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A- Feb Questions
1- Role of Religion or Slavery? Redefine power as NOT over PEOPLE but over
SKILLS/competence
2- Very first step to being civilized is to first find a teacher and then be INITIATED by that
teacher into learning about how the world works.
a. Why is Initiation fundamental? FOUNDATION OF POLITICAL SOCIETY
a.i. They did not have books and the internet to go and surf and find things
a.ii. If anybody wanted any kind of knowledge, you had to go to a personalized
one on one teaching system
a.ii.1.
Not a system that people in Europe think of as political
today
a.ii.2.
In terms of South Asia, it was a fundamental foundational
act of establishing a political society
a.ii.3.
You can compare it to the social contract theory
a.ii.4.
Founded a political society because it required the student
to submit to an entire rigorous rhythm of cultivation and discipline,
and therefore it did require submitting to a certain series of rules
for how to behave, how to sit with your other students, and it
always involved the student paying for that teaching, either then, or
down the road in some form or shape
a.iii. Disciline/Cultivation Guru and Chela
a.iii.1.
Guru and female condet son and daughter etc
a.iv. Economics of gifts Dana/Daksina/Donations
b. True for every group in that terrain
c. Creates a social order between:
c.i. Elder and junior (Guru and Chela)
c.ii. Men and women (Guru and female)
c.iii. Cohorts (Chela + Chela)
d. Whether you think of the individual or a household, the student teacher
relationship is the fundamental political relationship
e. Early on, slaves of religion and slaves of laymen
e.i. Two different kidns of households and structures
f. It is not entirely new
g. Perhaps we are looking at an 18th and 19th century form of something that had
begun a long time ago
h. It is for that reason that its good to think through to the basics of how this system
would have been organized
i. Context in which to thinknot in terms of what you identify as religion
i.i. In the context of early south asian systems, you must think about the world
as a united whole
i.ii. The cosmology of the metaphysics involved is non-dualist
i.iii. There is not necessarily a creater god who stands outside of his or her
creation
i.iv. There are many female goddesses, thought of as much as creators as the
creatures that they create
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i.v. Very common to see amongst south asian hindus to see them clasping their
hands when they meet you
i.v.1.
What does that mean?
i.v.2.
They say I bow to the God in you
3- Teaching lineages become VERY important
a. Context in which the Mughals arrive
b. From the 14th 15th century, Akbar tried to change the terms of this discussion
b.i. He doesnt want slaves to be called banda + malik (slave and master)
b.ii. He changes it to guru and chela
b.ii.1.
If the guru teaches the chela well, then he will be very well
respected and enjoy tax cuts etc
4- Does the lineage of teachers require their students to become celibate in order to learn
teaching?
a. For instance, in some protestant monastic orders, when monks join, they take a
vow of celibacy
b. Against that kind of order, you have in South Asia orders that do not require men
to be celibate
b.i. Monks can be married, traders, warriors, merchants, kings, etc
5- Why Akbars changing terms?
a. Ideology or Realpoliticks?
a.i. Egs of Casia + 16th-17th century
b. He had just come to thrown and was facing2 difficult situations
b.i. With his cousins in central Asia who was a very powerful patron of
Islamic teachers, and therefore all the Sufi teachers everywhere would
constantly praise Chaibon Ikan in Central Asia and would tell everyone to
support him against Akbar
b.ii. Akbar was threatened by his own cousins in central Asia, using the Sufis
against him
b.iii. In addition to that, in South Asia, Akbar was facing lineages of teachers
and desciples in orders of various kinds
b.iii.1.
Sikhs
b.iii.2.
Vaishna
b.iii.3.
Shaiva
b.iii.4.
Jews
b.iii.5.
Armenians
b.iii.6.
Sakta traditions
b.iii.7.
**Bhakti = loyalty and devotion
b.iv. Akbar was facing all these lineages within South Asia while he was at the
same facing resistance outside South Asia
b.v. At that point, he decided that Mughal Emperor would position himself as
the ultimate Guru
b.vi. Visa vi, everyone in South Asia is a potential Desciple
b.vii. Therefore, distinction between slave and non-slave subjects would
disappear
b.viii. Everyone would be required to be equally loyal, devoted, equally cultivate
Akbars model of political society
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c. Was there political resistance?
c.i. No.
c.ii. What was happening was that Akbar was trying to create a more expansive
notion of political society in competition with all other religious groups
d. That is why he did not emancipate any of the house-hold slaves, he was just more
insistent that those who were within the harem, would continue to be loyal to him
e. By changing the term, he is requiring that everyone in the domain to be loyal to
HIM as the teacher, to HIS brand of teaching
6- He is essentially trying to put himself above caste/religion
a. In terms of Muslims, there is only ONE Allah, Muhammad is the last profit No
King on Earth can set himself up to be either Allah or Prophet
b. So in fact, a lot of the Muslims behin to hate Akbar
7- What in 18th c. leads to this situation?
a. Ascetic arms vs. Marathas/ Mughals
b. Afghans/ In the 18th Century, we have Marathas, Afghans, Mughals fight for dominance of
the weekend
c. Ragendra
c.i. 2 deciples: Anupa and Umrao
d. Son narendra with Auilab vs. Chelas of Anupas and jagatgitz son
8- English Elco 1760s on facing Ascetic Armies
9- Did these children every get to play
a. You can only understand how children are in this society
b. Children grow up to be disciplined very strong warriors, Ascetic Army
b.i. It is not hight bound, Chiva lineage of Gurus with a Muslim woman
c. Very open minded world in 18th century
d. Can incorporate muslim women and marry them
10- Kind of Shiva worrier you have to imagein3
a. These are very well trained arries
11- In the same 18th century, because there sis an opening and a number for well trained
armies\
12- First that hat British fprnd particular lineages present.
13- Systematically, the English man posted in India, becaun to attach particular groups of
such arms ascetic
a- From 1773, we cind regular demoltion of the ecemptions which had been enjoyed by
these men as well as attempts of the britiss eash inda company, oto tax their estates,
their moves
B- Thats the pressure tha begins from the 1770s against some lineages
C- British Opium Trade find these kinds of political societies standing in their way
1- Opium growing fields are in Western India, and China is farther East
2- Imagine an entire terrain peopled and controlled by groups supported by their desciples
and patrons who are standing in the way of british transport of Opium to China
a. Time that rhetoric of Thuggy ??**
D- What is going on in the rest of the world at this time that we already know??
1- The American Revolution!!! (1760s)
2- And then French Revolution will follow!!!
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3- The British are not interested in accommodations in the colonies
4- And remember, they have gone through what is the protestant reformation
5- In the protestant reformation, they are supposed to have separated church and state, they
are supposed to have only one king who defends the Anglican church
6- In Britain, until 1802, there is no toleration of descent
7- From 1783 in Britain, already an anti-slavery rhetoric has begun
8- Everything that the East India Company does in South Asia has to be kept in the bigger
picture of what is happening in America, and what is happening to Church society within
Britain, and what particularly is happening in terms of anti-slavery abolitionist movement
in Britain from the late 18th century
E- What is the meaning of Social Death in the context of this society?
1- They are becoming slave of God, not slave of humans
2- They are not slaves of social norms
3- The argument that this is still natal alienation holds if we think that natility is limited only
to those you are connected t by birth
a. You lose the birth society to which you were born, yet in the very fact that you are
initiated by a teacher, or giving a new name by your teacher
a.i. In that very act of naming, you are being reclaimed within another social,
spiritual, ascetic, disciplinary lineage
a.ii. You do lose your parents, but you gain another society
a.iii. Another way of socially continuing to be viable in te world
b. If you look at it in that way, then the shock and horror that many of you have
expressed about children being given up by their parents when they cant feed
them, or when children are ailing or there are too many, and they are simply
abandoned, it does not seem so bad anymore
b.i. It is the equivalent of a kind of welfare society in the time and place where
there is no foster care institution, there is no one central gov. that organizes
all the orphans and puts them into one place
b.ii. Why children are being sold, given up, why we find these boys being
brought off the street and being trained into soldiers, becomes a much
more viable way of dealing with a population that is unwanted
c. What is the downside of this system?
c.i. What do you already know about this world which would lead you to see
the pockets of difficulties in this kind of structure?
c.ii. What does this mean for the writing of histories of these people?
c.ii.1.
There is a lot more heresay than varifible fact
c.ii.2.
Are there a lot of slave-buying documents? No.
c.ii.3.
Minimal documentation
c.iii. What would Aquila have in play for claiming that the four slaves were
people she had bought to the British Regime?
c.iii.1.
Because they dont understand a society where people
submit to it by their free will
c.iii.2.
Disqualified those slaves as legitimate powerholders, to
disqualify them to the British
c.iii.3.
Lineage of students, as well as a blood related son
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c.iii.3.a. The British will favor the blood related son, not the
Chelas who are the desciples
c.iii.3.b. Suddenly the British go along and collaborate with
the woman, the mother of an infant, visavi elder, capable
warrior ascetics, who if they were allowed to inheret from
their Guru, would have gone up against the british
c.iii.3.c. So they suddenly stand forth as friends of women in
South Asia, and they are going to uphold the rights of all
women in South Asia against these Brutal Men
d. This is the lineage, the economics, the society at stake in learning South Asian
History
d.i. You begin to see the making of the European Empire very differently, and
European history as a very different enterprise