Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity

In Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity, Dorothy Figueira examines a variety of European and Indian thinkers who, by reinterpreting "Aryan texts" in ways that accorded the texts historical value at key historical moments, constructed ideologies of the Aryan. In part 1, Figueira examines the European Romantic mythographers' construction of the Vedic Golden Age, Friedrich Max Müller's return to the Vedas, and Nietzsche's turn to the Laws of Manu to construct a past for Europeans. Part 2 focuses on the role of Indian thinkers such as Raja Rammohan Roy, Dayanand Saraswati, Justice Ranade, Lokmaya Tilak, and Swami Vivekanand in reinterpreting Hindu scriptures during the quest for an Indian national identity under British colonial rule, in ways that maintained the position of the Indian elites within the social hierarchy and justified caste exclusion. In chapter 8, Figueria juxtaposes against elite reconstructions of the Aryan myth the work of low-caste social reformers such as Jotirao Phule and B. R. Ambedkar, who subverted the "nationalist script" by questioning the Vedas' canonical status, seeking to overturn the Aryan racial myth together with its triumphant justification for the maintenance of hierarchical relations within Indian society. One of the most interesting chapters, Phule and Ambedkar's demonstrates that nineteenth-century India saw areas of reform that were "hardly touched by relationships of colonial power and significantly address the issue of Indian hegemonic abuses" (158).

In recovering the voices of Phule and Ambedkar, Figueira launches a fierce critique against postcolonial theory, which, in her estimation, remains "deaf " to such subaltern voices "because they attacked an enemy who was not the colonial power, but an opponent from whose ranks the critics themselves spring and within whose hegemonic structure of knowledge and discourse they continue to operate" (158). Figueira's advice that students "of postcolonial theory should explore such histories and representations because they resonate in our continuing arguments with contemporary racism" (159) is salutary, as is her caution about the danger of overlooking internal abuses of power, whether overt or subtle, which may be obscured by considering colonialism as "the hegemonic evil" (158). Figueira argues convincingly that such simplistic vision has the "effect of whitewashing the checkered past of many colonized and postcolonial elites" and their many "abuses of power and human rights violations" (158).

Figueira's concluding statements, however, that critics claiming "privilege to speak for the Other" (163) are like "Aryan warlords [who] still wander the earth. . . . [and] have abandoned the plains of Kurukshetra to settle in the groves of academe" so that the "brahmanization of theory is complete" are strongly worded but misleading. For the words erase the complexities and nuances of postcolonial theory and the strategies provided by critics and theorists for unpacking and locating heterogeneous systems of power, examining histories from "below," unlocking the complicities between colonial and Indian power groups, and rendering visible the consolidation of such interests for the continuing subjugation of socially marginalized groups in India. Figueira's concluding assertions have the effect, therefore, of diluting her own carefully situated evaluations of critics such as Ashis Nandy and Lata Mani, whom she attacks for what she identifies as their lack of adequate historicization or adequate analyses of the colonial subject. The result is to dilute the persuasiveness of Figueira's scrutiny of the work of historiographers such as Partha Chatterjee.

Overall, the book's scholarly contribution lies in enabling the reader to examine hierarchies operative within Brahamanical systems for reading Indian social and philosophical thought. Lucidly written and drawing on the work of thinkers and theorists such as Durkheim, Cassirer, Eliade, Barthes, and Geertz, Figueira's arguments unfold through a comparative framework of analysis that gets to the philological roots of concepts provided by European and Indian Indologists,which shaped racial theories of interpretation, and which, by the mid-nineteenth century, had given rise to myths about the Aryan. The book is a valuable resource for comparatists working to uncover the links among culture, colonialism, and power, as well as for students and scholars of modern Europe and South Asia.