Having run out of liberal, utopian, Marxist, post-modern, post-religion and post-ideology theories to hypnotize the ex-colonial mind, exhausted Western scholars are turning to Bible and psycho-babble to mesmerize third world audiences. Incredible as it seems, the University of Chicago’s Prof. Martha Nussbaum invoked the puerile prattle of Sigmund Freud to lambast the Gujarat riots of 2002 in a talk at the capital’s India International Centre, to promote her book, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future (Permanent Black, 2007).
It is striking how all Western views on any subject hark back to the Biblical theory of original sin, human debility, and inability to transcend limitations. Ms. Nussbaum told a bemused Indian audience that once the human baby realizes it is completely dependent on its parents for survival, it is gripped by the pain of imperfection and shame of incompleteness; this shame and revulsion is later projected as hate towards other groups in society (don’t ask me how, I’m an ordinary vasudaiva kutumbakam type of Hindu).
Loads of psycho-babble on ‘human bad behaviour’ was passed off as serious political philosophy. Experimental psychology in the US, she said, shows that fear of differences creates a public culture of dominance and narcissism, driven by a wounded masculinity which hits out at the source of its perceived wound (whatever that means). Western experiments wherein school teachers inculcated prejudice in children against those with blue or brown eyes were glibly superimposed upon non-Western, non-monotheistic traditions to ‘prove’ her point.
One can rebut the allegations against the Hindu Right (read RSS-BJP), or accept barbs against President George Bush as levelling prejudice against Hindu society. My critique of Ms. Nussbaum rests on her use of monotheistic yardsticks to diminish non-monotheistic traditions. As the sole surviving ancient holistic tradition, India represents a major challenge to monotheistic hegemony in the contemporary era. This inspires awesome fear which steady recruitment of Hindu collaborators to the Western cause cannot overcome.
If one were to condense the difference between monotheistic and non-monotheistic faiths to a single factor, it would be the manner in which they encompass their respective universes. Hindu dharma embraces eternal values cherished over millennia by all natives of the land, excluding no form of worship or belief as too base or insignificant to be worthy of inclusion. External creeds entering the land in the historical period, as refugees, immigrants, or invaders, have been accommodated within the generous breadth of this tradition, which accepts and respects difference of belief and worship.
Thus, though mleccha may be a derisive term for outsider, turk a synonym for iconoclast, nowhere did Hindu dharma sponsor genocide or cultural repression of other faiths. Modern-day communal riots triggered by local tensions cannot be equated with the theology and history of various monotheistic traditions.
The Sanatana Dharma (eternal tradition) aspires to universal welfare of all. It stresses man’s debt to the nurturing earth and the elements that ensure survival of the human race; to the animal world, plants, minerals, indeed, all non-human creation. Far from being the sole consumer of creation, man has the enormous responsibility of ensuring the welfare of all. This is the true meaning of the Hindu grihastha ashram (householder stage of life) and the reason it is upheld as the best stage of life and society in the shastras.
Monotheistic creeds rest on the concept of a sole saviour and solitary path to redemption; and stretch the theology arising from this belief system to embrace not only the community of believers but all humanity in totality, suppressing everything incompatible with this worldview. Religious conflict is thus embedded in monotheism, as is its modern counterpart, pluralism, conceived as an antidote to sectarian wars in Christianity. European Christian countries later extended this concept to other faiths that entered their lands as refugees or immigrants, or survived as remnants of previous religious strife.
Christianity’s continuing difficulty with Islam rests on the latter’s refusal to accept the doctrine of religious truce, designated variously as pluralism and secularism. Christian and other minorities do survive in Muslim countries, but are largely ignored, marginalized or at times persecuted. The crux of the problem, however, is that both seek to invade each other’s geographical spaces through conversions aimed at changing religious demography; so far Islam’s success in Europe and America is greater than Christianity’s in the Gulf.
But Christianity is tenacious and is making inroads even in troubled places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Saudi monarch’s recent visit to the Vatican to discuss inter-faith issues suggests the desert kingdom may have more Jesuit citizens than it dares admit; their presence in the ruling elite could spell serious trouble.
In the contemporary world, religion has moved centrestage in identity politics. Despite formal adherence to secularism as state policy, there is a concerted move to impose the Christian socio-cultural, economic and political worldview on all nations despite resistance by native populations.
This is why, despite professed State secularism and cultural pluralism, the West is deliberately insulting harmless external symbols of identity that are central to some faiths. Typical instances of Western inability to tolerate cultural practices it does not share include the headscarf and veil of Muslim women in Western countries; nose-studs of Hindu women; and the turban and steel bangle of Sikhs. Wearing the cross publicly is also disapproved of, but it is pertinent that Christian symbols are an optional form of piety; the turban and headscarf are integral to adherence to Sikh and Islamic traditions.
The Muslim veil has never been an object of hate or ridicule in the Hindu mind, and has recently been condemned only by pro-West Muslims like Mr. Salman Rushdie and Ms. Shahbana Azmi. Claims that the modern West is post-Christian are hollow. The European Union’s decision to exclude Christianity from its Constitution does not alter Europe’s foundational political and cultural ethos, or lessen its commitment to evangelization in Asia.
Ms. Nussbaum says her Indian students regard religion and symbolic culture as fascist and reactionary, and are surprised when told of the role of liberal (read Christian) religion and pluralist rhetoric in forging America’s anti-racist civic culture. So am I: America’s African ex-slaves still lack the right to vote – it is a privilege extended every decade by the President, who has the power to withhold it.
The Pioneer, 27 November 2007