, as determinants of contemporary Hindu behaviour.

22. Kakar p.46-7

23. op cit p.148

24. ibid p.142-3

25. Inden (1986) p.416

26. cf. Lukes (1973) p.124 

27. op cit p.165

28. cf. in particular Beteille's discussion of this issue in (1986) p.122ff

29. Mines p.578

30. Dumont's consideration of the careers of Ram Mohan Roy and Nehru (op. cit. p.150) perhaps come closest to an explicit endorsement of this position.

31. cf. M.Foucault   Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. 1972-1977 New York, Pantheon Books, 1980 p.82

32. Marriott p.110

33. The concept of the "fluid person" has, more recently, been employed by Valentine Daniel in connection with his fieldwork amongst village Tamils, and this despite his repudiation of Marriott's "ethnosociological" method. cf. E.V.Daniel  Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1984

34. op cit p.109

35. ibid

36. op cit p.123

37. Appadurai (1986) p.759

38. cf. R.Gombrich 'Ancient Indian Cosmology' p.111 in C.Blacker and M.Loewe  Ancient Cosmologies. London, Allen and Unwin, 1975 p.110-142

39.Mauss understood this when he attributed the failure of Indian culture to develop a coherent picture of the person to 'Samkhya dualists, Buddhist impersonalists and Upanisadic monists,' though I believe his negativity here is incorrect. cf. Sanderson (1985) p.191

40. The Theravada Buddhist Puggalapannati is a good example of such a text. It lists twelve classes of person while preserving the Buddhist insight that ultimately the individual has no real existence. Similarly Buddhaghosa, in his Visuddhimagga III.74ff, identifies six character types with a view to assigning relevant meditational practices to each.

41. cf. P.van der Veer 'Taming the Ascetic: Devotionalism in a Hindu Monastic Order' Man (N.S.) 22 (1987) p.680-695

42. Mines p.569

43. ibid p.568

44. Dumont (1980) p.275

45. Sanderson op cit makes a similar criticism of Mauss who, he believes, 'presupposes that it is reasonable to approach the category of the person in India through metaphysics alone, overlooking the dimensions of social personhood which are, as it were, the raw material out of which these metaphysical systems are cooked'.  Collins (1988) p.105, also notes that Dumont uncritically conflates Hindu and Buddhist ideas on renunciation when it suits his purposes.  

46. cf. C.Geertz 'On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding', American Scientist 63 (1975) p.48

47. The knowledge of Indian renunciation by the Greeks and early Christians is well covered by W.Halbfass  Indien und Europa: Perspektiven inhrer geistigen Begegnung. Basel and Stuttgart, Schwabe, 1981, p.13ff. Many of the Greek views are taken up and expanded by later authors such as Voltaire, cf. Dictionnaire Philosophique 'Brachmanes, Brames' in  Oeuvres Completes de Voltaire, Vol.7 Pt.1. Paris, Th. Desoer, 1817 p.525ff

48. Olivelle (1975) p.75, points out that, though the literature of renunciation is extensive, formal definitions of the practice are difficult to find before the 17th century

49. cf. P.V.Kane History of Dharmasastra : Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Law in India  Vol.II Poona, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1990 p.975

50. op cit  p.195-6

51. cf. in particular his collected essays mentioned supra n.21

52. op cit p.577

53. Ramanujam (1986) p.83

54. Appadurai op cit p.757

55. cf. R.S.Khare  The Untouchable as Himself: Ideology, Identity and Pragmatism among the Lucknow Chamars. Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 1984

56. Collins (1988) believes, with some justification, that Dumont's use of the term "world" is problematic in that it is "a blend of Christian theology and sociological description." (p.103) As such, the "simple dichotomy between man-in-the- world and the world renouncer will not do descriptive justice to the facts of Hinduism." (p.105)

57. Parry (1980) p.89

58. cf. D.N.Lorenzen 'Warrior Ascetics in Indian History' Journal of the American Oriental Society 98/1 (1978 p.61-75). Thapar (1988) p.294 believes that this phenomenon may date back to the mid first millenium AD. 

59. cf. D.H.A.Kolff 'Sannyasi Trader-Soldiers', Indian Economic and Social History Review, 8 (1971) p.213-218

60. P.van der Veer  op cit  p.686. For further information on the order, and the background to the problems in Ayodhya cf. P.van der Veer '"God must be Liberated!" A Hindu Liberation Movement in Ayodhya', Modern Asian Studies 21/2 (1987) p.283-301 and H.Bakker 'Ayodhya: A Hindu Jerusalem', Numen 38/1 (1991) p.80-109. See also D.Gold 'Rational Action and Uncontrolled Violence: Explaining Hindu Communalism' Religion 21 (1991) p.357-370

61. Obeyesekere (1976) p.235

62. ibid p.247

63. cf. Zelliot (1978) p.102ff

64. Beteille (1969) p.211ff

65. Thapar (1988) p.274

66. Aiyappam (1973) quoted in Marriott (1979) p.113

67. Dumont (1970) p.135

68. Morris (1978) p.366

69. cf. Capital I.xi  3rd German edition, Hamburg, 1883 p.333

70. quoted in Inden p.78

71. ibid p.79

72. For evidence, from Buddhist texts, of this positive feeling for the city see my article op cit p.108

73. Inden (1986) p.421ff gives good bibliographical information on this.

74. cf. Kane op cit III p.577ff 

75. cf. Manu IX.206ff

76. op cit p.581

77. ibid p.639

78. Derrett (1968) p.144

79. ibid

80. cf. supra n.51

81. cf Parry (1980) and (1986) 'The Moral Perils of Exchange in a Hindu Pilgrimage City'. Unpublished Ms. cited by Appadurai op cit p.757

82. Obeyesekere (1990) p.246

83. cf.  G.de Vos 'Dimensions of the Self in Japanese Culture' in Marsella et al (eds.)  Culture and Self: Asian and Western Perspectives. New York & London, Tavistock Publications,1985 p.141-184

84. cf. R.Bellah's introduction to  Tokugawa Religion. (1989 edition), cited in McIntyre (1990) p.489

85. McIntyre (1990) p.490

86. ibid p.492

87. Dumont op cit p.135    

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