This essay was prepared on request of the 'Indira Gandhi National Centre of the Arts' (IGNCA, New Delhi) while the author was working in India on various projects during Dec. 1998/Jan. 1999, hence its essayistic style. The text was presented at the IGNCA in the framework of a public lecture on January 28th 1999. The paper basically questions the Eurocentric Western humanities and its capacities to adequately describe cultural conditions like those of the Indian subcontinent where rural traditional cultures are still dominant, but are ruled by urban values. The urban rural dichotomy outlined here shows clearly that, in regard to important parameters, the Western method widely projects the results of Eurocentric urban history on the population of other cultures like India, demanding tremendous efforts of adaption to these scientifically highly speculative urban values.
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