Then come the tribals. Inden says it is on to the tribals that the Jungians –
Inden’s term for scholars interested in Indian mythology and art in themselves,
rather than as instrumental in social scientific understanding – “offload the
savagery, animal sacrifice, and general fetishism and animism formerly attrib-
uted to the Dravidian.”
Campbell conjures up this essence: “For the calmly ruthless power of the
jungle... has supplied the drone base of whatever song has ever been sung in
India of man, his destiny and escape from destiny” (122).
Inden performs his customary trick of equating jungle with woman:
This defining essence consists of nothing more than the female side of the mind,
that which threatens to overcome man’s consciousness and reason. There has to
be sure, been a beneficent side to this femininity: [Inden quotes Campbell again:]
“New civilizations, races, philosophies, and great mythologies have poured into
India and have been not only assimilated but greatly developed, enriched, and
[made?] sophisticated.”
[Inden:] But the goddess, Kali, condensation of this jungle essence, is always
there:
[Campbell:] “Yet, in the end (and in fact, even secretly throughout), the endur-
ing power in that land has always been the same old dark goddess of the long red
dark tongue who turns everything into her own everlasting, awesome, yet finally
somewhat tedious, self.” (1992: 123).Inden comments, “Thus have the Jungians pushed the romantic idea of
Hinduism as an ambivalent feminine entity to its extreme.”
The reader gets from Inden no indication that India contains a great variety
of cultures, that there is a real difference in many ways between North India and
the Dravidian language speakers of the South, and that the great forests of
Central India still contain millions of tribal peoples, who only in the last hundred
years or so have given up widescale human sacrifice. These are not figments of
the Orientalist imagination but facts. As Felix Padel remarks in his sensitive
study of the Konds of Orissa, “tribal India is as different from mainstream India,
as that is from Britain, or more so” (1995: 11). The jungle dwelling primitive has
been an important factor in Hinduism; S ́iva and Pa ̄rvatı ̄ often dress as tribals.
Hinduism, Hindu authors, delight throughout history in running the gamut
from the grandeur of metropolitan monarchs to warriors to forest dwelling
ascetics to forest dwelling tribals. All part of life’s natural hierarchy, just like
the caste system.
Inden accuses Campbell of conjuring up an essence, but Inden himself is per-
forming a conjuring trick, conjuring up an ascription of femininity where it does
not exist – the Orientalist is the Other over which he seeks hegemony. But the
Goddess does play a vital, indeed an essential role, in Hinduism. In his zeal to put
words into the mouths of Orientalists, Inden overlooks the realities of Indian
texts. The flesh-eating goddess deep in the jungle was a standard theme of
Sanskrit and Tamil heroic texts. Inden several times refers to the Emperor Hars.a.
Ba ̄n.a, the great prose poet of Hars.a’s reign, in his unfinished prose poem
orientalism and hinduism 59