9. Religion, identity and ‘communal’ politics
Sudipta Kaviraj, Languages of secularity. Economic and
Political Weekly, 48(50): 93-102, 2013.
Peter van der Veer, Religion in south Asia. Annual Review
of Anthropology, 31: 173-187, 2001.
Surya P. Upadhya and Rowena Robinson, Revisiting communalism and
fundamentalism in India. Economic and Political Weekly, 47(36):
35-57, 2012.
Harbans Mukhia, That fateful day. Economic and Political
Weekly, 52(48): 25-28, 2017.
Talal Asad, Thinking about tradition, religion and politics in
Egypt today. Critical Inquiry, 42: 166-214, 2015.
Additional reading:
Talal Asad, Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam,
modernity (Cultural Memory in the Present). Stanford University Press,
2003.
Rupa Viswanath, The pariah problem: Caste, religion, and
the social in modern India. Columbia University Press, 2014.
Veena Das (ed), Mirrors of Violence: Communities,
riots and survivors in South Asia. Delhi: OUP, 1994.
Roma Chatterji and Deepak Mehta. Living with violence: An
anthropology of events and everyday life. Routledge India, 2007.
Gyan Pandey, Remembering partition; violence, nationalism
and history in India. Cambridge UP, 2004.
Shubh Mathur, Everyday life of Hindu nationalism: An
ethnography. Three Essays Collective, 2008.
(post by Krupa and Surya)
Mukhia, 2017:
Mukhia, a medieval historian writes this opinion piece on the
occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Babri Masjid
demolition. He opens his piece by noting that the demolition did not yield
any immediate political dividend to the BJP – it took them 6 years to come to
power at the centre.
Second that it is during the medieval period that two ‘rival
notions of God’ came face to face. However throughout this period there is no
record of communal violence at all. Mukhia suggests this is likely due to the
prevalence of the bhakti movement during this time and its philosophy, which
straddles both (Islamic) monotheism and (Hindu) polytheism.
With regard to the Babri Masjid site being a disputed one,
Mukhia reiterates that there is no recorded evidence (medieval period records)
of there ever having been a temple at the site. He suggests the answer to the
site being noted as a temple may actually lie in a study of tradition and its
links to popular culture. For example, the first record of the site possibly
being a temple is from the 19C and he considers this is likely a reflection of
the “prevailing mood at that time”. And over the years this ‘hint of a temple
at the site’ concretised resulting in demolition. He suggests there is more to
the incident than just demolition. Rather it is part of a well thought out plan
by Hindu fundamentalists to reshape the nation’s identity and heritage from
pluralistic to Hindu.
Upadhyay and Robinson, 2012:
This is a review article on literature related to communalism
since post-independence India. However it also reviews colonial and precolonial
period literature. The authors note that broadly communalism is to be seen as a
secular rather than religious phenomenon, one that is rooted in power relations
between “communities”. With regard to literature the authors first note that
there is vagueness over the phenomenon of communalism and its association with
“community” due to arbitrary definitions and explanations. Second that most
writings on communalism are not on communalism per se rather on Hindu and
Muslim communalism and Hindu fundamentalism. Third, features of ‘religious’
communalism i.e. ‘presumed homogeneous community identity and consciousness’
can be seen in sects, castes, regional and linguistic “communities” too but
they are typically not defined as communalism. Fourth, communalism is not a
peculiarly north Indian urban phenomenon.
Community and communalism:
The association between both is typically seen as a given.
However it fails to take into account the narrowing of the definition of
community when applied along with communalism – the latter is usually seen
through the lens of religion alone. Scholars remain divided over whether the
term communalism ought to be applied across other categories of communities
too. Further, in India the core of literature on communalism is essentially
focused on the Hindu-Muslim relationship. Here it is worth noting that
building on Varshney they suggest “ethnic” might be a better fit than
“community” to describe such a narrow understanding of the relationship between
communalism and communities. Further building on Varshney’s work the authors
consider that communalism has generally been explained from four theoretical
perspectives – essentialism, instrumentalism, constructivism and
institutionalism.
· Essentialism
focuses on “primordial conflicts” (between Hindus and Muslims) and so it only
highlights animosities while drawing a picture of both sides as unchanging
monoliths.
· Constructivism
focuses on colonial policies that resulted in the development of “community
consciousness” and hard identities.
· Institutionalists
consider communalism an outcome of economic and political institutions both
that resulted in slow economic growth, and scarcity of resources – leading to
competition to access these scarce resources and economic opportunities.
· Instrumentalists
consider communalism a consequence of the vested interests of political
leaders, elites and the middle class.
The authors seem to suggest communalism lies somewhere across
all four and question how religious communalism operates differently from
clashes over other social aspirations (regionalism, lingualism, casteism). They
consider that there is almost no work that touches on this angle.
Chronology:
The authors then trace the history of the concept since
precolonial times. Literature suggests that in precolonial periods religious
identities were more localised and identities or ‘a sense of difference from
the “other”’ was understood more along territorial, sectarian, ethnic and
cultic lines. Conflicts, when they occurred, were typically over resources –
land or political authority. Although they might be disguised as communal
conflicts. On the other hand certain scholars have argued that communal
conflicts in precolonial periods had a lot in common with those in the colonial
period – and hence the colonial period did not really mark the start of a new
kind of conflict. The authors suggest that rather than argue about the presence
or absence of such conflict in precolonial India, it would be more fruitful to
look at how the colonial period made it possible for certain localised
conflicts to spread to other social sites and how ‘new areas of contestation
emerged’.
The authors then examine how during the colonial period certain
economic and political contestations emerged around Hindu-Muslim and resulted
in the fusing of discrete localised issues under one homogenous category of
communalism. Scholars attribute this to the British policy of repressing
Muslims whom they saw as a threat to their political power. This resulted in
the rise of a new educated middle class – mainly upper caste Hindu elite. And
then once the Indian National Congress began to be seen as a potential threat
the British commenced a policy of appeasing Muslims. For example, through
separate electorates. However the authors note that though British policies
divided communities they were also internally divided which needs to be
acknowledged.
They note that ‘modernising religious reform movements’ of the
colonial period like the Arya Samaj, Wahabi, Ahmadiya, also had a role in
making religion susceptible to communalism. Nor were the princely states
(Hyderabad, Kashmir, Travancore) immune to communal strife though they were of
lesser intensity. This is because though most of these disturbances could be
attributed to ‘foreign hands’ the states were internally susceptible to such
disturbances.
Unresolved communal tensions during Independence emerged as full
scale riots in the 19060s and 1970s, typically over small issues (for e.g.
supposed eve-teasing, bursting crackers in front of a mosque) – making it clear
that any social issue could be communalised.
In the 1980s strong Muslim leaders emerged (Syed Shahabuddin,
Salman Khurshid) and their ‘aggressive manner’ made the average Hindu hostile
to the whole community. They note the rise of the Sangh Parivar during this
period as marking a shift in communal ideology. This is because their brand of
Hinduism found acceptance not just in the political but also in the social
realm. Literature notes that the development of minority consciousness (for
e.g. SIMI) goes hand in hand with alienation of minorities from contemporary
Indian political system and judiciary.
Considering the rise of communal consciousness, literature notes
that typically elites are the source of such consciousness while the actual
violence undertaken in its name is committed by other groups. However such a
view was shaken by the 2002 riots in Gujarat when the middle class also
participated in the violence and looting. Literature notes that middle-class
Hindus see themselves as ‘victims’ of a State policy of appeasement. And this
feeling is aggravated by heightened competition between groups due to slow
economic growth, unemployment and scarce opportunities.
Nationalism, Communalism, Secularism:
The authors then review the terms secularism, nationalism and
communalism. They again acknowledge that a lot of the debates around these concepts
arose out colonial policies. However they reiterate the worth of looking at
community formations in precolonial periods and their evolution in
post-colonial independent India.
Three versions of nationalism and secularism arose in
pre-independent India – secular statehood as visualised by Indian National
Congress, Hindu Rashtra as visualised by Hindu Mahasabha and the idea of
Pakistan as promoted by the Muslim League. Some scholars argue that these three
strands were a result of the desire to be free of colonial rule. Others note
that the development of Hindu nationalism as an ideology ought to be looked at
independent of Hindu communalism.
Regarding secularism scholars have noted four strands to it –
classical (looks at secularism in terms of modernity (Nehruvian)), soft Hindu,
hard Hindu and the fourth which attempts to move beyond the opposition of
secularism and religion – that straddle the line from practice to philosophy of
secularism. Considering the latter some scholars question if secularism is even
possible in India, given the attachment to religious identity and public
displays of such attachments. Further, that it is difficult to differentiate
between communalism, fundamentalism and nationalism – ‘the only difference
maybe in intensity or degree’.
The authors then move onto to review associated concepts like
‘communal consciousness’, role of media, women, cultural politics and
appropriation of local heroes. They do this in order to review the outcome of
communalism across diverse categories.
With regard to the rise of ‘communal consciousness they first
define it as rejecting links with other communities. While literature notes
some synthesis till 18C by 19C communal ideologies began to rise, partly due to
the census and population enumeration. They agree with scholars that census
also played a role in stereotyping community identities. Then they move onto
stereotyping of women and observe that in nationalist literature, the nation is
imagined as ‘Hindu’ female protected by the ‘Hindu’ male. This leads them to
question the insertion of women in the Hindu right’s project of cultural
nationalism.
Building on literature the authors question the lax role of the
State during communal riots (pre and post-independence) and also the role of
print and electronic media in instigating communal violence and the limited
role played by civil societies in controlling communalism. In fact they
question Varshney’s faith in the civil societies as they feel it prevents him
from looking at communal phenomena in India. They agree with Brass that an
Institutionalised Rioting System (IRS) has been created since Independence.
Regarding Hindutva cultural politics they agree that over the
last few decades it has transformed into fundamentalism. They note that the 1980s
was a ‘critical period’ that effected this transformation through certain
incidents. These include, communal violence in North Indian towns, Mandal
Commission recommendations, Indira Gandhi assassination, Ram Janmabhoomi
campaign. They also attribute some encouragement to Hindutva ideology through
the television serial Ramayana. With the opening up of the economy, access to
technology helped further the Hindutva cause (through audio cassettes, national
television and later independent satellite TV channels). Consequently they
notice the spread of communal movements beyond Hindu-Muslim – it has now
affected tribals and increasingly Christians as well. Women are also taking a
more active role in spreading Hindutva ideology. The authors then note that there
is also a history of appropriating local Dalit heroes by Hindu communal forces
but this is not a new phenomenon – it has also recorded in colonial times.
In conclusion they mark broad trends in writings on religion,
communalism and fundamentalism. Early decades of Independence has taken a more
instrumental or essentialist view. 1980s onwards with the rise of Hindu
fundamentalism literature noted the planned and organised nature of violence
against Muslims. After the 2002 Gujarat riots literature started questioning
the role of the State, politics of the Hindu right and use of Gujarat as an
“experiment” in the making of a Hindu Rashtra. More dangerous for them than the
role of the State in not checking Hindu fundamentalism is the unquestioned
circulation of Hinduised values and culture at the grass roots level.
THINKING ABOUT TRADITION, RELIGION AND POLITICS IN EGYPT TODAY –
Talal Asad
The events that unfolded in Egypt before the military coup in
2013, revolved around an Islamic Awakening that was fronted by the Muslim
Brotherhood. The movement's insistence on ritualistic observance and blind
obedience to authority, as well as the prioritising of the sharia as
constituting the foundations of their envisioned state were considered by
critics to be threats to the autonomous modern self. This interpretation had to
do with the radical secularist understanding of religion as belonging to the past
and its contemporary presence being confined to the private lives of
individuals. These views, according to Asad, is rooted in understandings that
emerged in the period of early European modernity which claimed an inverse
relationship between freedom and authority, and the understanding of the
individual as subservient to larger social conventions.
Such assumptions about tradition as anti-modern have faced
criticism from the likes of Adam Seligman who states that tradition bridges the
gap between rigid adherence to actual feelings and its management through
certain conventional formalities which makes action possible and acceptable.
Tradition also plays a crucial role in modern jurisprudence by establishing the
concept of precedence; and in liberal democratic systems as the foundation on
which future politics are expected to be conducted. Tradition in the form of
material remnants of the past such as objects, texts, buildings etc. are also
the base on which the reconstruction of veridical historical narratives are
created. However, the unquestioned authority that religious tradition is
understood to command, according to critics of tradition, goes against its
inclusion in politics, since the ethos of modern democracies is based on
deliberation.
However, arguments against such understandings of religion as a
coercive and all-encompassing authority is refuted by interpretations which
state that the authority of the same was not based on coercion or passive
acceptance by the subject, but was based on voluntary submission to the
tradition. Such an understanding also encompassed opposition to false claims of
authority, which was derived out of interactions with pre-modern Christian
traditions.
The growth of a commercial society opens up the possibilities of
self-invention, justified on the right of the sovereign self. This disregards
the influence of the market on individual behaviour, and the modern commercial
society's ordering of individuals into consumers and investors, and the market
is viewed as a means for fulfilling their desires. Thereby, ignoring the
possibility that coercion can also be internal, and that internal compulsions
are as effective a controlling mechanism as external and apparent control. The
modern secularist criticisms of religion are based on such understandings of
the past as the only source of blind obedience and ignore its potential as a
means through which self-conscious acts are turned unself-conscious, in that
they do not suppress desires and therefore also signifies freedom of choice.
Tradition, according to Asad, needs to be viewed not as a framework of control,
but a broad template of understanding and acting in the world. Like language,
devotion to tradition required not only repetition but also an inherent
flexibility to be able to adapt to changing circumstances. Through continued
usage, the element of submission to this framework of understanding disappears,
as it takes root in subconscious memory.
The language in which the idea of faith has been framed has been
in line with legalistic understandings of obligatory and forbidden actions.
These understandings articulate a whole range of actions belonging to the
observance of tradition, but have been reduced to an understanding based on
forbidding what is wrong. Thereby establishing an understanding of tradition as
being founded on certain presupposition of what 'right action/thought' is.
However, the formation of right and wrong is much more complex than each being
defined by counterpoised understanding of the other. Such understandings,
according to Asad, are contingent on the particularities of the space, time,
and situation in which it is being understood.
Hannah Arendt conceptualised tradition in European history, as
being tied to authority and religion, and in a way this stands true even for
the Middle East because of its Greco-Roman inter-linkages and European
influences in the post-Enlightenment period. Arendt argues that the rise of
modern science substantially destabilised the authority of religion, and
subsequently transformed the idea and practice of tradition as well. As a
result, these critiques of tradition led to reconceptualisation of ideas of
power in Roman political tradition which were based on the dual notions of
foundation and a religion that defined their political identity. This marked a
division in the understanding of power and authority, mirrored by a similar
division in its exercise by different, separate institutional entities - that
is, the Church and the State. This division was similarly reflected in medieval
Muslim governance between the collective authority of the ulama and
the individual amir. With time, the linkages between the religious
and temporal as wielders of authority and power respectively were eroded, and
as a result religious authority was separated from political authority, thereby
secularising the same. This separation of the two has been followed by an
augmentation of the state's foundation and its exercise of violence, as opposed
to religious tradition, as reflected in the American and French revolutions,
which replaced the latter as the new legitimate order for the future. Thereby,
leading to a fusing of power and authority in the state alone, essentially
removing any measures of checks and balances and introducing a new tradition of
the state, rooted in modernity, the repetition of which creates an enduring
aspiration for its continuation.
The 2011 Egyptian uprising was based on a negation of the state's
usage of violence as a basis for loyalty, and in instituting a new tradition
that was to be based on justice, progress and transparency. However, according
to Asad did not achieve fruition, primarily because of Egypt never embodied a
singular purpose and foundation, due to its inner fragmentation of interests
amongst the military, the government, the bourgeois and the protesters, leading
to the formation of multiple irreconcilable interests. However, mass protests
could be considered to be the true representation of the people's will as
espoused by the Schmittian conception of legitimacy which understood legitimate
rule in terms of the right to resist the political authority of the state. In
that, it presupposes that agitation against authority is an effort to
re-establish commonly held views regarding a single, normative order that
informs political and legal reasoning, which predates its formal codification
in modern state institutions and the constitution. In the case of Egypt, and
other modern states where power and authority remain concentrated in the hands
of the state, popular movements for change are viewed as threats to their
legitimacy, and are stifled through their monopolised usage of power.
In this context, there arises a distinction between the deliberate
violence of the secular and Islamist factions, where the former is viewed as necessary
for historical progress and the latter as reactionary and guilty of obscuring
Egypt's true secular character. These interpretations were commonly held by
secularists in Egyptian society, who constituted a small group of middle and
upper class elites, and their hostility towards them was ideological. In
contrast to this, the state viewed political Islam as represented by the Muslim
Brotherhood as a serious political challenge because of their popular following
and vast networks of organisation, which straddled vast sections of the
Egyptian population. The inherent irreconcilability of these factions prevented
them from coming together as a united front against the state as part of a
larger attempt to establish and consolidate democracy.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi were viewed as a threat and not
as a potential ally against the state, because of the centrality to their
religious identity that was accorded to them by their secular rivals. However
the motivations for denouncing the Brotherhood were not always hinged on the
matters of religious identity, and included lower-class deference towards the
elite who swarmed the ranks of the group. However, these motivations were
informed by ideas and views which were based on a division of politicised religion
and personal beliefs as the only motives, which overshadowed more complex
attitudes and opinions which underscored the fluidity of choices. These
interpretations also disregard the fact that democracy should ideally be viewed
as a continuous process, rather than an end in itself, and undergoes several
reiterations in order to maintain its representativeness, thereby negating the
merits of a different system, that the Brotherhood represented.
The ordering of these segregations, that of secular and Islamist,
were founded on understandings based on exclusive political and philosophical
categories that had been used exclusively within the said categories. Exchanges
across traditions were marked by mutual distrust and hostility and therefore
lacked any scope for a viable synthesis. As a consequence, the vision of an
ideal end-state was based on ideas that were considered to be rational and
decisive, as opposed to notions associated with religion such as affective,
violent and inconclusive. This justifies the importance that was accorded to
the consolidation of liberal conceptualisations of democracy and its associated
values and the free market system. These associated values of conclusiveness
and calculability were misconstrued in their representation as ideal
philosophical groundings for a modern nation state. Thereby, this completely
disregarded the necessity of inconclusiveness and states of flux in politics as
markers of a healthy, functioning democratic system.
This unquestioned ascription to certain principles as ideal
therefore disregards the interdependence that exists between different
discursive traditions. Growing consumerism and the incursions of the market
into everyday life have resulted in the devaluation of continuity with the past
and all its associated linkages, faith being one. These are usually viewed as
impediments to the realization of the unhindered self through opposition to
embodied traditions and external constraints. Therefore, this made hostility
towards religion a part of being modern. However, such a perspective completely
disregards the all-pervasive nature of the market and its own set of
constraining factors which have come to define the metrics of what can be
considered a good life in a modern context.
The criticisms regarding an Islamist state focused more on the
religious prefix than it did on the nature of modern governance itself, which
has come to define the conditions for a modern reality. The projected
irreconcilability between what are considered distinct pre-modern and modern
constructs are based on problematic assumptions regarding the rational,
conclusive and ethical conceptualization of the latter. In reality, the modern
state is marked by inconsistencies in its everyday functioning, founded on the
performance of certain exclusionary and violent practices either against its
own people or those belonging to other states, as a way of maintaining its
primacy. Asad concludes by stressing on the possibility of the exercise of
these same rights and duties without its regulation by an overarching
authority. The presence of multiple non-hierarchical domains of normativity
would fundamentally change politics by opening it up to different overlapping
interests, all oriented towards maintaining this plurality. In such an ordering
of reality, the past would continue to be a necessary aspect for a coherent
life. This has to be followed by a change in perspective regarding what
tradition embodies, and to view it not as an impediment to the realisation of
contemporary ideals and goals but as a code of observance that checks the
excesses of the coercive forces of the sovereign state and the free market.
The project of Orientalism was based on asserting the differences
in experience between the East and the West, and destabilizing hierarchical
orderings of experiences and knowledge emanating from these fundamentally
different systems. Religion constituted one plane of differentiation between
the religious East and the secular West. According to the author, the
orientalist privileging of religion is not predicated on a resigned
acknowledgement of the importance religious institutions in the colonies, but
on modern understandings of religion in relation to its nationalisation and its
interlocutions in the public sphere.
Colonial rule has been subjected to multiple readings based on
understandings derived out of different traditions. The variations that such
interpretations explicated were based on the tropes of internality and
externality of colonial and native elements and structures, thereby subscribing
to an understanding based on their mutual exclusivity.
The relation between religious and secular and their meanings in themselves,
came to be defined through the continued interactions of different faiths in
the public sphere. These interactions played out in the form of contestations
amongst different faiths and their efforts to secure their followers against
conversions and defections. In India, this took the form of Hindu resistance to
missionisation by Christian missionaries, subsequently leading to the formation
of a public sphere that was not secular by any means. Even though the colonial
policy of secularism avowed by a neutral religious policy, it proved to be
difficult to realise in a society where religion played an important political
role. As a result, externality and neutrality were reduced to mere tropes that
the state assumed to maintain its identity of a transcendent and neutral
arbiter in a society undercut by multiple religious identities. Despite such
efforts, Indian religions developed its opposition to the state, which was
understood to be fundamentally Christian. As a result, colonial frameworks of
organisation, laws and regulations, which were considered to be instruments of
modernity, elicited reactions from different religious groups which viewed them
as unwanted incursions and impediments on the observance of their faith. These
changes provided a new impulse to modern religions, whose opinions were voiced
by an Indian bourgeois that was fractured along lines of caste and religion in
the colonial Indian public sphere. In the absence of political representation
and avenues for participation, mass politics in India took the form of
political rituals like Tilak's Ganpati festival, and reflected majoritarian
narratives of Hinduism, which led to the emergence of other oppositional
discourses such as Ambedkar's politics of conversion, Periyar's anti-Brahmanism
and Gandhi's politics of Hindu inclusivism.
Democracy as an aggregate of political and legal devices represents the need
for addressing the ineradicable differences and disagreements that exists
within the modern state. Therefore, democracy in a sense, presupposes the
presence of multiple, sometimes irreconcilable discourses. the disputes that
exist amongst them, make for a kind of unity established out of a dialectics of
reconfigurations which hacks away at the inessentials and preserves what arises
out of the process as essential and therefore, worth defending. In Egypt, the
uprisings, although similarly representative of varying narratives of opinion
and intent, came to be coloured by the other in terms that were suited to
ensuring the prevalence of their own vision of the future. As a result,
diffidence in this case, consolidated these factions against one another, rather
than uniting them in pursuit of a common goal, that is establishing and
consolidating democratic principles in Egyptian society.
RELIGION IN SOUTH ASIA – Peter Van der Veer
Van der Veer states that the colonial state cannot be studied in
isolation, and needs to be understood in the context of the global framework of
imperial interactions between the metropole and its colonies. These
interactions produced both colonial and national modernity.
The universalisation of religion according to Asad (1993) is
directly related to the coming of modernity in Europe and the subsequent
proliferation of the same understanding through the spread of European colonial
dominance. As a result, traditions were invented in order to give certain
possibly dissociated and heterogeneous cultures a sense of coherence in
attempts to understand and represent them. Hinduism being a prime example of
such an exercise in classification. The classification of such divergent
practices and traditions under one broad masthead of Hinduism influenced a
movement for the unification of its various polytheistic traditions under a
singular understanding of a constructed tradition. The Revivalists therefore
constructed the notion of unity of God, the scriptures and subsequently the observance
of faith as part of a larger effort to fashion a modern Hinduism, which would
constitute the basis for moral action in the secular world. Similar
transformations took place in Islam, Sikhism and Buddhism as well.
Modern religions also brought about the creation of an informed
religious public. This adds a new dimension to Habermas' understanding of the
concept of the public sphere as a space for open, unhindered, critical
evaluation of the state's exercise of political power, which did not account
for the presence of religious public opinion as it was not considered to be
rational and critical. However, most modern nation states allow citizens to
follow different religions, without understanding varied affiliations in
relation to their loyalty to the state.
Religious movements that originated in the colonial period or
which are the successors of the ones which did, mark the contemporary modern
public sphere in South Asia. Certain movements were aimed at unifying and
homogenising the religious community, and therefore directed their ire against
what they considered to be a pseudo-secular state and attempts at conversion by
other religious sects. Movements like this such as the Tablighi Jama'at and
groups like the RSS and Shiv Sena and their views on organising the personal
lives of its adherents and members therefore runs into direct confrontation
with the agenda of the secular nation-state and its own tendencies of
interference in the lives of its citizens.
The media, against the context of developments in communication
technologies, also plays a crucial role in the transformation of the public
sphere. Developments in real time broadcasting capabilities have extended ideas
of darshan beyond temples and sites of pilgrimage. Also,
continued representation and display of sacred images and themes in
popular media not only informs the manner in which the visual register of the
public sphere is constituted, and also marks an increased mobility of sacred
power across time and space. The reach of new media has had a substantial role
to play in the creation of transnational religious spaces for migrants, who
both transformed by transmitted ideas and images of religion from their
homelands and subsequently transform the same in the process.
Religion constitutes a defining element in the politics of
identity in modern South Asia, but its beliefs and practices are not
geographically confined to the region, as neither are the people who belong to
it. As a consequence, it becomes important to understand the manner in which
forces of globalisation have transformed nation-states as well as the
functioning of its many defining elements in a transnational context.
LANGUAGES OF SECULARITY – Sudipta Kaviraj
Ideas concerning secularity entered the South Asia, particularly
India, gradually. Instrumentalities of colonial power and missionary debates
were the first point of entry for Western influences, but deist attacks on all
established religions, such as those fronted by Raja Rammohan Roy and the
Brahmo Samaj were not based on a complete rejection of religion, but on a
policy of reconstitution of its basic principles of adherence and worship in an
effort to initiate an internal shift from pre-modern observances to a modern
rationalist version of the same. Similar movements, according to Kaviraj,
questioned the need for a god, as a central force of ethics, and attempted to
locate capabilities of objective decision making within people and not some
superfluous, un-interrupting force. Syed Ahmad Khan’s reformism within Islam
followed a similar trajectory in terms of situating Islam within a more
modernist framework. These interventions established the foundational
principles of modern secularity – decline in religious control over social
life, that is, ethical secularity, and, the state’s position on religious
affairs or political secularity.
The end of colonial rule marked the emergence of two perspectives
in terms of the final direction that these decolonised systems would possibly
assume. Gandhi stated that these states could either emulate the Western path
into the modern. While the Nehruvian vision claimed that the real march towards
modernity could only be envisioned with the end of colonialism; since any
social, political or ethical mechanism produced during the colonial period
would be in strict opposition to British rule and would represent an
oppositional model to colonial modernity. This line of thought separated the
realisation of modernity from a European context, and implied that colonialism,
which sought to establish its modernising ethos in the colonies, had in reality
despoiled the ideals of Enlightenment. According to Nehru, the dissociation of
these ideas from the geographical bounded-ness of its applicability and peddling
them as universal ideals, the process completely ignored the prior historical
processes and changes that Europe had undergone prior to the inauguration of
modern constitutions. In the Indian context, such understandings regarding the
applicability of Enlightenment ideals disregarded the newness of its own
institutional history.
The trajectories of development of European and Indian state
secularism were substantially different. In Europe, it emerged as a response to
years of religious wars, before the establishment of modern constitutions. In
India, the same constitution which established adult suffrage as a fundamental
right, also established state secularity. The Partition of 1947, made this
ideal contentious, as the Pakistani state was based on its rejection, whereas
nationalists in India did not believe in its effectiveness. Unlike in Europe,
secularity was not subjected to a democratic test, and therefore lacked
institutional mechanisms or popular assent to justify its presence in the
constitution.
The 1980’s sparked off a new linguistic shift in
understanding secularism. Hindu nationalists acquired an anti-secularist stance
based on reasoning derived from thinkers like Savarkar. They attacked the
Congress’ policies of secularism, claiming unrestricted rule of the majority
community, in order to claim their ‘legitimate right to rule as a putative
majority and to stamp their cultural identity on the state’. A shift in the
language of the rightist Hindu polemics occurred, which saw a transition from
attacks on constitutional secularity to attacks on the Congress’ vaunted
secular identity. They claimed that although a secular state was desirable, but
within a framework of uniform and principled administration, with no
exceptions. This marked the rise of a distinctive language of the liberal
political imaginary. The liberal political ideology was fundamentally concerned
with the idea of dignity, predicated on the equal treatment of all. Unlike in
Europe, where again, such ideals preceded formal institutionalisation through
laws, in India the directionality of such developments was inverted. Ideas
concerning equal treatment came to be understood in terms of political
transactions, promises made during electioneering, that is, through
understandings based upon a system of gains and advantages, and not on high
political thought. These positions came to be assumed by the political Left as
well as the Hindu nationalists. As a result, Indian liberalism was recast from
what was to be a revolutionary overthrow of an exploitative order to a fight
against discrimination which based its arguments on the logics of numerical
preponderance. Hindu nationalism also underwent a similar discursive shuffle
where it assumed a combination of politics based upon identity and demands for
justice; and situated them in parallel with narratives of discrimination. This
discrimination was understood historically – in terms of the mistreatment in
hands of Muslim rulers – and in a modern context – by a state that unfairly
solicited only minority interests.
Academic debates regarding secularism followed these political
changes. T. N. Madan (1998) viewed secularism as a precondition for the
establishment of state secularity, and both stages of change being rooted in a
Christian culture. This process had underscored the changes in Christianity in
Europe in response to the scientific revolution of the 17th century
and the rise of Protestantism. Europe’s secular project went through different
stages of evolution into its final interpretation as a legal doctrine. However,
this distinction between secularism as a legal doctrine and secularisation as a
historical process is viewed as being based on a presupposed distinction that
was already inherent within pre-Reformation Christian scriptures. However, this
analysis does not account for the initial steps that had been taken to settle
the problems of religious difference by treaties which sought to establish
non-religious states. This did not ensure the protection of religious
minorities who were forced to accept their subordinate status. However, forces
of economic and social modernity drove populations towards more interactions,
thereby rendering religious sequestration impracticable. This led to the
transformation of the existent system into one that was blind to the
differences of religious thought and practice amongst its subjects. Madan’s
emphasis on secularism as a legal doctrine and secularisation as a historical
process is according to Kaviraj, based on a presupposed distinction that was
already inherent within pre-Reformation Christian scriptures, without
explaining the sociological process of its translation into practice. It needs
to be understood that the first step that was taken by holders of new
mechanisms of the disciplinary powers of absolutism was homogenisation. Despite
such efforts, small pockets of heterogeneous groups remained, as did
subdivisions within dominant groups, as well as non-religious communities. As a
result, most European states, where religious identity was dropped as a metric
of recognition in legal procedures by the state, without imposing restrictions
on the conduct of its subjects’ private lives. Therefore, the secular state was
not ‘effected as a consequence of secularisation’ but in response to a deep religious
quandary.
Ashis Nandy’s analysis finds agreements with Madan’s in terms of
accepting that secularism embodied the dream of a modernist minority who
acquired state power through Nehru’s dominance over the postcolonial Indian
political landscape, and with that the responsibility to ‘remake the masses’.
However, Nandy understands secularism and communalism as representative of two
binary understandings of how popular Indian imagination is to be constituted
with both ideas pivoting their realisation and subsequent operationalisation on
acquiring state power. Nandy characterises secularity into tis modern and
traditional variants. The modern variant of secularity understands religion as
an ideology and therefore assumes an intellectual form in which arguments are
justified by the state along lines of rational falsification. Unlike Madan, who
views secularism as a modern project, Nandy upturns this assumed binarised
characterisation based on the self-images of the modern as fundamentally
opposite to pre-modern conditions. Instead, he turns it around to constitute
his argument on the dogmatic imposition of conceptions of right, best and
appropriate without understanding the implications of the same. Thereby,
drawing parallels with secularist ideas of how religions function through ideas
of damnation, salvation and conversion. Madan challenged the general view that
secularism only required governmental will in order to succeed as a project of
postcolonial modernity, but in that he exposed it as the mission of a small
elite, westernised minority.
Nandy’s challenge to social science orthodoxy targeted individual
articles of Weberian faith and upturned previously held notions that social
secularisation must precede political secularity, and notions that modern secularists
were tolerant and atavistic traditionalists were intolerant and aggressive.
Nandy’s views regarding the modernist elites as a small clique of people
separated from the belief culture of their people, but adept at capturing the
state and imposing their political imaginary in a suppressed populace through
fundamentalism and militancy provided a new perspective on the project of
secularity. Kaviraj believes Nandy’s argument to be not just critical of
secularism, but religious orthodoxy as well, through its extrapolative logic.
He also claimed that religious peace in Indian society was based upon
influences of traditional religiosity. By changing the direction of
responsibility from the state to the people with regards to securing religious
tolerance, not through new techniques of control but the continuity of
religious traditions, it placed the onus of finding a solution on social
scientists and not statesmen. This created a demand in academic discourses for
critical postcolonial analyses of religious life and the modern state.
