Religion and civilisation - II

By Mushirul Hasan

INDEPENDENCE BROUGHT some relief, but the age-old issues have yet to be resolved in this era of globalisation. A tradition-bound society, with its multi-faceted personality, is still struggling to reconcile tradition with modernity. True, India adopted a democratic and secular Constitution, but the place of religion in politics is an issue that continues to be ceaselessly debated. With 120 million Muslims and other religious minorities, notably Sikhs and Christians, the outcome of this debate will in large measure determine the future contours of India's pluralist society.

It is widely argued, more so after the violent dispute over the Babri mosque (built by a Mughal governor, in 1526, at the birthplace of the Hindu god, Rama), that the secular option, exercised by the Westernised elites, hardly reflects the concerns of the people whose lives are inextricably bound with their religion and their inherited traditions. What is not made clear is how this image (Orientalist?) of a spiritualist Indian nation runs contrary to the values of a secular polity and society. The secular ideal is, indeed, rooted in the soil and nurtured in the sturdy, long-standing indigenous traditions of Hinduism. Thus the architects of the Constitution held to Sarva Dharma Sambhava (Unity of Faith) as the solid foundations for harmonious living. They claimed that their concept was consistent with the eclectic, reformist trends in Indian society and approximated with Mahatma Gandhi's concern to strengthen the moral edifice of the Indian state.

Outside the political arena, the debates were conducted at various levels. These were largely the outcome of India's encounter with the Western culture and civilisation in the early 19th century. Admittedly, the Indian intelligentsia grudgingly accepted the fact of British rule, but the response to the new ideas flowing from the West was a mixture of acquiescence and rejection. The coming of the missionaries, their evangelical fervour and their proselytising activities, heightened religious and cultural anxieties. Thus began the search - one that continues even in this millennium - of the Hindu past, its philosophical underpinning, and its metaphysical dimensions. This was also an era when serious efforts were under way to homogenise the segmented Hindu population, and to create what the historian Romila Thapar characterises as `syndicated, semitised Hinduism'.

The encounter with the West led to much soul-searching, and to a reappraisal of Hindu society. Nineteenth century thinkers discovered, much to their dismay, that all was not well with their great religion. The rigidity of the caste system had a debilitating effect on the Hindu caste structure; Sati (burning of a widow on the funeral pyre after the death of her husband) and female infanticide were widely prevalent. The challenges were twofold: first, to equip the Hindus to face the cultural and religious assault of the West by acquainting them with their great religious traditions; second, to give birth to a resurgent Hinduism that would be free of Islamic and Christian accretions.

The intellectual ferment gave birth to not only powerful movements of religious and social reform, but also informed the nationalist ideology that was starting to take shape in the 1870s. Yet, religious and social reformism did not present a unified world view. Nor did they reach out to all sections of society. The backward castes, or Dalits, had an altogether different agenda. They were busy fighting for their rights and against their subordination by the upper castes. The Muslim communities, too, were left outside the pale of the 19th century reform movements. In effect, although the reformers and preachers nurtured a pan-Indian vision, their caste, region or community narrowly defined their concerns.Just as the backward castes clamoured for their rights within the caste hierarchy, so did the politically advanced sections of the Muslim community. As a political minority, they sought political safeguards in a representative Government. As a religious minority, they asked for cultural autonomy, a demand raised with unfailing regularity by the immigrant communities in Western Europe. Western democracies have artfully dealt with or ignored such demands, but the Indian National Congress (founded in 1885), spearheading the liberation struggle, had no answers. In the end, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a London-trained barrister, asked for a separate Muslim nation on the basis of Hindus and Muslims representing two different religions, cultures and civilisations. This was the `two-nation' theory. The Congress resisted the idea for a while, but in the end Jinnah earned his Pakistan on August 14, 1947. The great Indian nation was irrevocably divided. And like Poland, Ireland, Palestine and Cyprus, this division took place with the connivance and acquiescence of the colonial power.

Partition was a holocaust, a brutal experience, a cataclysmic event. Millions died, millions were displaced and dispossessed. And yet, the political leadership in India, led by its first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, began its `tryst with destiny' warily. The strength and vitality of their experiment that began on the midnight of August 15, 1947, rested on a model guaranteeing full citizenship with equal rights and obligations. This formula was certainly superior to the Islamic alternative being worked out in neighbouring Pakistan.

India's agony over religion is not yet over. The sacred rivers flow from their sources up in the Himalayas, but their water is contaminated by the bodies killed in caste and Hindu-Muslim violence. The road to the sacred sites is wide open, but it is fouled by the casteist and communal publicists. The bell rings in the temples and the mosques, but the politics of hate has reached their precincts.

All said and done, the secular ground has been narrowed but it has, mercifully, not disappeared. The appeal of Hindu nationalism, once rising on the crest of a popular wave, is beginning to wane. The coalition, headed by the Hindu nationalist party at the Centre, is in disarray. The critical issue for the religious minorities is whether they are adequately equipped to occupy this territory along with other democratic and secular tendencies that have recently come to the fore after have led a lazy life during the last few years. Their options are clear-cut: to either draw strength from the secular forces or to seek refuge in Islamist ideas. For the first option, the turf is negotiable. The latter course can only increase the stranglehold of the retrogressive forces.

Today - just weeks after the September 11 assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon - Pakistan can ill afford to either nurture or acquire the role of a vanguard for a fundamentalist vision of Islam. If may succeed in becoming an Islamic state if the Taliban menace is not countered. Or it may transfer its loyalty to some new ideal. Or it may fail. Each of the alternatives is momentous; and the choice before the people is searching and inexorable.

Out of various contradictory tendencies the Pakistanis must find the capacity to create a secularised state and confront the powerful trends towards authoritarianism. If the past is any indication, they have an uphill task ahead of them. Yet their case, with all its specificities, will be relevant to other countries trying to cope with daunting external circumstances and beset with internal problems.

(Concluded)

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