ORIENTALISM AND RELIGION: THE QUESTION OF SUBJECT AGENCY

Federico Settler

In Orientalism and Religion, Richard King seeks to problematize the relations between religion and Orientalism through an investigation of colonial representations that lead to the production of the mystic East. The two fields of study might, under different circumstances, be assumed to operate according to directly opposing premises. Recent studies on religion during the colonial period and the role of religion in the struggle against the ever-suffocating imperialism appear to be implicated in the justification of colonial practices. The preoccupation of such studies betrays several assumptions about tensions between religious and civil authorities. These studies also demonstrate the extent to which religion can at once disrupt one order yet provide stability for another. King suggests that we explore such questions of power and knowledge that will lead us to rethink the very fabric of what constitutes religion.

Whilst Richard King problematizes the study of religion through an investigation of mysticism, and couched in the context of the "Orient", he develops this exciting interface using rather predictable arguments. His elaborate development of the relations between religion and theology leaves one rather desperate for some extended comments on a postcolonial reading of eastern mysticism, and in particular the manner in which any supposed "mutual imbrication" of Western and Oriental notions of the mystic might have occurred. Additionally, I would like to suggest that within the broader field of Postcolonial Studies it is imperative that we state explicitly the argument that the European colonialists are continuously affected by various indigenous encounters at the colonial periphery. We should also undertake a broad reading of Orientalism and not simply be contained to reading it in relation to the East and Indian religion. A possible misreading of Orientalism and Religion can be ascribed primarily to the fact that the author leaves a great deal of ambivalence as to the evident complexities of postcolonial critique, reading and theory, and our consequent understanding of religion in a post-colonial context.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2002
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion

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The field of postcolonial studies that has been gaining prominence in recent decades is generally assumed to have been inaugurated with the publication of Edward Said’s influential critique of Western con- structions of the Orient in his 1978 book, Orientalism

. The term "post- colonial" has come to replace generic categories such as "Common- wealth" and "Third World", that were once used to describe literature, locations, and social relations in Europe’s former colonies. However, delimiting the precise parameters of the field, let alone the definition of the term "postcolonial", is a rather slippery task. Simply, "postcolonial" refers to the interactions between European nations and the societies they colonized in the modern period. In practice, however, the term is used much more loosely. Not only does it refer to the period after the departure of the imperial administration and formal recognition of independence from Europe, but it also encom- passes mechanisms of knowledge production that occurred before independence. Some have suggested that the postcolonial comes into existence at the very moment of colonial encounter, since it marks moment(s) when power-relations become constituted and reconsti- tuted, through resistance, negotiation, conversion, and violence. The coming into being of colonies through various modes of impe- rialist control, and the corresponding emergence of anti-colonial struggles, has been significantly influenced by the ways in which both local and European conceptions of religion became implicated in competing interests. References to religion in a postcolonial context would seem to encompass not only the so-called essentialist projects concerned with recovering an idealized past and the recovery of indigenous traditions before their distortion by colonialism. It would seem that here we ought to include a multiplicity of traditions located in countries that have yet to achieve independence, as well as those traditions transported and practiced by minorities in First World countries. It has been widely recognized that both indigenous and imported traditions (whether missionary or settler oriented) are de- ployed in various forms of ethnic and political resistance in those independent colonies that now contend with "neocolonial" forms of subjugation. Postcolonialism thus refer not simply to a specific and materially historical event, but rather seems to describe the second half of the twentieth-century in general as a period in the aftermath of the heyday of colonialism. Generally speaking, then, "the ‘post- colonial’ is used to signify a position against imperialism and Euro- centrism. Western ways of knowledge production and dissemination in the past and present then become objects of study for those seeking alternative means of expression" (Bahri 1998). federico settler

It has been argued that the over-hasty celebration of independence masks the march of neocolonialism in the guise of modernization and development in an age of increasing globalization and transnational- ism. Such celebrations are often accompanied by an urgent call for the recovery of indigenous traditions, which frequently find them- selves labeled conservative and reactionary. The tendency in the Western academy to be more receptive to postcolonial literature and theory that is compatible with postmodern formulations of hybridity, syncretization, and pastiche betrays a cynicism towards the critical realism of nationalist writers who tend to be more interested in the specifics of social and racial oppression. This has been argued by some to be a privileging of the transnational, migrant sensibility at the expense of more local struggles in the postcolony. For example, Kwame Appiah speaks of the postcolonial condition in relation to Africa and makes this point about postcolonial thinkers from former colonies: "[I]n the West they are known through the Africa that they offer; their compatriots know them both through the West they present to Africa and through an Africa they have invented for the world, each other and for Africa" (Appiah 1996: 62). Critics have often argued that Western representations are perpetuated by privileging supposedly global perspectives about former colonies that are produced by "native elites" and other migrants, over the local struggles that are deemed urgent by the local communities them- selves. Thus, even in this critical discourse of postcolonialism we have to guard against the ways in which some apolitical perspectives are privileged over the more overtly political. Such practices sustain the muted, passive subject position of the indigenous community through commodifying the more exotic and palatable native perspectives, practices, and beliefs.

King is preoccupied with straddling an uncharted divide between two areas of study that had not previously been in dialogue. He spends much of the book articulating the complexities of the field and the historical biases of religious studies. He does this so elaborately that one is left to consider again the religious studies/theology "chicken and egg" anxiety. At the end of the book one is left with a feeling of being challenged to write the sequel, with the scene having been set by King though by invitation to enter the field of post- colonial studies/Orientalism. Too many questions are left unan- swered, too many loose ends perhaps, but an unmistakably important conversation has been introduced into the study of religion.

My reading of Orientalism and Religion is influenced by my own the question of subject agency work, which examines the ways in which Britain was imbricated both philosophically and materially by its simultaneous contact with South Africa and India during the nineteenth century. I am concerned with the ways in which conceptions of religion produced in the colonies informed Britain’s consolidation of its colonial interventions and poli- cies of rule in both South Africa and India. This impact of the colo- nial experience on the British psyche is particularly paradoxical when we consider the construction of Africa and India. Africa was repre- sented as naturally desolate, threatening and philosophically vacant. The social relations in Africa are marked by the absence of religion, thus rendering redundant any substantive discussions of religion in Africa other than mere superstition. India was constructed as rich with natural resources but full of tradition and distinguished by the prevalence of religion. We shall later explore some more ways in which contested conceptions of religion in the colonies are absent from Richard King’s Orientalism and Religion.

The empire lights black: Subjects in silence As already suggested, it is widely recognized that the notion of post- colonialism has rapidly gained currency since the publication of Edwards Said’s Orientalism. Although it does not necessarily represent the field’s founding document, Homi Bhabha suggests that Orientalism certainly inaugurated the postcolonial field. Although Said opened a portal for critical scholarship, postcolonialism has also concerned it- self with the devices of indigenous articulations and the "mutual imbrication" that emerged well prior to the development of area studies or the recognition of commonwealth literature. Postcolonialism can be said to be concerned with periods in global time and space during which those areas formerly colonized by west- ern imperial powers have articulated aspirations for independence, including also those periods in which these colonies have gained formal independence. It is pertinent that full recognition be given to the fact that postcolonialism cannot be understood as one singular moment. Ali Rattansi has observed that "reference must be given to a series of transitions situated between and with the moments of colo- nization/decolonization" (1997: 481). Counter to this, there exists a distinctly ambivalent reference to postcolonialism as an analytical model in the work of King, consequently conveying a sense that

postcolonialism provides simply a way of rereading history. Perhaps King is not sufficiently confident that postcolonial theory can ad- equately theorize those modes and mechanisms deployed in generat- ing and controlling the production of hegemonic forms of knowledge as well as local resistance.

Some scholars have sought to restrict the relevance of postcoloni- alism to the era following the Second World War, consequently fail- ing to give recognition to the manner and the extent of imperial occupation in the world. Ratansi suggests that the central defining theme of postcolonialism or post-colonial studies is the investigation of the mutually constitutive role played by colonizer and colonized, center and periphery, the metropolitan and the ‘native’ in forming, in part, the identities of both the dominant power and the subalterns involved in the imperial and colonial projects of the ‘West’. (1997: 481)

The coming into being of nations and national cultures, interpreted as a temporal and spatial arrangement, must be viewed as an am- bivalent outcome of the imperial project as well as the simultaneous or subsequent resistance to it. These outcomes are generally assumed to have led to the formal independence of colonies. Another outcome of the imperial project has not only been the sanitized and gradual extinction of cultures, but also the active extermination of indigenous groups. Notwithstanding the absence of such silenced groups from the cultural and political landscape, the encounter had equally lasting impact on the identity formation of the metropolitans at the center. King’s postcolonial focus on this plurality of imperial encounters on the Indian subcontinent encourages one to consider the binary opposition between the charitable, industrious colonizer and the pas- sive, introspective subaltern. He does not argue that imperialism op- erated directly as an aggressive project in India which undermined indigenous traditions; whilst it seldom overtly sought to destroy local authority, it must be seen as permanently scarring the psyches and traditions of the subsequently colonized. As Bernard Cohn reminds us: "Indians increasingly were to learn about their own culture through the mediation of European ideas and scholarship. The Brit- ish rulers were increasingly defining what was Indian in an official and ‘objective’ sense. Indians had to look like Indians" (1983: 183). Although not directly linked to British imperialism in India, it is helpful at this point to make reference to the work of Jean and John Comaroff on colonial models in Southern Africa. They have sought the question of subject agency to problematize colonial administration not as a fixed and coherent project but rather as competing and contesting sets of interests seek- ing authority. In doing so, they draw attention to at least three mod- els of colonial institutions: first, the state model with its preference for building alliances with local chiefs and securing trade agreements; second, settler colonialism "founded on brute coercion and domina- tion by force" (Comaroff 1991: 673); third, the civilizing mission, a Christian design for the complete transformation of the African desert to cultivate refined living and rational minds. It is important that we remain cognizant of the fact that the colonial project, as it played out on Indian soil, was also plagued by such competing inter- ests among the colonists as well as the indigenous elite.

Whilst Orientalism and Religion covers a great deal of academic his- tory regarding the topic of mysticism, there is a distinct preoccupa- tion with Western representations of the Indian or Eastern subject, thus rendering the postcolonial "Other" not only passive but effec- tively silenced. King’s observations about Indian religion raise for me some concerns articulated elsewhere by Mahmood Mamdani in Citi-zen and Subject where he develops, among other issues, the notion of South African "exceptionalism" (1996: 27). Mamdani suggests that studies in late colonialism must consider the possibility that apartheid was a generic form of colonialism, and that the notion of a unique relationship to the colonial center is an equally invented notion. This critique can be similarly applied to India and its relation to the Brit- ish imperial administration and its supposed recognition of Indian institutions, religion and traditions. King seems concerned with dis- pelling the myth of a naive Hinduism, and he draws on poststructural analysis to illustrate the point of institutional invention and organized power relations in the construction of both India and Hinduism. I am reminded at this point of popular references to India as "the Jewel in the Crown" 1 and "the Last British Outpost". 2

Reference to 1

This is the title of a drama about colonial India under British occupation during the nineteenth century, produced by Granada Television of England in association with WGBH, Boston (New York: A&E Home Video, 1993). They also appear in reference to the demise of the young Maharaja of the Punjab, Duleep Singh, and the demise of the Sikh dynasty and the triumph of the British over the Indian polity and aristocracy. The Sikh dynasty was legitimized by the possession of the Koh-i-Noor, the wondrous diamond now in the custody of the British representative of Sikh identity and independence.

2 Previously used in relation to Indian independence and more recently of Hong Kong being integrated into China (see The Indian Express, July 1, 1997).

the complex processes that informed prevailing notions of exceptionalism are alluded to when King quotes Niranjana: European translations of Indian texts prepared for a western audience provided to the ‘educated’ Indian a whole range of Orientalist images. Even when an anglicised Indian spoke a language other than English, ‘he’ would have preferred, because of the symbolic power attached to English, to gain access to his own past through the translations and histories circulating through the colonial discourse. English education also familiarised the Indian with ways of seeing, techniques of transla- tion or modes of representations that came to be accepted as ‘natural’. (King 1999: 93)

I would be glad if King went further so as to give the "native" voice, not simply by illustrating the misrepresentations of the Indian sub- ject, but also by uncovering the specific mechanism that generates particular readings of history and traditions. To conceive of subjec- tivity as precarious and ambivalent, is to open the possibility that subjectivity might be historically produced, emerging from conflict- ing political positions. If the colonizer can no longer be regarded as being in possession of a unique, socially fixed and morally robust character, then neither can the native be regarded as necessarily compliant and passive in his/her relationships. I would suggest that by decentering the passive subject we open subjectivity to change. The power of competing types of subjectivity is located in social institutions that are produced to manage social interests. Forms of subjectivity which at various times present a threat to the status quo will find themselves heavily policed, simultaneously feeding off this process of marginalization and repression to inform themselves as formidable alternatives. It is at these moments that the subject posi-tions offered fail to meet the individual’s interest that resistance emerge and agency becomes evident, however disguised and ambivalent. In chapter four King demonstrates an assumption that the tradi- tions and values of the dominant center are, pre-existent and unaf- fected. This chapter further seeks to problematize the assumption that the West existed coherently prior to colonization, and that dur- ing the colonial encounter it continued to remain a stronger set of formations. Postcolonialism takes as its premise that the psyches, val- ues, and traditions of the dominant powers were not necessarily sta- ble and comprehensive prior to the various imperial encounters through which colonialism became inflicted upon supposedly passive recipients in their respective colonies. Simply put, the contention that the question of subject agency the "West" is white, Christian, rational, civilized, modern, sexually disciplined and indeed masculine has now been thoroughly discredited. It has thus become evident that the relationships between the native and the colonists emerged out of ambivalent attempts to fash- ion strong European identities in the colonies. The constructions relied quite heavily on the gendered and familial privileges that ac- companied the imperial project, and legitimized the Victorian ten- dency to explain social relations through categories informed by race and sexuality (Thomas 1994: 98).

King argues confidently that Orientalists drew their justification to civilize "the native" and their duty to govern from their self-mandat- ing construction of the Other. As illustrated above, the Other was primarily represented by images of the "natives" as uncivilized, pre- modern, licentious, effeminate and irrational. In more recent post- colonial works, the definition of the Other have been extended to include also the emerging working class as well as women, both on the periphery of a dominant center.

Whilst the categories of the center and the periphery remains de- fined in terms of the Other, there incidentally can be no agreement as to the existence of the enterprise and agency of the colonized in Orientalism and Religion. It would be useful to explore briefly the con- temporary theoretical approaches to the material encounter of colo- nialism. This might be best illustrated with reference to the manner in which the colonial imagery of the exotic and the literate finds itself repeatedly implicated, as scholars such as King seek to come to terms with the legacy of area studies and textual canonization. King’s treatment of myth in terms of what he refers to as a post- colonial reading appears at times to be no more than a call to read myth differently, reminiscent of postcolonial literary criticism. Whilst using this potentially limited model, he is at pains to illustrate the archaic notions of Orientalism that still inhabit the study of religions in the East. Postcolonial Studies has often found itself too uncritically associated with postcolonial literature or literary criticism, a conten- tious body of work often referred to as literatures in English produced at the periphery. The reader is left confused by the lack distinction between the tasks of: (1) a postcolonial reading of literature produced about myth, and (2) how the notions and Indian practices about myth have informed the colonial project and presence. King’s work thus appears ambivalent in its failure to give critical treatment to mechanisms that inform the constructions of borders and conceptual boundaries, the maintenance and management of the canonization of works relating to the "mystic East". I am reminded of Leela Ghandi’s reflections on Michel Foucault, where she suggests that in his work "the discursive structure and order of western society remains myopic in relation to the non-Euro- pean world" (Ghandi 1998: 73). It is at this juncture that Said’s Orientalism comes to make its most decisive contribution—by impli- cating the colonial periphery (absent yet active) in the mechanisms and strategies of knowledge production within the West. In order to understand the West as a structure or system, Said suggests that it is critical that greater recognition be given to the ways in which the Orient defines Europe as its contrasting image, idea, personality and experience: "discourses of power … are all too easily made, applied, and guarded. If the knowledge about Orientalism has any meaning, it is being a reminder of the seductive degradation of knowledge, any knowledge, anywhere, anytime" (Said 1991: 328).

In an attempt to problematize the Christian theological roots of modern conceptions of religion, King takes the reader through a review of some predictable debates. My impatience is quickly fol- lowed with frustration as the old theology/religion, and religion/ secularism debates are exhausted, and I am tempted to level a "Eurocentrism" critique at King. But the writer is doing no more than he set out to do. He is honest about his intention simply to investigate the assumption about the Orient as contained in articula- tions of the "mystic East". He reminds us that the "prevailing atti- tudes and presuppositions we have about mysticism are culturally specific and ultimately derived from philosophical presuppositions of western thought" (1999: 34). The reader is then challenged to revisit at length the textual biases in western conceptions of religion and the manner in which such conceptions informed the "orientalizing" (in- stitutionalization) of Indian religion. Yet whilst one is left with a sure sense that modern conceptions of religion are never unaffected by the Christian theological foundations of Western philosophy, the question of the silent Indian subject continues to haunt me. the question of subject agency

Changing the subject’s agency

I am concerned that in seeking to turn the anthropological gaze back upon the West, King runs the risk of presenting the Indian subject as passive and without agency. We therefore wonder how the colonial encounter might have informed European definitions of mysticism. If we are to take seriously the postcolonial premise of mutual imbrica- tion between center and periphery, it is no longer tenable simply to look upon either the static center or the periphery for the expression of colonial power relations. To do so presumes that the Indian sub- ject to be either entirely absent or radically exoticized, to the extent that it cannot be included in the invention of problematic categories, practices, and definitions of Indian religion. One result of this is that commonplace constructions of Indian religion and traditions appear to remain unaffected in Orientalism and Religion, even though King seeks to bring supposedly oppositional fields of knowledge into dialogue. This dialogue is preoccupied with the power imbedded in imperialist authority, and how it has been used to define and establish boundaries around the Indian subconti- nent. King does, however, appear to recast a conceptual landscape where the center remains unaffected by its encounter of a multiplicity of colonial peripheries.

A brief consideration of how the construction of the "Other" in general, and religious traditions in particular, has been managed by imperialists at others parts of the peripheries of empire might help to clarify my concerns. First, such comparative considerations might genuinely destabilize the supposedly fixed constructions and concep- tions about hegemony at, and of, the European center. We need to consider the possibility that with encounters in various context-spe- cific colonies, European identities had to become increasingly fixed, in the process of seeking to construct categories by which they were able to inform their notions of the "Other". I wish to suggest that the strategy of "Othering" assumed two forms whereby the colonized were either defined as exotic or savage. The exotic can be broadly referred to as those perceptions of the "Other" as effeminate, intro- spective, mysterious, innocent, often captured by expressions such as traditions that represent the "cradle of mankind". Notions of the savage are captured in representations of the other as aggressive, depraved, illiterate, licentious and unsophisticated. That these very different representations of the Other emerged from the same colonial authority suggests interesting consequences for the identity for- mation of the colonizer, as a result of the range of responses generated by the colonizer’s encounter with the colonized—albeit savage or exotic.

A second consequence is that one can comfortably avoid the essentialism of the variety of subaltern projects concerned with recovering subject voices. King is aware of this difficulty and although he tries to steer clear of the complexities of native perspectives, the text remains trapped in the colonizer/colonized dichotomy. Ania Loomba reminds us that it has not been easy "to maintain a balance between ‘positioning’ the subject and amplifying his/her voice" and she warns us that it is at times all too easy to fall into "essentializing the figure or community of the resistant subaltern" (1998: 233). Should King allow for greater interface with subject voices one might be more convinced of his postcolonial claims to destabilizing the power formations inherent in Western hegemonic representation of the "mystic East".

Recent works in the study of postcolonialism display a primary concern with the mutual constitution of the identities of both the colonizer and the colonized. A further element of originality lies with the ability to identify and analyze the chronic instabilities inhabiting and destabilizing the colonial project. No longer are we allowed to see the colonial project as a set of pre-given norms concerned with civilizing the Other through imparting the higher values and tradi- tions of European culture. Similarly, the colonized cannot be conceived as passive recipients of such alien values, with the colonizer solely portrayed as the aggressive imparting agent. Resist- ance to the colonial project emerges not only from those moments of independence or anti-colonial revolt but also from the consequence of encounter.

What is the place of religion in this discourse? King’s writing illus- trates the extent to which religion, Christianity in particular, contrib- uted to the making of Orientalism. King seeks to illustrate this extent through his treatment of myth and the East. In recent writings on religion and the politics of identity, some analysts have tended to assume a position that critically reflects on religion as sanctioning the struggle against colonialism, while others have investigated the role of religion in legitimizing the oppression of the "natives". It must also be clarified that the socio-political content of various responses to colonialism are more complex than at first appear since religion, both Christian and indigenous, is deployed in the struggle for and against colonialism. It is thus the themes of "power" and "truth" that tend to dominate this enquiry of the relationship between religion and colo- nialism. While it has also been widely recognized that the study of the symbiotic and mutually exploitative relationship between Christi- anity and state power has been largely exhausted, a treatment of the socio-political implications is conspicuously absent from Orientalism and Religion.

Although King encourages the reader to take a postcolonial or Saidian reading of the construction of myth in relation to Western Christianity’s encounter with the East, yet he falls prey to the concep- tion of postcolonial critique as a treatment that is suspicious of local, native political interest. I am reminded of Said’s critique of early poststructuralism as essentially Eurocentric in its concern with West- ern hegemony in the production and management of knowledge about the self and the "Other", whether local or peripheral. The text has a distinctly apolitical feel with little reference to the local socio- political aspirations that would have informed any one or more in- ventions and interpretations of the "mystical". Such studies are thus limited to the study of the colonizer and the subject in relation to a particular set of religious values. What is of greater interest in King’s book? Is it the integrity of the mystical and the manner in which it had been profoundly misrepresented through western constructions? Or is it the changing nature, active content and meaning of religion in the postcolonial context, and India in particular. The need for active social and political content suggests that equal treatment be given to the construction and appropriation of religion from the moments of colonial encounter through to the postcolonial, rather than simply a naive preoccupation with giving voice to the muffled native. The challenge is to implicate the perspec- tive and material strategies of both the colonizer and the colonized, in the production of power and knowledge as well as subsequent resistance to it.

It is interesting that, in all this, religion continues to be articulated as either complicit in the production of oppressive regimes, or an imperative in the development of an anti-establishment ethic under the rubric of social and political equality and human rights. Much scholarship has found itself concerned with these particular sets of the material implications of religion. Whilst other approaches to the study of religion have been explored extensively, much of it continues to locate religion in relation to colonialism, as the religious and social virtues that informed the worldview and practices of the colonizers. Consequently, most of the studies concerned with religion and Orientalism, illustrated in this instance by King, broadly fail to pay adequate attention to indigenous strategies of resistance and other expressions of subject agency. Throughout the reading of such texts we are again struck by the silent native who is granted a reliable mouthpiece, in the form of the sympathetic modern scholar. I am not suggesting that the native voices contained within Indian religion holds an intrinsic truth about itself. My contention is merely that we can no longer assume that a reading of the mystic East, however comprehensively written about by Western scholars, travelers and missionaries, cannot claim to be, or be treated as unaffected by the protracted encounter with the Other. Such encounters might see colonizer responses to colonial power in the form of resistance and/ or subservience, both of which would inform Western representation of the Indian subject. It is therefore critical that we seek to investigate how it is that the traditions of one "other than Western" tradition acquire greater currency over others in the postcolonial metropolitan center.

King demonstrates a reluctance to depict mysticism as an aspect of religion that might appear to have emerged as a consequence of the colonial encounter, as well as a practice that might also have come into existence quite independently of colonial representations. Per- haps it is because such a position could be perceived as concerned with essentialist projects surrounding the recovery of indigenous and pre-colonial religious traditions. These studies about authenticity are not necessarily always concerned with the mechanical reconstruction of ‘ancient’ ritual but more with the exploration of ways in which the very values contained in such pre-colonial traditions can be trans- lated into vehicles for contemporary political manoeuver. The rela- tionship between the post-independence popularity of self-determina- tion and the increasing political potential of previously suppressed religious traditions thus begs investigation. Could it be argued that religion is again being deployed by authoritative political powers to legitimize their respective social projects? Or could it be argued that religion has come into its own, generating its own sets of power with its disparate anticipated consequences.

Remarks off center

In his treatment of the subaltern studies collective, King attempts to maintain the difficult balance between destabilizing the metropolitan constructs of the Orient, and the indigenous articulation of subject agency. Even at the end of his book the anxiety remains unresolved and he seeks to locate himself with the Spivakian "strategic essential- ism" when he suggests that primary to this emerging style of comparativism is a recognition of the mutual imbrication of a variety of axes of domination. He adds that a concern for a mutuality of cross-cultural interaction and influence promises to open up a space for comparative dialogue and prevention of isolationist appeals to indigenism.

In much recent postcolonial material about Africa and India binaries that have previously been argued to have only represented a depiction of the West’s Other have emerged as supposedly fixed identities in these regions, certainly insofar as theorizing is concerned. In the above comments I hope to have illustrated the theoretical consequences that have developed in these areas as a result of par- ticularizing their respective Otherness in relation to the West only. Consequently, the colonial images of the savage/exotic, the irra- tional/contemplative, the masculine/effeminate continue to haunt postcolonial theory. I want to point to the continuing conceptual policing that has emerged as a result of these supposedly fixed boundaries and the ways in which indigenous and other hybrid ex- pressions of religion have sought to find their own voice in a post- colonial world.

Africa and India continue to be simultaneously and respectively represented in relation to the evolving self-representation of the imperial center as dominant, modern, and literate. Postcolonial theory seeks to problematize colonial notions that barren Africa is inhabited by the savage, the hunter, the cannibals, and the storyteller, whilst lush India is inhabited by the exotic, the ancient and literate, the superstitious and internally ambivalent. However, these categories are seldom brought into conversation, particularly when reflecting on religion. Other representations that continue to dog this field of study is the sense in which these two points on the colonial periphery continue to be represented in significantly different ways. In terms of cultural sophistication in Africa, indigenous art and ritual tend to be the focus, but with regard to India the focus tends to be on philosophy and "the mystical". Whereas India is represented in much postcolonial theory as coming into its own in a post-independence context, where it is busily constructing nostalgic subaltern voices, Africa is depicted as essentially anti-colonial. From the moment of encoun- ter to post-independence, African peoples are portrayed as concerned with recovering ancient traditions and seeking to secure their legiti- macy in a contemporary global context.

I wish to suggest that these complexities can be clarified through a systematic investigation of postcolonial scholarship that has emerged from both India and other points on the colonial periphery, for ex- ample, Africa. Whilst these two areas have traditionally been set off against one another in justification of one colonial project or another, little work has been done to investigate the ways in which these binaries have been reproduced in recent postcolonial theory. King writes that "indigenous discourses remain deeply indebted to orien- talist presuppositions and have generally failed to criticize the essen- tialist stereotypes embodied in such narratives" (1999: 116). He al- ludes to the manner in which Gandhi and Vivekananda utilized those very stereotypes to inform their anti-colonial resistance, and to organize Indian nationalist sentiments. The examples of Gandhi and Vivekananda are a clear indication that indigenous communities were aware of the limited access to power that was available to them. In this context they sought to generate new forms of anti-colonial resistance by utilizing those essentialized and invented stereotypes while accepting colonial forms of rule through the mediation of local princes. Apart from such examples, King is unable to ascribe any agency to the indigenous communities themselves, thereby generat- ing an alternative and essentially silenced Indian.

King’s observations with regard to the continuities/discontinuities between textual and oral traditions are invaluable, though his text could be understood as not convincingly postcolonial because it cannot disentangle itself from an invented representation of India, as "previously literate" or "differently literate". To presuppose such constructs in terms of subject agency is highly dubious. Whilst the author steers clear of classic essentialism in his argument for some form of naive subject agency, the previously invented Orientalist representations remain largely intact. I am not suggesting that there exists some pure essential identity; I am suggesting that the project is inhabited by a multiplicity of imperially invented identities. The religious and material expression of such identities has become active not only in relation to a coherent center but also a series of frag- mented and ambivalent axes of self-representations in relation to political agency within the subject communities themselves.

Department of Religious Studies University of Cape Town Cape Town South Africa

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