A couple of months ago, Goa’s indefatigable journalist, writer, publisher and Wikipedia editor Frederick Noronha stirred a hornet’s nest with his column ‘Literary colonialism, Goan-style’ in the local press, criticising some aspects of GALF (Goa Art and Literary Festival).
Noronha began by speaking about two opposite camps, those who go ‘ga-ga’ over literary festivals, and the dissenters. Strangely enough, the reaction to his article was also polarised into two camps. The most vociferous GALF defenders, predictably, were those who got some degree of limelight or mileage from it over the years, or were close to the organisers; and the most ardent critics, those who hadn’t, or weren’t. But the matter is a little more nuanced than that.
I agree with Noronha, that some speakers and events often seem like lazy ‘fillers’, and that there is a degree of bias in who gets invited back again and again (fond as I may be of some of them).
A huge frustration Noronha didn’t mention is the inexplicable delay in the scheduling each year, sometimes until the last minute. Much as one would then like to attend, it is impossible to drop everything at such short notice.
Another personal observation: Margaret Mascarenhas wasn’t the easiest person to get along with, but even her detractors cannot deny her huge contribution to Goan literature. The absence of a posthumous tribute to her by GALF (or maybe I blinked and missed it) was a churlish low blow, by any reckoning.
Many past GALF editions have clashed with our Child’s Play concerts or rehearsals. This year I missed days 2 and 3 as I was already committed to attend a symphony concert in Mumbai. But I went to the opening day, largely because I had begun reading William Dalrymple’s latest book ‘The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World’ (2024) and he would be discussing the book with Vidya Dehejia, whose writings and lectures, particularly on Chola bronzes I have long admired.
I found the keynote speakers that preceded the discussion (Sumana Roy ‘The quest for the plant script’; Shanta Gokhale ‘The importance of Silence in releasing human imagination’; Ramesh Ghadi’s hard-hitting Konkani poems) extremely engaging and thought-provoking.
Dalrymple’s slide presentation was difficult to see from where I was seated, but having now finished reading the book, I can appreciate the points he made in the discussion.
Halfway through the book, just as Dalrymple was elaborating on the wide reach of India’s ideas and influences throughout the world (the ‘Indosphere’), I couldn’t help thinking of the BBC sketch comedy show ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ created by Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal, the “Everything comes from India” routine. And sure enough, a few pages further, Dalrymple mentions it himself.
‘The Golden Road’ is a fascinating read, and deserves all the praise showered on it. Indeed, at the start of the GALF discussion, Dehejia read out several reviews of Dalrymple’s book from around world, all gushingly positive, save one. Dehejia described this reviewer as “a scholar who appears to be from the field of subaltern studies”, who spoke of Dalrymple’s “bias in favour of the knowledge of the head over knowledge of the hand.”
She moved on from there to the different approaches to history from academicians versus “popular” historians. Apparently, academicians feel that popular historians are “supported by a network of trade publishers, literary festivals, [she emphasised this], and mostly upper-caste mentors.” “True”, she added, “but what’s wrong with that?” I could think of several things “wrong with that”, too many to get into here.
I looked up the dissenting reviewer, he was Kiran Kumbar, “postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, historian and medical doctor, currently teaching and researching at Yale University’s South Asian Studies Council.” Kumbar’s review (“The Indocentric Road Taken”) appeared in the India Forum (28 November 2024). I’ve reproduced some excerpts:
“The knowledge-makers Dalrymple chooses to typify as unknown and forgotten stars of South Asia are not the highly skilled and consistently neglected pot-makers or farmers, but the very ubiquitous Archimedes’ of the subcontinent: the Aryabhatas and Brahmaguptas. Considering the kinds of ‘literature, arts and the sciences’ that occupy the bulk of this book, one might well come away believing that it was only Brahmans and adjacent privileged-caste groups who had the ability to conceptualise and create anything of value in South Asia.”’
“Such implicit bias in favour of ‘the knowledge of the head over that of the hand’ – not that the latter is ever divorced from intellectual analysis – is a persistent problem in how histories of science have conventionally been imagined. It is the reason why for a long time women were mostly absent as actors in historical accounts of science and medicine, despite being skilled frontline healers and nurturing a tremendous repository of medical knowledge. It is also the reason why the majority of South Asia’s people and communities – the ‘lower’-caste and ‘untouchable’ Bahujans and Adivasis – are either a marginalised minority or completely absent in the region’s science histories: including, unfortunately, in ‘The Golden Road’.”
“An ode to a ‘forgotten’ India which needs to be given its rightful place in a Euro-American-centric globe ends up replacing one form of cultural supremacy with another. The obsession with an original centre of intellectual genius ignores cross-cultural exchanges and knowledge produced out of labour.”
Kumbar also twice quotes Mark Twain to demonstrate that the true origins of any innovation or accomplishment lie in the vast history and collective experience of humanity, but that “The Golden Road" is earnestly invested in giving civilizational credit to the last man.”
It further underscores the unfortunate truth of the aphorism ‘Pas de documents, pas d’histoire’ (No documentation, no history). ‘Knowledge of the head’ and ‘the last man’ get written about and immortalised; the subaltern ‘knowledge of the hand’ goes largely unwritten, unsung.
Kumbar’s review adds valuable perspective to ‘The Golden Road’ in particular, but in any reading of history in general.
(Dr. Luis Dias is a physician, musician, writer and founder of Child’s Play
India Foundation.
He blogs at
luisdias.wordpress.com)