Abstrakt
'Svaraj in Ideas' is Krishna Chandra Bhattacharya's discourse addressed to students of the Hoogly College during the years 1928-1930. As an early criticism of intellectual colonialism and cultural subjection, it has set up the philosophical agenda of a large part of post-independence Indian philosophy with such apparently simple questions as: "what is colonization doing to our mind? What is cultural subjection and alienation for consciousness, for the development of philosophy in India? Which influences have foreign models of education and the use of English for thinking in colonial India? And maybe, more importantly: what can we do with such a heritage, how can we go 'further' after the colonization of minds?" However, if 'svaraj' is a concept whose importance is growing in contemporary Indian discourse, KCB's Svaraj in Ideas' reception's still in becoming, neither being considered as a founder of postcolonialism, nor as a major philosophical model for Indian philosophy today, even less known in (postcolonial) philosophy outside India.
This talk attempts to go back to KCB's analysis of the challenges of intellectual colonialism (and following critiques addressed to this discourse) in order to explore contemporary postcolonial potentialities: can we move with KCB and his successors from 'colonial subjection' to 'postcolonial creativity'? Can we think the heritage of colonization as a source of hybridity for philosophy, necessary to re-create philosophy in a global world?