It is the latter who keep alive the bhasha theory of democracy, which sees democracy not as an import but a form of life native to the people.
The Bhasha theory, if I may call it that, does not look for voice and partaking. Voice which has no theory of speech is like a viewer who can never be a witness. He cannot tell a story. Democracy is a commons of memory; the vote is simply a marker of their memory. Memory needs retelling, reinvention, but the memory of the modern democracy reads more like the rote of print. Therefore, democracy becomes simply a memorial, a testament, rather than a lively form, whereas memory reinvents it in an everyday fashion. In that sense, the Bhasha theory of democracy is based not on the Guttenberg rule of law which …show more content…
Frozen as a printed text, it becomes the domination of experts on development. Development is the internalization of poor standard where a culture imposes violence on the other because it can no longer bear itself. As a result, the experts on development are a bit like the old ideologists. They wipe out or lobotomize huge sections of what they call ‘the third world’ in us. The millions of DNTs, the forced migration of squatters, the displacement of dam projects, the unspecified removal of disaster victims, the thousands who vanish after a riot, the untold Africans within us, are all erased as non-people and non-knowledge. There is something impersonal about the bother of these essays. It is like a storyteller speaking in a separate way about extermination. There is no sentimentality, none of the usual mushiness of primitivism or the market sentimentalism of lost opportunities, no appeal to Utopia or profusion. This is no Cassandra cry, no Antigone living in the world of the dead. There is only a toast to life, the normalcy of the life world. What genocide cannot cope with is the silence of the living. The silence of the adivasi is Devy’s constant mania. Anthropology cannot render as a garden what is a forest of stories. No print can capture the flight of speech. Silence refuses to be museumized. Devy’s work is an attempt to create the poetics and …show more content…
The formative time period is highlighted by what are known as the holy texts, the Vedas, and a wandering people known as the Indo-Aryans; this period is classified as the Vedic Period. Central to the Vedas was the visionary figure of the rishi, or seer, one who was able to communicate with and about the various gods of the Vedic pantheon through a complex system of rituals that could only be performed by an progressively more powerful priesthood. Freedom was to be found through the precise performance of ritual. The Epic and Classical Periods, from 400 BCE–600 CE are so given surnamed because of their focus on important texts, namely, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. These epics are concerned with heroes and heroic deeds, kings, queens, and ideal roles of individuals. Also of central importance to this time frame were Law Books concerned with the ideal nature of society. Social order and stability were to be found in a hierarchical ordering of people over and above specific roles assigned to each individual’s life stage (ashrama) and position in society (varna) or caste. On the upper step of this system was the Brahmin priesthood, followed by Kshatriyas (warriors) and Vaishyas (merchants), also known as two time-born classes. Only these groups were allowed to take part in a commencement ceremony known as the ‘sacred thread’, study the Vedas,
The Bhasha theory, if I may call it that, does not look for voice and partaking. Voice which has no theory of speech is like a viewer who can never be a witness. He cannot tell a story. Democracy is a commons of memory; the vote is simply a marker of their memory. Memory needs retelling, reinvention, but the memory of the modern democracy reads more like the rote of print. Therefore, democracy becomes simply a memorial, a testament, rather than a lively form, whereas memory reinvents it in an everyday fashion. In that sense, the Bhasha theory of democracy is based not on the Guttenberg rule of law which …show more content…
Frozen as a printed text, it becomes the domination of experts on development. Development is the internalization of poor standard where a culture imposes violence on the other because it can no longer bear itself. As a result, the experts on development are a bit like the old ideologists. They wipe out or lobotomize huge sections of what they call ‘the third world’ in us. The millions of DNTs, the forced migration of squatters, the displacement of dam projects, the unspecified removal of disaster victims, the thousands who vanish after a riot, the untold Africans within us, are all erased as non-people and non-knowledge. There is something impersonal about the bother of these essays. It is like a storyteller speaking in a separate way about extermination. There is no sentimentality, none of the usual mushiness of primitivism or the market sentimentalism of lost opportunities, no appeal to Utopia or profusion. This is no Cassandra cry, no Antigone living in the world of the dead. There is only a toast to life, the normalcy of the life world. What genocide cannot cope with is the silence of the living. The silence of the adivasi is Devy’s constant mania. Anthropology cannot render as a garden what is a forest of stories. No print can capture the flight of speech. Silence refuses to be museumized. Devy’s work is an attempt to create the poetics and …show more content…
The formative time period is highlighted by what are known as the holy texts, the Vedas, and a wandering people known as the Indo-Aryans; this period is classified as the Vedic Period. Central to the Vedas was the visionary figure of the rishi, or seer, one who was able to communicate with and about the various gods of the Vedic pantheon through a complex system of rituals that could only be performed by an progressively more powerful priesthood. Freedom was to be found through the precise performance of ritual. The Epic and Classical Periods, from 400 BCE–600 CE are so given surnamed because of their focus on important texts, namely, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. These epics are concerned with heroes and heroic deeds, kings, queens, and ideal roles of individuals. Also of central importance to this time frame were Law Books concerned with the ideal nature of society. Social order and stability were to be found in a hierarchical ordering of people over and above specific roles assigned to each individual’s life stage (ashrama) and position in society (varna) or caste. On the upper step of this system was the Brahmin priesthood, followed by Kshatriyas (warriors) and Vaishyas (merchants), also known as two time-born classes. Only these groups were allowed to take part in a commencement ceremony known as the ‘sacred thread’, study the Vedas,