Neither all for one, nor one for all
During the four years since Indian knowledge systems became a government programme, and the five since it first assumed shape as a meta-discipline, there has been little by way of review about its ends and meanings. Steered by the education administration of the Government of India, what are called knowledge systems do duty as vectors for academic careerism and towards the state’s conception of sustainable development. Left behind, in this calculus, are both the most tangible manifestation of our systems of knowledge, handicrafts and weaves, and the need to safeguard the living heritage that still survives.
The following are the opening paragraphs of a paper I have written on what is now fairly commonly known as Indian knowledge systems. You can read the paper here.
Some five years ago I first heard the term ‘Indian knowledge systems’. It was being used in the circles that are today described as ‘Indic’, although that term too was not as much en vogue then as it is now. Indic was taken to mean of and from India, grounded in its culture and philosophies, and generally free from western (or non-Indian) influences. Several centres and organisations that had been formed after 2015 styled themselves as being Indic, and the labels ‘Bharatiya’ or ‘sanatani’ or ‘dharmic’ were also employed.
Whether these terms and labels were to be considered as partially or mostly synonymous I could not say, although in the ways these organisations and centres worked, the similarities far outnumbered the dissimilarities. Whatever they styled themselves as, they seemed to have a common objective, and that is, to organise study and teaching, activity and ways of living, that are Indian in form and root, unpolluted by foreign (by which is meant, mainly, western) interpretation and analysis.
Weightier than all these, in its support of and use of the term ‘Indian knowledge systems’, was the central Government of India, through the Ministry of Education. Two actions, perhaps designed to be related, laid the foundation for the state support of what has come to be called ‘IKS’ (as the short form for Indian knowledge systems). These are the drafting of and then the final text of the National Education Policy 2020, and the formation by the All India Council for Technical Education of a division for Indian knowledge systems (the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship is included in this arrangement).
That, for the first time as a long-term programme, gave Indian knowledge systems recognition by the government and its support by way of a programme budget and an incipient administration of its own. Since 2019 and 2020, when this support was being readied and planned by the central government ministries (together with advisors from diverse backgrounds), ‘Indian knowledge systems’ as a term has become redolent with implicit assumptions concerning all that it stands for and why it is important for India and Indians. (You can read the paper here.)
Small is still beautiful
About a month ago, Berliner Gazette sent me one of its irregular emails. We are, they said, inviting contributions to our new project called ‘Pluriversum des Friedens’ (Pluriverse of Peace), and would you consider writing an article?
I did of course consider it right away. Berliner Gazette, in its own words, is “is a nonprofit and nonpartisan team of journalists, researchers, artists, and coders”. It has been published online since 1999 and continues to call itself “an experimental platform in dialogue with offline formats (workshops, exhibitions, festivals)” all while “thriving on exchange with grassroots movements and research initiatives and dissolving the conventional boundary between editors and audience.”
The ‘Pluriversum des Friedens’ project is set out in this way: “Let us imagine planet Earth as a pluriverse of peace: a ‘multiplicity of worlds’ where different forms of life and knowledge coexist, where nation-states and corporations no longer compete with one another, where everyone works together to make life worth living for all. Ultimately, a world without war and environmental destruction.”
Und in Deutsch: “Stellen wir uns den Planeten Erde als ein Pluriversum des Friedens vor: eine ‚Vielfalt der Welten‘, in der unterschiedliche Lebens- und Wissensformen nebeneinander existieren, in der Nationalstaaten und Konzerne nicht mehr miteinander konkurrieren, sondern gemeinsam daran arbeiten, das Leben für alle lebenswert zu machen. Und schließlich eine Welt ohne Krieg und Umweltzerstörung.”
My contribution to this project was titled in English, ‘Small is still beautiful’. This has been expanded to ‘Confronting War and Ecocide: Local Resilience vs. Postcolonial ‘Development‘ which in fact is what my text is about. The Deutsch text, ‘Krieg und Ökozid konfrontieren: Lokale Resilienz vs. postkoloniale ‚Entwicklung‘ ‘, can be found here.
The odd couple, traditional knowledge and sustainable development
A book that has just been published, ‘Indian Knowledge Systems: Viksit Bharat 2047‘, carries a chapter I have written for it. Indian Knowledge Systems (or IKS) has become a rather precocious subject these days (in India) and there are, so far as I know, some 12 or 13 IITs (these being the Indian Institutes of Technology) which have during the last couple of years begun units or research groups devoted to it.
What IKS is and what it might be (and what it is presented as being) deserves separate treatment. This chapter had to have something to do with both IKS and ‘Viksit Bharat’ (which means, Developed India, that state being seen as accomplished in 2047 which of course is 100 years after independence from British colonial rule).
“The formalisation of the idea of sustainable development has, in many ways, preceded by several decades any attempt at formalising ideas about traditional knowledge,” I wrote, in my summary of the chapter. “Yet, while ‘development’ ceased to be examined only in a narrow economic sense, to then become subordinate first to human development and then to sustainable development, traditional knowledge experienced no such perceptual transformation over the same period.”
Weighty, is it not? But why so? Because systems of traditional knowledge – and by which I mean all such systems, which include Indian knowledge systems – exist as living heritage practices brought into our era from earlier eras (some ancient). In contrast, ‘sustainable development’ and its allied concepts are more teleology than discrete practice, with ‘sustainability’ itself being inherent in traditional knowledge practices (and indeed having been so throughout their existence).
The centennial mark of 2047 is about a generation distant from where we are now. It might as well be any random year taken from between 10 years prior to 20 years ahead. But a closer milestone draws near, and that is 2030, this having been fixed by the United Nations as the terminal year for all manner of efforts that relate to activities which today are deemed to fulfil criteria for both ‘sustainable’ and ‘development’. I see traditional knowledge systems being drafted into this specific service (not altogether willingly, but that part I decided not to fulminate about in this chapter).
The central question however – of whether there is the implicit connection assumed between traditional knowledge and sustainable development – has remained unasked (in India as much as anywhere else) as the pace quickens first towards 2030 and therefrom to 2047. I explained that rather than an investment (of practical and intellectual effort) in safeguarding traditional knowledge systems, the efforts being made to draft them into the service of the Sustainable Development Goals is misplaced and furthermore has the potential to alter them (the knowledge systems), which if not corrected can distort their meaning and affect their continued viability and social functions.
To whet your appetite, here is a text extract from my chapter:
“To take a pace back, intangible cultural heritage, a term created by UNESCO and which has now gained a fair amount of recognition worldwide, has very much to do with a concept which precedes in by several decades. That concept is generally known as, in English, traditional knowledge. To simplify matters as I see them, the only real difference between the two terms – intangible cultural heritage (usually shortened to ICH) and traditional knowledge – is that ICH gives especial attention to the cultural content of knowledge systems.”
“The term ‘traditional knowledge’ does not possess as convenient a history of definition as does intangible cultural heritage. A part of the reason is that there are several synonyms (or broadly accepted near-synonyms) for traditional knowledge, such as indigenous and local knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge, folk and local wisdom, tacit knowledge, embodied knowledge and so on (and this only in English).”
“Likewise, what tends to be considered and included under the umbrella term, Indian knowledge systems, has in the modern era often been apportioned between what are now accepted as ‘sectors’ of the economy. Thus handicrafts and hand weaves – both umbrella terms themselves and therefore representative of a number of individual systems of Indian knowledge – fall under what is considered the ‘informal economy’ and such activity is treated as supplementary or adjunct to the main courses of economic activity. (The ‘informal economy’ itself is a term that is of significance only to those economists and economic planners who consider activities that sustain livelihood as being mainly formal or informal.)”
The book title is ‘Indian Knowledge Systems: Viksit Bharat 2047‘. The ISBN number is 978-81-980964-4-9. The publisher is DPS Publishing House, New Delhi.
Its masters’ voice, the Times of India
India’s largest English language daily broadsheet newspaper, The Times of India, is largest by circulation and also by readership. That being so, with India’s (mostly urban) English-reading population, also makes the Times of India one of the world’s largest newspapers.
During the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election the newspaper showed that it was not an impartial reporter of the election campaigns of the two main parties, Republican and Democrat. Its slant favouring the Democrat party and its nominee, Joe Biden, was just as visible as was its unfavourable treatment of the Republican party and its nominee, Donald Trump.
Four years later, and with just over two months remaining before votes are cast in USA for candidates seeking election as president, The Times of India, is utterly naked in its embrace of the Democrat party hook, line and sinker. This partisan treatment is more important than it appears to be. The USA is home to a significant population of what are called Indian-Americans, that is, American citizens who are ethnically from India, whether first or second generation.
As several US Census surveys and several other kinds of demographic studies have shown over the last 20 years, this is a group that is professionally well established and which posts a median household income higher than most others in the USA. Ergo, the political affiliations of this group matter, and they have tended to be Democrat supporters.
But in India, the Times of India has for several years pursued a line that places it squarely among the Left-woke forces. This makes what it chooses to place in its news pages and on its website – and what it broadcasts through its Times Now television channel – important because of the influence it wields within India’s young professional generation, the 20 to 40 years olds.
Briefly, the Times supports and amplifies the voices of the globalist forces, whether directly or through their representatives in India. With such an orientation, conservatism in any form is not what the Times media group is even objective about in its news coverage and with its commentary.
This holds true as much for India – politics, society and economy in India – as it does for how it presents the USA. The news reportage headlines it used following the 27 June debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which any impartial watcher concluded to have been as good as a walk-over for Trump, was given these headlines by the Times of India: ‘Hard to debate a liar: US prez on criticism’, ‘Trump’s relentless attacks & falsehoods’, ‘Kamala: ‘Slow start’, but Biden will win’ and ‘Obama to Biden’s rescue: ‘Bad debate nights happen, Trust me”.
From that point onwards, the Times media group cast out the last vestige of objectivity it had on the US 2024 elections. The media group had nothing by way of commentary to offer its readers and viewers about the weaponising of US government agencies by the Democrat party, nothing about the lawfare it caused to be waged against its opposition, nothing about the gigantic racketeering operation that grafted big pharma onto the US public health agencies, the FDA, CDC, NIAID.
Nothing about the BLM and Antifa running insurrections and nothing either about the illegal immigrant hordes that have come into the USA through a deliberately unsecured southern border, and who have been distributed all over the USA, housed free and given stipends and now voter registration slips. Nothing about the upward march of inflation for the last four years, which has wiped out the savings potential of American households, nor about the fentanyl and drugs curse that has taken over inner city USA. And after the most cursory coverage of the 13 July attempt to assassinate Donald Trump, nothing about the forces and motives behind the attempt.
From the time American vice-president Kamala Harris was installed (akin to a communist politburo selection) as the Democrat party presidential candidate – no democracy whatsoever there, no election, no due process – the Times of India has become an all-out Democrat party xerograph machine. Here are some of its headlines over the past month:
‘Trump’s attacks on Kamala fuel fear he is setting stage for chaos in case of Nov loss’, ‘Trump attacks Kamala for ‘stealing’ ideas’, ‘Popular music fades at Trump rallies as Harris hits crescendo’, ‘Kamala leading Trump in 3 key states’, ‘Trump meltdown over crowd size raises fears of mental decline’, ‘Trump returns to X with rambles and lies’, ‘Silicon Valley units behind Kamala after Trump inroads’, ‘Colour-coding Kamala? Get in line’, ‘Obamas take down Trump, talk up Harris’, ‘Coach Walz gives class on choice’, ‘Bill Clinton hails Harris as ‘prez of joy”, ‘Donald in la-la land after Kamala speech ratings trump his own’, ‘Kamala faces a Kennedy wrinkle on road to Kamalot’, ‘With Donald Trump as the option, Kamala Harris is rising, despite the US economy’, ‘Kamala vows a ‘new way forward”.
This is the India’s biggest English language newspaper, and one of the world’s largest, serves the Left-globalist forces of today’s world.
With music and prose
It is when the parading of barbarism becomes commonplace that, I think, we must step around the daily din and consider, quite simply, what we are witnessing and what to do.
We see posts that Naama Levy marks her 20th birthday today, that Arbel Yehud’s 29th birthday was yesterday, and that both have been in captivity for 260 days. They are hostages, like the others, 120 altogether. Their being so is a war crime committed by their captors.
And while this crime rolls on, day after grey day, the death by a thousand cuts of western civilisation also continues, a daily siege. In the USA, where campus antisemitism is the contagion, the flags of Hezbollah and ISIS are held aloft by masked youth, swathed in keffiyehs. They are sent messages from Khameini, they now brandish photographs of Sinwar.
And in the back alleys of American towns, young American women are raped and murdered. Rachel Morin, Mollie Tibbets, Lizbeth Medina, Kate Steinle, Sarah Root, Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray are some names, violated and done to death by illegal aliens. But surely more than just illegal aliens, for they mirror, in their viciousness and their collective method, what has poured into Europe, through Lampedusa and the southern coast of Spain.
The headlines, as a consequence: “Hundreds protest across France after horrific rape of 12-year-old Jewish girl”, “Neo-Nazi teenager who plotted to blow up Brighton synagogue jailed”, “Police officer in Mannheim stabbing dies”. The Old World, the old continent, is besieged, from without as much as from within.
What is imperilled? The legacies of culture and science, the fabric of a way of life (and living) that has spread all around the world. I expect not at all that those who facilitated the entry of tens of thousands of infiltrators into the USA thought to acquaint them with Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Philip Glass, Stephen Sondheim or Kurt Weill.
Nor, likewise, do I find among the ranks of Euro-apparatchiks of Europa 2024, those who bluster and wag their fatly bejewelled fingers in favour of ever more corps of infiltrators, the faintest recognition of the legacies of Daniel Barenboim, Otto Klemperer, Erich Leinsdorf, Artur Rodzinski, Artur Schnabel or Georg Solti. Nor indeed, if ever they lingered by a shelf in a bookstore, leafed through the prose of S Y Agnon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Elie Wiesel, Saul Bellow, Anzia Yezierska or Amos Oz.
You who read this will know those names, and more besides. And still the unquenchable font of creativity and craft that is Jewry gives to this edifice of Western civilisation. It was only the other day that ‘The Piano Player of Budapest’ was received by the literary reviews, a beautifully written Shoah memoir by Roxanne de Bastion. As Anne Frank had noted, “Where there’s hope, there’s life.”
But ever deadlier trebuchets are bombarding that edifice, of Western civilisation. Herta Muller, a contemporary German writer of considerable renown (Nobel) issued earlier in June what was called “a shocking wake-up call to the West”, of the import and consequence of the madness that has gripped parts of Western society since Hamas attacked Israel: “I am appalled that young people, students in the West, are so confused that they are no longer aware of their freedom.”
What makes me describe this? My father, who studied history in Calcutta (as it was then known) bought his copy of a Philip Roth book from a second-hand pile on the street. That was in the 50s. I bought my copies of Chaim Potok and Leon Uris the very same way in 80s Bombay (as it was then known). A small tradition, one generation to another, but of such acts are legacies made.
“Between prejudice and persecution there is usually, in civilised life, a barrier constructed by the individual’s convictions and fears, and the community’s laws, ideals, and values.” So Philip Roth had observed in his essay, ‘Writing about Jews’, for Commentary in 1963.
To return to the question, what is there to do? In her wake-up call, Muller relates the meeting between Paul Celan, Romanian-born and French, and Yehuda Amichai, Jewish, poets both. When Celan visited Israel in 1969, Amichai translated Celan’s poems and read them out in Hebrew. Celan later wrote to Amichai, “I cannot imagine the world without Israel; nor do I want to imagine it without Israel.”
A ringside view of the knowledge circus
Do India’s universities and centres of higher learning know what they are talking about when they use the term “sustainable development”? I have long assumed they do not. Simply because the organisation which created and popularised the term, the United Nations (and its various agencies), has not in any meaningful way examined the terms “development” and “sustainable”.
It has been over 50 years since they came to be introduced into major languages, but this has not been done either by the UN and its agencies, or by the great host of allied organisations which altogether make up the multilateral circuit.
I state this not as an armchair pundit, but because of many years of field experience that have, at many times, had to do with either “development” or “sustainable” or “sustainable development”. This field experience has been in the areas of rural development, environment and ecology, health and sanitation, cultural heritage and handicrafts, agriculture and food, water.
What I have seen, from the time I was a young adult in India, has been undevelopment, maldevelopment and unsustainable in every way possible. And, since 2012 as part of my engagement with Unesco’s culture section, the same in every single country in Asia that I visited. For the most part, what the very large majority of populations in Asia (and I presume in the African and South American continents) and also in Europe and North America live inside, are variations of undevelopment and unsustainable.
Yet here we are, six years short of 2030, which has been written in as the terminal year for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and its Agenda 2030 programme. India’s universities have – so far as I can see – adopted the cosmetics and optics of this programme with gusto. What it means to university faculty I cannot imagine. Perhaps a chance to be sent off to some absurdly titled conference somewhere in Asia or, even better, USA or Europe. Perhaps a chance to submit a case study on the SDGs to one of the UN’s hundreds of “high level panel” on something or the other related to the SDGs.
What I now relate is a close encounter with how one of India’s learning centres has adopted the “sustainable development” gospel. I have enough reason to believe that what I relate here does not describe an infrequent instance. It was some ten years ago that I first learnt of “mock UN” programmes being held in colleges and universities (schools even) all over India. The adoption has become widespread.
In early February I had a message from a New Delhi-based foundation about an upcoming conference on ‘IKS and SDGs’. This acronym, IKS, stands for Indian Knowledge Systems, and we have been seeing a good bit of activity on this subject during the last three or four years about it. But this is the first time I was hearing of a meeting to discuss Indian knowledge systems and the UN sustainable development goals.
Here is their description for “an international conference on Indian Knowledge Systems for achieving Sustainable Development Goals”.
The first paragraph: “Indian Knowledge Systems have a strong foundation in Indian culture, philosophy, and spirituality and have evolved through thousands of years. Sustainability on the other hand is emerging as a key theme for research in almost all fields of research in contemporary era. The United Nations has defined 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the present International Conference focuses on tracks across all these fields related to Indian Knowledge Systems. This Conference will provide platform to the researchers, academicians and institutions where they can present and discuss varied opinions and research works in the domain of Indian Knowledge Systems for achieving Sustainable Development Goals and their relevance in modern times.”
Overlooking the repetitive elements, what this immediately presents is the UN ownership of the SDGs, goes on to say that it will focus on work on the SDGs as they relate to Indian knowledge systems (IKS), and therefore how IKS can be of service to the SDGs.
The second paragraph: “This International Conference will deliberate the linkages between Indian Knowledge Systems and 17 Sustainable Development Goals that aims to identify and prove importance of those Indian knowledge practices which are indispensable for entire humanity and environment in modern times as well as provide a road map for future deliberations and research.”
It isn’t at all clear what this means. Links between IKS and SDGs, importance of IKS, how IKS can be used in future, is what I interpret it to be.
The third paragraph: “This International Conference aims to offer an opportunity to exchange new advancements in the area of listed themes and subthemes for further speedy progress in sustainability and opens new doors for networking and initiating the bilateral and multilateral interdisciplinary research in areas of mutual interests for achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs).”
More repetitive unclarity.
Nonetheless I wrote to the conference organisers: “I learnt about the conference you have organised, on Indian Knowledge Systems and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, only now. I won’t at this late juncture be able to offer a paper on the subject, however I would like to keep in touch with you and the Centre for Spiritualism and Human Enrichment should you continue to pursue the subject.”
“My reason for asking so is the experience I have, for the last 13 years with Unesco Asia-Pacific as one of its experts on living heritage (which has much to do with knowledge systems). And prior to that in the same overall theme of knowledge systems, as adviser to the Centre for Environment Education Himalaya, and the National Agriculture Innovation Project (under the Ministry of Agriculture).”
I expected that, if at all I am replied to, the organising institution would ask me to explain how my experience contributed to its conference theme. A reply did come back the same day: “Thank you so much for showing your interest. You may send your Abstract and Key words in 300 words on any dimension of Indian Knowledge System of your choice.”
Perhaps the organisers were over-burdened with administrative and teaching work and could not spare the time to ask the question I thought they should. I went ahead with an abstract that telegraphed as clearly as I could the intent of my proposed paper.
This was my abstract:
“The formalisation of the idea of sustainable development has, in many ways, preceded by several decades any attempt at formalising ideas about traditional knowledge. Yet, while ‘development’ ceased to be examined only in a narrow economic sense, to then become subordinate first to human development and then to sustainable development, traditional knowledge experienced no such perceptual transformation over the same period. I posit, in this paper, that this is so because systems of traditional knowledge – which includes Indian knowledge systems – exist as living heritage practices brought into our era from earlier eras (some ancient). In contrast, ‘sustainable development’ and its allied concepts have no such pedigree.”
“As 2030 draws nearer, this having been fixed by the United Nations as the terminal year for all manner of efforts that relate to activities which today are deemed to fulfil criteria for both ‘sustainable’ and ‘development’, we see traditional knowledge systems being drafted into this specific service. The central question however – of whether there is the implicit connection assumed between traditional knowledge and sustainable development – has remained unasked as the pace quickens towards 2030. I explain that rather than an investment (of practical and intellectual effort) in safeguarding traditional knowledge systems, the eagerness to draft them into the service of the Sustainable Development Goals is misplaced and potentially damaging to the continued viability of knowledge systems overall, including Indian knowledge systems.”
I thought that this would test them. I have more than ample field evidence to support my assertions. It would be a measure of their academic openness, I reasoned, if they accepted an abstract like this one as an indicator of the paper to follow, because what I was signalling to them was the insubstantial basis for their conference itself.
On 19 February an email arrived to tell me my abstract had been accepted, that I should upload it somewhere on the conference website, doing which would give me a ‘conference identity number’ that I would have to use when uploading my full paper. Encouraging, but I had expected at least a query or two.
On 26 February I completed my full paper, uploaded the file to the conference website and informed the organisers. Soon after, I received an email thanking me for uploading the paper and asking me to complete the registration process – that is, registration to attend the conference. On 27 February, I wrote back: “Thank you for accepting my paper. Concerning registration and the registration fee, I was not going to be able to attend the conference as for personal reasons I am unable to travel. I can transfer to you a token registration fee. But – please note – only a token. Do let me know what is suitable.”
By that time, the conference organisers were listing the titles of the papers received. I found them not a little bizarre: ‘Political awareness and political participation: an Indian retortion to colonial mindset and western perspective’, ‘Enhancing employee productivity: lessons of Swami Vivekananda for corporates’, ‘Healthcare economics in the Indian context: a comprehensive exploration of historical development and future trajectory’, ‘Immutable gender differences, ethical aspects at priority: assessing next generation impacts’, ‘Decoding the dharma of leadership: unveiling the management principles embedded in Indian mythology’, ‘Reviving shakti: unraveling the synergy of Indian knowledge systems in fostering gender equality and women’s empowerment’.
To my email, there was no reply nor has there been one since. The conference was held on the 2nd and 3rd of March. With a lead time of less than a month, I would not have been able to attend it. My intention was to make an attempt to help one of India’s IKS centres understand that there are several views about what they call IKS and what the UN calls SDGs that are quite different from what they are accustomed to, and that I had the necessary experience to explain it all.
But there is silence from the organisers. Considering all that I have seen take place – from my limited vantage point outside the margins of academics and administration – in the area of Indian Knowledge Systems, there is both a prescribed narrative about them and an orthodoxy to how they are dealt with. Just like there are for the SDGs. Isn’t that curious?
Habermas on Israel
Two news reports that have to do with Israel signal a most important development. They speak of the stance taken by Jürgen Habermas, a contemporary European philosopher, and three of his colleagues, on the matter of Israel’s action against the Hamas terrorist atrocities and the upsurge of anti-semitism.
The reports are to be found in the Jewish Post & News, “One of Germany’s most storied political theorists has issued a statement supporting Israel’s military response to the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, decrying as well the surge of antisemitism in Germany during the intervening period” and in The Algemeiner, ” ‘The current situation, created by the cruel attack by Hamas and Israel’s response to it, has led to a cascade of moral and political statements and demonstrations,’ Jürgen Habermas observed in the statement published on Monday on the website Normative Orders, which is devoted to philosophy and social theory.”
Who is Jürgen Habermas?
An enormously important voice, statesmanlike. From the philosophical standpoint, perhaps even oracular. Habermas is today 94 years old and, as described eloquently by Fernando Vallespín in his profile (published barely a week ago in El Pais, the Spanish newspaper), “In Germany, Habermas is as solid a national icon as the Brandenburg Gate … a restless adventure marked by an alchemy and intellectual flexibility that allowed him to integrate elements from others into his own theory, helping him achieve those ends.”
As a prominent voice in postwar Germany, Habermas participated in the major intellectual debates in the country. In 1953 he confronted Martin Heidegger over the latter’s rediscovered Nazi sympathies. In 1977 Habermas protested against curbs on civil liberties in domestic, anti-terrorist legislation, and in 1985–87 he participated in theso-called “historians’ debate” on the nature and extent of German war guilt by denouncing what he regarded as historical revisionism of Germany’s Nazi past.
Lending considerable weight to the joint statement are the other co-signers of the letter, published by the research centre, Normative Orders, at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. They are Nicole Deitelhoff, Chair for International Relations and Theories of Global Order, Rainer Forst, Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy and Klaus Günther, Professor of Legal Theory, Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law.
“The current situation created by Hamas‘ extreme atrocity and Israel’s response to it has led to a cascade of moral and political statements and protests,” states the letter. “We believe that amidst all the conflicting views being expressed, there are some principles that should not be disputed. They are the basis of a rightly understood solidarity with Israel and Jews in Germany.”
In her introduction to the book, ‘Jürgen Habermas, Key Concepts‘ (Routledge, 2014), Barbara Fultner has written: “Jürgen Habermas is without a doubt the most important German philosopher living today and one of the most important social theorists in the world. Heir to the founders of the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, his is one of the first names that come to mind at the mention of critical theory. His influence, like theirs, extends across the social sciences and humanities. Moreover, he has lived the life of a public intellectual par excellence, contributing on a regular basis to the editorial pages of major newspapers and engaging in public dialogue with other major figures ranging from Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty to then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. He is a deeply systematic thinker and a consummate synthesizer, bringing together concepts from sociology, Marxist theory and continental as well as analytic philosophy: a fact that makes his work often challenging to read.”
In “The Postnational Constellation, Political Essays‘ (Polity Press, 2001), Habermas observed, “It is a paradoxical situation. We perceive the trends toward a postnational constellation as a list of political challenges only because we still describe them from the familiar perspective of the nation-state. But the more aware of this situation we become, the more our democratic self-confidence is shaken; a confidence that is necessary if conflicts are to be perceived as challenges, as problems awaiting a political solution.”
When we consider what Israel faces, in Gaza with the terrorist group Hamas, on its northern border with Lebanon and Hezbollah, from afar, such as Yemen and the Houthi long-range missiles, the daily invective from Turkey, the manic sabre-rattling by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, then these musings of Habermas – now 22 years old – become aptly contemporary.
Chroniclers of systematic destruction
Between 1955 and 1958, Leon Poliakov and Joseph Wulf published, in German, three volumes of documents on National Socialist perpetrators. Léon Poliakov (1910–1997) founded a centre for research on the Holocaust in France, the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (CDJC, Centre for Contemporary Jewish Documentation), a historical commission to document the crimes against French Jews. Today, it is part of the Mémorial de la Shoah, the central Holocaust memorial site in France.
He also published extensively on the subject of Nazi perpetrators. Poliakov acted as an expert-advisor to the French delegation during the Nuremberg trials. In his function as the director for research at the CDJC, he explored the systematic destruction of Jews. His publication ‘Le Bréviaire de la haine. Le IIIe Reich et les Juifs‘ (Breviary of Hate. The Third Reich and the Jews) in 1952 offered one of the first comprehensive studies of the Holocaust.
Joseph Wulf (1912–1974) published the first documentary works on the Holocaust in German. He confronted German society with the crimes. From 1955 until his suicide in 1974, Joseph Wulf lived in Berlin. He researched the history of the Holocaust and the culture of the destroyed Polish Jewry. In his publications, Wulf focused on German sources to better educate German society about the crimes committed in their name. He named the perpetrators in various sectors of society, which was met with great resistance in German post-war society.
‘Das Dritte Reich und die Juden‘ (The Third Reich and the Jews) was the first joint publication of Poliakov and Wulf about Nazism, in 1955. One year later, they published ‘Das Dritte Reich und seine Diener‘ (The Third Reich and Its Servants), and in 1959, ‘Das Dritte Reich und seine Denker‘ (The Third Reich and Its Thinkers).
George L. Mosse (1918–1999) has been described as one of the 20th century’s most provocatively original historians. Best known for his work on the origins of fascism, he dealt with modern European social, cultural, and political history. Mosse’s work helped impel research into new fields including new cultural history, the comparative study of fascism, the history of racism and antisemitism, the study of bourgeois respectability, the aesthetics of nationalism, modern Jewish history, and the history of gender and sexuality. Themes that Mosse did much to advance now occupy a prominent place in the historical scholarship of modern Europe.
In his article on the three books by Poliakov and Wulf, in the journal ‘Commentary’, published in August 1960, Mosse wrote: “These weighty volumes of documents show us how little we have, as yet, penetrated to the core of National Socialism. Historians have concentrated on the political and sociological side of the movement to the virtual exclusion of its ideology. Yet one cannot read through these volumes without being impressed by the all-pervasiveness of the ideological appeal, and without seeing that the Jewish question was; unmistakably, central to this ideology.”
“Indeed, the authors apologize for the fact that even in those volumes not specifically concerned with the Jews, so many documents seem to deal with their fate. But there is no need for such an apology, the less so since the majority of the documents deal with the war years. What had always been central to National Socialist thought then became an obsession, not only in the mind of Hitler but within the whole apparatus of party and state. Racialism, discussed in these volumes with an almost monotonous sameness, is the clue without which National Socialism remains forever inexplicable.”
These paragraphs which follow are taken from the introductory chapter of ‘Das Dritte Reich und die Juden‘ (The Third Reich and the Jews) . The German original text is followed by the translation.
Das in der vorliegenden Dokumentensammlung behandelte Thema weist einige besonders hervorstechende Charaktermale auf. Im wesentlichen umfassen sie den Komplex, der unter der Bezeichnung „Endlösung der Judenfrage“ bekanntgeworden ist. Die annähernde Zahl der Vergasten und auf andere Weise Ermordeten ist bekannt. Auch über die zu diesem Zweck vom hitleristischen Verwaltungsapparat aufgezogene Maschinerie ist man ziemlich genau unterrichtet.
“The subject dealt with in the present collection of documents has some particularly salient features. Essentially, they comprise the complex that has become known as the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”. The approximate number of those gassed and murdered in other ways is known. The machinery set up for this purpose by the Hitlerite administrative apparatus is also fairly well known.”
Aber wie kam es zu dieser ausschlaggebenden Entscheidung? Ist es richtig, wenn einige Erzählungen oder Hinweise die Vermutung erlauben, daß Goebbels und Heydrich die Triebfedern dieses Unternehmens waren, während Heinrich Himmler den kategorischen Befehl des Führers erst nach heftigem Widerstreben ausführte? Welche Beamten und Verwaltungsangestellten wurden davon in Kenntnis gesetzt? Auch heute noch — 10 Jahre nach den Ereignissen — besitzt der Geschichtsschreiber hierüber keine einzige verläßliche Unterlage, ganz in dem Sinne wie Himmler selbst einmal sagte: „Es ist ein Ruhmesblatt unserer Geschichte, aber es wird niemals beschrieben sein.“
“But how did this decisive decision come about? Is it correct if some narratives or indications allow the assumption that Goebbels and Heydrich were the driving forces of this enterprise, while Heinrich Himmler carried out the categorical order of the Führer only after fierce resistance? Which officials and administrators were informed of this? Even today – 10 years after the events – the historian does not possess a single reliable document about this, quite in the sense as Himmler himself once said: “It is a glorious page in our history, but it will never be described.” “
Ohne den entsprechenden Abstand ist in diesem Falle eine Geschichtsschreibung besonders schwierig und heikel. Doch kommt noch ein weiteres erschwerendes Moment hinzu. Eine jüdische Feder — und wenn sie noch so gewissenhaft sein will — muß, in die undankbare Rolle des Anklägers gezwungen, Gefahr laufen, den rechten Ton zu verfehlen oder an den beiden gleicherweise gefährlichen Klippen scheitern, daß sich der Historiker erstens jeglichen —• wenn auch verständlichen — Ressentiments zu enthalten hat und zweitens übermenschliche „wissenschaftliche“ Objektivität besitzen muß, die jedem angesichts von 6 Millionen Leichen — einem Drittel des gesamten jüdischen Volkes — schwerfallen dürfte.
“Without the appropriate distance, a historiography in this case is particularly difficult and delicate. But there is another complicating factor. A Jewish pen – however conscientious it may wish to be – forced into the thankless role of accuser, must run the risk of missing the right note or failing on the two equally dangerous cliffs that the historian must, first, refrain from any — albeit understandable — resentment and, secondly must possess superhuman “scientific” objectivity, which should be difficult for anyone in the face of 6 million corpses – one third of the entire Jewish people.”
Aus diesem Grunde wurde die einzig vollkommen neutrale und vorurteilslose Form einer Sammlung von Dokumenten und unbeeinflußbaren Zeugenaussagen — sie stammen größtenteils aus den Archiven des Dritten Reiches selbst — gewählt.
“For this reason the only completely neutral and unprejudiced form of a collection of documents and uninfluential testimonies – most of them coming from the archives of the Third Reich itself – was chosen.”
Dadurch erübrigt es sich, den schmerzlichen, als „kollektive Schuldfrage” bereits in die Geschichte eingegangenen Fragenkomplex zu erörtern. Ohne nochmals auf dieses Thema zurückzukommen, möchten wir uns hier mit folgender Bemerkung begnügen: ln allen zivilisierten Ländern sind zwischen 1945 und 1955 zahlreiche Werke erschienen; Juden und Nichtjuden haben sich mit dem in der Geschichte unserer Zivilisation neuen Komplex des industrialisierten Mordens an Männern, Frauen und Kindern befaßt, denen nichts anderes zum Vorwurf gemacht wurde, als daß sie in diesem und nicht in jenem Bett geboren waren…
Yellow cloth badge in the shape of a six-pointed Star of David with black stiching around the edge. The star outline is formed from two overlapping, dyed triangles and has Dutch text in the center. Dated 1940-45. Photo credit, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection.
“This makes it unnecessary to discuss the painful complex of questions that has already gone down in history as the “collective guilt question”. Without returning to this subject, we would like to content ourselves here with the following remark: ln all civilized countries between 1945 and 1955 numerous works have appeared; Jews and non-Jews have dealt with the complex, new in the history of our civilization, of the industrialized murder of men, women and children, who were not blamed for anything other than that they were born in this bed and not in that one…”
Ausgerechnet im pedantischen Deutschland ist dieses Thema — außer in einigen Schriften ganz allgemeiner Art — bisher keiner einzigen ernsthaften Untersuchung gewürdigt worden. Weshalb ein solches Mißverhältnis? Ist denn nicht das Wissen davon, was geschah und wie es geschah, einem Stillschweigen vorzuziehen, welches verschiedene, unter Umständen sich sogar widersprechende Beweggründe haben könnte?
“In pedantic Germany, of all places, this subject has not been the subject of a single serious study, except in a few writings of a very general nature. Why such a disproportion? Is not the knowledge of what happened and how it happened preferable to silence, which could have various, possibly even contradictory motives?”
Dem Außenstehenden will erscheinen, als sei gerade das Gewissen der untadeligsten und kultiviertesten Deutschen am meisten durch jene Verbrechen belastet, an denen sie selbst keinerlei Anteil hatten; Verbrechen jedoch, die in ihrem Namen, im Namen des gesamten deutschen Volkes, begangen wurden… Wenn nun auch die strikte Verneinung (in unseren Tagen leider nur allzu häufig!) keinesfalls eine Lösung darstellt, so ist zurückhaltendes Schweigen bestimmt erst recht keine.
“To the outsider it would seem that the conscience of the most blameless and cultivated Germans is most burdened by those crimes in which they themselves had no part; crimes, however, which were committed in their name, in the name of the entire German people…. If strict denial (unfortunately all too common in our days!) is by no means a solution, restrained silence certainly is not.”
Wenn die vorliegende Studie zur Zerstreuung nicht gerechtfertigten Unbehagens, zur besseren Erkenntnis der Zusammenhänge und zu ihrem Bewußtwerden beitragen und eine sorgfältige Nachforschung anregen würde, ist die Arbeit der Herausgeber dieses Buches nicht umsonst gewesen.
“If the present study would contribute to the dispersion of unjustified uneasiness, to the better realization of the connections and to their becoming conscious and would stimulate a careful investigation, the work of the editors of this book would not have been in vain.”
The groves of bloodthirsty academe
Next only to the shock from the barbarity of the attacks on the day of 7 October 2023, has been the cold-blooded complicity of academics in explaining away, if not outright justifying, Hamas terrorism.
I learnt this first-hand during the fortnight after 7 October. For several years I have been a subscriber to a well-known email list, whose subject is described as network cultures, in which are discussed media, art, the digital world, and the perceptions that surround these. On it, academics from Europe and the USA often take issue with cultural theorists and artists.
On 8 October a post titled ‘Silence on Palestine’ appeared on the list and attracted comment: “The Palestinians have been pushed into a position of having very little choice” and “When a Palestinian fights for their freedom they are automatically a terrorist” and even “In a perfect world Hamas would sit in the Knesset and discuss problems”.
Nowhere was there the most elementary recognition of the demonic attack upon those attending the music festival and upon families in the kibbutzes being terrorist action, nor that Hamas is officially held to be a terrorist organisation by both the European Union and the USA.
Sickened by this position, which was the overall line adopted by writer after writer, I registered opposition by pointing out that “Hamas is a terrorist organisation, there is no other way to see it. Hamas is a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been described as “the world’s incubator of modern Islamic terrorism” and for 35 years Hamas has brought bloody violence against Israelis and Palestinians.”
The responses that swiftly crowded in reeked of intifada propaganda. “Comparing the behaviours one can easily label the IDF as a terrorist organization”, “Israel, under the influence of its war party, has become an apartheid state”, “The threat to Israel comes from their own apartheid policies, and from the support they receive for those policies”.
Just as disconcerting, I found, were the retreats into the ivory tower – “Commercial media outlets and considerably commercial social media are means to prohibit solidarity” – and the allegations that I am commissioned to express what I did – “Your charges sound like AIPAC talking points” (the AIPAC is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee)” and “You must be quoting Israeli press releases and conveniently omit all the Israeli violations of international law”.
And so it went on for 12 days. In every correspondence I began by repeating that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, repeated the death toll, the hostages, and their rocket fire. Then the wretchedness of Gaza in stark contrast to the hundreds of millions of dollars that have flowed in as assistance and aid, the antecedents of the use of violence against Israelis and Jews in the origin of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the threat by Hezbollah and its sponsors, the rising incidents of anti-Jew hatred and intimidation in Europe and North America, the nauseating ‘celebrations’ in western cities about the 7 October attack.
It made no difference. I was called an Israeli “bot” and as supplying a “blatantly misleading and a very callous reading of history”. This is what confronts us today, the unhinged leftism that has taken hold of universities in the ‘west’ (and just as important, in their partner institutions in the ‘east’, which means fast-developing Asia, and India). This is the strident activism that resorts to moral equivalence between a terror federation and professional defence forces, that howls for ‘proportionality’ but for one side only.
Not European left politicians, not American leftist professors and their ‘woke’ acolytes, nor their critical race theory and cancel culture networks – now with Asian characteristics – have condemned the Hamas atrocities. This is the nihilist cancer that needs rooting out.
The persistent fiction of independent India
Today morning, tens of millions of schoolchildren all over India were ordered to attend what is called flag hoisting. The national flag of India is run up a flagpole set in front of, or near, many thousands of schools, and a group of school functionaries pull a rope that sets the flag up atop the pole. The national anthem is played, several speeches are delivered, often including one or two (if the schoolchildren have ill luck) by a local political bigwig or member of the state assembly. The students may present a skit or two, in which they have been drilled during the preceding weeks, and then they disperse.
This has been the pattern to which Independence Day in India is marked and celebrated for as long as I remember. When the television era began, the live telecast of the indepdence day parade in New Delhi became a much looked forward to event. The parade has had the same ingredients for decades. Contingents from the three armed forces march, various sorts of wheeled and motorised weaponry drives slowly past, the President of India and as many members of Parliament as can be mustered sit in the VIP boxes to desultorily watch the parade. A number of what are called ‘floats’, tableaux mounted on lorries, are driven past, apparently representing the states of India or some theme.
And so it has gone, year after miserable year. The fiction of freedom is renewed annually by the independence day parade, which long ago became a collective ritual choreographed and managed. Like many invented rituals, this one applies a cosmetic veneer. Perhaps in the 1970s and 1980s, there were still Indians who saw the ritual for what it is, and who were aware of the forces that encircled what was presented to all of us as the “sovereign republic of India”.
Today I see very little indeed of that awareness remaining. The great mass of the Indian middle class has been distracted from such reflection by the baubles of “development” (‘vikas’ in Hindi) which has become an end in itself, and which is given any meaning that suits the Indian agents of those encircling forces. If – so the fiction goes – the last remnant of the colonial power whcih had ruled India withdrew on 14 August 1947, then we should, in a matter of no more than two generations, have had a country very different – very different indeed – from the one we see today called India.
What have we today in this colonised territory called India?
In our time 