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VICTOR ANANT
be a cultural split-personality is a useful occupation in Europe,
where to be harmonious and integrated would be disastrous.
The other reason is fanciful, but nevertheless one which
may be proved in time to have some truth in it. Assuming that
it is possible to draw the outline of a national image, it is then
possible to see a set pattern of love-hate relationships between
never-the-twain-shall-meet nations. A few spring readily to mind:
American and Japanese (with American interest in the mystique
of Zen) ; French and Arab (with French interest in the mystique
of Islam) ; German and Jew (with German interest in the Jewish
myth); British and Indian (with British interest in the mystique
of Hinduism). These nation-pairs pass through all phases involv–
ed in a marriage, beginning with love and conquest, and then
going on to exploitation, responsibility, an attempt at mutual
destruction, a desperate anxiety to preserve identity, guilt, repar–
ation; and will perhaps end only with the inevitable failure that
must follow all such intense relationships. At any rate these nation–
pairs have an exciting time discovering and discarding each other,
playing coquettes in turn, going away and coming back, and
producing beautiful half-castes. The new order may yet
be
in
the hands of the new bastardy. I see that despite all the tales
I will tell when I go back home, despite my cynicism, many
Indians will still have to go through the same ordeal. It is an
enriching ordeal. It is the source of all creativity.
I have often, in writing, talked of my sense of being a
Brahmin. This has been interpreted by many friends, especially
by my Indian friends, as a harking back to reactionary days, to
communalism, to exclusiveness. This \ is nonsense. The word
Brahmin has no meaning today because it has been given too
many meanings, like holy many, performing priest, yogi, mystic,
faith healer, a superior caste, etc. This, too, is nonsense. Hindu–
ism, like Judaism, repels many people because it has not been
subject to perennial re-definition. I do not use the word Brahmin
in any religious or narrow sense. What I hope to do, ultimately,
is to re-define the word in a way as to make it seem more real,
more a part of our times. The main difficulty in this is that Hindu–
ism seems to be, unlike the life of ancient Greek city-states, a way
of life derived from an all-peasant civilization. There were really
