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The Twilight of Certitudes: Secularism, Hindu Nationalism and Other Masks of Deculturation

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The Twilight of Certitudes: Secularism, Hindu Nationalism and Other Masks of Deculturation The Twilight of Certitudes: Secularism, Hindu Nationalism and Other Masks of Deculturation hat follows is basically a series of propositions. It is not meant for academics grappling with the issue of ethnic and religious Wviolence as a cognitive puzzle, but for concerned intellectuals and grass-roots activists trying, in the language of Gustavo Esteva, to 'regenerate people's space'* Its aim is three-fold: (1) to systematize some of the available insights into the problem of ethnic and communal violence in South Asia, particularly India, from the point of vi-?w bTthose who do not see communal ism and secularism as sworn enemies but as the disowned doubles of each other; (2) to acknowledge, as part of the same exercise, that Hindu nationalism, like other such eth no-national isms is not an 'extreme' form of Hinduism but a modem creed which seeks, on behalf of the global nation-state system, to retool Hinduism into a national ideology and the Hindus into a 'proper' nationality; and (3) to hint at an approach to religious tolerance in a democratic polity that is not dismissive towards the ways of life, idioms and modes of informal social and political analyses of the citizens even when they happen to be unacquainted with—or inhospitable to—the ideology of secularism. I must make one qualification at the beginning. This is the third in a series of papers on secularism, in which one of my main concerns has been to examine the political and cultural-psychological viability of the ideology of secularism and to argue that its fragile status in South Asian politics is culturally 'natural' but not an unmitigated disaster. For there are other, probably more potent and resilient ideas within the repertory of cultures and religions of the region that could ensure religious rGusiavo Esteva. 'Regenerating People's Space', A/imumw. 1987. 12(1). PP 125-52 and ethnic co-survival, if not creative inter-faith encounters. Few among munities can also happen to sections of a community or to individuals. the scores of academic responses to the papers—some of them hysterically Thus, in recent years, many expatriate South Asians in the West have hostile—have cared to argue or examine that part of the story, which f become more aggressively traditional, culturally exclusive and chauvin- once foolishly thought would be of interest even to dedicated secularists. istic. As their cherished world becomes more difficult to sustain, as their They were more disturbed by my attempts to identify the spatial and children and they themselves begin to show symptoms of getting inte- temporal location or limits of the ideology of secularism. Evidently, for grated in their adopted land, they become more protective about what some academics, the ideology of secularism is prior to the goals it is they think are their faiths and cultures. supposed to serve. Much less provoked were those who had some direct exposure to religious or ethnic strife as human rights activists, first- The enthusiasm of some states to aggressively impose secularism hand observers or victims, for whom the papers were written in the on the people sharpens these fears of deracination. Already sensitive first place. For even when uncomfortable with M.K. Gandhi's belief that about the erosion of faith, many citizens are particularly provoked by 'politics divorced from religion becomes debasing',2 they seemed to a secularizing agenda imposed from the top, for .:hat agenda invariably intuitively gauge the power of Raimundo Panikkar's pithy formulation: carries with it in this era a touch of contempt for believers. Such secularism 'the separation between religion and politics is lethal and their is: 3 identification suicidal'. essentially a religious ideology, not based on any scientifically demonstrable propositions.... It is the religion of a divinized human rationality of a particular kind, making critical rationality the final arbiter. This religious ideology is then The Paradox of Secularism imposed on our children in schools—from which all other religions are Secularism as an ideology can thrive only in a society that is predomi- proscribed. ... This religion spread in the UK and the USA for two generations. nantly non-secular. Once a society begins to gel secularized—or once Sunday schools were established. Catechisms of the new religion were published. With the rise of Nazism and the Second World War it fizzled out, and merged the people begin to feel that their society is getting cleansed of religion 4 with modern liberalism, which is also the religion of the new civilization now and ideas of transcendence—the political status of secularism changes. sweeping Europe. ... Secularism creates communal conflict because it brutally In such a society, people become anxiously a ware of living in afi increas- attacks religious identity, while pretending to be tolerant of all religions.5 ingly desacralized world, and start searching for faiths to give meaning to their life and to retain the illusion of being part of a traditional com- When Indian public life was overwhelmingly nonmodem, secularism munity. If faiths are in decline, they begin to search for ideologies linked as an ideology had a chance. For the area of the sacred looked intact to faiths, in an effort to return to forms of a traditional moral commu- and safe, and secularism looked like a balancing principle and a form nity that would negate or defy the world in which they live. If and when of legitimate dissent. Even many believing citizens described themselves they find such ideologies, they cling to them defensively—'with the as secular, to keep up with the times and because secularism sounded desperate ardour of a lover trying to converse life back into a finished like something vaguely good. Now that the secularization of Indian polity love', in the language of Sara Suleri. What sometimes happens to com- has gone far, the scope of secularism as a creed has declined. Signs of secularization are now everywhere; one does not have to make a case for it. Instead, there has grown the fear that secularization has gone too 2M.K. Gandhi, in Raghavan Iyer (ed.), 77i<? Moral and Political Writings of Manama far, that the decline in public morality in the country is due to the all- Gandhi (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 374. round decline in religious sensibilities. Many distorted or perverted 3Raimundo Panikkar, 'The Challenge of Modernity', India international Centre Quarterly, Spring-Summer 1993, 20(1/2), pp. 183-92; see p. 189. ''The decline of faith I am speaking of has its rough counterpart in the erosion of sPaulos Mar Gtegorios, 'Speaking of Tolerance and intolerance', Indian International beliefs surveyed in a somewhat different context by Mattei Dogan, 'Decline of Religious Centre Quarterly, Spring 1995, 22(1), pp. 22-34; see pp. 24-5, 27. On the contempt for Beliefs in Western Europe', International Social Science Journal, 1995, 47(3), pp. 405-17; believers that lies at the heart of secularism and the capacity this contempt has to legitimize and Ronald Inglehart, 'Changing Values, Economic Development and Political Change', western dominance over ail traditional societies, see Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn ibid., pp. 379-403. See also Ronald Jnglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Societies (Princeton: Davies, Distorted Imagination: Lessons from the Rushdie Affair (London: Grey Seal, and Kuala Princeton University Press, 1991). Lumpur: Berita, 1990). "* versions of religion circulating id modern or •• IJ religious or ethnic their origins to this perception n/t*wmimifA <^—rwi—TT— «na than to the persistence of traditions. is for the hoi poOoi not foci As pan of the same process, many non-secular' ideologies and 7 politics. It is not difficult today to find out the rate at which riots of movements haw become more secular in style and content. They do try various kinds can be bought how political protection can be obtained to look religious, for the sake of their constituency, but they can pursue for the noten and how after a riot political advantage can be taken of ii political power in a secularized polity only through secular pofabcs. secular There is even a vague conseniuB among important sections of poli- organization and secular planning They increasingly resemble the ret- ticians, the bureaucracy and the law-and -order machinery on how such setting gurus and iaJhus who. while amazing the cxats materialism of specialists should be treated Despite hundreds of witnesses and detailed the West', have to use at every step western technology, western medu information, hardly anyone has ever been prosecuted for complicity or and wumu disciples to stay in business A popular way of recognizing participation in riots in India or. for that matter, in the whole of South this in India is to affirm that politicians misuse religion But that Asia. The anti-Sikh riot in Delhi in 19M provides dramatic evidence of such a awsensus Though over 3,000 Sikhs were killed in the three-day f. At leart two l*ave been in the Union cabinet a- J haw come to characterize a section of urban. panics observe, nen if by detauJtsoane and perpetrators of the of reuspon. these tctnu to be no such violence in Bombay in January 1993 and in Gujarat in Match 2002. restraint in the BJP or the Shhr Sena. The people these parties mobilize — ' be dnwn by piety—in the Shiv Sena's case e*m that r$ ttrieir leaden value that piety only as a part of their political On the other hand though by now human-rights activists and students of communal violence have supplied enough data to show that riots are Even religious riots or pogroms are secularized in South Asia.
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