• The author makes a case for the hermeneutics of Faith while constructing history in India. Indian historiography has become skewed overmuch by materialism. This, the author points out, is insufficient exegesis.

Hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy gurdy, he sang

Histories of ages past

Unenlightened shadows cast

Down through all eternity

The crying of humanity

'Tis then the Hurdy Gurdy Man

Comes singing songs of love

Then the Hurdy Gurdy Man

Comes singing songs of love --- Donovan, 1968.

The realpolitik involved in the tangible construction of that variety of Neo-Kantianism which leads to logical positivism requires a unique historiography which needs to masquerade as a scientific discourse whose narrative arch ironically derives from religious studies. And neo-Kantianism and its offshoots are religions since they meet the sociological and anthropological criteria which characterize any major religion.

In a very odd Nietzschean fashion, using or rather, misreading Nietzsche's transvaluation of values, we have a historiography which denies its own religious superstructure. It is not a mere foible of contemporary materialist historiography deriving from the likes of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri that neophyte historians are taught the ‘scientific method’ in history entirely neglecting the ontology of this much misunderstood method.

The historical method in religious studies has given rise to the errors of John Dominic Crossan on the one hand and of Camille Bulcke on the other hand. Both unfortunately threw their respective metaphorical babies with the bathwater. Yet both are rigorous scholars whose research seems impeccable. And this historiography, having been born of a gesture towards logical positivism within Continental thought, had a disastrous effect on Dharmic studies. 

The materialist tendencies within Indic Studies have been conflated with neo-Kantianism and logical positivism, giving rise to the erroneous understanding that Sanatana Dharma can be interrogated through strictly empirical methods suited in studying religions and ethical codices only a few thousand years old. This main mode of current academic historiography is constrained by its own methods to look beyond a few thousand years precisely because it is only and firmly empirical.

And empiricism is in turn constrained by technical advances in archaeology, geology and even chemistry. For instance, archaeologists, nor chemists are yet equipped with tools to date DNAs and such like life-markers beyond a few eras. The problem is what a geologist faces --- a good geologist knows that something existed just beyond the timelines he can ken, but he simply does not have access to tools which will prove him right. Thus, our historiography is constrained by severe technological handicaps.

Because of these limitations within both the physical sciences and the scientific method in religious studies and consequently, historiography; many historians smugly declare their findings as accurate giving way to further biases.

The first bias consists of documented assumptions within any narration. A cursory knowledge of narratology will reveal these biases. It is a cliché that all historiography is finally fiction. Any student of literature can vouch for this foregoing fictional nature of history. The more urgent bias is that historiography is marked by the fixations of a community. In a certain sense, totems and taboos punctuate history. If anything is true then it is that neutral constructions of historiography are myths and the rigidity of ideologies mar the narratorial arch of historians.

The first step in constructing a historiography in accordance with our Dharma is that we first acknowledge with James Joyce that history is a nightmare from which we need to awaken. Our own nightmares consist of successive colonization by invaders who did not understand or care to understand our monism and simultaneous henotheism. This created in us, more than in our invaders, a self-loathing from which we are yet to recover. We do not only feel ashamed for and of our Dharma; we feel definite abjection towards who we are.

Here we need to digress slightly and remind ourselves that while religions and the State are often opposed within the Kantian and neo-Kantian matrices of statecraft and justly so, since theocracies are not good for citizens; Dharma, being more expansive than the more restrictive architectonics of religions, our lives are not distinct from Dharma but arise and perfects itself from within the core of our beings. The core of our being is Dharma.

Thus, neo-Kantianism is inapplicable to our body politic since we have no church, or centralized authority to begin with. Our Dharma, not being a religion, is neither a logic of the popular; nor is it a soporific of the masses. It has been handed down to us through our canonical texts, traditions and being-in-the-world. We do not need to play with words here distinguishing between the semiotics of history and itihasa. It is sufficient to say that while history is essentially an Enlightenment discourse, our historical impulse is not satisfied with what empiricists have to inform us.

The history of the Kundalini Shakti is not traceable through ordinary modes of historiography. What historians dismiss as myths, we see as metaphors and symbols; often in the psychoanalytic sense of both terms. Earlier I mentioned Dominic Crossan and Camille Bulcke. Both of them would be at a loss while trying to even fathom that a history of the Kundalini Shakti can and should be mapped. In their worldviews, we are only too human to account for Kundalini; in our worldview we who read this blogpost and I who write are not merely governed by the Jungian collective unconscious but we are perforce one Being. This is the teaching of monism.

I cannot agree that Advaita Vedanta is wrong and only materialists are right. A historiography which cannot account for the epistemology of monism, the logic of monism cannot be real. Either Advaita Vedanta is teleologically wrong; or historians of certain schools are wrong. I am not asking for bending recorded events to suit my Faith.

On the contrary, I am stating an Aristotelian necessity which is based on the very historiography that informs the architectonics of contemporary history --- both propositions cannot be true. It is an either/or Aristotelian position for empiricists. Had we been dealing with Dharmic historiography I would have demanded the inclusion of the excluded middle. Since contemporary historiography is essentially dogmatic, being Aristotelian, I demand an Aristotelian resolution. Either contemporary historiography is all correct or, all askew and wrong.

If it is all correct, then Advaita Vedanta with its vast logical apparatus is entirely wrong. And, all branches of dulia and hyperdulia within Sanatana Dharma gesture towards monism; then per se, our Dharma’s contentions of non-linearity of time are entirely wrong and our Faith is naught. But being a Faith community, nay, a theological community, how can we account for only this hermeneutics of suspicion? Can we not expect a more balanced hermeneutics of faith? From the desert of criticism, we need to pass on to the so-called second naiveté; a sort of Blakean higher innocence. The very fact that Paul Ricoeur speaks of the two types of suspicion; the concept of the second naiveté means that Ricoeur willy-nilly accepts the excluded middle which is a cornerstone of our Dharma’s epistemology and logic.

Therefore, how can we have a historiography which neglects either Ricoeur's insights, or the excluded middle of Indic thought? Historiography cannot simply be either Hegelian, Marxist, Engels’, Feuerbach’s, E.H. Carr’s or Ranajit Guha’s subaltern studies. Both our Dharma and Christianity see a definite numinosity within history which needs mapping. Both Hindu and Christian historiographies insist on the presence of an a priori transcendental force which informs history and propels it in our case, to the end of an aeon. And in the case of Christianity, to parousia and the Second Coming. Both Sanatana Dharma and Christianity reject dependent origination. Rather, dependent origination’s ontology lies in what we call Brahman and Catholics call the Omega Point and the Catholic priest, Raimundo Panikkar calls the Cosmotheandric (Vision or,) understanding of the universe.  

I am in no way rejecting historical conclusions, nor am I rejecting the necessity of (David) Hume’s insights on religion and consequently, Hume’s historiography, nor am I rejecting Immanuel Kant’s response to Hume and neo-Kantian insights. I even accept and find it necessary to situate history within the thickness of economic inequalities and of course, colonial oppression throughout the world.

It is not anyone’s imagination that Winston Churchill actually facilitated the Bengal famine, and no sleight-of-the-hand historiography can change that fact. Amartya Sen’s work on the Bengal famine is critical to our understanding not only of today’s Bengal but also of the British mindset then and now. The removal of the video installation of Helen Cammock on Churchill’s role in weaponizing hunger from London’s National Portrait Gallery is a recent testimony about how it is important not to neglect empirical evidence within historiography. My point is that these forms of exegesis are all important.

But what is also important is that we account for the limitations of current historiography and possess the intellectual humility to open up historical discourses and narratives to a hermeneutics of faith. Historians need to recognize that while their methods are valid and necessary, they are obsessively oblivious of the construction of history which accommodates Faith. Fr. Adrian van Kaam had to oppose Freud more radically than Jacques Lacan ever did. While Sigmund Freud’s insights cannot and should not be rejected wholesale, yet we must acknowledge with Ricoeur that Freud himself had fixations which were rooted in his anxiety (of the influence) of Judaism.

Similarly, in this short blogpost, I invite researchers, historians and other social scientists to see what they can gain by accommodating the insights from Indic knowledge. Let us have open minds and not be constrained by the thoughts of the past. We do need to wake up from the nightmares of history.

 Incidentally, the Hurdy Gurdy man did not come singing songs of love; he has become iconic because of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Our very best creations and intentions are often hijacked by evil which proliferates as viruses as Jean Baudrillard once pointed out. While God is, so is evil. They are not mere metaphors. Any historical discourse that elides both God and evil are insufficient in their exegetical methods.

The author is a theologian.

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