I begin with a rather amateurish reading of Tolstoy's views on art. Tolstoy viewed art as a human activity made possible through human society. He considered art to be a swelling up of human emotions. He declared art for art's sake evidence of society's moral corruption and not any art at all. Art was an expression from within. A claim made through note number 83 of Penguin's 1995 edition of Tolstoy's What is Art? is that Vedic hymns are "Sanskrit hymns collected in four sacred books, considered as revelations from Brahma, which the Aryans brought with them into India, forming the foundation of the religion of the Hindus".
"The Vedic Period (1500 BC-600 BC) covers the age of the settlement of the Aryans and the gradual expansion and spread of the Aryan Culture and civilisation. It was the time which witnessed the rise of the forest universities, where evolved the beginnings of the sublime idealism of India. We discern in it successive strata of thought, signified by the mantras or the hymns, the Brahmans, and the Upanisads. The views put forward in this age are not philosophical in the technical sense of the term. It is the age of groping, where superstition and thought are yet in conflict." (J.N. Mohanty, Indian Philosophy Volume 1).
The validity of art as subject to this book review is its aesthetics. Art has semiotic ability and can be used as material to reveal not only imagination, but also social realism through language using aesthetic theories. But, what about the aesthetics or the poetics of language? What functions do they play in developing systems of knowledge?
G.N. Devy's "The Crisis Within" emphasises the necessity of a base of interdisciplinary studies within knowledge systems and expresses concerns over the growing dependence on technology for an education. His methodology is rightfully social and embedded deep in pragmatics. "The intertwining of the patterns of domination and victimisation of various marginal groups by other marginal groups is typical of Indian society. Layering, not segmentation, is the principle that explains these complexities more adequately. Age-old tensions between one caste and another, between castes and tribes, between one tribe and other tribes, as well as frequent migrations of linguistic, racial or religious groups, create social sedimentations of these 'marginal layers'." (G.N. Devy, The Crisis Within). These words help connect the complexities of marginalisation, exclusion and symbolic violences corrupting India to the domains of sociology of education.
"It will become possible to begin decolonising knowledge in our institutions of higher learning. Decolonisation cannot be achieved merely by going for the outer forms such as the language of instruction, though language in itself is of prime importance. In our pursuit of knowing that which is worth knowing from all other knowledge traditions, we need to pay attention to the languages that have not received official protection, the ones that have remained outside the 8th Schedule of the Constitution, and without administrative units of their own." (G.N. Devy, The Crisis Within)
As a citizen of India, it may be a constitutional duty to at least respect, if unable to protect, the languages of the 8th schedule, let alone other minorities. But, not a month goes by without witnessing shameless and disrespectful caricature of one of these languages or its verbal accents all around, even in the mainstream. G.N Devy proposes an education for the expansion of one's mental horizons for inducting a consciousness for creating a free and equal society. This idea of integral education is in resonance with Sri Aurobindo's chitt-vistar, which is an educational philosophy to heighten consciousness of life and existence as it is.
The question of pragmatics is still extremely urgent, for that is what my pursuits are missing. In my pursuit of writing on the relationship between thought and language, I realised that creation requires recognisable form to be meaningful. How else does rational discovery become meaningful if not in the form language may comprehend? Guiding our attention also towards sensory knowledge stored in memory, "The Crisis Within" knits its philosophy with artistic and poetic intricacy, inspiring the reader to step into the grassroots, proving selflessness moral correctness. The challenge is to wrap one's head around the relevance of ideas floating near and around the philosophies discussed, and to understand the pragmatic implications of the poetics of language on society outside of literature, to identify a contemporary context that is already not in the heat of conflict. Therefore, this scope itself is testament to the crisis and the need for a pragmatic hypothesis.
How is testament born? Testament is relived in pages where ideas cause partitions and slaughter the poverty of the soul.
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