colonialism and combating cultural chauvinism

Since all knowledge is so profoundly mediated, isn't objective knowledge impossible to achieve?



a genuinely comparative approach to Indian literature – literature produced across regions and linguistic traditions – can help us avoid the problems caused by regional insularity and cultural chauvinism.



I think some forms of cultural chauvinism in India originated during British rule as a kind of mimicry, initially a defence against cultural denigration by the colonial masters.  The irony is that the defence (“my culture is also great, much like those of your European nations”) in fact drew on the ugliest forms of ethnocentrism and the racist logic found in 18th and 19th century Europe (“we are culturally superior to them, the barbarians, the ‘mlecchas' – and the languages of our less civilised neighbours are worth less than our Sanskritised Aryan languages”). 

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2906/stories/mohantyinterview.pdf