这种眷恋之情就是我们现代性背后的驱动力。如果认为这是怀旧，是不愿改变的顽固，那就等于对自己不公平。相反，正是由于有这种对过去的眷恋，我们才觉得现状需要改变，而改变就是我们的任务。我们必须牢记，在现代性的世界舞台上，我们是不可接触者，是被放逐的人。对我们来说，现代性就像一家外国商品超市，货架上放着琳琅满目的商品：只要花钱就能买到任何东西。没人相信我们也能成为现代性的生产者。印度目前最可悲的一点在于我们的附庸地位，我们无法成为自身权利的主体。但是，正因为我们想要现代，所以才把企求独立、创造的欲望投射到过去。要说这个过去是想像之物就太肤浅了，因为所有过去都只存在于想像当中。在“此时”之不完整、不满足的对立面，我们树立起一个美丽、繁荣、健康、自由交往的“彼时”，而且最关键的一点是那个“彼时”完全由我们自身开创。对我们来说，“彼时”不是一个历史意义上的过去；我们构建它只为标识与当下的不同。需要注意的是，康德在西方现代主义奠基之时说到当下，是把它当作逃离过去的场域；而就我们的感受来说，要逃离的正是目前所处的当下。我们面对现代性时采取的模式和西方从历史进化意义上进入现代性的方法最大的不同也就在于此。
我们的现代性是曾被殖民过的现代性。曾经教会我们现代性价值的历史进程也让我们成了现代性的牺牲品。因此，我们对现代性的态度只能是非常暧昧的。这一点反映在过去150年我们对现代性经验的描述里，从拉吉纳拉扬?巴苏到我们的同代人莫不如此。但这种暧昧的态度绝不是因为不确定到底应该拥护还是反对现代性。相反，暧昧是由于我们知道为了创建属于我们自己的现代性形式，有时必须要勇敢地拒绝别人建立好的现代性。民族主义时期已经有过很多充满勇气和创造力的行动。当然不是所有都取得了成功。如今身处全球化时代，我们也许应该再次唤起这种勇气。现在也许应该想想我们的现代性到底有着怎样的“此时”和“彼时”。
Present History in the Age of
Globalization
Whenever I think of enlightenment, I am reminded of the
unforgettable first lines of Kamalkumar Majumdar''s novel Antarjali
Yatra.
Light appears gradually. The sky is frosty violet, like the
colour of pomegranate. In a few moments from now, redness will come
to prevail and we, the plebeians of this earth, will once more be
blessed by the warmth of flowers. Gradually, the light appears. p.
1
Modernity is the first social philosophy which conjures up in
the minds of the most ordinary people dreams of independence and
self-rule. The regime of power in the modern societies prefers to
work not through the commands of a supreme sovereign but through
the disciplinary practices that each individual imposes on his or
her own behaviour on the basis of the dictates of reason. And yet,
no matter how adroitly the fabric of reason might cloak the reality
of power, the desire for autonomy continues to range itself against
power; power is resisted. Let us remind ourselves that there was a
time when modernity was put forward as the strongest argument in
favour of the continued colonial subjection of India: foreign rule
was necessary, we were told, because Indians must first be
enlightened. And then it was the same logic of modernity which one
day led us to the discovery that imperialism was illegitimate;
independence was our desired goal. The burden of reason, dreams of
freedom; the desire for power, resistance to power: all of these
are elements of modernity. There is no promised land of modernity
outside the network of power. Hence, one cannot be for or against
modernity; one can only devise strategies for coping with it. These
strategies are sometimes beneficial, often destructive; sometimes
they are tolerant, perhaps all too often they are fierce and
violent. We have, as I said before, had to abandon the simple faith
that because something was modern and rational, it must necessarily
be for the good.
At the end of Kamalkumar''s novel, a fearsome flood, like the
unstoppable hand of destiny, sweeps away a decadent Hindu society.
With it, it also takes that which was alive, beautiful,
affectionate, kind. The untouchable plebeian cannot save her,
because he is not entitled to touch that which is sacred and
pure.
A single eye, like the eye mirrored on hemlock, kept looking at
her, the bride seeking her first taste of love. The eye is wooden,
because it is painted on the side of a boat; but it is painted in
vermilion, and it has on it drops of water from the waves now
breaking gently against the boat. The wooden eye is capable of
shedding tears. Somewhere, therefore, there remains a sense of
attachment.p. 216
This sense of attachment is the driving force of our modernity.
We would be unjust to ourselves if we think of it as
backward-looking, as a sign of resistance to change. On the
contrary, it is our attachment to the past which gives birth to the
feeling that the present needs to be changed, that it is our task
to change it. We must remember that in the world arena of
modernity, we are outcastes, untouchables. Modernity for us is like
a supermarket of foreign goods, displayed on the shelves: pay up
and take away what you like. No one there believes that we could be
producers of modernity. The bitter truth about our present is our
subjection, our inability to be subjects in our own right. And yet,
it is because we want to be modern that our desire to be
independent and creative is transposed on to our past. It is
superfluous to call this an imagined past, because pasts are always
imagined. At the opposite end from "these days" marked by
incompleteness and lack of fulfillment, we construct a picture of
"those days" when there was beauty, prosperity and a healthy
sociability, and which was, above all, our own creation. "Those
days" for us is not a historical past; we construct it only to mark
the difference posed by the present. All that needs to be noticed
is that whereas Kant, speaking at the founding moment of Western
modernity, looks at the present as the site of one''s escape from
the past, for us it is precisely the present from which we feel we
must escape. This makes the very modality of our coping with
modernity radically different from the historically evolved modes
of Western modernity.
Ours is the modernity of the once-colonized. The same historical
process that has taught us the value of modernity has also made us
the victims of modernity. Our attitude to modernity, therefore,
cannot but be deeply ambiguous. This is reflected in the way we
have described our experiences with modernity in the last century
and a half, from Rajnarayan Basu to our contemporaries today. But
this ambiguity does not stem from any uncertainty about whether to
be for or against modernity. Rather, the uncertainty is because we
know that to fashion the forms of our own modernity we need to have
the courage at times to reject the modernities established by
others. In the age of nationalism, there were many such efforts
which reflected both courage and inventiveness. Not all were, of
course, equally successful. Today, in the age of globalization,
perhaps the time has come once more to mobilize that courage. Maybe
we need to think about "those days" and "these days" of our
modernity.
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