The Indian self and the others: Individual and collective identities in India

Abstract

Starting from the influential Western tradition of constructing “Asia” and the “Asians” as distinctively different from “Europe” and the “Europeans,” the author discusses how theories about the “self” have proven to be constitutive for culture-specific understandings of the self and the other in one’s own and in foreign societies. By contrasting some of the main characteristics of “Western” views of Asians with Hindu and Buddhist theories about the self, he then shows how the tendency to construct “Asians” as distinct others has resulted in many Western scholars’ failure a) to understand key aspects of Indian self-theories and b) to do justice to the vast spectrum of traditions of Indian and Asian thought that do not conceive of Asia as a more or less homogenous cultural sphere. Finally, the author discusses how a more thorough analysis of intercultural and intracultural self-theories can shed light on the crucial sociological and psychological role such theories can play in the history and politics of intercultural encounters as well as on the factors involved in India’s and other society’s ongoing effort to achieve a collective identity.