Contradictions of being modern: Memory, performativity and caste

Abstract

The paper argues that the ‘objects’ of study based on which the ideas of modern and modernity have been examined in the Indian context have always been the ‘other’ of the dominant. That this approach has constructed a lowered caste, gendered other as non-modern is obvious, the paper explores how this approach has masked the dominant’s non-modern self. I look at the everyday, political, social and performative practices of Kodava that are memory based. I analyse these practices of ethno-linguistic minorities that are usually restricted to the realm of private and to the non-modern to point out how they constitute the modern. By doing so, I wish to reveal the non-modernity of the dominant and the modernity of the thus far ‘othered’. I draw from Wengrow and Graeber’s critique of European enlightenment and modernity that they argue drew from native American practices and philosophers. The paper contextualizes Wengrow and Graeber’s argument within the framework of sanskritization and points to how the supposed modern ‘has never been modern’.