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<b>India and her problem of Secularism</b>
Today Secularism is the fashion in India. It is the "in" brand. It is the brand to give oneself, lest one be called "communal". Many Hindus who are born in Hindu families, who carry the seeds of their Sanatana Dharma in their blood and their consciousness, have become ardent and vocal secularists. This article is addressed to the Secular Hindus, and is an effort to engage their minds, in the hope that some of them may be open to a fresh evaluation.
First of all there are two kinds of Secular Hindus.
1. Type A - Those who think that all religions are equally valid â "Sarva Dharma Sama Bhava" kind.
2. Type B - Those who think that all religions are equally invalid â The Atheist, Anti-religious, Anti-Spiritual kind
Let us look at each one in turn. The first kind of (Type A) Secular does believe in religion, at least in his own Hindu religion, and values it. He believes in the dharmic values that the Hindu religion, inculcates in him, and he recognizes the place of Spirituality in human life. He may himself be a deeply devout, and spiritual person. He most likely goes to temples occasionally, performs some form of puja, bhajan or yoga or other devotional activity; he may even have studied the Bhagvad Gita or some other Hindu scriptures to an extent; But he has not done any serious study of the world's other religions. He has not done any deep research on the Bible or the Koran, and cannot distinguish clearly the major distinctions between them and his own Dharma. So he naively believes that all religions are the same; they lead to the same goal; they are all different paths to the same end. He may have even been told by some well meaning Gurus and Acharyas that this is indeed so. So having reached this "secular' position, he then proceeds to condemn as "Hindutva" and "Communalism" anyone who makes distinctions between the religions, and thereby raises a warning regarding the future of Hindu society.
The second kind of Secular (Type B) does not believe in Religion of any kind. He abhors and disdains them all equally and regards them as the superstitious by-product of humankind of a bygone era. He is modern, and does not need any religion, either his own or another's. Thus having begun his inquiry into the subject with this prejudice, he then proceeds to ignore all scriptural study altogether. His acquaintance with his religion is therefore very cursory, and he does not feel the need to study this any further. He identifies himself, with a rational and scientific view of the world, easily gets carried away with modern western scholarship, which proposes all kinds of new philosophies, (like Marxism, Communism, Capitalism, Materialism etc.) which he deems adequate for his purpose. Not only does he not study other religions, he doesn't even study his own. He most likely loathes "Swami's" and "Gurus" and avoids them. Because he is a Hindu by birth, he is compelled to profess that he does not practice it, he does not believe in it, and he goes out of his way to condemn his own religion . He is deeply ashamed of his own religion, and keeps criticizing it at every turn. A few of them also take to studying the Hindu religion, but specifically for the purpose of criticizing it â The intention is not to learn, but to condemn. So there are legions of scholars, who pick up topics such as Caste, Sati, Idol worship, Brahmins and heap volumes of criticism on their own religion of origin.
The Type A Secularist is someone we can call the Gandhian Secularist. Mahatma Gandhi deeply and sincerely believed in the possibility of unity amongst Hindus and Muslims in India. Whether we agree with him or not, this was his stand, and he brought the great strength of his spiritual and moral force to bear upon this possibility. He hoped and wished that he could forge a unity between Hindus and Muslims that would allow the two communities to co-exist peacefully in Independent India. Whatever Mahatma Gandhi was, he was not ignorant. He took very studied positions on almost all issues. He saw that India's Muslims were mostly Hindus in prior generations, perhaps long past, but nevertheless they carried the Hindu culture with them in some small measure. They had converted under the relentless pressure of Islamic rulers, and frequent threat of violence. But this was all long past. He saw that Hindus and Muslims were now cast together in this country, to weave a common destiny and they cannot be separated easily. He in fact may have been the one who created the slogan "Sarva Dharma Sama Bhava". This is an inclusive Secularism, that believes that we must treat all religions equally, all people equally regardless of their religion etc. Even today there are many Gurus and Acharyas who say this â they even quote a Rig Vedic verse called Ekam sat vipraha bahauda vadanti and apply this verse to prove that all "Dharma's" must be looked upon equally.
The Partition of India both on its left and right, (picture Bharat Mata with her two hands cut off) delivered Gandhian Secularism a decisive blow, and rendered the possibility of unity amongst Hindus and Muslims, as almost an utopian fantasy. The Partition was brought upon India, because the Muslim leadership decided that it was impossible for them to live in a Hindu majority India, and they needed their own Islamic State. The Hindus kept on saying that we can all be friends â Hindu-Muslim Bhai Bhai etc., and held out the hope that we can be one country. The Muslim leadership said â No; that is not possible. The matter is really simple â If in a relationship between a man and a woman, if the woman or the man decide that a relationship is no longer possible, then the relationship breaks down; it matters little whether the other person keeps saying "No, we can still be in a relationship". Similar is the case with Hindus and Muslims â Only the Hindus keep saying "all religions are the same; we can all live peacefully together "; The Muslims laugh at the naivety of the Hindus, and say â "No Islam is special and different. We can all live peacefully together but only if you convert to Islam first". So now we have unfriendly states on either side of India which have actively decimated the Hindu population within their respective countries, and are supportive of terrorists who have the most evil designs on India.
The Type B Secularist is someone we can call the Nehruvian Secularist. Jawaharlal Nehru believed that religion itself was irrelevant and somewhat backward and superstitious. With his western education and temperament, he was attracted to Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin and the Russian experiment. These were all "Godless" and "Unspiritual" ideologies. It did not matter to Nehru, that the Communist experiment in Russia had resulted in the massacre of millions of people under the regime of Josef Stalin. He ignored that, (by what logic he justified this in his own mind remains to be discovered) and allied himself and our country closely with Russia and the Socialist way of life. Nehru thought that the primary ill of Indian society was its poverty and lack of development, and he committed himself energetically to India's modernization, albeit driven by the State. In doing this he and his people fashioned a Secular State out of India, which ignored its Hindu Dharma, its Dharmic institutions, and Dharmic education.
Nehruvian Secularism has also been dealt a mortal blow in more ways than one. Communism is dying all over the world â Only in India it seems to have some left over momentum. Socialism has given way to Capitalism all over the world; In 1991, in India, a Congress Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and his Finance Minister Manmohan Singh presided over the reversal of the trajectory that Nehru had set for India. India is rapidly demonstrating that left alone, people develop themselves. Development need not be moderated and regulated by the State. Power when concentrated in the hands of a few, ultimately corrupts people â Indira Gandhi and her Emergency was a demonstration of that. But as much as she loved staying in power, even she could not cross the line as Joseph Stalin did â through dictatorship and murder on a vast scale. This can be attributed to the essential dharma of our land. Russian communism had no dharma at all â It was pure Adharma. Pakistan has no Dharma at all â It's leaders have no regard for its own constitution. They amend it left and right to suit their private needs. Most of their transitions of power have been through murder and bloodshed, which is an essentially Islamic tradition. (lets see current one)
But what is indeed strikingly common to both kinds of Secularists (both Type A and Type B) is that they don't apply themselves and study the major religions and scriptures of the world, nor the history of major civilizations. Because even a cursory study of the Bible and Islam, will reveal how violent they are towards unbelievers and kafirs . Every religion has to deal with the ethics of human behavior â both amongst the followers of their religion, as well as between the followers of their tradition and those who do not follow their tradition. Equality, Tolerance and commitment to Peace, is good not only for the believers, but also necessary between believers of a particular faith, and those who subscribe to a different faith. In this latter characteristic, Hinduism is vastly different and has an infinitely superior record compared to both Islam and Christianity. While Hinduism is inherently pluralistic, and it allows many traditions to co-exist peacefully, Christianity and Islam are very severe towards the non-believers. While Hinduism is inherently Dharmic towards all people independent of what they believe in, Christianity and Islam offer their protection and allegiance to you, only if you convert to their creed. They prescribe the worst form of violence towards the kafirs and unbelievers â And this is borne out both by their scripture as well as their history. It only takes a cursory study of their scripture and their history, to find the patterns and correlations emerging. Their history is consistent with their ideology as embedded in their scripture, and their scripture contains the kernels of their ambitions and conquests, in the past, present and future . Christianity and Islam are fundamentally organized to be in a state of permanent conflict with the world of non-believers and kafirs. Whatever rudimentary notion of Dharma they may have, when it comes to their interactions with unbelievers, they are 100% Adharmic, even Asuric.
Why do Hindus reach their "Secular" positions and conclusions without proper inquiry? This is what is called "Avichara Siddhi" â A conclusion reached without much thought or research. It is like a conclusion "The sun goes round the earth". Well it is obvious - We can see it go round and round, yet it takes some inquiry (Vichara) before we can say, No â The earth is spinning on its axis, and that merely creates the impression of the sun going around the earth. Why have Hindus become so lazy intellectually, that we will not apply ourselves to the proper study of these topics? Why do we jump to some conclusion first, without appropriate research and then keep repeating our position, ad nauseum? Why have we become mere sloganeers shouting ourselves hoarse with our position, which has not been properly thought out and formulated in the first place? Lastly in our hurry to embrace Secularism, we have thrown the baby out with the bath water, we have abandoned our Dharma altogether. Today, we find secularists everywhere â on TV, in the Radio, in the news magazines; in the universities; in politics. It has become our new creed. To falsify the Secular creed is to invite the worst form of counter attack and slander.
Today India is developing fast. Our economy is growing. A section of our society is becoming affluent. But corruption is also rampant in every walk of life. The politicians are leading the nation in being self serving and corrupt. The concept of Dharma, Ethical Values, a sense of Sacrifice and Service that Swami Vivekananda talked about has not permeated our public life. Will modernization solve all our problems? Is it sufficient to modernize without a corresponding effort to establish Dharma in the land? Corruption is Adharmic. Capitalism generates great wealth alright, but it distributes this wealth in a very uneven way. What are the rich of our land going to do with their riches? Will they use their riches in service of the poor? Capitalism is Adharmic too â in that it engenders no value system. What do the affluent do for their society â during their leisure? If we were to follow the inspiring example of the west â we know the answer. The great fruit of capitalism is mindless entertainment, endless pleasure seeking and non-stop shopping.
Can the task of caring for the poor be left in private hands, or do we socialize it and give it to our politicians? We need to resurrect Dharma into the center of our lives. How are we going to do it, if we keep on swearing by secularism? Hindu Dharma emphasized people's duties and responsibilities. Not their rights . Today, we have only a screaming group of casteists and castes, who are ever more shrilly demanding what is due to them i.e. their rights. There is no possibility of Dharma in this. A secular education does not guarantee an adequate appreciation of ethical values, duties, responsibilities and a deeply imbibed sense of discernment between right and wrong action. How do we give our children a matrix of moral values and norms, if we ignore our own Hindu Dharma in our secular schools and colleges? How do we inculcate in our next generation, a value for Dharma and Moksha which are indeed the unique civilizational characteristics of our Hindu society, if we don't even address these in our educational institutions? This is the unsolved problem of our time. We sowed seeds of "Godless" ideologies drawn from the west, and we are harvesting a rich bounty of corruption across the length and breadth of our land.
So, we appeal to our secular brothers and sisters â Please think first; study your own scripture first; then study the other's scripture; then study the history of all the religions; See the correlations and correspondences for yourself. Then let us see if you continue to be secular. You may discover that it is only in the comforting cocoons of ignorance, illiteracy and mindlessness that secularism can flourish. You may find that Secularism cannot stand even the most rudimentary intellectual scrutiny. But please do not defend your Secular value system on the foundation of your unwillingness to study these subjects; Please do not say â I won't read my scripture; I don't have time; I won't read history; I don't have time for that; I will not attempt to read the scriptures of other religions; I have even less time for that; But I know I am a secular Hindu; and I know I am right and all the rest of you are communal.
Kalyan Viswanathan
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The Dilemma of a Liberal Hindu
By
Gurcharan Das
You do me honor by inviting me to speak at this wonderful conference, amidst such distinguished people. I am not an academic, and to make up for this disadvantage I thought I would speak from experience and offer a personal account of the inner life of a liberal and secular Indian. I shall focus on one theme primarily, which is my fear of the loss of tradition, and my feeble attempts to recapture it. I shall wake up Edmund Burke from the 18th century to be my worthy companion in the dilemma that I lay before you.
My Fear of the Loss of Tradition
A few months ago the confident and handsome friend of our sonâs gave a telling reply to a visiting Englishwoman in Khan Market in Delhi. âI am a Hindu, but â¦â, he said, and he went into a winding reply about his beliefs. He hastily added that he was an Indian first. It was a perfectly honest answer, and any other person might have given a similar one about Islam or Christianity. But I sensed an unhappy defensivenessâthe âbutâ betrayed that he might be ashamed of being Hindu.
This happened two weeks after I got a call from one of Delhiâs best private schools, asking me to speak to its students. âOh good!â I replied on the phone. âI have been reading the Mahabharata, and in that case I shall speak about dharma and the moral dilemmas in the epic.â
The principalâs horrified reaction was, âOh donât, please! There are important secularists on our governing board, and I donât want controversy about teaching religion.â
âBut surely the Mahabharata is a literary epicâ, I protested, âAnd dharma is about right and wrongâ. But my remonstration was to no avail. She was adamant and scared.
As I think about these two incidents, I ask myself, why should these two highly successful, young professionals be embarrassed of their heritage? Something seems to have clearly gone wrong. My fear is that modern, liberal Indians, and especially those at the helm of our private and public enterprises, may not have any use for their past, and they will abdicate our wonderful traditions to the narrow, closed minds of fanatical Hindu nationalists. In part, this is due to ignorance. Our children do not grow up reading our ancient classics in school or college with a critical mind as works of literature and philosophy as young Americans, for example, read the Western classics in their first year of college as a part of their âcore curriculumâ. Some are lucky to acquire some acquaintance with them from their grandmothers or an older relative, who tell them stories from the epics and the Puranas. They might read the tales in Amar Chitra Katha comics or watch them in second-rate serials on Sunday morning television. Meanwhile, the Sangh Parivar steps into the vacuum with its shrunken, defensive, and inaccurate version of our history and happily appropriates the empty space. And the richness of tradition is lost to this generation.
If Italian children can proudly read Danteâs Divine Comedy in school, or English children can read Milton, and Greek children can read the Iliad, why should âsecularistâ Indians be ambivalent about the Mahabharata? Indeed, English children also read the King James Bible as a text in schoolââtextâ is the operative word, for they are encouraged to read it and interrogate it. So, why then should our epic be âuntouchableâ for a sensitive, modern and liberal school principal? It is true that the Mahabharata has lots of gods in it, and in particular that elusive divinity, Krishna, who is up to all manner of devious activity. But so are Dante, Milton, and Homer filled with God or gods, and if the Italians, the English and the Greeks can read the texts of their heritage, why canât Indians?
With the rise in religious fundamentalism, it seems to me that it is increasingly difficult to talk about oneâs deepest beliefs. Liberal Hindus are reluctant to admit being Hindu for fear they will be automatically linked to the RSS. They are not alone in this. Liberal Christians and liberal Muslims, I am sure, have experienced the same misgivings. One can easily imagine hearing: âI am Christian, butâ¦â or âI am Muslim, butâ¦â In India, I blame Hindutva nationalists who have appropriated our culture and tradition and made it a political agenda. But equally, I blame many of our secularists who behave no better than fundamentalists in their callous antipathy to tradition.
We ought to view Hindutvaâs rise in the context of religious revivalism with a political bent around the world. Laurie Goodstein wrote in the New York Times on January 15, 2005: âAlmost anywhere you look around the worldâ¦religion is now a rising force. Former communist countries are crowded with mosque builders, Christian missionaries and freelance spiritual entrepreneurs of every persuasionâ¦â Philip Jenkinsâ insightful book, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, describes this in the America of George W. Bush. This growth in fundamentalism around the globe makes one wonder if the secular agenda is threatened everywhere. And is it the project of modernity, as some think, that has contributed to this vicious, political religiosity?
No one reads Edmund Burke these days, but he exercised considerable influence on 18th century minds. He is relevant, I think, to some of our discontents with secularism today. His critique of the French revolution was based primarily on his fear of the loss of traditionâkilling off the church and the aristocracy, he felt, would cut off links with the past. He spoke about âcustom, community and natural feelingâ, and he felt that continuity with the past was necessary to realize our full human potential. The challenge before modern, decent Indians today, it seems to me, is essentially the same. It is the one that Ram Mohan Roy faced in the early 19th century and Mahatma Gandhi in the early 20th century: how to grow up mentally healthy, integrated Indians? How do we combine our liberal modernity with our traditions in order to fully realize our potential?
As a liberal and secular Hindu, I oppose the entry of religion into the public domain, and its mingling with government or public school education. I deeply appreciate the âwallâ which both the U.S. and our own founding fathers built. For this reason, I admire France and Turkey who seem to have the strongest âwallsâ. But what does one do when the great literary classics of oneâs country are âreligiousâ or âsemi-religiousâ? Dante practically âcreatedâ the Italian language with his masterpiece, but his great poem is also a deeply religious workâpossibly the most religious in all Christianity. I donât know how Italians handle Dante in their schools, and I wonder what the Italian Left feels about it, say in a Leftish city like Bologna.
In India, we do have a problem and I donât think there are easy answers. Many Indians regard our great Sanskrit classics as religious texts. To the extent that they are religious, we are committed by our âwallâ to keep them out of our schools. Hence, I do sympathize with the principal of the school in Delhi. At the same time, unless our children are exposed to the Sanskrit classics and unless these are âdiscussedâ in a secular environment our children will grow up impoverished in the way Edmund Burke worried about. Clearly, something has gone terribly wrong with contemporary Indian education when our most influential schools churn out deracinated products, who know little about their own culture but a great deal about the West.
There are some in India who think that the answer lies in providing compulsory knowledge of all religions, and this will engender, what Emperor Ashoka called, a ârespect for all creedsâ. But this too is a dangerous path. For how do you teach religion without worrying about some teacher somewhere who will wittingly or unwittingly denigrate or hurt the sensitivities of the some follower of the religion being taught? And before you realize it, you will have a riot on your hands. So, we do have a genuine moral dilemma here, a dharmasamkata or dharma-vikalpa, the kind of thing that the Mahabharata delights in.
I was born a Hindu
I was born a Hindu, had a normal Hindu upbringing, and like many in the middle class I went to an English medium school that gave me a âmodern educationâ. Both my grandfathers belonged to the Arya Samaj, a reformist sect of Hinduism that came up in 19th century Punjab. It advocated a return to the Vedas, a diminished role for Brahmins and vigorous social reform of the caste system among other social evils. My father, however, decided to take a different path. When he was studying to be an engineer, he was drawn to a kindly Guru, who taught him the power and glory of direct union with God through meditation. The Guru would quote from Kabir, Nanak, Rumi, and Mirabai, and was a Radhasoami sant in the syncretic, bhakti tradition.
The striking thing about growing up Hindu was a chaotic atmosphere of tolerance in our home in Lyallpur. My grandmother would visit the Sikh gurdwara on Mondays and Wednesdays and a Hindu temple on Tuesdays and Thursdays; she saved Saturdays and Sundays for discourses of holy men, including Muslim pirs, who were forever visiting our town. In between she made time for lots of Arya Samaj ceremonies when anyone was born, married, or died. My grandfather used to jest that she would also have also called in at the Muslim mosque in her busy schedule had they allowed her in, but my more practical uncle thought that she was merely taking out enough insurance, in the manner of Pascal, and someone up there might hear her.
Despite this religious background, I grew up agnostic, which is a luxury of being Hindu. I have a liberal attitude that is a mixture of skepticism and sympathy towards my tradition. I have also come to believe that our most cherished ends in life are not political. Religion is one of these and it gets demeaned when it enters public life. Hence, religion and the state must be kept separate, and to believe this is be secular. I have a mild distaste for the sort of nationalism that can so quickly become chauvinism. Hence, I do not vote for the BJP. At the same time I feel Indian and I value my âIndian-nessâ, whatever that may be. This means that I value my past and I wish to cultivate it, and like Edmund Burke, I feel my past is important to me for living a flourishing life. This is a past that contains the influence of Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, Sikhism, and even Christianity.
I think it must have been difficult for my Hindu ancestors in the Punjab, who did not have the living memory of a political heritage of their own. Having lived under non-Hindu rulers since the 13th century, they must have thought of political life as filled with deprivation and fear. After Muslims had come the Sikh kingdom of Ranjit Singh. With its collapse around 1850 came the powerful British, with Christian missionaries in tow. Hence, three powerful, professedly egalitarian and proselytizing religions surrounded themâIslam, Sikhism and Christianity. No wonder, they were eager to receive Dayananda Saraswati when he came to the Punjab in 1877. And not surprisingly, he succeeded beyond his dreams in establishing the Arya Samaj in the Punjab.
âEvery writer needs an addressâ, wrote Isaac Bashevis Singer. That is a fine way of expressing what I have been trying to. All human beings need local roots, an identity, and a link with a unique identifiable past. A writer needs it even more, I think, because a writer aspires to speak universally about life.
âYou havenât turned Hindutva, have you?âIn the spring of 2002 I decided to take an academic holiday. My wife thought it a strange resolve. She was familiar with our usual holidays, when we armed ourselves with hats, and blue and green guides, and trudged up and down over piles of temple stones in places like Khajuraho or Ankor Wat. But she was puzzled by an âacademic holidayâ. I explained to her that in college I had read Aristotle, Euripides, Dante, Marx and other classics of western civilization, but I had always yearned to read the Indian classics and had never had the chance. The closest I had come was Professor Ingallsâ difficult Sanskrit class at Harvard when I was an undergraduate. So, now forty years later I wished to read the texts of classical India, if not in the original, at least with a scholar of Sanskrit. It was my Proustian search for lost time in order to reclaim my tradition, appropriately in the vanaprastha ashrama of my life.
My wife gave me a skeptical look, and after a pause she said, âItâs a little late in the day for a mid-life crisis, isnât it? Letâs go instead on a cruise of the Greek islandsâ.
Somewhat to my annoyance, my âacademic holidayâ became the subject of animated discussion at a dinner party in Delhi the following week. Our hostess was a snob. She was famous in Delhiâs society for cultivating the famous and the powerful. She had ignored us for years but this had changed in the past two, and we had become regulars at her brilliant dinners. I thought her friendly but my wife reminded me that her warmth was in direct proportion to my recent success as a columnist and writer. She always introduced me as âan old friendâ, but I donât think she had a clue about what the word meant.
âSo, what is this I hear about you wanting to go away to read Sanskrit texts?â she suddenly turned to me accusingly. âDonât tell me you are going to turn religious on us?â
Two women in exquisite silk sarees, one from Kanchipuram and another from Benares, now came in and joined us. One had a string of pearls around her neck and the other lovely diamonds on her neck and her wrists. Both had heavily mascaraed eyelashes, painted lips, and rouged cheeks, and it was apparent how much their lives consisted in a desperate struggle to keep their faded charms. They began to speak in loud, metallic voices without a momentâs pause, as though they were afraid that if they stopped they might not be able to start again. They were accompanied by a diplomat, who had once been Indira Gandhiâs favorite.
âBut tell us, what books you are planning to read?â asked the diplomat casually, as though he were referring to the latest features in a Korean dishwasher in Khan Market.
I admitted somewhat reluctantly that I had been thinking of texts like the Mahabharata, the Manusmriti, the Kathopanishadâ¦.
âGood lord, man!â he exclaimed. âYou havenât turned Hindutva, have you?â
I think his remark was made in jest, but it upset me. I asked myself, what sort of secularism have we created in our country that has appropriated my claim to my intellectual heritage? I found it disturbing that I had to fear the intolerance of my âsecular friendsâ, who seemed to identify any association with Hinduism or its culture as a political act. The pain did not go away easily, even though I realized that it was a pain shared by others. I was reminded of a casual remark by a Westernized woman in Chennai during the launch of my book, The Elephant Paradigm. She mentioned that she had always visited the Shiva temple near her home, but lately she had begun to hide this from those among her friends who proclaimed that they were âsecularâ. She feared they might pounce on her, quick to brand her extremist or superstitious.
Does the conservative temper offer an answer?
When I was growing up in post-Independence India in the 1950s and 1960s, the word âconservativeâ was as a term of abuse in the vocabulary of most Indian intellectuals (and many English and American ones, I suppose). We passionately believed in Nehruâs dream of a modern and just India. We likened his midnight speech at Independence about our âTryst with destinyâ to Wordsworthâs famous lines on the French Revolution: âBliss was it in that dawn to be aliveâ. I have tried to capture this mood at some length in my book, India Unbound. We laughed at Rajaji and Masani, who founded the conservative Swatantra Party in the late 1950s, and even dismissed Sardar Patel, who was the second most powerful man in India at Independence, after Nehru. Charles James Fox had laughed at Edmund Burke in the same way. Like many Englishmen of his day, Fox thought the revolution in France was an immensely liberating step forward, saying that it was the greatest event that ever happened in the world. In denouncing the French revolution, Burke was not expressing an opinion popular among thinking Englishmen; he was going against the tide.
To be a conservative in Nehruâs India was the same. It meant that one was on the side of age against youth, the past against the future, authority against innovation, and spontaneity against life. But how times have changed! Now, more that fifty years later, it is the old progressives who have become âoldâ, who look back nostalgically to a socialist past. They are the ones who oppose the reforms and continue to have a touching faith in rent-seeking statism, even when it has been discredited as âLicence Rajâ. They condemn too hastily the young of today, painting them uniformly in the colors of greed.
Even after we get over the easy polarities of the mind, âconservativeâ is an unhappy word for what I am seeking. It conjures up in too many minds the image of what the British mathematician, G.H Hardy, called a âwide bottomed member of the Anglican Church establishmentâ. But there is more to the problem. The difficulty arises from the nature of the thing. What I am advocating is a reverence for the past, and that is less a political doctrine than a habit of mind, a way of living and feeling. Like Burke, I think society is not a collection of loosely related individuals, nor a mechanism with interchangeable parts, but a living organism, and anything that affects the well being of one affects the whole. It is for this reason that Burke had cautioned against pulling down edifices which had met societyâs needs for generations.
We have had too much ideology in the 20th century and are frankly tired of it. We have had too much of what Burke called variously âspeculation,â or âmetaphysics,â or âtheoretical reasoningâ as applied to social and political questions. Some of my ambivalence about Indiaâs Leftist secularists is not unlike Burkeâs fear of the revolutionaries in France who seriously believed that they would construct the world from scratch by the application of general and abstract principles, and who even wanted to introduce a new calendar to mark the beginning of that new world. Part of the reason that the sensible idea of secularism is having so much difficulty in finding a home in India, I think, is that the most vocal and intellectual advocates of secularism were once Marxists. Not only do they not believe in God, they actually hate God. They literally follow Marxâs dictum that âCriticism of religion is the prelude to all criticismâ. As rationalists they can only see the dark side of religionâintolerance, murderous wars and nationalism, and do not empathize with the everyday life of the common Indian to whom religion gives meaning to every moment of life and has done so since civilizationâs dawn. Because secularists speak a language alien to the vast majority, they are only able to condemn communal violence but not to stop it, as Mahatma Gandhi could, in East Bengal in 1947.
Over the past fifty years we have realized in India that political activity is infinitely complex and difficult. Our caste system is unpredictable, intractable, and incomprehensible. There are many things at work, and the ways they relate to each other is complex. Politicians, unlike academics, have to act in concrete, discrete situations, not in general or abstract terms. Burke also cautioned about this complexity. So, when we address religionâs place in the Indian polity Burke would have us take account of the infinite circumstances of one billion believers and not insist always on the rational, secular principle of consistency. There are also unintended consequences because of the interconnectedness of things. Hence, when initiating change we ought to heed Burkeâs caution about the âlamentable consequences of plausible schemesâ. We have learned this lesson painfully over the past fifty years as we lived through Jawaharlal Nehruâs well-intended socialism which ended in becoming an ugly statism of the âLicense Rajâ.
In thinking about our secularism project in India, Burke would have us be humble in recognizing the complexity of society and to be careful of radical and rapid change. He would ask us to be skeptical about the role of reason in human affairs. Like many contemporary post-modernists, he had reservations about the Enlightenmentâs view of man as a predominantly rational, logical and calculating person. His rational side exists, he felt, but it is a small part of his total make-up. He would have us rely more on practical knowledge that is gained through experience rather than through abstract reasoning. He would have us pay attention to peopleâs habits, instincts, customs, and their prejudices. A generation earlier, David Hume, the illustrious Scottish philosopher, had also emphasized the importance of habit and custom.
Another of Burkeâs lessons, useful especially in a rapidly globalizing world, is to pay attention to the local and the particular. We speak too often about Indiaâs diversity, but we act as though only New Delhi matters. Burke would have us think of the Rights of Man, not in the abstract but of existing rights that people actually possess and enjoy, which they have inherited in the context of their particular situations. However, I disagree with Burke in his conception of the state that has to implement these rights. He was an orthodox Christian and he thought of society as the handiwork of God, a âDivine tactickâ, he called it. He regarded the state as âinherently and inalienably sacredâ, and although I share his passion for good government, I would worry about his âconsecratedâ state according âto one Divine planâ. I regard the spiritual and the temporal as two distinct orders, and I find his conception too readily lends itself to the dangerous idea that some particular human will or wills should direct the course of social life. This would not only be oppressive, but fatal to human liberty.
Burkeâs life teaches that to be conservative is not to become an apologist for the current order. He defended the American Revolution; he raised his voice for the emancipation of Catholics and for removal of trade barriers with Ireland; he spoke loudly for abolishing slavery and the trade in slaves; and even louder against the privileges and excesses of the rule of the East India Company. Many of us in India remember him not only for instigating the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the governor general, but for drafting the East India Bill, which led to the reform of the East India Company. Although Hastings was acquitted, Burkeâs speeches created new awareness in England of the responsibilities of empire and the injustices perpetrated in India.
Overall, I think, Burke would have approved of the gradual flow of Indiaâs contemporary history. Unlike the French Revolution (which he condemned because it was a sharp break with the past) and unlike the violent histories of China, Russia and so many countries in the 20th century, India won its freedom from Britain peacefully. This is why Andre Malraux was moved to say that India was created by saints and this happened in the shadows of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Not only did we escape the World Wars, but we became free without shedding much blood, thanks to Mahatma Gandhi. Yes, half a million died in the Partition riots, but it was not state sponsored violence. After Independence, Nehru built our polity based on many institutions of colonial rule, and this represented a Burkeian continuity. Our addiction to peace might be one of the reasons why we created so easily the worldâs largest democracy.
Nehruâs socialism, followed by Indira Gandhiâs âdark decadesâ, did slow us down for almost forty years, but it did not wipe out our private economy with its invaluable institutions of banks, corporate laws, and the stock market. So, when we broke free from our socialist shackles in 1991, we had this advantage over China. Many Indians (and I include myself in this) are impressed with Chinaâs dramatic progress today, and feel impatient and even depressed at the slow pace of our economic reforms. We feel frustrated by the missed opportunities from a higher growth rate. But Burke would have consoled us, telling us that even slow reforms add up. He would say that it is better to grow prosperous with continuity and democracy, albeit more slowly.
Gandhi too would have understood this dilemma
Burke expressed his understanding of society famously as a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are yet to be born. That is to say, the present is not the property of the living, to make of it whatever they will. It is an estate held in trust. Those who hold it have a responsibility to pass it on in good condition. The French revolutionaries were in the process of wounding this trust, and we in India are guilty of this as well. Mahatma Gandhi understood this and cautioned the Congress leaders about overturning in the name of reason, liberty, and equality the many historical continuities and institutions of the past. For this reason his secularism also resonated with the people. It was grounded in the belief that the ordinary Indian was religious and traditional. He thus showed respect for âotherâ. This is not true, alas, for many of todayâs champions of secularism, and this is why no one listens to them. This, combined with the way our political class has exploited the word in a naked quest for power, is why the sensible idea of secularism has acquired a bad odor in todayâs India.
Gandhi, like Burke, has frequently been dubbed a reactionary. Burke did not defend an exclusive aristocratic or monarchic orderâhe approved of the mixed system that existed in the Britain of his day, which was a combination of aristocratic, commercial, oligarchic, and democratic elements. Just as Burke preferred prudent and incremental reform, so did Gandhi. Hence, Ambedkar called him reactionary and too tolerant of the caste system. However, Gandhi was a realist. Much as he abhorred untouchability and caste, he did not think one could merely legislate them away. And in the end, Gandhi probably did more than any human being to make Indians aware of casteâs iniquity. What Ambedkar did not appreciate is that Gandhiâs respect for the historical process did not mean that he evaded the responsibility to criticize the past. In fact, he criticized it relentlessly. But he also respected community and continuity. Hence, he would have taught us that secularism will only succeed in India if it does not undermine tradition, but reinforces our âcustom, community and natural feelingâ in Burkeâs language.
I suspect Gandhi would have immediately understood the dilemma about teaching the Mahabharata in our schools and he would have agonized over the lack of easy answers. He instinctively grasped the place of the epic in Indian lives, and he would have approved of what V.S. Sukhtankar, the editor of the Poona Critical Edition of the epic, wrote: âThe Mahabharata is the content of our collective unconscious â¦. We must therefore grasp this great book with both hands and face it squarely. Then we shall recognize that it is our past which has prolonged itself into the present. We are it.â If we are it, surely it is important to teach it to the young so that they may understand and value who we areâthis would have been Gandhiâs response, I believe.
The debate on teaching the Mahabharata in our schools is relevant for another reason, which I found upon reading Michael Oakeshott. It is the idea that there are things to be enjoyed, but that enjoyment is almost heightened by oneâs awareness that what one is enjoying is in danger of being lost. It is the combination of enjoyment and fear that stimulates conservative thoughts. The epic has given me so much enjoyment in the past three years, that I have become a Mahabharata addict. I feel deeply sad that many young boys and girls in India are growing up rootless, and they will never have access to these forbidden fruits of pleasure. This dilemma has a personal dimension, you see, and it has led me to tread conservative paths. It seems to me conservatism is unlike other ideologies for it does not offer the vision of an ideal society, as Samuel Huntington wrote in an article called âConservatism as an Ideology,â published in 1957. There is no conservative Utopia because it is concerned, not with content but with process, with stability, with continuity and prudence. It is the opposite of radicalism, which expresses enthusiasm over the boldness in embracing change. My fears of the loss of tradition may appear exaggerated. Perhaps, they are. Certainly in the villages of India, where the vast majority of Indians live, the Mahabharata is well and alive in the oral traditions. But the future of India does not lie in the villages of India but in the cities. It is there, especially with the powerful onslaught of the global culture, we have to be concerned to preserve continuity with the past.
Let me close with a true story, which I think goes to the heart of the secular temper. A few years ago, I visited the Madras Museum in Egmore. While I was admiring a Chola bronze, a middle aged South Indian woman came behind me, and without self-consciousness, placed a vermilion mark on the Shiva Nataraja. I was appalled. Slowly however, I realized, that we lived in two different worlds. Mine was secular; hers was sacred. Both of us stood before the bronze statue with very different expectations. For me, it was a nine hundred year old object of beauty; for her, it was God. Mine was an aesthetic pleasure; hers was divine darshana.
She did not see what I saw, a brilliant work in bronze by an early Chola artist. I admired the weightless joy of the dancer, so skillfully captured by the sculptor. I moved along, passing by other bronzes, and I got irritated that the bronzes were dusty, ill lit, poorly spaced and badly presented. Suddenly, I felt embarrassed by my petty, niggling concerns. I turned around to look for her. She was still there, absorbed by her light-footed, tireless dancing god, whose dance actually brings the universe into being, and without missing a beat, and in the fullness of time, dances it out of existence. I was struck by the contrast of our livesâthe fecund richness of her sacred world versus the poverty of my weary, feeble, skeptical and secular existence.
I felt drawn to her and to her god. For someone who is carrying out such a momentous mission in this universe, I find that her god looks cool, athletic and even debonair. This is where our empty secularism has gone awry. Modern, liberal, English educated Indians are fast losing the holy dimension in their lives. They will never know the depth and opulence of her life. They are quick to brand her superstitious, illiterate, and casteist. She is, in fact, probably far more tolerant and accepting of diversity because she is capable of seeing God everywhere. It is in her rich world that the BJP and our Hindu nationalists ought to learn the true significance of Hindutva and the Congress Party and our secularists ought to learn the real meaning of secularism.
In my world of museums, concert halls, and bookstores, there is plenty of search for beauty, but there is no place for the holy. We are lost in a desacralized world of petty, middle-class concerns. Our secularism has robbed us of Kantâs âmoral conditionâ. Partly, it is the fault of traditional religion, which has overlaid and trivialized the original inspiration. The fundamentalists of the VHP and Islam have alienated us further. The answer for an authentic life, I think, lies with the woman in Madras in whose attitude lies the possibility of a fullness and wholeness of being. Thanks to millions like her, India will take a long time to become a sanitized American suburb.
I return to the main Shiva Nataraja at the entrance. He still looks unperturbed and absorbed in the serious task of creating and destroying the universe. But there is something new. Under his raised left leg, there is a marigold flower! So, the next time the world gets too much for you, do what I doâgo visit the Madras museum, and if you do not experience eternity, you might learn a modest lesson in implementing pluralism in a democracy, the theme of this wonderful conference. It is not only her attitude, but it is the outlook of the narrator, which is one of respect for the âotherâ, for her alien, sacred worldview. Secularism will only find a comfortable home in India if one respects the sensibilities of a deeply traditional and religious people.
As we think about sowing the seeds of secularism in India, we have to go beyond the easy polarities of the mind. The question is of the âhowâ and not of the âwhatâ. You cannot just divide Indians between communalists and secularists. That would be too easy. The average person is decent and is caught in the middle. John Rawls, I think, may have offered a way out when he distinguished between âpublic reasonâ and âsecular reasonâ. Public reason limits itself to political and civic principles while secular reason is broader and concerns itself with a secular personâs first philosophy. In the same vein, Martha Nussbaum distinguished between political and comprehensive liberalism. Advocates of secularism must not forget this distinction and they must refrain from introducing âcomprehensive liberalismâ and âsecular reasonâ into public debate. In a recent lecture in Poland, âReligion in the Public Sphereâ, Habermas spoke about the commendable idea of toleration, which is the foundation of modern democratic culture. He called it a two-way street. Not only must believers tolerate each othersâ beliefs, but also the atheism of nonbelievers. Disbelieving secularists, similarly, must value the convictions of religious citizens. And amongst religions, only those that can suspend the temptation of narcissismâthe conviction that my religion alone provides the path to salvationâare truly welcome in our rapidly world.
Note
As this is not an academic paper, I have deliberately not cluttered it with footnotes. However, those who wish to read some more of Edmund Burke, I would recommend the following books, which have given me such pleasure in preparing for this paper:
1. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. J. G. A. Pocock, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987, 181.
2. Edmund Burke, Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs in The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, 7th ed., Vol. IV (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1881), 143.
3. Peter J. Stanlis, âEdmund Burke in the Twentieth Century,â in Peter J. Stanlis, ed. The Relevance of Edmund Burke, New York: P. J. Kennedy & Sons, 1964.
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Paper Presented at a Conference at the university of Chicago âIndia : Implementing Plularism and Democracyâ on November 11 - 13, 2005. Forthcoming in a volume edited by Martha Naussbaum.