Saturday, 29 June 2013

Ranajit Guha & the praxis of stupidity

Ranajit Guha is an historian. He is over 90 years old. He was born in India and only emigrated some 12 years after Independence. Thus he must have known that the vast majority of Indian peasants under the Raj1) couldn't read or write any language, let alone lawyerly English, and literary Persian and scholarly Sanskrit and so on.2) didn't know the 'series of codes which defined his very existence'- because some of those codes were written in lawyerly English and very very few of the people who knew lawyerly English also knew precisely what 'series of codes' obtained and how they related to each other. The Viceroy didn't know-he'd ask his Principal Secretary. The Principal Secretary didn't know buton social and economic issues than any other segment of voters. The men and women in that group differed little in their staunchly conservative perspective, particularly on issues that touch on racial anxieties.

For instance, 75% of non-college white evangelical men and 65% of the women agreed that discrimination against whites is now as big a problem in America as discrimination against minorities; three-fourths of the men and two-thirds of the women also agreed with the harshly worded statement that "Immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background." Four-fifths of the men and two-thirds of the women agreed it is "necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values." Three-fourths of the men and two-thirds of the women agreed that the "Democratic