Framing “Always Indigenize” beyond the Settler-Colony: “Indigenizing” in India

Abstract

LEN FINDLAY'S ALWAYS INDIGENIZE IS AN INSPIRING CALL to Open up academy Canada to indigenous people and to indigenous scholarship. Findlay's critique of Canadian academy its tacit colonial practices is committed to local politics, and clearly stated title of essay, attends to vision and possibility of Radical Humanities Postcolonial Canadian University (italics mine). Although Findlay's essay carefully remembers that its politics are contingent on context n which they are taken up, maxim itself makes a broad generalising claim. Clearly, there is an element of universal nation of always indigenize. Findlay reminds us of Chandler's caveat that Jameson's historicize, on which Findlay models his indigenize is unclear and general and lends itself to be divergently interpreted by literary scholars, his proposition, nevertheless, imagines universal model (Findlay 308). This rhetoric of universalization becomes problematic, because Findlay's critique and anti-hegemonic strategies specifically speak to invader/settler-colonies. My interest here is to assess what call to indigenize means non-settler colonies, specifically India, where colonial matrix is different than a settler colony such Canada. I write specifically with more than 67.8 million (1991 census peoples of India mind, who form about 8% of Indian population, and largest population any single nation-state. (1) I am not a tribal myself, and I do not speak for tribal peoples India (a very large and heterogeneous group itself): what follows are my considerations a scholar of Indian writing and someone familiar with politics and particularities of Indian situation. It seems to me that Findlay's strategies, which are so enabling Canadian context, taken up its universalistic formulation, whatever else good they do, do not allow a liberating politics to tribal peoples India. And it also seems to me that if it were possible to translate it to an Indian context, politics of Findlay's essay would want to include fourth-world peoples, and not eclipse their cause. I am deepest political sympathy with Findlay's ideals, but because my concern lies a non-settler colony, I must tease out his strategy to from its unspoken and universalising settler-colony context. Findlay grounds his arguments on hypotheses that in (human) beginning was indigene and communities live as, or relation to, indigene (Findlay 308). In this context, he explains how he wants call to indigenize to be heard: as a strategically indeterminate provocation to thought and action on grounds that there is no hors-indigene, no geo-political and psychic setting, no real or imagined terra nullis free from satisfactions and unsettlements of Indigenous pre-occupation (309). Further, twin strategies of visibility and conspiracy, which he explores Section II of his essay, work very well when indigenous is a racial minority, visibly identifiable or otherwise. Moreover, discussion last section of a more inclusive English department, committed equally to Englishes and Others, becomes possible Canada because English is majority-spoken language. In spite of its colonial and hegemonic beginnings, Findlay can hope that English can become a source of good instrumentality which will allow new alliances between English literary and Indigenous Studies (322,308). The historio-geography Findlay describes all these assumptions suggests that that kind of colonisation he has mind, and hence his strategies of indigenization, attend to power structures settler-colonies. It is not possible, however, to generalise these parameters to a non-settler colony. In sharp contrast to situation settler colonies such Canada, non-settler colonies entire colonised population were, and relationally still are, the native opposed to outsider colonisers. …