Books » Literary Review
Published: September 26, 2015 17:39 ISTOn the left side of life
Special Arrangement
Pluralism and Democracy in India - Debating the Hindu Right; Wendy
Doniger and Martha C. Nussbaum, Oxford University Press, Rs.895.
A range of scholarly contributions on democracy and secularism throws open the stage for debate.
The book under review, Pluralism and Democracy in India: Debating the Hindu Right
— the result of a conference in November 2005 at the University of
Chicago Law School — is one that engages with ideas of political
freedom, pluralism and democracy in India. This it does by looking at
its history, politics, news reporting and popular culture to make sense
of the country’s drift to right-wing majoritarianism. The scholarly
essays nudge one towards intellectual introspection on how such a
political equation came to pass. The catalyst for both the conference
and the volume was the brutal violence against Muslim civilians in
Gujarat in 2002. The volume, thought of in a time of optimism — after
the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the general elections in
2004 and 2009 — describes the feelings of the editors at the juncture of
the Narendra Modi-led BJP victory in 2014 as the inability to “feel
confident about what the future holds…”
Political circumstances have since changed drastically, from the time
the volume was planned to its publication. Yet, the 20 essays, by
prominent historians, economists, journalists/columnists, litterateurs,
sociologists, political scientists and scholars of philosophy and
religious studies, are not only relevant today because they “debate the
Hindu right” but also because they try to provide answers to some of our
contemporary dilemmas.
For example, Amartya Sen, Mushirul Hasan, Akeel Bilgrami and Martha C.
Nussbaum bring out the importance of the past to contemporary life and
emphasise the role of a critical and nuanced look at history to
understand the present. Malini Parthasarthy, Antara Dev Sen and Arvind
Rajagopal look at the print and electronic media to foreground their
role in shaping the “political” and disseminating dominant, majoritarian
and masculinist stereotypes — allowing themselves to be manipulated by
hate propaganda often. Amrita Basu, Tanika Sarkar and Ritu Menon take up
the issue of violence and democracy to demonstrate the normalisation
and acceptance of ethnic violence in India especially against the
minorities and vulnerable communities. Women, many a time, become both
active agents of this violence and brokers of peace. Prabhat Patnaik and
Zoya Hasan look at state and institutional failures that have left the
vulnerable sections to fend for themselves in the arenas of welfare and
well-being.
Paul B. Courtright and Wendy Doniger, scholars of the non-judgmental and
non-agenda-centric history of the Hindu religion, have been accused by
the Hindu right of denigrating and misinterpreting Hindu religion. They
share their experiences of being the targets of threats and
intimidation. Besides these essays, there are other equally engaging
ones by Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Pratik Kanjilal, Gurcharan Das, Mona G. Mehta
and Ved P. Nanda.
The editors and some contributors lean towards the thesis that the
ascendance of the Hindu right in India is largely due to the neglect of
matters of the heart — the emotional, religious and quasi-religious
commitments (p.5) — coupled with an undue privileging of the notion of
scientific rationality in the public realm. The editors express an
unease that India’s leadership (after Gandhi) moved ahead with its ideas
of progress and rationality with a social disconnect and with its back
toward faith and sentiments that ultimately led to the rise of the Hindu
right. The latter, in turn, realised the religious/emotional needs of
the people and devised ways to satiate those needs. Thus, it got the
support of the people.
This argument is resonant of the “secular-antisecular” debate which came
up in the late 1980s and formed the nerve centre of debates on the idea
of India in the 1990s. However, I remain a critical dissenter to this
view. Rather than suppressing the emotional-religious side of its
citizens, the Indian state, at best, was apologetic and defensive about
its secular-ness and at worst, a violator of this secular value. It
never really explained “secularism” leave aside confidently nurturing
the notion as a live part of its nationalist goals. While not meddling
with and fettering matters of faith in private (which in any case it
should not have done), it hobnobbed with the organised and
not-so-organised faith; was large-hearted about public devotional
expressions; was open-armed toward ostentations associated with
religiosity; was tolerant of venomous speeches that went in the garb of
defending religious identity, and, was even complicit in several
incidents of religious violence. All this even at times when these
clearly went against the rights of the weak.
After all these years of living in India, one has yet to come across an
instance where the Indian state has ever fettered a nocturnal, loud jagran or been an obstacle to neighbourhood Gita-paths or
gatherings on the Bhagwat or public sacrifice of animals. Conversely,
it has hardly ever unambiguously supported a rationalist’s politics or a
religious dissenter or a scholarly research work from fanatical
attacks. The instances it has done so have been as a result of pressure
from civil society and media.
Has the Indian state then really been secular and rationalist? Has it
ever really chalked out its secularism beyond the early doses of “unity
in diversity”? Has it remained true to even this theorem of “unity in
diversity”? These are questions which stare one in the face when
exhorted about Indian state secularism and its “oppressions”. In fact,
the book opens up these very questions once again for debate. By
bringing together a wide range of themes and scholarly contributions on
Indian democracy, secularism and the politics of the Hindu right at one
place, it makes us revisit these debates in the transformed context of
the present times.
Pluralism and Democracy in India - Debating the Hindu Right; Wendy Doniger and Martha C. Nussbaum, Oxford University Press, Rs.895.
Manjari Katju teaches political science at the University of Hyderabad.
