Michael Walzer tries to answer how secular rationalism found itself besieged in many countries after initial years of optimism
Siddharth Singh
Soon after it was formed, Lord Dufferin described the Congress as a “microscopic minority”. The infamous expression used by a viceroy was decisively disproved by 1947 when the minority became the master of India. But in one sense, the colonial official was right. In 1885, the Congress and its leaders were indeed like a small reef in a large ocean: as members of an educated and rationalizing elite, they numbered a handful among millions of their countrymen seeped in superstitious ideas and practices. They not only had to beat the British but also the long-seated religiosity that marked India for two millennia.
What happened to the story of India’s liberation from political domination and religious-and-cultural dogma? In 1985, the British were a memory but religious revivalism had become a potent political force. In 1989, four years after the Congress celebrated its centenary, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the bearer of Indian conservatism, won 85 seats in the Lok Sabha, a shock from which the secularizing elite—political parties, academicians and the press—are yet to come to terms with.
In The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions (Yale University Press 2015), Michael Walzer tries to answer how secular rationalism found itself besieged in many countries after initial years of optimism.
Professionally, Walzer is a political scientist. But to call him just that would be to understate his formidable achievements. From The Revolution of the Saints (1965) to The Paradox of Liberation (2015) represents a journey of a lifetime. In between have come notable milestones. Just and Unjust Wars (1977)—as the name suggests—is a 20th century version of Saint Augustine’s idea. Excursions in Biblical politics, the idea of toleration, justice and morality have marked a long intellectual career.
The Paradox casts a longing eye at two democracies that Walzer seems to admire: India and Israel. Algeria, a shaky democracy, is brought in as a third example. The discussion is rounded off by considering the US as a comparative control.
The paradox of liberation is simple. “The old ways must be repudiated and overcome—totally. But the old ways are cherished by many of the men and women whose ways they are. That is the paradox of liberation.” (page 19). In the Jewish case, centuries of oppression and landless wandering resulted in a diaspora characterized by meekness, submission and lack of political ambition. In India and Algeria, the pattern was slightly different: there was no diaspora and the dominated people had a continuous history of living on a land that came under foreign conquest. The long period of foreign domination resulted in an “inward turn” with spirituality and apolitical existence marking life. In Israel, Mapai, the workers’ party of Israel, led the challenge to traditional ideas. The Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru forged an ambitious social programme after independence. Untouchability was ended and progressive legislation for women enacted. Algeria had its own share of reform.
Yet, within 50 years, a party supposedly professing militant Hinduism was well on its way to power in India. In Israel, a militant version of Judaism is back. Algeria has experienced great violence and is at best a quiescent battle zone. How were the secularizing elite beaten back in these countries?
Walzer has an illuminating answer for India. “On the one hand, Nehru did not believe that the religious communities had a future. Religious belief, or at least its more fervent and ‘superstitious’ versions, would ‘vanish at the touch of reality’. ... At the same time Nehru knew very well the strength of Hinduism and Islam and he certainly understood the near identity of caste and economic hierarchies. So his refusal to recognize the religious communities wasn’t determined only by secular blindness but also by secular fear: he worried that recognizing them would strengthen them. I suppose the two views can be held simultaneously: religious identity is a clear and present danger while secularization, however inevitable, lies somewhere in the future.” (pages 110-111).
This is a partial answer and begs a further question: If a founder of the republic knew the one-sided nature of the fight, then the modernizing drive was at best a holding operation. Sooner or later, revivalism would prevail. So Nehru battled religiosity but not to the degree that would have ensured its elimination. This was with respect to Hinduism. He left Islam untouched. With every passing generation, the gap between profession and practice got wider. In this, India’s electoral democracy played no small part. Walzer notes the Shah Bano episode. These compromises continued to the point when traditional ideas, which had been denied a hearing by Nehru, simply appeared as an unspoilt option. A secularism that was so spavined from the start could not survive the demands of electoral politics. Hinduism, as with exilic Judaism, has continued as always. It is a matter of debate whether revivalism is a right word to describe this change of fortunes. The Paradox is a book worth reading to understand these issues.
Siddharth Singh is Editor(Views) at Mint.
source: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/Vj7jh1HrmRohdoiMx5eoDN/Book-Review--The-Paradox-of-Liberation.html?ref=newsletter
