Intermediary cultures
My brief and very selective outline of the British-Indian relations is not meant to convey the impression that the British were the first and only who happened to incorporate the Indian subcontinent into the modern world system. There is something like a very early beginning of this process dating back to the arrival of Vasco da Gama at the West-coast of the subcontinent by the end of the 15th century. Certain commercial routes (carreiras) were officially mapped out by the Portuguese, and quite similar national monopoly-like conditions applied as later in the Northwestern European East India companies. When Panikkar in his famous book on Asia and Western Dominance names the era between 1498 and 1945 – almost 450 years – »Vasco Da Gama Epoch«, it seems that he is alluding not only to a long-lasting continuity of Western dominance but also to a long and not only hostile history of commercial and cultural exchange between Asia and Europe. After all, the Portuguese called their growing network of commercial settlements on the West-coast »Estado da India«. This is, I think, a definite clue to the task of empire-building in those days and an anticipation of that unifying label »State of India« that came into use only after the Indians had cast off the colonial dominance of the imperialist powers.
In the beginning the Portuguese were primarily interested, as later the British, in the trade with India. Soon, however, they fostered rising imperialistic tendencies and started to conquer small parts of the Indian territory and to draw in the catholic missionaries. So at first sight the common collaboration of military violence and ideological brainwashing seems to have been the dominant sign also of this cultural encounter. Yet, new historical studies were able to substantiate co-operative attitudes on both sides, Indian and Portuguese, and there is now a fairer assessment of the formerly underrated symptoms of mutual acceptance and recognition (Feldbauer 2004).
Let me elaborate a bit on that other side of the history in the following conclusion: So far I avoided those well-known theoretical key words: orientalism (sensu Said), hegemony (sensu Gramsci) and hybridity (sensu Rushdie). And I do not think that they are absolutely essential. Since all cultures are syncretic, hybridity does not have any distinctiveness and doesn't it have rather ominous roots in 19th century race theories (Young 1994)? Particularly India is a fabuluos example for denominating in an outspoken manner various cross-cultural amalgamations, as there are Hindu-Muslim communalism and architecture, Indo-Islamic civilization, Indo-Persian art, or Anglo-Indian literature. The two other key words mentioned above originate from normative political contexts: The fight for hegemony of a »social bloc« (Gramsci) presupposes the developed nation state, which does not apply to India in the time treated here; let alone the fact that the social system in that part of the world had not a class-, but a caste-structure. As to orientalism this is a polemical key word, which in the Saidian discourse has certainly shown a notably illuminative force, notwithstanding, however, the fact that it underestimates the creative force, which might emerge out of the encounter of different cultures in the secluded realm of interpretive research and narration.
I prefer to speak of »intermediary cultures« instead of using the above mentioned somewhat outworn key words. The term ›intermediary culture‹ is introduced here as a merger with a subversive potential, convenient to designate a new form developing between forms already existing. Meant is not simply the intersection of the characteristics shared by A and B. It rather means the dynamic conjuncture and cooperative interaction between the two, out of which may emerge a hitherto unknown form. This new form often has a transitory function, and the concept could hence also be called ›culture in transition‹. My decisive argument is, that the agency of the intermediary culture shows up as something creative, especially when it succeeds to transform the given structures of A and B. The implied action mode being based on shared intentions, its rationality can be called »responsive« (B. Waldenfels). The efforts, for instance, of the Portuguese Jesuits as well as of the European philological scholars to comprehend the foreign cultures of the Indian peoples may be appreciated as being committed to that principle of responsive rationality. The point is, they experience the otherness of the foreign culture as if they themselves were asked questions by the other and should strive for acceptable answers.
Sometimes their answers will certainly be unsatisfactory, but even then they may empathetically intrude into the self-perception of the culture in question and develop alternative views that might be in some way examined and appropriated by the other side. The question-and-answer-game will, if it brings profit for both sides, never come to a halt and can unleash a constant exchange of roles since it relies, like a dialogue, on reciprocity: the asked one becomes the questioner, the answering the questioned et vice versa.
The question-and-answer-game forms the core of the intermediary culture. Its objective outcome consists, however, not only of statements and texts. In fact its yield often has an organizational consequence, which for some time can change the determining factors of political, social or cultural practice. The British, who around 1800 took over the life-style of the Indian Nawabs or Rajahs, put on test the principle of responsive rationality not only in a discursive, but first and foremost in a mimetic way. Their assimilative practice was an attempt to understand the strangeness of the other culture by living the way of life of the others.
When the emperor Akbar initiated a dialogue with the other religions and began to integrate the Hindu elite into the political culture of the Moghul court, this initiative of an intermediary cultural practice produced flexible and durable new power constellations. If, on the contrary, responsive rationality is prohibited by an assault on the other culture, be it religiously or politically motivated, the question-and-answer-game cannot unfold. Exactly that happened under one of Akbar's later successors, Aurangzeb (1658–1707), who via adjustment of rigid boundaries between the religions carved the way for the decline of Moghul power. When the British stepped in with upgraded imperialist and combined fundamentalist, i.e. religiously narrow-minded claims, they brought down the symbolic power of the last Mughal in Delhi and sparked off a cruel war.
My attempt to depict some of the confrontations and interdependencies between imperial cultures and cultural imperialism within a specific span of historical time in India is not meant to proof a clear-cut theoretical hypothesis. Intermediary cultures may emerge under whatever condition. It is an open secret, after all, that the policy of neither an imperial nor an imperialist power is particularly suitable for the advancement of the freedom to practice what I called »responsive rationality«. But I hope, I have not completely failed to indicate that none of the two power-systems can totally rule out the burgeoning of intermediary and at the same time subversive cultures.
[Lecture delivered at the International Conference Ibridi, differenze, visioni. Lo studio della Cultura II, Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, October 19–20, 2007]
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