Cultural Appropriations of The Mahabharata

 Cultural Appropriations of The Mahabharata: A Continuous Battle between Colonization and Decolonization

Dr. Manisha Patil

Associate, IIAS SHIMLA

Ever since Charles Wilkins translated The Bhagavat-Geeta in English in 1785, Indian sacred texts, The Mahabharata being the foremost among them, have been continuously translated, adapted and appropriated by the Western Orientalists as the finest method of what Edward Said called “to domesticate the Orient and thereby turn it into a province of European learning.” (Said 78) This entire enterprise of Orientalism is based on the famous maxim of Michael Foucault called ‘knowledge is power’. The construction of knowledge about India was (and is) essential for the subjugation of India. Through a series of English translations of ancient Sanskrit texts like The Mahabharata, Western writers have created an ‘authentic’ textual account of India whereby India had a very rich ancient cultural heritage but has fallen from that grace to the present chaos. Even after independence, it remains the ‘White Man’s burden’ (Rudyard Kipling’s phrase) to discover, appreciate, analyse and propagate the wisdom of ancient Indian literature as Indians themselves are incapable to do so. This process of neo-colonizing the mind of Indians by modern Orientalists has unauthenticated the lived experiences of millions of Indians and subtly imbibed self-directed racism, hatred and inferiority complex among them. As a result, it is necessary to interrogate the Western adaptations and cultural appropriations of the Indian texts like The Mahabharata and once again wage the battle for what Ngugi, Wa Thiong'o rightly calls ‘Decolonizing the Mind’.