S.N. Balagangadhara, Reconceptualizing India studies, New Delhi, Oxford, 2012
Introduction
…I suppose we canal agree that we need to understand a phenomenon before making moral judgements, and that the firmer the moral opinion, the more certain is our knowledge of the phenomenon….-p. 3
The caste system exists, in one form or another, among Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Christians, and Muslims. It has also existed in different environments. It means that this system adapts itself to the environments in which it funds itself. Since new castes have risen and disappeared over the centuries, this system must also be dynamic. Since the caste system is present in different political organizations, and has survived under different political regimes, it is also neutral with respect to political ideologies.—p. 4
…what the Europeans think they know of India tells us more about Europe than it does about India….—p. 5
…So, let me push the question: what is this ‘something’ Europe has to learn from India?
At this state, we usually encounter silence because there does not appear to be any answer to give. Surely, this is strange: Europe has been studying India for centuries; it has colonized her territories and people; it has told Indians what is wrong with their society and culture. And yet, no answer is forthcoming. Indians know what they have to learn from Europe and they have been learning it for centuries on end. Europe, by contrast, apparently has given no thought to the question and certainly has no proper answer.
By virtue of this, the second possibility—that Europe has something to learn from India but does not know what—is very disturbing. One culture, the Indian, has been learning for generations and centuries; the other culture, the European, does not know what to learn or even whether there is anything to learn in the first place. For the first time in so many hundred years, these cultures will meet with each other on the world arena as equals and as competitors. What will the outcome be?—p. 6
…Colonial consciousness denies the presence of morality in the Indian tradition. Moreover, it takes the superiority of Western culture both as its presupposition and its conclusion. This stance towards Indian culture can be traced back to the Christian theological understanding of ‘heathen religions’. The conclusions of this theological understanding have become the foundation of the descriptions of India as developed by later generations of social scientists. This characterization of colonial consciousness also allows me to explain why colonialism is intrinsically immoral and why it has been perceived as an educational project. Colonialism modifies the Indian experience and replaces it with a framework which is rationally unjustified and unjustifiable, and must, therefore, be imposed with violence.—p. 10
…dialogues about religion are often the harbingers of violence. This happens not because ‘outsiders’ have studied Hinduism or because the Hindu participants in the dialogue are religious ‘fundamentalists’, but because of the requirements of reason as they are embodied in such dialogues. The chapter {six} generalizes this argument to show that there is no prima facie harmony between the requirements of reason and the requirements of symmetry in certain dialogical situations. Where religious violence is on the rise, thoughtless slogans are no substitutes for a study of the history of religious dialogues in a different way.—pp. 11
2 The Future of the Present: Rethinking the Post-colonial Project.
…Orientalism speaks about the culture that produced it, namely, Western culture. To study Orientalism, then, is also to study Western culture.—p. 39
When Europeans came to the East (say, India or Egypt) and wrote down their experiences, they were not hallucinating. They did not write about their dreams or compose stories. The reports had (p.40) some structure, whether authored by a merchant, a missionary or a bureaucrat. Reflections about such reports at second remove, or reflections on experiences at a later stage or in a distant way, led to the finding of a structure in these experiences. That structure is the Orient and the discourse about it is the Orientalist discourse.—pp. 40-41
‘Orientalism’ is how Western culture came to terms with the reality of the East. Thus, ‘Orientalism’ refers not only to the discourse about experience, but also to the way of reflecting about and structuring this experience. In this sense, even though Orientalism is a discourse about Western cultural experience, it is not direct but oblique. It is oblique because it appears to be about other cultures. It is also oblique because the experience is not directly reflected upon. It is Western in the sense that it refers to the experiences of the members of a particular culture. Orientalism is the Western way of thinking about its experience of non-western cultures. However, it takes the form of an apparent discourse about the Orient.—p.41
…the distinction is drawn between ‘ordinary historical knowledge’ (that is, factual knowledge of other peoples and places) and ‘paranoid knowledge’ (where the person confuses his experiences of other people with the knowledge about them). The paranoid thinks that his beliefs about other people are true descriptions and does not see them as reports about his experience…..—p. 41
…The Orientalist stubbornly refuses to believe that he is talking about his experiences: instead, he maintains that he is reporting about other people as they are in the world. If this Saidian analogy is accepted, we can make sense of one of the extraordinary epistemological properties of Orientalism.
This information (about the Orient) seemed to be morally neutral and objectively valid; it seemed to have an epistemological status equal to that historical chronology or geographical location. IN its most basic form, then, Oriental material could not really be violated by anyone’s discoveries, nor did it seem ever to be revaluated completely. (Said E. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, London; Penguin Books. 1978, reprint 1995, 205).—p. 42
…’Orientalism’ refers not only to how Europe experienced the orient, but also to how it gave expression to that experience. In doing this, Western culture built and elaborated on conceptual frameworks, using resources available from its own culture. Those descriptions also generated Europe’s description and understanding of itself and the world. That is, Europe’s descriptions of other cultures have been fundamentally entwined in many untold ways with the way it has experienced the world. To understand the way in which the West has described itself, the world and others, is to begin to understand the West itself. The challenge of Orientalism, thus, is a challenge to understanding Western culture.—p.45
It is obvious that every generation of thinkers is constrained or limited by the cognitive resources available to it. Indeed, while one cannot predict how these resources will be used by a particular generation, one can identify the cognitive limits of their use….—p. 46
Critics of Orientalism—from Edward Said to Ronald Inden—provide the following answer: the West thinks that it is a scientific, entrepreneurial, rational culture, contrasted with which stand the Western conceptions of the Orient….—p. 46
Since Said, we have known that Western representations of other cultures have taken specific forms: Orientalism is an academic domain, a set of institutional structures, a discourse. That is, one is able to answer questions about the forms taken by Western conceptions of other cultures….—p. 47
…What form has the ‘self-image’ of the West taken? Enough has been said to enable a sharp, short answer: the form of the social sciences….—p. 47
…I suggest that ‘Hinduism’, as a concept, provided the Westerners with a coherent experience. To the extent that it is a concept, it is a construct. It is also that because, as an experiential entity, it unifies the Western experience. However, this concept has no reference in the world, that is, there is no ‘Hinduism’ (whether as a religion, or as a multiplicity of religions) in Indian culture. As a result, the double qualification of Said makes sense: ‘Hinduism’ is both a false description of the Indian reality, and imaginary. It is false, not because the West gave a false description of the reality, but because it falsely assumed that the experiential entity was a real entity in the world. It is imaginary in the sense that it does not have an existence outside the experience of Western culture.—p. 54
3 Comparative Science of Cultures: A Methodological Reflection.
We, from other cultures, know the West the way the West looks at itself. We study the East the way the West studies the East. We look at the world the way the West looks at it. We do not even know whether the world would look different, if we looked at it our way. Today, we are not in a position to make sense of the previous statement. Wen Indian anthropologists, psychologists, or sociologists do their anthropology, psychology, or sociology, it is really the West talking to itself.—p. 69
…About a full two thousand years ago, the pagan cultures of Greece and Rome met an emerging Christianity, which triumphed. Today, the circle has come a full turn: two other ancient pagan cultures (non-White and non-Christian in nature) will meet the reigning intellectual (p.69) and cultural hegemony of a predominantly Christian culture. The challenge of intellectual hegemony is going to express itself as the afore-mentioned historical task. Of course, this is inter-generational in nature: no generation, leave alone some individual thinker, is capable of bringing such a task to fruition. This qualification, obviously, does not make the task any less daunting that it is.
…I believe that the task is going to present itself as a comparative enterprise. No matter how combative the initial formulations are going to be, one will be compelled to take the hard-won insights and theories of the earlier generations into account, if the task is to be completed. That is to say, the ‘decolonization’ of the social science….the task of ‘decolonizing’ the social sciences will either be a collective global effort of intellectuals across the world, or it simply will not take place. The intellectual hegemony that non-Western intellectuals will be forced to seek can only be achieved through negotiation with intellectuals of the Western world and with their cooperation. In this sense, the hegemony of non-Western intellectuals will not be ‘their’ hegemony. It cannot, and will not, take the form of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ opposition. This opposition will have to be transcended and that will be possible only because of the fact that, today, such an opposition does exist which constitutes our point of departure as well….—p. 70
…Rightly or wrongly, ever since modern colonialism, Western culture has presented itself as an alternate and desirable form of life to peoples from non-Western cultures. But, there is an asymmetry here: while the Western form of life is proposed as an alternative to non-Western forms of life, non-Western cultures are never seen as alternatives (at a macrolevel) to the Western form of life, even where many intellectuals from the West look admiringly at various aspects of non-Western cultures. In this sense, the kind of alternative that the West is to other cultures does not fall in with the notion of ‘alternative’ that we know from our logics and linguistics. ‘Being an alternative to’ is a symmetrical relation: if X is an alternative to Y then Y is also an alternative to X.
In this globalized world of ours, it makes perfect sense to suggest that India, Iraq, or Pakistan should try to emulate Europe or the US, (p.72) whereas it seems both obscene and ridiculous to suggest that Europe and the US should try to emulate India or Iraq. This signals that Western culture is seen as the ‘endpoint’ for non-Western cultures and that only as such does it meet the others in the world arena. However, not many intellectuals openly want to take such a stance. Not only does it smack of the now-rejected developmental ordering of human history, but it also does not allow for an appreciation of how these cultures are meeting each other today: as alternate forms of life…..—pp. 72-73
…When modern sociology describes the Indian caste system, or when modern anthropology studies Hindu practices in some part of India, both presuppose the ‘facts’ dredged up by the earlier generations of Orientalists…..—p. 74
…The contemporary experience of Indian culture and society appears to lend truth-value to the colonial descriptions of India.-p.75
Making one culture intelligible by using the language of another is merely one face of the coin. The other has implications within the West itself. Unlike the received view, I would like to argue that the quandaries faced by Western ethical theories have little to do with its age but with its original: religion. What virtues and vices are; why they are that; why norms must hold universally; and what constitutes a moral life—these are parts of a theological vocabulary. Should it be possible to demonstrate the truth of this hypothesis, the consequences would be immense. Neither the Greek nor the Roman intellectuals can be pressed into the service of ‘secular’ ethics. Plato and Aristotle must become radically unintelligible to a culture which calls itself heir to their civilization. The distance between Athens and Jerusalem will then be at least as great as that between Bombay and New York.-p. 84
The standard textbook trivia which we teach our students routinely assure us that not only are there multiple ‘native’ religions in India (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism; different forms of Saivism; multiple varieties of Vaisnavism; the Bhakti movement, Sikhism, and many other kinds of ‘popular’ religions), but also that they rose in conflict with the ruling ‘orthodoxies’. For instance, the pure Vedic religion is supposed to have given birth to a degenerate Brahminism. The Sramana traditions (exemplified by both Jainism and Buddhism) are alleged to have fought Brahminism. The latter itself is said to have mutated into Hinduism, partially strengthened by the Advaitic religion that later fought Buddhism, and so on. In such a case, one would expect a huge volume of literature regarding religion (what religion is, what these individual religions are), and even more, literature in theology. Yet, there is hardly any theology in India (if we look at Christianity as an example of what it means to write theological tracts), and there is hardly any explicit reflection on the nature of religion. (All one needs is an acquaintance with the history of Christianity to notice how staggering this absence is.) To this day, neither the scholar nor the layperson can answer the question about what makes, say, Hinduism a religion; or what that Brahminism is which Buddhism fought. Are we seriously to believe that, for centuries on end, Buddhism—as a religion—fought another religion, Brahminism, without even being able to say what made Brahminism a religion?-p. 86
…The first is to draw attention to the fact that the only framework that we could possibly use today to study Indian culture would come either from Orientalism, or from the social sciences, or both. If we use these frameworks, we will merely add to the existing Western descriptions of India, and these would not advance our understanding of Indian culture. Of course, one might have no problems with either, and, in so far as such frameworks allow us to find ‘the truth’, we should go ahead. This is the received view on Orientalism and the social sciences, whose legitimacy requires endorsements until the emergence of alternate and rival theories that challenge the current understanding. That, in fact, has been my argument so far. However, I am not interested in criticizing this view, but in elaborating on the answers given by comparative research.—p. 89
…However, in reproducing these Western descriptions about India and the others, something additional intervenes: the Indian intelligentsia, too, is (p.89) constrained by Indian culture. This means, they do not simply parrot Western descriptions of India but transform them in the process. Indians reproduce Western descriptions as Indians understand them….—pp. 89-90
4 Colonialism and Colonial Consciousness.
…Indian nationalist thought crystallized around the certainty that colonization expressed the weakness of Indian society and culture, and the strength of the British.—p. 99
…Quite a few theories float around as purported explanations of the caste system. Some see a deformed class-relation in it; others, a fossilized coalition of associations. Some see hygienic (p.102) principles operative in the caste system; still others, some transaction rules. Some call it racial segregation, whereas others see in it the propensity of human beings to maximize fitness through extended nepotism.—pp. 102-03
Let us remember that the earliest descriptions of India were those that travellers and missionaries provided. They were framed within an explicit theological framework, namely that of Christianity. According to this framework, heathen religions dominated Indian culture. ‘Heathendom’ was the name of the sway that the devil held over people. Without the intervention and revelation of God, human beings were an easy prey to the machinations of the devil and his minions, and they were easily seduced away from worshipping the true God…..Because there is an intimate relation between ‘being moral’ and following the ‘true religion’, it was obvious that heathen religion implied the corruption of morals. Put succinctly, immorality always accompanied false religion.
Over a period of centuries, this theological framework used in the description of Indian society, her people and culture, solidified into a conviction that became a part of the common sense in the West. The possibility of proselytizing Indians came from the same Bible: the corruption of a people not only expresses the need to do so, but also indicates the possibility for conversion. In worshipping the devil, human beings are expressing their hunger to worship the true God. Their straying from the true path indexes their (p.109) ability to walk the same path. These theological conclusions were part of the ‘ethnographic descriptions’ of India for centuries on end.—pp. 109-110
To the Christian missionary, it was obvious that the devil and his minions, or his ‘priesthood’ (namely, the Brahmins), misguided the Indians. If one was ‘secular’, one merely secularized these explanations and sought the cause in the ‘evil conspiracy’ of the Brahmins and / or in the civilizational inferiority of India. Consequently, it was the task of the Christian West to bring either the true religion or civilization or both to the shores of India. Both these ‘explanations’, whether religious or secular-religious, were the presuppositions and not the results of any ‘scientific’ or academic study of Indian civilization and culture. For Christians, the truth and the concomitant superiority of their religion were contained in the Bible; for those who secularized this belief, the truth was ‘borne’ out by the event of colonization…..—p. 110
…This is what logicians call petitio principii: the fallacy of assuming the truth of what one wants to prove …..—p. 110
…Anyone who formulates moral criticisms of caste and corruption is logically compelled to deny the presence of ‘morality’ in Indian traditions. This is what the British said about India. This is what Indians believe to be true. This is how Indians experience themselves and their culture.
Thus then is colonial consciousness. It is not merely the belief in the civilizational superiority of one particular civilization. It is a belief that functions both as a cognitive premise (whether as a suppressed premise or as an explicit on) and as a logical conclusion of the descriptions of the colonized and, as such, it is a massive exercise in petitio principii. {the fallacy of assuming the truth of what one wants to prove} Colonialism involves creating and sustaining such a consciousness.—p.111
…Colonialism is not merely a process of occupying lands and extracting revenues. It is not a question of encouraging the colonized to ape Western counties in trying to be like them. It is not even about colonizing the imaginations of a people by making them dream that they, too, will become ‘modern’, developed and sophisticated. It goes deeper. Colonialism denies the colonized peoples and cultures their own experiences; it makes them aliens to themselves; it actively prevents descriptions of their own experiences except in terms defined by the colonizers. This situation makes colonialism intrinsically immoral. Colonial consciousness is not only an expression, but also an integral part, of the phenomenon that (p.111) colonialism is. In that case, colonial consciousness itself becomes immoral. Colonialism is also immoral because it creates an immoral consciousness.—pp. 111-12
…The colonizer is responsible for actively initiating the process that prevents people from (p.114) accessing their own experiences. The colonized is morally responsible for propagating and perpetuating the same process; but he does that in a different timeframe.—pp. 114-15
Colonial consciousness does not involve only subscribing to the truth of an isolated statement about civilizational superiority. Rather, it requires commitment to a theoretical framework that structures how one experiences the social and the cultural world….—p. 115
…In post-colonial studies, however, one uses the term ‘hybridity’ while referring to ‘the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization’ (Ashcroft, B., G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin (eds.), The Post-Colonial Studies; The Key Concepts, London: Routledge. 2003:118)….—p. 117
…Hybridity, {Homi. K. } Bhabha {The Location of Culture, London: Routledge. 1994} argues, subverts the narratives of colonial power and dominant cultures; it is an act of self-empowerment by the colonized within the framework of colonial power….(p.117) […]
Following Homi Bhabha’s logic, the ‘hybrid’ is not only inauthentic and immoral, but also a voyeur. That is to say, ‘mimic-men’ are not able to reflect on their experiences; typical of these hybrids and (p.118) ‘mimic-men’ is their inability to access their own experience. When I say ‘their own’, I do not suggest anything more than the following; typical of the hybrid is his inability to access his experience. They continue with their mimicry and act as though they were still the colonized. Even when the hybrids become the ‘dominant culture’, they are unable to unlearn what they had learnt when being colonized. Instead, they continue with the same practice that had once paid dividends. In other words, he is a voyeur, someone who gets his kicks by trying, futilely and perversely, to make someone else’s experience his own. That is, he simply assumes as true that the Western cultural experience is the only framework available for formulating the problems facing Indian culture; assumes as true that the Western cultural experience is also his experience of his culture. When he ‘looks’ at his culture he merely sees a variant of Western culture. Colonization creates generations of such hybrids. In their turn, the hybrids breed to bring forth their look-alikes.
This is what happens when ‘mimic-men’ breed and branch. They not only breed more hybrids but, in the process, also conjure forth their opponents. Such men, according to Bhabha’s own logic, have inauthenticity and immorality inscribed on their hearts. They do indeed mimic the West: inanely, incessantly, thoughtlessly, and immorally.
These reflections tell us not to use ‘hybridization’ as a catchall phrase. It is trivially true that human cultures have evolved in mutual interaction. There is nothing gained by saying that all cultures in the world are ‘hybrid’ in nature. If we make such a statement, then we are required to distinguish between different kinds of hybridity: the hybridity of contemporary Western culture is different from the hybridity of post-Independence India. However, once we say this, we also say that boundaries are needed. One might want to ‘wish away the boundaries’ the way Nederveen Pieterse (Pieterse, J. N. ‘Hybridity, So What? The Anti-hybridity Backlash and the Riddles of Recognition’, Theory, Culture & Society, 18(203), pp. 219-45. 2001) wants to. One can do so only if one does no realize that, if all boundaries are done away with, all we get is an amorphous whole.—pp.118-119
…Both colonial and post-colonial thinkers agree that Indians are immoral and untrustworthy. One calls it ‘immoral’ and criticizes it; the other calls it ‘subversive’ and celebrates it. One criticizes immorality and the other justifies it. Both, however, accept the colonial descriptions of the colonized. This is precisely what colonial consciousness is all about. The post-colonial thinkers of today, it appears, are standing in for the masters of yesterday.—p. 120
5 India and Her Traditions: An Open Letter to Jeffrey Kripal.
What kind of ‘atheism’ am I talking about? Not the Western atheism: that makes no sense to the many Indian traditions because of two things: (a) as the above story suggests, the road to ‘enlightenment’ does not go through Jerusalem. That is, Prajapathi does not tell Indra that he should ‘believe in God’ in order to be enlightened; (b) consequently, most of these Indian traditions are not ‘theistic (poly-heno-or mono- or whatever) the way Judaism, Christianity and Islam are. Consequently, Western forms of ‘atheism’ do not have the Western kind of theistic doctrine to oppose, when they came to India.—p. 143
6 Are Dialogues an Antidote to Violence?
…ceteris paribus … ‘everything else remaining the same’….—p. 163
…a rational dialogue becomes skewed because the party which makes the maximum number of unproven assumptions does not have to demonstrate the truth of these assumptions. The protagonist cannot even ask the antagonist to prove this truth because he is unaware of all the assumptions the latter is making; most are hidden in the ceteris paribus clause. Consequently, all one can say about a ‘rational dialogue’, even when it is conducted by formulating explicit and prima facie non-partisan, is that it gets skewed even where one does not want or intend it to happen.—p. 163
7 Intercultural Encounters, Reasonable Dialogues, and Normative Political Theory
Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods is one of the earliest and fines treatises on the nature of religion, gods, belief in them, and so on. From that dialogue, consider the following fragment, where Gaius Cotta, the academic sceptic, is speaking:
I am considerably influenced … by the plea that you put forward at the conclusion of your discourse, when you exhorted me to remember that I am both a Cotta and a pontiff. This is no doubt meant that I ought to uphold beliefs about the immortal gods which have come down to us from our ancestors, and the rites and ceremonies and duties of religion. For my part, I shall always uphold them and have always done so, and no eloquence of anybody, learned or unlearned shall ever dislodge me from the belief which I have inherited from our forefathers … You are a philosopher, and I ought to receive from you a proof of your religion, whereas I must believe the word of our ancestors even without proof. (III.ii:290-91); emphasis mine)
The same point is made even strongly later: ‘Although I for my part cannot be persuaded to surrender my belief that the gods exist, nevertheless you teach me no reason why this belief, of which I am convinced on the authority of our forefathers, should be true’ (ibid. 293; emphasis mine). Addressing the need to prove the existence of gods felt by Quintus Lucillus Balbus, his stoic opponent, Cotta says the following:
You did not really feel confident that the doctrine of the divine existence was as self-evident as you could wish, and for that reason you attempted to prove it with a number of arguments. For my part a simple argument would have sufficed, namely that it has been handed down to us by our forefathers. (III. iv: 295; emphasis mine)—p. 174
The rain doctor [Kwena practitioner] That’ just the way people speak when they talk on a subject which they have no knowledge. When we first opened our eyes, we found our forefathers making rain and we follow in their footsteps….
The medical doctor [Livingstone]: I quite agree with you as to the value of the rain; but you cannot charm the clouds by medicines. You wait till you see the clouds come, then you use your medicine, and take the credit which belongs to God only.
Rain Doctor: I use my medicine, and you employ yours; we are both doctors, and doctors are not deceivers. You give a patient medicine. Sometimes God is pleased to heal him by means of your medicine; sometimes not—he dies. When he is cured, you take the credit for what God does. I do the same. Sometimes God grants us rain, sometimes not. When he does, we take the credit for the charm. When a patient dies, you don’t give up trust in your medicine, neither do I when rain fails. If you wish me to leave off my medicines, why continue your own? (John and Jean Comaroff, “The Colonization of Consciousness’, in M. Lambek (ed.), A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 2002: 499-500; emphasis mine).—p. 178
…The interaction between the structure of rational dialogue and the cognitive mechanisms that embed them is clearly the locus of these misunderstandings. In other words, the structure of rational dialogue compels the modern western mind to take recourse to his common-sense conception of what people are. These are very much part of the Western culture. They guide not only our theorizing, but also the way we relate to people from other cultures….—p. 185
…Gandhi argued that the current Indian caste system was a distortion of the varna system; Ambedkar felt that Gandhi did not recognize the intrinsic injustices in the Indian caste system. Gandhi claimed that Ambedkar’s position was divisive in that it would pit one community against another; in this diagnosis, Gandhi has been proved right because such is the case in India today. According to Ambedkar, however, Gandhi failed to see the extent to which social humiliation is an institution in Indian society and an integral part of Hinduism. One wanted changes in the caste system; the other strove for its total abolition. Whatever their differences—and, indeed there were many—both agreed that the Indian society of their time was unjust (because of the presence of social, political, economic, and sexual discriminations) and wanted to create a just society, where such discriminations would no longer exist.
We know for a fact that neither Gandhi nor Ambedkar clearly articulated and theorized their conceptions of justice….—p. 191
Thus, while one could oppose the ‘caste system’ in India (because of the unjust consequences associated with that system), one could also consistently oppose the creation of a ‘caste-less’ society. The argument for one is not an argument for the other. One has to empirically demonstrate that building a caste-less society in India will not have unjust consequences. No thinker, whether Indian or western, who opposes the ‘caste system’ has ever addressed himself to this task. All of them commit the same fallacy: they simply demonstrate the unjust consequences of the caste system and send out clarion calls (or implement irrational policies) to ‘abolish’ such a system and bring about a ‘just’ society. Such a stance is the rule because they assume that a just structure could never have unjust consequences, unless external circumstances disturb the structure. This is a false premise….—p. 194
…If we accept a consequentialist notion of justice, then it is easy to show that the requirement of justice conflicts with the requirement of rationality. Under the assumption that the reservation policy is a just measure to set earlier wrongs right, we can easily show that a society that follows this principle is bound to collapse. Because neither the ‘high’ nor the ‘low’ caste has any reason to expend more energy or effort than is required for a (p.194) particular outcome (this is the rationality assumption), none will put in the effort to become competent and capable: the reward and the punishment is utterly indifferent to the capacities of the individuals, but is sensitive only to the caste they are born in. The inefficiency and the irrationality in all those Indian institutions that follow the reservation policy is an ample demonstration of this fact. Whatever Ambedkr’s assessment of ‘Gnadhism’ might be, Gandhi to shared the former’s desire to uplift the downtrodden through corrective moral and political measures. In this sense, the current reservation policy in India is an empirical example of how an argument against injustice can never serve as an argument for a ‘just’ society.—pp. 194-95
8 The Secular State and Religious Conflict
…I shall argue that the so-called neutral liberal state, which the ‘secular state’ in India is, actually feeds the violence it is supposed to contain or neutralize.—p. 198
…The Indian state, modelled after the liberal democracies in the West, is the harbinger of religious conflict in India because of its conception of toleration and state neutrality. More of ‘secularism’ in India will end up feeding what it fights: the so-called ‘Hindu fundamentalism’.—p. 199
…Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, said at one point that if he had the power to legislate, he would ban all proselytizing: ‘If I had the power and could legislate, I would stop all proselytizing … In Hindu households the advent of a missionary has meant the disruption of the family coming in the wake of change of dress, manners, language, food and drink …’ (Harijan, 5, November 1935)….—p. 201
…The point is that no student of religion is willing or able to argue that Hinduism and the Semitic religions are phenomena of the same kind. Consequently, the onus is on those who want to argue that these two phenomena are instances of the same kind. In other words, the secular state cannot assume the opposite of scientific wisdom without compelling arguments.
However, there is one story or one compelling argument that opposes the scientific wisdom. It comes from the theologies of the Semitic religions. Let me recount the simplest version of that story. There was once a religion, the true and universal one, which was the divine gift to humankind. The biblical God installs a sense or spark of divinity in all races (and individuals). During the course of human history, this sense is corrupted. Idolatry, worship of the devil (namely, the false god and his minions) was to be the lot of humankind until the biblical God spoke to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and led their tribe back on to the true path. Of course, it is possible that this story is true; after all, those who follow these religions do believe in its truth. Is this enough for a secular state to accept the truth of this claim? In answering this question, the secular state cannot be neutral. The choices are but two: (a) the state accepts some variant of the (p.203) above theological story and treats Hinduism and the Semitic religions as phenomena of the same kind: or (b) it gives in to the prima facie difference, and (in the absence of better arguments) treats the Semitic religions and the Hindu traditions as phenomena of a different kind.—pp. 03-04
The famous Muslim traveller to India, Alberuni, also noted the absence of religious rivalry among the Hindus in the eleventh century: ‘On the whole, there is very little disputing about theological topics among themselves; at the utmost, they fight with words, but they will never stake their soul or body or their property on religious controversy’ (Sachau, E (ed.) Alberuni’s India: An Account of the Religion, Philosophy, Literature, Geography, Chronology, Astronomy, Customs, Laws, and Astrology of India about A.D. 1030, New Delhi: Rupa and Co. 2002, 2—2:3). Although Alberuni continued to say that the Hindus directed their fanaticism against foreigners, it was clear that the Hindus did not do so because they considered the latter to be propagators of false religion. In fact, an analysis of Hindu Sanskrit sources on the Muslims from the eighth to the fourteenth century reveals that ‘the construction of the other is made neither in religious nor in territorial terms; in other words, although the term dharma is used in the sense of religion, the Muslims are not projected as a community practising a religion which is the antithesis of recognized religious practices’ (D. P. Chattopadhyaya, ‘Raja Rammohun Roy: A New Appraisal’, in Kalyan Sengupta (ed.), 19th Century Thought in Bengal, Calcutta: Allied Publisher. 1998:90). Thus, traditionally, Hindus did not even identify Muslims along religious lines, let alone consider them as religious rivals.
In other words, the Hindu traditions refused to accept that theirs was a false religion and that Christianity or Islam was the true one. Nor were they willing to say that Christianity or Islam was false. They merely maintained that these traditions could co-exist without competing with each other as rivals. This is the Hindu view of the matter. The Semitic religions, on the other hand, advance the claim that they and the Hindu traditions are competing or rival movements. Between these two positions, again, there is no neutral ground: (a) the Semitic religions and the Hindu traditions are competitors with respect to each other; or (b) they are not. The secular state has to choose between these two logically exclusive premises as well.—p. 205
…In the Epistle to Diognetus, purporting to be a ‘reply to an inquiring heathen’s desire for information about the beliefs and customs of Christians’, an anonymous writer explains:
The doctrines they (the Christians) profess is not the invention of busy human minds and brains, nor are they, like some, adherents of this or that school of human thought. As I said before, it is not an earthly discovery that has been entrusted to them. The thing they guard so jealously is no product of mortal thinking, and what has been committed to them is the stewardship of no human mysteries. The Almighty Himself, the Creator of the universe, the God whom no eye can discern, has sent down His very own Truth from heaven, His own holy and incomprehensible Word, to plant it among men and ground it in their hearts. (Staniforth, M., ed. And trans, Early Christian Writers: The Apostolic Fathers, Harmondswroth: Penguin, 1968: 176-8; italics added.—p. 206
…Let us assume that both the pagans and the Christians are in agreement with the premise that ‘all things in human affairs are doubtful, uncertain, and unsettled’. By virtue of this, religions also share this attribute, say the pagans. Their religion does not, say the Christians, because it is the (p. 207) truth itself, as revealed by the Divine mind. Better put: the religions of antiquity were false religions because they were inventions of ‘busy human minds’, whereas Christianity was the Truth because none other than the biblical God has entrusted stewardship of His truth to the Christians. In other words, Christians opposed their true religion to the false religions of the Roman period and later to the ‘pagan idolatry’ of the Hindus.
To most Hindus, on the contrary, the question of ‘truth’ in tradition does not even make sense….—pp. 207-08
…incomprehension towards the notion of ‘religious truth’ has given rise to the claim that Hindus look at the truth of religions in a different way. The Hindu view does involve the ascription of truth-predicates to religions, it is said, but in a ‘pluralist’ manner: ‘all religions are true’. However, it is unclear what it means for truth to be conceived pluralistically. More importantly, this attribution of a pluralistic notion of religious truth to the Hindus threatens to turn them into beings lacking the basic capacity of consistent reasoning. If all religions are true, both Christian and Islamic doctrines have to be true at the same time. This claim then entails that Hindus fail to see that one religious doctrine which claims that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that Jesus Christ is the Son of God stands in contradiction to another which asserts that God is one and cannot have a son who is both divine and human.
In contrast, my explanation avoids transforming Hindus into logical cretins…..—p. 208
…Historically, pagan traditions have generally tried to make sense of the Judeo-Christian claims about ‘religious truth’ from their traditional perspective. The result is the often-repeated claim that ‘all religions are true’. This does not reflect a peculiar notion of religious truth, but an attempt to translate the attitude of one culture into the language of another. Even though Hindus have discussed ‘truth’ in Indian languages also, this ‘truth’ appears to be of a completely different kind than the (p.208) doctrinal truth claimed by the Semitic religions. Until we have a clear insight into its nature, it is best to stress that the Hindu view does not see the different traditions of humanity as either true or false.
Conversion is possible from the false to the true only if one assumes that both the traditions of antiquity and Christianity opposed each other with respect to truth and falsity. This holds not only regarding the traditions from classical antiquity, but also with respect to the Hindu traditions of today. Consequently, the secular state that allows for the possibility of conversion is compelled to choose between the following: (a) both the Hindu traditions and the Semitic religions are epistemic candidates with respect to truth and falsity; or (b) they are not.—pp. 208-09
The Semitic self-description contains a universal truth claim, which gives rise to a dynamic of proselytization. When the biblical God reveals His plan, it covers the whole of humankind. Those who receive this revelation should try to convert the others into accepting the message in this divine self-disclosure. That is, proselytizing is an intrinsic drive of Islam and Christianity. The pagan view, on the contrary, implies that every ‘religion’ is a tradition—that is, a specific set of ancestral practices—characterizing a human community. The traditions are upheld not because they contain some exclusive truth binding the believer to God, but because they make some community into a community. Any attempt at interfering with the tradition of a community from the outside will be seen as illegitimate, since all traditions are part of the human quest for truth….—p. 209
…Here, citizen x is a Hindu… The value of non-interference is central to the tradition of citizen x and it is unethical for him to allow Muslims and Christians to interfere in the traditions of human communities. Thus, he opposes conversion….—p. 210
…the secular state has to choose between the following two premises: (a) no religion could be false; or (b) some religion(s) could be false. There is no neutral ground between these two logically exclusive premises.—(Italics original) p. 210
Let me now summarize the four choices the Indian secular state has to make. (a) The ‘Hindu traditions’ and the ‘Semitic religions’ are phenomena of the same kind, or they are not. (b) As such, they are religious rivals, or they are not. (c) As rivals, they compete with each other regarding truth or falsity, or they do not. (d) They can do that because some religion is false, or they cannot because no religion is false. In each of the four cases, these claims are those of the Semitic religions and the Hindu traditions respectively. Each of these assumptions carves the universe up into two exhaustive partitions, because, in each case, one statement is the logical negation of the other. So, what should a liberal state do in such a situation? What choices are open to it, if it wants to remain neutral and secular? (p.211)
…the Indian state ought not to be neutral with respect to religious conversion in India because it cannot be neutral.
The above statement is odd, to put it mildly. We can bring the ‘oddness’ to light by formulating it as a logical statement: with respect to religious conversions, if a liberal state ought to remain neutral, and if the Indian state ought to be a liberal and neutral state, then the Indian state can be neutral. However, the Indian state cannot be neutral on this issue. Therefore, either (a) a liberal state ought not to remain neutral or (b) the Indian state ought not to be liberal and neutral or (c) both. We can eliminate the choices (a) and (c) rather quickly: the obligation of state neutrality with respect to religious conversion is a cornerstone of liberal political theory. Consequently, there is only one choice left: with respect to religious conversions, theories of state neutrality oblige the Indian state not to be liberal and neutral.
…The post-independent Indian state implemented a series of reforms to ‘the Hindu religion and its law’, while it did not interfere with Islam and Christianity. {see Chatterjee, P. ‘Secularism and Tolerance’, in R. Bhargava (ed.) Secularism and Its Critics, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 1998.} This suggests that some interpretation of ‘neutrality’ and ‘liberalism’ is at stake here. Theories of state neutrality that interpret this notion to mean neutrality of justification force us to compromise the notion of a neutral state. Such interpretations either generate odd conclusions or try to defend indefensible positions.—pp. 211-212 (Italics original)
…Most importantly, it {Constitution} prohibits all forms of coercion in conversion. It says that religious conversion can take place by means of persuasion alone. But, if one takes conversion from one religion to another to be a matter of persuasion, one must presuppose that religion involves the question of doctrinal truth. One can be persuaded to convert only in so far as one accepts the truth of one religion as opposed to the falsity of another. Therefore, the secular state’s restriction on religious conversion again reveals it has taken a position on the question whether or not religion is a matter of truth. It may not accept the truth claims of any one particular religion, but it does assume that religion revolves around truth claims. This conclusion shows that the failure to be neutral towards the issue of conversion is not specific to the Indian secularists. It is a general malfunction of the neutrality of the model of liberal secularism. Even when its theorists take a critical attitude towards proselytization, they reproduce the theological assumption that religion revolves around truth and therefore support a principle of religious freedom that entails the freedom to convert.—p. 214
…But, all forms of liberalism do agree that a state should not base its policies in any one religion, because this would violate principles such as religious liberty and the equal rights of all citizens. In the case of conversion, it appears the liberal state cannot but implement a policy which either presupposes Semitic theology or the pagan stance towards religion and tradition. Hence, it will fail to grant equal rights to all citizens, since the notion of religious liberty itself is disputed. To one (p.214) group, it implies the freedom to convert; to the other, freedom from conversion. Could not the Indian state merely subscribe to the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and follow the example of Western democracies? Surely, one could argue, what works for Western democracies should also work for the Indian polity.(pp. 214-15)
…Because Western liberal democracies endorse religious toleration and legislate about the issue, quite obviously, they are not playing the agnostic. As I said, they cannot play the agnostic because they have presumed that religious truth is cognitive in nature, and that, for example, coercion is not the way for a religion to persuade people of its truth.
Consequently, the Indian state cannot merely follow the example of Western democracies and hope to remain ‘neutral’. It cannot play the agnostic and yet legislate about religious freedom. It confronts choices, which Western democracies never had to face.—pp. 24-15 & 217
…the very possibility of a state being neutral with respect to religions hinges on the issue of whether or not religions involve the question of truth. In other words, although the liberal state ought not to make decisions about the truth of religions, it must decide whether religion itself is a matter of truth. I claim that the Western liberal, neutral states have historically so decided.—p. 215
When Christianity underwent divisions (to speak only of Western Christianity) Catholics and Protestants came up with competing truth claims. They defined the terms of the debate as a discussion about true and false religions. Islam and Judaism do the same as well. Whether they accuse each other of being false religions or merely that the others are deficient in worshipping the biblical God, the point is that each of them advances the claim that their beliefs are true….—p. 215
…When each {Semitic religions} is convinced that it is the truth and the rest are false, and each of them explicitly states that the difference between truth and falsity constitutes the difference between salvation and damnation, then each one of them is asserting not only that its beliefs are true, but should also be so believed….—p. 216
The framers of the Indian constitution took over the theory of liberal state as it emerged in the West and tried to transplant it into Indian soil. In the process, they also endorsed the theological claim that religion is an issue of truth. While such a stance makes sense in a culture where the problem of religious tolerance arises because of the competing truth claims of the Semitic religions, it does not do the same in another cultural milieu where the pagan traditions are a living force. Consequently, the Indian state is subject to contradictory demands. It must look at the Hindu traditions the way the Semitic religions do, as I have argued, while simultaneously playing the ‘agnostic’ with respect to the issue whether religion itself is a matter of truth. The first impels it to legislate on the issue of conversion; the second compels it to remain ‘neutral’ and let the communities decide. The first stance results in violence generated and sustained by the state; the second stance forces the involved communities to solve this problem on their own. The first attitude results in forcing the interaction between the Semitic religions and the pagan traditions to take the form of religious rivalry; the second forces the state to withdraw.—p. 217
…Spinning the state policy around the Protestant-Christian criticisms of the Indian religions, the colonial state created stories about ‘priests’ of Indian religions, the nature of Hindu temples, the reactionary role the Indian ‘religions’ played in the evolution of Indian (p.217) society and such like. The colonial representation of India, which was fundamentally a Protestant description of India, became the guiding mantra of the ‘secular’ politicians of India….—pp. 217-18
…The secularism of Nehru and his followers was, quite simply, a negative attitude towards Hindu traditions. There is nothing ‘neutral’, in any sense of the word, about the Nehruvian ‘secular’ state.—p. 218
…once the seduction of this ‘secularism’ wore off, representatives of the Hindu traditions began to articulate a defence of their own traditions. However, this defence did not take the form of reflections on Hindu traditions and their ability to address the problems of modern society. Instead, it took the inevitable form of defence against attacks, that is, a militant defence of the Hindu traditions against the ‘secular’ state of the Nehruvian variety.—p. 218
…When the Indian state assumes the truth of a Semitic theological claim, and further accepts this claim as its own epistemological position, then it actively creates and promotes the religious rivalry between the majority (that is, those who belong to the Hindu traditions) and the minority (Muslims, Christians, and so on). That is to say, the state creates religious rivalry where there is none (if viewed from the majority perspective)….—p. 218
…The exacerbation of religious violence does not tell us that secularism has failed in India. Its intensity tells us that secularism has been entirely successful in India. The secular state, which the secularists continue to wish for, does not prevent religious conflicts: it actively promotes them.—p. 219
By forcing the framework of the Semitic religions on the Hindu traditions, the ‘liberal’ state in India is also coercing the communities to solve their internal conflict in a religious manner. That is to say, it is forcing the pagan traditions in India to mould themselves along the lines of the Semitic religions. The growth of the so-called Hindu fundamentalism is a direct result of this coercive straitjacket. Traditions, which never systematically persecuted the other on grounds of religious truth, are forced into a systematic persecution of religions precisely on this basis. When secularists fight ‘Hindu fundamentalism’ by appealing to liberal theory, they feed and strengthen what they intend to fight. It is precisely a liberal ‘secular’ conception that generates the phenomenon of ‘Hindu fundamentalism’ in the pagan Indian culture.—p. 219
…In the same way as its colonial precursor, the secular state of post-Independence India has forced the Hindu traditions to identify and stand up for themselves as religious doctrines—variants of Islam and Christianity. The result is the Hindutva movement: a militant attempt to establish the doctrines of ‘Hinduism’ as the superior and dominant form of religion in Indian society.—p. 221
…When one assumes that all the movements in question—Islamic fanaticism in the Arab world; Christian fundamentalism in the United States; the Hindutva movement in India; violent Buddhist groups in Sri Lanka—are variants of one and the same phenomenon, one’s analysis and research projects will indeed confirm that we confront a worldwide threat of ‘religious fundamentalism’ or ‘religious violence’. However, this does not give us a fruitful understanding of these various movements. It merely shows how the fallacy of petitio principia {the fallacy of assuming the truth of what one wants to prove} allows one to uphold a crude conceptual framework, which reduces all cultural movements into variants of either liberal pluralism or religious fundamentalism.—p. 221
At this point, a common misunderstanding may emerge. Let it be clear that I am not in any way suggesting that political structures and processes in India should become ‘faith-based’, ‘theocratic’, or ‘religious’. This understanding of my argument commits a fallacy: it assumes that because I criticize the notion of a liberal secular state in India, I intend to defend its mirror image of a religious or faith-based state. This is neither a logical implication nor a hidden agenda of my argument. Rather, I wish to challenge the entire framework of liberal political theory on conceptual grounds. This framework first makes all cultural traditions into variants of a common phenomenon of religion. Then it tends to reduce all political models to an opposition between the impartial and secular versus the partial and religious ones. I context the framework at two levels. Firstly, in spite (p.224) of its pretention of neutrality, the liberal model of toleration and state neutrality is itself not a secular, impartial model. In reality, it is a Semitic theological entity which has been dressed up in ‘secular’ philosophical garb. Secondly, the prima facie evidence indicates that the Hindu traditions cannot be variants of the same phenomenon as Islam and Christianity. Hence, the suggestion that an attempt to examine the traditional pluralism of the Indian culture as the source of a potential alternative to the liberal model of toleration is equivalent to the advocacy of faith-based politics misses the point. I do not intend to study the Hindu traditions as a religious doctrine or faith, because this approach captures neither their basic nature nor their distinct structure.—pp. 224-25
The distinction between ‘emic’ and ‘etic’, as it is made in anthropology, refers to how one accounts for beliefs and behaviours. An ‘emic’ account is meaningful to the actor because it uses categories from within that actor’s culture. An ‘etic’ account, by contrast, is applicable to all cultures, a ‘neutral’ account as it were.—notes, 1, p. 226
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