“Otherworldliness became spirituality, an Indian cultural essential that promised her a future cultural perfection unattained in the West. Passiveness became at first passive resistance and later nonviolent resistance – the age-old Indian character thus provided a revolutionary technique by which to bring on that future perfection. The supposed penchant of India to accept despotism led Gandhi to reject the state entirely. The backward and parochial village became the self-sufficient, consensual and harmonious center of decentralized democracy. An absent national integration turned into the oceanic circles of a people’s democracy. Insufficient Indian individualism became altruistic trusteeship, and inadequate entrepreneurial spirit turned into non-possessiveness. This ‘affirmative Orientalism’ owes much to Europeans like the vegetarian Henry Salt, the Theosophist Annie Besant, the Hindu convert Sister Nivedita, the simplifier Edward Carpenter, and the champion of spiritual nonviolence, Tolstoy, all of whom employed these positive stereotypes against a modernized, aggressive, capitalist, materialistic, and carnivorous Europe for which they bore little love. …

Gandhian utopia reacts against negative orientalism by adopting and enhancing this positive image. It therefore ends up with a new Orientalism, that is, a new stereotype, of India, but an affirmative one, leading to an effective resistance. …

Orientalism did not only serve European domination. Affirmative Orientalism furthered the resistance by Europeans to Western capitalism and modern industrial society.”

aus: Richard G. Fox: East of Said. In: Joan Vincent: The Anthropology of Politics, Main Street Maiden MA, USA u.a. 2009, S. 147/148.

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