The Prime Minister’s trip to Germany focussed on boosting trade and technology ties. But the gifts that he exchanged with his host, Chancellor Angela Merkel, offer a sneak peak into the deeper civilisation connect between India and Germany
Despite their complimentary national traits and requirements — if Germany can benefit from access to Indian skilled labour and a large market here, India’s growth story can be fuelled by cutting-edge German technology — and equally importantly, a shared commitment to the universal values of freedom, democracy and equality, the two countries are somehow indifferent to each other. Sure, there has been increasing cooperation at the Government-to-Government and business-to-business levels, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recently concluded trip to Germany shows, but at the people-to-people level, there is still precious little to talk about, beyond Bollywood and Bayern Munich.
This is especially disappointing because the two countries do, in fact, share a deeper civilisational connect that somehow seems to have snapped in the modern age. A re-discovery of this civilisational connect has the potential to truly re-invigorate the India-Germany bilateral and offer young Germans and Indians alike a fresh perspective, as they both seek to re-define their place within a new world order.
The gifts that Mr Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel exchanged earlier this week offer a sneak peak into the historical ties that the two nations share. Mr Modi gifted his host, who holds a doctorate in quantum chemistry, reproductions of manuscripts and papers written by Indian Nobel Laureate CV Raman who is known to have been inspired by the famous German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz to pursue a career in science On her part, Ms Merkel on Tuesday gifted Mr Modi an original first edition print of German Indologist Friedrich Max Müller’s book on the Indian spiritual leader, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa.
Today, Max Müller is, arguably, the most recognisable German in India. This is as it should be for few other foreigners have contributed so significantly to India’s understanding of its past and its philosophy as he. Best known for editing The Sacred Books of the East, his monumental 50-volume set of English translations of Asian religious text that was published by the Oxford University Press between 1879 and 1910, Max Müller also translated the Upanishads and the Rig Veda.
His other well-known book, that seems to have been largely forgotten in this country today, is titledIndia —What It Can Teach Us. The book is based on his lectures to candidates of the Indian Civil Service examination, on whom he wished to impress the importance of ancient Indian culture and tradition. His last major work, published a year before his death in 1900, was The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy. This was the major first publication to discuss all the philosophical systems of India.
But while there is still a reasonable amount of recognition of Max Müller and his work in India, few today remember his contemporary Indologists. For example, Arthur Schopenhauer, who worked around the same time as Max Müller and is considered to be the first Western thinker who incorporated thoughts of the Upanishads in his own philosophy, hardly rings a bell.
Schopenhauer believed that called the availability of Sanskrit literature to the West was “the greatest gift of our century”, and even predicted that ancient Indian philosophy, which he considered to be the “highest human wisdom”, would become the “cherished faith of the West”. In the preface to his best known work, The World As Will And Representation, Schopenhauer writes that one who “has also received and assimilated the sacred primitive Indian wisdom, then he is the best of all prepared to hear what I have to say to him”. Interestingly, Schopenhauer was introduced to Indian philosophy through his friend Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, a lesser known philosopher, who had mastered the Sanskrit language.
This is just a small list of a few thinkers from the 19 century. The first German to study Sanskrit can be traced to back to the 17th century to the missionary Heinrich Roth, who lived in India and is believed to have written on Sanskirt grammar but his works were never published. Later, August Wilhelm Schlegel, the first professor of Indology at Bonn University, published his famous book, On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians while poet Friedrich Rückert gained prominence with his translation of the Mahabharat.
At this point, one may rightly question how exactly the study of what obscure German philosophers had to say about India or Indian philosophy would be of any interest to contemporary Indians (or Germans, for that matter). The answer to that is simple: If young Indians (and Germans) are looking to rewrite their terms of engagement with each other and indeed with the world, they will have to find their own unique narrative. Besides, a nation that is ignorant of its past cannot hope to build a strong and secure future — and this is particularly relevant for an emerging power like India that has an otherwise robust civilisational identity.
Two good examples of how ancient knowledge can be or is being leveraged in the contemporary world is the growing popularity of traditional Indian medicines and therapeutic practices in this country and that of Sanskrit studies in Germany. Unfortunately, the Indian perspectives on these issues have oscillated from completely ignoring the matter on the one hand to romanticizing it on the other. Since Germany has made huge progress in researching ancient India, and Sanskrit classes there are so popular today that universities can’t find enough teachers to cater to the growing demand, these ties have the potential to be leveraged further.
(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on April 16, 2015)
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