Foreign Civilization Before we begin let me give you a brief introduction of the speaker today is professor at the Indian Department of medical studies at the central European University of Vienna he has extensively worked on late antique and patriotistic philosophy one of his research project project is on Christian platonism and Byzantine theology
He has also worked on Syriac Christianity including the Syria Christians of India in the year 2000 he initiated digitization and cataloging of the manuscript collections of Saint Thomas Christian of Kerala the project has resulted in the collection of digital images of 1500 paper manuscripts written in Syria and
Garcini Malayalam and 60 000 palm leaf manuscript as well as the documentation of architectural monuments artworks and inscription the material is archived in Hill Museum and manuscript Library puzzles puzzles Publications on Indian subject include the Nomo Canon of Metropolitan fdco of nissibes I’m sorry for the pronunciation
Edition of ms64 from the collection of the Church of the East impressive published in 2009 a co-edited volume uh title Christianity in Asia sacred art and visual Splendor published in 2016. a series of studies on Indian Christianity and the Indian manuscript collection including classical Syria as a modern lingua Franca in South India
Between 1600 and 2006 published in 2009 garasuni Malayalam a witness to an early stage of Indian Christian literature published in 2014 accommodationist strategies on the Malabar Coast competition of completing complementary published in 2018 Syria Christians in India 2019 and notes on Syrian planning in South India in the
Middle Ages and early modernity is forthcoming the material digitized in India is being published online by Hill Museum and manuscript library and the catalogs are forthcoming with anshuman Pandey and the program team of George kiras he participated in the collaboration of Unicode forms on the garcini Malayalam script which
Facilitated the printing of garcini Malayalam text for the first time in history I welcome you to give your lecture can you hear me thank you so much for this invitation and thank you so much for coming basically yes basically I’m very much onwards to be given the honor of giving a Paras bar
Lecture um before I start my presentation however I would like to tell that this is an inaugural lecture in a series which my friend Uday balakrishnan whom perhapsulos you know and I have invented and we are very much inspired by the ideas of Professor according to whom
One becomes a good scientist if one is also aware of has a certain awareness of the humanities and the social sciences and what we want to initiate now is an interface between the social sciences and the humanities and this and Science and Technology most of all because the
Institutions like the Indians of science are educating the future decision makers of India and such institutions worldwide are educating future decision makers and we think that that a good understanding of History helps making sound decisions and uh this first lecture is will be followed by a discussion on Monday to
Which I invite all of you at the Bangalore International Center on the possible historical routes of the war in Ukraine there will be because we will we will discuss we could bring together Russian and Ukrainian participants so we will stop in 1917 to avoid the most difficult questions the
Most difficult questions will be there to be by um no British scholar of Indian origin Dr Samir Puri that will be the next lecture then there will be a lecture on the European Union there will be a lecture on the historical roots of the ecological crisis and because we really think that no
Humanities and social science Scholars should come to the fore and speak up in order to participate in a certain sense in the decision making because many times very long decisions are being taken and what I will speak about today is pseudo-scientific Theory I call it through the scientific about the
Existence of world civilizations and this Theory leading to an idea of a certain Clash of civilizations because there is this idea that there are these civilizations these civilizations have developed independently of each other and this development know that there is the decline of the so-called Western Civilization will inevitably lead and
Inevitably leads to a clash of these civilizations now what if this image these serializations have never existed then what we are seeing now is a clash of imaginary civilizations and it’s our imagination which has created this so I want I would like to say some words about the history of this
Idea and also about alternative ideas because I think that decision makers are still stuck with historical ideas in which real historians don’t believe anymore the beginning is an emblematic picture of spiritual romance in the British Library the East offering its riches to Britain and Britannia is represented by
This white lady and India is represented by the black lady offering all the jewels to Britannia you see a Chinese lady turning the back you see an Indian representing America and under the arm of mercury who represents trade there is also a representation of Persia and in the very background you see a
Ship which is that of the East India Company the the figure here is the themes and the lion of course represents the might of Britain I am starting with a political issue I am from Hungary and this is a statement by the prime minister of Hungary who thinks he is in
The Forefront of the defense of European Christian civilization this is from a publication of his given in 2017 but one could quote his further sayings because he has not changed his mind ever since the biggest debate in Europe today is about migration this is what our future
Stands or falls on the feet of Europe the question is whether the character of European nations will be determined by The Same Spirit civilization culture and mentality as in our parents and grandparents time or by something completely different themselves liberal and left-wing who are supported with the money power and
Networks of international forces with George Soros at the Forefront claim that taking action against migration is wrong impractical and immoral in contrast with this we want to preserve the foundations of Europe we do not want parallel societies we do not want population exchanges and we do not want to replace
Christian civilization with a different kind therefore we are building fences defending ourselves and not allowing migrants to food to flood us um I think this is an emblematic expression of the idea of Defending at any price the European civilization and here I think it’s very important to ask whether such a civilization exists
You may remember Gandhi’s saying when he was asked that what do you think about Western Civilization he said it would be a good idea um of course Gandhi also believed in the civilization his theory and he thought that Indian civilization was superior to the Western
What I am claiming here but let us not run I will just continue there is another voice in the west and I am quoting from a recent book of his Pope Francis who seems to reply I don’t say to prime minister Urban but to the Views represented also by prime minister Urban
Fantasy of national populism in countries with Christian my majorities is its defense of Christian civilization from perceived enemies whether Islam Jews the European Union or the United Nations the defense appeals to those who are often no longer religious but who regard their nation’s inheritance as a kind of identity
The laws of relationship with God and the loss of a sense of universal fraternity have contributed to this sense of isolation and fear of the future thus erasers or superficially religious people vote for populists to protect their religious identity unconcerned that fear and hatred of the other cannot be reconciled with the gospel
The heart of Christianity is God’s love for all peoples and our love for our neighbors especially those in need to reject a struggling migrant whatever his or her religious belief out of fear of deluding a Christian culture is grotesquely to misinterpret both Christianity and culture migration is
Not a threat to Christianity except in the minds of those who benefit from claiming it is to promote the gospel and not welcome The Strangers in need nor affirm their Humanity as children of God is to seek to encourage a culture that is Christian in name only emptied of all
That makes it distinctive here Pope Francis makes a distinction between Faith or religion and culture he thinks that the coming of foreigners is not a true not a threat to the Christian culture but he thinks that whoever is behaving in a cruel manner with his neighbor is betraying Christianity
That how to say there is a kind of historical and scholarly background to this because Pope Francis is a Jesuit and the Jesuits were those in Christianity who have always separated Faith from culture this is why they tried to implant Christian faith in foreign countries beat in the Americas and in Asia in
India adopting the local culture like Roberto De nobili who was dressing as a Brahmin and who wrote Works which were very much in the style of Tamil Shriver literature now the question is and here comes the historical survey how have we arrived here and I would simply
Represent the the the field the the emblem of the the East India Company the East India Company and the conquest of half of the World by the British was very instrumental in the creation of the civilizationist argument although I think that the most powerful exponent of this argument was eager the German philosopher
But let us go forward before entering the history I would like to quote someone whom I respect very much and the alternative Economist and Schumacher whose book small is beautiful I had the privilege to translate into Hungarian long long time ago and this is from the sixth chapter the greatest resource education
The ideas of the fathers in the 19th century have been visited on the third and fourth Generations living in the second half of the 20th century to their Originators these ideas were simply the result of their intellectual processes in the third and fourth Generations they have become the very
Tools and instruments through which the world is being experienced and interpreted those that bring forth new ideas are seldom ruled by them but their ideas obtain power over men’s lives in the third and fourth Generations when they have become a part of that grid mass of ideas including language
Which seeps into a person’s mind during his Dark Ages that is to say the time until the end of puberty these 19th century ideas are firmly lodged in the minds of practically everybody in the western world today whether educated or uneducated in the uneducated mind they are still rather
Muddled and nebulous too weak to make the world intelligible and this is a very difficult issue we are heirs to 19th century ideas we believe they are truth while they are images of fantasy which had a certain rationality in the minds of their inventors but they lived in their time and they
Were also limited by the limits of their times but we can go even further to start our historical survey and this is something which is very important for me and about which I have never really read two models of governance which were there in the ancient world
At least from Europe up to India I would say and this is the Hellenistic modem versus the Roman motor what is the Roman motor all of us know we are also celebrating the great achievement of Roman law equality before the law equality before the law means that Roman citizens as
Individuals were responsible to the state they had to follow the laws of the state there was no intermentary between the state Authority and the individual this also meant that the state had an ideology that was the the cut of the emperor until the coming of Christianity and later it became Orthodox Christianity in
381 when Taurus has the great mid Christianity the state religion and in this way Christianity has replaced the Roman religion which was based on the cut of the emperor earlier the Christians were persecuted because they refused to sacrifice Libations to the emperor and later the Heretics were persecuted if
They refused to confess the Orthodox Doctrine but the structure remained the same what is the Hellenistic motor and here I just gave a mosaic of Alexander the creep a great who created the big Empire which then fell into Parts which had a deep impact as far as India according to the Hellenistic model
The state the the Empire or the ruler gives only a limited number of laws and every Community is governed by its own customary laws the best theory according to me to explain the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible is that the ptolemaic rulers wanted to know all the customary laws of their subjects
And so uh Philadelphia in the 4th Century before Christ ordered the translation of the Hebrew law into geek which was the state language but how do we know this from the same time we have Greek translations of customary Egyptian love as well it seems to have been a state Enterprise and the Mythic
Narrative about it basically means this understanding and the West is so finally the Hellenistic rulers were defeated by the Romans and the Roman model prefect and the Roman model also means one only truth low multiple truths the truth is that of the state the truth is not that of diverse
Communities who may differ in their conception of the truth and this I think prevails even now when for example in France the burka the Muslim there is forbidden in the name of the LIE City the worldly State this is the imposition of one only truth on all the communities
The Hellenistic motor is different and although I think this was not in the discussions around the Indian constitution was made India even uh even somehow instinctively adopted the Hellenistic model and this is why in India every Community how to say every Community has the and the rights to govern themselves
According to their own clothes and this makes a difference okay we have already spoken about the British East India Company now what about the civilization or Theory until the 19th century basically until the second half of the 19th century we were not speaking about civilizations civilization was a singular term and
Meant the progress of humanity toward the single goal it was a teleological idea it also presupposed a kind of evolution toward the better um in his lectures on the philosophy of third history has outlined already the civilizational theory without speaking about multiple civilizations um he links the constitution of
Civilization to a degree of organized statehood and also very importantly the sense of History civilization is the working of the world spirit for Higa which somehow realizes itself in human history and the mean representative of civilization is naturally the best is a quote from here but more important quotes are coming
Now what is Higa saying about India this is foreign example of an uncivilized Nation can you hear me is it okay in the feudalism of medieval times individuals were also confined to a certain station in life but for all there was a higher being superior to the most exalted Earthly dignity and
Admission to holy orders was open to war you know to monastixes and priesthood this is the Grand Distinction that here religion holds the same position towards all you remember the idea of the Roman law towards all that although free choice is often limited by many restrictive circumstances the religious element
Stands in the same relation to all and all are invested with an absolute value by religion in India the direct contrary is the case but by the fact that in India has already observed differences extend not only to the objectivity of spirit but also to its absolute subjectivity and thus exists all its
Relations neither morality nor Justice nor religiousity is to be found I I hope you don’t like this and another thing that that characterizes India is a lack of the sense of History India has not only ancient books relating to religion and Splendid poetical Productions but also ancient
Goods the existence of each letter kind of literature has been mentioned as a condition necessary to the origination of history and yet history itself cannot be found the Indian view of things is a universal pantheism a panther is however of imagination not of thought basically this follows in a
An interesting secularized manner the discourse of the Christian missionaries although here girl had a strange kind of solution he was not a I have to say a very religious person he believed most of her in his own philosophy spread of Indian culture is previous prehistorical for history is limited to
That which makes an essential Epoch in the developmental Spirit on the whole the diffusion of Indian culture is only a dumb deedless expansion that is it presents no political action the people of India have achieved no foreign Conquest but have been on every occasion Vanquish themselves so apparently your theoretical superiority with a
Sense of History gives you somehow the means to conquer other people um I just want to want to show where the origins of the defense of Western Civilization against the rising competitive civilizations is coming from and you may agree perhaps read Pope Francis that is not coming from the
Gospels it’s coming from this colonial experience even though Hungary has never achieved colonizing any country in Asia or Africa but the third the ideology is still there in China and India lie as it were still outside the world’s history as the meat piece of position of elements whose combination
Must be waited for to constitute their vital progress the distinguishing feature of the Chinese people is that everything which belongs to Spirit unconstrained morality in practice and Theory heart invade religion science and art properly so-called is Aliant to it remember the east of hearing its riches to Britain
Because they are so inferior the best thing they can do is to offer the riches okay and I think all of you know the vitamins Bergen you will forgive me if because of lack of time I will not read it moreover it’s a shame but this is not an oddity
The civilizational Theory comes after that in the 19th century and survives on until now and here are the great thinkers those about whom Schumer has spoke when he said that there are the 19th century great minds whose rippers of food are are surviving in the under conscious of the present-day Western
People but I would say not only of the western people also of the other people because that civilizational theory has been transmitted because naturally then those who were thought to be uncivilized Nations then their National Consciousness was arising they began to speak about their own civilization and this is how the
Muslim Brotherhood began to speak about the superiority of Muslim civilization basically the great Gandhi believed in the superiority of Indian civilization um but again I am running forward the most important Works to be put it here are Max V best Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism was what Spangler
Spanglers the decline of the best Arnold twin peace a study of history where he describes the whole history of the world as a history of civilizations and cardiaspers the original goal of History I can’t enter every part of this and my time is our youth time is precious so I should
Not have abuse of it and it is reversed however stopping foreign economic ethic of world religions published posthumously he gave the most complete ex exposition of his civilizational theory but he gave it already in the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism his theory was that religion defines ethic
And the attic which defines economic and political Behavior you may remember that he comes after Marx so it’s also a reaction two more the Marxist idea that the economic conditions Define the cultural over structure um and this complex of spiritual and material habitudes defines a civilization which is a strong identitarian entity
Does there are separate Chinese Indian Muslim Orthodox in Western civilizations and this Western form of Christianity had given rise to the particular Western development the birth of capitalism technological and political superiority and the conquest of the world at the root of capitalist thought is this enchantment and soybearung introduced to Christianity by
Protestantism the loss of the feeling and the belief in the miraculous and what is interesting is that this is not a positive development for leader Weber was a very dubitative mind he thought it was so but he was very very dubitative about the value of this process supposed to be variance however took
This motor and took it to be the grand justification of their civilization’s theories and here I come to the end I’m literally jumping and this has led to a very shallow journalistic Reformation of the weberian civilizational theory by Samuel Huntington in The Clash of civilizations and the
Remaking of the world order which has been many times refuted ever since by Specialists because it’s based on non-existent historical facts but still has an incredible impact on decision makers in the world big why because of the extreme Simplicity of the theory which is appealing you read it you
Understand it immediately you are Exempted from thinking too much and you can believe in it so the idea is that the Western Civilization is losing its superiority and it has to be defunded by all means because the the other civilizations are less valuable and then if they Prevail then they will
Through the world in a sort of cows it’s all based on this waterproof distinction between the so-called civilizations we will continue I think I have a little bit more time yeah to see how much this is untrue and untenable from the historical point of view then President Bush
Formulates his idea of the right of the preemptive strike against conceived dangers and many many other things about which I don’t want to speak now they have either that Huntington or they are influenced by the ideas of Huntington or perhaps they have others thoughts and Huntington is a good justification for that
The only problem with hunting Tom is that historically is Andrew of course I am not the first to try to go beyond the civilization model and there have been very important steps that is the idea of cosmopolises um the the the the cosmo police is a dynamic concept
The static Concept of Civilization it’s not a static entity Cosmopolis means the organizational principle of a large transnational area which is based on some cultural phenomenon that are organizing those areas and which are not necessarily or perhaps not at all defined by religion this connection of civilization
And the religion has been challenged by a subsequent historians uh the the concept comes from Stephen Tolman Cosmopolis the hidden agenda of modernity I’m now listing the uh some works and then give a little bit of uh explanation the grand representative um of the Cosmopolis idea is the Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock the
Language of the Gods in the world of man Sanskrit culture and Power in P Modern India picks up on it and she writes about Islam translated literature conversion and the Arabic Cosmopolis of South and Southeastern Asia where she defines the principle that maintains together this salt and Southeast Asian Islam as
The translation movement from the original Arabic and recently Mahmoud Courier in fact a good friend of mine introduced the concept of a cosmo police of law a student proposed it to explain in an alternative and postmodern manner the rise of modernity for him Cosmopolis is a harmonious and ordered Unity of Nature
And Society a world where the loss of Nature and Society are in harmony and it is this harmony which according to tulumin were represented by early modern humanists like Erasmus and monten and which is broken by the extreme rationalism of the 17th century represented by Descartes Newton but when
Sheldon Pollock picks up this idea he he transfers the concept completely for him Cosmopolis is a translocal and trans Community cultural identification which somehow represents the dialectic processes between the local and the global and it’s all time in evolution there is a constant element the the important cultural law of Sanskrit in
The Sanskrit Cosmopolis but it’s all in evolution and change and you see that it’s less of a combative concept and civilization um ronitrichi argued that an Arabic Cosmopolis in Translation partly replace and partly overlapped with the Sanskrit cosmopoliso she’s very much inspired by Pollock and finally Mohammed picks up the the idea and
Tries to understand the unity of all these very different Islamic communities across South and Southeast Asia some of them others material others even material as unified by the look my question is still okay the static and combative character of the civilizations is gone with the idea of the Cosmopolis
It’s a much more sympathetic notion but it’s still about the same entities a very important issue is the valderstein Palestine underground debate about world systems that was a big debate in the last two decades of two three decades of the 20th century and in the first decade of
Of the 21st it has a little bit settled most of all because of the untimely early death of Andre boonde Franco died in 2005. um very much inspired by Marx of course wrote a big book the modern world system and the first volume was published in 1974 while the second was published as
Least as 2011. um the first volume was about capitalist Agriculture and the origins of European World economy in the 16th century Valenstein argued that it was the colonial expansion which first unified the world into one Unity before that there were fragmentary so-called World Systems but not a unified World system with capital letters
Um and it is capitalized accumulation which then produces this colonial expansion and unifies the world this is very much a continuation of Marx’s food and is a sociologist and Andre Gunder Frank Who challenged this and and marriages Who challenged this view wunderfrank is an economist he has many
Many books he was one of the most pertinent critics of neoliberalism and and Gunther Frank argued that whatever wallerstein present as the represent or as the characteristics of global capitalism we’re already there even before for 5 000 years the world has always been one unified economy
What is the relevance of this debate to our subject the civilization is theories while Pakistan is not a civilizationist and is not approaching world history from the point of view of culture but from economic history yet his fragment reward systems are somehow mirror images of the civilizations from another perspective
If kunda Frank and jills are right then no no room for civilizations because even economically the world was always United okay the Americas were outside but the old world was United then the Americans just joined this old world well and even that is not true because the Vikings went to America and
There were communication between the Americas and the old world they were not as intense as after them yeah I have already summarize this now comes my very modest contribution so these are the debates you see with whom I am in sympathy and what do I not like but here comes my own research
Very shortly in a nutshell what I my only search mostly in India but it’s a extension of research on the Mediterranean the nearest and so on it is so that I arrived finally in India and this research shows that the civilization theory is simply incapable of explaining the phenomena that we are encountering
The food is it true that there is no historical conscience in India um let us see what happens in this search again I am still not there where I want it to be okay because I should mention Gandhi and modern gandhian thinker thinkers who have like ashishman nandi and vinay Lal
Who have accepted the challenge of the colonial labor a historic India and following Gandhi present the a historicity of the Indian tradition as a superior character of Indian civilization in that book the history of History which is a very clever book argues that history is a western construct
It is not a science it is an ideology and this is the basis of his criticism of postcolonial modern postcolonial Indian history you are falling in the Trap of the West you want to apply history instead of accepting that India is a historical the myth tells more about
India’s Soul than your history even if you try to read the evidence between the lines and and against the how is how the attractive are to see it so even then you are in that Western trap so this is one approach the other approach is that of David Schulman virtual
Narayana when Sanjay Supra in their greed book textures of time in which they are arguing that even if we don’t find the proper historical literature in India it’s enough to look at the sub-generic markers in other drawers literature epics lyrics and see when the author wants to convey historical information Um but I have a more radical answer to this question based on my 25 25 years by now of working in Indian archives just go to the Indian archives and you will find this history you will find it in western archives but less the real history writing you find
In the Indian archives and I was just discussing with Dr Batista before the talk and she said that when she teaches popular folk art and popular Traditions she always encounters oral history and history and images the historical concept is no people without a historical consciousness that was a big lie
There are different wrongs in expressing the historical consciousness those people are my interlocutors the Syrian Christians of India whose Erika as I have studied but someone may argue okay this is a repercussion of Western Civilization because they are Christian but they have been Christians since I don’t know
The first clear testimonies are from the 6th century not to speak about the legends of Saint Thomas coming to India they are an Indian people who have who have Indian Customs who speak an Indian language Malayalam and who had contact with West Asia it doesn’t make them European
Most of all because their mother church was also Asian and and these are just some documents this is a brief history of the community written to the majesties of the Dutch Republic and transmitted by the Visionary in Malayalam the history was written in Malayalam but because they didn’t think
That anybody would understand Malayalam in Leighton and Amsterdam they translated it to a European language they knew namely Syria because the language of communication between the European missionaries and the local Christians was in their literary language which was playing the role of Sanskrit uh what was the rule of Sanskrit for the
Hindu communities that was Syria for the Christian communities they were a very Indian Community they are and and this is the beginning of the Syria translation um not a precise translation so I am putting the Malayalam with our own translation it’s about events in the 9th century but I don’t want okay
You can read it and it will be published sometime it’s not yet published the important thing is that this speaks about a persecution that the Christians in Chennai suffered from the panjang Kings and greed persecuted for them was money kavachakar so I was Saint of the 9th century
Hmm so that they were who is called a magician and they were unable to resist Monique so most of them converted to Hinduism and another part went to Kerala and intermarried with the Christians there now the history is from the early 18th century so it was transmitted to um with her in the
1720s this is called pre-colonia in Indian history because the the colonial history starts with the British as I have learned okay but but but to have this story and there are Portuguese sources and there are all kinds of sources confirming that this is correct historical memory they had to have a continuous
Partly oral partly written transmission of their history from the 9th century this is the point here you know but this was it was still in a European archive because it was sent to Leiden but this I found to my greatest surprise and Delight in an Indian library of mananam in near kothayan
It’s a huge book of the history of the community from Saint Thomas as they think but the data become very precise already from the 15th 16th century onward and and this is the the first document that is inserted in it because from the beginning of the 18th century the whole
Chronicle is based on copies of documents either in Malayalam or in Syriac which they found in an archive which was preserving these documents there is the lack of sense of History here no I don’t have time to read it but as you see this is just very precise
Data from the 16th to the early 18th century this we have published by and this is one of the most fantastic documents with this I am closing uh the earliest Malayalam written document the Teresa Pali copper plates connected also to what archaeologists found in patnam they are dated 849. A.D they are
Written in Old Malayalam and partly Sanskrit in water to and Grande Scripts and finally you have here signatures in kufik Arabic judeo Persian um I think this is this is the last plate because the whole thing is not the original but a copy and members of a trade Guild consisting of Muslims
Signing in Arabic Christians signing in Persian zoroastrians like the founder of this institute signing in Persian and the Jews also signing in Persian but in Hebrew characters testifying to the authenticity of the copy what was this that was apparently a trade Guild perhaps those called anjuvannam a trade
Guild which was acting together and the whole treat killed consisting of I don’t know this rule belong to different civilizations but they don’t they are Indians and their language is Arabic and Persian they are testifying to the authenticity of the copy of a very important document which is a
Land donation to a Christian Church in 849 by by the governor of Vernon to finish here are my thesis civilizations as water profanities have never existed their existence is a colonial construct religions do as a second religions do not Define cultural civilization religion is particular usually exclusive culture is General even Universal
All spiritualities and here I am following Pope Francis not to say religion have told the unity of humanity and the universal fraternity between human beings four whatever we believe to be a civilization is an inextricable web of economic social cultural interactions and not essentialized entity five where there are indeed cultural
Differences between peoples Humanity has one unified civilization six globalization is not a new phenomenon we live in a world System since 5000 years and finally any political action based on unscientific theories like Clash of civilizations great replacement Theory the defense of Western or Orthodox or Islamic or Hindu or Buddhist civilizations
Listing disastrous consequences to the world thank you doctor so I hope there are there is room for questions you saw Indian civilization imagination not thought can you explain because we are recording so it’s very difficult to explain because I think that’s stupid but that was said by one of the greatest philosophers
Of the West yeah so he thought that he had very little information about India he got it from Colonial sources basically British and he thought that this is a people living in dreams and because they don’t have history we have seen that they do because they don’t have history they don’t have a
Uh and a philosophical thought like the Germans have they are inferior that’s what he thought but of course I I just quoted it to so to show the the very dubious origins of the civilizational theory is it acceptable what I’m saying this is not what he’s saying he uses quoted people saying
I hope you don’t accept Higa but perhaps you explain my explanation thank you Professor you mentioned that Gandhi himself thought that Indian civilization is superior to all others so I just wanted to know whether after observing all of all of this I think Whenever there is a nation building
Process somebody comes up with this Concept of Civilization like these days he said that there is only one civilization State this is uh I mean the Chinese State because it can trace back the culture to 3000 BC or something like that so I mean do you think that this is
The result of a rise of nationalism that we see in 18th 19th century in Europe as well like French civilization or maybe because there’s a French nation and it’s not just a property of the king or when let’s say in our case we uh traced back
Our history back to the more and our Flag represents could you speak this is slower because so I’m just saying that whenever there’s a uh there’s an establishment of a national myth that uh let’s say Bharat Mata which is or Germania in Germany that is where we talk about civilization that is the
Germanic civilization it’s French or it’s Indian Chinese before such National Concepts when it was all about feudalism and these con then there was no such concept of Celebration do you think it’s like that uh no I I I don’t think how to say it is connected to the rise of
Nationalities but they were not thinking in terms of national civilizations nobody ever said that there is a German civilization or a French civilization or a British civilization they thought that there was a European civilization based on some so-called common values which were able to be that of Christianity now after the Holocaust
Which was so cruel toward the the the the excluded shoes nobody dares to say a Christian civilization as such they speak about the Judo Christian civilization and many Jews are happy with this but it’s still the same concept so they were thinking in broader entities than than National entities and um
Of course when Gandhi was somehow not inventing but representing a new nationalist movement in India that was the Nationalist movement of a huge country one of the biggest populations in the world so he believed that this this new nation can be built on the basis of Indian civilization the big
Earth out there was Islam which finally led to the partition now how much the the Muslims of the subcontinent are part of the same civilization that’s a problem still for Indian civilizationist theories and this is why I say that Civilization is only thus harm Gandhi wanted to believe in a common civilization which
Integrates Muslims as well but they couldn’t realize it and most of all there was also the the British Intrigue of splitting the subcontinent and we know how disastrous this was how many deaths it has caused immediately and population exchange and whatever um but as I’m reading gandry d i I see that he
Never contested the concept of a civilization there is a famous story when Gandhi visited srinarayana group in Kerala who was a dalit basically irawa advice and the report is that he lied Gandhi but he didn’t understand the Indian Nationalism because his idea was that everybody is Atman
So how can we you you separate the Indian soul from the world soul that was srinarayana guru’s question um and srinarayana Guru was a very interesting figure because while he was an advising he radically challenged the brahminical rule and was basically a social reformer uh um
So it’s not that no it’s a it it’s it’s fashionable to criticize Gandhi I don’t want to criticize Gandhi I just say that he was also a child of his times in the last slide how one is not supposed to Define civilization so my question is how do you define civilization
Sign it as a colonial concept right an invention which has basically no historical reality so what would you to use a Sanskrit word vasutra I’m sorry yes that would be excellent and um all these theories and all these theories which are rampant still are trying to split the world into uh into
Waterproof entities and what is now uh fearful right because of the war in Ukraine that is this tendency to split the world into two camps once again and certainly the Russian aggression is responsible for that but the Western reaction is also responsible for that right sorry just a follow-up question if I’m allowed
Um do you think that it is the basic human instinct of fear that causes you know people to say this is me and that is you and this is where I draw a line and I won’t allow you to know encroach as opposed to not being fearful but allowing accommodating understanding and
Empathizing with the other side so do you think there’s a dichotomy of human thought and behavior that you know underlies the two sides I don’t want to share verses I don’t mind sharing because you know that doesn’t disturb my identity as a nation as an individual so
Do you think it is rooted in the emotion of fear of the unknown yes absolutely absolutely and and the politicians our politicians are playing on that whether they believe they are afraid or not I don’t know but they want to generate this fear and this is horrible thank you Professor for the Fantastic
Talk I I also think it’s a very timely talk because right now in India we are going through a whole nation and civilization project like where we are trying to write an Indian civilization so even your title the imaginary civilization it made me scared because if India doesn’t have
History then some of us are building that the so-called history is being created so you know this sudden like I’m a Syria Christian who’s married to a Hindu and again and again I have to be you know I’m trying to learn Sanskrit I’m trying to learn Hinduism to be
Accepted by the rest of the country so I feel like there’s a project happening and whether I like it or not the Indians we are in a very economically powerful place right now and we want to be very proud of a civilization that we don’t understand so there’s a whole project happening right
Now Gandhi’s India is dead I mean nobody wants to be I mean it’s sad to say this but the language of arises and this you know the right wing Hinduism is being spoken about and suddenly this myths Sanskrit a kind of Hinduism even I don’t
Know so it’s it scares me that if there is no history if there is no civilization somebody is building so it so you know there’s a whole argument that after Western Civilization should be Indian and Chinese civilization that should take over the orders should need to be challenged and the current
Government really pushes that and now it’s not even the governments it’s the people saying that you know intelligent people saying that it’s time Indian civilization take over whatever that means so it scares me out I mean when you were saying about Hellenistic law I was thinking it makes sense for smaller
Groups like you know like smaller countries like Greece India is a sub continent and India is behaving like conquerors now like we are the conquerors we want to conquer Sri Lanka Nepal in our Behavior we are behaving like conquerors so this this Cosmo the word you said cosmopolitis is a great idea
But Indians are they are waiting to take over we want to be the conquerors deeply now because we have been you know waiting for our time for so long so I’m also trying to figure out it’s scary that civilizations Theory says that there is no civilization it means that
The current you know people who are hungry for Park they will create a story of Indian civilization and a lot of people will start following them because I mean there’s nothing else so I I’m just trying to what I’m trying to say is I understand I agree with you completely
But this this world order will be pushed and I don’t know how to you know like how to stop not stop but how to come to it how may I requests to people who are asking the question to keep it brief so that because I brief the answer yes um I know
And this is why I I I wanted to start our lecture series with this subject what can be done I don’t know my university has been expelled from Hungary because we are not belonging to their civilization somehow and it was founded by George Soros who is at the
Forefront of all the evil Powers who want to destroy the western civilization of course it’s an imagination it was a good rhetorical rhetorical device to rely to Rally people around them but what I think and it may be very utopistic that we have to do good history
So I was here mostly speaking about theories and speaking about my own experience of discovering part of Indian history only at the end but none of the phenomena that I’m encountering can be explained by this civilizational model it’s simply it’s not workable and if it’s not workable to explain
History then it’s not workable to explain political decisions either and and and of course the the the Western Colonial ideologies must have should have anticipated that that the peoples whom they oppress will uh will invent their own civilization’s theories like the Muslim Brotherhood began to preach I think at the very
Beginning of the of the of the 20th century it began to preach the superiority of Islamic civilization but it’s a western concept why do the Indians need a western concept which is moreover or the outdated because no real historian believes in this I don’t say no historian I only say no real historian
We are encountering the facts we have much more historical knowledge than our predecessors had in the 19th century we have um unveiled so many Colonial and postcolonial deceptions we cannot write history in this way anymore a new toyin bee cannot be written um my friend Sivan piron will give one
Lecture in this series on the Eco on the medieval roots of the ecological crisis he is Way Beyond Weber then why are the ingrained 19th century ideas the Reapers of the nine uh the fragment the the the the the illogical fragments of the audited 19th century ideas determining our presentation
That’s my question I don’t know what we can do but perhaps we should go out we Humanity Scholars and not include ourselves in our rivalry tolerance but speak up accepting the the the risk of being wrong because as our predecessors were so many times wrong we may also be wrong
Uh can I ask you a question you had shoulder slide which had an extract from Samuel Huntington’s Clash of civilizations and he says that the call after the Cold War liberal democratic uh capitalism has replaced a Marxist State socialism and then the next step is to sort of make uh China India other
Countries adopt that uh I don’t know that these are not your statements but what I don’t understand about that statement is that number one India China by the late 1990s had already started moving away from Marxist State socialism to a more market-oriented capitalism number one Marxist State socialism in itself was a
Western construct as well and number three uh I mean something which all Indians study as part of a history textbooks is that uh India China Africa we were Rich regions of the world rich countries and until the second house the second Millennium CE when the Persians and the
Europeans came and plundered us and well I mean capitalism May well have the word capitalism may have entered the European lexicon only by the 15th or the 16th centuries but India China Silk Roads I mean that was very much capitalism in every sense of the world I mean that’s
Mercantile capitalism fundamentally so I really don’t understand what he is really talking about and he did not say that that that now this is rather fukuyama whom you whom you quoted that now the Western capitalist system should be exported everywhere that’s not Huntington Huntington is a much more pessimistic
Thinker he thought that the first danger of uh of the Soviet uh yeah the Soviet the Soviet Associated block is over the next danger is the rise of the non-western civilizations he believes in the Civilizations for him China the Orthodox belt as he uh Orthodox um Islam are all terrible threats very much
Capitalized and and they are powerful this makes it a threat because whatever technique technological development they will achieve it will be against us the West this is something turns completely crazy idea what you said was very much fukuyama’s irinic idea the end of history now everybody will be America that was fukuyama
Of course it was another Revolution but but that was I don’t know it was a less dangerous illusion it was just stupid but this is stupid and dangerous that’s the problem and very quickly you started I mean the entire theme of The Talk was the imaginary versus the real and you
Started the talk with and there’s a counter to the previous question actually right there you started the talk with a statement by the Hungarian prime minister and I get it like as a historian you’re critiquing his statements because the historical theoretical underpinnings of his statement may not be very accurate as a
Politician he is not Discerning and examining each and every word and the context historicizing it but the threats that he’s talking about are very much real uh and as uh as an Unapologetic right-wing conservative had I been a Hungarian citizen I would have most probably voted for him and if
Gandhi’s India is dead I’m very happy um briefly while our dear prime minister was enclosing the refugees who were trying to get Refugee status in Hungary in concentration camps for a year I was visiting those camps with a Christian group a processing Christian group trying to bring some relief to his people
We saw incredible conditions you don’t imprison people who just want to be accepted to live a normal life who are fleeing War who are fleeing assassination who who I spoke to an Afghan woman I asked why did you come here he said the talibans have entered our village
They killed so many people they picked up our eldest child Idol what happened to him they made him a child warrior and in order to to defend the other four children she came on the perilous way leading her to Hungary are they the enemies of the state and of
The enemies of Western Civilization how can you say this if I’m saying that because I mean after their migration they want to replicate the exact information how do you know I mean that that’s all uh that that’s all and on through ideology I spoke to these people
The only wanted many of them were fleeing Islamic fundamentalism like the talibans they wanted only a normal life they wanted to get integrated they wanted to work they wanted this is the ideology that these people because they are coming from a from an Islamic background this is the state ideology
I quoted Richter Orban but I knew who who was his counselor who was who was dictating this to him I know him personally so so the idea is that because they come from a different cultural background even in the third generation they will not become integrated and that counselor
You don’t know the name so I don’t have to pronounce it here he said that what we should do is to wrap all the Muslims who are coming to our borders into into pork leather and wrap them in um these people are thinking like this for
Them the other is not a human being and I cannot accept any such idea and and I saw those beautiful refugees some of them of course were coming from Islamic State background and so on it was very easy to detect them and send them back the the majority were just very very
Honest people a friend of mine among them who his father-in-law paid for his trip and taught him no free because you and you all your family will be killed if you stay here he came from from Western Iraq um and our leader was a Protestant preacher
This is how we got access and when this Protestant preacher was speaking about the Bible my friend told oh he’s he’s speaking very well I read the same things in the Quran hi um I love the talk it was a very different way of looking at the world
And I’m really interested to know um to clarify a few things one was you mentioned cosmopolitis yeah correct so what I understood from the presentation was that um you particularly your thesis particularly does not subscribe to cosmopolysis you know either because you you believe it is more flexible but
Still a similar substitute to civilizational Theory how to say because it’s still categorizing things I think this is a very good concept I’m not against the concept it’s not a solution um so these are wonderful books by Sheldon Polo byronit Ricci where by Mahmoud Korea I have nothing against
Them or but I I think that we have to promote the idea of the oil company it’s again not my idea in in this circle I wrote Andre Gunder Frank the idea was was raised and okumeni can be translated into many languages in Sanskrit it is Yeah that’s it yes um it’s it’s uh it’s about the unity of of humanity and and it’s in the upanishads it’s in the Christian teaching it’s in the Muslim teaching uh you find it everywhere this is the basis of spirituality and perhaps I would even dare to say that from this religiously determined
Civilization Studio Theory we should return to spirituality and that will unite us and not divine so a follow open that is you partly answer the follow-up question as well so I’m changing it so sorry no so I’m thinking a follow-up question where uh the thesis that you provided uh
Of vasudeva and and what is the Greek word um are there works or ideas um trying to model systems based on this because right now as you rightly said most of the systems around the world are based on a civilizational theory artist systems that are sources that I
Can read that talk about models of the world based on this other Theory um I may be not not well informed where I found the closest to this is in these works by Andre Gunder Frank and and jills and in that work which I quoted just this is
Okay I don’t see without my eyeglasses so um Andrei Gunther Frank and do you see the the arrow so Andre Gunther Frank and very cages the World System 500 years or 5 000. this is an edited for you with severon contributions Palestine himself contributed and tried to refute
On the wonderful this is a very good volume with multiple approaches and there are several articles treating this this is the closest that I have found thank you so you have a follow-up question okay I’ll just come to him uh this might be the last question because
Uh that was a very wonderful lecture and I really like the idea of multiple truths rather than one truth you present at the writing it was really good so my question is um so I completely agree with you that the civilizational uh you know the framework is creating a lot of commotion
Today so what I would like to ask is along with this uh construct there also comes the you know people try to desperately hold on to the values that that pose the civilization like for suppose like the index utilization or what whatever the western civilization or whatever the Christian civilization
Whatever they have hold some Central values so by disregarding such a civilization construct we might end up killing some of these values so is there a way to go forward or what do you think about this I agree with Pope Francis that if we really believe in our values
Then we will open our arms and not and not and not be cruel if you are Christian that group with which I was visiting and the so-called Transit zones which were in fact concentration camps they were keeping in cages entire families for years finally the some of the inhabitants one
Of them is a close friend of mine became a close friend of mine an Iranian um challenge this at a local Court in Hungary and the judge made the very clever move of referring all this to the European court of justice is my friend’s name and and he his son
And another family have challenged the whole system the the the they referred it to the European court of justice the European court of justice has decided that it was illegal according to European those and they had to be transferred to open camps 800 people were transferred to open
Camps and then they got most of them a gut to Germany and Austria but my friend abuzar Sultan he said my friends are here in Hungary I want to stay in Hungary and he fought until he got the refugee status in Hungary but for this you need it the decision of
The European court of justice but that group with Rich I was visiting every second week for a year those camps was a Christian group who believed who believe in the in the Christian lives and who believe that what what Christ said that that when someone is there and is in need you have
To go and have of course we have to go back to our basic values but our basic values are not cruel thank you sir and and and religion is good culture is good the exclusivity of tradition and culture is not good yeah uh I just wanted to mention because
We were talking about this concept of and I think somebody asked that whether there’s a I mean if is anybody actually following this concept or not I think I’ve heard about this place in pondicherry called Orville and I think they have this concept of where anybody
Can come and live like a I mean a human being and that’s it there’s no nationality or something like that I haven’t been there but I have heard about this thing they’re both Orville or in pondicherry yeah I mean they have dedicated so I don’t know’s teaching I must I must admit I
Have heard about it but I don’t know it’s from so I can’t I can’t comment unfortunately but the city itself I as far as far as I know that City itself is totally based upon this course I I suppose that that he is very much influenced by the vedanta
Still affirms that you can become you can obtain muksha only if you are born a Brahmin this is what neither SRI narayana Guru nor Rama namaha she has accepted I don’t know about free Europe Hindu excuse me last question sorry no I just want for a Japanese family law conference
Some professors had come and they were sharing that how Japan’s population is going down the fertility is zero and the Next Generation don’t want to have kids so I asked this question that Japanese were very proud of this civilization and their xenophobic they don’t let others come in but they don’t have people
Anymore there is no younger Generations so the professors were sharing that they are trying to convince the government that you need to start having policies which are friendly for migrants Outsiders because there are no Japanese anymore so even though there is a new way of thinking of a different civilization so
I I thought it was very interesting that Japanese are coming to India you know we were trying to have these conversations on family law like what can be done because you can’t be closed forever your country doesn’t have population anymore it’s the same with Europe I mean one day
There is no population so whether you like it or not there will be intermixing and you have to think about a greater civilization I agree with you what can I say in Hungary they try to solve it by family friendly laws which is a very good thing but it doesn’t work
So because they have lack of Labor they are excluding the migrants and they are importing guests rivers from the Philippines from India no recently when the deliver when the delivery boy brought some pizza to us I wanted to speak to him Hungarian but he did not understand he was either an
Indian or Pakistani so it’s a very hypocritical because for political reasons we don’t let enter those who are knocking on our door but we go out and hire cheap labor from the Philippines because we don’t have Labor and even if the family friendly lose her but apparently they don’t but not enough
Uh that will have its effect in 20 years or more thank you Stefan for this amazing lecture we wish you all the best in your journey of finding many truths this is a small token of appreciation from us thank you so much and thank you for to the audience for this intense questions
It was a very good discussion please join party outside in reception and thank you for your Lively and interesting and challenging presence okay
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