Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron

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This is not related to the textbook controversy but is from Havard and so I thought I will post it here:

The Pitfalls of Pluralism

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Pitfalls of Pluralism
Talibanization and Saffronization in India
From Religion, Vol. 25 (4) - Winter 2004
N. J. Demerath III is Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Gujarat is India’s westernmost state, and the home of the subcontinent’s two great leaders in the movement for independence from British imperialism: India’s Mohandas Gandhi and Pakistan’s Muhammad Ali Jinnah. But the last two years have been anything but kind. In January 2001, the state was devastated by a massive earthquake that took some 40,000 lives. A little more than a year later, Gujarat was the site of a different kind of disaster. On February 27, 2002, a train car filled with politically active Hindu devotees returning from the Ram temple in Ayodyah was set on fire by Muslim extremists, and 58 people burned to death. Hindu extremists responded violently. Over the next week, anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat’s capital of Ahmedabad and other cities took 700 lives by official counts and more than 2,000 by unofficial estimates.

The figures are eerily similar to those of earlier riots in Gujarat in 1969. But more shocking than the number of deaths was the nature of the killings. The brutality seemed to mock all civilized norms as rioters attacked women and children and mutilated the dead. Even more shocking, the events occurred as the police and military stood by and watched under orders from the state’s Chief Minister, Narendra Modi. Modi is a member of the right-wing “Hindutva” Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is now in power at the head of a somewhat precarious parliamentary coalition. <b>Rather than disciplining or reprimanding Modi, the BJP leadership in New Delhi implicitly supported him by featuring him as a campaigner in upcoming elections around the country.</b>

Sociologists often find themselves analytically unraveling civilizations. <b>But India seems to be a civilization that is coming apart in reality. What are some of the factors behind these disturbing developments? It is important to consider four overriding themes: the fallacy of a truly united India, the victimization of Muslims within Indian society, the problems of identity faced by many Hindus, particularly among the middle classes, and the conflicts unfolding as religious politics develop into a religious state.</b>
India as a Construct Deconstructing

<b>To say that India is coming apart suggests that it was once a seamless whole—and uniformly Hindu at that. But this notion is more revisionist myth than reality. </b>Any unity that India experienced prior to its independence in 1947 was due at least as much to Buddhist emperors, Muslim moghuls, and the Christian British Raj, as to Hindus themselves. Hinduism’s co-existence with Islam is longstanding. However, while the early Muslims came from the west, most later Muslims, as well as Christians and Buddhists, have been converts from the ranks of the “untouchables.” “Dalit” is now the politically correct term for this group, and in deference to the change, the Indian press now often refers to “ex-untouchables,” a term that conveys unwarranted implications of mobility to an untutored outsider. There have long been many Indias representing diverse cultural constructions and diverse points of view. This is also true of other states, including the United States, where negative “diversity” has been reconceptualized as positive “pluralism” with self-congratulatory smugness. Realistically, conflicted diversity falls far short of tolerant pluralism on the subcontinent. Immediately following India’s independence from Britain in 1947, <b>the predominantly Hindu India officially separated from the Muslim West and East Pakistan (Bangladesh)</b>. This produced one of the most grotesque episodes of the 20th century, when streams of Muslims heading north and Hindus heading south used the same roads and the same train stations, resulting in some 500,000 deaths due to collisions. The recurring Hindu-Muslim violence in cities such as Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Hyderabad, and Gujarat’s Ahmedabad, signals a refusal to put this history of altercations to rest.

In the intervening years, there have been three full-scale wars between India and Pakistan, and the continuing dispute over Jammu-Kashmir has left both sides perpetually poised against each other—with more than a million troops and both Hindu and Muslim nuclear bombs at the ready. Meanwhile, extremists <b>on both sides</b> exacerbate tensions, <b>especially in India</b>, the third largest Muslim society in the world with some 120 million believers. There is particularly tension in Gujarat, which shares a leaky border with Pakistan. Consequently, an attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi by a small group of Muslim extremists did not aid Hindu- Muslim relations across the rest of the country.

But in a globalized world, there are no more wars that can be easily classified into regional, local, or civil; the stakes are higher and more dangerous. After more than 50 years of continuing disputes and abortive negotiations over Kashmir, it is clear that India and Pakistan cannot resolve their differences. While Pakistani politicians are eager to negotiate because they can rely on Kashmir’s overwhelmingly Muslim population, this advantage makes their Indian counterparts quick to refuse negotiations. By now it seems that any realistic solution will require pressure from international powers.

Muslims as Victims

There are two common mistakes in estimating religion’s role in violence. The first is underestimating it, as many of my secular colleagues in sociology are inclined to do. The second is overestimating it, as do my colleagues in religious circles. There is little question that religion is important, in part because many Hindus regard conversion out of the faith as a betrayal both of the faith and of the cosmos itself. But religion alone does not provide a sufficient explanation for violence; it generally requires other, more secular correlates. In this case, both Muslims and Hindus have grievances that go beyond their faith. <b>While Muslims are seen as religious extremists elsewhere in the world, in India they have primarily been victims</b>. Especially in areas like Gujarat, Muslims are not only of low caste, but also of low income. Many members of the Muslim elite moved to Pakistan just after the partition, and replacing them has been difficult in a country whose educational infrastructure is stunted.

Meanwhile, the Indian Constitution, adopted in 1950, extended a major concession to Muslims by allowing them to conduct their personal affairs involving such matters as marriage, divorce, and inheritance according to the shari’a (Islam law) rather than India’s new civil law. The traditional Hindu community was granted no corresponding religious privileges; <b>if anything, it was constrained by secular reforms intended to soften its sharper edges, such as its treatment of “untouchables.”</b> Right-wing Hindus have harbored simmering resentment ever since. By the mid-1980s, the then-ruling Congress Party found itself in a cycle of quid pro quo favors extended alternately to conservative Muslims and Hindus. This culminated in Ayodyah in 1992, when BJP extremists tore down the 16th century Babri Masjid mosque because it is built on the <b>alleged </b>birth site of the god Rama.

Hindu Undoings

One of religion’s best protections against extremism is a structure of authority within the faith that can ward off opportunistic visionaries and demagogues who want to mobilize the faithful for purposes that are not always full of faith. Such an overarching system of authority is lacking in both Hinduism and the Sunni Islam that predominates in South Asia. This means both are subject to the kind of politicization that can be seen within “Hindutva,” (the right-wing flank of Indian Hinduism, including the <b>BJP) and Al Qaeda</b>.

Religions are also more inclined to extremism when they are troubled than when they are flourishing. Many Hindus—like many Muslims—have reason to be uneasy about waves of modernization, secularization, urbanization, and what Dipankar Gupta likes to call “Westoxication,” looming as threats to religious traditions. Caste and religion are becoming increasingly separate dimensions of Hinduism, and many now see the possibility of being loyal to one but not the other. For some, caste is becoming less a reincarnated place in a <b>divine Brahmanic hierarchy </b>than a horizontal status marker that is subject to politics and mobility. Inter-caste resentment, conflict, and violence is rising. It is no longer uncommon for low-caste vigilantes to seek redress of grievances from higher caste oppressors, and lowcaste violence inflicted on no-caste dalits is also increasing. One very publicized case in the past year involved a community in Haryana where a group of men from the low but locally dominant “jat” caste killed five dalits for skinning a cow while it was allegedly still alive and hence to be revered. Their account had little credibility, but the truth remained stubbornly difficult to publicize. Newspapers do carry frontpage stories of ill-fated Brahmin-dalit romances that end in suicide when the respective parents disapprove. But the stories now include a sense of shame and regret on the part of the parents themselves, who would have intervened in the tragedy “if we’d only known how serious they were.”

Meanwhile, problems have emerged from India’s policy of job “reservations” for untouchables, dalits, and members of the “scheduled caste”—another euphemism inherited from the British, who started the reservations policy. While remaining at the bottom of the caste system, some have experienced considerable class mobility; now caste and class rankings may differ. Many of India’s high-caste Hindus object to the “affirmative action” afforded to dalits whose middleclass educational and economic advantages have turned them into a privileged group that remains eligible for reserved positions even though they may not need them.

Even the more conventional Hindu middle class in places like Gujarat faces major identity problems. When I inquired into why the urban middle class was a strong source of support for the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), and other faces of Hindutva extremism <b>rather than for the forms of tolerance and enlightenment with which the middle class is associated in the West</b>, the answer seemed to be syllogistic. First, this is not wholly a middle class in the Western sense. It is a “shallow middle class” both quantitatively and qualitatively—one whose lower ranks lack the kind of education that is associated with the middle class in the West. Furthermore, with caste and class increasingly out of synch, real problems of identity are on the upswing. Hindutva also offers an identity kit, one that ties the individual to the grand traditions of faith, nation, and civilization <b>through its revisionist historical claims</b>.

Religious Politics in a Religious State

Many explanations have been offered in regard to India’s ongoing patterns of violence. Two opposing interpretations stand out—one bottom-up and the other top-down, one involving what might be termed spontaneous combustion, and the other involving political arson.

The bottom-up model of spontaneous combustion argues that when social circumstances are the equivalent of a drought-dried forest tinder box, an inferno may be generated from the underbrush. Given the circumstances among both Muslims and Hindus, it is no surprise that few areas in India have been immune to violence—especially in cities where the two communities live cheek by jowl with clenched fists at the ready. When there are so many suspicions of wrongdoing, long-time friends can suddenly become enemies, and violence feeds upon itself. Original causes of violent cycles blur, and history becomes subject to willful and revisionist construction. As a result, grievances are attributed to race, ethnicity, and religion, which are frequently mere proxies for the true causes. After examining a series of violent episodes and conducting interviews with surviving participants on both sides, the sociologist and psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar finds a remarkable similarity between the charges that the contesting communities hurl against the other.

<b>The top-down model of political arson is offered by political scientist Paul Brass. According to his analysis, case after case of Hindu-Muslim violence has been carefully plotted and forcefully instigated by political leaders within the Hindutva movement and the BJP</b>. Incidents tend to occur in the run-up to important political campaigns preceding critical elections. This was not only true of the riots that followed the destruction of the Ayodha mosque in 1992, but also of the recent riots in Gujarat.

Rather than choosing between these two models or scenarios of India’s religious violence, it makes more sense to reconcile them. Even the most fire-prone circumstances can escape conflagration if there is no spark. However, there is little doubt that one form of lightning involves religion’s relationship to power. But here one must tread carefully. An important distinction lurks not only for India but for the United States and every other country.

On the one hand, religion has a rightful place in politics and would be virtually impossible to remove from the political arena. On the other hand, religion has no place in the political state itself, and secular neutrality can be secured through constitutions and other rule-defining charters such as the US First Amendment—especially its “establishment clause.” This means not only insuring that one religion does not gain established sway over others, but also that the state balances association with religion and non-religion. The government should constitute a level playing field for all faiths, or lack a faith. Even if the majority rules in a democracy’s voting booth, the minority must be protected by its legal system. <b>Many people fail to understand that both the US democratic state and its religions have thrived because they have been kept generally separate, not in spite of it.</b>

India observed such principles for its first 30 years of independence, though it did make some previously mentioned exceptions that earlier breached the separation. But since 1980, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, her successor son, Rajiv Gandhi, and the currently-ruling BJP have all played the religion game. There is now talk of Hinduizing the state and its constitution because, after all, “India has always been a Hindu civilization and its population has an overwhelming 80 percent Hindu majority.” Following the BJP’s surprising victory in Gujarat led by the infamous Modi, it announced a three-fold platform for campaigning in future elections.

<b>The platform includes a “ban on religious conversions” aimed primarily at non-Hindus, including North American Christians, who would woo dalits away from their religious birthright; a “uniform civil code” aimed at eliminating the longstanding Muslim exemption, though more intended to restore a sense of Hindu dominance than to correct a religion-based state policy; and a revocation of the Indian Constitution’s Article 370, which makes mostly Muslim Kashmir out-of-bounds to Hindus interested in purchasing land or starting businesses.</b> All three measures would add kerosene to fires already well underway.

Fanning the Flames

<b>India is now faced with the dual threats of “Talibanization” in bordering Pakistan and Kashmir and “Saffronization” by the BJP and Hindutva at home.</b> Hindu-Muslim violence is a function of mutual mistrust and stereotypes. In many ways, the violence feeds upon itself as each episode triggers a new response, and the ultimate causes are lost in the miasma of a history that is dialectically construed. Interestingly, the Indian national flag is composed of three stripes: orange for the saffron of Hinduism, green for Islam, and a stripe of white in the middle. The white is a neutral symbol of the kind of secular state that is so crucial to India’s future. As I tiptoed across India’s religious “mindfield,” my fingers were crossed in the hope that wiser heads would prevail. Talk of a constitutional change to “Hinduize”<b> India has abated temporarily, but another resounding victory by the BJP would no doubt bring it back. As an officially Hindu state, India would see violence on an unimaginable scale. When minefields explode, the toll can be catastrophic.</b>
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