Abstract
Robert A. Yelle,
The Language of Disenchantment: Protestant Literalism and Colonial Discourse in British India
, AAR Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion Series, Oxford University Press: New York, 2013; 320 pp.: 97801199924998, £64.00/$99.00 (hbk), 97801999925018, £22.99/$35.00 (pbk)
This venture in ‘discourse analysis’ interweaves abstract notions of language, modernity and secularization pertaining to the history of culture and religion in India. Max Weber is invoked to show how rationalistic Protestants sought to ‘disenchant’ Hindu religion by ridding it of magic, miracles and mystery; how anti-Catholic invective inveighed against Hindu ‘priestcraft’, ‘meaningless vain repetitions’ and ‘verbal idolatry’; and how colonialism superimposed English upon a hapless India, rationalizing and codifying Hindu law and tradition. In a text dense with abstractions, we learn, ‘Foucault has told us’ what we need to know. Rhetoric against ‘Catholic and sectarian practices in Britain’ defined official attitudes toward Hinduism. Efforts were made to codify the Anglicization and Christianization of India. Previous notions of colonialism and modernity, ‘as simply rational or secular’, are seen as questionable.
Unfortunately, ruminations do not accurately relate to the actual events of India’s history. First, the rise of English language to ascendancy, so that India is now, after America, the largest English-speaking country in the world, stem not from Lord Macaulay and Sir Charles Trevelyan, nor from Lord William Bentinck, but from the demands of high caste elites who would not be denied. Such demands emerged out of the kingdoms of Thanjavur, Shivaganga and Ramnad in the 1780s. There, schools run by Christian Friedrich Schwartz and Vedanayagam Shastriar introduced Enlightenment learning to Brahmanic youth. By the late 1820s, local leaders in Madras, led by Vennelacunty Subha Rao, signed petitions demanding higher learning, in English.
Second, Protestant efforts to reverse Babel by Pentecost are misunderstood by Yelle. Protestant missionaries strongly supported vernacular languages in India. Except for Scots missionaries (Alexander Duff, John Anderson and John Wilson), most missionaries opposed the emphasis on English education. English language waxed ever greater in India, but so did resurgences of vernacular languages. Tamil and Telugu, and Bengali, were among the vernaculars that, as languages of ‘disenchantment’, served as vehicles of science and secularity. The Day of Pentecost, instead of restoring a single language to humanity, extolled all languages – any language could become the vehicle of enlightenment.
Third, attempts to impose Anglican Christendom failed. Yelle does not see that the Raj in India was as much Indian as British. Its religious establishments had been, from 1639 onwards, substantially Hindu. Indeed, Anglican failures to heed the ‘sensibilities’, so essential for a multi-faith empire, contributed to the great bloodbath of 1857. This polemic, despite its sophisticated cant for insiders, falls short in verified contexts of the events and facts of history. Disenchantment, or Enlightenment, with modernity, rationalism and secularization, tends to the deification and re-enchantment of other institutions that are imbued with ‘sacred’ attributes. Alas, the author’s rhetoric, however dazzling, tends to obscure his meaning for those not yet initiated into the conventions of convoluted ‘discourse analysis’.