[ LETTER TO NEWSPAPERS]
D-504 Purvasha
Mayur Vihar 1
Delhi 110091
29 December 2003
Dear Editor,
While the Sangh Parivar has every right to observe the death of Kushabhau
Thakre in any way it pleases, Madhya Pradesh has no business to arrange
a state funeral and declare two days of mourning for a person who was neither
an elected representative there nor a constitutional functionary. This is
misuse of public resources for private purposes. The waste will become far
greater because the state's economy will come to a halt for a day.
Although on paper we are a democracy and a republic, under the Sangh Parivar
dispensation the trappings of monarchy have returned. Narendra Modi's second
swearing-in was a regal affair attended by both the Prime Minister and the
Deputy Prime Minister (who will, naturally, also witness the cremation of
the late Mr. Thakre); and the recent swearings-in of Chhattisgarh, Madhya
Pradesh and Rajasthan were also modelled after the circus of ancient Rome
and the late Shri Hitler's rally at Nuremberg.
Yours truly,
Mukul Dube
o o o
[See Related report:
Thakre cremated with full state honours
http://www.thehindu.com/2003/12/30/stories/2003123003961100.htm ]
|
December 30, 2003
December 27, 2003
India: Recognition to Witchcraft - Illegal and Ill-Founded
Economic and Political Weekly
December 27, 2003
Recognition to Witchcraft
Illegal and Ill-Founded
The history of India is one of inchoate assimilation of disparate tribes – their respective myths, customs and cults left fairly intact, only incoherently unified in a hierarchical order. This process of absorption was relatively humane by international standards, but it became the precursor of a swamp of superstitions. Placating these superstitions – as evidenced most recently by the felicitation of witch doctors, shamans and sorcerers – might momentarily bring votes to the politician in election times, but it will only exacerbate the deeper fissures.
Ranjit Sau
On September 22, 2003, at a function in Patna, Sanjay Paswan, union minister of state for human resource development, felicitated 51 witch doctors, shamans, and sorcerers. The Bihar unit of the International Association of People’s Lawyers had asked the police to stop the function on the ground that it amounted to a gross violation of Bihar’s Prevention of Witch Practices Act, 1999. The Patna-based Mahila Samajik Sansthan has filed a public interest suit against Paswan in the Patna High Court, and has demanded his arrest. Social activists and researchers have accused Paswan of encouraging superstition for the purpose of gaining votes in election for political office.
The very fact that as late as 1999 an act had to be passed to outlaw the practice of witchcraft in Bihar is itself eloquent enough. The malady is deep-rooted and widespread. One is reminded here of an observation by Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi: “Ideas (including superstition) become a force, once they have gripped the masses”. Apparently, the spell of witchcraft had once swayed the masses, and it has continued ever since.
Paswan said he was “seriously thinking of introducing a new course in school syllabus on the basis of experiences of witchcraft practitioners, including ojhas (witch doctors), gunis (shamans, practitioners of occult), and bhagats (sorcerers)”. The neglect of these people, he added, had made villages vulnerable to natural and other calamities. “It is they who protected villages from evil spirits.”
We have got two kinds of evil spirits to contend with – one roaming villages, the other circling the towns. Thus arises in India a dual system of superstitions. The entire course of ancient Indian history shows tribal elements being fused into a general society. This development was in its own way much more humane than in other countries. The older cults and forms were not demolished by force, but assimilated with great ingenuity. Superstition reduced the need for violence. The main work of brahmanism has been to gather the disparate tribal myths together, to display them as unified cycles of stories, and to set them in a better-articulated social framework. Brahmanism thus gave some unity to what would have been social fragments without a common bond. The process was of crucial importance in the history of India, first in developing the country from tribe to society and then holding it back, bogged down in a swamp of superstition. Much more brutality would have been necessary had Indian history developed along the same lines as that of Europe or the Americas.
Kosambi labels one set of beliefs, rituals, practice as ‘priestly superstition’. In decrying the role of superstition when it kept India backward, he says, it must never be forgotten that priestly ritual and magic also helped bring civilisation to various localities in ancient India. Such beliefs turned into fetters when the class-structure hardened. Mere superstition cannot arise unless it has some deep productive roots, though it might survive by inertia.
The priestly class must have had some peculiar function in the early means of production, some outstanding success that gave it a hold upon society. One of those contributions was a good calendar. It does not suffice here, unlike in Europe, for the farmer to note the end of winter by natural signs. Here the sequence of activities has to be timely. Land has to be prepared before the monsoon sets in; sowing can be done only after the proper rainy season has begun, or the sprouts will die. The fields are best weeded during the mid-monsoon break. The real difficulty lay in telling the time of the year accurately. The moon with its phases sufficed for primitive man’s simple ritual; and the birds, beasts and plants themselves furnished all necessary information to food-gatherers. This left an enduring heritage of the lunar month, and prognostication by omens.
But the food-producer’s year is solar, which requires constant adjustment of lunar months. The urgent need for a working almanac lay at the root of astronomy, algebra, the theory of numbers, all of which were conspicuous achievements of the priestly class. The season can then be foretold even when the sun and the moon obliterated their starry background, or were invisible because of clouds.
Primitive reasoning led inevitably to the conclusion that the heavenly bodies not merely predict but form all-important weather; the word “meteorology” still implies that. Therefore, the stars and planets foreshadow and control all of human life. Thus the horoscope (which even Galileo drew up in his day), astrology, mantras, and rituals to placate or influence the heavenly spirits were natural concomitants to the indispensable priestly calendar. It cannot be without significance that Aryabhatta (who was the first to suggest that the earth rotates about its axis) and Varahamihira (better known for his astrology, iconography, prognostication and allied ‘sciences’) were among the nine jewels of the Gupta court in the late fifth century.
A great separating line appeared in the course of transition from tribe to society. Those who refused to take to food production and plough agriculture fell behind in social and economic status, along with their totems, taboos and fearsome spirits. Meanwhile, the deities worshipped by farmers reside high above the sky in mountain tops, stars and planets, but those propitiated by hunters and food-gatherers are to be found at a much lower level on earth in trees, stones or animals. The altitude of the abode is a measure of the prestige of the occupant spirits.
Caste is class on a primitive level of production. The class structure hardened by the fifth century, as a serious shortage of coins of precious metals led to the organised formation of self-sufficient villages, requiring least amount of cash transaction, each village having been provided with precisely twelve artisans to serve the gentry in exchange of subsistence in kind. Then the doctrine of ancestral-commodity fetishism came to prevent social mobility. At this point the divine spirits along with the associated superstitions got partitioned neatly between the artisans on the one hand and the upper classes on the other. It so happens that the present ministry of human resource development in Delhi is fortunate to have spokesmen for both parties. If the minister of state is a champion of one group, the cabinet minister is a strong protagonist of the other. If the former is bent on putting witchcraft in schools, the latter keeps pushing astrology into colleges and universities.
Once it was thought that economic development is a solvent into which all ignorance melts. And education is the most potent antidote of all. But the two ministers do not seem economically underdeveloped, nor do they look lacking in education. Both are said to have the highest academic degree in physics, and they were lecturers. To relieve our anxiety on this count, Paswan has issued a statement: “I strongly believe that whatever they [witch doctors] practice is pure science.” But this has put us in a quandary. For science is a terrible thing, without even a shred of proof.
The demarcation between science and pseudo-science is not merely a problem of armchair philosophy; it is of vital relevance for society. Many philosophers have tried to resolve the problem of demarcation in the following terms: a statement constitutes knowledge if many people believe it sufficiently strongly. But the history of thought shows that many people were totally committed to absurd beliefs. If the strength of beliefs were a hallmark of knowledge, we should have to rank some tales about demons, angels, devil and of heaven and hell as knowledge.
Scientists, on the other hand, are very sceptical of their best theories. Newton’s is the most powerful theory science has yet produced, but Newton himself never believed that bodies attract each other at a distance. So no degree of commitments to beliefs make them knowledge. The cognitive value of a theory has nothing to do with its psychological influence on people’s minds. Belief, commitment, understanding are states of human mind. But the objective, scientific value of a theory is independent of the human mind which creates it or understands it.
But, we know, all scientific theories are equally unprovable; for every theory in turn depends upon another theory. For example, Galileo claimed that he could observe mountains on the moon and spots on the sun, and that these observations refuted the time-honoured Aristotelian theory that celestial bodies are faultless crystal balls. But his observations were not observed by unaided senses: their reliability depended upon the reliability of his telescope – and of the optical theory of the telescope – which was violently questioned by his contemporaries. It was not Galileo’s pure, untheoretical observations that confronted Aristotelian theory; but rather Galileo’s observations in the light of his optical theory that confronted the Aristotelians’ observations in the light of their theory of the heavens. It is all circular reasoning.
Recourse to the probability of occurrence does not help much either. For the mathematical probability of all theories, given any amount of evidence, is zero. We do not know, for sure, how long the series of experiments has to be in order to yield the correct estimate of probabilities; nor shall we ever know. “When is a series of experiments to be called long [enough]?”, asks Karl Popper. “We cannot know when, or whether, we have reached an approximation to the probability. How can we know that the desired approximation has in fact been reached?” Thus reckoned, scientific theories are not only equally unprovable, but also equally improbable.
So, science proceeds by trial and error, taking risk on the way. Theories in science live in a world of Darwinian struggle; the fittest survive, for a while. There is no perfect theory, only better theory, for the time being. Newton was challenged by Einstein; so is Einstein by a host of others. That is how knowledge advances.
In respect of society and spirituality there is even less scope for experimentation or proof by other means. But that does not mean we cannot discriminate between beliefs. Mahatma Gandhi had characterised the devastating earthquake of January 1934 in Bihar as “a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins” – in particular the sin of practising untouchability. “For me”, he said, “there is a vital connection between the Bihar calamity and the [custom of] untouchability.” Rabindranath Tagore was equally against that social scourge. Yet he was constrained to distance himself from Gandhiji’s judgment that related a natural disaster such as earthquake to some extraterrestrial dispensation of justice. “It is”, Tagore wrote, “all the more unfortunate because this kind of unscientific view of phenomena is too easily accepted by a large section of our countrymen.”
Once upon a time man had claimed himself to be the sole cosmic purpose. He placed himself at the centre of the universe, leaving all heavenly bodies to rotate about his home-planet, the earth. But, then the successive discoveries of the solar system, the Milky Way, the existence of innumerable galaxies, and so on had the effect of dethroning him from the pinnacle of creation. Similarly, he had to give up the prejudice that diseases were a retribution for our ethical failure. Comets are no longer looked upon as an advance warning of an impending catastrophe attracted by his sin.
On social and spiritual matters, we can, much like Galileo, observe other communities, especially their rituals, customs and beliefs, and compare them with ours. Much like the theories of science, there may be no perfect belief about society and spirituality, but there could be better ones by some measure. To put it in more concrete terms, Paswan may like to compare the performance of the ojhas with that of the doctors at the New Moon Hospital, at Chichra, for instance. To take another example, rural electrification and provision of good schools, drinkable water and efficient medical service may be a better way of keeping the evil spirits at bay than by, say, appointing 50 witch doctors, shamans and gunis.
Of course, a politician need not always actually believe in what he says or does. His metric is how to face the ballot box within a year or two. He dares not perturb the age-old social prejudice. He would rather titillate than challenge the ruling regime of silent exploitation. Such politics only goes to undermine the very basis of democracy. In 1938, Rabindranath wrote: “We who often glorify our tendency to ignore reason, installing in its place blind faith, valuing it as spiritual, are ever paying for its cost with obscuration of our mind and destiny. ...This irrational force of credulity in our people ... might have had a quick result [of building] a superstructure, while sapping the foundation.”
Placed by the side of comparable countries like China, Russia and the US, or the smaller countries like England, France and Germany, India has the dubious distinction of recording by far the largest volume of dissent, disturbance and insurgency within its border. India does not seem to have crossed the stage of being an uneasy complex of disparate tribes. The prevailing politics is exacerbating the tribal divisions and subdivisions without providing the canopy of a collective identity. Promotion of witchcraft, shamanism and sorcery is not to be conflated with renaissance. It is a crash obscurantism that gnaws at the very foundation of a rational society of justice and democracy, while deceptively supporting a broad superstructure of toleration and generosity.
December 27, 2003
Recognition to Witchcraft
Illegal and Ill-Founded
The history of India is one of inchoate assimilation of disparate tribes – their respective myths, customs and cults left fairly intact, only incoherently unified in a hierarchical order. This process of absorption was relatively humane by international standards, but it became the precursor of a swamp of superstitions. Placating these superstitions – as evidenced most recently by the felicitation of witch doctors, shamans and sorcerers – might momentarily bring votes to the politician in election times, but it will only exacerbate the deeper fissures.
Ranjit Sau
On September 22, 2003, at a function in Patna, Sanjay Paswan, union minister of state for human resource development, felicitated 51 witch doctors, shamans, and sorcerers. The Bihar unit of the International Association of People’s Lawyers had asked the police to stop the function on the ground that it amounted to a gross violation of Bihar’s Prevention of Witch Practices Act, 1999. The Patna-based Mahila Samajik Sansthan has filed a public interest suit against Paswan in the Patna High Court, and has demanded his arrest. Social activists and researchers have accused Paswan of encouraging superstition for the purpose of gaining votes in election for political office.
The very fact that as late as 1999 an act had to be passed to outlaw the practice of witchcraft in Bihar is itself eloquent enough. The malady is deep-rooted and widespread. One is reminded here of an observation by Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi: “Ideas (including superstition) become a force, once they have gripped the masses”. Apparently, the spell of witchcraft had once swayed the masses, and it has continued ever since.
Paswan said he was “seriously thinking of introducing a new course in school syllabus on the basis of experiences of witchcraft practitioners, including ojhas (witch doctors), gunis (shamans, practitioners of occult), and bhagats (sorcerers)”. The neglect of these people, he added, had made villages vulnerable to natural and other calamities. “It is they who protected villages from evil spirits.”
We have got two kinds of evil spirits to contend with – one roaming villages, the other circling the towns. Thus arises in India a dual system of superstitions. The entire course of ancient Indian history shows tribal elements being fused into a general society. This development was in its own way much more humane than in other countries. The older cults and forms were not demolished by force, but assimilated with great ingenuity. Superstition reduced the need for violence. The main work of brahmanism has been to gather the disparate tribal myths together, to display them as unified cycles of stories, and to set them in a better-articulated social framework. Brahmanism thus gave some unity to what would have been social fragments without a common bond. The process was of crucial importance in the history of India, first in developing the country from tribe to society and then holding it back, bogged down in a swamp of superstition. Much more brutality would have been necessary had Indian history developed along the same lines as that of Europe or the Americas.
Kosambi labels one set of beliefs, rituals, practice as ‘priestly superstition’. In decrying the role of superstition when it kept India backward, he says, it must never be forgotten that priestly ritual and magic also helped bring civilisation to various localities in ancient India. Such beliefs turned into fetters when the class-structure hardened. Mere superstition cannot arise unless it has some deep productive roots, though it might survive by inertia.
The priestly class must have had some peculiar function in the early means of production, some outstanding success that gave it a hold upon society. One of those contributions was a good calendar. It does not suffice here, unlike in Europe, for the farmer to note the end of winter by natural signs. Here the sequence of activities has to be timely. Land has to be prepared before the monsoon sets in; sowing can be done only after the proper rainy season has begun, or the sprouts will die. The fields are best weeded during the mid-monsoon break. The real difficulty lay in telling the time of the year accurately. The moon with its phases sufficed for primitive man’s simple ritual; and the birds, beasts and plants themselves furnished all necessary information to food-gatherers. This left an enduring heritage of the lunar month, and prognostication by omens.
But the food-producer’s year is solar, which requires constant adjustment of lunar months. The urgent need for a working almanac lay at the root of astronomy, algebra, the theory of numbers, all of which were conspicuous achievements of the priestly class. The season can then be foretold even when the sun and the moon obliterated their starry background, or were invisible because of clouds.
Primitive reasoning led inevitably to the conclusion that the heavenly bodies not merely predict but form all-important weather; the word “meteorology” still implies that. Therefore, the stars and planets foreshadow and control all of human life. Thus the horoscope (which even Galileo drew up in his day), astrology, mantras, and rituals to placate or influence the heavenly spirits were natural concomitants to the indispensable priestly calendar. It cannot be without significance that Aryabhatta (who was the first to suggest that the earth rotates about its axis) and Varahamihira (better known for his astrology, iconography, prognostication and allied ‘sciences’) were among the nine jewels of the Gupta court in the late fifth century.
A great separating line appeared in the course of transition from tribe to society. Those who refused to take to food production and plough agriculture fell behind in social and economic status, along with their totems, taboos and fearsome spirits. Meanwhile, the deities worshipped by farmers reside high above the sky in mountain tops, stars and planets, but those propitiated by hunters and food-gatherers are to be found at a much lower level on earth in trees, stones or animals. The altitude of the abode is a measure of the prestige of the occupant spirits.
Caste is class on a primitive level of production. The class structure hardened by the fifth century, as a serious shortage of coins of precious metals led to the organised formation of self-sufficient villages, requiring least amount of cash transaction, each village having been provided with precisely twelve artisans to serve the gentry in exchange of subsistence in kind. Then the doctrine of ancestral-commodity fetishism came to prevent social mobility. At this point the divine spirits along with the associated superstitions got partitioned neatly between the artisans on the one hand and the upper classes on the other. It so happens that the present ministry of human resource development in Delhi is fortunate to have spokesmen for both parties. If the minister of state is a champion of one group, the cabinet minister is a strong protagonist of the other. If the former is bent on putting witchcraft in schools, the latter keeps pushing astrology into colleges and universities.
Once it was thought that economic development is a solvent into which all ignorance melts. And education is the most potent antidote of all. But the two ministers do not seem economically underdeveloped, nor do they look lacking in education. Both are said to have the highest academic degree in physics, and they were lecturers. To relieve our anxiety on this count, Paswan has issued a statement: “I strongly believe that whatever they [witch doctors] practice is pure science.” But this has put us in a quandary. For science is a terrible thing, without even a shred of proof.
The demarcation between science and pseudo-science is not merely a problem of armchair philosophy; it is of vital relevance for society. Many philosophers have tried to resolve the problem of demarcation in the following terms: a statement constitutes knowledge if many people believe it sufficiently strongly. But the history of thought shows that many people were totally committed to absurd beliefs. If the strength of beliefs were a hallmark of knowledge, we should have to rank some tales about demons, angels, devil and of heaven and hell as knowledge.
Scientists, on the other hand, are very sceptical of their best theories. Newton’s is the most powerful theory science has yet produced, but Newton himself never believed that bodies attract each other at a distance. So no degree of commitments to beliefs make them knowledge. The cognitive value of a theory has nothing to do with its psychological influence on people’s minds. Belief, commitment, understanding are states of human mind. But the objective, scientific value of a theory is independent of the human mind which creates it or understands it.
But, we know, all scientific theories are equally unprovable; for every theory in turn depends upon another theory. For example, Galileo claimed that he could observe mountains on the moon and spots on the sun, and that these observations refuted the time-honoured Aristotelian theory that celestial bodies are faultless crystal balls. But his observations were not observed by unaided senses: their reliability depended upon the reliability of his telescope – and of the optical theory of the telescope – which was violently questioned by his contemporaries. It was not Galileo’s pure, untheoretical observations that confronted Aristotelian theory; but rather Galileo’s observations in the light of his optical theory that confronted the Aristotelians’ observations in the light of their theory of the heavens. It is all circular reasoning.
Recourse to the probability of occurrence does not help much either. For the mathematical probability of all theories, given any amount of evidence, is zero. We do not know, for sure, how long the series of experiments has to be in order to yield the correct estimate of probabilities; nor shall we ever know. “When is a series of experiments to be called long [enough]?”, asks Karl Popper. “We cannot know when, or whether, we have reached an approximation to the probability. How can we know that the desired approximation has in fact been reached?” Thus reckoned, scientific theories are not only equally unprovable, but also equally improbable.
So, science proceeds by trial and error, taking risk on the way. Theories in science live in a world of Darwinian struggle; the fittest survive, for a while. There is no perfect theory, only better theory, for the time being. Newton was challenged by Einstein; so is Einstein by a host of others. That is how knowledge advances.
In respect of society and spirituality there is even less scope for experimentation or proof by other means. But that does not mean we cannot discriminate between beliefs. Mahatma Gandhi had characterised the devastating earthquake of January 1934 in Bihar as “a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins” – in particular the sin of practising untouchability. “For me”, he said, “there is a vital connection between the Bihar calamity and the [custom of] untouchability.” Rabindranath Tagore was equally against that social scourge. Yet he was constrained to distance himself from Gandhiji’s judgment that related a natural disaster such as earthquake to some extraterrestrial dispensation of justice. “It is”, Tagore wrote, “all the more unfortunate because this kind of unscientific view of phenomena is too easily accepted by a large section of our countrymen.”
Once upon a time man had claimed himself to be the sole cosmic purpose. He placed himself at the centre of the universe, leaving all heavenly bodies to rotate about his home-planet, the earth. But, then the successive discoveries of the solar system, the Milky Way, the existence of innumerable galaxies, and so on had the effect of dethroning him from the pinnacle of creation. Similarly, he had to give up the prejudice that diseases were a retribution for our ethical failure. Comets are no longer looked upon as an advance warning of an impending catastrophe attracted by his sin.
On social and spiritual matters, we can, much like Galileo, observe other communities, especially their rituals, customs and beliefs, and compare them with ours. Much like the theories of science, there may be no perfect belief about society and spirituality, but there could be better ones by some measure. To put it in more concrete terms, Paswan may like to compare the performance of the ojhas with that of the doctors at the New Moon Hospital, at Chichra, for instance. To take another example, rural electrification and provision of good schools, drinkable water and efficient medical service may be a better way of keeping the evil spirits at bay than by, say, appointing 50 witch doctors, shamans and gunis.
Of course, a politician need not always actually believe in what he says or does. His metric is how to face the ballot box within a year or two. He dares not perturb the age-old social prejudice. He would rather titillate than challenge the ruling regime of silent exploitation. Such politics only goes to undermine the very basis of democracy. In 1938, Rabindranath wrote: “We who often glorify our tendency to ignore reason, installing in its place blind faith, valuing it as spiritual, are ever paying for its cost with obscuration of our mind and destiny. ...This irrational force of credulity in our people ... might have had a quick result [of building] a superstructure, while sapping the foundation.”
Placed by the side of comparable countries like China, Russia and the US, or the smaller countries like England, France and Germany, India has the dubious distinction of recording by far the largest volume of dissent, disturbance and insurgency within its border. India does not seem to have crossed the stage of being an uneasy complex of disparate tribes. The prevailing politics is exacerbating the tribal divisions and subdivisions without providing the canopy of a collective identity. Promotion of witchcraft, shamanism and sorcery is not to be conflated with renaissance. It is a crash obscurantism that gnaws at the very foundation of a rational society of justice and democracy, while deceptively supporting a broad superstructure of toleration and generosity.
December 25, 2003
India / France: True secularism against overt display of religiosity
The Times of India
25 December 2003
True secularism against overt display of religiosity
In India , we've grown so used to hypocrisy and half-truths that when we are confronted with the truth we can't see it for what it is.
And so it is with the French decision and the idea of secularism that underlies it. For India 's liberal elite, of course, secularism means something quite different from what it means to the French and indeed rest of the world.
It is not about the separation of church from state or religion from politics but the enthusiastic participation of state functionaries in all matters of faith. We've even got ourselves a weighty Sanskrit neologism to describe this desi corruption.
It's called sarvadharmasamabhava. In theoretical terms, it means that the Indian state is obliged to accord equal respect to all religions in public policy.
In practical terms, it translates into the most unseemly displays of religiosity by our political class: From ministers prostrating at the feet of self-styled godmen to leaders inaugurating their political campaigns at one or another place of worship.
And these, remember, are the less harmful examples of our secularism.
Think of Ayodhya and Gujarat and you get to the real mess that the Indian version of secularism, with its unthinking mixing of religion and politics, has produced. Yes, context and motive are important criteria in assessing any political decision.
But before we apply these standards to the recent French edict banning all markers of religious identity in state-run schools, let's apply them to our own sorry secular experiment.
Besides, any talk of context in the French case must take into account the country's proud republican tradition - of equality, liberty and fraternity - in which the state relates to individuals not as members of this or that community but as equal citizens.
Take away that history and no French citizen, much less a Muslim, would have the right to make the kind of criticism that he has so self-righteously directed against the banning of hijab in state-run schools.
25 December 2003
True secularism against overt display of religiosity
In India , we've grown so used to hypocrisy and half-truths that when we are confronted with the truth we can't see it for what it is.
And so it is with the French decision and the idea of secularism that underlies it. For India 's liberal elite, of course, secularism means something quite different from what it means to the French and indeed rest of the world.
It is not about the separation of church from state or religion from politics but the enthusiastic participation of state functionaries in all matters of faith. We've even got ourselves a weighty Sanskrit neologism to describe this desi corruption.
It's called sarvadharmasamabhava. In theoretical terms, it means that the Indian state is obliged to accord equal respect to all religions in public policy.
In practical terms, it translates into the most unseemly displays of religiosity by our political class: From ministers prostrating at the feet of self-styled godmen to leaders inaugurating their political campaigns at one or another place of worship.
And these, remember, are the less harmful examples of our secularism.
Think of Ayodhya and Gujarat and you get to the real mess that the Indian version of secularism, with its unthinking mixing of religion and politics, has produced. Yes, context and motive are important criteria in assessing any political decision.
But before we apply these standards to the recent French edict banning all markers of religious identity in state-run schools, let's apply them to our own sorry secular experiment.
Besides, any talk of context in the French case must take into account the country's proud republican tradition - of equality, liberty and fraternity - in which the state relates to individuals not as members of this or that community but as equal citizens.
Take away that history and no French citizen, much less a Muslim, would have the right to make the kind of criticism that he has so self-righteously directed against the banning of hijab in state-run schools.
India: BMAC, VHP two sides of same coin
The Times off India, December 24, 2003
'BMAC, VHP two sides of same coin'
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2003 01:46:35 AM ]
LUCKNOW: The very credentials of Muslim Personal Law Board and Babri Masjid Action Committee in resolving issues pertaining to Muslims or the Ayodhya imbroglio was on Tuesday questioned by Muslims for Secular Democracy (MSD), an organisation opposed to religious fundamentalism and communalism and one which seeks to make no distinction between majority and minority communalism.
Addressing a joint press conference noted script writer and lyricist Javed Akhtar and editor of Combat Communalism Javed Anand questioned the very authority of the Board in deciding matters pertaining to Muslims. They sought to know whether the Board was an elected body and if it was an ad hoc one, then who vested it with the power to speak or take decisions on behalf of the vast majority of Muslims.
Reacting to a pointed query on the Ayodhya issue and the role of Babri Masjid Action Committee, Javed Akhtar stated that the MSD firmly believed that Ayodhya was not a religious issue and it was for the court to take a final decision on it. He added that both the action committee and the VHP were not a solution to the vexed problem but were the problem themselves.
Akhtar dismissed all talks of a uniform civil code by the BJP as an election gimmick and said if the party was genuinely interested in such a code it should place its blueprint before society so that a discussion could be held. The script writer maintained that the MSD was not opposed to such a code, provided a blue print of it was made available to it. He added that laws of all communities were unjust towards women.
He also stated that the amendment of the Constitution in the Shah Bano case was wrong and that the government had bowed before the fundamentalists on that count.
Denying that the MSD had any political leanings or was affiliated to any political party, Akhtar said as a national forum of secular and democratic-minded Muslims the MSD is aimed at being in the forefront of the ideological battle against fundamentalist and communal Muslim politics. The organisation was also in agreement with all secular-democratic groups in the sub-continent that the fascist terror in the name of Hindutva posed the greatest threat to democracy and the religious minorities in India, just as fanaticism and terrorism in the garb of Islam were the greatest threat to democracy and religious minorities in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Earlier, MSD members including Akhtar interacted with students at the philosophy department of Lucknow University.
'BMAC, VHP two sides of same coin'
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2003 01:46:35 AM ]
LUCKNOW: The very credentials of Muslim Personal Law Board and Babri Masjid Action Committee in resolving issues pertaining to Muslims or the Ayodhya imbroglio was on Tuesday questioned by Muslims for Secular Democracy (MSD), an organisation opposed to religious fundamentalism and communalism and one which seeks to make no distinction between majority and minority communalism.
Addressing a joint press conference noted script writer and lyricist Javed Akhtar and editor of Combat Communalism Javed Anand questioned the very authority of the Board in deciding matters pertaining to Muslims. They sought to know whether the Board was an elected body and if it was an ad hoc one, then who vested it with the power to speak or take decisions on behalf of the vast majority of Muslims.
Reacting to a pointed query on the Ayodhya issue and the role of Babri Masjid Action Committee, Javed Akhtar stated that the MSD firmly believed that Ayodhya was not a religious issue and it was for the court to take a final decision on it. He added that both the action committee and the VHP were not a solution to the vexed problem but were the problem themselves.
Akhtar dismissed all talks of a uniform civil code by the BJP as an election gimmick and said if the party was genuinely interested in such a code it should place its blueprint before society so that a discussion could be held. The script writer maintained that the MSD was not opposed to such a code, provided a blue print of it was made available to it. He added that laws of all communities were unjust towards women.
He also stated that the amendment of the Constitution in the Shah Bano case was wrong and that the government had bowed before the fundamentalists on that count.
Denying that the MSD had any political leanings or was affiliated to any political party, Akhtar said as a national forum of secular and democratic-minded Muslims the MSD is aimed at being in the forefront of the ideological battle against fundamentalist and communal Muslim politics. The organisation was also in agreement with all secular-democratic groups in the sub-continent that the fascist terror in the name of Hindutva posed the greatest threat to democracy and the religious minorities in India, just as fanaticism and terrorism in the garb of Islam were the greatest threat to democracy and religious minorities in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Earlier, MSD members including Akhtar interacted with students at the philosophy department of Lucknow University.
December 24, 2003
India: Outsider as 'Other' | Politics of Identity and Exclusion
The Times of India
December 25, 2003
Outsider as 'Other' | Politics of Identity and Exclusion
ANURADHA M CHENOY
[ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2003 12:00:00 AM ]
Two hundred years ago, Immanuel Kant wrote that "we are unavoidably side by side". This, however, has not prevented communities from continuously constructing new "outsiders". Sometimes the outsiders belong to another religion, on other occasions to another ethnicity, region or caste. Once an outsider versus the insider mindset is created, it keeps excluding other groups while forcibly homogenising itself.
The outsiders and insiders are then seen as possessing only specific and singular identity characteristics even though no one has just one identity. For instance, one may be a mother, a doctor, a tribal, a Christian, a Bihari, an Indian all simultaneously. But it is only her ethnic or religious identity that becomes primary in such group identification. All other identities are devalued with the purpose of valorising a specific identity over the others for the purpose of group formation.
These kinds of identity demarcations create categories of citizens that are subject to various exclusions that range from social and economic boycott, ghettoisation of communities to humiliation, ethnic cleansing and genocide. This is because of the belief that those outside the group become the ‘other’, who is perceived as threats and are thus subject to violation or savagery.
Such identity construction is quite different from how identities are actually formed. Identity formation is never a unilinear affair that develops in splendid isolation. But, on the contrary, it is influenced by multiple currents that are full of exchanges, interchanges and cross-fertilisation but rarely stationary, isolated or unchanging.
There are, however, forces that are keenly interested in retaining the myth of purity of identity formation because identity politics is the easiest method of political mobilisation and can be used to construct a particular kind of nationalism. For such mobilisation, the myth of identity threats are transformed into violence through a variety of complex mechanisms. This is used as a diversion from other issues like a troubled economy or structural unemployment. Identity politics and the assertions of cultural nationalism are used to ride the wave of popular mobilisation for electoral purpose and the capture of power. Instances of caste, communal and now ethnic violence shows how communities discriminate and are violent against the other.
The political formations behind the recent "sons of the soil" clashes in Assam and Maharashtra are proponents of identity-based politics. The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) that is fanning the anti- Bihari sentiment leaving many dead and thousands homeless rose to fame on the basis of mobilising Assamese nationalism for a 'swadhin Asom' movement three decades ago, against the entry of Bangladeshi mig-rants as also other non-Assamese settlers.
When the ULFA attacked the symbols of the Indian state, they were considered insurgents and banned. Many of its leaders sought refuge in Bangladesh, whereupon they began praising Bangladesh, migrants and all. The ULFA lost out on public sympathy because of its double standards and because it indulged in extortion and violence. Mobilising against the Biharis on the pretext of railway jobs is a method to reinstate themselves in the public view as "Asom's boys” and re-establish a cultural nationalism of the local variety.
Similarly, the Shiv Sena known primarily for its anti-outsider movements in Mumbai claims to be part of the Hindutva brigade which for them is the binding factor of Hindu nationalism. Hindutva itself is an exclusionary construction, bent on keeping out all non-Hindus from the image of a Hindu nation. The Shiv Sena is now pitted against Hindus from other states, that they were so keen on homogenising against the Muslims. The Sena leadership has led ruthless attacks on poor Indians (Hindus for them) and openly declared that they would not allow outside job-seekers into the state. This establishes that the concept of a Hindu majority is an imaginary construct and that pluralities within that religion and between ethnic groups need to be accepted and respected to ensure the survival of this plural heri-tage. A nationalism based on self assertion denies human rights and even democracy.
The BJP-led NDA has had little comment on these projects that seek to revive regional chauvinism except to restore law and order and postpone railway jobs. This is a method of keeping the problem under wraps until it emerges again, rather than confronting, contesting and rejecting it as an unacceptable ideology, one that will do massive harm to the fabric of the Indian multi-ethnic state.
The statistics that have emerged in the case of railway jobs establish the extent of unemployment in comparison to the availability of jobs. It reveals that the euphoria around the high growth and GDP figures is based on quicksand and that the image of India as an emerging power is one with feet of clay. Further, when policies that vastly increase the differences between the rich and poor are in place, the theoretical and political practice of the politics of identity and exclusion will become commonplace.
A liberal, secular and national project in the current era can be installed primarily where there is a humane state and civil society. One that ensures that India is a space for all its citizens equally. That access is not denied on the grounds of religion, caste or region. It is only when these exclusions are removed that a national, humane and democratic project is ensured.
December 25, 2003
Outsider as 'Other' | Politics of Identity and Exclusion
ANURADHA M CHENOY
[ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2003 12:00:00 AM ]
Two hundred years ago, Immanuel Kant wrote that "we are unavoidably side by side". This, however, has not prevented communities from continuously constructing new "outsiders". Sometimes the outsiders belong to another religion, on other occasions to another ethnicity, region or caste. Once an outsider versus the insider mindset is created, it keeps excluding other groups while forcibly homogenising itself.
The outsiders and insiders are then seen as possessing only specific and singular identity characteristics even though no one has just one identity. For instance, one may be a mother, a doctor, a tribal, a Christian, a Bihari, an Indian all simultaneously. But it is only her ethnic or religious identity that becomes primary in such group identification. All other identities are devalued with the purpose of valorising a specific identity over the others for the purpose of group formation.
These kinds of identity demarcations create categories of citizens that are subject to various exclusions that range from social and economic boycott, ghettoisation of communities to humiliation, ethnic cleansing and genocide. This is because of the belief that those outside the group become the ‘other’, who is perceived as threats and are thus subject to violation or savagery.
Such identity construction is quite different from how identities are actually formed. Identity formation is never a unilinear affair that develops in splendid isolation. But, on the contrary, it is influenced by multiple currents that are full of exchanges, interchanges and cross-fertilisation but rarely stationary, isolated or unchanging.
There are, however, forces that are keenly interested in retaining the myth of purity of identity formation because identity politics is the easiest method of political mobilisation and can be used to construct a particular kind of nationalism. For such mobilisation, the myth of identity threats are transformed into violence through a variety of complex mechanisms. This is used as a diversion from other issues like a troubled economy or structural unemployment. Identity politics and the assertions of cultural nationalism are used to ride the wave of popular mobilisation for electoral purpose and the capture of power. Instances of caste, communal and now ethnic violence shows how communities discriminate and are violent against the other.
The political formations behind the recent "sons of the soil" clashes in Assam and Maharashtra are proponents of identity-based politics. The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) that is fanning the anti- Bihari sentiment leaving many dead and thousands homeless rose to fame on the basis of mobilising Assamese nationalism for a 'swadhin Asom' movement three decades ago, against the entry of Bangladeshi mig-rants as also other non-Assamese settlers.
When the ULFA attacked the symbols of the Indian state, they were considered insurgents and banned. Many of its leaders sought refuge in Bangladesh, whereupon they began praising Bangladesh, migrants and all. The ULFA lost out on public sympathy because of its double standards and because it indulged in extortion and violence. Mobilising against the Biharis on the pretext of railway jobs is a method to reinstate themselves in the public view as "Asom's boys” and re-establish a cultural nationalism of the local variety.
Similarly, the Shiv Sena known primarily for its anti-outsider movements in Mumbai claims to be part of the Hindutva brigade which for them is the binding factor of Hindu nationalism. Hindutva itself is an exclusionary construction, bent on keeping out all non-Hindus from the image of a Hindu nation. The Shiv Sena is now pitted against Hindus from other states, that they were so keen on homogenising against the Muslims. The Sena leadership has led ruthless attacks on poor Indians (Hindus for them) and openly declared that they would not allow outside job-seekers into the state. This establishes that the concept of a Hindu majority is an imaginary construct and that pluralities within that religion and between ethnic groups need to be accepted and respected to ensure the survival of this plural heri-tage. A nationalism based on self assertion denies human rights and even democracy.
The BJP-led NDA has had little comment on these projects that seek to revive regional chauvinism except to restore law and order and postpone railway jobs. This is a method of keeping the problem under wraps until it emerges again, rather than confronting, contesting and rejecting it as an unacceptable ideology, one that will do massive harm to the fabric of the Indian multi-ethnic state.
The statistics that have emerged in the case of railway jobs establish the extent of unemployment in comparison to the availability of jobs. It reveals that the euphoria around the high growth and GDP figures is based on quicksand and that the image of India as an emerging power is one with feet of clay. Further, when policies that vastly increase the differences between the rich and poor are in place, the theoretical and political practice of the politics of identity and exclusion will become commonplace.
A liberal, secular and national project in the current era can be installed primarily where there is a humane state and civil society. One that ensures that India is a space for all its citizens equally. That access is not denied on the grounds of religion, caste or region. It is only when these exclusions are removed that a national, humane and democratic project is ensured.
December 22, 2003
India: KARNATAKA: Another Ayodhya?
Outlook Magazine | Dec 22, 2003
KARNATAKA: Another Ayodhya?
It was Babri in 1992, a decade later it's a Sufi shrine in the south
B.R. SRIKANTH
A few years ago no one would have predicted that the Guru Dattatreya Baba Budangiri Swamy dargah near Chikmagalur, in Karnataka's tranquil and picturesque Western Ghats, would become the Ayodhya of south India. The shrine of Sufi saint Dada Hayath Meer Qalandar, the Sangh parivar claims, was originally a Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Dattatreya (an incarnation of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva), his mother Devi Anasuya and four disciples. While the VHP and Bajrang Dal have in recent years been demanding the "liberation" of the dargah, an overt political twist has now been added with the BJP's Karnataka unit joining the chorus for the first time.
Ironically, the dargah has always been a symbol of communal harmony. It has an interesting blend of rituals and festivities, interweaving Hindu and Muslim. Thousands of pilgrims from all communities turn up at the shrine twice a year—once in December during the Datta Jayanti celebrations and again in February-March for Hayath Meer Qalandar's urs. During the rest of the year, a trickle of devotees come to offer prayers and receive a talisman and sacred ash from the muzavar, the equivalent of a priest, at the shrine.
The BJP's ploy of playing the communal card in Karnataka became official when Union cabinet discard and state unit chief Ananth Kumar disclosed his party's intention of turning the shrine issue into "another Ayodhya" at a press conference in Chikmagalur. Ever since, the parivar and the BJP have been vowing to "repeat Gujarat". A rally was organised as part of the Hindu Viraat Samajothsav in Bangalore which was addressed by a number of seers of various maths in Karnataka and Hindutva's fiery votary, VHP general secretary Praveen Togadia. Similar rallies were organised in Chikmagalur and other parts of Karnataka. The date couldn't have been better—December 6—anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition.
At the Bangalore Samajothsav, the seers lamented the 'downslide' of Hinduism, spoke on the lack of a ban on cow slaughter and on conversions. They spoke up against the discrimination of Dalits and the practice of untouchability. These discourses were followed by Togadia's vituperative attack on the minorities and on policies implemented by various governments to retain their "votebanks".
Ayodhya seemed to have shifted to Bangalore and Chikmagalur this December 6; both were awash with saffron flags, banners and cutouts of Hindu deities. Saffron T-shirts and bandanas too were handed out to the youth at the rallies. At Chikmagalur, Sadhvi Rithambara and other Bajrang Dal and BJP figures made fiery speeches. "It's a sacred spot where Lord Dattatreya performed penance and which his mother Anasuyadevi declared as a holy place. Muslim invaders overran it and converted it into a dargah to suit their religious needs," Rithambara thundered.
For the first time, BJP MP from Chikmagalur, D.C. Srikantappa, and the leader of Opposition in the legislative council, D.H. Shankara Murthy, used the Dattatreya Jayanti celebrations atop the windswept Baba Budan hills to demand that the shrine be handed over to Hindus. The BJP and the Sangh want a Dattatreya idol to be installed here for regular worship.
The VHP-Bajrang Dal have vowed to keep the pressure on the government with a new twist to the controversy over the shrine—they have extracted land records from the district administration to buttress their claim that the shrine belonged to the Hindus. These records indicate that Datta Peetha and Baba Budan dargah are two different shrines located one kilometre apart in the region. In addition, they claim to have secured a list of properties owned by Datta Peetha and Baba Budan dargah as another piece of evidence in support of their claim for the shrine.
The contentious turn in the shrine's story and the various twists and turns in legal battles over the control of the shrine in recent years was set off in the mid-'60s.But at that point it was more a tussle between two administrative bodies—the Waqf Board and the Muzrai department which manages temples in Karnataka. They squabbled over a notification issued by the Waqf Board that the shrine was under its jurisdiction. Interestingly, the then sajjada nasheen (manager of the shrine) backed the Muzrai department's stand, arguing that the dargah was not exclusively a Muslim shrine but venerated by people of both communities.
The second round was fought in 1975 when the state government ordered the shrine to be vested with the Waqf Board. But the Chikmagalur district court struck down this order in 1980. In 1991, the Bangalore High Court dismissed an appeal by the Waqf Board and ordered restoring the status quo in terms of rituals and prayers as they existed before June 1975, a verdict later upheld by the apex court. Now, the Sangh parivar wants the shrine to be entirely handed over to Hindus and an archak (Hindu priest) to be appointed to perform rituals. It has also objected to its management by the sajjada nasheen. The 14th generation sajjada nasheen, Syed Peer Mohamed Shakadri, passed away in 1999. Now his son, Syed Ghouse Mohiyuddin, manages the affairs of the dargah.
For centuries, the shrine has been an exemplar of Hindu-Muslim unity. The Hindus call the sanctum as that of Dattatreya, the Muslims describe him as Baba. A platform inside the shrine symbolises the peetha where Dattatreya performed penance, but it's also revered as the place were Baba offered prayers. Hindus believe a stream inside the shrine was used by Anasuya. To the Muslims, the feminine presence is known as Mama Zigani.
Adding to the confusion are conflicting versions about who Hazrat Dada Meer Qalandar and Baba Budan were. Legend has it that Dada Meer Qalandar, a close disciple of Prophet Mohammed, arrived here in the sixth century. He brought Baba Budan or Sayyed Shah Jamaluddin Maghribi from Yemen in the 16th century to manage the dargah. Baba Budan reportedly brought seven coffee beans from Yemen and introduced coffee cultivation in the region. Another section holds Baba to be the grandson of Ismail Shakhadri, who was originally sent by Hyder Ali in the 18th century to collect cess and manage the daily affairs of the dargah.
On its part, the Karnataka government handled the rallies in Bangalore and Chikmagalur as well as the annual Datta celebrations with great tact. Wary of a Hindu backlash, it did not heed the appeals by noted playwright Girish Karnad to ban the entry of Togadia or clamp down on the Chikmagalur rallies. Instead, the S.M. Krishna government facilitated these rallies and celebrations with the help of a large police force (6,000 each in Bangalore and Chikmagalur). The local administration was instructed to handle them with caution and to ensure that peace was not disturbed in the region.
That won't soften the BJP and the parivar's determination to make this a political issue, especially in view of the assembly elections next year. Any surprise then that the Sangh parivar has activated its cadres in Karnataka?
KARNATAKA: Another Ayodhya?
It was Babri in 1992, a decade later it's a Sufi shrine in the south
B.R. SRIKANTH
A few years ago no one would have predicted that the Guru Dattatreya Baba Budangiri Swamy dargah near Chikmagalur, in Karnataka's tranquil and picturesque Western Ghats, would become the Ayodhya of south India. The shrine of Sufi saint Dada Hayath Meer Qalandar, the Sangh parivar claims, was originally a Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Dattatreya (an incarnation of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva), his mother Devi Anasuya and four disciples. While the VHP and Bajrang Dal have in recent years been demanding the "liberation" of the dargah, an overt political twist has now been added with the BJP's Karnataka unit joining the chorus for the first time.
Ironically, the dargah has always been a symbol of communal harmony. It has an interesting blend of rituals and festivities, interweaving Hindu and Muslim. Thousands of pilgrims from all communities turn up at the shrine twice a year—once in December during the Datta Jayanti celebrations and again in February-March for Hayath Meer Qalandar's urs. During the rest of the year, a trickle of devotees come to offer prayers and receive a talisman and sacred ash from the muzavar, the equivalent of a priest, at the shrine.
The BJP's ploy of playing the communal card in Karnataka became official when Union cabinet discard and state unit chief Ananth Kumar disclosed his party's intention of turning the shrine issue into "another Ayodhya" at a press conference in Chikmagalur. Ever since, the parivar and the BJP have been vowing to "repeat Gujarat". A rally was organised as part of the Hindu Viraat Samajothsav in Bangalore which was addressed by a number of seers of various maths in Karnataka and Hindutva's fiery votary, VHP general secretary Praveen Togadia. Similar rallies were organised in Chikmagalur and other parts of Karnataka. The date couldn't have been better—December 6—anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition.
At the Bangalore Samajothsav, the seers lamented the 'downslide' of Hinduism, spoke on the lack of a ban on cow slaughter and on conversions. They spoke up against the discrimination of Dalits and the practice of untouchability. These discourses were followed by Togadia's vituperative attack on the minorities and on policies implemented by various governments to retain their "votebanks".
Ayodhya seemed to have shifted to Bangalore and Chikmagalur this December 6; both were awash with saffron flags, banners and cutouts of Hindu deities. Saffron T-shirts and bandanas too were handed out to the youth at the rallies. At Chikmagalur, Sadhvi Rithambara and other Bajrang Dal and BJP figures made fiery speeches. "It's a sacred spot where Lord Dattatreya performed penance and which his mother Anasuyadevi declared as a holy place. Muslim invaders overran it and converted it into a dargah to suit their religious needs," Rithambara thundered.
For the first time, BJP MP from Chikmagalur, D.C. Srikantappa, and the leader of Opposition in the legislative council, D.H. Shankara Murthy, used the Dattatreya Jayanti celebrations atop the windswept Baba Budan hills to demand that the shrine be handed over to Hindus. The BJP and the Sangh want a Dattatreya idol to be installed here for regular worship.
The VHP-Bajrang Dal have vowed to keep the pressure on the government with a new twist to the controversy over the shrine—they have extracted land records from the district administration to buttress their claim that the shrine belonged to the Hindus. These records indicate that Datta Peetha and Baba Budan dargah are two different shrines located one kilometre apart in the region. In addition, they claim to have secured a list of properties owned by Datta Peetha and Baba Budan dargah as another piece of evidence in support of their claim for the shrine.
The contentious turn in the shrine's story and the various twists and turns in legal battles over the control of the shrine in recent years was set off in the mid-'60s.But at that point it was more a tussle between two administrative bodies—the Waqf Board and the Muzrai department which manages temples in Karnataka. They squabbled over a notification issued by the Waqf Board that the shrine was under its jurisdiction. Interestingly, the then sajjada nasheen (manager of the shrine) backed the Muzrai department's stand, arguing that the dargah was not exclusively a Muslim shrine but venerated by people of both communities.
The second round was fought in 1975 when the state government ordered the shrine to be vested with the Waqf Board. But the Chikmagalur district court struck down this order in 1980. In 1991, the Bangalore High Court dismissed an appeal by the Waqf Board and ordered restoring the status quo in terms of rituals and prayers as they existed before June 1975, a verdict later upheld by the apex court. Now, the Sangh parivar wants the shrine to be entirely handed over to Hindus and an archak (Hindu priest) to be appointed to perform rituals. It has also objected to its management by the sajjada nasheen. The 14th generation sajjada nasheen, Syed Peer Mohamed Shakadri, passed away in 1999. Now his son, Syed Ghouse Mohiyuddin, manages the affairs of the dargah.
For centuries, the shrine has been an exemplar of Hindu-Muslim unity. The Hindus call the sanctum as that of Dattatreya, the Muslims describe him as Baba. A platform inside the shrine symbolises the peetha where Dattatreya performed penance, but it's also revered as the place were Baba offered prayers. Hindus believe a stream inside the shrine was used by Anasuya. To the Muslims, the feminine presence is known as Mama Zigani.
Adding to the confusion are conflicting versions about who Hazrat Dada Meer Qalandar and Baba Budan were. Legend has it that Dada Meer Qalandar, a close disciple of Prophet Mohammed, arrived here in the sixth century. He brought Baba Budan or Sayyed Shah Jamaluddin Maghribi from Yemen in the 16th century to manage the dargah. Baba Budan reportedly brought seven coffee beans from Yemen and introduced coffee cultivation in the region. Another section holds Baba to be the grandson of Ismail Shakhadri, who was originally sent by Hyder Ali in the 18th century to collect cess and manage the daily affairs of the dargah.
On its part, the Karnataka government handled the rallies in Bangalore and Chikmagalur as well as the annual Datta celebrations with great tact. Wary of a Hindu backlash, it did not heed the appeals by noted playwright Girish Karnad to ban the entry of Togadia or clamp down on the Chikmagalur rallies. Instead, the S.M. Krishna government facilitated these rallies and celebrations with the help of a large police force (6,000 each in Bangalore and Chikmagalur). The local administration was instructed to handle them with caution and to ensure that peace was not disturbed in the region.
That won't soften the BJP and the parivar's determination to make this a political issue, especially in view of the assembly elections next year. Any surprise then that the Sangh parivar has activated its cadres in Karnataka?
December 20, 2003
Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and `Vedic science' [Part 1]
Frontline, Volume 20 - Issue 26, December 20, 2003 - January 02, 2004
ESSAY
Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and `Vedic science' [Part 1]
MEERA NANDA
The mixing up of the mythos of the Vedas with the logos of science must be of great concern not just to the scientific community, but also to the religious people, for it is a distortion of both science and spirituality.
The Vedas as books of science
IN 1996, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) of the United Kingdom (U.K.) produced a slick looking book, with many well-produced pictures of colourfully dressed men and women performing Hindu ceremonies, accompanied with warm, fuzzy and completely sanitised description of the faith. The book, Explaining Hindu Dharma: A Guide for Teachers, offers "teaching suggestions for introducing Hindu ideas and topics in the classroom" at the middle to high school level in the British schools system. The authors and editors are all card-carrying members of the VHP. The book is now in its second edition and, going by the glowing reviews on the back-cover, it seems to have established itself as a much-used educational resource in the British school system.
What "teaching suggestions" does this Guide offer? It advises British teachers to introduce Hindu dharma as "just another name" for "eternal laws of nature" first discovered by Vedic seers, and subsequently confirmed by modern physics and biological sciences. After giving a false but incredibly smug account of mathematics, physics, astronomy, medicine and evolutionary theory contained in the Vedic texts, the Guide instructs the teachers to present the Vedic scriptures as "not just old religious books, but as books which contain many true scientific facts... these ancient scriptures of the Hindus can be treated as scientific texts" (emphasis added). All that modern science teaches us about the workings of nature can be found in the Vedas, and all that the Vedas teach about the nature of matter, god, and human beings is affirmed by modern science. There is no conflict, there are no contradictions. Modern science and the Vedas are simply "different names for the same truth".
This is the image of Hinduism that the VHP and other Hindutva propagandists want to project around the world. The British case is not an isolated example. Similar initiatives to portray Vedic-Aryan India as the "cradle" of world civilisation and science have been launched in Canada and the United States as well. Many of these initiatives are beneficiaries of the generous and politically correct policies of multicultural education in these countries. Under the worthy cause of presenting the "community's" own views about its culture, many Western governments are inadvertently funding Hindutva's propaganda.
KAMAL NARANG
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi at the inauguration of the Indian Science Congress in New Delhi in 2001. The obsession for finding all kinds of science in all kinds of obscure Hindu doctrines has been dictating the official education policy of the BJP ever since it came to power nearly half a decade ago.
But what concerns us in this article is not the long-distance Hindutva (or "Yankee Hindutva", as some call it), dangerous though it is. This essay is more about the left wing-counterpart of Yankee Hindutva: a set of postmodernist ideas, mostly (but not entirely) exported from the West, which unintentionally ends up supporting Hindutva's propaganda regarding Vedic science. Over the last couple of decades, a set of very fashionable, supposedly "radical" critiques of modern science have dominated the Western universities. These critical theories of science go under the label of "postmodernism" or "social constructivism". These theories see modern science as an essentially Western, masculine and imperialistic way of acquiring knowledge. Intellectuals of Indian origin, many of them living and working in the West, have played a lead role in development of postmodernist critiques of modern science as a source of colonial "violence" against non-Western ways of knowing.
In this two-part essay, I will examine how this postmodernist left has provided philosophical arguments for Hindutva's claim that Vedas are "just another name" for modern science. As we will see, postmodernist attacks on objective and universal knowledge have played straight into Hindu nationalist slogan of all perspectives being equally true - within their own context and at their own level. The result is the loud - but false - claims of finding a tradition of empirical science in the spiritual teachings of the Vedas and Vedanta. Such scientisation of the Vedas does nothing to actually promote an empirical and rational tradition in India, while it does an incalculable harm to the spiritual message of Hinduism's sacred books. The mixing up of the mythos of the Vedas with the logos of science must be of great concern not just to the scientific community, but also to the religious people, for it is a distortion of both science and spirituality.
In order to understand how postmodern critiques of science converge with Hindutva's celebration of Vedas-as-science, let us follow the logic behind VHP's Guide for Teachers.
This Guide claims that the ancient Hindu scriptures contain "many true scientific facts" and therefore "can be treated as scientific texts". Let us see what these "true scientific facts" are. The prime exhibit is the "scientific affirmation" of the theory of guna (Sanskrit for qualities or attributes). Following the essential Vedantic idea that matter and spirit are not separate and distinct entities, but rather the spiritual principle constitutes the very fabric of the material world, the theory of gunas teaches that matter exhibits spiritual/moral qualities. There are three such qualities or gunas which are shared by all matter, living or non-living: the quality or guna of purity and calmness seeking higher knowledge (sattvic), the quality or guna of impurity, darkness, ignorance and inactivity (tamsic) and the quality or guna of activity, curiosity, worldly gain (rajasic). Modern atomic physics, the VHP's Guide claims, has confirmed the presence of these qualities in nature. The evidence? Physics shows that there are three atomic particles bearing positive, negative and neutral charges, which correspond to the three gunas! From this "scientific proof" of the existence of essentially spiritual/moral gunas in atoms, the Guide goes on to triumphantly deduce the "scientific" confirmation of the truths of all those Vedic sciences which use the concept of gunas (for example, Ayurveda). Having "demonstrated" the scientific credentials of Hinduism, the Guide boldly advises British school teachers to instruct their students that there is "no conflict" between the eternal laws of dharma and the laws discovered by modern science.
PARTH SANYAL
In Kolkata, astrologers demonstrating against the West Bengal government's decision not to introduce astrology as a subject in the State's universities. A file picture.
One of the most ludicrous mantras of Hindutva propaganda is that there is "no conflict" between modern science and Hinduism. In reality, everything we know about the workings of nature through the methods of modern science radically disconfirms the presence of any morally significant gunas, or shakti, or any other form of consciousness in nature, as taught by the Vedic cosmology which treats nature as a manifestation of divine consciousness. Far from there being "no conflict" between science and Hinduism, a scientific understanding of nature completely and radically negates the "eternal laws" of Hindu dharma which teach an identity between spirit and matter. That is precisely why the Hindutva apologists are so keen to tame modern science by reducing it to "simply another name for the One Truth" - the "one truth" of Absolute Consciousness contained in Hinduism's own classical texts.
If Hindu propagandists can go this far in U.K., imagine their power in India, where they control the Central government and its agencies for media, education and research. This obsession for finding all kinds of science in all kinds of obscure Hindu doctrines has been dictating the official educational policy of the Bharatiya Janata Party ever since it came to power nearly half a decade ago.
Indeed the BJP government can teach a thing or two to the creation scientists in the U.S. Creationists, old and new, are trying to smuggle in Christian dogma into secular schools in the U.S. by redefining science in a way that allows God to be brought in as a cause of natural phenomena. This "theistic science" is meant to serve as the thin-edge of the wedge that will pry open the secular establishment. Unlike the creationists who have to contend with the courts and the legislatures in the U.S., the Indian government itself wields the wedge of Vedic science intended to dismantle the (admittedly half-hearted) secularist education policies. By teaching Vedic Hinduism as "science", the Indian state and elites can portray India as "secular" and "modern", a model of sobriety and responsibility in contrast with those obscurantist Islamic fundamentalists across the border who insist on keeping science out of their madrassas. How useful is this appellation of "science", for it dresses up so much religious indoctrination as "secular education".
Under the kindly patronage of the state, Hindutva's wedge strategy is working wonders. Astrology is flourishing as an academic subject in public and private colleges and universities, and is being put to use in predicting future earthquakes and other natural disasters. Such "sciences" as Vastu Shastra and Vedic mathematics are attracting governmental grants for research and education. While the Ministry of Defence is sponsoring research and development of weapons and devices with magical powers mentioned in the ancient epics, the Health Ministry is investing in research, development and sale of cow urine, sold as a cure for all ailments from the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to tuberculosis (TB). Faith-healing and priest-craft are other "sciences" receiving public and private funding. In the rest of the culture, miracles and superstitions of all kinds have the blessings of influential public figures, including elected Members of Parliament.
THERE are two kinds of claims that feed the notion that the "Vedas are books of science". The first kind declared the entire Vedic corpus as converging with modern science, while the second concentrates on defending such esoteric practices as astrology, vastu, Ayurveda, transcendental meditation and so on as scientific within the Vedic paradigm. The first stream seeks to establish likeness, connections and convergences between radically opposed ideas (guna theory and atomic particles, for example). This stream does not relativise science: it simply grabs whatever theory of physics or biology may be popular with Western scientists at any given time, and claims that Hindu ideas are "like that", or "mean the same" and "therefore" are perfectly modern and rational. The second stream is far more radical, as it defends this "method" of drawing likenesses and correspondences between unlike entities as perfectly rational and "scientific" within the non-dualistic Vedic worldview. The second stream, in other words, relativises scientific method to dominant religious worldviews: it holds that the Hindu style of thinking by analogies and correspondences "directly revealed to the mind's eye" is as scientific within the "holistic" worldview of Vedic Hinduism, as the analytical and experimental methodology of modern science is to the "reductionist" worldview of Semitic religions. The relativist defence of eclecticism as a legitimate scientific method not only provides a cover for the first stream, it also provides a generic defence of such emerging "alternative sciences" as "Vedic physics" and "Vedic creationism", as well as defending such pseudo-sciences as Vedic astrology, palmistry, TM (transcendental meditation) and new-age Ayurveda (Deepak Chopra style).
In what follows, I will examine how postmodernist and social constructivist critiques of science have lent support to both streams of Vedas-as-science literature.
But first, I must clarify what I mean by postmodernism.
Postmodernism is a mood, a disposition. The chief characteristic of the postmodernist disposition is that it is opposed to the Enlightenment, which is taken to be the core of modernism. Of course, there is no simple characterisation of the Enlightenment any more than there is of postmodernism. A rough and ready portrayal might go like this: Enlightenment is a general attitude fostered in the 17th and 18th centuries on the heels of the Scientific Revolution; it aims to replace superstition and authority of traditions and established religions with critical reason represented, above all, by the growth of modern science. The Enlightenment project was based upon a hope that improvement in secular scientific knowledge will lead to an improvement of the human condition, not just materially but also ethically and culturally. While the Enlightenment spirit flourished primarily in Europe and North America, intellectual movements in India, China, Japan, Latin America, Egypt and other parts of West Asia were also influenced by it. However, the combined weight of colonialism and cultural nationalism thwarted the Enlightenment spirit in non-Western societies.
Postmodernists are disillusioned with this triumphalist view of science dispelling ignorance and making the world a better place. Their despair leads them to question the possibility of progress toward some universal truth that everyone, everywhere must accept. Against the Enlightenment's faith in such universal "meta-narratives" advancing to truth, postmodernists prefer local traditions which are not entirely led by rational and instrumental criteria but make room for the sacred, the non-instrumental and even the irrational. Social constructivist theories of science nicely complement postmodernists' angst against science. There are many schools of social constructivism, including the "strong programme" of the Edinburgh (Scotland) school, and the "actor network" programme associated with a school in Paris, France. The many convoluted and abstruse arguments of these programmes do not concern us here. Basically, these programmes assert that modern science, which we take to be moving closer to objective truth about nature, is actually just one culture-bound way to look at nature: no better or worse than all other sciences of other cultures. Not just the agenda, but the content of all knowledge is socially constructed: the supposed "facts" of modern science are "Western" constructions, reflecting dominant interests and cultural biases of Western societies.
Following this logic, Indian critics of science, especially those led by the neo-Gandhians such as Ashis Nandy and Vandana Shiva, have argued for developing local science which is grounded in the civilisational ethos of India. Other well-known public intellectuals, including such stalwarts as Rajni Kothari, Veena Das, Claude Alvares and Shiv Vishwanathan, have thrown their considerable weight behind this civilisational view of knowledge. This perspective also has numerous sympathisers among "patriotic science" and the environmentalist and feminist movements. A defence of local knowledges against rationalisation and secularisation also underlies the fashionable theories of post-colonialism and subaltern studies, which have found a worldwide following through the writings of Partha Chatterjee, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Dipesh Chakrabarty and others. All these intellectuals and movements mentioned here have their roots in movements for social justice, environmental protection and women's rights - all traditional left-wing causes.
Social constructivist and postmodernist attacks on science have proven to be a blessing for all religious zealots, in all major faiths, as they no longer feel compelled to revise their metaphysics in the light of progress in our understanding of nature in relevant fields. But Hinduism displays a special resonance with the relativistic and holistic thought that finds favour among postmodernists. In the rest of this two-part paper, I will examine the general overlap between Hindu apologetics and postmodernist view of hybridity (part I) and alternative sciences (part II).
Postmodern "hybridity" and Hindu eclecticism
THE contemporary Hindu propagandists are inheritors of the 19th century neo-Hindu nationalists who started the tradition of dressing up the spirit-centered metaphysics of orthodox Hinduism in modern scientific clothes. The neo-Hindu intellectuals, in turn, were (consciously or unconsciously) displaying the well-known penchant of generations of Sanskrit pundits for drawing resemblances and correspondences between religious rituals, forces of nature and human destiny.
Postmodernist theories of knowledge have rehabilitated this "method" of drawing equivalences between different and contradictory worldviews and allowing them to "hybridise" across traditions. The postmodernist consensus is that since truth about the real world as-it-is cannot be known, all knowledge systems are equivalent to each other in being social constructions. Because they are all equally arbitrary, and none any more objective than other, they can be mixed and matched in order to serve the needs of human beings to live well in their own cultural universes. From the postmodern perspective, the VHP justification of the guna theory in terms of atomic physics is not anything to worry about: it is merely an example of "hybridity" between two different culturally constructed ways of seeing, a fusion between East and West, tradition and modernity. Indeed, by postmodernist standards, it is not this hybridity that we should worry about, but rather we should oppose the "positivist" and "modernist" hubris that demands that non-Western cultures should give up, or alter, elements of their inherited cosmologies in the light of the growth of knowledge in natural sciences. Let us see how this view of hybridity meshes in with the Hindutva construction of Vedic science.
It is a well-known fact that Hinduism uses its eclectic mantra - "Truth is one, the wise call it by different names" - as an instrument for self-aggrandisement. Abrahamic religions go about converting the Other through persuasion and through the use of physical force. Hinduism, in contrast, absorbs the alien Other by proclaiming its doctrines to be only "different names for the One Truth" contained in Hinduism's own Perennial Wisdom. The teachings of the outsider, the dissenter or the innovator are simply declared to be merely nominally different, a minor and inferior variation of the Absolute and Universal Truth known to Vedic Hindus from time immemorial. Christianity and Islam at least acknowledge the radical otherness and difference of other faiths, even as they attempt to convert them, even at the cost of great violence and mayhem. Hinduism refuses to grant other faiths their distinctiveness and difference, even as it proclaims its great "tolerance". Hinduism's "tolerance" is a mere disguise for its narcissistic obsession with its own greatness.
Whereas classical Hinduism limited this passive-aggressive form of conquest to matters of religious doctrine, neo-Hindu intellectuals have extended this mode of conquest to secular knowledge of modern science as well. The tradition of claiming modern science as "just another name" for the spiritual truths of the Vedas started with the Bengal Renaissance. The contemporary Hindutva follows in the footsteps of this tradition.
The Vedic science movement began in 1893 when Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) addressed the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. In that famous address, he sought to present Hinduism not just as a fulfilment of all other religions, but also as a fulfilment of all of science. Vivekananda claimed that only the spiritual monism of Advaita Vedanta could fulfil the ultimate goal of natural science, which he saw as the search for the ultimate source of the energy that creates and sustains the world.
Vivekananda was followed by another Bengali nationalist-turned-spiritualist, Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950). Aurobindo proposed a divine theory of evolution that treats evolution as the adventures of the World-Spirit finding its own fulfilment through progressively higher levels of consciousness, from matter to man to the yet-to-come harmonious "supermind" of a socialistic collective. Newer theories of Vedic creationism, which propose to replace Darwinian evolution with "devolution" from the original one-ness with Brahman, are now being proposed with utmost seriousness by the Hare Krishnas who, for all their scandals and idiosyncrasies, remain faithful to the spirit of Vaishnava Hinduism.
Vivekananda and Aurobindo lit the spark that has continued to fire the nationalist imagination, right to the present time. The Neo-Hindu literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially the writings of Dayanand Saraswati, S. Radhakrishnan and the many followers of Vivekananda, is replete with celebration of Hinduism as a "scientific" religion. Even secularists like Jawaharlal Nehru remained captive of this idea that the original teachings of Vedic Hinduism were consonant with modern science, but only corrupted later by the gradual deposits of superstition. Countless gurus and swamis began to teach that the Vedas are simply "another name for science" and that all of science only affirms what the Vedas have taught. This scientistic version of Hinduism has found its way to the West through the numerous ashrams and yoga retreats set up, most prominently, by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his many clones.
ALL these numerous celebrations of "Vedas as science" follow a similar intellectual strategy of finding analogies and equivalences. All invoke extremely speculative theories from modern cosmology, quantum mechanics, vitalistic theories of biology and parapsychology, and other fringe sciences. They read back these sciences into Sanskrit texts chosen at will, and their meaning decided by the whim of the interpreter, and claim that the entities and processes mentioned in Sanskrit texts are "like", "the same thing as", or "another word for" the ideas expressed in modern cosmology, quantum physics or biology. Thus there is a bit of a Brahman here and a bit of quantum mechanics there, the two treated as interchangeable; there are references to "energy", a scientific term with a definite mathematical formulation in physics, which gets to mean "consciousness"; references to Newton's laws of action and reaction are made to stand for the laws of karma and reincarnation; completely discredited "evidence" from parapsychology and "secret life of plants" are upheld as proofs of the presence of different degrees of soul in all matter; "evolution" is taught as the self-manifestation of Brahman and so on. The terms are scientific, but the content is religious. There is no regard for consistency either of scientific concepts, or of religious ideas. Both wholes are broken apart, random connections and correspondences are established and with great smugness, the two modes of knowing are declared to be equivalent, and even inter-changeable. The only driving force, the only idea that gives this whole mish-mash any coherence, is the great anxiety to preserve and protect Hinduism from a rational critique and demystification. Vedic science is motivated by cultural chauvinism, pure and simple.
What does all this have to do with postmodernism, one may legitimately ask. Neo-Hinduism, after all, has a history dating back at least two centuries, and the analogical logic on which claims of Vedic science are based goes back to times immemorial.
Neo-Hinduism did not start with postmodernism, obviously. And neither does Hindutva share the postmodernist urgency to "overcome" and "go beyond" the modernist fascination with progress and development. Far from it. Neo-Hinduism and Hindutva are reactionary modernist movements, intent on harnessing a mindless and even dangerous technological modernisation for the advancement of a traditionalist, deeply anti-secular and illiberal social agenda. Nevertheless, they share a postmodernist philosophy of science that celebrates the kind of contradictory mish-mash of science, spirituality, mysticism and pure superstition that that passes as "Vedic science".
For those modernists who share the Enlightenment's hope for overcoming ignorance and superstition, the value of modern science lies in its objectivity and universality. Modernists see modern science as having developed a critical tradition that insists upon subjecting our hypotheses about nature to the strictest, most demanding empirical tests and rigorously rejecting those hypotheses whose predictions fail to be verified. For the modernist, the success of science in explaining the workings of nature mean that sciences in other cultures have a rational obligation to revise their standards of what kind of evidence is admissible as science, what kind of logic is reasonable, and how to distinguish justified knowledge from mere beliefs. For the modernists, furthermore, modern science has provided a way to explain the workings of nature without any need to bring in supernatural and untestable causes such as a creator God, or an immanent Spirit.
For a postmodernist, however, this modernist faith in science is only a sign of Eurocentrism and cultural imperialism. For a postmodernist, other cultures are under no rational obligation to revise their cosmologies, or adopt new procedures for ascertaining facts to bring them in accord with modern science. Far from producing a uniquely objective and universally valid account of nature, the "facts" of modern science are only one among many other ways of constructing other "facts" about nature, which are equally valid for other cultures. Nature-in-itself cannot be known without imposing classifications and meaning on it which are derived from cultural metaphors and models. All ways of seeing nature are at par because all are equally culture-bound. Modern science has no special claims to truth and to our convictions, for it is as much of a cultural construct of the West as other sciences are of their own cultures.
This view of science is derived from a variety of American and European philosophies of science, associated mostly with such well-known philosophers as Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, W.O Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michel Foucault. This view of science has been gaining popularity among Indian scholars of science since the infamous "scientific temper" debates in early 1980s when Ashis Nandy, Vandana Shiva and their sympathisers came out in defence of local knowledges and traditions, including astrology, goddess worship as cure for small-pox, taboos against menstruation and (later on) even sati. Over the next two decades, it became a general practice in Indian scholarly writing to treat modern science as just one way to adjudicate belief, no different from any other tradition of sorting out truth from mere group belief. Rationalism became a dirty word and Enlightenment became a stand-in for "epistemic violence" of colonialism.
According to those who subscribe to this relativist philosophy, the cross-cultural encounter between modern science and traditional sciences is not a confrontation between more and less objective knowledge, respectively. Rather it is a confrontation between two different cultural ways of seeing the world, neither of which can claim to represent reality-in-itself. Indeed, many radical feminists and post-colonial critics go even further: they see modern science as having lost its way and turned into a power of oppression and exploitation. They want non-Western people not just to resist science but to reform it by confronting it with their holistic traditional sciences.
What happens when traditional cultures do need to adopt at least some elements of modern knowledge? In such cases, postmodernists recommend exactly the kind of "hybridity" as we have seen in the case of Vedic sciences in which, for example, sub-atomic particles are interpreted as referring to gunas, or where quantum energy is interpreted to be the "same as" shakti, or where karma is interpreted to be a determinant of biology in a "similar manner" as the genetic code and so on. On the postmodern account, there is nothing irrational or unscientific about this "method" of drawing equivalences and correspondences between entirely unlike entities and ideas, even when there may be serious contradictions between the two. On this account, all science is based upon metaphors and analogies that reinforce dominant cultures and social power, and all "facts" of nature are really interpretations of nature through the lens of dominant culture. It is perfectly rational, on this account, for Hindu nationalists to want to reinterpret the "facts" of modern science by drawing analogies with the dominant cultural models supplied by Hinduism. Because no system of knowledge can claim to know reality as it really is, because our best confirmed science is ultimately a cultural construct, all cultures are free to pick and choose and mix various "facts", as long as they do not disrupt their own time-honoured worldviews.
This view of reinterpretation of "Western" science to fit into the tradition-sanctioned, local knowledges of "the people" has been advocated by theories of "critical traditionalism" propounded by Ashis Nandy and Bhiku Parekh in India and by the numerous admirers of Homi Bhabha's obscure writings on "hybridity" abroad. In the West, this view has found great favour among feminists, notably Sandra Harding and Donna Haraway, and among anthropologists of science including Bruno Latour, David Hess and their followers.
To conclude, one finds a convergence between the fashionable left's position with the religious right's position on the science question. The extreme scepticism of postmodern intellectuals toward modern science has landed them in a position where they cannot, if they are to remain true to their beliefs, criticise Hindutva's eclectic take-over of modern science for the glory of the Vedic tradition.
Meera Nanda is the author of Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism (Rutgers University Press, 2003). An Indian edition of the book will be published by Permanent Black in early 2004.
ESSAY
Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and `Vedic science' [Part 1]
MEERA NANDA
The mixing up of the mythos of the Vedas with the logos of science must be of great concern not just to the scientific community, but also to the religious people, for it is a distortion of both science and spirituality.
The Vedas as books of science
IN 1996, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) of the United Kingdom (U.K.) produced a slick looking book, with many well-produced pictures of colourfully dressed men and women performing Hindu ceremonies, accompanied with warm, fuzzy and completely sanitised description of the faith. The book, Explaining Hindu Dharma: A Guide for Teachers, offers "teaching suggestions for introducing Hindu ideas and topics in the classroom" at the middle to high school level in the British schools system. The authors and editors are all card-carrying members of the VHP. The book is now in its second edition and, going by the glowing reviews on the back-cover, it seems to have established itself as a much-used educational resource in the British school system.
What "teaching suggestions" does this Guide offer? It advises British teachers to introduce Hindu dharma as "just another name" for "eternal laws of nature" first discovered by Vedic seers, and subsequently confirmed by modern physics and biological sciences. After giving a false but incredibly smug account of mathematics, physics, astronomy, medicine and evolutionary theory contained in the Vedic texts, the Guide instructs the teachers to present the Vedic scriptures as "not just old religious books, but as books which contain many true scientific facts... these ancient scriptures of the Hindus can be treated as scientific texts" (emphasis added). All that modern science teaches us about the workings of nature can be found in the Vedas, and all that the Vedas teach about the nature of matter, god, and human beings is affirmed by modern science. There is no conflict, there are no contradictions. Modern science and the Vedas are simply "different names for the same truth".
This is the image of Hinduism that the VHP and other Hindutva propagandists want to project around the world. The British case is not an isolated example. Similar initiatives to portray Vedic-Aryan India as the "cradle" of world civilisation and science have been launched in Canada and the United States as well. Many of these initiatives are beneficiaries of the generous and politically correct policies of multicultural education in these countries. Under the worthy cause of presenting the "community's" own views about its culture, many Western governments are inadvertently funding Hindutva's propaganda.
KAMAL NARANG
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi at the inauguration of the Indian Science Congress in New Delhi in 2001. The obsession for finding all kinds of science in all kinds of obscure Hindu doctrines has been dictating the official education policy of the BJP ever since it came to power nearly half a decade ago.
But what concerns us in this article is not the long-distance Hindutva (or "Yankee Hindutva", as some call it), dangerous though it is. This essay is more about the left wing-counterpart of Yankee Hindutva: a set of postmodernist ideas, mostly (but not entirely) exported from the West, which unintentionally ends up supporting Hindutva's propaganda regarding Vedic science. Over the last couple of decades, a set of very fashionable, supposedly "radical" critiques of modern science have dominated the Western universities. These critical theories of science go under the label of "postmodernism" or "social constructivism". These theories see modern science as an essentially Western, masculine and imperialistic way of acquiring knowledge. Intellectuals of Indian origin, many of them living and working in the West, have played a lead role in development of postmodernist critiques of modern science as a source of colonial "violence" against non-Western ways of knowing.
In this two-part essay, I will examine how this postmodernist left has provided philosophical arguments for Hindutva's claim that Vedas are "just another name" for modern science. As we will see, postmodernist attacks on objective and universal knowledge have played straight into Hindu nationalist slogan of all perspectives being equally true - within their own context and at their own level. The result is the loud - but false - claims of finding a tradition of empirical science in the spiritual teachings of the Vedas and Vedanta. Such scientisation of the Vedas does nothing to actually promote an empirical and rational tradition in India, while it does an incalculable harm to the spiritual message of Hinduism's sacred books. The mixing up of the mythos of the Vedas with the logos of science must be of great concern not just to the scientific community, but also to the religious people, for it is a distortion of both science and spirituality.
In order to understand how postmodern critiques of science converge with Hindutva's celebration of Vedas-as-science, let us follow the logic behind VHP's Guide for Teachers.
This Guide claims that the ancient Hindu scriptures contain "many true scientific facts" and therefore "can be treated as scientific texts". Let us see what these "true scientific facts" are. The prime exhibit is the "scientific affirmation" of the theory of guna (Sanskrit for qualities or attributes). Following the essential Vedantic idea that matter and spirit are not separate and distinct entities, but rather the spiritual principle constitutes the very fabric of the material world, the theory of gunas teaches that matter exhibits spiritual/moral qualities. There are three such qualities or gunas which are shared by all matter, living or non-living: the quality or guna of purity and calmness seeking higher knowledge (sattvic), the quality or guna of impurity, darkness, ignorance and inactivity (tamsic) and the quality or guna of activity, curiosity, worldly gain (rajasic). Modern atomic physics, the VHP's Guide claims, has confirmed the presence of these qualities in nature. The evidence? Physics shows that there are three atomic particles bearing positive, negative and neutral charges, which correspond to the three gunas! From this "scientific proof" of the existence of essentially spiritual/moral gunas in atoms, the Guide goes on to triumphantly deduce the "scientific" confirmation of the truths of all those Vedic sciences which use the concept of gunas (for example, Ayurveda). Having "demonstrated" the scientific credentials of Hinduism, the Guide boldly advises British school teachers to instruct their students that there is "no conflict" between the eternal laws of dharma and the laws discovered by modern science.
PARTH SANYAL
In Kolkata, astrologers demonstrating against the West Bengal government's decision not to introduce astrology as a subject in the State's universities. A file picture.
One of the most ludicrous mantras of Hindutva propaganda is that there is "no conflict" between modern science and Hinduism. In reality, everything we know about the workings of nature through the methods of modern science radically disconfirms the presence of any morally significant gunas, or shakti, or any other form of consciousness in nature, as taught by the Vedic cosmology which treats nature as a manifestation of divine consciousness. Far from there being "no conflict" between science and Hinduism, a scientific understanding of nature completely and radically negates the "eternal laws" of Hindu dharma which teach an identity between spirit and matter. That is precisely why the Hindutva apologists are so keen to tame modern science by reducing it to "simply another name for the One Truth" - the "one truth" of Absolute Consciousness contained in Hinduism's own classical texts.
If Hindu propagandists can go this far in U.K., imagine their power in India, where they control the Central government and its agencies for media, education and research. This obsession for finding all kinds of science in all kinds of obscure Hindu doctrines has been dictating the official educational policy of the Bharatiya Janata Party ever since it came to power nearly half a decade ago.
Indeed the BJP government can teach a thing or two to the creation scientists in the U.S. Creationists, old and new, are trying to smuggle in Christian dogma into secular schools in the U.S. by redefining science in a way that allows God to be brought in as a cause of natural phenomena. This "theistic science" is meant to serve as the thin-edge of the wedge that will pry open the secular establishment. Unlike the creationists who have to contend with the courts and the legislatures in the U.S., the Indian government itself wields the wedge of Vedic science intended to dismantle the (admittedly half-hearted) secularist education policies. By teaching Vedic Hinduism as "science", the Indian state and elites can portray India as "secular" and "modern", a model of sobriety and responsibility in contrast with those obscurantist Islamic fundamentalists across the border who insist on keeping science out of their madrassas. How useful is this appellation of "science", for it dresses up so much religious indoctrination as "secular education".
Under the kindly patronage of the state, Hindutva's wedge strategy is working wonders. Astrology is flourishing as an academic subject in public and private colleges and universities, and is being put to use in predicting future earthquakes and other natural disasters. Such "sciences" as Vastu Shastra and Vedic mathematics are attracting governmental grants for research and education. While the Ministry of Defence is sponsoring research and development of weapons and devices with magical powers mentioned in the ancient epics, the Health Ministry is investing in research, development and sale of cow urine, sold as a cure for all ailments from the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to tuberculosis (TB). Faith-healing and priest-craft are other "sciences" receiving public and private funding. In the rest of the culture, miracles and superstitions of all kinds have the blessings of influential public figures, including elected Members of Parliament.
THERE are two kinds of claims that feed the notion that the "Vedas are books of science". The first kind declared the entire Vedic corpus as converging with modern science, while the second concentrates on defending such esoteric practices as astrology, vastu, Ayurveda, transcendental meditation and so on as scientific within the Vedic paradigm. The first stream seeks to establish likeness, connections and convergences between radically opposed ideas (guna theory and atomic particles, for example). This stream does not relativise science: it simply grabs whatever theory of physics or biology may be popular with Western scientists at any given time, and claims that Hindu ideas are "like that", or "mean the same" and "therefore" are perfectly modern and rational. The second stream is far more radical, as it defends this "method" of drawing likenesses and correspondences between unlike entities as perfectly rational and "scientific" within the non-dualistic Vedic worldview. The second stream, in other words, relativises scientific method to dominant religious worldviews: it holds that the Hindu style of thinking by analogies and correspondences "directly revealed to the mind's eye" is as scientific within the "holistic" worldview of Vedic Hinduism, as the analytical and experimental methodology of modern science is to the "reductionist" worldview of Semitic religions. The relativist defence of eclecticism as a legitimate scientific method not only provides a cover for the first stream, it also provides a generic defence of such emerging "alternative sciences" as "Vedic physics" and "Vedic creationism", as well as defending such pseudo-sciences as Vedic astrology, palmistry, TM (transcendental meditation) and new-age Ayurveda (Deepak Chopra style).
In what follows, I will examine how postmodernist and social constructivist critiques of science have lent support to both streams of Vedas-as-science literature.
But first, I must clarify what I mean by postmodernism.
Postmodernism is a mood, a disposition. The chief characteristic of the postmodernist disposition is that it is opposed to the Enlightenment, which is taken to be the core of modernism. Of course, there is no simple characterisation of the Enlightenment any more than there is of postmodernism. A rough and ready portrayal might go like this: Enlightenment is a general attitude fostered in the 17th and 18th centuries on the heels of the Scientific Revolution; it aims to replace superstition and authority of traditions and established religions with critical reason represented, above all, by the growth of modern science. The Enlightenment project was based upon a hope that improvement in secular scientific knowledge will lead to an improvement of the human condition, not just materially but also ethically and culturally. While the Enlightenment spirit flourished primarily in Europe and North America, intellectual movements in India, China, Japan, Latin America, Egypt and other parts of West Asia were also influenced by it. However, the combined weight of colonialism and cultural nationalism thwarted the Enlightenment spirit in non-Western societies.
Postmodernists are disillusioned with this triumphalist view of science dispelling ignorance and making the world a better place. Their despair leads them to question the possibility of progress toward some universal truth that everyone, everywhere must accept. Against the Enlightenment's faith in such universal "meta-narratives" advancing to truth, postmodernists prefer local traditions which are not entirely led by rational and instrumental criteria but make room for the sacred, the non-instrumental and even the irrational. Social constructivist theories of science nicely complement postmodernists' angst against science. There are many schools of social constructivism, including the "strong programme" of the Edinburgh (Scotland) school, and the "actor network" programme associated with a school in Paris, France. The many convoluted and abstruse arguments of these programmes do not concern us here. Basically, these programmes assert that modern science, which we take to be moving closer to objective truth about nature, is actually just one culture-bound way to look at nature: no better or worse than all other sciences of other cultures. Not just the agenda, but the content of all knowledge is socially constructed: the supposed "facts" of modern science are "Western" constructions, reflecting dominant interests and cultural biases of Western societies.
Following this logic, Indian critics of science, especially those led by the neo-Gandhians such as Ashis Nandy and Vandana Shiva, have argued for developing local science which is grounded in the civilisational ethos of India. Other well-known public intellectuals, including such stalwarts as Rajni Kothari, Veena Das, Claude Alvares and Shiv Vishwanathan, have thrown their considerable weight behind this civilisational view of knowledge. This perspective also has numerous sympathisers among "patriotic science" and the environmentalist and feminist movements. A defence of local knowledges against rationalisation and secularisation also underlies the fashionable theories of post-colonialism and subaltern studies, which have found a worldwide following through the writings of Partha Chatterjee, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Dipesh Chakrabarty and others. All these intellectuals and movements mentioned here have their roots in movements for social justice, environmental protection and women's rights - all traditional left-wing causes.
Social constructivist and postmodernist attacks on science have proven to be a blessing for all religious zealots, in all major faiths, as they no longer feel compelled to revise their metaphysics in the light of progress in our understanding of nature in relevant fields. But Hinduism displays a special resonance with the relativistic and holistic thought that finds favour among postmodernists. In the rest of this two-part paper, I will examine the general overlap between Hindu apologetics and postmodernist view of hybridity (part I) and alternative sciences (part II).
Postmodern "hybridity" and Hindu eclecticism
THE contemporary Hindu propagandists are inheritors of the 19th century neo-Hindu nationalists who started the tradition of dressing up the spirit-centered metaphysics of orthodox Hinduism in modern scientific clothes. The neo-Hindu intellectuals, in turn, were (consciously or unconsciously) displaying the well-known penchant of generations of Sanskrit pundits for drawing resemblances and correspondences between religious rituals, forces of nature and human destiny.
Postmodernist theories of knowledge have rehabilitated this "method" of drawing equivalences between different and contradictory worldviews and allowing them to "hybridise" across traditions. The postmodernist consensus is that since truth about the real world as-it-is cannot be known, all knowledge systems are equivalent to each other in being social constructions. Because they are all equally arbitrary, and none any more objective than other, they can be mixed and matched in order to serve the needs of human beings to live well in their own cultural universes. From the postmodern perspective, the VHP justification of the guna theory in terms of atomic physics is not anything to worry about: it is merely an example of "hybridity" between two different culturally constructed ways of seeing, a fusion between East and West, tradition and modernity. Indeed, by postmodernist standards, it is not this hybridity that we should worry about, but rather we should oppose the "positivist" and "modernist" hubris that demands that non-Western cultures should give up, or alter, elements of their inherited cosmologies in the light of the growth of knowledge in natural sciences. Let us see how this view of hybridity meshes in with the Hindutva construction of Vedic science.
It is a well-known fact that Hinduism uses its eclectic mantra - "Truth is one, the wise call it by different names" - as an instrument for self-aggrandisement. Abrahamic religions go about converting the Other through persuasion and through the use of physical force. Hinduism, in contrast, absorbs the alien Other by proclaiming its doctrines to be only "different names for the One Truth" contained in Hinduism's own Perennial Wisdom. The teachings of the outsider, the dissenter or the innovator are simply declared to be merely nominally different, a minor and inferior variation of the Absolute and Universal Truth known to Vedic Hindus from time immemorial. Christianity and Islam at least acknowledge the radical otherness and difference of other faiths, even as they attempt to convert them, even at the cost of great violence and mayhem. Hinduism refuses to grant other faiths their distinctiveness and difference, even as it proclaims its great "tolerance". Hinduism's "tolerance" is a mere disguise for its narcissistic obsession with its own greatness.
Whereas classical Hinduism limited this passive-aggressive form of conquest to matters of religious doctrine, neo-Hindu intellectuals have extended this mode of conquest to secular knowledge of modern science as well. The tradition of claiming modern science as "just another name" for the spiritual truths of the Vedas started with the Bengal Renaissance. The contemporary Hindutva follows in the footsteps of this tradition.
The Vedic science movement began in 1893 when Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) addressed the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. In that famous address, he sought to present Hinduism not just as a fulfilment of all other religions, but also as a fulfilment of all of science. Vivekananda claimed that only the spiritual monism of Advaita Vedanta could fulfil the ultimate goal of natural science, which he saw as the search for the ultimate source of the energy that creates and sustains the world.
Vivekananda was followed by another Bengali nationalist-turned-spiritualist, Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950). Aurobindo proposed a divine theory of evolution that treats evolution as the adventures of the World-Spirit finding its own fulfilment through progressively higher levels of consciousness, from matter to man to the yet-to-come harmonious "supermind" of a socialistic collective. Newer theories of Vedic creationism, which propose to replace Darwinian evolution with "devolution" from the original one-ness with Brahman, are now being proposed with utmost seriousness by the Hare Krishnas who, for all their scandals and idiosyncrasies, remain faithful to the spirit of Vaishnava Hinduism.
Vivekananda and Aurobindo lit the spark that has continued to fire the nationalist imagination, right to the present time. The Neo-Hindu literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially the writings of Dayanand Saraswati, S. Radhakrishnan and the many followers of Vivekananda, is replete with celebration of Hinduism as a "scientific" religion. Even secularists like Jawaharlal Nehru remained captive of this idea that the original teachings of Vedic Hinduism were consonant with modern science, but only corrupted later by the gradual deposits of superstition. Countless gurus and swamis began to teach that the Vedas are simply "another name for science" and that all of science only affirms what the Vedas have taught. This scientistic version of Hinduism has found its way to the West through the numerous ashrams and yoga retreats set up, most prominently, by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his many clones.
ALL these numerous celebrations of "Vedas as science" follow a similar intellectual strategy of finding analogies and equivalences. All invoke extremely speculative theories from modern cosmology, quantum mechanics, vitalistic theories of biology and parapsychology, and other fringe sciences. They read back these sciences into Sanskrit texts chosen at will, and their meaning decided by the whim of the interpreter, and claim that the entities and processes mentioned in Sanskrit texts are "like", "the same thing as", or "another word for" the ideas expressed in modern cosmology, quantum physics or biology. Thus there is a bit of a Brahman here and a bit of quantum mechanics there, the two treated as interchangeable; there are references to "energy", a scientific term with a definite mathematical formulation in physics, which gets to mean "consciousness"; references to Newton's laws of action and reaction are made to stand for the laws of karma and reincarnation; completely discredited "evidence" from parapsychology and "secret life of plants" are upheld as proofs of the presence of different degrees of soul in all matter; "evolution" is taught as the self-manifestation of Brahman and so on. The terms are scientific, but the content is religious. There is no regard for consistency either of scientific concepts, or of religious ideas. Both wholes are broken apart, random connections and correspondences are established and with great smugness, the two modes of knowing are declared to be equivalent, and even inter-changeable. The only driving force, the only idea that gives this whole mish-mash any coherence, is the great anxiety to preserve and protect Hinduism from a rational critique and demystification. Vedic science is motivated by cultural chauvinism, pure and simple.
What does all this have to do with postmodernism, one may legitimately ask. Neo-Hinduism, after all, has a history dating back at least two centuries, and the analogical logic on which claims of Vedic science are based goes back to times immemorial.
Neo-Hinduism did not start with postmodernism, obviously. And neither does Hindutva share the postmodernist urgency to "overcome" and "go beyond" the modernist fascination with progress and development. Far from it. Neo-Hinduism and Hindutva are reactionary modernist movements, intent on harnessing a mindless and even dangerous technological modernisation for the advancement of a traditionalist, deeply anti-secular and illiberal social agenda. Nevertheless, they share a postmodernist philosophy of science that celebrates the kind of contradictory mish-mash of science, spirituality, mysticism and pure superstition that that passes as "Vedic science".
For those modernists who share the Enlightenment's hope for overcoming ignorance and superstition, the value of modern science lies in its objectivity and universality. Modernists see modern science as having developed a critical tradition that insists upon subjecting our hypotheses about nature to the strictest, most demanding empirical tests and rigorously rejecting those hypotheses whose predictions fail to be verified. For the modernist, the success of science in explaining the workings of nature mean that sciences in other cultures have a rational obligation to revise their standards of what kind of evidence is admissible as science, what kind of logic is reasonable, and how to distinguish justified knowledge from mere beliefs. For the modernists, furthermore, modern science has provided a way to explain the workings of nature without any need to bring in supernatural and untestable causes such as a creator God, or an immanent Spirit.
For a postmodernist, however, this modernist faith in science is only a sign of Eurocentrism and cultural imperialism. For a postmodernist, other cultures are under no rational obligation to revise their cosmologies, or adopt new procedures for ascertaining facts to bring them in accord with modern science. Far from producing a uniquely objective and universally valid account of nature, the "facts" of modern science are only one among many other ways of constructing other "facts" about nature, which are equally valid for other cultures. Nature-in-itself cannot be known without imposing classifications and meaning on it which are derived from cultural metaphors and models. All ways of seeing nature are at par because all are equally culture-bound. Modern science has no special claims to truth and to our convictions, for it is as much of a cultural construct of the West as other sciences are of their own cultures.
This view of science is derived from a variety of American and European philosophies of science, associated mostly with such well-known philosophers as Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, W.O Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michel Foucault. This view of science has been gaining popularity among Indian scholars of science since the infamous "scientific temper" debates in early 1980s when Ashis Nandy, Vandana Shiva and their sympathisers came out in defence of local knowledges and traditions, including astrology, goddess worship as cure for small-pox, taboos against menstruation and (later on) even sati. Over the next two decades, it became a general practice in Indian scholarly writing to treat modern science as just one way to adjudicate belief, no different from any other tradition of sorting out truth from mere group belief. Rationalism became a dirty word and Enlightenment became a stand-in for "epistemic violence" of colonialism.
According to those who subscribe to this relativist philosophy, the cross-cultural encounter between modern science and traditional sciences is not a confrontation between more and less objective knowledge, respectively. Rather it is a confrontation between two different cultural ways of seeing the world, neither of which can claim to represent reality-in-itself. Indeed, many radical feminists and post-colonial critics go even further: they see modern science as having lost its way and turned into a power of oppression and exploitation. They want non-Western people not just to resist science but to reform it by confronting it with their holistic traditional sciences.
What happens when traditional cultures do need to adopt at least some elements of modern knowledge? In such cases, postmodernists recommend exactly the kind of "hybridity" as we have seen in the case of Vedic sciences in which, for example, sub-atomic particles are interpreted as referring to gunas, or where quantum energy is interpreted to be the "same as" shakti, or where karma is interpreted to be a determinant of biology in a "similar manner" as the genetic code and so on. On the postmodern account, there is nothing irrational or unscientific about this "method" of drawing equivalences and correspondences between entirely unlike entities and ideas, even when there may be serious contradictions between the two. On this account, all science is based upon metaphors and analogies that reinforce dominant cultures and social power, and all "facts" of nature are really interpretations of nature through the lens of dominant culture. It is perfectly rational, on this account, for Hindu nationalists to want to reinterpret the "facts" of modern science by drawing analogies with the dominant cultural models supplied by Hinduism. Because no system of knowledge can claim to know reality as it really is, because our best confirmed science is ultimately a cultural construct, all cultures are free to pick and choose and mix various "facts", as long as they do not disrupt their own time-honoured worldviews.
This view of reinterpretation of "Western" science to fit into the tradition-sanctioned, local knowledges of "the people" has been advocated by theories of "critical traditionalism" propounded by Ashis Nandy and Bhiku Parekh in India and by the numerous admirers of Homi Bhabha's obscure writings on "hybridity" abroad. In the West, this view has found great favour among feminists, notably Sandra Harding and Donna Haraway, and among anthropologists of science including Bruno Latour, David Hess and their followers.
To conclude, one finds a convergence between the fashionable left's position with the religious right's position on the science question. The extreme scepticism of postmodern intellectuals toward modern science has landed them in a position where they cannot, if they are to remain true to their beliefs, criticise Hindutva's eclectic take-over of modern science for the glory of the Vedic tradition.
Meera Nanda is the author of Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism (Rutgers University Press, 2003). An Indian edition of the book will be published by Permanent Black in early 2004.
December 15, 2003
India: Peddling Religion on TV
Washington Post
December 15, 2003; Page A26
The Airwaves of Enlightenment
India's Gurus Take to Television to Spread Their Message
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
NEW DELHI -- In the plush, heavily marbled living room of his 8,000-square-foot mansion, the wealthy industrialist sat raptly in front of the television at 7 a.m., a cup of tea in his hand and a contented smile on his face.
On the screen in front of him, Yashpal Sudhanshu, one of India's best-known gurus, chanted a prayer in Sanskrit before launching into a soothing, feel-good lecture on how to cope with stress. "Begin each day with a pure thought," he advised. "When you do breathing exercises, when you control your anger, when you laugh, you're actually prolonging your life."
The industrialist, Rajiv Malhotra, said he was deeply grateful for such guidance. Listening to a guru each morning helps him "get peace out of this mechanical life," he said. "People have become very conscious about material things."
Malhotra, 44, is not alone. As Indians move to the cities and leave behind traditional, village-level forms of Hindu worship, they increasingly are turning to the airwaves in search of spiritual sustenance. As a result, religious programming is booming, making celebrities out of gurus whose satellite-assisted reach now extends to many parts of the globe.
"Spirituality was always part of the Indian psyche, but now it has just found a new vehicle, 24-hour television," said Madhav Kant Mishra, executive director of the seven-month-old Sadhna religious channel. "Indians had started disbelieving their own traditional knowledge systems. The TV channels aim to reestablish that system with modern analysis and in a modern context."
The audience for such programs cuts across social classes in India, where cable television costs as little as $1.50 a month, and cable and satellite services reach an estimated 42 million of 191 million households nationwide. By all accounts, however, some of the most ardent viewers are educated middle-class and wealthy Indians, who tend to live in larger towns and cities and rely on their daily dose of Hindu folk wisdom, prayers and counseling as a powerful antidote to urban angst.
"You walk through any neighborhood in Delhi at 6 or 7 a.m. and you will hear the sound of religious TV coming out of most homes," Mishra said. "People have gotten addicted to it."
Hinduism is deeply embedded in the fabric of everyday life in India, where tens of thousands travel the roads on yearly pilgrimages and makeshift shrines grace the corners of the even the humblest dirt-floored homes.
But the pressures of economic growth and modernization -- manifest in a steady flow of people from the countryside to the cities -- have taken their toll on religious tradition as observed by Hindus as well as the country's Muslim and Christian minorities.
"Indian religions are very locality-specific," said Ashis Nandy, one of India's leading social scientists. "You have family priests, family gurus, personal gods, village gods and goddesses -- this is what living Hinduism is -- and that is truly in decline in urban areas. Therefore you begin to search for substitutes."
One consequence, he said, is a more homogenized and generic form of Hinduism. Another is the rise of Hindu nationalism, whose politicians have made enormous gains over the last decade in part by trying to "exploit this sense of void" among the increasingly transient urban masses, Nandy said.
But most of India's best-known gurus are determinedly apolitical -- cultivating followers in secular parties as well as the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party at the head of India's governing coalition.
The trend has set off fierce competition for airtime among gurus who regard television as key to enhancing their profile -- and bringing in the financial contributions that sustain their ashrams and lifestyles. Some of the programming can be found on mainstream, India-based cable channels such as Zee TV, which claims a worldwide audience of 225 million, and Star Plus of the Murdoch media empire. But the trend is most visible in the emergence since 2000 of four 24-hour cable channels whose content consists largely of gurus singing prayer songs (bajhans) or delivering sermons.
"The religious business in India is very lucrative," said an executive of a religious channel who asked not to be identified. So fierce is the competition for media exposure, the executive added, that lesser-known gurus typically pay religious channels for airtime; some have been known to record their sermons in private, "then insert shots of a crowd from elsewhere and send us the tapes. Some of them are such novices that they need teleprompters and written scripts to give discourses. It's a big commercial game."
Sudhanshu, however, is so popular that he does not pay for airtime -- and commands a worldwide following of 3 million on several channels, aides say.
A Sanskrit scholar from the foothills of the Himalayas, Sudhanshu, 48, is the founder and head of the Universal Awakening Mission, which operates 20 ashrams and a network of charitable hospitals and schools across India; it also has overseas branches in Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere.
During an interview at his New Delhi temple recently, Sudhanshu said one of his principal goals is to enhance the "aura" -- a halo of colored light -- that surrounds each human being at a distance of three to six inches.
"That aura protects you from negative forces," he said as he sat in the lotus position with bajhans playing softly in the background. "When that aura weakens, other people's words and actions have a negative impact. My message is to strengthen that aura around you by meditation, introspection and worship, so you create heaven around you."
The organization's prosperity was evident during a visit to its main ashram, which occupies 17 acres in a farming area outside New Delhi. A kind of religious theme park, the ashram features ornamental ponds stocked with swans, a fire temple, a seminary for Hindu missionaries and a 60-foot high artificial mountain -- complete with cascading waterfall -- ornamented with statues of Hindu gods.
It also has an old-age home and a charitable hospital whose treatment regimes range from state-of-the-art laser eye surgery to chromotherapy, which involves directing bands of colored light on patients suffering from mental conditions.
Taking a visitor on a tour recently, an executive of the ashram acknowledged that for all the guru's divinely inspired wisdom, he also had help from another source in building his spiritual empire. "Television has created this," the executive said.
Special correspondent Rama Lakshmi contributed to this report.
December 15, 2003; Page A26
The Airwaves of Enlightenment
India's Gurus Take to Television to Spread Their Message
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
NEW DELHI -- In the plush, heavily marbled living room of his 8,000-square-foot mansion, the wealthy industrialist sat raptly in front of the television at 7 a.m., a cup of tea in his hand and a contented smile on his face.
On the screen in front of him, Yashpal Sudhanshu, one of India's best-known gurus, chanted a prayer in Sanskrit before launching into a soothing, feel-good lecture on how to cope with stress. "Begin each day with a pure thought," he advised. "When you do breathing exercises, when you control your anger, when you laugh, you're actually prolonging your life."
The industrialist, Rajiv Malhotra, said he was deeply grateful for such guidance. Listening to a guru each morning helps him "get peace out of this mechanical life," he said. "People have become very conscious about material things."
Malhotra, 44, is not alone. As Indians move to the cities and leave behind traditional, village-level forms of Hindu worship, they increasingly are turning to the airwaves in search of spiritual sustenance. As a result, religious programming is booming, making celebrities out of gurus whose satellite-assisted reach now extends to many parts of the globe.
"Spirituality was always part of the Indian psyche, but now it has just found a new vehicle, 24-hour television," said Madhav Kant Mishra, executive director of the seven-month-old Sadhna religious channel. "Indians had started disbelieving their own traditional knowledge systems. The TV channels aim to reestablish that system with modern analysis and in a modern context."
The audience for such programs cuts across social classes in India, where cable television costs as little as $1.50 a month, and cable and satellite services reach an estimated 42 million of 191 million households nationwide. By all accounts, however, some of the most ardent viewers are educated middle-class and wealthy Indians, who tend to live in larger towns and cities and rely on their daily dose of Hindu folk wisdom, prayers and counseling as a powerful antidote to urban angst.
"You walk through any neighborhood in Delhi at 6 or 7 a.m. and you will hear the sound of religious TV coming out of most homes," Mishra said. "People have gotten addicted to it."
Hinduism is deeply embedded in the fabric of everyday life in India, where tens of thousands travel the roads on yearly pilgrimages and makeshift shrines grace the corners of the even the humblest dirt-floored homes.
But the pressures of economic growth and modernization -- manifest in a steady flow of people from the countryside to the cities -- have taken their toll on religious tradition as observed by Hindus as well as the country's Muslim and Christian minorities.
"Indian religions are very locality-specific," said Ashis Nandy, one of India's leading social scientists. "You have family priests, family gurus, personal gods, village gods and goddesses -- this is what living Hinduism is -- and that is truly in decline in urban areas. Therefore you begin to search for substitutes."
One consequence, he said, is a more homogenized and generic form of Hinduism. Another is the rise of Hindu nationalism, whose politicians have made enormous gains over the last decade in part by trying to "exploit this sense of void" among the increasingly transient urban masses, Nandy said.
But most of India's best-known gurus are determinedly apolitical -- cultivating followers in secular parties as well as the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party at the head of India's governing coalition.
The trend has set off fierce competition for airtime among gurus who regard television as key to enhancing their profile -- and bringing in the financial contributions that sustain their ashrams and lifestyles. Some of the programming can be found on mainstream, India-based cable channels such as Zee TV, which claims a worldwide audience of 225 million, and Star Plus of the Murdoch media empire. But the trend is most visible in the emergence since 2000 of four 24-hour cable channels whose content consists largely of gurus singing prayer songs (bajhans) or delivering sermons.
"The religious business in India is very lucrative," said an executive of a religious channel who asked not to be identified. So fierce is the competition for media exposure, the executive added, that lesser-known gurus typically pay religious channels for airtime; some have been known to record their sermons in private, "then insert shots of a crowd from elsewhere and send us the tapes. Some of them are such novices that they need teleprompters and written scripts to give discourses. It's a big commercial game."
Sudhanshu, however, is so popular that he does not pay for airtime -- and commands a worldwide following of 3 million on several channels, aides say.
A Sanskrit scholar from the foothills of the Himalayas, Sudhanshu, 48, is the founder and head of the Universal Awakening Mission, which operates 20 ashrams and a network of charitable hospitals and schools across India; it also has overseas branches in Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere.
During an interview at his New Delhi temple recently, Sudhanshu said one of his principal goals is to enhance the "aura" -- a halo of colored light -- that surrounds each human being at a distance of three to six inches.
"That aura protects you from negative forces," he said as he sat in the lotus position with bajhans playing softly in the background. "When that aura weakens, other people's words and actions have a negative impact. My message is to strengthen that aura around you by meditation, introspection and worship, so you create heaven around you."
The organization's prosperity was evident during a visit to its main ashram, which occupies 17 acres in a farming area outside New Delhi. A kind of religious theme park, the ashram features ornamental ponds stocked with swans, a fire temple, a seminary for Hindu missionaries and a 60-foot high artificial mountain -- complete with cascading waterfall -- ornamented with statues of Hindu gods.
It also has an old-age home and a charitable hospital whose treatment regimes range from state-of-the-art laser eye surgery to chromotherapy, which involves directing bands of colored light on patients suffering from mental conditions.
Taking a visitor on a tour recently, an executive of the ashram acknowledged that for all the guru's divinely inspired wisdom, he also had help from another source in building his spiritual empire. "Television has created this," the executive said.
Special correspondent Rama Lakshmi contributed to this report.
Of Hindutva and governance
The Hindu, Dec 15, 2003
Of Hindutva and governance
By Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Signs of Hindutva were unmistakable in the elections... [But] we are so used to equating it with belligerence that we do not notice it when it takes subtler forms.
THE CONDUCT of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the recent Assembly elections has led many observers to argue that it has undergone a far-reaching transformation. From the party of Hindutva, it has become the party of governance, from an organisation beholden to the Sangh Parivar, it now is acting as a responsible ruling party, instead of playing on an apocalyptic politics of Hindu self- esteem, it is now occupying the space of sensible policy. In many ways this assessment is picking out a discernible trend: the BJP has for some time looked more the natural governing party than the Congress. It outclasses the Congress in sheer political talent across the board. It has the ability to set an agenda on more fronts than one could list, from infrastructure, foreign affairs, Kashmir to economic reform. It is a party that, for better or for worse, now defines the policy space on almost every front, while other parties are reduced to being mere respondents or naysayers. It would be churlish to deny the fact that the BJP is in many respects capable of governing at least as well as any of its rivals. Any opposition that does not acknowledge this reality is premised on a pipe dream.
It is not surprising that the BJP should capitalise on its governance capacities. Only its opponents have made the mistake of supposing that the BJP can expand its base on Hindutva alone; the BJP itself has never been under this illusion. The contrast between governance-based elections and identity politics-based elections is in any case overstated. Even Narendra Modi ran on both issues of Gujarati pride and claimed to have brought water to Gujarat. But equally it would be a mistake to suppose that the BJP has given up on Hindutva or that Hindutva does not represent, in the long run, a profound and insidious danger to the fundamental premises of a liberal constitutional democracy. Far from this election being a sidelining of Hindutva, the results represent its increasing triumph.
Hindutva works as an explicit plank of mobilisation when the following conditions obtain. First, there has to be a framing context or a specific event that generates anxiety that the politics of Hindutva can tap. Such an anxiety can be generated by terrorism, a narrative that stitches together events such as Godhra and Akshardham, or during the 1980s the fallout from the Shah Bano case. The BJP then taps into this anxiety. During the present elections, there was no such framing context, no immediate event to fuel a politics of anxiety and resentment. It was thus intrinsically difficult to unleash the energies of Hindutva. This lack of a framing narrative also freed the media to cover a wide variety of issues rather than focus insistently on the secularism issue alone.
Secondly, what would be an issue around which Hindutva politics would mobilise? In some ways it has already become the dominant sentiment: on all the issues, be it cow slaughter, conversion, cultural transformation, expansion of its base amongst tribals, the acceptance of religion in politics, changes in the self-perception of Indians, marginalisation of minorities, Hindutva is already mainstream. It has already redefined the public sphere in ways that cries of "Hinduism in danger" no longer have quite the same appeal. This is not because Hindutva does not have wide support; it is because it has to a great degree been successful.
The one major issue on which Hindutva politics could mobilise would be Ayodhya. But this is a tricky one to use. For one thing, any mobilisation on this issue runs the risk of inviting the question: what has the BJP been up to on this issue for five years? It can now mobilise on this issue only when one of two conditions obtain. Either it is utterly desperate, or there is a reasonable chance that this mobilisation will result in the construction of the temple. Given the current institutional and legal constraints, the BJP cannot launch another movement, because a movement without an end result will simply yield diminishing returns. It will take this issue up only when it is now in a position to deliver on it. It is easier to organise movements for the sake of it when you are in Opposition, they are harder to justify when a party holds the reins of power. And the temple issue also gets sustenance from a larger framing context that was unavailable this time.
Therefore it should not be surprising that Hindutva was not, directly, a main plank. But signs of it were unmistakable: Mr. Modi was not an insignificant presence; in its own quiet way, the Congress Government's banning of `trishuls' in Rajasthan had an influence. We are so used to equating Hindutva with belligerence that we do not notice it when it takes subtler forms. The BJP was not belligerent not because it has given up on its core ideology, but because it feels that the tides of history are with it. The courts, based on the Archaeological Survey of India report might rule in its favour; most parties are behaving as if it is only a matter of time when the temple in Ayodhya will be built. The governance agenda has come to the fore on the backs of Hindutva, but it will not entirely supplant it. If the BJP Governments begin to run into serious electoral trouble again, or if some unfortunate events hand it a framing context on a platter, the belligerent BJP will make a very swift appearance again. Its cadres will not simply melt away.
Any nation that is built on a politics of resentment and the marginalisation of the minorities, as Hindutva inevitably is, cannot long endure and prosper. Hindutva has the potential of creating a volatile politics that can still plunge this country into chaos, and jeopardise the project of creating a free society where no individual is stigmatised for who they are. The violence in Hyderabad, and the liturgy surrounding Uma Bharti's swearing in, were brief reminder of all that can still happen in this country. The real lesson of these elections however is that opponents of Hindutva cannot win simply by opposing it and calling it names. They have to do what the BJP has done, link an ideology to an energetic and robust organisation with some political imagination. The Congress party, under Sonia Gandhi, is incapable of doing that. It does not have leadership that can translate public sentiment into a concrete political programme or play craft politics. It does not have a clear ideology or organisational acumen. Most political parties that were in the political wilderness like the Democrats in the U.S. or Labour in Britain, made strenuous efforts to reinvent themselves and defined themselves by the adjective "new." Where is the "new" Congress? If the Congress fights on its record of the last two decades, it does not have a leg to stand on; and Sonia Gandhi is a reminder of its grim past rather than a harbinger of the future.
The BJP attracts more young political talent than almost any other party. Underlying that move is an attraction of the politics of the "new," a politics that gets us over our own recent past. Hindutva is a social movement that has produced an enormous amount of social churning that a lot of people feel empowered by. It has lodged itself in the interstices of our psyche, while the Congress looks positively conservative and closed by comparison. The forces of Hindutva are now confident enough to set their sights on longer-term goals, of which governance is inevitably a part. But governance is easier to promise than deliver, and the BJP like any political party will remain vulnerable on these issues. Under those circumstances and in the right context, belligerent Hindutva will be once again on the agenda. But the current calm should not lull anyone into the illusion that governance will do away with Hindutva; if anything good governance will only enhance the long-term appeal of Hindutva. These elections should not be taken complacently as a sign that the Indian electoral system can inevitably tame all fanaticism; they rather point to the fact that opponents of fanaticism have their work cut out for them.
Of Hindutva and governance
By Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Signs of Hindutva were unmistakable in the elections... [But] we are so used to equating it with belligerence that we do not notice it when it takes subtler forms.
THE CONDUCT of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the recent Assembly elections has led many observers to argue that it has undergone a far-reaching transformation. From the party of Hindutva, it has become the party of governance, from an organisation beholden to the Sangh Parivar, it now is acting as a responsible ruling party, instead of playing on an apocalyptic politics of Hindu self- esteem, it is now occupying the space of sensible policy. In many ways this assessment is picking out a discernible trend: the BJP has for some time looked more the natural governing party than the Congress. It outclasses the Congress in sheer political talent across the board. It has the ability to set an agenda on more fronts than one could list, from infrastructure, foreign affairs, Kashmir to economic reform. It is a party that, for better or for worse, now defines the policy space on almost every front, while other parties are reduced to being mere respondents or naysayers. It would be churlish to deny the fact that the BJP is in many respects capable of governing at least as well as any of its rivals. Any opposition that does not acknowledge this reality is premised on a pipe dream.
It is not surprising that the BJP should capitalise on its governance capacities. Only its opponents have made the mistake of supposing that the BJP can expand its base on Hindutva alone; the BJP itself has never been under this illusion. The contrast between governance-based elections and identity politics-based elections is in any case overstated. Even Narendra Modi ran on both issues of Gujarati pride and claimed to have brought water to Gujarat. But equally it would be a mistake to suppose that the BJP has given up on Hindutva or that Hindutva does not represent, in the long run, a profound and insidious danger to the fundamental premises of a liberal constitutional democracy. Far from this election being a sidelining of Hindutva, the results represent its increasing triumph.
Hindutva works as an explicit plank of mobilisation when the following conditions obtain. First, there has to be a framing context or a specific event that generates anxiety that the politics of Hindutva can tap. Such an anxiety can be generated by terrorism, a narrative that stitches together events such as Godhra and Akshardham, or during the 1980s the fallout from the Shah Bano case. The BJP then taps into this anxiety. During the present elections, there was no such framing context, no immediate event to fuel a politics of anxiety and resentment. It was thus intrinsically difficult to unleash the energies of Hindutva. This lack of a framing narrative also freed the media to cover a wide variety of issues rather than focus insistently on the secularism issue alone.
Secondly, what would be an issue around which Hindutva politics would mobilise? In some ways it has already become the dominant sentiment: on all the issues, be it cow slaughter, conversion, cultural transformation, expansion of its base amongst tribals, the acceptance of religion in politics, changes in the self-perception of Indians, marginalisation of minorities, Hindutva is already mainstream. It has already redefined the public sphere in ways that cries of "Hinduism in danger" no longer have quite the same appeal. This is not because Hindutva does not have wide support; it is because it has to a great degree been successful.
The one major issue on which Hindutva politics could mobilise would be Ayodhya. But this is a tricky one to use. For one thing, any mobilisation on this issue runs the risk of inviting the question: what has the BJP been up to on this issue for five years? It can now mobilise on this issue only when one of two conditions obtain. Either it is utterly desperate, or there is a reasonable chance that this mobilisation will result in the construction of the temple. Given the current institutional and legal constraints, the BJP cannot launch another movement, because a movement without an end result will simply yield diminishing returns. It will take this issue up only when it is now in a position to deliver on it. It is easier to organise movements for the sake of it when you are in Opposition, they are harder to justify when a party holds the reins of power. And the temple issue also gets sustenance from a larger framing context that was unavailable this time.
Therefore it should not be surprising that Hindutva was not, directly, a main plank. But signs of it were unmistakable: Mr. Modi was not an insignificant presence; in its own quiet way, the Congress Government's banning of `trishuls' in Rajasthan had an influence. We are so used to equating Hindutva with belligerence that we do not notice it when it takes subtler forms. The BJP was not belligerent not because it has given up on its core ideology, but because it feels that the tides of history are with it. The courts, based on the Archaeological Survey of India report might rule in its favour; most parties are behaving as if it is only a matter of time when the temple in Ayodhya will be built. The governance agenda has come to the fore on the backs of Hindutva, but it will not entirely supplant it. If the BJP Governments begin to run into serious electoral trouble again, or if some unfortunate events hand it a framing context on a platter, the belligerent BJP will make a very swift appearance again. Its cadres will not simply melt away.
Any nation that is built on a politics of resentment and the marginalisation of the minorities, as Hindutva inevitably is, cannot long endure and prosper. Hindutva has the potential of creating a volatile politics that can still plunge this country into chaos, and jeopardise the project of creating a free society where no individual is stigmatised for who they are. The violence in Hyderabad, and the liturgy surrounding Uma Bharti's swearing in, were brief reminder of all that can still happen in this country. The real lesson of these elections however is that opponents of Hindutva cannot win simply by opposing it and calling it names. They have to do what the BJP has done, link an ideology to an energetic and robust organisation with some political imagination. The Congress party, under Sonia Gandhi, is incapable of doing that. It does not have leadership that can translate public sentiment into a concrete political programme or play craft politics. It does not have a clear ideology or organisational acumen. Most political parties that were in the political wilderness like the Democrats in the U.S. or Labour in Britain, made strenuous efforts to reinvent themselves and defined themselves by the adjective "new." Where is the "new" Congress? If the Congress fights on its record of the last two decades, it does not have a leg to stand on; and Sonia Gandhi is a reminder of its grim past rather than a harbinger of the future.
The BJP attracts more young political talent than almost any other party. Underlying that move is an attraction of the politics of the "new," a politics that gets us over our own recent past. Hindutva is a social movement that has produced an enormous amount of social churning that a lot of people feel empowered by. It has lodged itself in the interstices of our psyche, while the Congress looks positively conservative and closed by comparison. The forces of Hindutva are now confident enough to set their sights on longer-term goals, of which governance is inevitably a part. But governance is easier to promise than deliver, and the BJP like any political party will remain vulnerable on these issues. Under those circumstances and in the right context, belligerent Hindutva will be once again on the agenda. But the current calm should not lull anyone into the illusion that governance will do away with Hindutva; if anything good governance will only enhance the long-term appeal of Hindutva. These elections should not be taken complacently as a sign that the Indian electoral system can inevitably tame all fanaticism; they rather point to the fact that opponents of fanaticism have their work cut out for them.
December 08, 2003
Why is Assam burning?
The Hindu, Dec 08, 2003
Why is Assam burning?
By Walter Fernandes
The Centre has treated insurgency in the Northeast as a law and order issue or given it a communal colour by focussing on the Bangladeshi immigrants and ignoring those from the Hindi heartland.
Why is Assam burning?
By Walter Fernandes
The Centre has treated insurgency in the Northeast as a law and order issue or given it a communal colour by focussing on the Bangladeshi immigrants and ignoring those from the Hindi heartland.
December 03, 2003
BEWARE THE CORE IDEOLOGY - Secularism cannot be left to the mercy of political parties
The Telegraph, December 07, 2003
BEWARE THE CORE IDEOLOGY
- Secularism cannot be left to the mercy of political parties
Rudrangshu Mukherjee
Dussehra mock battle
Standing in the courtyard of the Indian International Centre in New Delhi one morning in late October, a prominent member of the Congress think tank and an ardent advocate of the free market told me, “The Congress will have shot itself in the foot if Congress doesn’t win three of the four states.” He was referring, of course, to the elections the results of which are now known. Having shot itself in the foot, the Congress is no longer limping. It is hobbling and may even be close to collapsing.
It is not just the fact that the Congress has lost three of the four states but it is also the scale of the defeats in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh that makes the Congress somewhat of a non-starter as a candidate to unseat Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government next year. Add to the defeats the fact that in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress is not even an also-ran; that in West Bengal it is practically non-existent; that in Maharashtra Sharad Pawar is unlikely to play footsie with an obviously losing side — and you get a picture of a political party that is no longer in a position to provide any kind of challenge to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The remarkable decline of the Congress has another grave implication. It means that the political party that was seen as a vehicle for opposing the communal politics of the BJP is now non-existent as a force. There are two factors that explain why this has happened.
There is the question of leadership. There is a widespread scepticism about Sonia Gandhi’s abilities to lead the country. Even committed secularists feel if in a hypothetical presidential election they had to choose between her and Vajpayee, they would probably prefer the latter. This has nothing to do with her Italian origins which the BJP attacks. It is a more fundamental doubt about her abilities. As president of the Congress, she has done precious little to remove these doubts. She has failed to give to her party any programmatic and ideological direction. The Congress has been buffeted like a rudderless boat alternately by the currents of Nehruvian socialism and then by liberalization. Ms Gandhi is neither a liberalizer nor a socialist — even if one were to comepletely disbelieve the canard that she is a liberalizer after Manmohan Singh has spoken to her and a Nehruvian after a spell of conversation with Pranab Mukherjee.
Similarly, the Congress can no longer boast of a strong secular thrust. It has failed to reject completely a soft Hindutva line to counteract the BJP and woo the majority vote. One has only to remember Sonia Gandhi starting off the Gujarat election campaign in Ambaji temple and more recently Digvijay Singh’s pathetic attempts to be more Hindu than the sangh parivar. The Congress’s secular credentials have always been a trifle suspect, especially after the massacre of the Sikhs in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Ms Sonia Gandhi, either through intent or through inactivity, has failed to reaffirm Congress’s commitment to secularism.
Ms Gandhi has not even tried to put her stamp as a leader on the Congress. She is a leader by default because she has no challenger or, what is worse, because she is the widow of Rajiv Gandhi.
The other factor consists of the subtle changes in the BJP under the initiative of Vajpayee. Ever since he became prime minister, Vajpayee has been trying to distance his government’s policies and the BJP from the more fanatical proponents of Hindutva. Not that there haven’t been instances of doublespeak on his part and a slew of clarifications. But overall there has been a move to put issues like the Ram mandir on the backburner and to concentrate on development. The grotesque aberration in this has, of course, been the pogrom in Gujarat but there has been no repetition of the experiment despite threats from Togadia and Modi. Significantly, Hindutva was not prominent in the election campaigns, not even in the states where the BJP has won against the tide of conventional wisdom. These elections were won and lost on the basis of performance and governance or the lack of them.
It is also important that despite pressure from sections of the sangh parivar, the BJP under Vajpayee has not abandoned the path of liberalization. In this and in the highlighting of governance during the election campaign, Vajpayee and his deputy, Lal Krishna Advani, have spoken in one voice, whatever differences they may or may not be having on other matters.
Under Vajpayee, the BJP has usurped the political and ideological space that was previously occupied by the Congress: closet Hindutva plus liberalization. (It needs to be recalled that neither Indira Gandhi nor Rajiv Gandhi was beyond playing on majoritarian sentiments when it suited their interests.) The great Indian battle between communalism (read BJP) and secularism (read Congress) is no more than a piece of shadow-boxing: men of straw in a mock battle with Rama and Ravana easily interchanging places.
Does this mean the battle for secularism in India is over or actually non-existent? Has the BJP changed colour or is it that the anti-minority crusade has been abandoned? The answer to both questions is in the negative.
A journalist known for his loyal espousal of the cause of the BJP — arguably the only writer in English who does so with eloquence and a disarming and pernicious rationality — wrote in The Telegraph the day after the election results: “If the BJP steered well clear of emotive issues centred on its Hindutva ideology, it was not because the party is no longer interested in its core ideology.” The verb “steered” is important. Hindutva has not been abandoned. The BJP stayed away from it because the particular political and electoral context demanded a different set of priorities and a different kind of campaign. There was a degree of political acumen in the choice. But this is no guarantee that Hindutva and majority-led violence will not be used in the future for political gains.
The battle for secularism has become more difficult because circumstances have forced the belated recognition that secularism cannot be made dependent on any political party. It is far too important for that. Political parties have betrayed India’s past; India’s present and its future cannot be left to them.
Secularism is an endangered value and an important one. It needs to be defended and upheld by individuals as individuals or in a group. For those who believe that secularism and tolerance are vital to civlized existence, the election results convey an urgent message. The results underline a danger of mistaking appearance with reality. The challenge is to combat the BJP’s core ideology and not be swayed by a context-driven election campaign and the ensuing victories.
BEWARE THE CORE IDEOLOGY
- Secularism cannot be left to the mercy of political parties
Rudrangshu Mukherjee
Dussehra mock battle
Standing in the courtyard of the Indian International Centre in New Delhi one morning in late October, a prominent member of the Congress think tank and an ardent advocate of the free market told me, “The Congress will have shot itself in the foot if Congress doesn’t win three of the four states.” He was referring, of course, to the elections the results of which are now known. Having shot itself in the foot, the Congress is no longer limping. It is hobbling and may even be close to collapsing.
It is not just the fact that the Congress has lost three of the four states but it is also the scale of the defeats in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh that makes the Congress somewhat of a non-starter as a candidate to unseat Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government next year. Add to the defeats the fact that in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress is not even an also-ran; that in West Bengal it is practically non-existent; that in Maharashtra Sharad Pawar is unlikely to play footsie with an obviously losing side — and you get a picture of a political party that is no longer in a position to provide any kind of challenge to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The remarkable decline of the Congress has another grave implication. It means that the political party that was seen as a vehicle for opposing the communal politics of the BJP is now non-existent as a force. There are two factors that explain why this has happened.
There is the question of leadership. There is a widespread scepticism about Sonia Gandhi’s abilities to lead the country. Even committed secularists feel if in a hypothetical presidential election they had to choose between her and Vajpayee, they would probably prefer the latter. This has nothing to do with her Italian origins which the BJP attacks. It is a more fundamental doubt about her abilities. As president of the Congress, she has done precious little to remove these doubts. She has failed to give to her party any programmatic and ideological direction. The Congress has been buffeted like a rudderless boat alternately by the currents of Nehruvian socialism and then by liberalization. Ms Gandhi is neither a liberalizer nor a socialist — even if one were to comepletely disbelieve the canard that she is a liberalizer after Manmohan Singh has spoken to her and a Nehruvian after a spell of conversation with Pranab Mukherjee.
Similarly, the Congress can no longer boast of a strong secular thrust. It has failed to reject completely a soft Hindutva line to counteract the BJP and woo the majority vote. One has only to remember Sonia Gandhi starting off the Gujarat election campaign in Ambaji temple and more recently Digvijay Singh’s pathetic attempts to be more Hindu than the sangh parivar. The Congress’s secular credentials have always been a trifle suspect, especially after the massacre of the Sikhs in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Ms Sonia Gandhi, either through intent or through inactivity, has failed to reaffirm Congress’s commitment to secularism.
Ms Gandhi has not even tried to put her stamp as a leader on the Congress. She is a leader by default because she has no challenger or, what is worse, because she is the widow of Rajiv Gandhi.
The other factor consists of the subtle changes in the BJP under the initiative of Vajpayee. Ever since he became prime minister, Vajpayee has been trying to distance his government’s policies and the BJP from the more fanatical proponents of Hindutva. Not that there haven’t been instances of doublespeak on his part and a slew of clarifications. But overall there has been a move to put issues like the Ram mandir on the backburner and to concentrate on development. The grotesque aberration in this has, of course, been the pogrom in Gujarat but there has been no repetition of the experiment despite threats from Togadia and Modi. Significantly, Hindutva was not prominent in the election campaigns, not even in the states where the BJP has won against the tide of conventional wisdom. These elections were won and lost on the basis of performance and governance or the lack of them.
It is also important that despite pressure from sections of the sangh parivar, the BJP under Vajpayee has not abandoned the path of liberalization. In this and in the highlighting of governance during the election campaign, Vajpayee and his deputy, Lal Krishna Advani, have spoken in one voice, whatever differences they may or may not be having on other matters.
Under Vajpayee, the BJP has usurped the political and ideological space that was previously occupied by the Congress: closet Hindutva plus liberalization. (It needs to be recalled that neither Indira Gandhi nor Rajiv Gandhi was beyond playing on majoritarian sentiments when it suited their interests.) The great Indian battle between communalism (read BJP) and secularism (read Congress) is no more than a piece of shadow-boxing: men of straw in a mock battle with Rama and Ravana easily interchanging places.
Does this mean the battle for secularism in India is over or actually non-existent? Has the BJP changed colour or is it that the anti-minority crusade has been abandoned? The answer to both questions is in the negative.
A journalist known for his loyal espousal of the cause of the BJP — arguably the only writer in English who does so with eloquence and a disarming and pernicious rationality — wrote in The Telegraph the day after the election results: “If the BJP steered well clear of emotive issues centred on its Hindutva ideology, it was not because the party is no longer interested in its core ideology.” The verb “steered” is important. Hindutva has not been abandoned. The BJP stayed away from it because the particular political and electoral context demanded a different set of priorities and a different kind of campaign. There was a degree of political acumen in the choice. But this is no guarantee that Hindutva and majority-led violence will not be used in the future for political gains.
The battle for secularism has become more difficult because circumstances have forced the belated recognition that secularism cannot be made dependent on any political party. It is far too important for that. Political parties have betrayed India’s past; India’s present and its future cannot be left to them.
Secularism is an endangered value and an important one. It needs to be defended and upheld by individuals as individuals or in a group. For those who believe that secularism and tolerance are vital to civlized existence, the election results convey an urgent message. The results underline a danger of mistaking appearance with reality. The challenge is to combat the BJP’s core ideology and not be swayed by a context-driven election campaign and the ensuing victories.
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