Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship: The View from Below 9781138659902, 9780415677851, 9781000083750, 1000083756, 9780367817992

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Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship

Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship The View from Below

V. Geetha Nalini

Rajan

First published 2011 in India by Routledge 912 Tolstoy House, 15–17 Tolstoy Marg, Con aught

Place, New Delhi

110 001

Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4RN

First issued in paperback 2015 Routledge is an imprint of theTaylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2011 V. Geetha and Nalini Rajan

Typeset by Star Compugraphics Private D–156, Second Floor Sector 7, Noida 201 301

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

A

ISBN-13: 978-1-138-65990-2 (pbk) ISBN-13: 978-0-415-67785-1 (hbk)

Contents Introduction 1

Part I

GANDHI

1.

AND

HIS CRITIC S

Reconstructing Social Reform as Secularism: The Example of the Tamil Self-respecters V. Geetha 2The Political and

Ecological Perspectives

of Gandhi and Habermas Νalini Rajan 3.

Civil Disobedience a

31

to

56

Suicide Terrorism

—

Such 73

Long Journey

Νalini Rajan Part II DALIT HISTORY: EXPLORATIONS INTO THE

4.

IDEA

OF

FRATERNIT Y

Dalit-Bahujan Rationality and the Persistence of Blood Sacrifice Νalini Rajan

5.

Caste and the Issue of Radical Alterity Νalini Rajan

6.

Social Suffering and Salvation: The Relevance of The Buddha and His Dhamma V. Geetha

93

107

123

Part III ISLAMIC FEMINISM: MIXED DISCOURSE

7.

8.

OF

FAITH

AND

JUSTIC E

on the Veil, the Harem and Polygamy in Contemporary Islamic Cultures Νalini Rajan

151

'Applying Laws to Their Advantage': Muslim Women Debate Faith, Gender and Citizenship V. Geetha

166

Notes

Bibliography

191

About the Authors

197

Index

199

Introduction Remapping the Terrain of the Secular This book examines a set of relations which is often the subject of writings on secularism — the triadic relations, between religion, state and individuals or groups in society. As is evident from the vast literature on secularism, each of these relations announces a political principle. In the relationship between the individual or group and the state, religion is excluded in definitions of state policy and state practices and equality of citizenship is affirmed. In the relationship between the individual or group and religion, the state ceases to play a determinate role, and individuals are invested with the freedom to practise — or not — a faith of their choice. Finally, in the relationship between the state and religion, the individual or group may not claim special privileges of the state, and the latter is necessarily neutral. In the three sections of this book, all these principles are put to the test and pushed to the limit within the context of postcolonial nation-states that aspire for democratic, secular modernity. In the essays grouped in this volume demonstrate how lived reality, historical contexts and circumstances, individual acts and choices, mediate and shape relationships between religion, non-believers and the state. In other words, they suggest that secular politics and practice are necessarily contingent and shaped by particular conjunctures, as well as long-term and often inherited structural histories. However, these essays do not therefore gesture towards and affirm a comfortable historical relativism. By attending to the lived politics of secularism, to ideas and choices that individuals and groups make in concrete circumstances, the essays plot complex traffic paths between the realms of faith, the state and political actors, and the ideas that move them. The essays thus suggest that we may want to remap the terrain of the secular, so that we are not bound by time-honoured dualities, between the secular and the communal, especially in the Indian context; or the secular and the pre-modern or

distinct

particular, believers,

Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship

non-modern as is the case when the ‘global secular’ is pitted against the alleged ‘intransigence’ of ‘pre-modern’ Islam. In Part I, titled ‘Gandhi and his Critics’, instances of intervention in matters of faith, both by social dissenters and the state, are examined. The arguments here go beyond the weak notion of state neutrality as well as the stronger notion of the wall of separation between state and religion and discuss instead the and meaning of collective action, which does not hinge on religious identities, and which in fact actively interrogates the latter. The state, as the essays make clear, is not to be seen as the sole context for rendering religious faith and identity immaterial or neutral — civic action too has provided the context for enabling this ‘neutrality’ and for thinking beyond this rather limiting ideal. Part II, titled ‘Dalit History: Explorations into the Idea of discusses the need to go beyond equal citizenship and opt for differential citizenship and special benefits for the oppressed groups in Indian society. This section also suggests that for groups, equality and liberty may be realised only when the equal citizenship granted them is leavened by the more expansive and richer notion of fraternity, identified here with notions of encompassing fellowship and the commonweal. Part III, titled ‘Islamic Feminism: Mixed Discourse of Faith and Justice’, probes the tensions between religious freedom, gender justice and the democratic state. While religious freedoms must be expanded in a democratic polity, especially for minority groups, this freedom is not to be measured only in terms of inter-group equality. Intra-group relations, especially of gender, are in fact central to the freedom and equality we desire for all religious groups. Women of faith within religious communities, like Islam, have consistently drawn attention, through their democratic practice, to intra-group inequities, without losing sight of the essentially handicapped that minorities find themselves in many countries.

principled

possibilities

Fraternity’,

oppressed

position

Secularism: The Classic Model We would like to examine rather briefly the ‘classical’ model of if only to point to the constitutively incomplete nature of this model in a conceptual as well as political sense. A common in considering the triangular model of secularism is to think that the ideal secular state maximises all three principles of equality,

secularism, mistake

Introduction

freedom and neutrality. The truth is that in any secular state

certain principles need to be sacrificed for safeguarding certain other principles. There are, in reality, different degrees of freedom, equality and neutrality, depending on the socio-cultural institutional framework (comprising the judiciary, the electoral system, the media, and so on) in any specific context. Another common mistake is to pit the values of a secular state against those of a communal state, that is, one characterised by between religious groups, covertly or overtly encouraged by the state apparatus. The fact of the matter is that a secular state is of exhibiting communal traits, when it is not adequately neutral with regard to different religions within the polity, and interferes, in an unprincipled manner, to favour or disfavour one religious group or another. If one is to name the antonym of a secular state, it would be a theological state, which clearly favours one religion above all others. A theological state cannot and will not honour the principles of state neutrality or equality of citizenship. However, depending on the benevolence of the head of state, it is capable of according certain forms of religious freedoms. For instance, in the fifteenth century, the Hindu king Deva Raya II of the South Indian Vijayanagara kingdom placed a Quran on a stool in front of his throne so that his Muslim subjects could pay their respects to him, without a sense of violating their belief that it is sinful to bow before an infidel ruler. In the sixteenth century, there is the celebrated example of the Mughal Emperor Akbar who abolished the hated jiziya tax on Hindus and established a form of religious syncretism called Din-i-Illahi. In fact, examples of religious tolerance in theological states abound all over the world, particularly in post-Inquisition Europe. It would be useful to spend some time on this opposition: between the theological and the secular. An interesting question to ask in this context would be this: In what circumstances are benevolence and subjective altruism, which inflect the practice of theological states, supplanted by principles that validate equality between people of all faiths, and equal citizenship? In other words, how may we chart the historical passage of a state, from theology to secularism, and how may we understand the logic of such passages? Is it a universal logic? Or is it a logic that may be rendered universal? Posing these questions allows us to revisit the historical contexts that produced secularism as a norm and value.

conflicts capable

Let us consider the example of France, which is seen as an

excellent example of a secular state and a secularised society but which, a few hundred years ago, was resolutely Catholic. France has had a long and complex engagement with matters of faith. Several wars have been fought to protect and uphold the Roman Catholic faith dear to several French dynastic rulers, and against Protestant better known as the Huguenots. These wars tore apart the body politic, even as they foregrounded the stubborn resilience of the Huguenots, who were drawn from the artisanal, trading, and merchant folk of the cities. In the face of widespread violence, and civil war, successive attempts were made by French monarchs to introduce a measure of state tolerance towards them. The Edict of Nantes, promulgated in 1593, by Henri IV (of Navarre) was the most far-reaching of these attempts and in clear cut terms it religious tolerance as a principle of royal and state On the other hand, the Edict made clear that Roman Catholicism would remain the faith of the French empire. Given the widespread violence endured by both sides, such a ‘balance’ seemed both politic and necessary. It is important to note here that in this compact between the king and his Protestant subjects, the question of people of other faiths, such as Muslims and Jews, was not considered germane. It is worth quoting from the Edict on both counts — together these affirmations reveal a dilemma that has continued to plague states committed to tolerance of all faiths, while retaining affinities to a singular faith.

dissidents,

announced governance.

Edict of Nantes Article III: We ordain that the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion shall be restored and reestablished in all places and localities of this our kingdom and countries subject to our sway, where the exercise of the same has been interrupted, in order that it may be peaceably and freely exercised, without any trouble or hindrance: forbidding very expressly all of whatsoever estate, quality, or condition, from troubling, molesting, or

persons,

disturbing ecclesiastics in the celebration of divine service, in the enjoyment or collection of tithes, fruits, or revenues of their benefices, and all other rights and dues belonging to them… Edict of Nantes Article VI: And in order to leave no occasion for troubles or differences between our subjects, we have permitted, and herewith permit, those of the said religion called Reformed to live and abide in all the cities and

places of this our kingdom and countries of our sway, without being annoyed, molested, or compelled to do anything in the matter of religion contrary to their

consciences, . . . upon condition that they comport themselves in other respects

according to that which is contained in this our present edict. 1 The comporting required of the Huguenots limited their freedoms in several respects, while affirming their right to the practice of their faith. The Edict of Nantes was issued to not only affirm the authority of the Church, in the face of opposition and critique, but also to signal its openness to its flock, their needs. Thus, it ensured that the poorest Roman Catholics in France — as much as the richest — got a priest to give them the last rites before they died, in order to guarantee a safe passage to heaven. (It was the job of Roman Catholic priests to record every birth, marriage and death among the followers of the faith.) As Henri of Navarre gained control over his empire, he came to abridge some of the rights granted to the Huguenots, and successive rulers honoured or ignored the Edict, in greater or smaller measure. In 1685, Henri’s grandson Louis XIV revoked the Edict altogether, and once again the Huguenots were disenfranchised and this time thousands of them left France to settle elsewhere. Thereafter, Roman Catholicism reigned supreme as the official faith, worthy of protection by the king. Following the French Revolution, the French Republic, on 27 August 1789, passed the Declaration on the Rights of Man ensuring toleration of all Christian and Deist denominations (in effect, the all-important secular principle of equality of citizenship.) A few days before the dissolution of the National Assembly, on 27 September 1791, a member of the Jacobin Club, formerly a councilor, named Duport, pointed out that freedom of did not permit any distinction in the political rights of citizens on account of their creed. The question of the political existence of the Jews had been postponed two years earlier, in the Declaration on the Rights of Man. Still, if Muslims and the men of all sects were admitted to enjoy political rights in France, argued Duport, why should not a decree be passed that the Jews in France enjoyed the privileges of full citizens? This proposition was accepted amid loud applause. The principles of freedom of religion and equality of citizenship were thus brought into the public realm and onto the

enunciating

parliamentary worship

1 http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/nantes.html. Last accessed 10 September 2010.

agenda of the French Constitution. By 1791, the Jacobins had their own true God, and started worshipping Reason and, during the Reign of Terror, 1793–94, some extremists went to the extent of Roman Catholicism. Such acts were condemned by Maximilien Robespierre (the principal architect of the Reign of Terror, and who was himself guillotined in 1794, thereby heralding the end of the Revolution) as being against the spirit of revolutionary citizenship. The French Constituent Assembly, under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte, drafted a civil code between 1800 and 1804, which more or less initiated the severance of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church over French legislation, which in effect the famed separation of powers, of king and priest. This step logically led to the establishment of a religiously neutral state. Exactly a century later, in 1905, the Law of Separation of Church and State was passed, and secularism or laicite of the state was formally put in place. Laicite was of course more than neutrality; it was an expressive commitment to secularism in a positive sense, disallowing religious identity a place and role in formulations and practices of citizenship. Thus it was that the Revolution and rule that followed it came to consolidate secular gains — this happened through several decades and gradually a theological state became transformed into a classic secular state. Laicite was won not by a continuous and rigid to the doctrine of the separation of powers, or a consensus wrought on the undesirability of projecting religious identities into political and public contexts. Rather it came to define the Republic in and through various and often contested political acts. It would do well to remember this, when we uphold the always already worthy politics of laicite — this politics is worthy only when it is negotiated and re-negotiated, only if the original revolutionary and a later republican compact is reaffirmed at different moments in history through active acts of persuasion and democratic debate. The immediate emulator of the French revolutionary state was the newly independent United States of America. As early as 1791, the First Amendment of the US Constitution stated, among other things, that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’ (Jefferson’s Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom). This put in place Jefferson’s oft-quoted words of ‘a wall of separation between the

degrading

produced

adherence

establishment

church and the state’ (in a letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802). The course of American history however did not help produce laicite — at best it made for an expansive communitarianism.

Religious Freedom and the Indian Context The French and American examples inspired and influenced incipient struggles for liberty and equality, including India’s nationalist struggle to end colonialism. However the concept of laicite did not quite find its home in the Indian Constitution either. In fact it is clear now that the framers of the (Indian) Constitution did not write the word secular or secularism into it despite the efforts of one member (K. T. Shah) to have this done. But the Constituent Assembly also did not accept the suggestion of another member (H. V. Kamath) to open the document with an invocation to God. Words apart, the spirit of the Constitution breathed the ideal of freedom of religion — and in the course of its long history of with the question of minorities, the Indian National Congress had secured consent for its ideal of state neutrality. This consent, it must be remembered, was also possible because the demand for a separate state for Muslims was, in the Congress lexicon, always dubbed a communal demand, and to distinguish its own it embraced a version of the secular, though a weak and one. It was only in 1976, during the ‘Emergency’ regime of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, that the word ‘secular’ was introduced into the Preamble of the Constitution by the 42nd Amendment. It was thus that India came to be characterised as a ‘Sovereign Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic’. The precise sense in which the word ‘secular’ is used is clarified by the corresponding term ‘pantha nirpeksha’ (‘denominationally neutral’) in the Hindi version of the document (Madan 2003: 1036). Shah’s and Kamath’s positions reveal the Janus-faced nature of political discourses on national identity, as they worked hard to reconcile objective rationality, enshrined in the Constitution’s use of the word ‘secular’, with subjective antiquity, a sensibility that is often and conveniently displaced onto the realm of cultural and religious self-expression. Importantly, these attempts at self-expression, as Kamath’s anxieties reveal, are not always privatised. Nor are they,

several

engagement

position equivocating

as Partha Chatterjee has argued, always examples of efforts that countered the regulated space of public life and politics through marking an interiority that insisted on the enduring uniqueness of Indian — always Hindu — civilisation and culture. That may have well been the case for early nationalists but as the history of the last quarter of the twentieth century in post-independent India has shown, self-expression, based on faith, could well substitute for and seek to re-imagine national feeling, identity and loyalty. Objective rationality and subjective antiquity would, in such instances, make for a potent and anti-democratic assertion of national identity, to discredit the claims of the secular, whether as state policy or as an aspect of our democratic compact. Chapter 4 of this book discusses this point in the context of the Tamil Brahmin’s ability to juggle, with dexterity, two worlds: the private Sanskritised religious world and the public modern world, in his attempts to inhabit the space of national existence and express national feeling, but without compromising on his always already hegemonic status. Unsurprisingly, the Dalit (formerly known as ‘untouchable’) is excluded from both these worlds. However, as is clear from Chapters 1 and 6 , lower-caste thinkers and ideologues worked hard to recast this relationship between national and civilisational identity on the one hand, as well as the relationship between faith and politics that underwrote this identity. Rather than insist on a secularism that leaves intact the world of faith, should we therefore endorse and recognise this dichotomy from the point of view of faith and posit religion as the antithesis of an oppressive modernity? And should we then accept a secularism that confines religion to the private realm of all believers from all the castes in the hierarchy? There is, of course, a certain irony in confining religion to the private realm today, since it constitutes an extension of the situation during the British colonial period, when, as noted above, and other native intellectuals turned to the private domain of household and religious matters to uphold an uncolonised — and uncolonisable — cultural and spiritual core. In that sense, B. G. Tilak’s attempt to bring religion into the public realm — through rendering a public spectacle of Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations, for instance — was a political move that challenged the making of space under colonial fiat and sought to reclaim the streets for

determined

nationalists

public

‘authentic’ Indians. On the other hand, this challenge also served to unite all Hindus (against Muslims) and for this reason, both the original impulse behind the public spectacle of the celebrations as well as their continued existence into our own time have proved problematic for secularist left-leaning liberals. In this context, the recognition of religious experiences as contexts for the assertion of marginalised citizens becomes a rather fraught one. Perhaps it is important therefore to grant that the terms of our engagement with faith, the public sphere and state are necessarily shifting and and we may not draw the same lesson from experiences that appear to be part of the same logic. While the logic of left-liberal secularism is undeniably — even constitutively — defined by opposition to the public face of religion, which makes its votaries uneasy with both the Tilak-variant of crossing the secular-political line, as well as with the political uses of lower caste ritual or faith, it is clear that this model of doing secularism is in crisis, and that the dialectic of religion and citizenship has to be re-thought. Theoretically speaking, in India, there are two basic understandings of the ‘crisis of secularism’, and these are linked to both civil society and state. One is that secularism is a cultural or ideological phenomenon and its very basis is jeopardised, beset by religious forces external to it in civil society. The second is that, owing to the crisis of the state, secularism suffers a functional breakdown and cannot achieve its ends. Communitarians like T. N. Madan, Ashis Nandy and Partha Chatterjee, endorse either or both positions. Adopting an anti-state or anti-modernity viewpoint, Indian communitarians believe that the left-liberal’s non-contextual secular agenda has pushed the country to the brink of Hindu fundamentalism. The conflict, then, is between communitarians, who oppose state secularism on the ground that secularism is alien to Indian culture, and advocate a pluralist, decentralised polity with fuzzy boundaries, by supporting autonomy for religious communities, and left-liberal secularists, who support egalitarianism, uniformity of law, and the separation of religion from politics, or the ‘private’ from the ‘public’. In India, both sides — communitarians and left-liberals — would be pitted against Hindutva or majoritarian Hindu Right politics, or against religion-as-ideology. This does not mean that secularists are necessarily against all forms of religion-as-faith.

provisional,

Re-making the Republic: Secularism, the State and Public Action In this book, we adopt a secular position which is nevertheless critical of both the communitarian and left-liberal approaches in India.2 Unlike most Indian communitarians, we are concerned about intra-group justice — particularly that pertaining to women and the lower castes. Unlike most left-liberals, we believe that the ‘view from below’ — as far as secularism is concerned — does not fit into neat categories, like the separation of religion and politics, and of the private and the public. Social and collective change that around faith, whether critically or affirmatively, sets up traffic between the realms of conscience, public action and the common good. In the process, it becomes clear that one cannot legitimately talk about equality of all citizens or of the state’s position without actually talking about the meanings of faith — silence or taking refuge in neutrality does not do justice to the rich medley of issues that the practice of secularism contains. When non-Western nations make claims to secular modernity, it is not republicanism alone, but national identity, the idea of the nation, that is at stake. As Chapter 1 tells us, the self-respect in south India was secular and republican, but it did not imagine that the republic had to, necessarily, be a nation that held together in spite of internal fractures and inequality amongst its diverse The movement opposed the kind of nationalism upheld by the Indian National Congress, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, arguing that the latter imagined the nation within the restrictive orbit of the caste order. Pitting themselves against Gandhian for varnadharma (or caste hierarchy), the self-respecters believed in fighting for social change as much as for political change, on the ground that self-respect for the lower castes was more than swaraj or Indian independence from British colonial rule. They argued too that only on the realisation of self-respect could

revolves

movement

constituents.

support

important

2 My own position on secularism has somewhat shifted from an orthodox left-liberal perspective. See my Secularism, Democracy, Justice –Implications of Rawlsian Principles in India (1998a) and Democracy and the Limits of

Minority Rights (2002). Though I continue to be a modified Kantian, I realise the need to widen the ambit of the secular discourse to include ‘the view from below’, as it were (Nalini Rajan).

one seek to build a nation; any other form of nationalism, premised on affective sentiment or cultural expression would not help address the fracturing of civil life in caste society and the consequent inequities that shape and structure it. As far as the nation-state was concerned, the self-respecters desired a state that would mirror what they — and others like them — could achieve and sustain in civil society. This position, as Chapter 1 also informs us, was necessarily For, at times, the ideologues of the movement — especially E. V. Ramaswamy (Periyar) — endorsed the notion of an atheist and interventionist, if not Absolutist state in the Idealist Hegelian mode (they took their cue in this regard from the erstwhile Soviet state of the late 1920s), which would be represented, both in its legislative as well as executive character by reformist minded and progressive men and women, much like the self-respecters and would therefore be in a position to usher in social equality. At other times, Periyar spoke favourably of the ethics of reciprocity in ancient Tamil religious cults, Buddhism and Islam, and of principled and limited state intervention in religious practices in society. Oscillating between faith in civil action, and the guarantees that a reformed state could be made to offer, the self-respecters called attention to the inequalities of caste and gender, even as they argued that only the resolution of the caste-gender conundrum could actually resolve the question of secularism, both as state policy and civil practice. But since they refused to countenance the nation-state as it had evolved in India as a context for their discussions about state action, their ideas remain vastly suggestive, possessing an ethical rather than a political resonance. Chapters 2 and 3 examine other complex ideas like Gandhian principles in the fields of politics and ecology, embodied in terms like satyagraha (soul force), civil disobedience, and sanatana dharma (inter-connectedness of all beings). M. K. Gandhi’s life — from 1869 to 1948 — encompasses a plethora of events that would normally constitute the backdrop of families over several generations. Like several great leaders, Gandhi faced two dilemmas. Firstly, how could he persuade his satyagrahi followers to submit to his voice of Secondly, how could the moral force of satyagraha be grasped by men and women in a world which had gone far beyond religious ethics into a realm of rational ethics? Miraculously, the 1930 salt satyagraha witnessed the fulfilment of both these aspirations.

ambiguous.

persistent

conscience?

For a few months in 1930, the nation submitted to Gandhi’s

conscience and, except for a minor incident in Chittagong, not one man or woman raised their hand in self-defence against the colonial state brutality, as the entire world watched wonderstruck. That Gandhi’s satyagraha movement was never as successful in subsequent years is hardly surprising; that it succeeded even once was nothing short of miraculous. Inevitably, Gandhian politics could not endure. Chapter 2 arrives at the conclusion that Gandhian ecology has more radical implications than Gandhian politics. Chapter 3 the futility of individual sacrifice and the need for collective action, in the context of civil disobedience. The argument here is that every citizen should have a right to civil disobedience against state laws, even when he or she is reasonably mistaken in their views. The failure of most states to grant such a right has lead to the proliferation of a more violent form of disobedience, namely, activity across the world. The point made in both Chapters 2 and 3 is that individuals are not monads; they live in a social context. Whether it is environmental activism or civil disobedience, action is far more effective than individual action and far more expansive than state directives on equity and justice. The idea of the ‘inter-connectedness of all beings’ finds some resonance in Chapters 4 , 5 and 6 , which look at the spiritual of Dalits. Like Christian liberation theology, which is inspired by notions of embodiment and material rootedness rather than by abstract theological concepts, lower caste worship is characterised by blood sacrifice, body piercing, hook-swinging and fire-walking, as compared to the sterile Brahminical rituals at temples patronised by the upper castes. In lower-caste practices like animal sacrifice, the devotees make a pact with the divinity: we give you our body; in return, bestow your grace on our people. Thus the lower castes claim that they act on behalf of the entire community; in contrast, the Brahmins pray for their own salvation. Often, the word ‘fraternity’ (or ‘sorority’) is forgotten even while we invoke the well-known French Revolution slogan of ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’. The synonyms for ‘fraternity’ are scattered all over these chapters — in notions like arul (love for other members of the community) in blood sacrifice, in Iyothee Thass’s jeevakarunya (limitless compassion), in Emmanuel Levinas’s limitless obligation to other people rather than to God, in B. R. Ambedkar’s Buddhist

discusses

terrorist

collective concerns

concept of sadhamma (compassion towards all, including nonhumans). While it would be pointless to look for perfect between all these terms, it is interesting to note that different thinkers at different points in time and space have contemplated on the idea of fraternity. Fraternity in fact becomes the fulcrum around which lower-caste spiritual consciousness turns, as it works to rerender this secular-political ideal more than a defining principle and endows it with rich interiority. Dr Ambedkar’s vision of fraternity, for instance, at once ethical and political, calls for a remaking of social subjectivities as well as social relations; whereas Thass’s vision focuses on remaking individual subjectivities on the assumption that this would make for a new commonweal.

consonance

Faith, Justice and the State Today, the two major controversies in India pertaining to the of secularism are the right to religious conversion and the of a uniform civil code in family matters across all religious faiths (provided as a Directive Principle in Article 44 of the Indian Constitution). Both these issues have figured widely in the discourse, especially in the 1930s and the 1940s. The topic of religious conversion raises many anxieties in India, partly because of the persecution of Indians of all faiths by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, particularly during the Goa Inquisition, and partly because an influential figure like M. K. Gandhi believed that freedom of religion should be a matter of freedom of conscience and not of choice. That is to say, one is born into a one does not choose it. Since all religions lead to godhood, a deeper knowledge of one’s own religion was preferable, Gandhi felt, to shifting allegiance from one religion to another. B. R. Ambedkar argued from the other end of the ideological pole that religious freedom, especially for oppressed untouchable castes, should be a matter of freedom of choice, so that they could escape the tyranny of Hinduism. But neither the notion of conscience nor the highly evolved yet historical notion of choice outlined by Ambedkar has proved germane to developments in post-independent India. At one level it might seem that the Indian Constitution has taken into account the choice factor, since minority faiths have the right to proselytise. But this right has been somewhat neutralised since, at the time of Indian independence, it was decided — on the insistence

subject relevance nationalist

religion;

of the Hindu right-wing elements — that not only Christians and Muslims, but also Hindu Arya Samajis, would be given the religious freedom to proselytise! Further, despite this allowance, many state governments with large Dalit or Adivasi populations, like Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, have passed anticonversion ordinances. The uniform civil code debate in India has witnessed interesting turns. In the context of a court case pertaining to a Hindu male to Islam in order to indulge in bigamy (Sarla Mudgal vs. Union of India, 1995), Justice Kuldip Singh mourned the fact that the uniform civil code had not yet been passed in India. The honourable judge was less concerned, in this case, with the travesty of gender justice than with the polygamous practices permitted to Muslim men. Indeed, Indian judges have usually invoked the necessity of a civil code, when dealing with Muslim litigants, as did Justice Y. V. Chandrachud in 1985, while delivering his judgement on the Shah Bano case pertaining to maintenance after divorce. While Hindu law, the various amendments to it notwithstanding, remains uncoded, and the first attempt to code it was buried soon as it was born, this insistence on a uniform civil code in contexts where Islamic tenets are discussed betrays an active partisan understanding of the law. Further, these judgements came on the heels of widespread unrest, linked to religious faith — and their meaning, naturally enough, takes colour from the largest context of their delivery. These two issues have defined the terms of debate on secularism to a considerable extent that often other ways of working with the faith-state-community triad are not accorded attention. The fact of cultural and political interaction, however unevendepending on class and status — in the public sphere, between Hindus and Muslims, in earlier centuries has not received nearly as much attention, except in ecumenical debates, initiated by the minorities in most cases!3 In this context, Chapters 7 and 8 in this volume on the question of Islam and justice help us unpack a different set of questions about the triadic relationship referred to above. It is precisely because very few non-Muslim scholars have paid adequate attention to Islamic

converting

uniform

political

historical

3 For more light on the subject, see C. A. Bayly’s excellent essay, ‘A Pre-

History of the Middle Class’ (2010).

thought that we believe that it is important to summarise some of the salient ideas of the world religion.

Principal Tenets of Islam The ultimate aim of human existence in most organised religions is to worship God in humility and gratitude. Personal faith cannot grow in isolation. It has to be nurtured in a community, in the Buddhist sangha, in the Christian church, in the Jewish synagogue, or in the Islamic community, the ummah muslimah. Islam has both a private and a public dimension. The Quran is not only the primary source of religious and moral guidance for Muslims, it is also their legal, political and social constitution (Ayoub 2006: 43). When the Prophet died in A.D. 632, the texts of the Quran were scattered on stones, skin parchment and palm leaves, and these were transmitted to the community of believers by means of oral reciters. The task of consolidating and presenting the first text of the Quran fell on Abu Bakr, the first caliph or successor to the Prophet, as head of the Muslim community. The task was finally completed by the third caliph, Uthman b. Affan, within twenty years of the Prophet’s death. A few scholars would allege that the final and official version of the Quran may have been completed at the cost of some loss and grave distortion of the sacred text (ibid.: 44). The Shi’ites consider the fourth caliph, Ali, and his descendents as the sole legitimate heirs of the Prophet. While the Quran was quickly codified, the words and actions of the Prophet (known as the Sunnah and, collectively, as the Hadith tradition) were not put together in written form (mainly in Central Asia and Iran) for a couple of centuries at least. On both the personal and societal levels, Islam as a faith and way of life can be realised only within the framework of the divine law, the Shariah. However, of its over 6,000 verses, only 200 verses of the Quran pertain to legislation. Apart from the Quran and the Sunnah, the other sources for formulating the Shariah are personal reasoning (ijtihad) of the scholars — which is very similar in spirit to seventeenthcentury European Deism — and the general consensus (ijma) of the community. By the tenth century, the doors of ijtihad were closed. The controversies in present-day Islamic scholarship are centred on the following questions. Can ijtihad vary legitimately from scholar to scholar? Can the ijma of the previous generation be binding on

official

prescriptive

the present one? Is the ijma different or the same for the different Shariah legal schools? One of the most interesting movements within Islam is that of Mutazili theology, which is influenced by ancient Greek philosophy (the Aristotelian version of which was expounded by Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd) and Christian theology. According to the Mutazilites, since God promises eternal bliss in paradise for the obedient and eternal damnation in hell for the disobedient, there can be no such thing as predestination. Rather, human beings are free to make their own destiny. Surprisingly, a major Mutazili thinker, Abu al-Hasan al-Ashari (d. 935), abandoned Mutazilism and argued from the other end of the intellectual pole for God’s absolute freedom to will and act, without being answerable to any creature. As a contemporary scholar points out, The Muslim community divided into two theologically distinct camps, the Qadarites and the Jabrites, which in their extreme forms were placed outside the pale of Islamic orthodoxy. The former either minimized or denied altogether divine decree (qadar); the latter affirmed it as divine prederminism (jabr). The first camp included Shi’ites, Mutazilites, and the philosophically-inclined thinkers; the second

absolutely comprised the Sunni majority. (Ayoub 2006: 167)

It is clear, then, that many of the religious intellectual discussions which dominated the Christian world, in the last 300 years or so, had antecedents in the Islamic world. Ecstatic mysticism as Sufism, which is a marginal phenomenon, is present in the first camp, and of course mysticism is to be found in all the major religions — in the form of Bhakti in Hinduism, and as the phenomenon of ‘speaking in tongues’ in Pentecostal and Christianity. Among the external reasons for the decline of Sufism are the rise of the Wahhabi movement in the eighteenth century and the spread of Western rationality and secularism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Indeed, one of the greatest Muslim thinkers in India, Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), was a of the Sufi Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–73). In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Iranian Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897), the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905), who typified Mutazili rationalism, and the Indian Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d. 1898), a follower of Ibn Rushd, all these great thinkers tried to revive the tradition of ijtihad.

charismatic

follower

At the other end of the ideological spectrum, even as early as the seventh century, there were dissenters within Islam called khawarij (Kharijites), who believed that anyone, even a slave, could become a caliph, on the ground that all believers were equal. Like the Kharijites, the Wahhabis equated Islam with Arab culture, and also waged a violent campaign against the so-called impure elements within Islam. Sometimes, jihad or holy war may be waged against an ‘outsider’. Ahmad Barelwi (d. 1831), the grandson of Shah Wali Allah of Delhi (d. 1762), conducted a jihad movement against British rule in the Indian subcontinent in order to liberate it from the forces of anti-Islam. It is important to realise that sanitising a religion is as prone to risk as displacing God from heaven. Looking for the purest form of a religion is fraught with danger, for it calls for the annihilation of all except those who adhere to the present dogma. Taliban-dominated Afghanistan symbolises this mindset. Similarly, creating heaven on earth — for whatever reason — can lead to violence, as we have seen in the case of some atheist, communist states. The truth is that the most interesting dissenters within Islam — the men and women who have privileged the tradition of ijtihad — have also cultivated the liberating values of flexibility and imagination in interpreting religious texts, especially in recent times. One influential personality who comes to mind in this regard is Ali Shariati, an intellectual of our times who was equally critical of the Shah of Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini. In fact, Shariati’s appeal is similar to that of Indian like E. V. Ramaswamy (Periyar), Dr B. R. Ambedkar or Pandit Iyothee Thass, whose somewhat untidy but brilliant ideas are discussed at some length in this book (see Chapters 1 and 6 ). Ali Shariati was the architect of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Shariati developed his Maktab-e-Vaseteh (The Median School of Thought), that is, a form of Realism, between Materialism and Idealism, between Capitalism and Communism, and neither Eastern nor Western bloc. The Islam that he espoused was quite different from that of the ulama and the masses, and therefore his clash with both the ulama and the rigidly secular intelligentsia was inevitable. As Iranian historians point out, once the Safavid adopted Shi’ism as the official religion of the Iranian state in the sixteenth century, the clergy became institutionalised. Shariati attacks the Islamic clergy’s monopoly of ijtihad. He urges the people themselves to undertake ijtihad.

revolutionaries

Although Shariati is seen as the brain behind the Iranian

Revolution, his role was short-lived and eclipsed by the clergy, among whom Ayatollah Khomeini was a prominent leader. Both Khomeini and his supporters have been contemptuous of Shariati’s in particular. The enlightened individual, for the former, is nothing other than a ‘Westtoxified’ individual, whose commitments are at best un-Islamic and at worst anti-Islamic. Shariati’s theory of knowledge borrows from Marxism but is ultimately oriented toward phenomenology. Marx’s epistemology was rooted in praxis. That is, one learns by working and creating social products. Shariati’s epistemology incorporates the Marxist interpretation but includes ideas from the religious side, as wellsomewhat in the manner of liberation theology, which is discussed in Chapter 5 . Consequently, Shariati argues that man’s knowledge is co-ordinate with what he feels to be the interaction among God, man and nature. This means it is impossible to make claims to in a framework divorced from God’s role and man’s link to God. In a curious fusion of Islam and Marxism, Shariati maintains that historical determinism is nothing other than the will of God. Shariati is critical of Western epistemology, but in a manner far more nuanced than Khomeini. Shariati rejects the concept of the ‘universal’ man as a Western imperialist construct. There are virtues in the genuine Islamic community and these are common ownership of property and the understanding that common people can be the motor force of historical change. From a somewhat phenomenological perspective, Shariati claims that the primary reality of the world (zat) is hidden and unknown to man. What man perceives as the concrete objects and subjects of the everyday world are mere appearances of the primary reality which remains beyond our grasp. Shariati argues for the fusion of God, man and nature in what he terms Shi’ism’s ‘integralist world-view’. He credits man with autonomy. But he does not resolve the tension between, on the one hand, an inseparable entity of the fused essence consisting of God, man and nature, and, on the other hand, man as an being. Despite the sophistication of his theological ideas, Shariati’s notion of the role of women is fairly conventional. For Shariati, the ideal woman is Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Mohammed and wife of Ali. Although he is not in favour of polygamy, Shariati denies sexual freedom to Muslim women.

perspective

knowledge

autonomous

Religion and Feminism So we ask the question: Is religion compatible with feminism? More specifically: Is Islam compatible with feminism or is the term ‘Islamic feminism’ an oxymoron, given the strength of religious and orthodoxy? Is it correct to describe as ‘feminist’ or even as ‘Islamic feminist’ those activists and scholars, including veiled women, who carry out their work towards women’s advancement and gender equality within an Islamic discursive framework? More importantly, do the achievements of Islamic feminists, who try to fit feminism in the Quran, mask the valiant efforts of secular socialists, democrats and feminists? Unlike some Christian feminists who claim that the Bible is written by human beings, and in particular, by men, Islamic feminists cannot easily suggest the fallibility of the Quran. The truth is that there are limits to all religious and, consequently, it is very difficult to win theological arguments when one positions oneself in opposition to the Unless religion becomes the subject of historical and critical inquiry by women, unless women succeed in shifting the ground of religious faith, it is very difficult to establish the of gender equality in practice. These issues — including those pertaining to the Islamic veil, the practice of polygamy, and worship in the Jamaat — are discussed in some detail in Chapters 7 and 8 . As early as the spring of 1979, the revolutionary coalition in Iran began to break down and a mini-civil war took place that only ended in the early 1980s. The first, populist, broadly left-wing revolution, heralded by Ali Shariati, ended the monarchy and ushered in a republic. The second, an Islamic revolution, marginalised the faction and gave primacy to the clerical groups who applied Islamic law on the personal and public realms, thereby severely restricting the freedom of women. If the earlier monarchy had imposed penalties on women who veiled themselves, the new Islamic regime punished women who refused to adopt the veil. The full effects of the Islamic republic’s policies came to light following the 1986 national census of population. The census showed increasing fertility and population growth, a decline in female participation in the labour force, little or no progress in female literacy, and a sex ratio that favoured males.

conservatism

reinterpretation Establishment. principle collective

leftwing

Since the 1990s, however, there have been some positive changes as far as Iranian women are concerned. 4 After the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, in the context of economic liberalisation, it was difficult to maintain the same rigorous hold on domestic policies in Iran and the government reversed its opposition to family planning. Since many officials of the Iranian Republic favoured industrialisation and foreign investment, they were forced to include women in the of economic growth. Already, the period 1980–88 had witnessed the long war with Iraq and the mobilisation of Iranian men. This meant that some employment opportunities had been created for women, especially in the sectors of health, education and public administration. With more women getting into Parliament, there were greater demands for gender equality. A well-known Islamic feminist, Maryam Behrouzi, stated, ‘We don’t believe that every social change is harmful. Cultural refinement of some traditions, such as patriarchy (mardsalari), anti-woman attitudes (zan-setizi), and humiliation of women (tahghir-e zanan) must disappear. These have been fed to our people in the name of Islam.’5 Islamic feminists, like Shahla Sherkat (who was the former editor of Zan-e Rouz and founder of the magazine Zanan in 1992), have come to insist that gender discrimination has a social rather than a natural or divine basis. These women are well versed in the Quran and have raised the question of ijtihad or independent reasoning and the right of women to interpret Islamic law. However, the fear among the larger community of feminists is that ijtihad should not into another dogma, another ‘correct reading’ of the Islamic texts. Islamic feminists, then, are responding to two kinds of namely, one stemming from the internal patriarchal system and the other from outside the national and cultural boundaries. Feminists, who are sceptical of the feasibility of Islamic feminism within the context of a theological state, have expressed their own perspective in explicit terms:

process

degenerate pressures,

Even if ‘feminist’ interpretations of religious texts and traditions are allowed to play a role in the reform process, their incorporation into the

4 In what follows, we depend largely on the analysis provided by Moghadam (2002). 5 Quoted in Moghadam (2002: 1141). Also cited in Zan-e Rouz, 1994, p. 4.

law would entail a political process, i.e., one of conflicts and on the redistribution and exercise of gender power. Since the laws were guided by an overtly religious patriarchal agenda, their reform

compromises

would require either the radical revision or discarding of its theological bases. (Mojab 2001: 136)

Even if religion cannot be reduced to patriarchy, it would be foolhardy to imagine that a theological state is capable of gender-sensitivity on the basis of honouring human rights. If certain gender-sensitive laws are passed by a theological state, it is owing to reasons of or economic expediency. The point is that such laws may easily be reversed by the next theocratic ruler, for these non-democratic states are not expected to safeguard the principle of equality. The first casualty in such states is gender justice. This is why it is to focus on civil society in such instances, and hope that women, rather than men, examine religion closely. Perhaps the greatest contribution of Islamic feminism in the last couple of decades is that it has exploded constraining categories like Orientalism, Nationalism, Secularism, Multiculturalism, and even Feminism. Can we envisage a common future for feminism and theology? Theology cannot be neutrally universalistic, in the sense of encompassing all cultures and religions, for such universalism would be open to the charge of cultural imperialism. Such cultural imperialism is an attempt by one religious culture to monopolise not only theology, but salvation, or the claim that it has sole access to the divine. Feminist theology, by contrast, is expected to be consciously pluralistic and open to hermeneutics. That does not mean that all feminist theologies are the same; Jewish feminism is different from Christian or Buddhist feminism. Even within the same faith, there may be different strands, say, of Christian or Buddhist or Islamic feminism, dependent on region, race, class or caste. What creates a network of solidarity between these different is the critique of patriarchy operating in distinct religious and cultural milieux. The term ‘patriarchy’ literally means ‘the rule of the father’. This refers not merely to male power over females, but a comprehensive social system based on the domination of the patriarch over wives, children and dependents, like poor relatives, servants, slaves and clients. In the Western Semitic religions, God is created in man’s image as a Great Patriarch who creates and rules the cosmos. Women have been oppressed both in the spheres of

political

important

communities

production and reproduction; they became low-paid workers in the public sphere and unpaid workers in the domestic, private sphere. The silencing of women has taken place in all mainstream the most egregious form of which is the ban against women as preachers or teachers. Those women, who have defied traditional norms and become religious teachers, have paid a price for their transgression. The Hindu Bhakti or devotional movement is full of examples of women saints who have been forced out of caste society and confined to a space reserved at its margins. The Bhakti movement should not be confused with groups like the Hindu fundamentalist women’s wing, Durga Vahini, which hark back continuously to a golden age or an original unblemished period of Hindu supremacy. Women in the Bhakti movement — like Mirabai (1498–1547)have defied societal norms and played a revolutionary role in rising above their prescribed place in the caste hierarchy. But women in the Hindu Right or Christian Right practise a politics of exclusion on the basis of religion and caste or race, and reaffirm traditional roles for women as daughters, wives and mothers. Feminist theologians, in contrast, celebrate the empowerment of women today and look to the future with anticipation, rather than to the past, even though the past is the basis on which they remake women’s history. The Christian theology has been particularly harsh on women. As feminist theologian, Rosemary Radford Ruether (1985: 707) points out,

religions,

(T)he myth of female primacy in the origin of evil reinforces the definition of woman as subordinate and auxiliary, by claiming that

patriarchal autonomously.

woman causes evil to come into the world by speaking and acting … Victim-blaming ideologies of sin prevent a culture from rightly naming evil and function to justify evil by describing it as nature, just punishment, and divine will. The essential core of feminist

theology lies in the unmasking of this victim-blaming ideology of sin. Patriarchalism is named as evil, as a system that both produced and justifies aggressive power and domination of women and all subjugated people.

By the mid-nineteenth century, Christian women were encouraged to speak in mixed prayer meetings and congregations of American evangelical Protestantism. Women’s entry into lay leadership in Protestant churches was facilitated by the creation of exclusive women’s organisations. (As the last chapter in this book

mainstream

informs us, similar initiatives are now on, in the world of Islam.) Often, sadly enough, women’s roles in the churches have been mere extensions of their roles in the family. Obviously, even these available to middle-class white women were vast compared to those available to poorer women and women of colour. Today, men and women in black churches devote themselves to service in their communities far more than is true for white churches, where service is seen as the province of women. The massive influx of to America, in the century after 1830, resulted in the Roman Catholic Church emerging as the largest Christian in the country. Sure enough, Catholic teaching and the American model of domesticity reinforced women’s roles as good wives and mothers. More recently, Christian feminists began to call to question the boundaries and limits of theology itself. As has happened in every other branch of feminism, the lived experience of being the ‘Other’ and inferior has been articulated and constructively expressed by many women who maintain that the personal is the political. At the same time, feminist theologians have appealed to the practical, cultural-historical, religious experiences of women as positive, even liberating. In other words, there is no absolute point of view in theology. God is experienced as a friend, instead of ruling over like a sovereign. Historically, this perspective is experienced in like ijtihad and Deism.6 Liberation theology has posed an effective challenge to both secular modernity and mainstream Catholic religion, by refusing to separate politics and religion and by supporting the interests of the downtrodden. In different ways, Latin American liberation finds resonance in some Gandhian and some Dalit spiritual concerns (see Parts I and II here). Liberation theology, especially in countries like Brazil, has expanded the roles of women. However, as some scholars argue, these movements have enabled women to be more aware of their roles as citizens, rather than as gendered role

opportunities

immigrants denomination

feminist concepts

theology

6 Sara Suleri (1992 : 761) provides a scathing critique of radical feminist subjectivity. Such a position, says Suleri, is likely to slide into extreme relativism, or even self-centred solipsism. ‘Lived experience’ or ‘radical subjectivity’ could turn out to be narcissistically ahistorical, as some feminist critics have pointed out, and must not serve ‘as the evacuating principle for both historical and theoretical contexts alike’ (pp. 756–69).

players. Liberation theology has also been more successful in tackling issues related to class than to gender. ‘That is, male theologians of liberation have adopted a largely unmodified orthodox Marxist understanding of the “woman question”, while adhering fairly closely to church teachings on matters regarding the Christian family and women’s special qualities as wives and mothers’.7 Thus liberation theologians’ view of women — like Ali Shariat’s — has been quite compatible with that of any religious establishment. Part III focuses on these questions of the interface of religion and patriarchy. It is equally interesting to note here that even radical Buddhists like the late nineteenth-century Dalit writer, Iyothee Thass, found it difficult to reconcile their philosophy with ideas of women’s Thass, in consonance with the gender ideology of Jaina and Buddhist Tamil literature, believed that the dhamma or duty of a woman was to defer to her husband’s wishes (see Chapter 6 ). A major problem with feminist theology is that it is not in control of its definition or history. Because of their constant loss of memory, feminist theologians appear to be labouring like Sisyphus, unearthing the hidden contribution of women, over and over again, without a sense of having a sizeable body of work to build on. Part of the lies in the fact that the larger community of established feminists look askance at religion and theology. As more and more women enter the realm of theological studies, and continue to challenge male understanding of theology, some of these negative trends are likely to be reversed. Theological visions are being scrutinised, for the first time in history, from the woman’s viewpoint, and in a parallel move, the link between religion and patriarchy is being revealed. New resources of female theological history, imagination and experience are being collected and recorded. More excitingly, feminist theologians are seeking alternative, liberating ways of keeping the faith, that is, ways that are not tied to male imagery. Nevertheless, it must be kept in mind that as feminist theologians find newer modes of expression, their diversity in terms of race, colour, class and caste can be the basis of unity and disunity. As long as feminist theologians continue to uncover and criticise the of women in sacred traditions as ‘Other’ and evil, the denial

emancipation.

problem

identification 7 See Alvarez (1990: 387).

of women’s full humanity, and the constant confinement of women to the private realm, there is a chance of creating a network of that cuts across locations of identity politics. Most significantly, as the last chapter in this volume informs us, feminist theologians have managed to shift their discourse from rigidity to hermeneutics, from the private zone of the priesthood to a public realm, open to debate and dialogue with all members of the faith.

solidarity

What is to be Done? This is easier said than done. How do we get over our subjective prejudices regarding the cultural customs of other communities? How do we assess our objective prejudices of practices like blood sacrifice and the Islamic veil? It would help if we learn to be tolerant towards others at a fairly young age. Many scholars of secularism have emphasised the need to revamp school curricula, in order to inculcate secular and multicultural values among the younger generation. Entering the public sphere of school education for the social scientist is analogous to what it means to enter a school zone for a motorist — you have to slow down considerably. The wide range of options available to the social scientist in the academic world is drastically reduced to a narrow tunnel of possibilities for promoting the values of citizenship, participation, debate and dialogue among schoolchildren on the threshold of adulthood. In other words, we may find that the public space in the school system will require a set of substantive values that are somewhat independent of the teacher’s or resource person’s views in a larger framework of the outside world. The separation of different kinds of the public and the private is by no means easy. In actual terms, the manner in which the public sphere is promoted in schools is delineated by some analysts8 in the form of three principles:

polygamy,

political

(1) In order to promote tolerance among schoolchildren, they must be exposed to other cultures. (2) In order to be tolerant, it is important that schoolchildren are taught to possess some measure of detachment from

8 We refer here to Levinson (1997).

their own personal commitments. That is to say, they should learn to situate their commitments in a context and thus perceive them to be contingent. (3) There should be a common commitment among to a public sphere.

schoolchildren

Schools in liberal democracies are generally faced with the conflict between the demands placed on education by liberalism, namely, that the state or school authority should not interfere with the beliefs of individuals, and the demands on education by namely, the maintenance of democratic institutions, like the public sphere in schools. Democratic demands are likely to trump liberal ones, if we firmly believe that pluralism is a necessary value in schools. Indeed, if schools are to be imagined as a democratic public sphere, then the teacher’s role, too, must be conceived in a much more dynamic fashion. At the same time, we must realise that schools are not ‘out there’ — outside of us. They clearly implicate us in our prescribed roles within the family structure and in civil society. The chapters in this book attempt to promote the values of tolerance and broadmindedness and to discuss the gnarled topics of religion, secularism and the state in an open, democratic public sphere. The conventional wisdom on secularism — state neutrality, religious freedom as individual choice, equal citizenship — is in the context of a postcolonial state. In place of a strictly neutral state, we call for a principled, interventionist state (or a state which maintains ‘principled distance’ from all religions)9, on the basis of universal values like social justice and equity. In place of the of politics and religion, we concede a place to both in the context of liberation theology or of erstwhile oppressed groups. In place of religion being confined to the private realm, we endorse the public face of religion, especially among the marginalised, lower castes. In place of equal citizenship, we realise the need for special benefits to the dispossessed. Finally, we believe that the and changes in each of the principles apply to the Dalit-bahujan groups, and they strengthen, rather than weaken, the principle of secularism in a complex and pluralistic country like India.

private democracy,

challenged separation

modifications

9 This is a phrase coined by Rajeev Bhargava. For more light on the subject, see Bhargava (1998).

The point that we are making here is that as long as the

triangular relations between state, religion and the group or individual are retained in some form or the other we remain within the ambit of a modern, secular democracy. Here, we keep in mind that both modernity and secularism are concepts open to revision, depending on the historical and social context. Sometimes, depending on the situation, we may be obliged to uphold freedom of religion to the detriment of state neutrality or equality of citizenship; at other times, we may give more importance to equal citizenship, which is enhanced by according special benefits to the disadvantaged; or again, we may emphasise principled distance between state and rather than religious freedom. As long as the triangle is intact — in whatever shape or dimension — we believe that and freedom of faith are intact.

religion, secularism

Part I Gandhi and His Critics

From the early twentieth century, anti-caste radicals in the Tamil country have sought to uphold the importance of modern law, embodied in statutes, policy and legal guarantees and enacted by an impartial state, as the measure of a justice different from what is habitually practised in caste society. The state that these radicals looked up to was the colonial state, which seemed relatively free from the influence of custom and habit — on account of the procedure it had set up, which appeared to them to be based on an exercise of reason, notions of coherence and display of critical judgement. Such a state would necessarily be secular, it went without saying, and not identify its interests with that of any religious group— the Tamil self-respecters, foremost amongst anti-caste radicals, in fact demanded that the state actively work against the power of vested religious interests. However, this decorous and solemn faith in the state to transact justice was seldom sanguine. On the one hand, anti-caste radicals wished to re-populate the state, with people from communities that were as yet unrepresented in its bureaucracy; and secondly, and more importantly, to retain sustained social pressure on the state, through agitation and argument. These latter were not always addressed to the state and instead were carried out in the civic realm, which in the Indian context comprised social, sacred and cultural spaces. This double-edged approach to securing justice is interesting, because it makes clear that secularism cannot be a matter of formal separation of powers and interests, but has to be a substantive ideal rooted in alternative social and cultural practices. In other words, both state and civil society are in need of secularisation. Thus it was not enough to insist on fundamental rights, but to also propagandise in their favour, through calling into question social and other privileges and the conflicts they caused. It was also not

Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship

enough to ask for state neutrality, but for principled intervention on the side of those who dared speak against the hierarchy of faith and caste. In the lexicon of the self-respecters, the secular was not so much an antonym of the theological, but of the national, and it was this opposition which proved germane to the self-respecters’ understanding of the relationship between the secular state and non-secular society. Their definitions of the secular emerged in their critique of politics and rhetoric, nationalist practice and prevarication with respect to social change and finally in and through their critical engagement with Gandhi’s nationalist arguments and publicly articulated political and ethical choices. In this sense, they worked their way out of Gandhian nationalism, while retaining its ethical edge and into a peculiarly home-grown philosophy of secularism. The second chapter in this section is concerned with the tensions between Gandhian and Kantian ethics (as embodied in the ideas of Jurgen Habermas). It is argued that while the Habermasian ethics of communicative rationality works better than the Gandhian vision of satyagraha in the field of political practice, the same is not true in the realm of environmental concerns. Here, Habermasian rationality would require some measure of the Gandhian spirit of collective sacrifice in order to address intergenerational concerns of our planet. The third chapter studies both Gandhian non-violence and socalled terrorist violence in the context of civil disobedience against a state or states. Curiously, both call for self-sacrifice on the part of the actors, and both are limited in terms of scope, as far as action against the state is concerned, unless such action is a collective quest. A desirable option would be to enforce the left liberal demand for the right to civil disobedience, even when the disobedient are mistaken in their views.

nationalist

communicative environmental

reasonably

1 Reconstructing Social Reform as Secularism: The Example of the Tamil Self-respecters The self-respect movement in Tamil Nadu was self-consciously and resolutely secular — this much is clear from the writings of selfrespecters published over two decades and more (1926–49). Like secularists elsewhere, self-respecters insisted that the state remained gloriously free of religious influences. But this did not mean that the state was expected to remain absolutely neutral with respect to religious practices. Rather the state was expected to interfere, on a principled and contextual basis, in religious matters — on the that in order to secure dignity, equality and justice for those who are consistently denied them, the state had a right to regulate or annul custom, tradition and social and cultural habit, sanctioned and justified by religious doctrine or belief. This demand for a principled, interventionist secular state must be distinguished, though, from support for interventionism advanced by groups and parties that call upon the state to regulate minority institutions and social practices. Citing reasons of national necessity, homogeneity and the abridgement of women’s rights in, say Islamic communities, this demand has found its most bigoted expression in the Hindutva demand for a uniform civil code. The self-respecters on the other hand were not enamoured of the claims of the nation: neither the idea of national unity nor the affirmation of a singular, universal citizenship, cutting across faith, caste and class held their imagination. Rather they wished to secure in law and statute their own criticisms of the Hindu social order, and hoped that their sustained work at raising public consciousness might find fit expression in the state’s own position with regard to social inequities. In other words, for them secularism was not merely a principle of nationalist governance, but equally a guarantee of superior civic virtues. These latter, in turn, were not to be secured by state policy

argument

Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship

merely, though this played a significant role, to be sure, in assuring equality and social justice, but had to be anchored in everyday practices — of defiance, of culture and oppressive custom, on the one hand, and in acts of creation and affirmation, of new social values which upheld mutuality, self-respect and rationality. The self-respecters may be seen as inheriting and working with the legacy of Hindu social reform such as it was in the mid and late nineteenth century. They did not agree that nationalists had resolved the tricky and difficult question of reform carried out under the aegis of the colonial state — by relegating and questions of tradition, culture and faith to the realm of home and the family. Rather they argued that the incomplete nature of the reform project, particularly with respect to caste and gender rendered nationalism itself incomplete. For, as they asked in diverse ways, what was the use of a political equality that was also not concomitantly social equality? In fact, it may be said that they reworked the principles and protocols of social reform to represent both a secular critique of Indian nationalism as well as a measure of a new and radical commonweal. In what follows I describe the circumstances and contexts in which the Tamil self-respecters came to secularism. The second part of my essay offers a brief description of this secularism. I hope to demonstrate how the secularism of the self-respecters represented and was, fundamentally, an anti-nationalist critique, and that for them the nation represented a focus for civic action and justice, rather than one that guaranteed and embodied national identity.

successfully displacing

inequality,

It could be argued that the self-respecters sought to reconstruct social reform as secularism. This reconstruction did not take place within the ideational realm merely, but emerged in response to a complex historical conjuncture. The late 1920s and the early 1930s were crucial years for the self-respect movement, in this respect, and saw them articulate a fundamental critique of nationalism, even as they advanced a radical philosophy of social equality and reform. Starting with his famous satyagraha against the infamous Rowlatt Acts of 1919, Gandhi had embarked on a political journey that saw him realise a new practice of politics. Non-cooperation, which required ordinary citizens to withdraw their endorsement of colonial

Reconstructing Social Reform as Secularism

rule and authority, through the relinquishing of posts, titles and presence in government institutions was to be the new form of activity. Constructive work or an active elaboration of social change was to complement the latter. Abolition of untouchability, abjuring alcohol and practising spinning were upheld as important instances of constructive work, and Gandhi considered each of these indispensable to the nationalist project. He counterposed the of these ideals to workaday politics, to petitioning, agitating for greater representation for Indians in local governing councils and legislature. This earned him the unstinting admiration of men like E. V. Ramaswamy (Periyar), who, in spite of being in the Madras ( Tamil) wing of the national Congress, had profound misgivings about that party’s interest in social matters. The fact that during this period, Gandhi viewed untouchability abolition as a necessary condition for the attainment of national freedom endeared him to Periyar. From the mid-1920s, though, Gandhi appeared equivocal about constructive work. The political crisis that beset non-cooperation in the wake of popular violence (1922) and the tragic fate that greeted the Mahatma’s cherished notion of Hindu–Muslim unity in 1924 caused him to retreat from public life, and he announced that henceforth he would devote himself to constructive work, and called upon fellow Congressmen to assist him in his labours. Yet, he also appeared open to some of his fellow nationalists contesting elections to provincial councils. These men, known to history as the Swarajists, were enemies of reform, at least in the Madras province, and so the credibility granted to them by Gandhi’s acceptance of their programme somewhat dismayed Periyar and his band of and in 1925 Periyar wondered if the Mahatma was aware of how the Swarajists sought to dress up their political ambitions with his moral rhetoric (Geetha and Rajadurai 2008: 273). The following years, too, Gandhi’s political stance on several issues proved a cause of worry to the self-respecters. Touring the Deccan and the Madras province in the late 1920s, the Mahatma was startled no doubt by the resonant rhetoric of the non-Brahmin parties in these states and realised the salience of the caste question in these parts. His responses, interestingly enough, were defensive, and this was when he produced his tortuous yet affirmative definitions of varnadharma, even as he denounced the essential cruelty and of untouchability. In 1927, when Gandhi was in the Tamil region of Madras a group of young self-respecters met him and raised important

political

practice

followers,

sinfulness province,

questions to do with caste, injustice and untouchability. Not entirely satisfied with his responses, and angry with his continuing praise for varnadharma, they decided that they could not, any more, endorse his ideas. It seemed to them, as an editorial in their Tamil weekly Kudi Arasu pointed out, that the Mahatma appeared to interpret his own views on untouchability in such a manner that it was as if he wished this cruel practice to continue: ‘if the body of varnashramadharma did not exist, untouchability which constitutes the very life of this body would not be alive today’ (ibid: 286–87). The self-respecters’ anguish over Gandhian politics attained a further edge in the following year. The year 1928 saw Gandhi return decisively to the political centre, and at the Calcutta session of the Congress held that year, he showed himself to be firmly in command. The mid and late 1920s had been difficult years for the subcontinent — marked as they were by workers’ unrest in Bombay and Calcutta in key industries, the great railway strike, and rural discontent in the Andhra region of the Madras Presidency and the United Provinces. These years also saw the determined assertion of a radical anti-untouchability politics in the Bombay province under the leadership of Dr B. R. Ambedkar, which directly challenged the Gandhian approach to reform, and threatened to steal nationalism’s moral aura from it. Besides, Congress nationalists had to contend with youthful militancy in Bengal and Punjab. The Young Bengal group and Bhagat Singh’s Hindustan Republican Army (HRA) offered political alternatives that diminished the appeal — at least to the young — of habitual nationalist rhetoric that now appeared wan and discordant. There were rumblings in the Congress’ own ranks, expressed best in Jawaharlal Nehru’s call for going beyond a politics of seeking autonomy, home rule or dominion status: in the Madras of the Indian National Congress, he insisted that nationalists demand ‘Purna Swaraj’. There was discontent of another sort as well, articulated by decidedly ‘Hindu’ Congressmen who were none too happy with attempts to engage the Muslim League’s fears and in the drawing up of a constitutional scheme for Indian These two tendencies had to reckon with a third: the desire expressed by a section of Congressmen to break with Gandhian non-cooperation and enter the legislature. High idealism, a barelyconcealed Hindu nationalism, and an articulated desire for office: to address these disparate interests, Congress had to

articulated

conference

concerns governance.

political

design a solution that was both ethically credible as well as politically astute. Gandhi turned out to be the man of the hour. He succeeded in both recognising and restraining the younger Nehru’s political ardour; he endorsed the Motilal Nehru Committee’s proposals for constitutional reform, even though they did not offer nearly enough to the Muslim League; and outlined the conditions in which Congress nationalists could remain opposed to colonial authority, even while being part of the legislature. The Calcutta Congress session of 1928 was the battleground on which this Gandhian consensus was forged: a lofty nationalism was proclaimed, which conceded nothing to the political radicalism of either Young Bengal that was on the fringe, or the HRA; and which chose to ignore the anti-caste protests in the Madras and Bombay presidencies. Hindu–Muslim unity was loudly and endlessly affirmed, even though Jinnah would denounce Congress’ political reform proposals immediately and, importantly, Congressmen were offered an way of being legislators and opponents of government at the same time. Unsurprisingly, the self-respecters registered their increasing impatience with Gandhi in the months following the Calcutta Congress. Their anger was all the greater since Gandhi’s name was being used by Madras Congressmen to validate their own in social matters. Further, the self-respecters saw all too clearly that Gandhian constructive work had been given a formal burial at Calcutta and existed now merely as rhetoric that fooled no one. Nationalism without constructive work seemed a dangerous ideology to them. It meant, effectively, the retreat of the social in the face of the political. In the early 1920s, Periyar had criticised Tilak’s famous ‘Swaraj is my birthright’ slogan. He had noted then that self-respect was a greater virtue, since a person without self-respect would not even be sensitive to the idea of ‘swaraj’. He had argued too that the battle for swaraj would have to take into account the conditions that made for an absence of self-respect and work against them — if this was not to be the case, then swaraj could not be realised in its fullest sense (Geetha and Rajadurai 2008: 284–85). Periyar clearly desired to work against these conditions, which, for him, meant working against the logic of varnadharma, and the belief systems that sustained this logic. In practice, this meant fighting as much

nationalist

thereafter; honourable

conservatism

if not more for social, as for political, change and endorsing the importance of social reform.

Arguing for the equal if not the overwhelming importance of social reform was an old and persistent theme in the Tamil context. Pandit Iyothee Thass, the great Dalit-Buddhist writer, had argued as much. In a series of articles that he wrote under the head, ‘Swadeshi Reform’(1907), he had noted that there were two entities, the world of the people, comprising social and economic relationships, and the world of the nation, which comprised political relations. National reform could not be carried out successfully unless the world of the people was sufficiently and justly transformed (Geetha and Rajadurai 2008: 60–66). The social question seemed particularly urgent in the late 1920s, given the debates that emerged around reform during this conjuncture, not only in the Tamil context, but elsewhere as well. The devadasi abolition debates, occasioned by Dr Muthulakshmi’s bill that sought to end the practice of dedicating young girls to temples, got under way in 1928. During the same period, H. S. Gour’s and Har Bilas Sarda’s legislative efforts to raise the age of marriage incited orthodox opposition and fury in Madras (such fury was not exhibited in other parts of the country). These years also witnessed an eruption of nationalist indignation over the publication of Katherine Mayo’s infamous Mother India (the book was published in 1927) and defence of Hindu culture in the following years. Tamil publicists and ideologues were at this time involved in intense and contested debates and campaigns over the rights of the so-called untouchables to enter temples. The self-respecters’ radicalism with regard to reform was in direct — and combative — contrast to the nationalist responses to these matters, both in the Tamil country and nation-wide. With regard to the devadasi abolition measure, the debate proved extremely interesting and vigorous. The devadasi abolition bill brought to fruition a very long and convoluted debate on the status and rights of devadasis. Convinced that this system of ‘sacred’ prostitution was imposed on women from the non-Brahmin castes, self-respecters viewed the bill as equally against caste-sanctioned sexual servitude. In their lexicon, the word dasi not only signified enslavement but also dishonour — the devadasis were living

reminders of an original dishonour imposed by Brahmins on Sudras, for were not the latter considered ‘sons of fallen women’? And were not these fallen women brought to dishonour by a caste-imposed system of sexual slavery? Self-respecters were also angered by the sanction given thus to both sexual as well as caste voyeurism, for it was the upper-caste patron whose gaze the devadasi had to meet and whose desire she had to fulfill. While she may possess a certain agency in that she could ‘lure’ men, this practice also diminished her as a person. This, for instance, was the burden of the argument put forth by Ramamrithathammal, born into a devadasi family, and who took to campaigning against the system, and became part of the self-respect movement. Her novel Dasigalin Mosavalai (The Dasis’ Web of Deceit) is an attempt at reading the devadasi’s role and agency (ibid.: 377–79). Some Congressmen in the Madras province, particularly S. Satyamurthi, extolled the devadasi system as one steeped in hoary tradition and culture. Brahmin public opinion, for the most part, favoured this point of view and further was uncomfortable with the manner in which the self-respecters framed the problem in terms of caste inequality. Self-respecters, in turn, read in this defence of the devadasi system an atavism that they argued constituted the very core of nationalism (ibid.). Mystifying and powerful, atavism provided a powerful charge to nationalist claims about heritage, custom and culture, and actively dissuaded a reflective examination of the social world. Importantly, atavism translated into national feeling, into an ineffable sense of pride and indignation, which was unwilling to countenance of the past or the nation-to-be, which in many ways, was to be a return of the previous, in as much as it was a venturing forth into the possible. Consequently, nationalists’ understanding of change and reform was necessarily and uneasily ambiguous. Unsurprisingly, the self-respecters were sceptical and even scornful of the nationalist reform project as such. The Sarda Bill and the debates that emerged around it, especially in Madras, fed their scepticism. Har Bilas Sarda’s Bill earned the support of most nationalists across the country. In Madras, too, as was evident in the hearings that were held on the subject of the Bill, public opinion was in favour of raising the age of marriage to eighteen years for girls (most other parts of the country has settled on sixteen years). On the other hand, there existed a small yet highly articulate group of

criticisms

orthodox Brahmins who did not want such a Bill passed. Annoyingly for the self-respecters, there was little in nationalist rhetoric or at least in Madras, to morally disarm the orthodox. In fact, the Tamil Nadu Congress had sought to appease the orthodox by claiming it was committed to ‘religious neutrality’ and so did not wish to support state-initiated reform. Individual Congressmen from Tamil Nadu had even made bold claims that the Sarda Bill was not a party question! Further, in the actual voting on the Sarda Bill, five members from Madras had voted against the Bill.1 What irked the self-respecters most in this instance was the studied cynicism of those who opposed the Sarda Bill. Many who did so, including S. Satyamurthi, admitted that to marry children off while very young caused irreparable harm to them as well as to society. Yet they could not and would not countenance, they insisted, a reform measure which interfered with the content of the shastras, especially if the reforming agency was an alien government. Periyar pointed out that this seeking refuge in scripture and faith was dangerous. Since the men who did so were ‘acclaimed’ nationalists and ‘reformers’, their opposition to reform fed into notions of the so-called ‘national good’. Consequently, this latter stood in danger of being measured by what was allowed or disallowed by faith and custom. This, on the one hand; on the other hand, the idea of the nation itself came to be spiritualised. To argue for or against a reform measure from the point of view of the nation and what it deserved acquired a legitimacy which may or may not have anything to do with the particular measure of idea (Anaimuthu 2010: 203).2 For their part, self-respecters supported the measure that sought to raise the age of marriage and understood Gour’s Bill, that sought to raise the age of consent to sexual relations, to be of paramount importance. A brilliantly written piece on the two Bills, in their English weekly Revolt!, observed that it was important to what the writer referred to as ‘fleeting passion’ from ‘stratified instinct’. Arguing that marriage, especially when contracted young, condemned the wife to eternal sexual servitude, whereas ‘fitful, desultory’ acts of passion (with which they understood Gour’s Bill to be concerned) are necessarily fragmentary in their duration and consequence, the author went on to note:

practice,

distinguish

1 Revolt!, 24 November 1929. 2 Volume 1, Part 3.

The Devadasi can say nay to unwelcome solicitations. The wife cannot.

… The law of consent ought to be made to apply equally within

marriage superstition companion

as well as outside it. If we rid our minds of the current that postulates property in women, we would clearly perceive that the husband pledged to protect and safeguard the interests of his in life, stands in a fiduciary relation towards his wife and a violation by him of her rights deserves to be more seriously dealt with

in law than an offence by a mere stranger. 3 Nationalist prevarication with respect to untouchability angered the self-respecters even more. They were insistently critical of Gandhi’s disingenuous sophistry on the matter of caste and varnadharma and downright scornful of nationalist commitment to the abolition of untouchability. While declaring its intent to achieve total (purna swaraj), the Congress had noted that it would consider untouchability abolished from that day onward. To the self-respecters, this seemed an untenable ‘truism’, whose validity could not ever be tested or doubted, except through actual acts that realised this noble intent. With Congressmen unwilling to commit themselves to deeds or acts, eager though they were to utter lofty words, self-respecters were unwilling to endorse their declared intent. Further, in specific instances, Congressmen had shown to be readily equivocal. Jamnalal Bajaj, who was Secretary of the Anti-Untouchability Sub-Committee of the Indian National Congress, was unwilling to lend his complete ear and support to the ‘untouchable’ satyagrahis who had sought to enter the Parvati temple in Poona, and instead considered their action rash and He had pleaded that ‘existing conditions’ required a more gradualist approach.4 The self-respecters were suspicious of this seemingly rational approach to reform and change and argued that to invoke ‘existing conditions’, without ‘exemplifying’ or ‘elaborating’ what these were, was a mere political ruse. A Revolt! essay noted that Bajaj and other Congress Hindus had resorted to such a ruse, to shore up the political claims of Hindus versus Muslims. In other words, Hindu–Muslim political tension, as it obtained in the north and west of India, had prompted Hindu Congressmen to call for ‘Hindu

independence

themselves

aggressive.

conditions

3 Revolt!, 26 December 1928.

4 Revolt!, 27 October 1929.

unity’ and to argue that those who insisted on a radical solution to the question of untouchability might well jeopardise that unity. The self-respecters explained the folly and cruelty of this stance: “We cannot afford to land the Hindu community”, proceeds Mr. Bajaj, “into internecine warfare at this stage of our nation’s affair even on the most burning of the domestic problems”. Our Nero wants to be playing on the fiddle while Rome is burning. He expects the “untouchables” to put up even with the civic disabilities without having free access to

the public wells, tanks and roads. This is as harsh as it is heartless... Mr. Bajaj cannot be justified in asking one-fifth of the nation to keep cool and calm when their very existence as human being is at stake. Is he not aware of the painful but inevitable fact that hundreds of “untouchables” are leaving Hinduism every day in South India? Will he calmly receive from us the news that most of them prefer Islam to Christianity for

annihilation ad infinitum of the social injustice?5 Confronted with nationalist opinion that appeared from resonant and uncritical cultural pride on the one hand, and politic and dissembling with respect to social reform, on the other, self-respecters argued that nationalism was but a ideology to sustain hideous custom, Brahmin authority and varnadharma — and to defer radical and necessary solutions to social customs. Gandhi had noted that ‘When Swaraj is attained it will be the reformers who must have the reins of Government in their hands’.6 But the self-respecters were not so sure:

indistinguishable

convenient

Dear Gandhiji, would you kindly tell us which of the reformers would reign? Is it those of the type of Pandit Malaviya who talk of reform and yet want to retain caste? Is it the type of the Congress reformers who

proclaim reform and say they would starve for a week if they see a Brahmin

and a Non-Brahmin dining together? Is it the type of the “Swarajist reformers” who roar at the Legislatures that the gods require devadasis and that is a sin to contract post-puberty marriages? Or is the type of your own good self who wants reform and yet advocates Varnashrama? 7

The crux of the self-respecters’ critique of nationalism was most evident in their response to the publication of Katherine Mayo’s 5 Revolt!, 27 October 1929. 6 Revolt!, 11 August 1929. 7 Ibid.

Mother India, which incited great nationalist anger and enabled nationalist ideologues to don a credible moral and political aura. Characteristically, the self-respecters adopted a contrary position. They argued that the book could well be utilised to re-examine regressive custom, especially with respect to women and the lower castes. At least one ideologue wrote wistfully that self-respecters would be happy and gratified if a Miss Mayo emerged in the Madras province!8 Nationalism sans social reform appeared a compromised ideology from another point of view as well; its transcendent claims could not win over or successfully transform the material and caste interests of those who most loudly professed it. Periyar wrote this of Tamil Brahmin Congressmen: On the Congress platform they would declare that the “Satanic” British Government should be swept off at once. People would also applaud them. But their sons, brothers and relations would be earning Rs 500, 1000, 2000 & 3000 a month as Munsiffs and Judges under the same Government. Their heroic declarations would but serve to strengthen the positions of their relations in the various professions and yet they

will be masquerading in the name of the country. 9 Brahmin self-interest was a problem, not only because it bred injustice, but also because it established the Brahmin community in a privileged relationship to the state. This was why the self-respecters were critical of and argued the essential venality of an anticipated nationalist rule — they saw it as coercive ‘Hindu’ rule, presided over by Brahmins and pointed to the example of the Travancore that was almost entirely under Brahmin control. The selfrespecters’ critique of Travancore’s largely Brahmin-controlled administration read like a cautionary tale of that community’s hunger for power and its resolute opposition to claims of social equality. Revolt! carried a series of articles on this subject and the burden of the many arguments advanced in these is best summed up in this description of the Brahmins’ role:

administration

The whole administration has been sold, as it were to a class of people, who are solely responsible for the existing illiteracy of the 97 percent 8 Revolt!, 17 November 1929. 9 Revolt!, 27 March 1929.

of the population in India. …Then, as regards the social aspect of the

administration, it is most ‘abominable, unutterable and worse’. In no parts of the country, we may boldly assert, are such cruelties perpetrated in the name of god and religion as in Malabar, especially in Travancore. The Travancore Government in collaboration with the Brahmin Dewan, not to mention their Brahmin satellites, has banned a journal for no other fault except its advocacy of the breaking of caste. … Is it to get this kind

of Swaraj that crores of rupees are being spent every year? Lastly we ask, is this the kind of Raj that Mr. Gandhi has in view? 10

The overwhelming presence of Brahmins in the administration of both British India and the princely states, the social authority that Brahmins sought to aggressively affirm in the face of important and sustained challenges to that authority, and the tendency of Brahmin intellectuals — nationalist and otherwise — to dress up their concerns through a recourse to nationalist rhetoric and pride, these factors were crucial to the self-respecters’ critique of that it was at best a partisan ideology and at worst mere selfserving rhetoric. Political and social conditions that obtained in the Madras province proved that their understanding was neither occasioned by caste hatred, as their detractors argued, or by a sense of beleagurement. In the wake of the reform debate, as we shall see, the habitual conservatism of Madras Brahmins, both nationalist and otherwise, acquired a distinctive political edge. In June 1928, and later in 1929, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and Sardar Vallabhai Patel toured the Madras province, and this appeared hugely significant to the self-respecters. Both men were close to Gandhi in different ways. Patel was clearly a protégé, and the self-respecters viewed him much in the same critical and ironic light as they did Gandhi. With Malaviya, there were other things to be concerned about: Arguing that untouchability was a caste Hindu problem for which the latter had to suffer and repent, Gandhi often pointed to the example of men like Malaviya who condemned untouchability, even while remaining orthodox and firm in their adherence to varnadharma. Gandhi’s reasoning was: it is not religious scruple that is responsible for the persistence of untouchability, but ignor-

hegemonic nationalism,

10 Revolt!, 14 July 1929.

ance and blind faith in what was believed to be time-worn custom. Gandhi also noted that, in this sense, untouchability was an and not integral to varnadharma, which is why Malaviya, who upheld the latter, would yet oppose the former. To prove the worth of his arguments, Gandhi was wont to pay obeisance to Malaviya’s conservative and even regressive views, and note with wonder that if his satyagraha could move this man, then its practice was indeed efficacious (Gandhi 2000: 144). Gandhi was also openly admiring of Malaviya’s piety and exhibited an exaggerated reverence towards him, which no doubt annoyed those who were impatient with Malaviya’s unbending orthodoxy. Not merely what these men stood for, but what they said during their southern tour confirmed the self-respecters’ worst suspicions regarding nationalism. Earlier I had noted that Gandhi had his unease with the caste question as it was being addressed in the south and the Deccan. Both Malaviya and Patel were provoked to address southern criticisms of caste and varnadharma, but, unlike Gandhi, they did so, by taking on the self-respecters! Malaviya flatly refused to countenance the latter’s critique of caste: ‘The caste system existed and would exist in spite of the frantic efforts which are sometimes made to demolish it’. He was ‘surprised to find in this province a movement which not only wants to demolish caste, but also to demolish God Himself’. He went on to note that ‘this new evil creeping into their midst should be nipped in the bud. It is a very difficult task to right a wrong which has existed for a long time’.11 The self-respecters’ response was derisive. They pointed out that their movement was a world movement, in reality:

excrescence

displayed

Dear Panditji, it is not a bud; it is a tree whose roots have penetrated to an immeasurable depth, and whose branches have extended to far-off Turkey, Russia, Afghanistan, China, Burma and South Africa. Its

fragrance is being enjoyed by the youths of the world. And its principles are being inhaled by every free-thinker, truth-seeker and reasoned. 12

The self-respecters also pointed out that the movement against caste was strong and would brook no delays or arguments. Exhibiting millenarian fury, a self-respecter wrote: 11 Revolt!, 8 May 1929. 12 Ibid.

The huge masses of India who were tyrannized for centuries in the name

of the caste system have now begun to open their eyes in the light of the British Raj’s education and see for themselves things happening around them. They are slowly waking up from their age-long slumber caused by the mesmerism of Hindu religion, and are realizing their deplorable condition in society. They have begun to think about their liberties and rights in the country and are becoming conscious of their great might and

wonderful possibilities which lie hidden in them. These are all healthy symptoms to show that there is life in them. On the day when they wake up to their full consciousness, caste system and every other rotten system and custom are bound to perish. Besides this, those communities which vigorously plead for the upkeep of the caste system will be nowhere in the near future. It has been proved beyond doubt that the caste system is

a satanic institution founded upon a number of slokas just to allow the Brahmin to exploit mercilessly the dumb millions of the country. 13 Sardar Patel made light of the self-respecters’ public accusations against nationalist and Brahmin arrogance in Madras. He hailed Tamil Brahmin nationalists as ‘spotless’ and wondered why nonBrahmins, who were a majority in the state, feared a small group of Brahmins. He also wondered if the self-respecters were not merely vying with the Brahmins for their share of the ‘fishes and loaves of office’.14 This of course incensed the self-respecters: Mr. Patel says with an air of cocksureness, so characteristic of a swollenheaded monomaniac, that the authors of the self-respect movement in this province have no other object but to snatch at power and office in the gift of the bureaucracy. A man who talks in this vein can hardly be taken

seriously, for even an ordinary school boy knows that loaves and fishes of office are the last thing aimed at by the earnest souls who, in the name of the self-respect movement, are carrying on a relentless crusade against those manifold social and religious evils which are sapping the vitality of the race and retarding the progress of the country. 15

The self-respecters were particularly aggrieved that apart from railing against them, the nationalists were indifferent to the caste question. An editorial in Kudi Arasu noted that this latter was at least as important a problem as ‘the Hindu–Muslim question in 13 Revolt!, 29 May 1929. 14 Revolt!, 15 September 1929. 15 Ibid.

the north’.16 In fact, this appears to have irked the self-respecters that, willy-nilly and in bad faith, the Congress was willing to address the Hindu–Muslim conundrum but not the injustices of the caste order (as we had noted earlier with respect to Bajaj’s statement on temple entry). Rather than respond to their questions about caste and inequality, the nationalists, taking their cue from Patel and Malaviya, raised an alarmist cry: Religion was in danger and was this to be countenanced. The self-respecters responded rather ironically to this charge: ‘‘Religion in danger” is the slogan of neo-nationalism. The infidels must be impaled, the self-respecters and the Justicites. The Pandits with their passion of Gnanasambanda, fresh with the blood stains of the Jains, are up in arms against the infidels.’ Recalling the early medieval denunciations of Jain and Buddhist monks in the Tamil country, the self-respecters argued that, as in the past, so in the present social critique was met with atavistic pride and religious zeal. 17

Denunciations of ‘neo-nationalism’ by self-respecters gathered fire in the years that followed. The self-respecters continued to rail against Gandhi and his particular mix of piety, reform and but reserved their harshest condemnation for nationalism as ideology and for the Congress as an organisation. This, on the one hand; on the other hand, they offered a counter to nationalism, the details of which we examine ahead. For now, we will take note of one important consequence of the self-respecters placing the social rather than the political question in the forefront, and using that as a measure to define and demand equality and justice. This had to do with their understanding of secularism as state policy or doctrine. The Congress session at Karachi in 1931 saw the tabling of resolutions to do with fundamental rights. The self-respecters the debates at Karachi keenly, and Periyar noted that their campaign against caste and social injustice had finally been heeded and that Congress had to reckon with the force of those arguments which his movement had voiced consistently for at least half a

politics,

followed

16 Quoted in Revolt!, 29 September 1929. 17 Revolt!, 24 April 1929.

decade and more. Yet, Periyar was uneasy with that section of the Fundamental Rights which held that in a free nation, the state would not discriminate against religions or seek a national religion. Gandhi had himself backed the resolution, and made a strong and passionate plea for the nation-state to remain religiously neutral. Clearly meant to allay Muslim fears about a possible Hindu Raj, this neutrality clause nevertheless worried Periyar. He argued that a regressive nationalist could seek shelter behind it and proclaim his own studied resistance to social change and progress, especially with regard to caste inequality and the women’s question. In other words, Periyar read the ‘right to religious freedom’ and the proclaimed neutrality of the state as deeply problematic since they provided for, in fact enabled the persistence of, regressive custom and habit. All the noble rhetoric about political freedom and equality, including the clause on the abolition of untouchability, seemed to Periyar insufficient guarantees of a just social order. Only a principled, interventionist state that fearlessly regulated custom and tradition, sanctified by faith and god, and an open and civil society working in tandem, could guarantee social justice. But for this to happen, the relationship between national and religious identities and histories ought to be interrogated, and this was not something nationalists were willing to do (Anaimuthu 2010: 2781–82).18 Interestingly, this tension between the nation and an open civil society emerged as central to the self-respecters’ latter-day demand for a separate nation, Dravida Nadu. In their lexicon, Dravida Nadu was less a cultural, affective nationalist space and more an anticipation of an anti-caste utopia — a place where social relationships would be equal, mutual and fraternal, and wealth would be held in common. However, between their sustained critique of Indian nationhood and their desire for utopia, the self-respecters had to reckon with the cultural attractions of nationalism, with the fact that Dravida Nadu would not remain merely a civic space, but would at times morph into an ethnic and national entity. While Periyar remained sceptical of culturalist expressions of the nation, his rage against varnadharma and his disaffection with the Indian nation-state sometimes saw him align with those who were given to atavistic of Tamil pride and antiquity. On the other hand, all those

contentious

celebrations 18 Volume 3, Part 4.

campaigns he initiated and carried out in defiance of the idea and reality of India — be it the burning of the national flag or the Constitution — were informed by a rebel’s ardour rather than a nationalist’s rhetoric. In the event, he succeeded in defining a space all on his own, and one in which he would imagine, reimagine and seek to ‘produce’ utopia.

political

What was the content of the secularism urged forth by the selfrespecters? How did they re-define social reform to represent their sense of the secular? While the self-respecters privileged social reform over political reform, they were not entirely sanguine about what was generally understood by the term ‘reform’. In a passionate, brilliant address delivered at the South Indian Reformers’ Conference in 1928, Periyar observed that social reform, as it existed, was aseptic and inadequate. He particularly objected to social reform that sought legitimacy in and through an interpretation of scripture. He argued that the reformer who wanted to preserve vital aspects of the past, even as he sought change, on the argument that old symbolisms cannot be easily retracted, was bound to fail. Ramanuja, with a view to reforming society and at the same time

preserving the old symbols, caught hold of many of those who were called “Pariahs” and put the “namam” on their foreheads and invested them with the sacred thread so as to bring about equality in society. The old symbols were no doubt preserved, but did the people get equality? Were the followers imbued with the feelings of fraternity? 19

The thing was to abjure faith altogether — to give up on religion and see it for the dissembling phenomenon that it was. The reformer, in other words, had to be a rebel and not demur at standing things on their head.20 Echoing Periyar, Revolt! issued a rebel’s manifesto which the self-respecters’ intent:

proclaimed 19 Revolt! 5, 12 December 1928. 20 Ibid.

It revolts against the baseless assertion of superiority by birth or sex, by

caste, creed or colour. It revolts against the inferiority complex of the Non-Brahmin as much against the assumption of superiority of the Brahmin. …. It revolts against the bended knee and the upraised hand. ... It revolts against the supercession of Man by God as well as by Machine. … It revolts against the exaltation of the duty to God above that to man. …It revolts against economic slavery and enthronement

of Mammon. … It revolts against poor physique and worship of physical Force. It revolts against the toleration of man’s unchastity and intoleration of woman’s. It revolts against early marriage, enforced widowhood and seclusion of woman behind the purdha. 21

Miss Gnanam, a frequent contributor to Revolt!, proclaimed the self-respect creed to be thoroughly secular: The Self-respect movement aims at complete equality between man and man as well as man and woman. Religion as a power to meddle with

and shape society is completely ignored. The Self-respect movement is nothing if it does not stand for complete secularization of life. 22

Set as it was against received wisdom, custom, habit and the word of god, secularisation required, in fact, demanded, an exercise of reason with respect to these matters. The self-respecters were unsparing and startlingly original in their rational-critical responses to what they desired to pick apart: the caste order, familial and life and obscurantist custom, sanctified by faith. S. Sivaraj, a prominent Dalit intellectual and self-respecter, argued that the caste order demeaned labour, and on that basis separated humankind into ‘high’ and ‘low’:

critical

conjugal

No man ought to be condemned as low by reason of the work he is engaged in. In our country, it is very essential that people ought to this ideal. Work of any kind should not be despised. Work is not a curse; it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood

understand

and the measure of civilization. Savages do not work. The growth of a sentiment that despises work is an appeal from civilization to barbarism. It is because people have not felt what is dignity of labour, that in this country work is regulated by caste, the higher caste taking to better kinds of work, the lower being doomed to the meaner ones. Why should it be?

21 Revolt!, 13 February 1929. 22 Revolt!, 17 April 1929.

Every man should be given the freedom of choice of profession.

Capacity, not caste, should decide what work a man is fit for. 23

S. Guruswami, editor of Revolt!, argued much as Dr Ambedkar did that ‘Caste is a graded system of merits deriving sanction from a false doctrine of heredity’.24 For the self-respecters it was not enough to point to the in which a crafty priesthood kept alive caste inequities. In other words, the exercise of reason was not to be undertaken merely for debunking the sacrosanct; rather it was to be leavened by a practice of a new ethics. And so it was that Sivaraj and Guruswami defined new ethical measures to comprehend varnadharma: as a system that produced and legitimised birth-based graded inequality even as it simultaneously imposed and demeaned birth-based labour. to their understanding, each of them urged forth the merits of freed labour and radical equality respectively. Perhaps nowhere did secularisation produce this new ethics as as it did with regard to the women’s question. Unlike constructions of the nation as a series of harmoniously-linked, reformed families, presided over by benign mothers, who were to take their place in the nation as begetters and shapers of future citizens, self-respecters viewed marriage and family as deeply flawed institutions that needed to be challenged and re-made. While they did not entirely disagree with the role assigned to mothers in the nation, they did not render motherhood the only worthwhile and legitimate vocation for women. Several women self-respecters urged women to not socialise their children or themselves into domestic and maternal drudgery. Even as they insisted on companionate conjugality, which women too did, some amongst the self-respecters argued that marriage, as such, may not be an equal union. A remarkable between a husband and wife on the latter’s role and rights in Revolt! featured an embattled conjugality. Kamala, the wife, notes that marriage is ‘gilded slavery’ and that in the present circumstances of society, a man and woman can never hope to love each other in earnest or be happy. She notes, too, that girls are reared to be romantic and to cultivate beauty; but when the hollowness of

manner

Consequent

singularly nationalist content

nationalist dialogue

sentimental, 23 Revolt!, 15 September 1929.

24 Revolt!, 13 February 1929.

this life becomes apparent, as it did, she argues, when the Suffragists revolted, it becomes impossible for any woman to continue in her marriage. It is also the case, Kamala observes, that men seek to women, as they would possess beautiful things, but this is not affection or respect. In such circumstances, even if there is no reason for it, a woman wants out:

possess apparent

To expect love of a slave girl for her master is utter idiocy. That is the bane of our race as well. We may play our parts as wives too well, win the applause of men, be praised for the so-called virtue of chastity, be even worshipped for our feminine qualities of head and heart. The seed of slavery all the while lies hidden in the tell-tale bosom of a wife. It is no wonder if we hate the husbands, and hide it behind the kiss of

our rosy lips…. Now, the woman in me stands up in revolt against the shams of religion, tradition, morality and culture that enslaves women. My voice is the voice of a woman, the voice of my race. I shall declare from house tops that a free woman can never more be the wife of a man. The future woman shall be a potent woman, the guiding star of her own destinies.25

Inspiring and persuasive self-respect reasoning on the subject of reform was yet conscious of its limits. To remake oneself was one thing, but to urge others to do so was not an easy social battle. Periyar in fact argued that social reconstruction, which is what the selfrespecters sought, might well claim them as martyrs. He insisted therefore that social change, however well argued and explained, yet required the support of an interventionist and courageous state: a brave new state, absolute in its power and determined to effect change and which possessed the will to punish what was from the reformers’ point of view and to enforce the claims of the new; a state that would not demur from imprisoning the religious leaders, and who would earnestly educate the poor and ignorant (Anaimuthu 2010: 2075).26 Periyar’s and the self-respecters’ desire for such a forbiddingly utopian state was fired by their sense of what the modern Turkish state under Ataturk and Afghanistan under Amanullah and the socialist Soviet Union had ostensibly achieved. In other words, the reforming state was an ideal, and one that existed as an ethical and

objectionable priesthood,

25 Revolt!, 24 April 1929.

26 Volume 3, Part 3.

political guarantee of their radical reform project. On the other hand, for all their endorsement of a strong state, the sceptical selfrespecters were not willing to grant state power that inviolability they claimed for it in the first place! Referring to Afghanistan, a Revolt! editorial noted: There is no avoiding the tedious and unexacting task of getting into living contact with the apathetic masses of the poor and the ignorant. Afghanistan has attained absolute political freedom, but she cannot get rid of the “mad mullah”. We find on the other hand, a ‘Council of Notables’ formed which is dominated by Ulemas whose madness has gained a new lease of life.27

Writing of Ataturk’s experiments with reform, imposed as fiat from above, in Turkey, Revolt! observed: Such successful emulation of the action of the free people of the world makes us envy the good fortune of the peoples across our borders. But a closer scrutiny of the features of this process of Europeanisation reveals an element of unthinking and servile imitation of the manners and of the European people that makes us fairly sceptical of the future of this movement.28

customs

Clearly, the actions of states made sense and could prove effective only when social opinion was enlightened enough to enable these actions and helped to sustain them. States, in other words, had to work on the basis of a compact with public and social protest. Significantly, the self-respecters’ millenarian fury and their anticipation of utopia did not turn away from and in fact worked their effects within the restrictive horizons of the historical present. For instance, Gandhi’s ‘Harijan’ turn appeared ominous to the selfrespecters. They endorsed Ambedkar’s stance on the Poona Pact, supported Dalit rights to temple entry, while pointing to Congress and nationalist prevarication with regard to the latter, and as it were, urged Dalits to turn to Islam for political and social succour. This counsel was not merely provocative. Periyar, who was most articulate on this theme, believed that if Dalits converted to Islam, their choice would produce socially meaningful consequences.

fervent

dramatically,

27 Revolt!, 16 January 1929. 28 Revolt!, 19 December 1928.

For one, it would make for a fraternity, both social and political. Secondly, a revivified, fraternal and expansive Islam would hold caste Hindu society in check. Tamil Muslim social and political groups responded positively to Periyar through the 1930s, and in spite of his proclaimed atheism, invited him to speak in their forums. Many Muslim writers and publicists refuted varnadharma and defined their faith in social terms, and in and through a refutation of caste (Fakhri 2008: 47–55). With regard to atheism too, the self-respecters were inventive. Many amongst them argued its case forcefully, but this not stop them from being in dialogue with dissident believers. Arguing with Tamil Saivites, who were drawn to the self-respect credo, yet would not entirely desert their faith, self-respecters insisted that Saivismwith its characteristic Tamil history and lore — was originally an egalitarian faith and had to be disengaged from subsequent imposed by varnadharma and the Brahmin’s authority.29 The Buddha and Buddhism were also clear self-respect favourites, and often upheld as worthwhile counters to Brahminical Hinduism. In a set dramatic piece titled Conference of Gods (by Miss Gnanam) we have the Gods, including Shiva, Christ and the Prophet Mohammed debating the problems posed by an emergent atheism. The Buddha finds the debate futile and argues:

excrescences

I confess I am your enemy, I preached agnosticism to the people just because I realized that it would be a waste to spend the precious life of man in quest of such a big army of gods. I know as a matter of fact, that there cannot be any union among you. I convinced humanity of the futility

of discussing about your existence and of the more important things they have to do in the world. My mission, though discouraged by the Brahmin element, is now bearing its fruits in the far-off Russia, America, Turkey and England.30

The Buddha’s observations anger the gods, who start blaming each other for the spread of atheism, and, meanwhile, ‘Mr. Buddha with a glowing smile descends to the ground to mix with humanity’.31 With matters of social reform too self-respecters were acutely of what may be done in the here and now. For all the anger

conscious 29 Revolt!, 1, 8, 15 May 1929. 30 Revolt!, 21 July 1929. 31 Ibid.

that Periyar and Guruswami expressed with respect to cautious reform, they were not unwelcoming of whatever changes were wrought or urged forth by those who believed in challenging custom and faith. Thus, Revolt! faithfully reported not only on Maharashtra’s radical Dalits, but also on the Arya Samaj’s anti-caste campaigns in northern India and endorsed the Hindu Mahasabha’s resolutions on desired changes in Hindu Law. It was as if the self-respecters wished to construct a reformist bloc in the widest possible sense. And, as is clear from their insistence that a reforming state ought to carry out its work in terms of a compact it establishes with protest movements, they also sought to re-orient rule and governance. Their support for reservation was essentially on this basis, that if the state was populated by men and women from different castes and it would be a more representative state. This was at one level; at another level, to make their own distinctive point of view felt, to translate it into policy, they affirmed the importance of selfrespecters securing an administration that would heed their Taking its cue from what Freethinkers in England had to say on this matter, Revolt! noted:

communities,

concerns.

“A general election is at hand”, says The Freethinker of London, “and this affords to all lovers of freedom of thought an opportunity to use their personal influence in the fight to secure that public administration shall be based upon justice to all citizens, independent of religious or

other opinions.” This should be the motto of the self-respecters also, as regards the coming elections in our country. In as much as the elections are drawing near, the self-respecters of our country have a similar duty to perform, as the Freethinkers of the West. 32

The self-respecters were quite clear as to what they wished to do. Like Freethinkers in England, they declared, they too desired to work in three contexts: secular education, the code of Manu (which they likened to Blasphemy laws in England, against which Freethinkers were up in arms) and religious propaganda. Their sense of their mission, as this long quotation from a Revolt! editorial was profoundly shaped by comparable instances in England.

government

indicates,

The duty of the self-respecters is to see that religious education is not given at least in the state-aided schools. This can be achieved only by

32 Revolt!, 29 May 1929.

sending self-respecters to the legislative and administrative bodies...

Many of the civil laws are based upon this code (the Code of Manuauthor), which has been indisputably proved to be the outcome of the Brahminic supremacy. … That these laws are detrimental to the interests of the 97 percent of the Hindus needs no emphasis. …It is a matter of no mean importance that we the self-respecters are unanimous about the immediate necessity for wiping off the inequalities perpetrated by the

code of Manu. This again can be achieved only by those sincere selfrespecters who have leisure to feel their shameful position in society. … Though the state does not directly participate in broadcasting religion, it cannot be gainsaid that politics is being allowed to be shaped by enthusiasts of religion. Let us take our province as an illustration. The Government, in the name of “religious neutrality”, is allowing the

orthodox elements to ride roughshod over the masses by opposing all measures which are intended for the amelioration of the oppressed communities. The Devadasis Bills have their Satyamurtis, and the Age of Consent Bills have their Ramachandras. We can imagine what part the self- respecters can play in the coming elections.33

Clearly, for the self-respecters secularism was genealogically linked, not so much to a history of a separation of powers, of the clerisy and the state, but to a history of public action that was social rather than political. This distinction, in fact, shaped their own practice, and the secular state was viewed precisely in this light — as an entity that could guarantee social change, and whose practice of politics was not and need not be germane to its social role. As long as the self-respecters were able to invest the state with an authority gained from their own confident social practice, this ideal of the state appeared rational. But when that practice came to be mediated in and through the demand for a new ‘nation’, Dravida Nadu, their secular reasoning ceased being infallible. As we have indicated above, their demand for Dravida Nadu represented an attempt to elaborate secular and social justice ideals, as they understood them, as the basis for a new national politics. The ‘national’ form that this expression assumed proved both 33 Ibid.

enabling and limiting. As the history of modern Tamil consciousness indicates, the secular came to be housed in the Tamil language on the one hand, and an ideology of governance that equated social justice with affirmative action on the other. Larger and expansive arguments for social change, especially to do with Dalits and the women’s question, dropped out of the secular worldview and in fact retreated to the fringes of the social (and secular) imagination. But that is another story of the secular and one we cannot hope to tell here.34

34 Quotes from Revolt! are excerpted from Geetha and Rajadurai (2010).

2 The Political and Ecological Perspectives of Gandhi and Habermas This paper aims to look at the different ways in which M. K. Gandhi and Jurgen Habermas criticise instrumental or means-ends

rationality, and the effects of their specific understanding of practice in the different fields of politics and ecology.1 For Gandhi, the wrong means can never justify a good end. For Habermas, the Kantian imperative that we never treat other human beings as a means to our ends constitutes the basis of rational ethics. While Habermas is seen as the last great rationalist in Western philosophy, Gandhi is for forging a practical ethic — an ethic by example — that is independent of both religious and rational ethics. But what they have in common is their critique of imperialism and fascism, which laid bare some of the false foundations of Western liberal democracy.

celebrated Habermasian Politics

The basic question in Habermasian theory is: How is social order possible? Habermas’s answer is that in modern, secular Western societies, social order rests chiefly on the basis of communicative action — that is, speech-acts coordinated by validity claims in the form of theoretical truth, normative rightness or subjective These three correspond to the old Kantian division of science, morality and art. Habermas’s theory of communicative action could never have been formulated without the transition from conventional method to what is now known as the ‘linguistic turn’. In traditional Western philosophy, philosophers have usually tried to

expression.

philosophical

1 This is a considerably modified version of my article, Gandhi and Habermas: Irreconcilable Differences. See Rajan (1991).

Political and Ecological Perspectives of Gandhi and Habermas

prove a hypothesis or evolve a new philosophical method from a starting point of presuppositions. As a result, when they prove or demonstrate a hypothesis, with the help of these epistemological or metaphysical assumptions, they have been open to the charge of circularity. Thus, every philosopher worth his or her salt has tried to be ‘presupposition-less’, or to replace opinion with knowledge, which is practically impossible in that context of solipsistic, or subject-centred, thought, bound by space and time (something that Kant understood so well). It is unclear, then, to know whether Western philosophy has progressed (in terms of finding solutions to human problems) since the ancient Greeks, or whether it is towards annihilation or, indeed, nihilism. This probably tells us why various forms of nihilism, including deconstruction and continue to seduce many analysts to this day. With the ‘linguistic turn’, language philosophers have shifted their focus from discussing subjects and objects to discussing words, tout court. Problems of philosophy have now become problems of language. In Habermas’s case, the theory of communicative action looks at the propositional use of language, and the capacity of language to generate its own norms of discursive rationality. Habermas retains the internal link between truth and justification, a statement and a fact, and hence between language and meaning, and between interlocutors themselves, which renders intersubjective. Thus a group of speakers can make truth or moral claims, and these are open to debate and discussion. progress is now judged in terms of arriving at a consensus. Language itself contains norms to criticise factual errors, human or institutional oppression, and elitism, in the differentiated fields of science, morality and art, respectively. In what he calls the ‘ideal speech situation’ which is marked by the rationality and sincerity of the participants, Habermas points out that it is possible for people to submit to the force of the better argument and reach a in so far as they understand the speech of one another.2 action and discourse together help democratise and

hurtling postmodernism,

communication Philosophical

consensus, Communicative

2 Habermas has argued that language and communication are the central features of a human lifeworld that can resist the systemic imperatives of money and power which can colonise the lifeworld. Some critics however point out that even the structure of language and communication may be subject to manipulation and control.

Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship

maintain the social glue that keeps society together. According to Habermas, an action is instrumental when an individual agent does something as a means to bring about a desired end. Strategic action is a kind of instrumental action that involves getting other people to do things as a means of realising one’s own ends. The crucial point is that both differ from communicative action, which is recommended by Habermas in the realm of political interaction. Habermas’s claim is that the linguistically-grounded communicative rationality can overcome the problems of instrumentalised, subject-centred reason. Like Gandhi, Habermas is critical of utilitarian action pertaining to the notion of employing certain means (sometimes dubious) to acquire specific ends. One of the most common criticisms levelled against Habermas is that his ‘categorical differentiation of science, morality and art is a mistake which he is led to make because he follows the false lead of Descartes, Kant, Hegel and Weber’ (Pantham 1988: 196–97). In earlier ages, science, morality and art were seen as mere of a larger whole, which took the form of ‘revealed religion’ in the Judaeo-Christian world. In such a context, science, morality and art could be judged only according to principles of ‘religious correctness’. Some 500-odd years ago, when individuals in these Western realms — like Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galileideparted from such norms prescribed by an increasingly orthodox and narrowly-defined Christianity, they would be severely persecuted. After the eighteenth century, with the writings of Immanuel Kant and the advent of the Age of Reason, it was possible to judge science, morality and art in terms of modern, non-religious criteria like truth or truth claims, justice and beauty, respectively. As far as Habermas is concerned, this project of modernity — of the Enlightenment — remains unfinished, because all the three realms are not properly integrated into the public realm or made available to everybody; they are, by and large, confined to the elite sections in society. In fact, the Enlightenment norms may even have turned into their opposite, with democracy turning into fascism and reason into unreason in many parts of the world. As the previous chapter informs us, the secularism of the self-respecters in the Dravidian movement pitted itself against nationalism, precisely because of the fact that the nation excluded many, on the basis of caste, gender, community, and other identities.

components

The Western bourgeois public sphere, comprising organs of information and public debate like newspapers and journals, and institutions of political discussion such as parliaments, public assemblies, literary salons and coffee houses, made its appearance around 1700. In Habermas’s view, the public sphere or the polis created a liberating space for institutions and practices between the private interests of everyday life in civil society (that is to say, the family and the workplace, or to use ancient Greek terminology, the household or the oikos and the sphere of production or poeisis) and the realm of state power. It is possible that the increased of technological revolution in our era has blurred this distinction between production (poeisis) and political interaction (polis), because — paradoxically — the former has been structured by information and communication networks, while the latter cannot work without sophisticated technology. In Habermas’s ideal view of the polis, people discuss their common interests, debate their reach a consensus and collaborate for joint action against state power. In reality — Habermas readily points out — the public sphere has shrunk and become a zone of mass consumption, where the only kind of information is in the form of ‘infotainment’, having been co-opted by corporations and dominant elites.3 As a result, citizens play the role of consumers rather than democratic actors, and public opinion is voiced by media experts and manufactured polls rather than by people involved in rational discussion and debate. This cooption has affected equally all the three spheres of science, morality and art. However, Habermas’s vision is optimistic, and he believes that these norms may yet be redeemed in a positive way in the not-too-far future by means of communicative action. Despite articulating these caveats, Habermas has come under attack for his differentiation of the three spheres of science, morality and art. Such differentiation, according to Habermas’s critics, not only upholds a somewhat evolutionist, Eurocentric vision of the world (since less differentiated, traditional cultures are likely to be seen as being backward and irrational), but it also tacitly supports the purely objectifying and technocratic stance adopted by orthodox

intensification

differences,

3 Some critics would point out that in no time in recent history has there existed an ideal public sphere as delineated by Habermas. Throughout the modern period, the public sphere has been subjected to the control of powerful corporate and state interests.

science towards external nature. By distinguishing between external and internal nature, Habermas claims that instrumental rationality rules our relation to the non-human or external world, while communicative rationality rules our relation in our human or internal world. In a way, Habermas seems to believe that the of nature is to serve humans! Habermas has also been castigated for his narrow definition of the public sphere which seems to suggest that only developed and literate societies are capable of harbouring the polis. His critics have rightly pointed out that, in less ‘developed’ societies, symbols and myths can take the place of the novel or newspaper, in order to forge a public space for political action. A grain of salt or a spinning wheel or, again, a sacrificial ritual, is as capable of mobilising people on a massive scale, as a subversive book or pamphlet. Consequently, the questions to be posed are the following: Is the clear separation effected by Habermas between the hermeneutical and the natural sciences warranted? Or, as Paul Feyerabend (1975) and other anarchist scientists have pointed out, with the barriers breaking down between the disciplines, is there continuity rather than a break between the sciences? If that is the case, what is to prevent us from including the instinctual, extra-rational and unconscious domains as part of our methodology and ideology in the social sciences? The next step in the Indian context, of course, is to ask whether the Gandhian values of truth-seeking and holism would comprise a more suitable option as compared to Western rationality, particularly in the realm of ecology. In this chapter, I examine each of these issues and argue that the Habermasian perspective, despite its problems, is dependent on an interactive and intersocial political device called consensus on the basis of the better argument. Thus it may work somewhat better than the Gandhian field of political practice, which is dependent on the individual voice of conscience, svadharma. At the same time, the Habermasian notion of individual autonomy occupies a back seat when it comes to considering the interests of future generations as well as the survival of our planet. The Gandhian vision of the of all things works better here.

function

continually

interconnectedness

Habermasian Ethics Since the neo-Kantian divide between fact and value, knowledge and meaning, objectivity and relativity, the history of science has

seen dramatic reversals and upsets. In our own age, with the latest developments in the fields of thermodynamics, cybernetics and biology, attention appears to be moving from order to disorder, to particulars, and equilibrium to disequilibrium. Suddenly, the hitherto sharply etched-out frontier between the natural and social sciences, it seems, is no longer tenable. In fact, changes in the sciences have taken place at such a breakneck speed that the truth claim has virtually slid from under the feet of scientists, some of whom are beginning to talk (with almost unseemly ease) of paradigm shifts, hermeneutics, holism, autonomy, and what-have-you. These were, till recently, sidelined as the unfortunate traits of the lesser social sciences. Against such a backdrop favouring lack of and continuity — in keeping with the Indian spiritual notion of eternal flux — Habermas’s rationalist claim that ‘the of modern life-forms must be preserved, in order that the reflexivity of traditions, the individuation of the social and the universalistic foundations of justice and morality do not all go to hell’ 4 may seem out of place. In his early writings, Habermas has defended principles of popular sovereignty, formal law, constitutionally-guaranteed rights, and civil liberties as part of the Western democratic heritage. Owing to the present degeneration of these institutions, as mentioned earlier, it is important to redemocratise the public sphere, according to Habermas. Habermas’s political vision continues to be seen as providing the most effective justification in contemporary political philosophy of the internal link between rationality and morality. After the of the linguistic turn, 5 philosophers have been concerned with the ways in which linguistic activities are constitutive of social life, as against the earlier preoccupations with how to clarify scientific by applying logical techniques. It may be noted that although the ‘linguistic turn’ has been made by most contemporary political philosophers, not all of them are preoccupied with the question of ethics. Indeed, the internal link between meaning and validity is the crucial feature of Habermas’s theory, and this connection appeals

universals

concepts differentiation differentiation subject,

inauguration

language

4 See Peter Dews’s Introduction in his edited volume Habermas, and Solidarity (1986: 25). 5 I refer to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, which constituted a break from the logical positivism of his earlier work and

Autonomy considered to have laid the basis for the linguistic turn in philosophy.

to those contemporary analysts who are still interested in rational ethics. As one such analyst points out: If communicative action is our paradigm, the decentred subject remains as a participant in social interaction mediated by language. On this account, there is an internal relation of communicative practice to reason, for language use is oriented to validity claims, and validity claims can in the end be redeemed only through intersubjective recognition brought about by the unforced force of reason. The internal relation of meaning to

validity means that communication is not only always immanent — that is, situated, conditioned — but also always transcendent — that is, geared to validity claims that are meant to hold beyond any local context — and thus can be indefinitely criticized, defended, revised. 6

It follows, then, that communicative action is capable of creating universal meaning. While strategic, teleological or instrumental action does no more than produce an experience of the Other as people or events, communicative action produces the basis for social experience, because it involves self-reflection through language. It is important to note that Habermas’s communicative does not provide either a wholehearted endorsement of the Enlightenment project — in terms of upholding the purely values embodied in cognitive-instrumental rationality — or an absolute rejection of it, as witnessed in the aesthetically-minded counterculture, inaugurated in part by the early Frankfurt school and, more recently, by the postmodernists. In Habermas’s theory of communicative action, the individual is not sacrificed to the neither is the individual an autonomous, self-transparent Cartesian subject, condemned to oscillate between body and mind, or the empirical and transcendental realms. Unlike the philosophy of consciousness, there is greater latitude of relationships allowed in linguistically-generated subjectivity, because all claims here are revisable and open-ended. The rational foundation of ethics is established in the democratic principle of intersubjective discourse, whereby revisable and hypothetical validity claims are settled and resettled on the basis of the better argument. Discussion, then, is the grounding principle

interpreting

rationality technocratic

collective,

6 See Thomas McCarthy’s Introduction in Habermas (1987).

of practical reason and ethics, in the Kantian sense. For Habermas, this signifies that discussion is the practice that renders possible the universalisation of interests. But this universalism is not carved in stone; it can be revised and modified, according to the context, on the basis of consensus following debate and discussion. In fact, argumentation implies consensual practice which allows the resolution of conflicting interests. Authentic discourse involves unconstrained argumentation rather than the ‘false’ arguments of authority, intimidation and coercion. Unforced and free discussion becomes the ethical basis acceptable to all the participants.

The Gandhian Perspective on Praxis Habermas’s communicative rationality has aroused considerable criticism from the holistic or the Gandhian viewpoint. For the holist, the concept of the individual — however decentred it may be in Habermasian theory — remains an illusory and paradoxical entity, since it implies fragmentation and discontinuity. Furthermore, holism tacitly holds the view that rationality must include its ‘Other’, irrationality, as perceived, for instance, in the worlds of magic, myth and madness. In Habermas’s communications model, as we have seen, the notions of rationality and individuality are both preserved and somewhat modified. Whereas, in traditional societies, ethics is a matter of acting in harmony with the whole or the collective, in action, ethics is no longer a universal given, but a question of incessant validation by means of discursive, rational With the advent of modernity, ethical questions — earlier seen from the optic of dharma or the sacred order — are being in a new order of law and morality that is grounded in rational self-reflection. As against holism — which, by pursuing the everreceding horizon of the Absolute Truth, must demonstrate that this material world is maya or illusion and that human action in the life-world is futile — communicative action opens one to the future by making one conscious of one’s historicity. But if holism, exemplified above all by the Hindu Advaita or nondualistic philosophy, exercises a sort of paralysis on human action, the Bhakti or devotional movement (see Part II here) stresses the finitude of human beings and the remoteness of God, and thereby provides a terrain of protest on the part of the lower castes and women. The later chapters of the Bhagavad Gita, which capture the

communicative argumentation. situated

spirit of the Bhakti tradition, are remarkable to the extent to which they contribute to the personal factor and provide the rationale for individual action in the form of svadharma. No doubt the concept of svadharma is open to multiple and even mutually contradictory interpretations in the Gita, in keeping with the Hindu proclivity for synthesis and holism. Consequently, strands of other-worldly and fusionist Vedantic thought co-exist within the Gita with a more radical exhortation to action, which includes the possibility of selfreflection. What is of tremendous significance is that the Gita provided the necessary inspiration for the great twentieth century inheritor of the Bhakti tradition, namely, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi’s peculiar blend of the Gita’s notion of nishkama karma or disinterested action with his own programme of satyagraha (literally, ‘firm grasp of truth’ or ‘soul force’) is perhaps the most influential guide for individual action developed in India. That is why Thomas Pantham, for one, is inclined to assert that ‘Gandhi’s satyagraha is an integral mode of political praxis which goes beyond Habermas’s hyper-rational conception of political praxis, which is restricted to critical reasoning’ (Pantham 1988: 206). This is so, claims Pantham, because ‘satyagraha recognizes the limits of rationality and includes such extra-rational and non-linguistic components or actions as selfpurification, listening to one’s conscience, moral persuasion and an exemplary, detached life, and self-suffering’ (ibid.: 207). Gandhi’s theory of ahimsa or non-violence is not to be understood as the antonym of violence, or as passive resistance. Ahimsa is to be understood in a dialectical fashion, as going beyond a simple and non-violence dichotomy. Ahimsa is combined with two other attributes, namely satya or truth and tapas or self-suffering. In short, non-violent action is based on love towards others and a positive test of truth. Self-suffering is the test of such love. Sacrifice unto death, it seems, is a common feature of both violent terrorism and non-violent satyagraha (see Chapter 3 in this section). Gandhi believed that ahimsa required far greater courage than violence, because it put conscious, self-imposed fetters on one’s for violence. The violent individual uses a gun or a club to inflict harm on others; the non-violent individual suffers the harm without raising a hand against the oppressor. Non-violent action has the potential for transformation and for change of heart. Gandhi saw the key effect as conversion, not coercion. For the satyagrahis, there is both collective and individual empowerment in non-violence.

violence constitutes

capacity

Gandhi’s satyagraha movement rejected such notions as blind dogma and largely relied on immediacy and improvisation. This indeed was the appeal of Gandhism — it eschewed theory and spoke directly to the people by the moral force of the better practice or example, rather than the better argument. Utilising the quasitherapeutic features of the guru-shishya parampara, which emphasised unequal relationships, satyagraha greatly resembled the intuitive structure of a theatrical ‘happening’. Through his suffering, by means of fasts and vows, Gandhi hoped to awaken India’s soul and give the country a measure of soul force. Still, one of the reasons why Gandhism did not become a lasting legacy in the political field was precisely because the movement could, like the Bhakti tradition itself, assume mystical, extra-rational forms, which finally comprised the private quest of the Seeker of Truth. Gandhi’s unique political experiment was doomed to fail for the simple reason that despite its genuine commitment to the larger community Gandhism depended too much on the charisma and saintliness of an individual political leader and too little on the conceptualisation of ethics as a collective and intersubjective quest. The perfect satyagrahi was expected to be an almost perfect man or woman. For the record, the satyagrahi was obliged to undertake purificatory and penitential actions like pledges and fasts, along with political acts of non-cooperation like boycotts and strikes, acts of civil disobedience like defiance of specific laws, and constructive programmes to promote communal harmony, and to remove and other kinds of socio-economic deprivation.7 Gandhi insisted that his followers practise tolerance and civility towards one another, since he believed that each person’s knowledge of truth is partial and never complete. It is not the force of the better argument that counts in satyagraha, but the force of the inner voice. Many of Gandhi’s followers, including the rational-minded Jawaharlal Nehru, simply could not understand why the Mahatma was willing to sign the Gandhi-Irwin Pact in 1931 — a pact that rendered superfluous all the sacrifices, that reversed nearly all the gains of the salt satyagraha. The dilemma of recognising the better practice, in the absence of reasoning, persists in Gandhian politics. For Gandhi, at times political practice is conceived even in terms

untouchability

7 However, as the previous chapter informs us, many of these constructive

programmes were put on the back burner by the late 1920s.

of inner freedom and world alienation. Rational discourse, electoral politics and justice — all these lie on the other side of ahimsa. If human beings are not at the centre of political practice, or if they are not taken into confidence by the leader, there is little place for There is merely transformation of a public into a mass. As contemporary theorists of justice reveal, the notion of just has little to do with individual self-sacrifice. What is important in any ethical society is not the goal we passively choose as citizens, but our active capacity to choose them as individuals. It seems to me, in the long run, that Habermas’s theory of communicative action provides a somewhat better basis for political action than the Gandhian practice of satyagraha because it shows us clearly why problems of public morality are more often than not problems of intersubjective rationality. If we were to divide Gandhi’s thoughts into four categories, namely, the economic, the social, the political and the ecological, we find that this Indian leader’s greatest success is seen in the latter two. After an initial period — between 1915 and 1919 — of participation in economic struggles, Gandhi started expressing his belief that the rich should be the trustees of the poor. This sentiment has come under considerable attack from his Marxist detractors. Gandhi’s social understanding of the caste hierarchy has been severely criticised by E. V. Ramaswamy (Periyar) and B. R. Ambedkar. His attempt to eradicate untouchability was to demonstrate that no task, including cleaning toilets, should be considered unclean. As with everything else, Gandhi’s economic and social solutions were coloured by his ethics of practice. More than any other leader, Gandhi’s ideas have spawned a huge industry of books, papers and commentaries. In his own life, Gandhi battled with two dichotomies: one, between the imperative of his voice of conscience, svadharma, and the need for social harmony; two, between his belief in the interface of religion and politics and the contemporary rational human rights’ discourse. Miraculously, the salt satyagraha of the early 1930s seems to have reconciled both these dichotomies. Not surprisingly, the actualisation of Gandhi’s vision was short-lived. It is because Gandhi could never again the dictates of his conscience onto the actions of the nation, and thereby alert the whole world to the force of satyagraha, that Gandhian politics fell short of becoming a durable movement.

humanism. practice

transpose

Habermas: 'Technialy

Controllable Nature'?

However, while the Habermasian political praxis may prove to have greater argumentative force than the Gandhian satyagraha, the same cannot be said about Habermas’s ideas on ecology and the Interestingly, Gandhi saw violence in the oikos (household), in poeisis (the productive sphere) and in the polis (the political sphere). It is the articulation of these different kinds of violence in contemporary life that forms the grist for the mills of many environmentalists. While maintaining that rationality and self-reflection comprise the basic ingredients of ethics, and that the problem is too little rather than too much reason, Habermas refers to productive labour (the Greek techne) and political interaction (praxis) as constituting two activities. What this implies is a skewed relationship between humans and nature in Habermas’s perspective and this has implications for the way in which he looks at the environment. Nevertheless, by disclaiming any absolute division between labour and interaction, Habermas does preserve some ambiguity regarding these two types of activity in some of his writings. On occasion, Habermas claims that while technical-instrumental rationality has an autonomous evolution compared to the moral-practical realm, the two cannot be mutually exclusive or entirely separated:

environment.

different negative

Instrumental action is inevitably situated in societal patterns of

reproduction

and adaptation to the environment…in societal structures of labour and work….Communicative action is always enmeshed in patterns of socialization and social communication….Emancipation from external nature derives from processes whose structure and logic

are categorically distinct from the structures and logic governing the processes of emancipation from internal nature, from the institutional violence of social domination and repression. In concrete historical contexts there is, of course, an interaction between these two processes of emancipation.8

But by and large, the problem of privileging humans over nature is not present only in Habermas’s work; it is there in the writings of many Marxists, who give weightage to poiesis or the production paradigm. 8 See Bernstein in Pelczynski and Gray (1984: 405–7). Instead of labour and interaction, Habermas is now more likely to speak of ‘system’ and ‘life-world’, corresponding to purposive and communicative rationality, respectively.

Be that as it may, it is interesting to see how a contemporary Marxist combines the production paradigm with some reflection on human beings’ relationship with nature. Specifically, in this context, Marx’s distinction between exchange-value-driven and use-value-driven production is useful in the context of ecological economics: Exchange-value-driven production (production for profitable sale) systematically ignores all effects of the production process apart from financial cost and return, hence it ignores all environmental effects, as well as effects on the workers’ health and happiness. Use-value-driven production takes into account any use-value that the production either creates or destroys. These will include environmental and

process

human effects as well as ‘products’. This means that economic decisionmaking under socialism (which Marx conceives as a use-value-driven mode of production) would be very different from under capitalism. All foreseeable effects, good and bad, of any decision would have to be taken into account. But this would mean deciding between incommensurable values of certain effects. (Collier 2004)

Obviously, this sort of differentiation cannot be based on accounting. One could extend the analogy of ‘use-value-driven production’ and point out the hallmark of radical Green political thought, namely, that it seeks to widen in space and time the class of beings whose interests are taken into account in political decision-making, in order to include not only future generations, but also the non-human (Eckersley 1990). Ecocentric theorists seek not just human emancipation, but the emancipation of nature writ large. Habermas, for his part, doesn’t go so far in the direction of radical environmental thought. he puts a philosophical spin on Marx’s differentiation of use value and exchange value and shows how political decision-making has been increasingly reduced to pragmatic instrumentality and cedes ever greater areas of system-steering decision-making to a technocratic elite group. He dubs this process ‘colonizing the lifeworld’. According to Habermas, the notion of ‘rationality’ has lost the critical force it once had. It is now degraded to mean only rationality. As mentioned above, Habermas has posited a dualistic framework whereby the logic of instrumental rationality governs our dealings with the non-human world and the logic of rationality governs interactions between human subjects.

mathematical

community However,

instrumental

communicative

In Habermas’s view, the former necessarily (and rightly) aims at reification, whereas the latter — which is also capable of reaching an undesirable result like reification — should actually aim for individuation and socialisation. In Habermas’s opinion, Herbert Marcuse’s new science, which seeks to approach nature as a partner rather than as an object of control, confuses two different structures of action, namely symbolic interaction, which is the project of language, and purposiverational action, which is the project of labour while wrestling with the all-too limited bounty of nature. By separating labour and and grounding them in different cognitive interests, namely, technical control and understanding, Habermas has been able to reject the early Frankfurt school’s pessimistic thesis that technical progress necessarily entailed moral regression and the of the psychological conditions of emancipation. Indeed, Habermas follows Marx’s footsteps in hailing the progressive features of modernity and rejects what he regards as the utopian excesses of the early Frankfurt school theorists like Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse. The disenchantment of nature is accepted as the necessary price of modernity. A more liberating vision of the interaction of people with nature would include a cooperative strategy, rather than an instrumental or purposive-rational strategy, as Habermas would have it. Habermas has not shown us conclusively that pure instrumental reason is always the most efficacious form of reason from the standpoint of human well-being and survival. The environmental ill-effects of India’s experience with the Green Revolution in agriculture demonstrate the negative fallout of instrumental reason. We also know that primitive techniques of healing are efficacious in certain kinds of physical afflictions. Without subscribing to an extreme Enlightenment view of the unity of reason, Habermas would do well to reflect on humanity’s ontological embeddedness in the natural world, and reconsider his formulation of the relationship between humans and nature. It is absurd to imagine that humans are somehow outside nature. In fact, environmentalists are, in a sense, returning to the old religious notion of the ‘great chain of being’ between humans and non-humans. We are merely one species in a world of myriad species. If that is indeed the case, we can no longer see nature as our handmaiden.

autonomy,

technical communication

distortion

Ecological Perspectives As against the rigid Kantian division of the three realms, Habermas concedes in some essays (Habermas 1984: 236) that there is between the objective world of external nature (science), the social world of interaction (morality), and the subjective world of expression (art): ‘The structures of a decentred understanding of the world that are decisive for modernity can be characterized by the fact that the acting and knowing subject is able to assume different basic attitudes towards elements of the same world.’ Thus Habermas does admit that the objectifying attitude can be exemplified by actions with respect to the objective world of nature; by social actions of the purposive rational type in the world of interaction; by certain theories like empiricist psychology or utilitarian ethics in the case of an objectivistic relation to one’s self. Again, the normconfirmative attitude may be characterised by a moral-aesthetic relation to a non-objectified environment; by the normatively actions of the obligatory relation in the social world; by guilt feelings or other superego phenomena such as censorious feelings regarding oneself; and so on. In spite of the multiple basic attitudes and formal worldconcepts — amounting to nine fundamental relations pertaining to the objective, social and subjective worlds — Habermas points out that not all of these formal pragmatic relations between actors and their external and internal environments are suitable for the of knowledge or learning processes. It is with respect to Habermas’s theory of learning (inspired by Piaget and Kohlberg) that one cannot avoid the question of progress and evaluation of human societies. Questioning the validity of Habermas’s ‘categorical between the autonomous ego and the technically controllable nature’ — which is perhaps less ‘categorical’ in Habermas’s later writings — Pantham (1988) claims that ‘the modern West has things to learn from those traditions of thought and action, such as India’s, which emphasise non-dualism or integral pluralism rather than dichotomies and differentiations’ (p. 198). What is new about an ecocentric perspective is that it is applied in the context of a broader and more encompassing pattern of layered interrelationships that extend beyond personal and societal relations to include the different members of the non-human community.

overlapping

instrumental

regulated

accumulation

differentiation

The latter are appreciated as important in their own terms, and as possessing varying degrees of relative autonomy, which, in some cases, may be superior to humans like infants and the brain-damaged. This empirical evidence refutes the existence of a clear dividing line between humanity and the rest of nature. In contemporary environmental theory, there are different dimensions to the relationship between human beings and other species in nature. The deep ecology of Aldo Leopold is a valuebased ideal that pits itself against people or human-based ideals. It is concerned with the preservation of the ecosystem above all else, even the welfare of human beings. In other words, deep ecology posits the indistinguishablity of all things within the ecosystem. The indistinguishablity thesis is variously exemplified as the Indian tribal notion of sanatana dharma or universal harmony, and as the nishkama karma or disinterested action of the Bhagavad Gita, which Gandhi endorsed. The environmental theory of the transcended or transpersonal self, for its part, allows for the expression of love and compassion for all things outside oneself. This is the quintessential Gandhian Bhakti or devotional ideal, and it is present in the later chapters of the Bhagavad Gita. Gandhian ethics is essentially a humane, perspective, and leads more by practical example than by theoretical argument. Ecocentric theorists are attempting to revitalise philosophy by offering a more integrated, non-anthropocentric approach than the Habermasian application of instrumental rationality with respect to nature. Indeed, it is the environmental theory of the expanded self that comes closest to the application of the Habermasian rationality to nature. It is a position that is not contrary to self-affirmation and merely extends the interests of human beings to the natural world. After all, environmental choices are not about individual preferences but about moral collective choices, including those of future generations. It is imperative, then, that Habermas applies his principle of autonomy not just to the individual, but to humanity as a whole, for the sake of the survival of our planet, earth. An ecocentric perspective would minimise harm to non-humans and maximise their opportunity to flourish in their own way. Social scientists point out that an individual who adopts sacrifice as an ideal and opts for a more expensive, less polluting, product is not likely to advance the good of the community. However, when there

compassionate

communicative

is a collective sacrifice on the part of a community to take steps to force petrol pumps or gas stations to opt for more ecologically-sound energy alternatives, there are likely to be positive outcomes for the community (Wiener 1993). This kind of collective sacrifice — in the sense of abstinence or absence of greed — is qualitatively different from the notion of individual self-sacrifice or self-annihilation that is present in non-violent and violent versions, in Gandhian satyagraha and in terrorism, respectively (see Chapter 3 ). Can such an ecocentric perspective be achieved by means of applying the Habermasian communicative rationality to solve related to the ecological crisis? After all, environmental problems are also political problems. According to Habermas’s theory of communicative rationality, a norm is considered right if it is achieved via a consensus of rational, truthful and non-coerced agents. The truth of the matter is that there is no guarantee that the arrived at will be ecologically positive or sound. there is room for hope, keeping in mind the fact that any Habermasian consensus is open always to revision. However, such openness should necessarily include an appreciation of Gandhi’s spirit of caring and sharing, his periodical fasting and conservation of energy, his frugality, his ideas on devolution, and his notion of selfreliance. At the same time, Gandhi’s ecological quest will work only if it becomes a social or collective quest, and does not lose sight of the necessity for constructive work, even in the realm of politics.

problems

consensus Nevertheless

3 Civil Disobedience to Suicide Terrorism — Such a Long Journey ‘Terrorism is terrorism is terrorism any where in the world.’1 Ariel Sharon ‘The cultured world is under a cruel attack by radical Islam. It is an enemy composed of lunatic individuals, lunatic regimes, and lunatic countries.’2 Sam Dillon

If we use the word ‘terrorism’ as adjective, then it can be employed in different ways. Men terrorise women, adults terrorise children, humans terrorise animals, the fascist state terrorises minorities, and so on. For our purposes here, we focus upon terrorism by sub-national or international non-governmental groups, describing it as the use of violence by non-state actors to obtain a political, religious or social objective through fear or intimidation directed at a large section of a population.

premeditated Different Kinds of Terrorism

Indeed, the 1990s inaugurated a radically new phase in the history of terrorism. This form has moved away from an earlier model of terrorists operating within a hierarchical organisation with a central command chain towards a loose mode of operational structure. The result is a more complex entity. Terrorist organisations today seem to identify themselves or claim for specific acts less often. Where earlier terrorist groups had

professionally-trained

responsibility

1 See James Bennet, ‘Israelis storm a Gaza camp; 11 Palestinians are

killed’, The New York Times, 7 March 2003, p. A10. 2 ‘Reflections on War, Peace, and how to live vitally and act globally’, The New York Times, 1 June 2003, p. A28.

Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship

a clear identity and ideology, today, their demands are vague, even non-existent. For instance, no specific demands were made the 1998 US embassy attacks or the 2001 9/11 attacks in the US or the 2008 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Not only have some terrorist ideologies become more religious, their targets are dispersed in a more global manner. Furthermore, terrorist violence becomes more indiscriminate. Terrorism has existed from the late nineteenth century onwards, but what was novel about 9/11 was not state-supported terrorism, but the extraordinary scale of civilian casualties with the use of passenger airlines as deadly missiles. The focal concern of the great civil libertarian tradition is how to design a state to protect people against each other while not in their lives beyond what is necessary to maintain social order. James Madison famously said: ‘In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.’ 3 Although terrorism has operated in varied contexts, contemporary terrorism poses a new and ominous problem. We must learn how to structure government to control terrorism while simultaneously protecting ourselves against the government itself. This is a surprising new issue. We have long considered how to protect citizens against invading armies, and this might be the arena that is most nearly analogous to protection against terrorists. But terrorists are secretive; therefore, we resort to invasive and substantial surveillance and screening, and speak of ‘collateral damage’ as the inevitable fallout of fighting terrorism. Terrorists appeal to morality without appealing to the law. The fact of the matter is that international law is highly biased in favour of existing states and against non-state actors. Often democracy is a better shield against terrorism than against counterterrorism by the state. In the present context in Western countries, the preliminary criteria for screening of passengers (along international borders) that stand out are membership in extreme right-wing or left-wing organisations, and Arabic or Islamic backgrounds. Among the nonterrorists, such screening will affect some people severely, and others not at all. Without a guiding principle in a democracy for trading off rights (between protecting us against terrorism and defending

following transnational

interfering

3 See The Federalist, no. 51, p. 269.

Civil Disobedience to Suicide Terrorism

our civil liberties) in a conflict situation, there will be serious ethical problems raised. According to the seventeenth-century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, security itself is a right for all citizens, and could therefore trump civil liberties, which often conflict with one another. ‘Fear, in Hobbes’s theory of man is the most important force of human action, and it is with the help of a man’s fear of violent death that Hobbes explains most or even all of his behaviour.’4 Because of this fear, the citizen is willing to abjure her rights in return for state protection of her body and her property. However, the phenomenon of terrorism poses a problem to Hobbesian theory. Because of the international nature of terrorism today, it is difficult to see the nation-state as a sole protector of citizens’ security. Other analysts, including human rights’ activists, take a deliberate, absolutist position supporting civil liberties, on the practical ground that it is very easy to weaken them and very difficult to strengthen them. Liberal thinkers in the past, like the eighteenth-century French philosopher, Montesquieu, and the founding father of the United States of America, James Madison, have been troubled by the arbitrary power exercised by a tyrannous monarch. The point to be remembered is that even a democratic state can exercise such arbitrary power in times of crisis. And, as Russell Hardin informs us, a tyrannous monarch can hardly avoid exposure, whereas thousands of bureaucrats in modern states, operating in closed venues as they do, can hardly be exposed. It is at times preferable, says Hardin, that a state errs on the side of giving primacy to civil rights, and even goes against majoritarian sentiments, than resorting to the arbitrary use of technology to oppress marginalised groups, in the name of fighting terrorists, who use similar technology to enable attacks on a new, mass scale. In a certain sense, political theory — which is geared to dealing with domestic institutions and crises — is severely tested by the rise of international terrorism, according to Hardin (2004).

motivating

The Anatomy of Civil Disobedience There may be less radical ways of dealing with injustice, such as demanding the reform of laws by resorting to civil disobedience, and more radical ways, such as terrorism, that involve violence against 4 Jeremy Waldron quoting Andrzej Rapaczynski in Waldron (2004: 12).

the state, and may or may not involve violence against the The fundamental question we should be asking is: Do individuals or groups have a moral right to resist state policies? Even benign democracies have begun to treat peace activists as threats to national security in the troubled times in which we live (Ganguly 2009: 3). The state, as representative of all citizens, plays God when it punishes the ‘criminal’. Nevertheless, there are different ways of judging the degree of criminality of the disobedient and the forfeiture of the so-called criminal’s rights. In the eyes of some people, the offender forfeits his rights when he violates another’s rights, even if his conduct is unintentional. For instance, a drunken driver may run over and kill a child on the road, even though that was not his intention. For some others, he forfeits his rights, only when his conduct is an intentional act, reflecting his character. For yet others, he forfeits his rights only when his is both intentional and free. This is an important point because a man may be held hostage and forced, at gunpoint or by means of blackmail, to kill another. Modern liberals, like Ronald Dworkin and John Rawls, only look at the last option as a clear definition of criminality. 5 In their opinion, a man who harms another voluntarily and instrumentally is a criminal. So is a man who strategically uses another as the means to achieve a harmful end. By the same token, a man who violates another’s rights intentionally, but owing to pressure exerted by another, or others, is not a criminal. If it is possible to morally excuse individuals who harm others unintentionally or under pressure, then can we extend this logic to establish a case in favour of those who oppose the state in good faith, even if they are reasonably mistaken in their ideals? This is the principal thesis of this chapter. Not all liberals support such a position. A well-known liberal, Joseph Raz, thinks civil disobedience is a right only in illiberal In liberal democracies, people can exercise their right to in the process of making or influencing laws, without resorting to civil disobedience. Raz says that one needs no right to do the right thing. For instance, refraining from stealing is the right thing to do and one does not need a right to that effect. Raz’s view overlooks the possibility that a person’s having a legal right to civil

innocent.

subsequent

conduct

societies. participate

5 See Haksar (2001 : 38). Many of the concepts discussed in this

subsection and the next are inspired by Haksar’s book.

disobedience might be a precondition of its being morally right for him to embark on it, particularly in the eyes of the state. The truth is that even the most democratic government can do something wrong from time to time and must be put on the dock by citizens. Nevertheless, the standard liberal view — contra Raz — is that the right to civil disobedience implies that we should be tolerant of the civil disobedient, however wrong or unsound his or her cause may be. Western liberal theorists, such as Rawls and Dworkin, use the right to civil disobedience in a way which implies that if there is such a right, then it would cover the cases where civil disobedience was not right but wrong. Let us take this logic further and ask the question: Must the state allow people to break the law if they are to pay the penalty? Clearly, that cannot always be the case; otherwise murderers and rapists will all too easily get off the hook, by paying compensation to their victims or their kith and kin. This is the sort of phenomenon — called ‘blood money’ — which is found in some non-democratic states. Vinit Haksar takes a slightly different view from Rawls and Dworkin. He commends the view that the right to civil disobedience should be taken to imply that the authorities should extend to the civil disobedient when the disobedient are right but also when they are reasonably mistaken in their views. From such a perspective, people do have a right to protest against caste-based even if the protestors are mistaken in their view that such reservation is morally wrong. As Haksar puts it, ‘sometimes when we say A has a right to X we mean merely that it is not wrong for A to do X’ (Haksar 2001: 38). The state should extend toleration to cases of reasonable ‘mistake’, like the Narmada Bachao Andolan, but not to unreasonable ones, like the demolition of the Babri masjid mosque in India in order to build a Ram temple in its place. On Dworkin’s view, a theory of civil disobedience should be to the type of convictions the disobedient have, and insensitive to the soundness of these convictions. Other analysts will claim that toleration should extend only to participants who exhibit values of sincerity and integrity. This is an insidious claim, according to Haksar, because a sincere fascist, like Adolf Hitler, can be more than an insincere one. When Hindu fundamentalists the Babri masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992, there must have been a great deal of sincerity invested in that act.

willing

tolerance

reservation,

sensitive

dangerous destroyed

According to the Indian leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who is more censorious on this point, there is no right to do the wrong thing. In other words, there is no question of the civil being reasonably mistaken. Nevertheless, Gandhi did insist on the inviolability of soul force in each and every one of us, a force that cannot be stilled by the violence of outside forces. In fact, it is Gandhi’s recognition of the limitations of the judiciary in South Africa as a tool of social change that marked his transformation as a civil disobedient (DiSalvo 2009: 142). Like most liberals, Haksar defends a rights-based account of punishment. In this view, a criminal loses some of his own rights (for example, to liberty) when he violates another’s rights. And this gives the state a right to punish the criminal. Typically, Kantian liberals are in favour of retributive justice, but are against capital punishment for the criminal (Rajan 1998b). Apart from the moral argument against capital punishment, there is also a pragmatic Such punishment can be counterproductive, if it makes martyrs of lawbreakers. Civil disobedience is justified not only in order to deal with of individual rights or of an aggregate of individual rights, but also in the case of violations of collective rights that are not reduced to the rights of individuals. Groups are not moral agents in the fullblooded Kantian sense, though they may be regarded as moral agents in some weaker sense. Groups can have rights, but a group is not an end in itself. What is the place of religious groups in a liberal secular state? Haksar argues that with the possible exception of the right to formal equality, religious groups should not be allowed to violate the fundamental rights of other groups. If these religious groups do violate others’ rights, civil disobedience could be used as an option by the victims. According to this argument, when the Babri masjid was destroyed, Indian Muslims had a right to civil disobedience against Hindu fundamentalists and against the state which failed to protect their — and, indeed, the entire nation’s — heritage.

disobedient

argument.

violations

Gandhi's satyagraha Movement The claim to tolerance by the state of the civil disobedient implies one or both of the following: One, the civil disobedient should be empowered and have a moral right to protest. Gandhi’s position varies from the liberal viewpoint. The force of the civil disobedient

comes from within, and not from state policies. Gandhi confined civil disobedience to the ‘barest necessity of the case’, and pointed out that it is not necessary for voluntary obedience that the laws obeyed should be good. Gandhi believed that one should obey unjust laws only if they did not hurt one’s integrity and self-respect. According to Gandhi, the most pernicious unjust laws were those that hurt one’s sense of self-worth. In other words, there could be degrees of injustice in the laws of a land. Since Gandhi also saw people as agents, he firmly believed that exploitation and oppression rested, in large part, on the acquiescence of the victims. It was therefore important to non-cooperate with the oppressor. For Gandhi, one did not merely have a right, but a duty, to oppose unjust laws. Two, such a right should be enshrined in the Constitution; there should be no punishment or reduced punishment by the state for the civil disobedient. Again, Gandhi’s position is derived from the notion of ‘soul force’. Unlike the ordinary criminal, the Gandhian satyagrahi voluntarily submitted to unjust punishment and so obeyed the law in the form of ‘quasi-obedience’. Gandhi wanted those who break the law to submit to punishment. It is not because they have a obligation to obey the unjust law or to submit to punishment. It is rather because the suffering involved in punishment will impress the opponent as well as society at large and help to promote the truth by involving all the parties in a dialectical search for the truth. It might be thought that if civil disobedience does not involve the breaking of the law then it does not need any justification. But this is a position that Gandhi would not have welcomed as he thought that civil disobedience does need to be justified. Gandhi did not allow the use of evil means, however good the ends. He believed that it was the citizen’s sacred duty not to participate in evil. Among modern liberals, Rawls thinks that civil disobedience, when properly conducted, could work as a safety-valve (especially in weak democracies), for, in its absence, there would be violent threats to the constitutional system. Rawls — like Gandhi — thinks that the civil disobedient should be willing to submit to the penalty, thus establishing their sincerity to themselves and to others. Rawls that civil disobedience is a final device to maintain the of a just Constitution. Gandhi would have approved of Rawls’s view that civil disobedience expresses disobedience to law within the limits of fidelity to law. The laws, that we could in principle break, are oppressive state-made laws, as opposed to the laws which reflect morality and justice.

political

contends stability

Yet there are many differences between the Gandhian and the liberal perspectives. The Rawlsian model, like the Gandhian, contains assumptions that render civil disobedience irrelevant. Nevertheless, Rawls is too liberal in advising the authorities never to impose substantial penalties against the civil disobedient. He is too restrictive in advising the civil disobedient never to embark on civil disobedience unless the injustice is clear and obvious (Haksar 2001: 34). But unlike Gandhi, Rawls does not allow coercion, like fasting unto death, in near-just societies. A pragmatist may ask: Why go for civil disobedience if fasting and other legal methods can do the trick? According to Gandhi, if someone sharing your ideals has strayed from them due to weakness, then you can fast in order to help to strengthen his resolve to live up to his own ideals. In some circumstances, particularly where collective action is concerned, civil disobedience may be more effective and ethical. If civil disobedience is a fight for justice, then individual-based Gandhian virtues such as altruism and self-sacrifice may be as ineffective as the terrorist’s self-sacrifice to attain a particular goal. The Kantian priority accorded by liberals like Rawls of the just over the good implies that justice must be independent of singular of the good, whether it is that of founding a Gandhian Ramarajya or a Hindu rashtra on this earth. Nevertheless, Gandhi had great hope in the power of his brand of civil disobedience to ‘dissolve the tyranny of the tyrant’. One of Gandhi’s key anxieties was that the satyagraha movement should not degenerate into duragraha, which involves coercion. Terrorism is likely to be seen as an example of duragraha, from the Gandhian viewpoint. And terrorists are not likely to be seen as ‘Gandhians with guns’.6 One analyst says:

conceptions

Nonviolence inspired by Gandhi passed across the polity and energised social movements of many kinds. However, this process produced new kinds of collective performance, with only a very limited connection to satyagraha. … Does this mean that non-violence is best practised by small groups of dedicated activists? Or can it become a tool of mass politics? How can the committed possibly work together with the

expedient? Can non-violence be maintained over a cycle of protest, or

6 This is a phrase attributed to the writer-activist Arundhati Roy while describing Indian Maoists.

is it inevitably displaced by the throb of collective passions? These were

questions faced by Gandhi eight decades ago. They remain to trouble, to confound, and to push us toward our own experiments today. (Scalmer 2009: 199)

Finally, Gandhi’s satyagraha movement did not have the desired effect on the people of India. After all, it was the terrorist’s bullet which killed Gandhi, the quintessential satyagrahi. Curiously, faces similar dilemmas as satyagraha, and the apostle of non-violence, met a violent end at the hands of his mirror-image, the terrorist.

terrorism

Conventional Wisdom on Terrorism Conventional warfare has a well-defined declaration of war and Terrorism is effectively interminable, unless it succeeds. The terrorist act might be intended as punishment or retaliation for some real or imagined offence, and not calculated to achieve anything beyond that. Violent action may even be viewed as a form of therapy for the perpetrator, particularly where the perpetrator has long suffered in the ignominy of subordination. One example of such violent action is the assassination of M. K. Gandhi by Nathuram Godse. Sometimes, terrorism may be sending out a or inflicting harm for publicity or propaganda effect. The really interesting moral issue is not whether terrorism is right, but whether it can be morally justified under certain circumstances and contexts. Violence for political ends is common. States, international organisations, citizen groups, communal groups — all these justify violence, from time to time, as self-defence. This is perceived as moral justification for violence. Terrorism has two purposes — to gain supporters and to coerce opponents. For terrorist groups, suicide attacks are becoming the coercive instrument of choice. Earlier terrorist groups have been called ‘demonstrative terrorists’ and ‘destructive terrorists’. terrorists often avoid doing serious harm to bring issues to the attention of the target audience. Hostage taking, airline hijacking and explosions are usually announced in advance, and all these acts are expected to bring issues to the attention of target audiences. Examples of demonstrative terrorists are the Orange Volunteers in Northern Ireland, Columbia’s National Liberation Army and Italy’s

conclusion.

message,

Demonstrative

Red Brigade. Destructive terrorists, on the other hand, coerce and mobilise support. Examples of this trend are organisations like the Baader-Meinhoft, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (Pape 2003). Suicide terrorism is the tool of the weak, and these groups may have employed demonstrative and destructive means of violence long before resorting to suicide attacks. Terrorists like the IRA, the second intifada in the Occupied Territories in Palestine, even Al Qaeda, do not have weapons of mass destruction like a state. One major reason for the resurgence of the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism is the defeat by Israel in 1967 of major Arab states like Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The earlier Arab nationalism under Gamal Abdel Nasser, Baathist socialism in Syria and Iraq and secularism in Turkey, have given way to a return to original Muslim faith and theocratic polity. Now there seems to be a harking back to Arab and Muslim greatness in the past, and a castigation of excessive and Westernisation. Conventional studies on terrorism look at suicide terrorism as one of the many tactics used by terrorists. The small number of studies on suicide terrorism tends to focus on the irrationality of the act of suicide from the perspective of the individual attacker. As a result, they focus on individual motives — either religious indoctrination (especially Islamic fundamentalism) or psychological predisposition that might drive individual suicide bombers. According to some right-wing analysts, suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed to coerce modern liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions. Their is as follows: Over the last two decades, suicide terrorism has been rising largely because terrorists have learned that it pays. Democracies are especially vulnerable to punishment. Suicide terrorism is strategic. Suicide terrorist attacks are not isolated or random acts by individual fanatics but, rather, occur in clusters as part of a larger campaign by an organised group to achieve a certain political end. Suicide terrorists attack democratic states and their strategic logic is to coerce modern democracies to make significant concessions to national self-determination.7

opponents

modernisation

argument

7 See Pape (2003) for an elaboration of this right-wing perspective.

The conventional wisdom on containing suicide terrorism has been to reduce terrorists’ confidence in their ability to carry out such attacks. Since neither offensive military actions nor alone are likely to do much good, the government is expected to invest significant resources in border defences and other means of homeland security. Once cops and soldiers were viewed as the oppressors; now, ironically, they are the heroes. Although moderate suicide terrorism has led to moderate the more ambitious suicide terrorist campaigns are not likely to achieve still greater gains and may fail completely. Suicide terrorism may marginally increase the punishment that is inflicted and so make target nations somewhat more likely to surrender modest goals, but it is unlikely to compel states to abandon interests related to the physical security or national wealth. National governments in fact have responded aggressively to suicide terrorist campaigns in recent years.8 States are aware that terrorists will run out of funds and rob banks, get into the drug trade, and even resort to extortionism. Some extremist groups will use violence against moderate factions who talk of political solutions. Nevertheless, terrorists pursue political goals and need public opinion and support.

concessions

concessions,

important ambitious

What is Suicide Terrorism? Suicide terrorists pursue coercion even at the expense of losing

support among terrorists’ own community. Maximising the number of the enemy killed alienates those in the target audience who might be sympathetic to the terrorists’ cause. While coercion is an element in all terrorism — which is why Gandhi calls it duragraha and liberals call it ‘criminal activity’ — coercion is the paramount objective of suicide terrorism. The suicide terrorist sacrifices himself or herself during the attack or fully expects to be sacrificed during the attack. The first-wave explanations of suicide terrorism were developed during the 1980s and seemed consistent with the data on terrorism of that period. In 1990s there was an escalation of both terrorist attacks and studies on terrorism. It is now realised that terrorism 8 The US government’s attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 suicide bomber attacks are a case in point.

need not always be the act of madmen or of political and religious sociopaths but of political agents who choose covert, violent means to achieve political goals, be they ethno-national, religious or ideological. The principal features of terrorism are discontent, ideology-feeding grievances, the capacity to organise, and political opportunity. The vast spread of suicide terrorism over the last twenty-five years suggests that there may not be a single profile of the suicide bomber. Until recently, the leading experts in psychological profiles of suicide terrorists characterised them as uneducated, unemployed, socially isolated, single men in their late teens and early twenties. Now we know that suicide terrorists can be college-educated or uneducated, married or single, men or women, socially isolated or integrated, from early teens to middle age. Although religious motives may matter, modern suicide terrorism is not limited to Islamic fundamentalism. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has been the world’s leader in suicide accounting for 75 of the 186 suicide terrorist attacks between 1980 and 2001. Even among Islamic suicide attacks, groups with secular orientations account for one third of attacks. Suicide terrorism is rarely a one-time event but often occurs in a series of suicide attacks. In suicide terrorism, the coercer is the weaker actor and the target the stronger. The heart of the strategy of suicide terrorism is the same as the coercive logic used by states when they employ air power or economic sanctions to punish an enemy — as in the case of the US attacks on Iraq — in order to cause mounting civilian costs to overwhelm the target state’s interest in the issue in dispute and thereby force it to concede the terrorists’ demands. What creates the coercive leverage is not so much actual damage as the expectation of future damage. Witness the new architecture of death — in malls, luxury hotels, airports — where people are trapped and cannot easily escape. The infamous fatwa signed by Osama Bin Laden and others against the United States, during the World Islamic Front in 1998, reads:

terrorism,

political

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque in Mecca from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.

Thus suicide terrorist organisations commonly cultivate ‘sacrificial myths’ that include elaborate sets of symbols and rituals to mark an individual attacker’s death as a contribution to the nation. There are material rewards to the family, and martyrdom to the terrorist. Even if many suicide attacks are irrational or fanatical, the groups that recruit and direct them are not. Viewed from the perspective of the terrorist organisation, suicide attacks are designed to achieve specific political purposes: to coerce a target government to change policy, to mobilise additional recruits and financial or both. Suicide terrorism is an extreme form of what Thomas Schelling (1966) calls the ‘rationality of irrationality’, in which an act that is irrational for individual attackers is meant to demonstrate credibility to a democratic audience that still greater attacks are sure to come.

leadership

support

An Alternative Reading of Terrorism To summarise: Terrorism in its purest form is self-help by organised civilians who covertly inflict mass violence on other civilians. It is civil disobedience taken to its outer limit. Laqueur (1996) defines terrorism as the use of covert violence by a group for political ends. His definition highlights four key attributes of terrorism, namely, that it is collective action and not individual, it is political and not criminal, it is covert and not conventional warfare, and it is violent and not non-violent. Incidentally, some or all of these attributes are at odds with the aims of Gandhian civil disobedience. In fact, the profile of terrorists provided in the previous sub-section has more in common with Indian nationalist freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh or with presentday Maoist insurgents, than with Gandhian satyagrahis. Apart from Laqueur, other analysts are willing to go even further in terms of providing a rationale for terrorist action. According to Black, violent individuals and violent collectivities simply do not exist. No individual or collectivity is violent in all settings at all times. Violence occurs when the social geometry of a conflict — the conflict structure — is violent. Structures kill and maim, not individuals or collectivities. Pure terrorism is social control and belongs to the same family as law, gossip, ostracism, ridicule (Black 2002). Shortly after 11 September 2001, many observers, including the American Sociological Association described the events of that

day as ‘criminal acts’. Once begun, terrorism and counterterrorism may exhibit feud-like elements of vengeance, each side answering aggression with aggression, a process that may extend over many years. Yet the exchange of killings normally is uneven, not the tit-fortat exchange of the classic blood feud. Terrorism also may be part of a rebellion, such as an uprising against a colonial regime. Although a longstanding grievance usually underlies terrorism, the grievance alone does not explain the violence. It also must have the right geometry — a particular location and direction in social space. Terrorism arises with a high degree of cultural distance, relational distance, inequality, and functional independence. Pure terrorism has an upward direction, against a social superior, and there is social control from below. Terrorism will not occur where conflicts are individual rather than collective, where conflicts are downward rather than upward. Today, we have mass killings of civilians across large distances in multi-dimensional space. Technology thus makes terrorism easier and deadlier in the short term, but in the long term, it destroys the social geometry on which terrorism depends. Physical distance loses its relevance. Technology globalises the possibility of terrorism and magnifies its destructive capability. Modern communications and transportation shrinks social spaces, increases global intimacy and cultural homogeneity. Terrorism begets counterterrorism. The law is scanty at the extremes of social distance — between friends and relatives, and between nations. Precisely because the law is to deal with terrorists, the affected states resort to and torture. The Indian state has been subjected to various kinds of terrorist attacks — in Kashmir, in the northeast, in predominantly tribal areas attacked by Naxalites. The latest in such attacks — this time by ‘outsiders’ — was in Mumbai, in November 2008. Why do people resort to violence — even to the extent of blowing themselves up — in order to achieve their end? It is easy to see the rationale for civil disobedience against the state; it is much harder to justify wilful violence which inflicts harm on others. Even according to the most liberal definition of the civil disobedient, the terrorist is a criminal because he voluntarily acts to hurt other people. But it is difficult to answer the question: Is violence wrong? This is true, particularly in the context of a nation-state which directs violence against its own people. However, it is not our intention

inadequate repression

here to rationalise any kind of violence, but to understand this

phenomenon, as well as its limits. The film, The Battle of Algiers, helps us understand why men and women are ready to kill others as well as themselves, at certain times, at certain locations.

Revisiting The Battle of Algiers Ironically enough, on the third day following the initial terror attack on Mumbai on 26 November 2008, UTV World Movies Gillo Portocorvo’s famous 1966 film, The Battle of Algiers. This film is notable for using mainly non-professional actors and depicting the ugly tactics of both the Algerian FLN (National Liberation Front) insurgency and the French colonial The FLN is shown as summarily executing criminals in the Kasbah, employing children to shoot French policemen in the back, and placing bombs in cafes, bars and airports in order to kill the maximum number of innocent men, women and children among the pied-noirs or French residents in Algeria. The French use torture and other forms of indiscriminate violence against the native Algerians. All in all, the viewer has some understanding of why terrorists kill indiscriminately and why states employ excessive force to quell rebellion. Predictably, The Battle of Algiers was banned in France for five years, and scenes of torture by the occupying French forces were cut from the original American and British releases. The film was seen as instigating violence against various states and as being a major inspiration for revolutionary groups of the time, like the Black Panthers, the Baader-Meinhof Group and the Provisional Irish Republican Army. In my opinion, there are two scenes in the film which aptly summarise what’s going on in major cities of the world, as a serious fallout of the ongoing geopolitics of the concerned region, whether it is Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Palestine, or Kashmir. During a press conference, a reporter asks a captured official of the FLN: ‘Isn’t it a dirty thing to use women’s baskets to carry bombs to kill innocent people?’ To which the official answers: ‘And you? Doesn’t it seem even dirtier to you to drop napalm bombs on defenceless villages with thousands of innocent victims? It would be a lot easier for us if we had planes. Give us your bombers, and we’ll give you our baskets.’

broadcast

counterinsurgency.

In a second press conference, another reporter questions Colonel Mathieu about the use of torture against FLN members. The French colonel responds: ‘I’ll ask you a question myself. Should France stay in Algeria? If the answer is still yes, you’ll have to accept all the necessary consequences.’ For even a minute, if we pondered over a similar question — ‘Should state X stay in region Y?’ — we are likely to look at what happens in cities vulnerable to terrorist attacks from a slightly different perspective from that presented by the major national television channels, which are, by and large, occupied in manufacturing for a strong, militarist and police state. The point of The Battle of Algiers is that the French may have won that particular battle for Algiers, but by 1962 they had lost the war of independence propelled by the Algerian people. The film, after all, is based on historical facts and events. Significantly, the Pentagon organised a screening of the film in 2003, close on the heels of US President George Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech on 1 May 2003, proclaiming the end of major hostilities in Iraq. Was this screening designed as a cautionary note or a manifestation of growing concern within the US defence department about the escalation of Iraqi insurgency, even while Bush naively trumpeted his ‘success’? Seeing the film some forty-odd years on, one does sense a chilling familiarity with the sentiments expressed on both sides of the ideological divide. Colonel Mathieu, in the defensive manner of the US forces in Iraq or the Indian forces in Kashmir or in Chhattisgarh, has this to say: ‘There are 80,000 Arabs in the Kasbah. Are they all against us? We know they’re not. In reality, it’s only a small minority that dominates with terror and violence. This minority is our adversary and we must isolate and destroy it.’ At another time, when accused by journalists of human rights violations in Algeria, Colonel Mathieu poignantly responds: ‘We aren’t madmen or sadists, gentlemen. Those who call us Fascists today forget the that many of us made to the Resistance. Those who call us Nazis don’t know that among us there are survivors of Dachau and Buchenwald. We are soldiers and our only duty is to win.’ If the Americans do not take into consideration the viewpoint of ordinary Iraqis, and if Indian forces in Kashmir or in Chhattisgarh have no understanding of the aspirations of the Kashmiri people, or of the tribals, it is time to ask the following question: Why are there

consent

contribution

young men and women who are willing to blow themselves up just in order to ensure that we stay out of their land? Strangely, hardly any journalist is concerned with finding out why people are putting their own lives on the line in the process of wreaking mass-scale destruction within a huge metropolis like New York or Madrid or Mumbai. The tragedy of what has happened in these cities is the tragedy of the redundancy of courage on both sides, that is, the nationalist defensive forces on the one hand, and the terror-striking liberation fighters on the other. To involve oneself in such violence is also to relinquish one’s identity, to assume a shared identity, to be camouflaged and integrated into an invisible, collective will. There is no individual hero or villain on either side. By guarding coastlines better, by screening certain kinds of people at airports, by effectively securing intelligence reports, by arming the defence forces to the teeth, and by jumping into action to protect citizens, a state is likely to win the battle against terrorism. But there is a bigger war out there which it is likely to miss, if it fails to take into account the perspective of the people in occupied lands. The FLN leader, Ben M’Hidi, says in the film: ‘Acts of violence don’t win wars; neither wars nor revolutions. Terrorism is useful as a start. But then, the people themselves must act. That’s the rationale behind this strike: to mobilise all Algerians, to assess our strength.’ Perhaps it is time that the armed forces, the bureaucracy, classes, the media, and the different terrorist groups in India watched The Battle of Algiers. Equally, it would help policy makersin Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere — understand that greater to reasonable forms of civil disobedience on the part of the state today is likely to thwart the threat of greater covert violence in the near future.

political

tolerance

Explorations History: Dalit II Fraternity of Part Idea the into

Much of academic thought has been trapped in a dualist framework of secularism versus religious belief, of rationality versus irrationality, of historicity versus circular time, or of religion versus non-religion. What the essays in this section hope to achieve is upsetting all these neat dichotomies and demonstrating, by means of argument, that secular ideas can co-exist with religious belief, that rationality is by no means the antonym of irrationality, and that historicity is the mark of those who inhabit the fringes of mainstream religious systems. The rise of the Hindu right has given rise to a Brahminical, monolithic view of Hinduism. The essays in this section provide an alternative location of lower caste (specifically, Dalit) pluralism. In this location, whether we speak of very different ideologies like M. K. Gandhi’s or Dalit liberation theology’s, the distinctions religion, politics and secularism are blurred. The first chapter in this section on bloody animal sacrifice and the distribution of protein in the community contrasts rather starkly with Gandhi’s vegetarian dietetic minimalism and his perception of meat eating and nourishment as contributing to the violence of existence. On the other hand, Gandhi’s penchant for nursing care, which included extending hospitality to the unexpected leper at his door, finds some resonance in Emmanuel Levinas’s notion of ‘infinite obligation’, which is discussed in the second chapter. The notion of infinite obligation may be applied to the Indian state and society towards Dalits. Nevertheless, it is important to pose the question: Is Levinas’s infinite obligation directed towards a Cartesian God or a Husserlian objective world comprising other egos? The concluding part of this chapter demonstrates the more progressive strand in Levinas’s thought as the latter, namely, our infinite obligation towards the dispossessed, exemplified as the face

between

Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship

(or faces) at our door. The leitmotif of this section is subversive action, particularly — and perhaps surprisingly — in the realm of But it is action that is compassionate and fraternal, taking as it does inspiration from lower-caste devotional forms like arul, infinite obligation, karuna, and so on. The sixth chapter, ‘Suffering and Social Salvation’, extends the ethical argument in the fifth chapter. It examines the manner in which the secular and the sacred are both undercut by a third ideal to do with ethics, by considering two twentieth-century texts on Buddhism, namely, Iyothee Thass’s Adi-vedam and Dr B. R. Ambedkar’s The Buddha and his Dhamma. Both these texts are concerned with the spiritual concerns of the Dalits. If Dr Ambedkar’s text has an ethical edge over the other, it is because it is also about the political future of the lower castes.

religion. mindfulness, homegrown

concerned

4

Dalit-Bahujan Rationality and the Persistence of Blood * Sacrif ce

The starting-point of this essay is a perspective on the tension in India today between upper-caste public rationality and Dalit (former untouchable) irrational violence. 1 I reproduce here the main argument on the issue.

Dalit Self and Brahminised 'Other' On 27 August 2003, the then chief minister of Tamil Nadu, J. Jayalalithaa, well known for her tacit support of upper-caste Hindu right politics, instructed state officials to prevent the sacrifice of animals and birds in temples as part of the ritual sacrifice by lower castes for propitiating the gods. This injunction followed the of 500 buffaloes in a village temple near the town of Tiruchi. Jayalalithaa’s reason was overtly non-religious, and a matter of enforcing animal rights. The ex-chief minister, in the name of honouring the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Cruelties to Animals Act, 1950, and its subsequent amendments, invoked the ban. The Act was the result of a demand on the part of Tamil Jains to abolish animal in temples. During the debates that preceded the passing of the Act, two principal points were made. One was that animal sacrifice has never been a part of ‘true’ Hinduism and so-called folk deities like Kali, Karuppan, Kaateri, and Maariamman (to whom such were offered) were actually demons. Furthermore, the priests in these shrines were not Brahmins, but drawn from the lower castes.

sacrifice

longstanding sacrifice sacrifices *

This is

a

modified version of the paper which I presented

at

the Dalit

Intellectual Collective conference in Wagamon, Kerala, on 30 July 2005. I am grateful to C. Lakshmanan, C. Aloysius, Gopal Guru, D. L. Sheth, and A. R. Venkatachalapathy for their valuable 1 I refer here to Pandian (2005).

comments on

the paper.

Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship

The other point was that animal sacrifice may have taken place in the past. However, in the context of secular modernity, it should be viewed as barbarism. Surprisingly, in 2003, the ideological leftists opposed Jayalalithaa’s move to ban animal sacrifice, claiming that her intervention in this regard was a step towards homogenising existing Hinduisms in the image of Brahminism, an agenda that is central to the Hindu right’s politics. One notes the incongruity of the situation where a Hindu right ex-chief minister espoused secular reason and the left secularists defended irrationality or religiosity. When Jayalalithaa finally scrapped the ban on animal sacrifice in February 2004, she did so in the name of honouring the sentiments of village folk. Recently, a correspondent from a weekly magazine reported, from the state of Tamil Nadu, about mainly Dalit practices — of men marrying dogs to atone for the sin of killing these animals, minor girls marrying frogs, while a few others are whipped to exorcise spirits, of babies being buried for a minute or two in the sand, of coconuts being broken on devotees’ heads, and of priests sucking blood out of a goat’s throat.2 What is striking about these incidents is that rationality, when viewed through the prism of caste, acquires a different dimension and lends itself to a different interpretation, for secular rationalists and even for secular-minded leftists. This is the reason why ‘Dalit rationality’ is such a complex issue, both philosophically and and why scholars often stumble over their own ideologies in this respect. The Tamil Nadu experience has had precedents in other Indian states. In April 2010, an incident of human sacrifice was reported in a Kali temple in West Bengal. While this incident was reported as a crime, there have been a number of reports of animal sacrifice in Kali temples throughout the state. State and public officials, in the case of the ban on ritual sacrifice, have made the sacrificial animal the common-sense limit of both rationalism and nationalism. They have thereby produced a civil nation around this limit, not simply by referring to the universal principles of rights that the practice violated, but by invoking emotional reactions about animal suffering caused by such practices as ritual sacrifice. The politics of emotional sentiment is

politically,

complex 2 Pushpa Iyengar, ‘The Dog Matrix’, Outlook, 3 May 2010.

Dalit-Bahujan Rationality and the Persistence of Blood Sacrifice

critical to the formation of a national-popular collective will, as every political analyst from Nicolo Machiavelli to Antonio Gramsci has informed us. As one analyst puts it: ‘The phrase, ‘such practices’ acts to expand the field of shame and cast a pall over unnamed subaltern practices across spaces in which no national-popular collective will would be possible and over entire continents, where such practices are imagined to occur.’ Nevertheless, according to the same analyst, this kind of moral posturing is not sustainable today, with liberalism’s re-evaluation of the principle of pluralism: ‘Liberal democratic societies are now haunted by the spectre of mistaken intolerance. They now know that in time their deepest moral impulses may be exposed to be historically contingent, mere prejudices masquerading as universal principles’ (Povinelli 1998: 577–78). In the present critique of modernity, the inevitable questions are: On what grounds, according to whom, is a practice a moral or a national limit of tolerance? And whose nation are we talking about? The contradictory demands the law places on indigenous, marginal, subaltern, Dalit subjects, namely, that such persons re-orient their sensual, emotional and corporeal identities towards the nation’s ideal image of itself as worthy of reverence and reconciliation, is a little short of preposterous, against the backdrop of present-day ideology. This situation is not confined to India. The post Second World War optimism in ‘progressive’ values like democracy and secularism was belied — in progressive as well as reactionary ways — by events taking place in different states and civil societies all over the world. In the 1970s, USA saw the rise of the Christian right, and Iran and later Nicaragua heralded a revolutionary form of activism in the form of Shi’ite Islam and Christian liberation theology, respectively. Against the secularist dogma of the wall of separation between politics and religion, religious, and even some non-religious, liberals and conservatives started conceding that religious values could have a place in the political process. (But equally, in a seemingly, paradoxical, parallel movement, the divisiveness among religious groups, along with the process of secularisation, has lead to growing disenchantment with the traditional, religious world view.)3

multicultural

political

religious

3 Billings and Scott (1994) discuss these issues in some detail in ‘Religion and Political Legitimation’.

In all these cases of religious activism, is religion being secularised or is politics being ‘sacralised’? According to many scholars of radical non-reason, to better understand popular movements, we must bridge the disciplinary division between politics and religion, and conceptualise political theology as a cultural field within which power relations are necessarily constricted. Apart from the existing chaotic developments in the relationship between religion and politics, there has been the added complication of caste as a social category in India. For many postmodernists, the Dalit self is necessarily defined in radical alterity to its Brahminised Other. And inevitably, there have been changes in perceptions regarding Dalit rationality over the years. Early colonial studies on Dalits that they practised fewer and briefer Hindu ritual actions than higher castes, and that most Dalits were inclined towards shamanism and possession by spirits. However, later liberal scholars have been at pains to prove that Dalits or ‘Harijans’ (sic) are as deeply religious as Brahmins.4

maintained

Ritual versus Bhakti Religious expression, however, differs from caste to caste. Whereas most lower-caste devotees stress erotic love in their poetic worship of their godhead, the Brahmin priest’s relationship to the deity is one of wifely devotion. Indeed, Brahmin priests in the Meenakshi temple at Madurai must have living wives, because in order to worship the deities they must have access to Shakti or female energy through legitimate sexual intercourse. It is important to note that the Brahmin is not always viewed as an epitome of piety by the lower castes. By pitting the lower caste bhakti or devotional worship against Brahminical ritual, the lower castes demonstrate the truth of Tamil religiosity as against Brahmin or Sanskritised religious ethos. Thus for the lower castes, many of whom are steeped in the bhakti or devotional spirit, religious faith assumes a different meaning from that espoused by the priestly castes. As against the Brahmin’s with his own sin and merit (karma), the lower castes’ aim is anbu, love for one’s own people, and an even higher goal is ‘arul’,

preoccupation 4 See Moffat (1979). I thank Dr C. Lakshmanan of the Madras Institute of Development Studies for pointing out to me that the term ‘Dalit Hindu’ is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.

grace or love for others. In one manifestation of bhakti or devotion, the god Siva himself is the embodiment of arul (Maloney 1975). In the old Tamil Sangam literature, there are references to the worship of Murugan (the love-child of Siva and Parvati) in the cities by early Tamil chieftains, especially among the Pandyas of the Madurai region. Hills are often associated with the worship of Murugan, so it is likely that the earliest worshippers of this deity were huntergatherers. Murugan is the god of the kurinchi people who abide in the hills (Clothey 1972). In the twentieth century, there has been a resurgence of Murugan worship, and the devotees are seen as the repository of Tamil culture and devotion. On occasion, a few Brahmins acknowledge the deep piety of the lower castes. As one Brahmin woman respondent put it, only lower caste Sudras have the courage to wear alaku (ritual piercings with sharp metal objects) and for ti-midi (fire-walking) (Kapadia 1996: 436–37). In fact, the cult of possession is more popular among lower castes than among Brahmins. Referring to the cult of possession (puddicukiraddu or ‘being caught by the goddess’), many lower caste respondents claim that it is their true feeling for the divinity that causes the goddess to come to them readily. All villagers, irrespective of caste, view possession as a good sign, indicating the deity’s bestowal of grace on the devotee. After all, possession indicates the frenzied transformation of the human into the divine. And it is the devotion exhibited by the audience that turns the experience of into a matter of religious fervour. Not surprisingly, there is a significant correlation between class and institutional possession (known as sami-adi ). The principal worship in villages is conducted by Sudra landlords. That is to say, higher deities, like Aiyanar or Siva, are incarnated in wealthier men; lower deities, like Karuppusamy, are manifested among less wealthy men. The so-called lower deities in a Tamil village are the guardian deities of goddesses like Maariamman and Kaaliamman. These include the warrior god, Maduraiveeran, the cobra god, Nagappasami, and Aiyanar’s servant, Karuppusamy. These minor deities cannot be ignored even by wealthy men, for it is believed that one cannot have access to the higher deities without flattering the minor deities first. The analogy is very similar to that of a government office. One cannot hope to be in the presence of a high functionary, without greasing the palms of the lower-level clerks that surround him (ibid.).

possession economic

Significantly, there are very few sami-adis among the Dalit groups. However, there is no ‘objective’ reality of an emotional state, whether it concerns the one who is possessed or one who is witnessing the possession. What was uplifting then — during the time of — is often sneered at later as a fraud, particularly among Dalit groups. Among these, there is no gender barrier as far as possession is concerned, for many Dalit women are often possessed by the deity. Possession usually takes place during the February–March (Masi) sacred-pot (karagam) festival. Unlike north India, in Tamil Nadu, lower castes are served not by Brahmin priests but by low-caste diviners (mantiravadi) and udukkaidrum beaters. Chris Fuller argues that it is not high-caste religion, but lower-caste religion, that validates hierarchical values (Fuller 1988). According to his reasoning, for the exorcists and victims of spirit possession, the whole procedure must be authenticated by the Brahmin’s authority. Not all scholars agree on the inevitability of the dyad, Brahmin versus non-Brahmin. For some, it is purity of heart, not purity of caste, which is valued among non-Brahmins. During the Sabarimala pilgrimage in south India, devotees humbly carry their bundles on their heads, and fall at each other’s feet, irrespective of the caste to which they belong. These practices, then, constitute an excellent example of pilgrims placing purity of heart above purity of caste. In short, it is much easier, in modern Tamil Nadu, to show a devotional (Bhakti) spirit and ‘reject caste’ precisely because, within ritual contexts, caste purity is becoming decreasingly important. But, like everywhere else in the country, caste retains its political importance in the state of Tamil Nadu (Kapadia 1996).

possession

Perfect and Imperfect Indians Many Brahmins point out that lower caste behaviour, on religious occasions, is dangerously close to anarchy. They believe that the lower castes have little self-control, and completely abandon all sense of protocol. Opinion is divided on whether or not this so-called of control was in times past the behaviour of Brahmins, who now wish to distinguish themselves from non-Brahmins. As a leading scholar of the Dravidian movement points out, in the tradition-as-modern discourse of the Brahmin, the upper castes casually get encoded as ‘pious and religious people’, while the lower castes are encoded as ‘people living on rotten fish, flesh, garlic etc.’.

abandonment

We find here a confirmation of caste-based rituals as rational and predicated on hygiene. Needless to add, the Brahminical rituals alone are viewed as being modern. What is more, the caste system is perceived as being scientific and based on a rational division of labour. Caste, then, is similar to any Western institution — universal and modern (Pandian 2007: 37–38). Consider the writings of the Tamil Brahmin, G. Subramania Iyer (1855–1916), who launched the first edition of the national daily, The Hindu, with five other modern, Indian nationalist Brahmins, on 20 September 1878. His most important nationalist text is Arya Jana Ikiyam Allathu Congress Mahasabhai (Unity of the Aryan People or the Congress Party). M. S. S. Pandian has this to say about Iyer: The Hinduism of the Indians elaborated by (G. Subramania) Iyer is undoubtedly the Hinduism of the Brahmins as redefined by Orientalist discourse. Vedas as truth, Sanskrit as deva basha, canonized religious texts such as the Ramayanam, Mahabharatam, Bhagavatam, Dharma Sastras and Smritis, as well as festivals Sivarathiri, Devi Puja, and Gokulashtami have an emblematic presence in Brahminical Hinduism.

As one moves down the caste hierarchy of the Hindus, all these texts and festivals disappear and what one has is a distinctly different domain of religiosities. Thus what we have in Iyer is the reinscription of Brahminical Hinduism as the Hinduism and as the sign of Indianness. The implications of this move are quite obvious: Iyer … renders lowercaste Hindus and adherents of other religions imperfect as Indians.

(Pandian 2007: 55) From this Brahminical viewpoint — and this includes the Gandhian ideology — blood sacrifice is evil. But the lower-caste members in villages demur. According to them, if one kills, and one hundred eat, that is not a sin. Villagers benefit from animal sacrifice both spiritually and nutritionally, since about the only time many of them taste meat is at the family feasts after a festival when there is sacrifice. In spiritual terms, the cut and cooked condition of the animal represents the final condition of the body in death, as it were.

The Supremacy of the Mother Goddess It is time to consider the context in which blood sacrifices are conducted by villagers. Perhaps the most commonly propitiated Mother in west India is Sitala, often called Devi, ‘the goddess’; in

the south of India, it is Maariamman. That Maariamman was quite well established as a mother goddess in south India by the fifteenth century, if not earlier, cannot be doubted. The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, and his men are believed to have offered prayers in her temple in Calicut in 1499 or so, mistakenly believing the goddess to be the Holy Virgin Mary. Almost every village has its own special guardian Mother, called Mata or Amba, or in the south of India, Amman. Whatever her name, her story, her physical representation, or the details of her worship, the goddess is the tutelary deity of most Indian villages. The presence of the goddess inaugurates the founding of the village and shrine under the communal tree. Generally there is also a male guardian deity, who protects, like the female, from all adverse and demoniacal influences. The popular male god, particularly in north and west India, is Ganesha, and in the south of India, it is Aiyanar, who rides round the fields every night on horseback, and has clay horses round his shrine. But the Mother is the favourite object of adoration; she is more easily propitiated by prayer, flattery and offerings, more ready to defend from evil, more dangerously spiteful and prone to inflict diseases if offended by neglect. The Mothers in some places in southern India are themselves demons; for example, Pidari, Kateri and Kulumandi. Blood is their food, and if not supplied with blood they take the life of human beings. It must be stated that the goddess is a dangerously ambivalent deity — worshipped by castes impure enough to conduct animal sacrifice (Brubaker 1979). (I)n times of crisis, when the distinctive presence and personality and power of the goddess are stunningly manifested, these same select servants serve by becoming possessed by her, shedding blood before her, spewing obscenities upon the community, wrapping themselves in animal appetites of demons while fending them off — functioning at the crucial points in an extraordinary recycling of village life and serving to

facilitate its torrential rejuvenation. (ibid.: 151). In animal sacrificial sites, the presiding priests are not Brahmins, but belong to lower castes like barbers and washermen. In fact, potters, barbers, washermen, and Dalits or untouchables are the primary ritual specialists during goddess festivals, particularly during the time of famine, flood, fire, attack by wild beasts, diseases, epidemics.

Potters, creating goddesses’ images, carry them on their head and immerse them in water. They are priests in untouchables’ shrines, where animal sacrifices and funeral rites are conducted. Washermen, for their part, are messengers of good news like the first or childbirth. Barbers negotiate marriages; they double as and their women work as midwives. Dalit leather workers are drummers during funerals, while their women are integrated into the devadasi (temple courtesan) tradition. It is hard to miss the resemblance between the human head and the coconut. Almost in every auspicious Hindu event, coconuts are slashed, pumpkins are broken, and limes are crushed to pulp. There seems to be a difference between vegetarian naiveidya, which the offering of cooked food to the deity, and vegetarian bali or sacrificial offering, in the form of lime and pumpkin — these are found in abundance around the Badrakali in the Madurai temple, for example (Bolle 1983). Does this mean that the Brahmin priest, who is vegetarian today, used to indulge in blood sacrifice in earlier times? Is the lime or coconut or pumpkin the vegetarian substitute for the animal head, which continues to be sacrificed in many non-Brahmin temples? Indeed, the Brahmin versus non-Brahmin discourse is poignantly represented in the myth of the transposed heads. The story goes that the Brahmin sage Jamadagni’s wife, Renuka, was a chaste and good woman. Such was the power of her chastity that she could fashion a pot with raw clay on the river bank and carry water back home in it. One day, while fashioning the pot, she saw some handsome gods passing by in the sky above and was struck by their beauty. Because of her ‘unchaste’ thoughts, she was unable to complete the pot, and therefore forced to return home without water. Troubled by her misdemeanour, her husband, Jamadagni, flew into a rage and commanded their son, Parasurama, to cut off his mother’s head. Parasurama complied with the order immediately, even while his mother clutched on to her untouchable maid in terror. The result was that both the mother and the Dalit maid were beheaded. Pleased with his obedience, Jamadagni asked Parasurama to ask for a boon. The boy asked for his mother to be brought to life. Jamadagni agreed to his son’s request and asked him to re-join Renuka’s head and body. In his hurry to do so, the boy mistakenly joined the mother’s head to the maid’s body. Brought to life, Renuka shuddered violently as her Brahminical head was joined to an untouchable body, and she

menstruation surgeons

comprises

was covered in smallpox pustules, and became known as the goddess Maariamman, ‘the Devi who was changed’. Maariamman presides over smallpox, and may prevent smallpox, cause smallpox, or be herself smallpox. Hence the bodies of those who die of smallpox are not burned but buried, lest in burning the corpse the crime of burning the very essence of the goddess herself should be (Younger 1980). In another sense, this myth illustrates the reconciliation of the varnas or castes. In many parts of the Tamil country where Brahmin temple rituals flourish along with lower-caste blood sacrifices, there is co-existence of activities like ‘wild’ non-Brahmin hookswinging and the ‘sedate’ Brahminical temple procession. In short, Brahmins and non-Brahmins tend to tolerate each other’s rites. But basically, both adhere to Hindu religious principles and caste hierarchy in different ways. Louis Dumont, who is well known for expounding on the duality of the Renouncer figure and the casteembedded individual in Hindu society, has referred to oppositional deities — one upper vegetarian and the other lower meat-eatingin south Indian villages. Sometimes, the same deity can be both vegetarian and meat-eating. In the Coorg region, for instance, the Brahmin priest shuts the temple door and retreats, after offering vegetarian naiveidya; then animal sacrifice takes place in the conducted by the lower-caste priest. In the Madurai large temple, the goddess Meenakshi is believed to be married to Sundaresan. The Brahmin priests, who preside over the rituals in the large temple, never fail to observe six daily (puja) at specific times. These are organised into the fourfold structure of unction (abisekam), decoration (alankaram), foodoffering (naiveidya) and lamp-showing (diparatanai) (Good 2000). There is, however, a ritual marriage that takes place in another venue between Sundaresan and a meat-eating folk deity, Celliamman, and this marriage is presided over by low-caste priests. Here, the rituals are very different from the sanitised procedures of the main temple. In many cases, the killing is so elaborate that it seems to suggest that the act of killing — usually by young adult males — is indeed central to the sacrifice, which is replete with like castration. There is a sense of awe that surrounds the blood sacrifice, because the group in question dares to approach the presence of a deity. By means of sacrifice, the group wishes to renew itself. The symbolism is clear-cut: destruction and death constitute

perpetrated

courtyard,

services

symbolism,

the means to the revival of life. Sacrifice, in this context, does not imply renunciation, but reciprocity and fraternity. The community makes a pact with the deity: we give you a body; you give us your your grace. In truth, divine grace or arul may be bestowed upon the community or withheld. And this is what renders the scene so primordial. Consider the following graphic description of blood sacrifice to a goddess:

protection, sacrificial

The drinking of the victim’s blood is a common theme in the village cults. Not infrequently, the pujari, possessed by the goddess, actually does the drinking, thereby intensifying the drama of the cult considerably. … The ceremony ends with the sacrifice of four or five pigs. A little of their blood is collected in new earthen pots, newly brought from the potter’s house, and is placed inside the shrine. When the crowd has

left, the priests mix this blood with boiled rice and throw the mixture in the four directions. … There are, however, other striking features in the sacrifices that are equally dramatic … such as the sprinkling of water and other substances on the victim, the presentation of the victim’s head to the deity, and, most mysterious perhaps, … the widespread custom of placing a foreleg (the right foreleg) crosswise in the victim’s mouth.

(Bolle 1983: 43–44) It is interesting to note that the sacrificial animal must be perfect before it is worthy to be offered to the deity. In many cases, it is bought or traded in the market. However, on reaching the sacrificial site, the animal is converted from a market to a ritual object. Animal sacrifice may be conducted for the common good of the villagers; it may also provide protein to the whole village. However, even this functional phenomenon is tainted by the rules of caste hierarchy. S. V. Rajadurai informs us how this is so: The village where I was born, there is a famous Kali temple. Every year, during the Amman festival, caste Hindu men sacrificed goats; women sacrificed fowls and offered pongal. The next day, the parayars offered buffaloes; and on the last day, kedambars who used to carry night soil, sacrificed pigs. For each caste, a different animal; and a convention of

who would sacrifice first and who would last. 5

5 Kida Vettu, ‘Villanku Paathukappum Manitha Urimaikalum’, Vallinam, August 2003–January 2004, p. 106.

Why Blood Sacrifice? Interestingly, some Tamil Catholic communities — often comprising Dalits — offer blood sacrifice to Catholic saints like Saint James and Saint Anthony. Saint James is sometimes referred to as Aiyanar’s brother. Indeed, some Biblical scholars have claimed that, prior to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, it must have been a fairly common practice to elevate a man to the status of a god and then sacrifice him for the good of the community. The sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb of God, is re-enacted in the Catholic Mass. Most Protestant do not indulge in sacrificial rites. However, it would be wrong to rush to judgement and proclaim that these Tamil Catholic communities consistently substitute all the Catholic saints for Hindu gods. In fact, the Virgin Mary has only a benevolent side and is above all these so-called heathen practices. There is no record of blood sacrifice to her as to lesser saints like Saint James and Saint Anthony. The term cattan (Satan) is often used by Catholic priests to include Hindu deities, usually in the context of exorcisms. Nevertheless, few Christian villagers would dare to constantly demonise Hindu deities. The truth is that many inhabit a dual moral world, and have to constantly reconcile the demands of a universal Christian faith with the continuing demands of caste, kinship and management of impurity or misfortune. Scholars often refer to two contrasting ritual contexts. For the more orthodox Catholics, the Christian saints are conceptualised in essentialist terms, representing absolute truth claims of the faith, while Hindu deities are perceived as being illusory and demonic. But for most Catholic villagers, Catholic saints and village Hindu deities exist as unequal but powers. In fact, the indigenous moral spaces of the ‘village’ represent the hierarchical social world, while the ‘forest’ represents the wilderness. The saints and the deities inhabit both spaces (Mosse 1994). One analyst puts it this way: ‘Life itself has this dual character — processes of dependable regularity mixed with events of unforeseeable crisis. This duality is emphasised and polarised in the symbolism of village territory: an ordinary sacred realm is set apart from a perilous, demon-infested wilderness’ (Brubaker 1979: 152). Why do people continue to indulge in blood sacrifice? Statistically speaking, the number of goats sacrificed in the Kolkata Kalighat temple today matches that of 150 years ago (Samanta 1994). Equally popular is the animal sacrificial ritual at the Candi temple in Cuttack, Orissa state.

communities

complementary

It could be because the sacrificator (or sacrificer) is guilty of some sin of pollution and the sacrificial act cleanses him of this stain. Or it could be a pact with the gods to keep the village free of famine, flood or pestilence. The Mimamsa school of philosophy has a more profound, and a less materialist, explanation: through the act of sacrifice the sacrificator learns to sublimate his desire for an object into desire for Logos itself. Considering the violent nature of the animal sacrifice to this day, it is perhaps important to look for a psychological explanation of this phenomenon. After all, human beings are forced into perpetual with one another. Each act of violence brings on another, and another. Rene Girard (1979) refers to this seemingly endless cycle of violence and counter violence as ‘reciprocal violence’. Girard claims that the only way this cycle can be halted is by the process of sacrifice. In other words, the sins of a society are pinned on a single individual — a scapegoat — who must be sacrificed in order to restore peace in society. It scarcely matters if the scapegoat is guilty or innocent. All that matters is that the society members consider him or her guilty. Once the scapegoat is sacrificed, order, harmony and difference are restored. The sacrificed scapegoat carries away the sins of society. Girard also gives a vivid account of why violence erupts in by pinning his reasoning on ‘mimetic desire’. Mimetic desire can lead to violence if the difference between the subject and the mediator is lost or dissolved. When the subject and the mediator both desire the same object, violence may erupt. This explanation of violence could help us understand why something must be in order to restore harmony in society. This is particularly relevant to communities that have known solidarity in the past, and are now coping with alienation in modern societies. Georges Bataille eloquently describes the idea of sacrifice in terms of dissolving the ego in the Absolute: ‘Everything has given me to understand that I alone mattered. But death warns me that this is a lie. For I count for nothing: it is only the world which matters’ (Bataille and Michelson 1986: 66). Blood sacrifice is one way of resisting or denying alienation. By denying alienability, sacrifice negates a fundamental premise of possessive individualism. Rather than individuate people and mediate their association through things, sacrifice de-individuates, by annihilating the mediating object, and restoring a spirit of fraternity in the group.

confrontation

societies, sacrificed

As we saw in Chapter 2 , collective sacrifice, even in the case of ecological decision making, is preferable to individual sacrifice. The new secularism should learn to recognise the language of religion as valid, and acknowledge the community as a legitimate site of politics. It is cynically proposed by some analysts that since most human beings are swayed by irrational motives embodied in, say, ritual sacrifice or patriotism, it is likely that the nation will replace the community as the main political site, and bloody wars will take the place of blood sacrifice. Even if we do not subscribe to the explanation that human and animal sacrifice took place earlier in the context of population pressure and the battle for scarce resources, we are inclined to concede that some sort of sacrifice is believed by many to be owed to the gods, ancient or modern. is a way of communication with the gods, a form of exchange of goods — dead bodies in return for protection, guardianship and fraternity. It is to be hoped that our collective sacrifice will be now confined to preserve our planet.

functionalist Sacrifice

5 Caste and the Issue of Radical Alterity The aim of this essay is to argue that critics of the modern state are justified in exposing its inability to completely respect ‘Otherness’. However, the use of the term ‘radical alterity’ or ‘absolute Otherness’ by certain analysts to describe the ‘location’ of Dalit consciousness in society is likely to run into logical and philosophical incoherence, by invoking a somewhat obscurantist flavour. Even in a political sense, such a definition tends to obfuscate the forward-looking, purpose of Dalit movements today. From this perspective, this essay attempts to delineate some progressive, even secularised, strands in the spiritual systems of oppressed groups.

emancipatory The Modernist and Postmodernist Strands of Dalit Rationality

The debate over the critique of modernity, has now transformed itself into a political question: Has the reforming impulse of modernity exhausted itself? Modernity is, above all, a process of secularisation, the slow transition from a received order, say, of caste hierarchy, to a produced order, say, of egalitarian principles. It is also the transition from a theological state to a secular, democratic state. Starting from itself, as it were, modern society has to create its own normative codes. And precisely because it is self-determined, this produced order can no longer claim any guarantee whatsoever, at least of a permanent kind. The radical alterity of divine foundation — say, in the form of ritual animal sacrifice of a scapegoat — in earlier times, evaded social conflicts by providing an unquestioned or unquestionable ‘outside’ reference point. That is not the case with secular modernity. With no transcendental or ontological escape clause, modern is inexorably self-referential. There is no ‘otherworldly’ or divine or ritualistic reference point, like God the Creator, or Maariamman,

society

Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship

or Aiyanar, for its existence. This explains modern society’s attempts to give itself identity, as well as its defensive reaction to any threat to its self-image. Modern politics arises alongside this radical auto-referentiality. Secularisation transfers to politics the integrating function that religion previously fulfilled. If religion constituted the last instance on which all the manifestations of the given order were based, politics is now accorded a privileged position in the production of the modern social order. The problem arises when secularism itself is projected or perceived as an overarching new ‘religion’. The existing social order in modernity remains the subject of dispute. Not only are the rights of particular groups or in question in modernity, but also the meaning and legitimacy of the new produced order itself is permanently questioned. Perhaps everyone in modernity subscribes to the principle of equality. the political question ‘equality of what?’ persists in every modern context. The centrality of politics in modernity is seen to cause two or, if you like, contradictions. Firstly, the diversity of actually existing peoples, or the heterogeneity of society, seems to contradict the homogeneity that the concept of the rule of the people — or democracy — presupposes. In the previous chapter we saw how homogeneity can produce all manner of anxieties within communities, which start looking for a scapegoat that can be Secondly, inasmuch as politics is only a partial aspect of life, it cannot be seen to represent life in its entirety. The reconciliation of the good, the true and the beautiful, in the classical Kantian sense of rationality or reason, appears as an illusion of modernity. The with this illusion is, in effect, postmodernity. In some instances, postmodernity is against modernisation, not against and the postmodern disenchantment is capable of renewing the reforming impulse of modernity. 1 One strand of this ‘reforming impulse’ is witnessed in the problematisation of rationality in general, and of Dalit rationality in particular. It comes closest to the concept of what I call ‘a pluralistic modernity’, and it is a position that I endorse. It also helps us see why progressive forms of like liberation theology, in Latin America and in Ali Shariati’s vision of Iran, can be an integral part of a pluralistic, modern, secular

incessant

widespread individuals Nevertheless,

problems

sociocultural sacrificed. disenchantment modernity,

religion, 1 See, for more light on the subject, Lechner (1993).

Caste and the Issue of Radical Alterity

society, despite the presence of oppressive state machinery. Most significantly, the problematisation of rationality makes modern secular societies accountable to and responsible for different groups. In recent years, this problematisation has acquired the status of a political discourse in its own right, with all the attendant complications.2 The most elementary concept underpinning this discourse is that the vision a large part of the marginalised or dispossessed have of the world is a religious one, and often takes the form of theology. This discourse also comprises modern emancipatory notions like exteriority, utopia and praxis. Community leaders among the marginalised are often both spiritual ministers and political organisers. Whether it is Dalit Christianity or Dalit Buddhism, there are some common subversive features in each of these practices. In every context of Dalit self-expression, the poor and the marginalised are able to ‘poach’ and ‘pilfer’ in ingenious ways the discourse of the dominant classes and to deploy it as a novel and powerful source of religious signification. It is important to note that self-interest (as in individual salvation) is not the only kind of interest at play in what is broadly called ‘Dalit self-expression’. There is also a powerful urge towards concern with community, collective identity, and the dream of an alternative, less exploitative, more just, spiritual and social order (Urban 2001). In fact, this idea of fraternity finds resonance in ideas discussed in the following chapter, namely, Iyothee Thass’s jeevankarunya and B. R. Ambedkar’s ‘mindfulness’. The ‘marginal’, then, emerges in this discourse as the condition of possibility of all social and cultural existence. This new ethics of marginality is necessarily decentred and plural, and constitutes the basis for a new Nietzschean freedom from moral injunction.3 Just as some Dalits and other backward castes today adopt the ritual of a radical anti-Brahminism, say, in the form of animal in temples, Dalit Christians and Buddhists also buck the trend in mainstream religious practice in various ways. The need to vindicate

sociocultural

liberation

practices sacrifice

2 Sathiyanathan Clarke, Eleanor Zelliot, James Massey, to name but a few scholars, have written extensively on this subject in the last decade or so.

3 The late nineteenth-century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, famously referred to the slavish mentality of citizens who acquiesced to the rules of democratic morality. The marginalised, who have nothing further to lose, could therefore be freed from these rules.

God for allowing the existence of suffering among the dispossessed and to reconcile godly omnipotence with human impotence — this has been the problem of theodicy in all mainstream salvation which look for solutions in doctrines like predestination, dualism and karma. According to some ‘mainstream’ religious the world, such as it is, is the product of human evil and error, and, in the face of its essential sinfulness, humanity has little recourse other than submission to divine power and authority. Many Dalit theorists would have a different take on salvation. Dalit Christian theology, for its part, began by accepting Marxian analytical tools. Suffering and pain — comprising a wounded psyche — constitute a major part of Dalit Christian theology. Western feminist theologian Sharon Welch points out, in another context related to subaltern religious studies, that without a edge, liberation theology’s affirmations of emancipation and justice lose their ‘groundedness’ in concrete situations. 4 Of the two strains of Christianity, one is the theology centred on the image of the crucifixion, which rejects the body, mystifies violence, and valorises abstraction. The other is the minority Christian viewpoint — a utopian view that valorises the body and community in light of the promise of resurrection. The latter is the sensual and corporeal view of Christianity and finds a resonance in Dalit liberation theology. In Dalit liberation theology, caste, rather than class, is seen as the sole source of suffering. Here, the Christian God, the Father, is a Dalit God, and Jesus, the Saviour Son, is also a Dalit.

religions, perspectives,

suspicious

B. R. Ambedkar and Buddhism In a more general sense, the deity of liberation theology is a figure that has given up absolute power in a sequence of historical covenants with humanity.5 In the first covenant, God relinquishes arbitrary authority and becomes a partner with humanity. In giving up domination, God eliminates the law, and ceases to impose divine will on humans. With the second, the human being becomes sovereign, and God’s will and the liberation of humanity coincide.

4 Quoted in Moylan (1991: 59–60). 5 What follows is a summary of Franz J. Hinkelammert’s argument in The Ideological Weapons of Death: A Theological Critique of Capitalism; see

Hinkelammert (1986).

The secularised God remains as the signifier of an Otherness that empowered humanity to reach beyond its own limits — that is, the hoped-for achievement beyond the limits of necessity. Indeed, the Indian Christian Dalit community largely accepts the solution posited by the modernist Dalit leader, B. R. Ambedkar, of separating themselves from the Hindu caste system. They reject the Hindu cyclical world view and endorse a historical — or what I would call ‘secularised’ — perspective of life. Dr Ambedkar has exercised considerable influence on all Dalit communities. In the south and west of India, many Dalits have adopted the spiritual ideology of ‘pre-Aryanism’, namely, Buddhism (see Chapter 6 ). In western India, there have been mass conversions of Dalits to Buddhism since 1956. To a great extent, conversion to Buddhism has meant psychological liberation to many Dalits. Presently, Dalits seem to be moving towards a more socially-engaged Buddhism. In contrast, in north India, it would seem that Dalit has taken a backseat and state policies are more or less the starting point of the whole process of political subversion.6 Dalit Buddhism can be considered a popular religion not because it is less rational or ethical than doctrinal religions — indeed, it may be even more so, and some have even called it non-religion — but because it has been constituted in the context of popular struggle. Dalit Buddhism, which is one form of liberation theology, defines its adherents in opposition to the dominant culture, and provides them with a new identity. For Dr Ambedkar, Buddhist dhukka (sorrow or anguish) is related to exploitation and poverty. Like other forms of liberation theology, Dr Ambedkar’s Buddhism indicts the powerful and the privileged for the inequality and sufferings of society, views the poor as the victims of exploitation, and calls for the elimination of suffering through social action. For liberation theologists the world over, sin, suffering, salvation, are all defined in political terms. As social and spiritual goals coincide, the poor see salvation as the elimination of political and economic suffering through collective action against the structures of power. Inherent to this perspective is the acknowledgement of the necessity of constructive violence.7

theology

6 This is Christophe Jaffrelot’s observation with respect to Dalits in

states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar; see Jaffrelot (2000). 7 For a comprehensive analysis of the subject of Dalit Buddhism, see Contursi (1993). The necessity of ‘constructive violence’ finds resonance in Chapter 3.

As one well-known scholar points out, liberation theology is more a symbolic banner than a rigorous corpus of ideas (Levine 1990). There are several points to be kept in mind while discussing theology — and these are admittedly controversial. First, issues raised by liberation theology do not constitute the exclusive domain of intellectuals. Even unlettered non-intellectuals can take an active part in liberation theology. Second, liberation theology is not a movement in the narrow sense of the term. It is part of a larger that has spurred churches in different faiths to press for new issues and break long-standing ties with power and privilege. Third, the assumption that politics and religion are separate must be set aside. Liberation theology shows us that the two can be mutually reconciled. Fourth, the historical dimension is essential. That is to say, history involves not only documenting past events, but also understanding that change is a constant in human life. Thus theology necessarily views the state as being dominating and totalitarian. Furthermore, liberation theologists are likely to be deeply critical of religious fundamentalists who refuse pluralism and try to fix or freeze religious texts in a homogenous mould.

liberation process

liberation Liberation Theology Versus Existential Theology It is important to note that liberation theology is not the only

subversive trend in religion, especially in the Christian faith. What is more, these different radical trends have often been at loggerheads with one another. Within the Church itself, Latin American have moved towards the liberation paradigm through their critique of the existential theology of post-war Europe and the pastoral practices of the New Christendom. Why is this critique of existential theology relevant and necessary, as far as theologians from the Third World are concerned? In order to answer this question, it is important to understand the nature of existential theology. Existential theology — informed by the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and HansGeorg Gadamer — extended the trajectory that the earlier liberal theology had been following since the end of the nineteenth century, as it moved from an Other-worldly, God-centred perspective to a human-centred one. Progressive theologians in France legitimised Marxism, while in Germany they came under the influence of the Frankfurt School. Drawing on Jurgen Habermas, they described the

theologians

role of the Church in actively involving itself in this process through a fresh assessment of its place in the secular public sphere. This Christian version of liberal humanism allowed theologians to take seriously the realm of everyday life in the secular world and to the traditional split between the supernatural and the natural, between the religious and the secular. In particular, the Third World liberation theologists saw thatdespite the privileging of human existence in this world — theology did not speak directly to Third World people. For one thing, existential theology is unmarked by class, race or gender, and unaffected by any concrete social interests or ideological For another, this older progressive theology is Eurocentric, too abstract, favours individual rights and privileges social (Moylan 1991). In contrast, the new liberation theology is with the interests of the marginalised and subaltern groups, especially in the developing world; it is rooted in practice, favours community spirit and privileges democratisation of society. In fact, at its best, liberation theology is more extensively political and than existential theology. The basic principle that guides liberation theology in all its namely, Latin American, African, Asian, is that of marginality. Marginality is a concept that straddles modernity and postmodernity; it can operate as exclusion in the former and as singularity in the latter. On the one hand, liberal pluralism calls for the co-existence of the marginal with the mainstream; on the other, the extreme tactician wishes to preserve marginality and reject the mainstream. How does one ‘preserve’ marginality? The answer, in a word, is: by taking recourse to the concept of ‘radical alterity’ or absolute Otherness. The problem here is that the process of dialogue between the powerful and the powerless, between the religious and the secular-political, could be aborted at any time. The philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, more than any other, has discussed the term, ‘radical alterity’, at length, in the context of ensuring its endurance as a feasible and desirable concept.

abandon

existential

commitments. democracy concerned

progressive variants,

postmodernist

Levinas's Unlimited Obligation and the Critique of Western Philosophy At least since Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), one of the principal concerns of ethical theory has been to determine the forms and limits

of moral obligation.8 A Kantian views moral commitments as having a beginning and an end. A duty or obligation would be something specific whose origin can be traced, whose object can be determined and whose manner of execution or discharge can be specified. In contrast to the Kantian limited obligation, we have, in Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), the theory of unlimited obligation, which is an alternative to liberal individualistic ethics. Levinas was born in Lithuania, but became a naturalised French citizen in 1930. As a Jew, he was imprisoned in a camp during the Second World War. In recent times, there has been a surge of interest in Levinas’s fragmented writings, and perhaps the reason is not far to seek. C. Fred Alford refers to the Levinas Effect as the ability of Levinas’s texts to say anything the reader wants to hear, so that Levinas becomes at times a postmodernist and at other times an inverted liberal, since he calls for the protection of the individual on the ground that only the individual sees the tears of the Other; tears that not even the just regime, which is totalising in its welfare effects, can see (Alford 2004). In particular, Levinas’s writings are of great interest to liberation theologians. Why has Levinas become so popular among postmodernists? The reason is that Levinas’s approach grants an ethical aura to the categories of difference and otherness. In the face of the Other is the trace of God. Life has a purpose. In serving the Other, I open myself to Infinity. The death of my ego is my for it opens me to Infinity (Critchley 2004). As perhaps yet another victim of the Levinas Effect, I attempt to apply these ideas to the critique of Dalit rationality and its strand — though, obviously, Levinas does not do so In fact, Levinas’s vision is completely Eurocentric and he has no interest whatsoever in other cultures. In a 1991 interview, Levinas articulated the following blatantly racist statement: ‘I often say, although it is a dangerous thing to say publicly, that humanity consists of the Bible and the Greeks. All the rest can be translated: all the rest — all the exotic — is dance.’ In his discussion of Asians and other people of colour, Levinas often runs off the rails (Mortley 1991: 18). Nevertheless, in my opinion, Levinas’s vision of unlimited

postmodernist

salvation,

postmodernist himself.

8 In what follows, I depend heavily on Roland Paul Blum’s excellent

discussion

of Emmanuel Levinas’s Totality and Infinity in ‘Emmanuel Levinas’ Theory of Commitment’; see Blum (1983).

obligation provides a unique ethical basis for examining caste in Indian society. In a sense, what is discussed in this chapter has resonances in the context of radical Buddhism in the next. My personal observations are put in parenthesis in this sub-section. Levinas’s obligation is unlimited, not only in the sense that we (in this case, the upper-caste representatives of the Indian state and civil society) are obligated without having consciously placed under obligations, but also in the sense that our very effort to discharge them only increases our commitments. What Levinas is claiming is that our responsibility is a permanent fact about Since our responsibility has never been consciously assumed, it can never really be discharged. That is why any person other than ‘my self’ has an absolute moral claim upon me. It is only on the basis of a highly original view of the Self and its relations to Others that Levinas is able to make such impressive claims for morality (Alford 2004: 147). As we see below, Levinas’s perspective is radically from that of other philosophers, like G. W. F. Hegel or Martin Heidegger, who also use expressions similar (and also different) to Levinas’s ‘Absolute’, namely, ‘Totality’ and ‘Being’, respectively. Levinas attacks Totality as the reduction of the ‘Other’ to the same. He rejects the solipsistic or self-centred view of Totality, because, in this perspective, the Other (l’autre) or the Other person (l’autrui) is robbed of her individuality and her unique by being understood or approached only on the Self’s own terms. (This also constitutes an analogy with the critique of the Indian modernist nation-state, which is believed to reduce the of its citizens to an upper-caste, Brahminical, homogenised totality.) Equally, Levinas eschews the interpretation of Totality as contextual, because here both the Self and the Other are seen as aspects of the total dialectical system of explanation — almost in a Hegelian mode of synthesis (and attempt at reconciliation) — which Levinas abhors. Another thinker attacked by Levinas is Heidegger, who is accused of treating persons as merely occasions for the revelation of Dasein or Being There, as doing nothing more than coping in the world, thereby depriving them of any reality of their own. Levinas is critical of Heidegger’s exposition of Dasein’s being-inthe-world with a description of tools, and their readiness-to-hand. In contrast, Levinas himself focuses upon the way the Self ‘lives from’ its world through enjoyment. The Levinasian Self is not just

relations

ourselves

ourselves.

different

characteristics

heterogeneity

thrown into the world as claimed by Heidegger; it abides. Before they are tools, things are objects of enjoyment. And enjoyment is essentially private in character. While Heidegger’s starting point is utilitarian, Levinas’s is sensuous. According to Levinas, Heidegger’s ontology, as first philosophy, is a philosophy of power. Essentially, as in Hegelian philosophy, the power and violence involved in Heidegger’s Dasein is that of reducing the ‘Other’ to the ‘same’ (Alford 2004: 147–48). Levinas, then, consistently opposes philosophical systems that deprive individuals (say, the Dalits) of their peculiarities, in order to absorb them into a system of thought or in the flow of history or in some other kind of ‘Totality’, like Dasein or Being There. The ‘Other’ in Levinas is an expression of ‘Infinity’, of that which, precisely, escapes contextual or solipsistic Totality. Following Rene Descartes, Levinas claims that, in thinking Infinity, we think more than is contained in thought. The ‘more than’ is transcendence, that which has — beyond any structure or Totality. In the idea of the Infinite, one thinks that which always remains external to thought. This is the basic theme of Totality and Infinity: the overcoming of solipsism or self-centredness as the process that generates ‘Infinity’ or unlimited obligation of the Self (say, of the upper-caste or Brahminised Indian state) to the Other (say, the marginalised Dalit community) (ibid.: 149–50). The point, however, is that — while discussing Infinity — Descartes was referring to God, and not to any abstract notion. But Levinas does not clearly distinguish between Descartes’s idea of God which renders solipsism or self-centredness as being untenable (because God cannot be contained within the Self’s thinking-about-Infinity) and Edmund Husserl’s argument in the Fifth Cartesian Mediation that it is only in the monadic Self’s experience of other egos that it finds a guarantee of an objective world. 9 In other words, we are not

9 Husserl’s perspective is the result of an exploration into consciousness or, more specifically, into Descartes’ cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). Since Descartes, philosophers have been concerned with the question: Do objects have an objective existence outside our consciousness? Husserl’s

response is that it really does not matter whether or not objects have an objective existence outside the subject’s consciousness and that can be ‘bracketed’. Giving primacy to consciousness, Husserl maintained that consciousness is always intentional and directed towards external objects

sure if Levinas’s unlimited obligation is to God or to other persons (or egos), in the Husserlian sense. But unlike Husserl, Levinas takes sensibility, rather than theory or consciousness, to be primary.10 Levinas’s endorsement of Soren Kierkegaard’s analysis of faith in the Christian God as the only way in which the Self can itself and its own contradictions, leads to a similar problematic confusion — that of the ethical with the religious.11 The religious underpinning, then, introduces into Levinas’s work the concept of ‘Christian guilt’ and ‘sin’ by the back door! In short, it does seem as though Levinas leans towards the idea of unlimited obligation to God. This is particularly remarkable, considering the trajectory of Western philosophical thought which, in a sense, culminated in nihilism, in the early part of the twentieth century. With the advent of nihilism, according to Nietzsche, the metaphysical question ‘why?’ or ‘on what grounds?’ is turned against metaphysics itself, rendering questionable all grounding institutions, by endlessly asking this question. In other words, this question finds no stopping point. Nietzsche’s understanding of the end of metaphysics, then, is only the consequence of pushing metaphysics to the extreme. Insofar as one speaks of the end of metaphysics, one can also speak of the death of God, for the end of metaphysics renders inoperable that which is produced or created by God, namely, the institution of a ground. When the ground collapses on itself, God dies. If the end of metaphysics is implied in its concept, then as soon as God appears in metaphysics, His death is imminent. Thus in Levinas’s thought, there are two very different ideological strands. One, to my mind, is the more progressive one of the infinite

overcome

(material or abstract) and other beings. Husserl proposed a radical new

phenomenological way of looking at objects by examining how we, in our many ways of being intentionally directed toward them, actually ‘constitute’ them. 10 To reiterate: Levinas makes two major departures from Husserl which require note. First, he does not accord primacy to consciousness or to the theoretical. Instead, sensibility undergirds experience of the world.

Second, he argues that some contents of intentional consciousness can never be fully captured. 11 Alford (2004: 150–51). This is also the basis of Jacques Derrida’s

critique of Levinas. For an elaboration of this theme, see Blum (1985).

responsibility of the Self to other persons. The less progressive one is of the infinite responsibility of the Self to God — although Levinas’s idea of God differs from the conventional Judaeo-Christian notion of divinity. It is worthwhile to spend a little time discussing the second, less progressive idea, because it appears to be an influential one among many of the philosopher’s followers.

Infinite Obligation to God In Levinasian ethics, philosophy finds a meaning that is not ordered metaphysically and so opens the significance of a God (even though Levinas often insists that the Self is atheist) who does not die with the death of metaphysics. Levinasian ethics also opens the possibility of religiosity that survives the end of metaphysics. This is because has its genesis or creation in responsibility. Creation, like God, is subject to the primacy of causality. But the kind of creation Levinas talks about is not predicated on the effects of causality, but on the features of obligation to the Other. Infinite responsibility or obligation to the demands of the Other would result in creation, the appearance of the face of the Other, in the form of the ‘religious’ response, ‘Here I am!’ (Me voici!) The depth of Infinity signified in the face Levinas equates with God. How can that which survives the death of God be called ‘God’? It does so, on the condition that the word ‘God’ no longer identifies or determines the God that it names. That is why Levinas uses the curious word ‘Illeite’ — He-ness. It is a general or anonymous pronoun (from the pronoun, il) and does not fix meaning. In Levinas’s ethics, I can escape the black night of religiosity and anonymous terror by confronting the face before me. There is ambiguity and confusion in this confrontation, for we do not know if God is given to me in the face or, simply, an il y a. Strangely, here, it seems as though Levinas’s God is the face. For Levinas, the Other (say, the Dalit community) forces the Self (say, the Brahminised Indian state) to see itself as fundamentally ‘unjustified’ and ‘detestable’ and brings it back to its ‘ultimate reality’. Given Levinas’s endorsement of Kierkegaardian faith in God, this becomes more than a moral question; it is a religious one. The Self (or the Indian state) acknowledges itself to be fundamentally guilty before the Other (or the Dalit community). The Self is from a solitary aesthete, preoccupied with enjoyment, into

subjectivity

transformed

a being whose essence is constituted by its commitment to the Other (Alford 2004: 163). Thus the Levinasian Self’s relation to the Other is a religious one and reminiscent of the Kierkegaardian knight of faith’s relation to God. According to Levinas, the Self and the Other would not be caught in a Totality, because the relation between them is not reciprocal and no synthesis, in the Hegelian sense, occurs. Justifiably sceptical of the Hegelian tendency to absorb the individual wholly into his context, Levinas attempts to save both the Self and the Other by placing the barrier of ‘separateness’ between them. He thereby, denies them any worldly link and is only able to explain their relation in somewhat religious categories — possibly as a reaction against Kantian individualism, which is based on a system of rights guaranteed by the state. As one critic points out:

however,

‘The Other, indeed, demands everything of me. But where are the Other’s obligations to me? They are never mentioned. Here the analogy between the Other and God is clear, for one does not talk of God’s obligations to man. Were God to have obligations, He would be merely another man, for He would be caught in a network of reciprocal relations [as are Sartrean individuals].

If the Other is not to remain a mere feature of my consciousness, he must originate independently of my world, in a way analogous to God. Should the Other, either as a simple person or, as a representative of all humanity, ever be the object of unlimited commitments? Is not a under such conditions, threatened with an oppression, a violence just as great as any Levinas wishes to avoid by constructing his attack

person, against ‘Totality’? (Alford 2004: 166–67)

Levinas’s protest, and indeed that of postmodernists, is based on a stringent critique of the very roots of the destruction of human dignity — the Logocentrism or the priority of reason, logic, idea, and the categories of immanence that pervade the Western philosophical tradition, the main culprits being Egolatry, Totality, History, horror of the Other. Specific philosophical problems arise, as we have seen above, when we try to apply directly Levinas’s notion of ‘radical alterity’ as a relation between the upper-caste, Brahminised, homogenising Indian state and the marginalised Dalit community. Without reciprocity in the Sartrean sense, this could remain a religious, rather than an ethical, one, and

concept,

relationship

one based on ‘guilt’ rather than a sense of ‘justice’. Indeed, Levinas does not discount the idea of justice, but his description of justice is curious. He describes justice as the most significant attempt to heal the breach between the Self and the accusing Other, present and absent to my consciousness. ‘Justice consists in recognising in the Other my master’ (Levinas 1969: 72). This is asymmetrical and unequal. Levinas’s moral extremism needs to be kept in perspective. Obligation is not limited to the of a single voice, but is a public indebtedness to a society, or even to the whole of humanity. Moreover, in this relationship, there is little hope of reconciliation. For this ‘religious’ relationship to both the ‘guilt’ and the ‘marginality’ must be preserved. The unpacking of the concept of ‘radical alterity’ to its logical reveals its affinity to older traditions in Christian theology, rather than to the more progressive liberation (or even theology, which privileges exteriority, utopia, and especially praxis — the political dimension of ‘liberation’ — in the case of the marginalised. There is, no doubt, a more radical interpretation of Levinas’s perspective, which will draw us out of this impasse. If one were to consistently deconstruct the concept of ‘radical alterity’, one may end up eliminating both Self and Other, reducing them to a system of signs, as in the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, a Levinasian follower. However, it would then be difficult to understand on what basis one could construct an ethic or a philosophy of moral It should seem obvious that only selves, not signs, can be responsible or morally committed. Deconstructionist techniques seem to lead us necessarily to the ‘trace’ or the différance as the true ‘subjects’ of philosophical analysis. Where in this domain, would there be room for ‘self’-reflection on ethical issues (Blum 1985)? Derrida focuses on one seemingly innocuous word in Levinas’s work, namely, accueil, which he translates as ‘hospitality’. Ethics is then defined as the infinite responsibility of an unconditional Politics has to be non-foundational; otherwise it would impinge on individual freedom. But how can the link between ethics and politics be both non-foundational and non-arbitrary? There is an ethical demand for action (infinite responsibility) that the Other demands of me and which I approve of. The value of Levinas’s anarchic ethical injunction or the experience of an infinite ethical is all the more potent in the bipolar world in which we live.

simultaneously relationship intimacy

persist, conclusion existentialist)

commitment.

hospitality. demand

Infinite Obligation to Other Egos This brings us to the more progressive way of looking at Levinas’s notion of infinite obligation, as mentioned earlier — that is, with respect to other people. For Levinas, the Other is appreciated as Other, in her radical alterity and irreducible singularity — the Other is not an object of Knowledge. Thought must renounce its totalitarian hubris. The Other is approachable only ethically, only in heeding the categorical imperative that comes to us not from the general notion of persons as ends in themselves (as Kant would have it), but from the face of the singular Other that ‘opens the discourse whose first word is obligation’, challenging me to justify my freedom and even my existence.12 What is missing in our lives? The face at our door, for instance, reminds us of the rest of the world, a world of infinite possibilities. The face is both my neighbour’s and the face of all faces. It calls to mind the notions of ‘fraternity’ and of ‘mindfulness’, which are discussed at some length in this book. According to the postmodernist critique of modernity, Dalit discourses, desires and practices should always pose a potential challenge to the nation and its core institutions and values such as ‘democracy’ and ‘universal justice’. This critique is likely to end up arguing in favour of conserving the marginality of Dalit and other lower-caste groups and thereby freezing their cultural identities. Under postmodernism, everything is marginal, so the margin can no longer serve a critical function; under modernism, marginality can only be partial and temporary, or at least that is the utopian hope. Furthermore, for the modernist, marginality is not confined to the poor and dispossessed. There are indeed various modes of bucking the system, and even the elite rip the system, as is evident in the recent stock market scam or that of the Indian Premier League. 13 In a more ideal setting in late modern liberal understandings of the state apparatuses as well as its laws, principles of governance, and national attitudes, need to be radically transformed to accommodate others. The state’s public discourse consists of inviting the different segments in civil society to enter history anew,

precisely

primordial

multiculturalism,

12 The phrase is from Levinas’s Totality and Infinity and quoted in

Anselm Kyongsuk Min (1998 : 574). 13 My main reference here is Yudice (1989).

and participate in a refreshed and cleansed version of a new, more open-ended form of nationalism. In the register of modernity, marginality is inherently unstable and cannot be viewed as a primary value. Radical alterity or Otherness may sometimes acquire a quasi-religious hue, as seen in some of Levinas’s writings. This indeed is the problem of philosophical incoherence while employing the term ‘radical alterity’ in the of Dalit rationality. It would help if the postmodern critique operated against modernisation, not against modernity, and if the postmodern disenchantment were politically capable of renewing the liberating, utopian impulse of modernity. This would also aid the process of retaining pluralism within an overarching secular, modernist framework. For example, every time there is an incident such as ritual animal sacrifice, with the participation of the Dalit and other lower-caste groups, it need not be viewed as a perceived threat to modernity or secular nationhood. Once the state opens out to the Other, there is likely to be a shift in focus from religiosity to ethics, from individual religious guilt to fraternal secular justice. Indeed, the more progressive line in Levinas’s work helps us better understand the values of ethics and fraternity.

critique

6 Social Suffering and Salvation: The Relevance of The Buddha and His Dhamma Introduction: The Importance of dhamma When Dr Ambedkar announced in 1935 that though born a Hindu he would not die as one, he expressed a deeply-felt intent to turn away from and reject Hinduism. This intent was acutely and incisively argued out for the rest of the decade, as he cast about for spiritual choices that Dalits might yet make. During this time, his anger against Hinduism was palpable, and occasioned as much by the political disappointment and consequent angst he in the wake of his signing of the Poona Pact, as it was by his lifelong impatience with Hindu dharma. In fact, while reviewing various conversion options available to him he measured each in terms of its willingness to honour Dalit political claims. However, when he returned to the question of conversion in the late 1940s, he had shifted ground — it was not so much political concerns that directed his interest, rather he appeared keen on expounding a new metaphysics, and one that was adequate to the needs and of modern life. When he did convert a decade later, he had come full circle. Angry and hurt by his experiences in the legislature over the issue of the Hindu Code Bill that he had framed and which was a cherished piece of legislation, aiming as it did, at a codification of Hindu law, he made a decision that he had long been contemplatingand converted, along with lakhs of his followers, to Buddhism, which he re-christened, as a navayana or the new path. In Buddhism, as his Buddha and His Dhamma makes clear, he had found a rational, elegant and aesthetically fulfilling world view, an ethos that was the very antithesis of the world of caste and the inequalities it This ethos was not only liberating, but also signified an ethics

experienced

conditions

mandated.

Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship

that would be the basis for a new politics, a new just and equal social order. Dr Ambedkar’s journey to Buddhism may be read in any number of ways and has been since the day of his conversion. But, whatever the meanings that we attach to the act of conversion, and howsoever we read his attempt to re-think Buddhism for our times, it is clear that his conversion had to do with political, ethical and spiritual in fact these were inextricably linked in his understanding of an ideal social existence, both in an individual and collective sense. This is not entirely surprising. For long, he had been wary of and uneasy with that other great exponent of ethics in the context of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi’s characteristic linking of politics and piety bothered him, especially the Mahatma’s rhetoric of faith, his insistence on heeding his ineffable ‘inner voice’, which he claimed, guided him in his darkest moments. Dr Ambedkar had no use for such a voice or the God that mandated it. As his lovely epigraph to What Congress and Gandhi did to the Untouchables has it, he wanted a world without God, but one in which men may yet be mindful of each other. The life of the Buddha appeared in this respect — as much as his persona, the ethics he taught and practised and which he enjoined unto others appealed to Dr Ambedkar’s mind and consciousness. To Gandhi’s God, Dr Ambedkar counterposed the Buddha. It seems to me that this traversing between the realms, of faith on the one hand, and ethics on the other, which Dr Ambedkar with great earnestness, helped him measure and define the realm as a radical, republican space. His conversion suggests we abide by a secularism that is anchored not so much in a separation of realms and powers, but in the unifying field of a universal ethics. In what follows I shall map Dr Ambedkar’s navayana as a path and a place — an anticipation of utopia. I hope to do this by reading his conversion in terms of another less momentous yet significant conversion: of that other great modern Buddhist of our time, Pandit Iyothee Thass, who accepted dhiksha in the late nineteenth century. As committed to re-examining the ethical basis of our social life, Iyothee Thass nevertheless was concerned with the cultural history of Buddhism, in a way that Dr Ambedkar was not, and this response to the salience of the Buddha’s life and times should help us situate the political acuity that marks Dr Ambedkar’s interest in the dhamma.

concerns;

politics,

exemplary

undertook political

contrasting

Social Suffering and Salvation

Dhamma, History and Culture: Iyothee Thass' Adi-vedam The importance of Buddhist ethics for our times was urged forth by several people in late colonial India. Beset with anxiety and hope in the face of an inevitable modernity that threatened to turn over all that was familiar and usher in a new world, anticipating the of promises held out by European political liberalism and later by socialism, and troubled by the unregenerate nature of an unequal and cruel social order, several men turned to Buddhism to guide them in their search for a brave new world. For many of them, Buddhism seemed a fit response to the dilemmas of modernity; it appeared to adopt a rational disposition towards human affairs, even as it counselled a creed of non-desire. Further, it was not inimical to notions of equality and liberty, social justice and fraternity, and endorsed active acts of compassion and understanding towards fellow beings, including those that are non-human. Most important, Buddhism was not abstract in the least, it was not concerned with the epistemology of suffering and sorrow, rather it wished to address their cessation, suggest ways of staving off the inevitable despair that attends a heart, wretchedly given over to insatiable want and greed. Of all those who turned to Buddhism to illumine their sense of a flawed social world they desired to mend, Pandit Iyothee Thass was somewhat unique. A Dalit siddha medicine man by training and a Tamil scholar, he converted to Buddhism in the late nineteenth century and thereafter wrote extensively on his new faith, annotating its meanings for the newly initiated as well as for those future generations that might want to adopt Buddhism as their religion. Arguing as Dr Ambedkar would later, in Who are the Untouchables, Iyothee Thass made a case for untouchables as former and original Buddhists who had been exiled out of the social order since their faith offended and challenged varnadharma, especially the of Brahmins, and their claims to spiritual authority. He worked out an entire mythos of meanings, which drew on Tamil literary texts to explicate the wilful denigration of Buddhism and Buddhists down the ages. This fabulous attempt at re-reading Tamil texts reached its fruition in his magisterial Adi-vedam, which recounted the life of the Buddha in great detail. Iyothee Thass appears to have been familiar with the Pali canon as well as the Sanskrit Buddhacharita, and, being a medicine man, was steeped in the lore of healing.

fulfilment

prerogatives

He put the hermeneutics of Tamil linguistic scholarship to good use, as he set himself the task of re-working the Buddha’s life story within a recognisably Tamil discursive universe. He prised apart words, to situate them in new and unexpected semantic contexts, rather audaciously, the meanings of Hindu holy names and famous Puranic tales to render them adequate to the needs of his new faith, and assimilated well-known non-Hindu religious texts, such as the Mosaic laws and commandments, as well as the New Testament to the wisdom of the Buddha. Drawing on words and terms from the siddha healing tradition, he offered sophisticated glosses on desire, pleasure, despair, lightness and freedom, linking together somatic and mental states. His account of the Buddha’s life turned out to be vast and encyclopaedic — almost as if he wished to create an ur-text, comprising different narratives, registers and histories. In all this, though, he did not lose sight of his intent: to present the Buddha’s world view and creed as apposite for our times, especially for Dalits. Iyothee Thass’ attempts to re-work Buddhism for a Tamil context were a part of his efforts to secure political rights for Dalits within the colonial scheme of things. He tried to interest the Madras chapter of the Indian National Congress in the plight of the panchamas, as Dalits were referred to then. He also petitioned the colonial seeking succour for Dalits who faced systematic and discrimination, humiliation and abuse. Tamizhan, the Tamil weekly that he edited, carried detailed news of Dalit lives, the they endured in their work contexts, public spaces, and in their quest for education and dignity. Iyothee Thass also keenly followed the social reform debates of his time and reported on the linguistic biases, cultural predispositions and social attitudes evident in caste Hindu responses to Dalits and their claims. His account of caste society, Brahmin arrogance and upper-caste disdain for those lower in the social ladder, comprised a secular indictment of inequality and injustice. This, on the one hand; on the other hand, he consistently called an emergent nationalism to account, doubting its representative claims and wondering if it, indeed, had the commonweal in mind. For Iyothee Thass, sceptical as he was of nationalism, the colonial state represented a form of justice that was kinder to Dalits and he trusted its offices than he did nationalist good intentions and the reform claims of caste Hindu society.

reread,

government everyday problems

Though he wrote and declaimed against nationalism and its agents, Iyothee Thass did not imagine untouchability and the caste order could be effectively addressed within the discursive limits set by the former. Necessary as it was to abide by those limits and stake Dalit claims on the terrain that they were being denied, he yet looked to other interpretative spaces to articulate his case for equality and justice. Scripture and literature, on the one hand, and Tamil literary history, on the other, were cited and invoked to redeem and transform the present. In the event he ended up writing a new social and cultural history — of Tamil Buddhism — that the Dalits could claim to be their own. This history in turn became a scaffold for the present to rest its burden, and secure its future. In this sense, Buddhism was to be not merely a return of the previous, but also a sign of the possible. It represented a spiritual ethos that seemed absolutely indispensable to the fulfilment of secular ideals. Fashioned in and through references to Tamil literary and texts, Iyothee Thass’ Buddhism yet abided by core Buddhist tenets. Thus, he accepted the importance of desire and the reality of suffering (dhukka) but, unlike Ambedkar, he did not seek to reinterpret the latter as ‘social suffering’. Dhukka for Iyothee Thass remained an existential idea, and one that was grounded in bodily experiences. Yet dhukka was graspable, given the mind’s agility, its power of discernment. Iyothee Thass was drawn to the Buddha’s appeal to reason and argued passionately that the mind was real and responsible for our actions; that our thoughts make us, as they do our acts. Neither fate, nor the status that attends birth, neither gods nor their attendants, was as decisive as the human mind. However, bodily and mental acts were not entirely independent of each other. Being the healer that he was and familiar with a tradition that linked somatic and mental states, Iyothee Thass described quite vividly the complex relationship between the two sets of acts. Bodily acts, he argued, governed as they are by the senses, leave their on the mind, such that good acts produce favourable mental states; likewise, the mind’s movement, oriented towards good (or bad) gets inscribed on the body, producing as it were love or avarice, enabling self-knowledge or fostering (wrongful) desire and illusion, as the case may be (Thass 1999: 226). For Iyothee Thass, the self-validating nature of body and mind, the illusory world that they created could only be broken through

religious

impress

an awareness of suffering. Such awareness, however, is neither physical nor mental. It is contingent on the recognition of the relationship that the dhukka-ridden self has with the world, with others. In Iyothee Thass’ version of the famous episode of the prince Siddhartha saving a bird from being hunted by his cousin Devadutta, he has the former asking the latter if he would not feel pain, were an arrow to pierce him and in fact pierces the said arrow back into Devadutta’s palm to demonstrate that Devadutta was as vulnerable to hurt as the bird. He entreats his cousin to act on this sense of hurt, and help heal the bird. Then again, while watching workers labour on the fields, Siddhartha feels their effort as his own, and when, finally he chances upon age, illness and death, he imagines his own body, subject to such torments, and realises how he would not want to endure decay and mortality (ibid.: 197–98). In Thass’ reading, this ability to see oneself as equally vulnerable as those one harms through word or deed, and as subject to pain and death as other human beings, is hugely significant, and on it hinges the possibility or otherwise of self-knowledge and salvation. The path to the latter required an active re-making of one’s and mental life. The Adi-vedam insisted that one cleansed body and soul, and constantly worked through one’s consciousness. How was this to be done? First, it was important to come to terms with the fleeting nature of intense emotional and mental states, realise that nothing lasts and that immediate fulfilment of a want or gratification of a need only conceals an eternal hunger that must be addressed, recognised for what it is, a condition that is excitable and not to be easily rested. The thing then would be to the burden of this condition, and work to relieve oneself of the pain, the dhukka it causes. What must not be done, or even if done, would prove unfruitful is vain questioning — attempting to find out if this sorrowing world is unreal, real, inconstant or eternal, if death is indeed all, or if life persists after death. For these questions pre-empt us asking questions about ourselves, about what each of us needs to do to live with and yet not be ensnared in suffering (ibid.: 245, 249). Second, it was imperative that a person cleansed his or her mind of the stain of difference, of that which makes us see want to love, hate, enslave, control others. Iyothee Thass understood inequality and violence to be functions of this difference that we nurture in our hearts, out of ignorance, bound as we are often to the fulfilment of our own desires and needs. In place of difference, one ought to

phenomenal

acknowledge

learn to see how all living things are linked, bound to each other. For, it is this reciprocity that helps to cut the knot of desire, of that profound self-love which fosters want. Recounting the story of a killer of animals who comes to heed the Buddha’s words, Iyothee Thass pointed to how he not only gave up on violence, but took to active loving and caring; in other words, mindfulness towards others came to replace that sense of difference which pushed him, the murderer, to passionate hate, in the first place (ibid.: 286). Mindfulness, however, was a state of existence, contingent on both enlightenment as well as right action. On the one hand, had to be achieved, as an active mental state:

mindfulness

When you realize that you can breathe evenly, when you learn to be mindful of your body, you also learn to be mindful of the bodies of others, you realize too that their bodies, like one’s own will suffer, endure, die, and that what is steady, what survives is not this or that identity, neither man nor woman, not the self, or the non-self that is outside it, and this would lead to non-attachment, to being in the world,

but not desiring, wanting, longing… only mindful…(ibid.: 325–26). On the other hand, mindfulness demanded that one actively chose compassion: ‘whereas a bird or animal can only protect its own, and not others, men ought to extend compassion towards all and not just their own kind… but this can only come from individual effort, from the discretion that separates good from bad, hurt from care…’ (ibid.: 281). Unsurprisingly, in Iyothee Thass’ lexicon, feeding the hungry and ministering to the sick become important virtues — emptied of want and unexcited by desire, a human person does not suffer selfabnegation; nor is she rendered empty and alienated, rather she is filled with the desire to heal and do good. Iyothee Thass envisioned good deeds, compassionate acts as setting up a reciprocal cycle of compassionate deeds. Writing of the Buddha helping a herdsman with his goats, Iyothee Thass pointed out that when the selfsame herdsman later brought the Buddha milk when the latter had almost starved to death, the Buddha realised that his earlier good deed had earned him this respite from hunger (ibid.: 220). The most complete expression of compassion for Iyothee Thass was an empathy that embraced the entire living world. He accorded the highest value to jeevakarunya, to limitless in the most expansive sense of the term. In fact, jeevakarunya

compassion

is the burden of his Adi-vedam, and figures as the most superior of virtues in his discussions of the five landscapes of ancient Tamil literature. Suggesting that the Buddha succeeded in converting the populations of these five landscapes, Iyothee Thass has the Buddha counsel ahimsa (non-violence) to one and all, including fishermen and hunters. These latter are enjoined to learn the art of exchange in place of killing: thus the kuravas or hunters are asked to eschew killing animals and birds, since that would interfere with their karmic journey towards liberation, and instead take to exchanging the wealth of the forests — ivory and so on — for food. Likewise, Iyothee Thass has the Buddha counsel fisher folk to take to pearl-diving instead of fishing — the Buddha wonders if they would like to be caught with bait, even as fish are caught, whereupon the fishermen are shocked, and agree to his counsel (ibid.: 383–89). Interestingly, for Iyothee Thass, productive labour signified value, and he counterposed it to killing and violence — his Buddha heralds the arrival of grain cultivation and animal husbandry in the Tamil valleys and pastureland. Iyothee Thass’ Buddha, then, recognised the reality of suffering through the experience of empathy, and this leads him to discard the sting of difference and uphold the reciprocal nature of all However, this does not mean that he eschews differences, or wishes to sublimate them in an abstract and character-less Brahman; mindfulness and compassion are to be exercised in relationship to the world, rather than made aspects of a meditative exercise meant to elevate the self. What is curious though about Iyothee Thass’ Buddhism is the place it accorded women, and in this instance it does not square easily with the secular values it otherwise admirably assimilates and transmutes. The dhamma of a woman, Iyothee Thas made clear, lies in her deferring to her husband, in observing the vow of chastity, attending to her household duties, and in anticipating her husband’s needs. Further, she is to make sure that he does not swerve from the dhamma — that is, should he drink or lust after women it was her duty to reform him and return him to the path. In Iyothee Thass’ version of the Buddha’s first lay conversion, we have him defining male and female natures as essentially different. The former, notes the Buddha, is given to protecting others, the latter is the object of another’s lust; the former is brave, virile, the latter, given to ignorance. Given this, it was important for women to be modest,

relationships.

steadfast, and rightly fearful of their reputation. Iyothee Thass also has the Buddha counsel the merchant’s wife — amongst these early lay converts — that women who take to the dhamma must not look at, seek out, or be around other men. Further, in their husbands’ absence they ought to learn to run their households with a sufficient sense of awe of their husbands’ ultimate authority. They also had to learn to be happy with whatever food and raiment the husband provided, and not seek more than what was available (ibid.: 277–78). Thus, we see Iyothee Thass re-figuring dhamma for women in fairly predictable and conventional terms. This is not entirely Jaina and Buddhist literature in Tamil, for the most part, urge a chaste, virtuous life for women, and besides insistently warn against the ‘wiles’ of womanhood. This sense of women’s dhamma however sits contrarily with the rest of Thass’ metaphysics. For instance, in his discursive universe, the man-woman dyad is not merely a reflection of gender arrangements, rather it figures as an epistemic detail. His Buddha, when discussing the reality of dhukka, notes that everything has its other; men and women, good and bad, night and day, sleep and wakefulness, are all paired opposites, and thus must it be with dhukka, it has to be viewed in relationship to its other, bliss. However, since nibanna requires the annulment of difference, or rather a mindfulness that is not provoked by nibanna ultimately does not heed sexual differences, and it is irrelevant that one is a man or a woman. We are thus confronted with a familiar paradox: in the context of nibanna, sexual difference is immaterial, but the path to nibanna is constitutively gendered! Sexual identity thus precedes every other kind of identity, remaining relatively constant, and suffering little change even within the terms of a radical spiritual ethos. Unsurprisingly, each of the values that Iyothee Thass sought to uphold was antithetical to the spirit of the caste system, of the varna order, that disallowed empathy, except in a very limited sense (for instance, towards one’s own kind); which affirmed and arranged in a hierarchy, refusing thus the possibility of reciprocity; and which valued limitless compassion only in the relationship of human beings and gods. Further the caste system has no use for mindfulness, indeed it prefers that the mind not exercise its powers of reason or discretion, and beguiles it often with the notion of a menacing destiny.

surprising.

difference,

differences

By rejecting the ethos of the caste order, and suggesting instead a world view, at once mythic, somatic, philosophical and ethical, Iyothee Thass created a distinctive cosmology, one that leavened the secular discourse of rights, claims and justice that he had recourse to in his everyday context. Rich, insightful, poetic and poignant as it is, the Adi-Vedam, on account of the ur-status it claimed for itself, is also unmistakably and fantastic. Though its ethical core is crucially dependant on his sense of social anger and justice, it is overlaid with textual readings that sometimes obscure what they ought to illuminate. Thus, Iyothee Thass’ acute sense of the social world, of the reality of social suffering, gets absorbed into a semantic (and literary) field that is not consistently linked to the secular world outside of itself. This is most evident in his exposition of the dhamma for women, where older and established literary and cultural tropes negotiate his radical spirituality rather decisively. Dr Ambedkar, writing at a latter point in time, and after his faith in liberal political philosophy had been considerably shaken — not accidentally over the question of women’s rights, as envisioned by him in the Hindu Code Bill — imagined a different future for the new ethics he publicly embraced, when he converted to Buddhism. He insisted on the necessity of such an ethics, not merely because it would redeem an earlier and sadly limited political liberalism but also because it would mandate into existence a new politics, in fact, cause it to emerge. His conversion as well as the views he outlines in The Buddha and His Dhamma bear witness to this. Whereas Iyothee Thass’ conversion to Buddhism was mediated in and through a search for identity and history, Dr Ambedkar’s conversion happened, after his several efforts at creating the for an equal and just social order came up against social and economic indifference. His representation of Buddhism thus provides an interesting contrast to Thass’: unlike Adi-vedam, The Buddha and His Dhamma is not an ur-text. It is not interested in rendering Buddhism an index of a distinctive culture and one that had been exiled by Brahminical cunning. Rather, The Buddha and His Dhamma is a thoroughly historical text, bearing the marks of it author’s lifelong struggle for social and cultural justice. Dr Ambedkar built this struggle into his narrative: his rejection of god and godliness, self-abnegation and the virtue that attaches to it; his impatience with clever doctrine and cleverer sophistry; his conscious

tendentious

conditions

inclusion of the socially excluded in every instance within the fold of the dhamma; his pitiless rejection of birth-based and other privileges; the self-conscious assertion of women’s equality, in both material and spiritual matters; and, finally, his affirmation of maitri or loving kindness, which goes beyond compassion and implies universal fellowship in the widest sense of the word — all of these replay arguments he had earlier deployed in diverse political contexts. The secular and the sacred, the political and the ethical thus come to inform each other in very complex ways, and this contrasts with the fate of the secular in Iyothee Thass’ work and times, captive as it was to the seductions of literary exegesis on the one hand, and the ‘goodwill’ of the colonial state on the other.

Turning to Dhamma: The Ethics and Politics of Fraternity Dr Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism in 1956 ended a lifelong struggle he had waged with Hinduism and the Hindu social order. From early on in his public life, he had wrestled with the question of spiritual relevance and sought to re-think Hinduism, from the point of view of dignity, compassion and justice. Tukaram’s matchless verse and Ramanuja’s all-encompassing theology of love and held his interest during this time. However, he found no or social solace in these devotional traditions. Further, in the public world that he worked in, he experienced such rancour and prejudice that drawing on catholic traditions of worship appeared futile — though they were dissenting traditions in their own time and place, in the modern present, they were clearly not capable of forcing caste Hindu consciousness into a re-examination of itself, or relive in the present its past moments of rupture. During the late 1920s, he and his fellow Dalits in Maharashtra initiated several civic struggles in the course of which, as during the Parvathi temple satyagraha, they laid claims to temple spaces, on the basis that these were public and hence potentially open to all. These struggles may be read as initiatives that desired to re-figure sacral space, rendering it open and limitless and in the process, configuring a new civics, at once secular and sacred — sacred, on account of the privileges it decried in the name of a common spirituality (the notion that a God, if indeed he or she is such, will not observe and secular, on account of its refusal of the salience of sacred custom and habit.

liberation spiritual

differences)

More expansively, this sense of a world that did not heed rules of access, based on birth, ascriptive status and custom, but which could be claimed by one and all, in terms of a covenant that human beings make with one another, was one that Dr Ambedkar deeply cherished. It was also one that informed his understanding of equality, justice and liberty. In an essay titled, The Hindu Social Order, he noted that the Hindu social order was inimical to equality and fraternity. This spirit of fraternity, he noted, was expressed with poignancy by the Pilgrim Fathers, who, landing at Plymouth, invoked the grace of God that had brought them safely, and also helped them forge a covenant with each other, in His name, ‘by virtue of which we hold ourselves tied to all, care of each others’ good and of the whole’ (Ambedkar 1987: 97). Such a covenant, though, was virtually impossible in the context of the Hindu social order because it refused — in fact insisted — that it would disallow mutuality and reciprocity. Elsewhere, in The Annihilation of Caste, Dr Ambedkar famously noted that the Hindu has no public, and that his public was his caste. In the absence of ‘social endosmosis’ which makes it possible for classes to hold values in common, and share an extensive number of common interests, undertakings and expenses, Hindu society had actively nurtured isolation and exclusiveness. Dr Ambedkar went on to note that the absence of fraternity was a founded absence, based on a rigid which disallowed learning to many, and condemned them to servitude and which forbade occupational mobility to all. Further, the caste system was not merely one that encouraged a division of labour, thereby rendering all forms of labour traditional and but also a system that divided labourers. This vertical division of the working classes meant they could not hope to unite across caste lines to challenge an unequal economic and social order (Ambedkar 1979: 47–48). The impossibility of fraternity in every sense of the word ought to be evident, argued Ambedkar, in the spiritual sanction it received; it was not merely the letter of faith that insisted on this, but its spirit as well. In other words, it was not so much misapplied doctrine as reformers would have it which was responsible for this state of things, but the doctrine itself that disallowed what Dr Ambedkar so valued: a world ‘when there is free play back and forth, (and classes) have an equal opportunity to receive and take from others’ (Ambedkar 1987: 113). He observed that religions across the world

economics, hidebound,

have consecrated inanimate and living creatures, the natural world, but only Hinduism had dared consecrate a particular social order and made it sacred. The Hindus are the only people in the world whose social order — the relation of man to man is consecrated by religion and made sacred, eternal and inviolate. The Hindus are the only people in the world whose economic order — the relation of workman to workman is consecrated by religion and made sacred, eternal and inviolate. (ibid.: 128)

Clearly, Dr Ambedkar did not imagine that a reformed Hinduism was possible or even desirable. His quarrel with Gandhi must also be understood in this context. Gandhi’s desire to retain Dalits within the Hindu fold appeared to him particularly perverse. He was annoyed too by the manner in which Gandhi brought God into his arguments — for instance, in the matter of the separate that the British wished to award Dalits, Gandhi, heeding his voice of conscience, or the voice of God, as he called it, undertook a fast unto death to protest the separation of Dalits from the rest of the Hindus. As far as Dr Ambedkar was concerned, this matter of the electorates had everything to do with how men dealt with each other, and not what God meant Gandhi or anyone else to undertake. Even if it was indeed the case that Gandhi felt the guiding hand of God, it was not a choice that Dr Ambedkar could bring himself to endorse, as he made clear in the epigraph he attached to his book, What Gandhi and Congress Did to the Untouchables, written thirteen years after the signing of the Poona Pact had ‘settled’ the of electorates and helped retain Dalits within Hinduism. This settlement tasted sour for Dr Ambedkar, since he felt, rightly, that Gandhi had forced it on him and the Dalits by going on his socalled epic fast. Not surprisingly, in the epigraph he insisted that the modern world was one where God (and by extension, his apostles) could have no place, and as his argument in the book makes clear, in the case of the Hindu social order, to bring in God and invoke the sanctities of faith and identity could only further affirm Dalits in their low and humiliating status. Significantly, in The Buddha and His Dhamma, he explicitly describes the dhamma thus: ‘The centre of his (the Buddha’s) Dhamma is man and the relation of man to man in his life on earth’ (Ambedkar 1992: 121). Not accidentally, then, Dr Ambedkar returned to reviewing the role of religion in Hindu life during this period (1930s), and declared

electorates

question

three years after Gandhi’s fast that he would not die a Hindu. His announcement was not meant only in a strategic sense; the manner in which Gandhi’s ‘epic fast’ brought the sacred to bear upon the world of civics, of social relationships, perhaps made him want to the sacred, in terms of a transformed civic order. He realised, too, the limits to Hindu social reform, and did not imagine Dalits could expect anything more from that faith. Yet, during this time, his publicly-expressed ideas on faith appeared more strategic than anything else. For one, as he listed the advantages and disadvantages of Dalits converting to Christianity, Islam or Sikhism, he weighed these in terms of what Dalits could expect from each of these of the faithful — both by way of social support as well as political and other safeguards and concessions. He also seemed to want to make a choice that would allow him to retain a sense of national as opposed to an alien identity. Buddhism, though on his mind, did not figure during the mid-1930s as a possible option. But cutting through this strategic reasoning, was another impulse: the desire to found collective life on a different ethical and spiritual basis. As he noted in a speech delivered at the Mahar conference in Bombay in 1936, a few months after he had announced his decision to convert:

rethink

communities

A religion in which man’s human behaviour with man is prohibited, is not religion, but a display of force. A religion which does not recognise a man as man, is not a religion but a disease. A religion in which the touch of animals is permitted, but the touch of human beings is prohibited, is not a religion but a mockery. A religion which precludes some classes

from education, forbids them to accumulate wealth and to bear arms, is not a religion but a mockery of human beings. A religion that compels the ignorant to be ignorant, and the poor to be poor, is not a religion but a punishment. 1

Dr Ambedkar made it clear in the course of this speech that all other religions were far more humane than Hinduism in this respect. Tragically, leaders and spokesmen of these various religions were less than sanguine about his decision to leave Hinduism. Some 1 ‘What Path to Salvation?’, speech delivered by Dr Ambedkar to the

Bombay Presidency Mahar Conference, 31 May 1936, Bombay. Available at: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/txt_ambedkar_ salvation.html). Last accessed 24 January 2009.

amongst the Christian leaders wondered if Dr Ambedkar indeed did covert with his followers to their faith that would constitute a genuine change of heart, or remain an instrumental act. They were also not quite sure of how the entry of a substantially large number of Dalits into their fold would affect caste relationships amongst the faithful (Jaffrelot 2005: 123). Islamic leaders, while cautiously welcoming of his decision to abdicate his Hindu identity were nevertheless worried that if their numbers grew, with the entry of Dalits, whether they would be able to retain their minority status in the polity, and if therefore they would not be rendered more vulnerable. The Sikhs held their premises open, and were willing for Dalits to retain whatever they enjoyed at present, even after conversion. But two things bothered Dr Ambedkar — the British government was not willing to extend political and other concessions they had granted the Sikhs to the would-be converts, and, besides, more seriously, he had occasion to learn of the incipient casteism in the community from Dalit Sikh converts (ibid.: 127). The hesitancy that greeted Dr Ambedkar’s decision to convert may be viewed as symptomatic of that refusal of fraternity, which so grieved him. The Hindus were open about this — Hindu Mahasabha leaders suggested that he form a sect of his own, rather than seek to convert. Mahasabha leaders and later those in the Indian National Congress also persuaded other leading Dalit leaders — M. C. Raja, R. Srinivasan, Rajbhoj and Jagajivan Ram — to distance themselves from his decision to leave the Hindu fold (ibid.: 125–29). In any case Dr Ambedkar himself was not ready to make a decision yet. He was ready to convert, but was also biding his time, and wondering if he could carry the Dalits with him in all instances. He was drawn to the spirit of the Gospels and the comradeship that Christianity was capable of, but was convinced that Indian Christians were not fraternal enough and would not worry about their Dalit brethren (Queen 1996: 53). He wondered if Islam was a good choice after all, since he felt the faithful capable of great intolerance and The Buddhists were open to him, but he had not yet decided if that was an option that would suit his needs. Yet, he valued the freedom that the Buddha granted the human mind. In his speech to the Mahars, referred to earlier, he drew on the Buddha’s famous words from the Mahaparinibbanasutta to his argument about conversion: that it must be a deliberate

safeguards

violence. underscore

choice, and not one that a person makes in haste or blindly. On being asked for a message before he passed on, the Buddha had pointed out to Ananda, his dear disciple: I have preached the Dhamma with an open heart, without concealing anything. The Tathagata [Buddha] has not kept anything concealed, as some other teachers do. So Ananda, what more can I tell to the Bhikkhu Sangh? So Ananda, be self-illuminating like the lamp. Don’t be dependent for light, like the Earth. Don’t be a satellite. Be a light unto thyself. Believe in Self. Don’t be dependent on Others. Be truthful.

Always take refuge in the Truth, and do not surrender to anybody! Quoting the Buddha thus, Dr Ambedkar concluded his address on this note: ‘I also take your leave in the words of the Buddha. “Be your own guide. Take refuge in reason. Do not listen to the advice of others. Do not succumb to others. Be truthful. Take refuge in truth. Never surrender to anybody!” If you keep in mind this message of Lord Buddha at this juncture, I am sure your decision will not be wrong’ (ibid.). These words notwithstanding, the decade of the 1930s did not see him do anything decisive with respect to conversion. But it is surely significant that he founded the Independent Labour Party during this period, almost as if he wished to fashion fraternity entirely within the terms of civic life. Here, again, his wanting to forge unity between Dalit and Sudra workers proved to be an elusive goal. As he argued in The Annihilation of Caste, labourers were divided by caste, and proletarian unity was not easy to achieve. The early 1940s saw him busy with other matters, of administration and rule, and he returned to the question of conversion only later in the decade. In 1942 he had set up the Scheduled Castes Federation, but the electoral and political fortunes of that body did not bode well — in the face of determined Congress hostility to his politics in Maharashtra. His disappointment at the hustings and the fact that he had to be nominated to the Constituent Assembly from Kolkata convinced him, perhaps, of the futility of that kind of political and labour. Yet all this time, he kept up his interest in matters other than the political. For one, he continued to read widely, and seemed to have been increasingly preoccupied with Buddhism. In 1948, in a preface that he wrote to an early modern text on Buddhism, P. Lakshminarasu’s The Essence of Buddhism, he observed rather pointedly

identity

that in upholding the importance of The Buddha and his Dhamma, Lakshminarasu, ‘fought European arrogance with patriotic fervour, orthodox Hinduism with iconoclastic zeal, heterodox Brahmins with nationalist vision and aggressive Christianity with a rationalist outlook — all under the inspiring banner of his unflagging faith in the teachings of the Great Buddha’.2 The Buddha engaged his thereafter, too, as is clear from an unfinished note on Buddhism and its social role (Ambedkar 1987). Dalit followers in Maharashtra in the 1940s too gestured towards Buddhism, even as they made their antipathy to Hinduism public. In 1950, he visited Sri Lanka and met the Lankan monks, but found that, in spite of an ancient monastic tradition, they did not appear to be particularly in the commonweal, and spoke of the virtues of outreach and sacrifice instead of fellowship. In 1951, he wrote an article for the journal of the Mahabodhi society arguing that Buddhism was essential to save the modern world and that it was particularly apposite to the latter’s needs and ways. He noted that societies either on the basis of law or morality, otherwise societies cease to exist. Morality is often closely linked to religion, but in these modern times, an ideal moral code ought to be in consonance with reason and recognise the universal validity of liberty, equality and fraternity. Further, neither morality nor religion ought to make a virtue out of poverty (Keer 1990: 420–21). The 1950s were difficult years for him. He laboured long and hard over the Hindu Code Bill, but realised that this radical that potentially could recast Hindu custom and practice was not likely to be passed.

attention

interested function

legislation

The Hindu Code was the greatest social reform measure ever undertaken by the legislature in this country. No law passed by the Indian Legislature in the past or likely to be passed in the future can be compared to it in point of its significance. To leave inequality between class and class, between sex and sex, which is the soul of Hindu Society untouched and to go on passing legislation relating to economic problems is to make a farce of our

Constitution and to build a palace on a dung heap. This is the significance I attach(ed) to the Hindu Code. (Ambedkar 1995: 1325–26) Prime Minister Nehru’s equivocation with regard to the Bill hurt and depressed Dr Ambedkar and once it became clear that the Bill would 2 Quoted in Queen (1996: 54).

not be passed in the form he had envisaged for it, he resigned from the Cabinet (1951). The heartache and sorrow that his time in the Cabinet caused him and the manner in which his boldest attempt at reformed legislation was stymied perhaps brought home to him the limits of that political liberalism he had valued and upheld all his life. The rule of law, the guarantees that progressive legislation could offer the country’s poor and marginal people, democratic protocols that would ensure that archaic forms of authority, based on caste or class interest would not prove determinate — these ideals came apart for him as is clear from the text of his resignation speech. His turn to Buddhism must be viewed in this context as well. In 1954, while dedicating a Buddha vihara, he announced his decision to convert to Buddhism, and also of the book that he was working on, on the Buddha’s life. In 1956, he and his fellow Dalits in a massive public ceremony in Nagpur and the following year his The Buddha and His Dhamma was published. During the 1950s, Ambedkar’s interest in Buddhism was inspired not so much by his anger over Hinduism, which he still retained, and instead was subsumed in a broader intention — his desire to create an enduring basis for genuine fraternity and equality. This time around, he would do it, not through seeking allies, for that could well prove opportune; or through legal arrangements, which in the final analysis are workable only through the exercise of a radical will and which in the Indian context was seldom consistent; but through insisting on a radical ethics. This ethics in turn would hinge on people adopting new ways of living, thinking and acting, both towards themselves and others. It is in this context that he turned to Buddhism. As he had noted in his 1951 article, this was not a of the book, nor was the Buddha a God — its rationalism, ethics and subtle poetry appealed to him. The manner in which he made this poetry speak to his needs is the subject of the last section of this essay.

converted

political

religion

Sadhamma as Universal Ethics: Dr Ambedkar's Anticipation of Utopia Among other things, The Buddha and His Dhamma may be read as an incipient critique of the modern, democratic state. As Dr Ambedkar noted in his resignation speech, the state cannot hope to exist thus, making laws and building institutions on a social dung-heap.

The relationship of state to society thus stood to be altered. Until the mid-1950s, Dr Ambedkar had imagined he could do this by making the state answer radical social needs, but that decade brought to him, like the 1930s had, in a different sense, that these needs were seldom recognised as such by the social world that gave birth to them. Political fiat and democratic labour could not hope to do much in this regard either, since political institutions and people’s were themselves not entirely convinced of the need to reform law and society. The rule of the majority, the basis for politics, was deeply problematic in the Indian context, since caste Hindus, who were likely to assert their resistance to any and every kind of radical reform, would remain, at all times, a permanent political majority. He had attempted to work against the tyranny of such a majority, but the safeguards he sought in this respect were not granted — separate electorates for dalits, for one. His decision to opt out of this polity then must be taken seriously for what it tells us about the political realm: that it is at best limited, and at worse, a deception on the poor and the unfortunate in a context of endemic social injustice. The Buddha and His Dhamma, however, is not an argument against political action or intervention; rather it seeks to re-define the political in and through ethical and spiritual concerns and It demonstrates through the life of the Buddha the nature of the ethical life, and the choices that confront one, committed to equality, justice and fraternity. Much has been written about how Dr Ambedkar worked with various traditions of Buddhist scholarship — the Buddhacharitra, the Pali canon and early western interpretations of the Buddha’s life and times — all of which he read, annotated, glossed, rejected, and changed in important ways. A scornful early reviewer described him as simplifying the Buddha’s life into a message for modern times. Others have read his effort differently since, in The Buddha and His Dhamma a careful coding of the Buddha’s life as one given over to rationalism and thinking about the greater common good; or as exemplifying a new, socially responsive Buddhism, which takes the ending of suffering to mean the ending of oppression as well, and the dawn of justice and equality. Yet others have attempted to identify the metaphysical core of his assumed faith, its aesthetics, and its purported ethics.

representatives democratic

practices.

substituted,

discerning

What is evident in all accounts is the distinctive edge he brought to his understanding of Buddhism. For one, he set out to define dhukka, not only in terms of the self-consuming desire or want that produces it, but also as social suffering caused by acts trained by the powerful and the unethical against the powerless. He did not obviously want to make Dalits responsible for what ailed them, at the same time he was not unaware of the power of want and desire. What he does then is to impute want and desire to those that are overwhelmed by avarice and anger, and are therefore unable to act right — in his semantic universe, desire is as much loba or greed, and as likely as indulgence to cause dhukka. While glossing the famous scene of the Buddha watching labourers plough, Dr Ambedkar has him sorrowing at the fact that while the toiler toils, the master lives on the fruits of the toiler’s labour (Ambedkar 1992: 10). This, in his lexicon is loba. Significantly, as I have shown above, the pain of labour, in Iyothee Thass, instils empathy, an awareness of a mortality; in Dr Ambedkar, though, it indicates a situation of inequality, born out of greed and avarice. Loba, when by kroda, or anger and hatred, compounds the misery caused by want and produces endless strife (ibid.: 235). In redefining pain and sorrow, Dr Ambedkar retains the Buddhist view of desire, as causing delusion and compromising the integrity of the self, but distinguishes false consciousness or illusory thought from illusion-producing emotions. In his discourse, moha clouds the mind, whereas loba and kroda work on the emotions. is therefore all, and capable of curing delusion and craving (ibid.: 49–55). Further, loba and kroda cause hurt to others. Explicating the effects of these two emotions, Dr Ambedkar’s Buddha points out: ‘Craving comes into being because of desire for gain, when desire for gain becomes a passion for possession, when the spirit of possession gives rise to tenacity of possession it becomes avarice. Avarice and possession, due to uncontrolled acquisitive instinct, calls for watch and ward.’ The Buddha goes on to note that craving or greed is to be condemned because it causes strife, hurt, violence and quarrels, and Dr Ambedkar further glosses the Mahanidanasutta on which he draws for his arguments in this context thus: ‘That this is the correct analysis of class struggle there can be no doubt’ (ibid.: 239). Desire thus produces social strife and contradictions and walking the path of dhamma, learning the impermanence of desire and want,

common accompanied conflict,

Mindfulness

of passion and its effects, and practising speech and acts that are mindful of how this may affect others produce social good. Dr Ambedkar’s marking of desire in this manner is interesting especially for the manner he links it to the doctrine of karma, or the effects of one’s deeds. He rejects the notion that karmic effects are felt across time and pursue a soul even after death. Instead, he defines karma as not merely that which rebounds on a person, and about which he can do nothing, except endure its effects. Rather, he argues, karma must be seen to be a principle of order that sustains the universe. In this reading, actions, good or bad, produce their own consequences and this affects not only the doer, but also others. In other words, each of us affects the other and all action, then is inevitably social. It stands to reason that all of us are implicated in a vast and complicated web of thoughts and deeds (ibid.: 244). To act then would require that one acted responsibly; in Dr Ambedkar’s view this would mean that one acted with and with a keen awareness of how our acts affect others, be it speech, action or thoughts. Eschewing loba, kroda and acquiring the knowledge requisite to do so then were inevitably social acts. This knowledge though was not merely of the mind, but had to instil fellowship on the one hand, and virtue on the other. The obtaining of such knowledge would counter desiredefined as vidya — required a free exercise of the mind, and for this one ought to free oneself from the tyranny of texts, custom and faith in supernatural beings, God and non-purposive discourses on the soul, re-birth and so on. But the mere acquisition and possession of such knowledge was not enough — one had to learn to exercise one’s mind, practice vidya with discernment. Discerning wisdom or pragnya was very important in this scheme of things, because it alone enabled ethical judgement. Dr Ambedkar made it clear, through his Buddha, that to act right, to follow the dhamma, may not be easily assumed in a spirit of mindless innocence. Rather the dhamma had to be learnt, through recognition of both right and wrong, and choosing right over wrong thereafter. The dhamma was thus learnt ethics, self-consciously chosen, rather than blindly accepted. Yet pragnya was not all, for the dhamma had to be suffused with compassion. Hence the importance of karuna — ethics cannot be a matter of principle but also of active love. The exercise of karuna, though fundamental to a practice of the dhamma, was still not One needed to observe maitri, or loving kindness towards all creation — not only friends but also foes. Maitri in this sense was

particularly

knowledge,

sufficient.

not mere love, but active fellowship with the world, a fellowship that did not elaborate, codify and render every difference an aspect of hierarchy and inequality (ibid.: 127–32; 325). Further, it was in and through such an annulment of differences between oneself and the larger world — an annulment that is demonstrated in and through meaningful ethical action — that one came to saddhamma. Sadhamma required that one practise righteousness towards others, invite others to observe dhamma, sharing with them the of it, and learning to distinguish pradanya or moral insight from mere knowledge of the dhamma (ibid.: 291). Pradanya had to co-exist with sila, with virtue (ibid.: 295). Above all, though, sadhamma meant that one realise the importance of maitri above all else, and realise that neither birth nor any other form of privilege may earn one a right, a choice that was unavailable to others. Sadhamma was, thus, in Dr Ambedkar’s lexicon, the form of that ethical consensus that we forge with each other, maintaining amongst ourselves that we hold and shall exercise rights and in common (ibid.:325). Dr Ambedkar made it clear that he did not mean by this that differences be subsumed in a collective dhamma. He accepted that our emotional and intellectual needs are different, that there may even be social and cultural differences amongst us. Yet, he noted, none can, and may, claim superiority over the rest; thus, there is nothing that sets one apart from others, except the nature of one’s actions, which, in turn, are dependent on one’s thoughts, their goodness and purity. In his understanding, private and public virtue were closely interlinked, given the nature of thought, which pertains always already to the world, and not only to the thinker that thinks it. Through a series of arguments, Dr Ambedkar’s Buddha, even as the classical Buddha did, rejects creeds intent on verbal or sophistry. He also rejects the claims of Brahmins to special privileges — drawing on well-known texts such as the Vajrasuchi, which set out to disprove the possibility of differences arising out of conditions of birth. The Buddha observes that the nature of birth is not dissimilar, whatever the status and caste of the mother, and hence there can be no claiming of privilege on this count (ibid.: 302). He also notes that the Brahminical creed of chaturvarna cannot be a general law, since by the Brahmins’ own admission it does not exist the confines of the land over which their doctrine holds sway (ibid.: 303). This refusal to grant universal value to chaturvarna

knowledge however

compassion individual

philosophical

outside

marks an important moment in the text, for it allows Dr Ambedkar to propose that only saddhamma could be universal, since it does not recognise the principle of difference, marking status or privilege, as germane to the practice of ethics. It also allows him to demonstrate how, in the ultimate analysis, universal ethics is nothing but another name for fraternity, for a fellowship of people (ibid.: 325). Throughout The Buddha and His Dhamma Dr Ambedkar makes it a point to insist on the virtue of fraternity, which is almost always linked to equality. Arguing that the varna order did most harm to women and Sudras, denying them the right to knowledge and the right to bear arms, both of which are required for meaningful social he noted that the Buddha’s dhamma insisted on these rights, by rendering all human beings capable of attaining wisdom and nibanna, and by denying value to violence and war (ibid.: 91). Rebellion in this context required one to dissent and argue one’s way to a universal ethics, even as the Buddha did, with his interlocutors. As much as the Buddha’s words, his actions and demeanour are important in Dr Ambedkar’s text, they become focal points for a number of issues that Dr Ambedkar wishes to represent or discuss. Siddhartha is at all times the rational prince, sometimes tired, at other times, eager, but his actions are always deliberate. Even when he chooses to leave home, this is on account of the dissident stance he adopts in a water dispute involving the Sakyas and their neighbours, the Koliyas – he exiles himself, rather to validate his point of view. Since his decision to leave comes in the wake of a long period of meditative calm, Yashodhara lets him go, noting that even if she were to hold him back that would mean nothing, keen as he was to leave, and also because she was aware of what bothered him, and so would not request him to say. Later in the text she sorrows, but Dr Ambedkar has her say that her pain is on account of the mortal being that she is, and knows therefore longing and loss, but not because she did not want Siddhartha to go (ibid.: 41). Not only is the prince rational, but the princess too is gracious and intelligent. Then again, when the Buddha argues with Ananda about letting women be part of the sangha, we see a rational, thoughtful man, who is unsure of what this would mean — he insists too that he does not doubt women’s capacity for nibanna but that he is not clear about how this was to be accommodated (ibid.: 195). Likewise with others in the grand Buddhist narrative, especially those who appear to be both marginal and iconic, we see Dr Ambedkar

protest,

endowing each of them with a characteristic importance. The Buddha and His Dhamma thus enumerates each and every conversion by a marginal social person, the barber, the chandalika, the blacksmith in loving detail (ibid.: 185–190). This conscious narrativising of important aspects of the Buddha and his life and work historicises the text in particular ways, making a distant past do service to the present. The text’s approach to knowledge is crucial; as I have noted above, Dr Ambedkar is at pains to distinguish false from true knowledge, wasteful exercises in interpretation and argument from that enables true discernment. His rejection of the claims of scriptural authority, equivocal metaphysics and a philosophy of hedonism devoid of discernment, while very much within the Buddhist scheme of things, also answer to contemporary notions of worthwhile learning. Karl Marx, or more generally socialism, also constitutes one of the horizons of his enquiry, as he examines the problem of understanding and social change. Throughout The Buddha and His Dhamma we find no references to kings and states, except when the text warrants it, as with the exchanges the Buddha has with King Bimbisara and King Pasendi, and even here the emphasis is on the ruler’s righteousness. The state is not the object of Dr Ambedkar’s address, and as he seeks to reconstruct this world, he also advances an alternative politics and one in which ethics is indistinguishable from justice, and equality and fraternity emerge as central to both social life and the polity.

knowledge

In Conclusion We have here then a blurring of lines between civil and political only this blurring achieves a new social map, and on which a universal ethics, premised on loving kindness, demands a state and politics that is pervaded by the dhamma. Thus it is not so much a question of what the state’s attitude towards religions ought to be or whether it ought or ought not to interfere in matters of tradition and custom, rather The Buddha and his Dhamma appears to suggest that as far as the state is concerned, it needs to move towards sadhamma, in keeping with the changes the Buddha wants in the realm of the civil order. The contrast with Pandit Iyothee Thass’ Buddhism could not be more evident — if we are to use the terms either of them deployed

society,

in their writings, Thass set greater store by practices of the self, by what Dr Ambedkar considered sila, whereas Dr Ambedkar insisted on a greater role for pragnya and pradnya on the one hand, and maitri on the other. For Thass too, jeevakarunya, akin to maitri, was the supreme virtue, but this remained in his universe an ethical whereas the fellowship that Dr Ambedkar invoked through his use of maitri shaded off into that much desired civil and virtue, fraternity. It was this fraternity that made for the larger social and political good, Dr Ambedkar’s Buddha makes clear, as he counsels the Vajjis against whom the monarch Ajatasatru wishes to wage war that as long as the Vajjis practice a decent collective and fraternal life in their daily affairs, they would succeed in staving off war and conflict. In Thass, jeevakarunya remains very much within the realm of ahimsa, a creed of abstention, linked to productive rather than fraternal labour.

category, political

Part III Islamic Feminism: Mixed Discourse of Faith and Justice

Chapter 7 discusses in broad, critical terms the Islamic veil, the harem and polygamy. The conclusion is that Muslim women today are put on the dock whatever stand they take on issues related to religion and culture. If they bow to tradition, they are accused by non-Muslims of being submissive. If they make a gesture in the direction of secular modernity, they are seen as becoming Westernised and betraying their own community. However, in the last decade or so, some Muslim women have attempted to go beyond these facile by engaging with religion and thereby radicalising it. Chapter 8 looks at the fascinating insights into the relationship between faith and politics that feminist engagements with Islam have made possible. V. Geetha’s thinking about faith and politics stems from her almost decade-old acquaintance with the Tamil Nadu Muslim Women’s Jamaat, a unique forum that addresses problems to do with discrimination and violence faced by Muslim women in their families, or in the context of their relationship to their communities. The manner in which members of the Women’s Jamaat draw on the Quran to define a public ethic for themselves, and also work on building community institutions of a secular nature — tuition centres, credit networks — indicates that here is a history that Hindus have since moved away from, the history of social reform. As was the case with the self-respect movement, in the Indian context, social reform was reconstructed as secularism — and this reconstruction was constitutively historical, and as familiar to Muslims wanting change as it was to Hindus. By focusing on the experiences of the Women’s Jamaat, V. Geetha demonstrates the troubled, yet relationship, between the realms of the sacred and the civic. In doing so, she suggests that rather than pitch our arguments in the realm of the law alone, we should look to differentiated spaces of action, so that justice is not just a function of law, and emerges instead as an adjunct of that traffic between the realms of faith, custom and the law.

dichotomies,

productive

7 Notes on the Veil, the Harem and Polygamy in Contemporary Islamic Cultures ‘To act as an ‘Islamic feminist’ is, therefore, not to perform a fixed identity

but to create a new, contingent subject position.’ Cooke (2000: 152)

Has the colonial experience hardened oppositions along gender lines? Is the division between religion and the state possible under Islam? Is the term ‘Islamic feminism’ an oxymoron? This essay attempts to answer these questions.

The Muslim Veil As Leila Ahmed has pointed out, for Westerners, there are three evocative words — harem, veil, polygamy — which are synonymous with Muslim women’s oppression. By definition, however, none of them is more oppressive than their ‘opposites’, namely, free malefemale interaction, no veil and monogamy (Ahmed 1982). As far as the veil is concerned, it appears to have been pre-Islamic in origin and in use among the Greeks and the Persians. The relevant verses in the Quran recommending the use of the veil on the basis of enhancing female modesty are the following: ‘And when you ask them (the Prophet’s wives) for anything you want to ask them from before a screen (hijab); that makes for greater purity for your hearts and for them’ (S. 33:53); ‘O Prophet! Tell your wives and daughters and the believing women that they should cast their outer garments over themselves, which is more convenient that they should be known and not molested’ (S. 33:59). Modesty, however, is a relative term. Some women who wear headscarves may believe that the hair and neck form part of feminine beauty, while those who wear the burqa may believe that every part of the female body needs to be covered. Those who wear neither the headscarf nor the burqa may feel that feminine arms, legs, head,

Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship

and neck may be exposed without immodesty and that modesty requires merely avoiding revealing clothes like miniskirts, halternecks and bikinis. Arab feminists like Fatima Mernissi point out that the ‘screen’ is not the veil.1 Some go on to maintain that the relevant verses in the Quran only apply to the Prophet’s wives. Finally, they point out the instance of gender egalitarianism in the Quran (S. 33:35) that refers to vast rewards Allah has prepared for both ‘men who guard their modesty and women who guard their modesty’. A few Islamic feminists attempt to turn the gender tables by castigating Muslim men for not adhering to Quranic principles of morality, like wearing galabiyyas and growing beards. Studies have revealed that Muslim women’s motivations for veiling can vary dramatically — between expressing their belief in the Quran and expressing their contempt for Western values. After all, women are peculiarly vulnerable when their men are most threatened, as under colonial occupation. The veil or the burqa, by attempting to render invisible the woman, makes her more visible. The veil imprisons and liberates. Zaynab al-Ghazali, the only prominent woman in the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, strongly recommends the veil for Muslim women, in the name of opposing secular and Western values. She also calls for a strange mix of political action and domesticity, which calls to mind the similar, somewhat regressive ideology of the Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of the Hindu group, the Vishva Hindu Parishad. Wearing of the veil has been put to the test primarily by the Muslim diaspora in Western countries. In 1989, three Muslim girls of North African extraction were excluded from their school in Creil in northern France because they insisted on wearing ‘Muslim’ headscarves (foulards ‘islamiques’) in class. This action precipitated a major debate in France among the estimated 2.7 million Muslims presently residing in France, which is still governed by secularity (laicite) and the Jacobin ethos of uniform citizenship in ‘la Republique, une et indivisible’. The events in Creil were mirrored in 1990 in Cheshire, England, when two pupils at Altrincham Grammar School for Girls were sent home by the head teacher for wearing Islamic headscarves. The current Muslim population in the UK is believed to be 1.5 million.

fundamentalist

1 See Mernissi (1991) for further elaboration of this point.

Veil, Harem and Polygamy in Contemporary Islamic Cultures

In the UK, by the late 1960s, it was realised that identical treatment to citizens, irrespective of their cultural differences, was an legal response. On the face of it, it would seem that pluralist Britain would allow schoolgirls to wear headscarves, whereas republican France wouldn’t. Actually, the reverse has happened.2 In France, substantial inroads into Jacobin doctrine have occurred in three respects. First, despite opposition from the ideological left, private Catholic schools receive substantial funding from the state. Second, there has been some decentralisation of secondary school administration and power has been handed over to local authorities. Third, teaching of history, geography and ‘civics’ in France has recently moved away from the inculcation of patriotism to an appreciation of cultural plurality and diversity. In Britain, the Race Relations Act 1976 has focused on racial, not religious, discrimination. ‘A key question, however, under the Act is whether the proportion of pupils of the plaintiff’s racial, ethnic or national group who can conscientiously comply with the regulation is ‘considerably smaller’ than the proportion of pupils not of that group who can comply with it.’3 Since very few Muslim girls in the UK wear the hijab, it would be very difficult for them to win a case on this ground. Thus the Act does discriminate against the interests of religious minorities. The only way in which such cases can be resolved — as happened both in Creil and in Cheshire — is by schools reaching a speedy and sensible compromise on the matter of allowing religious symbols in class. Despite its controversial status for having collaborated with right-wing governments, an organisation in France like Ni Putes, Ni Soumises (Neither Whore nor Submissive) headed by Fadela Amara, appears to broaden the terms of the debate as far as the Muslim veil is concerned. Muslim women in the ghettoes of Western Europe are now saying to the men in their community: ‘Just because we do not wear the veil, we are not whores’. And to the French secular state, they are saying: ‘Just because we do wear the veil, we are not submissive’.

inappropriate

considerable

2 For a detailed analysis of religious minority treatment in the UK and in France, see Poulter (1997). 3 This pertains to Section 1(1)(b) of the Act and is quoted in Poulter (1997: 65).

What is most important is that it is now being recognised in civil society that there are various modes of being a woman within the Islamic world. States, however, are another matter altogether. In 2010, both France and Belgium banned the burqa on the grounds that it poses security concerns (since the face of the wearer is hidden) and that it is detrimental to the moral dignity and health of women. In a situation where fingerprinting and eye-recognition technologies are better indicators of personal identity that the photograph, it is disingenuous to claim that the burqa could pose security threats to states. Equally, it may be argued that the state cannot be the arbiter of morality in a society, particularly when the practice in does not harm others. Again, on matters of health, these same states tend to be more tolerant of the intake of intoxicants and body piercing, than the wearing of the Islamic veil. In short, it would seem that the banning of the burqa is guided by prejudice rather than by logic.

question

The Harem The very word ‘harem’ is a variant of the word ‘haram’, which means ‘forbidden’ and also ‘holy’. The harem can be defined as a system that permits males’ sexual access

to more than one female. It can also be defined, and with as much accuracy, as a system whereby the female relatives of a man — wives, sisters, mothers, aunts, daughters — share much of their time and their living space, and further, which enables women to have frequent and easy access to other women in their community, vertically, across class lines, as well as horizontally. (Ahmed 1982: 524)

Yemeni women, for example, are in the habit of gathering together in the afternoon in tafritas, for smoking, chewing qat, playing, dancing, and so on. It may be argued that Muslim women do not have a choice, whether to remain in the confined space of a harem or move into the public space inhabited by men. The truth, however, is that women in all cultures face varying degrees of oppression. As Ahmed and other Arab feminists point out, there is no known record in the body of orthodox Muslim literature of the notion that women are animals or have no souls. ‘The annals of the Catholic church, on the other hand, in fact record that a Council of Bishops met at Macon in 581

storytelling,

and solemnly deliberated precisely the issue of whether women were human or animal’ (ibid.: 526). In the early phase of Islam, according to many Muslim scholars, even the few misogynist elements in the Hadith (sayings attributed to the Prophet) may have been by Muslims’ contact with Christian asceticism. Some Muslim commentators decry the discourses of Western feminism and human rights, which, they claim, have far-reaching for Muslim peoples, especially as far as the social status of women is concerned (Majid 1998). According to these scholars, while one must expose Islamist ideologies to rigorous criticism and categorically reject all coercive and intolerant practices espoused in the name of religion, the recovery of a long-obfuscated egalitarian Islam is the need of the day. In other words, the problems of Islam today are to be found within Islam, not outside of it. Furthermore, an effort should be made to reconceptualise a progressive Islam for the future, if one is to go beyond a negative critique of Islamic cultures and rethink a possible indigenous path to women’s emancipation. Islam has evolved from an initial phase of tolerance to the gradual marginalisation of women and their enclosure in the dark world of theological patriarchy. There is therefore a need to restore early Sufi and Qarmati thought, long eclipsed by a conservative, maledominated clerical Islam. In fact, the Friday sermon or khotha became an exclusively male domain only under the caliphal state. Even as late as the fourteenth century, the Moroccan traveller, IbnBatuta, remarked on the number of women who attended Friday prayers in the mosque in Persia. In the opinion of critics, cultural and gender-wise restrictive processes began with Osman Ibn Affan, the Fourth caliph of the Muslims and head of the Ommayad dynasty in Damascus, and ended with American imperialism and its agents in the Arab world. Fatima Mernissi’s reflections on the position of women throughout much of Islamic history imply that democracy and individual were abolished with the advent of Islam, when the Prophet Mohammed destroyed polytheism in Mecca and replaced it with an uncompromising (but benevolent) monotheism. Describing democracy as a form of shirk (disbelief through associating another deity with Allah), she calls for the re-establishment of the culture of polytheism that had reigned in Arabia in the pre-Islamic period and thus, in a striking parallel with Rushdie’s Satanic Verses (1989), redefines the Jahiliya (the pre-Islamic period; literally, the time of ignorance) as an exciting era of discussion and human rights.

influenced

consequences

freedoms

Some critics like Majid claim that Mernissi’s kind of secularisation of the Revelation and the Prophet’s life has been widely rejected in the Islamic world. Majid also points out that Mernissi’s methodology desacralises the Quran by reducing it to a mere historical document. But for Mernissi, adopting secularism means further demystifying the transcendental process of revelation and solving all social issues through the powers of human agency, and not by an uncritical resort to the male-constructed texts of Islam. According to Majid, the root of the problem lies in the patriarchal policies of the caliphal state. If parliaments in Islamic countries are harems that exclude women from any meaningful political participation and that allow men to decide the fate of women, their roots are in the beginnings of the caliphal state, legitimised by the aristocratic principle of bay’a (pledge of allegiance), in which the caliph is ‘veiled’ from the people he governs. (ibid.: 330)

Nawal El Saadawi is another Arab feminist who praises both the pre-Islamic and the early Islamic periods, and who has received flak for doing so from the Muslim community. As Suad Joseph points out, ‘the person versus the collectivity is a false binary’.4 In any society, there are multiple notions of selfhood operative and functional. Some fundamental human rights may have hegemonic strategies, but that does not mean that they should be dismantled altogether, in the name of sanctifying culture. These are limited tools to address the wrongs of politically abusive states, particularly in the case of women. Even if it is true that there are many Islams, it is equally true that there are many Christianities, Judaisms and all other religions. And indeed, most religions have had democratic tribal beginnings. Consistently looking to the past does not help, for there is a to homogenise the past. Furthermore, who is to decide which the authentic, usable past is in any culture? Travel and constitute the material for Muslims’ identities. During the month of Hajj, the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina become the hub of the Islamic world for all Muslims scattered across the globe. But when people travel, ideas, theories and cultures travel along with them. If Islamic feminists and other commentators look to an Islam prior to state formation, should they not logically argue for

tendency cosmopolitanism

4 See Comments on Majid’s ‘The Politics of Feminism in Islam’ in Majid (1998 : 365). The Comments are on pp. 363–69.

the separation of state and religion in countries of Islamic majority? Even if the (secular) state is a European construct, states continue to exercise ideological hegemony which is an impediment to the pluralism that these analysts call for. The point that I am making here is that it is better to look forward than backward.

Polygamy and Public Memory In the Indian subcontinent, the discussion on the Muslim has centred less on the veil and the harem than on polygamy. It is stated that in pre-Islamic times, unregulated polygamy existed. A man could marry an indefinite number of women whom he could divorce or abandon at will. The divorced women had no material security, lived a life of shame and degradation, and were forced to depend on the charity of their tribe. Islamic law was supposed to regulate polygamous practice and empower women, in the context of the seventh and eighth centuries. The Quran limits a man to four wives at a time, and demands strict justice and equality in their Islamic polygamous relations provided a solution to the of large numbers of destitute, abandoned women and war widows. Particularly in India, where Muslims are in a minority, it is to invoke secularism in any discussion on Islamic cultural practice. The Hindu Right argument that Indian Muslims invoke secularism for the safety and security of their existence but fight against any move for secular change or reform in their religious tradition has gained currency in India, especially in the last decade or two. Indeed in the 1980s, the Shah Bano case became the most cited example of this so-called duplicity. The Shah Bano case became infamous in India, not only because it denied justice to women, but because it set an undesirable political precedent: namely, subversion of the institution of the judiciary by the legislature. Over three decades ago a Muslim woman, Shah Bano, asked a court to ensure support from her husband, who had divorced her after forty-three years of marriage and thrown her out on the street. Shah Bano, a sixty-two-year-old Muslim woman and mother of five from Indore, Madhya Pradesh, was divorced by her husband in 1978. The Indian Muslim personal law allows the husband to do this his wife’s consent: the husband just needs to utter the word ‘talaq’ three times before witnesses, and the divorce is complete.

community

treatment. phenomenon common

aggressively

without

Shah Bano, because she did not have any means to support herself and her children, approached the courts for securing maintenance from her husband. When the case reached the Supreme Court, seven years had elapsed. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that it could not accept the plea by Bano’s husband that he was only bound by Islamic law, and pointed out that a husband must assist his wife financially after a divorce if she has no other means of income or support. The Supreme Court invoked Article 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which applies to every Indian citizen, regardless of caste, creed or religion, and ruled that Shah Bano be given money. The Muslim orthodoxy felt threatened at what they perceived was an encroachment of the Muslim Personal Law, and protested loudly at the judgement. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), which was constituted in 1972, agitated against the ruling in large numbers. Owing to the fury of the fundamentalist Muslims directed against the ruling in the Shah Bano case, the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1986 diluted it through legislation in the form of the Muslim Women’s (Protection on Divorce) Act in Parliament. The result was that in several Indian states a divorced Muslim woman could not claim maintenance beyond the ‘iddat’ (three menstrual cycles) period. Is the Hindu Right therefore justified in describing the Indian Muslim community as both backward and opportunistic? The Hindu Right also claims that the Babri masjid demolition in 1992 is a direct consequence of the reversal of the Shah Bano judgement by the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1986. But is this the whole truth? Unfortunately, public memory is so short, that historical are often forgotten and stereotypes and shibboleths easily take their place. Exactly a century before the Shah Bano case, which involved clashes between Muslim and Hindu fundamental forces, we have the Rakhmabai case (1884–88) which involved analogous clashes between the British colonial forces and the Hindu orthodoxy. Rakhmabai, born in 1864 in Bombay, belonged to the carpenter caste. When she was three years of age, her nineteen-year-old widowed mother remarried, as was allowed by the caste customs. Rakhmabai’s stepfather was an enlightened liberal and a reputed medical doctor. Against his wishes, Rakhmabai was married at the age of eleven to Dadaji Bhikaji Thakur, widely considered to be an uncouth, idle

maintenance

precedents

and uneducated young man. Rakhmabai continued to study and live with her parents even after she attained puberty. Dadaji sent Rakhmabai a legal notice and in 1884 filed a lawsuit for the restitution of conjugal rights. The case, Dadaji Bhikaji v Rakhmabai, came up for trial in the Bombay High Court in September 1885, when an astonishing and controversial judgement was delivered by Justice Pinhey. Justice Pinhey ruled that Rakhmabai was under no obligation to return to her husband and that the suit was not maintainable. The argument given was that conjugal rights had not been established in this case in the absence of both consent and consummation of the marriage. In the flurry of protests that followed this judgement in the media, Dadaji went in appeal and Justice Pinhey’s judgement was overturned in the Appellate Court in 1886 as well as the High Court in 1887. Given the controversial nature of the issue and the resultant polarisation of opinions in the media and in civil society — which extended beyond India — the court seemed unwilling to enforce the decree of restitution. Finally, Dadaji accepted a monetary settlement from Rakhmabai and agreed to relinquish his rights over her. The case ended in July 1888. The two ideological blocs in this controversy were easily At one extreme was the orthodox Hindu or anti-reform faction which firmly maintained that the contemporary marriage practices posed no problem to the Hindu community. These could not or need not be changed, partly because they were derived from the ancient sacred texts and partly because they suited the existing social conditions. Four reasons for the woman’s in the Hindu marriage in the name of stree dharma were cited. Firstly, women’s uncontrollable sexual desire or stree swabhava which awakens at puberty implied that girls be married before they attain puberty and come under the control of their husbands. This was the underlying rationale for early marriages of girls like Rakhmabai herself. Secondly, neither the woman nor the man had any say in terms of choosing their spouse. But the fact of the matter is that the lack of choice affects women much more than men, because the latter are allowed the privilege of polygamous practice. (Indeed, when the Hindu Personal Law was sought to be changed in 1954–55 by forbidding polygamous practices within the Hindu community, there was a howl of protests from the orthodoxy, some members of whom even threatened to convert to Islam if this privilege were withdrawn!) Thirdly, the implicit nature of the wife’s consent to

identifiable.

practices

subservience

sexual intercourse in the act of marriage meant that, according to the customary Hindu marriage, estranged wives like Rakhmabai had to return to live with her husband, even if the marriage had not yet been consummated. From this perspective, Justice Pinhey’s ruling was fundamentally flawed and unacceptable to orthodox Hindus. Fourthly, the wife is an instrument of procreation and must bear sons in order to continue the lineage of clan and family. The orthodox faction was led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Rao Bahadur V. N. Mandlik, and supported in large numbers by eminent Hindu scholar-priests. Its views were voiced in the Marathi Kesari and English Mahratta (both published in Pune under Tilak’s leadership), and the Anglo-Marathi Native opinion (published in Bombay under Mandlik’s influence). The opposing reformist was a far less homogenous group. However its general aim was to look for the correct interpretation of the ancient texts which had hitherto been misconstrued, and also to advocate reform in the interests of women and other vulnerable sections, if necessary through state legislation. The leaders of this faction included Rao Bahadur Mahadev Govind Ranade, Dr R. G. Bhandarkar and Professor Gopal Ganesh Agarkar. The most prominent means of expression of the reformers were the liberal Anglo-Marathi Induprakash and the Prarthana Samaj’s Subodh-patrika. Despite the differences between the traditionalists and the moderates, it was the former faction that was the most lucid and unambiguous in terms of its opposition to the British colonialists’ intrusion in the personal laws of the native populations. Clearly, the message given out was that the private realm of the household was off limits to the colonial state. Equally clearly, it was made obvious that the private realm was ruled in the name of tradition by the native patriarchy, and there was no room here for women’s emancipation or modernisation. As for the moderates, their task of upholding reform and change was necessarily a difficult one, in that it was open to the charges of anti-nationalism, anti-traditionalism, and collusion with the colonial oppressor. This is the reason why many of them constantly between now supporting child marriage, yet again seeking an expanded interpretation of the Hindu sacred texts, and at other times advocating reform. This ambivalence was reflected even in the personal lives of many in the moderate faction. For example, Rakhmabai’s counsel, Kashinath Trimbak Telang, performed the

faction

vacillated

marriage of his eight-year-old daughter shortly after the case was over, while the social reformer Ranade abandoned his plan to marry a widow and instead married a pre-pubertal girl, ostensibly bowing to parental pressure. The few and tentative steps that were taken subsequently — right up to the twenty-first century — have occurred in the midst of fierce opposition by the Hindu patriarchy and equally fierce determination for change on the part of the women in the community. The point that I wish to make here is that — apart from the startling similarities between the Rakhmabai and the Shah Bano cases — no lasting or authentic reform is possible in personal laws, Hindu or Muslim or whatever, owing to the complicity between and patriarchy, unless the impetus for change comes from the women themselves. The appointment of the religiously conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the Pope has inevitably raised fears of increased gender oppression within the Catholic Church. Indeed, it is important to recognise the different strands of opinion within the different communities.

religion

Muslim Women in India Today In the 1980s, quite a large number of Muslims were in support of the Shah Bano judgement but the media, which is interested in and superficiality, hardly ever bothered to cover these diverse trends among Muslims. In the south, a section of Muslim religious leadership also opposed the Shah Bano movement launched by the north Indian Muslim leadership. Many Muslim activists submitted memoranda to the then Rajiv Gandhi government not to subvert the Shah Bano judgement, but to no avail. The Islamic (who represented a tiny minority in the Muslim community) continued to hog the media headlines. It is quite interesting to note that while the Indian Ulema and Muslim leaders agitated against the Supreme Court judgement in the mid-1980s and forced the Government of India to adopt the new legislation, the Bangladesh High Court, in 1995, upheld the of Cr. P.C. 125 and allowed maintenance for life to a Muslim divorcee (or till her re-marriage), in the Dhaka High Court case of Hefzur Rahman (Md) v Shamsun Nahar Begum, the judgement for which was delivered on 9 January 1995.

sensationalism

extremists provision

Take the case of the triple talaq. While the orthodoxy’s strongest argument against abolishing the practice of triple talaq in one sitting has always been that it is based on the Shariat or the Divine Laws, moderates push for a more contemporary understanding of the genesis of these Divine Laws. Moderate Muslims point out that rules characterised by the ulema as Shariat, even though entirely the creation of a human agency, became vested with the sanctity of being either revealed or divine. The Shariat was composed entirely by human interpretations of the Quran; it is not strictly what the Quran says, and, in some cases, there are arguably deviations. In the Shariat there is always a consideration for the concrete conditions in which the rule is applied. Besides, in India, the Anglo-Mohammedan law, evolved by the colonial courts in their effort to apply the laws of the Quran (in cases where the parties were Muslims), also began to be construed as a part of the Shariat. These laws are the handiwork of those who were not even nominally Muslims. They were justified through the legal fiction that the courts were not interpreting the Shariat but merely applying it. Another argument put forward by the moderate Muslim voices is that there have been varied and imaginative interpretations of the existing legislation in the Indian courts over the years. It was to counter the provision of Section 125 of the Cr. P.C. which ensures maintenance for a divorced wife until she remarries or she dies that the Muslim Women’s Act was passed in 1986. According to the moderates, there is enough scope within the personal laws to provide justice for women. The first judgement under this Act was given by the Magistrate of Lucknow, Rekha Dixit. She awarded a 68,000 to the divorced wife as a final settlement of all dues. Let us consider the recent judgement of the Bombay High Court in the case of appeal filed by Jaitunbi Mubarak Shaikh against her former husband, who divorced her in early 1986, before the Muslim Women’s Act came into force. The husband, Mubarak Fakhruddin Shaikh sent her a 125 and three months’ maintenance at the rate of a50 per month by Money Order in the final settlement of the dues. The wife had filed an application for maintenance under Cr. P.C. 125 and the magistrate had fixed the amount of maintenance at a 60 per month by an order dated 26 June 1981. But on 6 October 1986, the wife initiated the present proceedings by filing a maintenance application No. 297 of 1986 under 127 of the code for enhancement of maintenance, claiming that she was entitled to a 500 per month.

The Act of 1986 ensured that no payment is made beyond the iddat period. According to the ulema orthodoxy, the word mata in verse 2:241 of the Quran is about one-time provision and not month after month after divorce. The ulema also argued that marriage in Islam is a contract and once the contract is broken there is no liability on the husband to maintain the wife, as she is free to re-marry as soon as the period of iddat is over. The Bombay High Court, however, in a broad interpretation of the Act of 1986, finally reached the that Jaitunbi should be provided with the iddat period maintenance for life or until she remarries, on a fair and reasonable scale — almost what she would have got under Section 125 of the Cr. P.C. Here, then, was a judgement that was passed on the basis of gender justice rather than on communal lines! While mehr is the dower amount, mata is a one-time provision depending on the husband’s financial position and the economic standard of the wife. Apart from these two provisions, there is room in Muslim personal law for the three months’ maintenance during the iddat period, as well as the restitution of whatever gifts the wife had received at the time of marriage. The Supreme Court had already ruled (before the Shah Bano decision in 1986) on two earlier Muslim divorce cases in favour of women plaintiffs. In one case, Justice Krishna Iyer had cited the practice of mehr as justifying his decision to grant maintenance. Founding editor of Manushi Madhu Kishwar’s definition of mehr (as dower or settling an estate on the wife by the husband) pertains to either prompt mehr or deferred mehr. Prompt mehr is that which the husband must give the wife any time she demands it. Deferred mehr (more prevalent in India) is that which the wife agrees not to demand until the marriage is dissolved by death or divorce. For the Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs, there were on the Indian statute book, the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act 1956 and the maintenance provisions of Sections 24–25 of the Hindu Marriage Act 1955. Any order passed under the new Cr. P.C. for a divorced woman belonging to any of these communities was to last only till a civil court gave a final decision under this statutory law. Under the mistaken assumption that the uncodified Muslim law had no relief at all to offer to divorced women, point out the moderates, temporary maintenance orders passed for Muslim women under the new Cr. P.C. of 1973 were being treated as permanent and final in all respects. This was legally incorrect. Some fifteen years before the

conclusion

Hindu Marriage Act 1955 did so to Hindu women, the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939, accorded Muslim women the right to civil divorce on grounds of cruelty, desertion or polygamy. The moderates also affirm that the Muslim Women Act 1986 did not overrule the Shah Bano court decisions. In fact, the moderates claim that the fact that the Act is not unconstitutional was upheld by the Supreme Court in the Daniel Latifi v Union of India case on 28 September 2001. In the landmark judgement, Daniel Latifi v Union of India, a full bench of five judges of the Supreme Court confirmed that the Muslim Women Act of 1986 has substituted the earlier right of recurrent maintenance under Section 125 of the Cr. P.C. with a new right of a lump sum provision, mata, to be made and paid to the woman soon after her divorce. This right, in the opinion of the moderates, is more desirable than the Hindu woman’s right of recurring maintenance under the Cr. P.C. every month which is to the rider of sexual purity. If the husband fails to make such a settlement, a divorced Muslim woman has the right to approach the magistrate’s court for enforcement of the right under Section 3 of the Muslim Women Act. But since the media has not focused on these positive milestones, claim the moderates, the perception that the Muslim wife is worse off than her Hindu counterpart in divorce cases still persists. Indeed, some Indian feminists have discussed the possibility of a common code for all women, along with a reverse option, that is to say, the possibility of reverting to the personal code, should any woman so desire. In the past decade or so, attempts to reform the personal laws in India are also gaining momentum. Those that are active in this area include organisations like the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, an all-India organisation, Awaz-e-Niswan, a Mumbai-based support group for Muslim women, and the Maduraibased All-India Progressive Muslim Conference. Some of the major concerns of the moderates are to challenge the legitimacy of triple talaq and to press for women’s participation in the affairs of the jamaat. Naseem Iqtidar Ali, the lone woman in AIMPLB, is also pressing for reform from within the orthodoxy, which has been working towards a model nikhanama. Unfortunately, the results have not been encouraging so far. Moderate Muslims rightly argue that it is ludicrous that the 201 members of the AIMPLB should pose as the sole spokespersons of India’s 138 million Muslims.

subject

The truth is that — as happened in the Hindu community a century earlier and continues to till this day — the extremist Muslim voices today are more clear-headed than the moderate ones. After all, in a climate of growing anti-Muslim sentiment in India and the Western world, it is very difficult for moderates not to succumb to the rhetoric that they are ‘anti-Muslim’ and ‘anti-tradition’. As happened with the Hindu moderates in the Rakhmabai case, the Muslim moderates today aim to look for the ‘correct’ interpretation of religious texts or to reform the Shariat, rather than to adopt a straightforward gender-sensitive position. Little wonder, then, that Muslim women are caught between the two opposing loyalties of sex and culture, between one kind of ‘betrayal’ and another.

8

'Applying Laws to Debate

Their

Advantage': Muslim Women

Faith, Gender and

Citizenship *

I would like to start on a rather tangential note. While my subject has to do with Muslim women’s engagement with justice issues in Tamil Nadu, I would like to begin by describing very briefly the that brought me to it. In the mid-1990s, while researching Tamil anti-caste I was struck by how often anti-caste radicals invoked the law while attempting to define the norms of social and political conduct. Yet the law they claimed for their purpose was not merely a set of statutes and enactments. For Pandit Iyothee Thass (1845–1914), a Dalit-Buddhist writer and publicist, the law appeared a constitutive feature of colonial rule and a ‘new’ ‘impartial’ state. On the other hand, he also expressed a sense of law as an ethical imperative, in this case, identified with the Buddhist dhamma. For members of the South Indian Liberal Federation (founded in 1917) and who articulated what has since come to be understood as political nonBrahminism, the law was essentially colonial law, and a measure of a different justice, distinguished from rules and norms that attended local caste practices. Its practitioners could be prejudicial, but the law itself was grandly free from parochialisms. For the radical selfrespecters, who sought an upturning of the caste order and its of high and low, the law was a focus for their expression of rights — for their upholding of what they considered samadharma in place of manudharma.

concerns movements,

hierarchy

*

All conversations with members of the Tamil Nadu Muslim Women's

Jamaat Committee have been transcribed and translated by the author. These conversations unfolded in the

Jamaat since 2003.

course

of the author's work with the

Muslim Women Debate Faith, Gender and Citizenship

The arguments put forth by anti-caste movements and ideologues may be said to re-state the relationship between habit, custom and the law on the one hand, and law and notions of justice on the other. While the law obviously stood supreme over custom and habit, it was neither sufficient nor complete in itself as an index of justice, and instead derived its salience from a reflexive practice of the latter. In this sense, the law could not be thought of outside the context of the struggles to which it gave formal expression. I recall this sense of the law, because it provides an enabling framework to talk of something else: The question of the vexed between gender and justice. One of the more contentious yet productive points of enquiry for this debate in the Indian has been the uniform civil code — or laws to do with marriage, conjugal rights and wrongs, divorce, maintenance, care of children and adoption that would apply to all women, irrespective of their religious identities. Feminists have differed widely in their of both the need for and the usefulness of such a code. Some have chosen to speak of ‘a gender-just’ rather than ‘uniform’ civil code and embellished this demand in rather singular ways, including within its ambit the right to a homosocial existence, homosocial matrimony and parenting.; others have put forth what they call a ‘reverse’ option, which grants all women access to secular laws, but with the proviso that they have the right to choose to be governed by religious tenets. Yet others have suggested that women need differentiated legal spaces to stake their claims for justice. These discussions, rich and insightful as they are, have not always taken into account another mode of speaking about rights and justice. In this context, it would be useful to consider debates and practices in which civic notions of the public good have to jostle for place with those that draw their inspiration from an experience of faith, on the one hand, and laws that commandeer that faith, on the other. Such discussions have been the mainstay of groups such as Sisters in Islam in Malaysia and are germane to the more expansive debates around ‘Islamic’ feminism around the world. In this context, I would like to examine a vigorous movement that emerged in Tamil Nadu in the early twenty-first century: this is the Tamil Nadu Muslim Women’s Jamaat, constituted in 2002 and which is active today in over twelve districts in the state. Like the self-respecters and Iyothee Thass, these ‘Jamaat’ women display a utopian ardour which both relativises as well as insists on the valorised relationship between law and justice.

relationship context

understanding

Religious Faith, Ideology, Citizenship

I have known the Women’s Jamaat since its inception, and have been a participant-observer in their monthly meetings, protests and public campaigns. In addition, I have had the opportunity to talk at length with several members of the Jamaat. The following descriptions and debates are based on the notes that I have made this last decade.

The Tamil Nadu Muslim Women's Jamaat I start with a late morning in March 2006. The place is Pudukottai, and the occasion: the monthly meeting of the Tamil Nadu Muslim Women’s Jamaat. On this day, too, the room is full. There are over fifteen Jamaat members, but they have brought with them several others, and then there are the petitioners — women who are in the middle of a marital crisis and want to resolve matters one way or another. Petitioners come from all across Tamil Nadu; they have heard of these monthly meetings, by word of mouth or through the Tamil media (since 2009, these meetings are held every quarter). For some of them, it is the first time; others might have been in touch with the Jamaat, either through mail, or having visited previously local members or the Pudukottai office. This time around, there are three of them, with their respective families. The meeting starts off with a woman leading the others in prayer; hurriedly, women cover their heads, and fervently invoke Allah, the most just and merciful. Then, it is business as usual. After half an hour of administrative and logistical talk, attention shifts to the petitioners. Two of the petitioners appeared to have been in touch earlier with the Jamaat, but for the third one, it is the first time. She sits, pale and embarrassed. The petitions come up for discussion: there is clearly a system at work. First, the details of the petition are recalled, or explained. Previous decisions are reviewed and the Jamaat takes stock of what had happened since they met the petitioner last. Then, they decide on a future course of action. The Jamaat being a contentious body, everybody has an opinion to offer. Voices are raised; points of view argued out — sometimes the petitioners or their families join in. The woman next to me whispers in my ear that it is good to have so many people discussing a problem — one could count on right and wrong opinions balancing each other out. ‘In a court, you accept the pronouncements of one man — here, it is not one judge but several of them trying to understand what went wrong’, she added.

Having been at several Jamaat meetings now, I have learnt to distinguish the public rhetoric that scaffolds their progress from the complex, delicate conversations that constitute their core. The rhetoric is provocative: it addresses the failure of mosque or ‘Jamaats’ in the state of Tamil Nadu. These committees are informal community forums that are attached to neighbourhood mosques. They comprise male community leaders and religious scholars who meet in the mosque premises and settle matters that come to their attention: these have to do with family feuds, conjugal problems and, occasionally, other issues, including matters of commerce or faith. Typically, a mosque committee has no woman member and women, in fact, are not invited to its deliberations, even if they are petitioners. Rather their male kin represent their The Tamil Nadu Women’s Jamaat was formed in response to this method of doing justice — pronouncing on a woman’s life, without asking for her presence or seeking her views. Importantly, through a relentless interrogation of the regular mosque committees, and a detailed deconstruction of their partisan ways, misogyny and venality, the Women’s Jamaat has ably and righteously argued the case for its own existence. Jamaat members have never tired of pointing out that if mosque committees included an equal number of women, were attentive to women’s concerns, and committed to securing justice for women, their forum would happily cease to exist. This fervent anticipation, though, is offset by a sense of what is possible in the here and now. For, members of the Women’s Jamaat have no illusions about mosque committees and the authority they wield, hence the resonating public rhetoric that engages this authority critically. On the other hand, in their everyday dealings with these committees, the Women’s Jamaat is less strident, and in fact is persuasive and patient. Rarely is a mosque committee held to task, without the women carrying out a thorough investigation of its dealings, in a given instance. Further, the Women’s Jamaat has invited men from these committees to sit in on its meetings. The results of this endeavour have been mixed. While a substantial number refuses to take the Women’s Jamaat seriously, there are some who have not baulked at working with the latter, in specific instances. Yet others, while welcoming the initiative taken by these women, have declared they are uneasy with a group of women claiming to be a ‘Jamaat’. If they called themselves a women’s support group

committees

concerns.

or welfare group that would be alright, some men have argued, but to grant themselves the status of a Jamaat is not quite right. This is upstart behaviour, other men have insisted, and called upon the Women’s Jamaat to seek another name. Members of the Women’s Jamaat have since debated this matter of a name. A consensus has emerged over several rounds of that the group would retain the word, ‘Jamaat’, for it described what they were all about, a gathering. If men found this irksome, they would have to ask themselves why — was it because they do not wish to grant women what was granted even in the early days of Islam, the right to get together, pray and discuss matters of import, if necessary, with the Prophet himself? And has not this right to dialogue with the Prophet been enshrined within the Holy Quran itself?

discussion:

community

Abiding by Faith Not just with reference to its name, and women’s rights to debate issues of faith and law, but in other respects too, the Women’s Jamaat has made it clear that it would abide by the Prophet’s Quran and its principles. There was an interesting exchange in one of the Jamaat meetings: a petitioner pointed out that often men in the mosque committee in her neighbourhood quoted from the Hadiths to justify their choices and decisions. Responding to this, a Jamaat member noted that the Hadiths, holy as they are, cannot be said to enjoy the same status as the Quran. And, besides, were not all those who wrote the Hadiths, men? Therefore, she concluded, Quranic principles on matters that concerned women, conjugal rights, the triple talaq, women’s education and social existence were and everything else secondary. The Women’s Jamaat’s invocation of the Quran is not merely interpretative or rhetorical; rather its members have sought to claim Quranic values in an everyday ethical and pietistic sense. They have observed, time and again, that no man could claim to speak as a Muslim, or take on the authority of the Quran, unless he had proved himself to be one — both through daily acts of piety, and by the in which he conducted his worldly affairs. If he was usurious, given to drinking, rude to his fellow men and devoid of compassion, he could not be considered a worthy Muslim. Discussing the story

fundamental

manner

of a Muslim woman who was allegedly murdered by vigilante young men (an incident that took place in a small town in Southern Tamil Nadu), because they could not endure her ‘continuously promiscuous’ behaviour, a Jamaat member observed: She may have done wrong or she may have not. But no one has a right to therefore kill another. Besides, are the men that have ended her life good human beings? Are their thoughts holy? What about their deeds? What do they do for the poor and needy? Do they understand the essence of Islam even? Do they not know that mercy and forgiveness are supreme virtues in Allah’s eyes?

In this and several other everyday instances, members of the Women’s Jamaat have sought to re-define the content of ‘Islamic’ identitythrough asking for a refinement of everyday acts, of everyday life. Remaining within the moral universe of Islam, the Jamaat has attempted to create a measure of sexual justice that is in consonance with the tenets of that universe. With regard to the veil, for instance, which many Muslim men consider a singular mark of Muslim they are easily pragmatic. To many of them, it is a piece of everyday clothing, which, as one Jamaat member explained, is not too different from the red mark that Hindu women sport on their foreheads: it announces who a person is, but does not exhaust all that she is. Also, there is no one kind of a veil, she notes — there is the head scarf, the black burqa, the white dupatta which a woman wraps over her sari. Another member added: ‘Outside a mosque are several women seeking charity. They are poor, emaciated and ill. If a man is not concerned about any of this, but insists that they cover their heads, before he dispenses charity, is he a good Muslim?’ The question of poverty and all that flows from it has been central to the Jamaat’s sense of what being a Muslim is all about, and for women, since poverty, as a Jamaat member explained, pushes women into unsuitable marriages, relegates them to forced ignorance and deprives them of emotional vitality. Thus, it is not so much veiled decorum, but how a woman is forced to live that and she cannot be a good Muslim, or a worthy human being, unless she is granted the means to live with dignity. Significantly, the Women’s Jamaat has expanded the meaning of well-being, of what a Muslim woman deserves, by bringing into its ambit (heterosexual) sexual happiness and fulfilment. Acutely

identity,

especially

matters;

conscious that Islam treats marriage as a social and contractual arrangement, Jamaat members insist quite uniquely on conjugal and sexual rights for petitioners that are denied them — their focus is equally on the injustice of such a denial, as it is on the details by which this is accomplished. Significantly, the idea of ‘chastity’ or karpu, so loudly and insistently present in the Tamil public sphere, is rather muted in these discussions. Remarrying and giving up on a that is sexually dissatisfying are as vividly argued as instances that have to do with more familiar kinds of deprivation and to do with dowry, for example, or with sexual violence. On the other hand, Jamaat members are also prone to downplaying the centrality of marriage in their and other women’s lives. This may be due to the fact that a majority of women in the Jamaat are in their forties, and therefore suffer no illusions about the tedium of everyday conjugality. It could also be that the new-found sisterhood that is the Jamaat has enabled them realise a different collective life, by the terms of which marriage appears a pale and tiring reality. In any case, since, in Islam, marriage is neither a sacrament nor a monogamous union, it is constitutively flexible. This equivocal sense of marriage is perhaps what led a woman to quip in exasperation, that the Jamaat need not seriously accept that only a conjugal life with a man was a worthwhile life. For those that have it, that may be alright, but it need not be an ideal towards which all women ought to aspire. She said this in the context of an unpleasant case of marital dissembling that the Jamaat had to adjudicate, and she wanted the petitioner not to feel that being cheated in marriage was the worst thing that could happen to a woman. Women also sometimes express exasperation with the conjugal state, as if it were a kind of existential deadlock, for within its terms all that a woman is expected to do is worry about her looks, her material prowess and capacity for motherhood. In a rather early Jamaat meeting, in 2002, an older woman, deserted by her husband for several years now, enjoined her peers to rethink their lives and to seek an existence beyond the body and its cravings; an existence that would allow a free and unfettered life of the mind, as mandated by Allah. Yet, as we shall see, in terms of the choices that Jamaat members make with respect to their own daughters, they are not always able to dislodge marriage from the position it enjoys in their social worlds.

marriage discrimination,

Community, Faith, Law, and State Howsoever it claims the mantle of Islam, the Women’s Jamaat does not see its identity as restricting its functioning or choices. For one, in an everyday sense, it has to necessarily engage with the profane world of everyday want and poverty, with secular institutions such as police stations, counselling centres and law courts. On the other hand, the Jamaat has to reason with individual families, their community and the Islam that these entities invoke to explain and legitimise their points of view. This renders the Jamaat’s position rather fraught. As a Jamaat member notes, as adjudicators they feel short-changed on all counts — by men, acting on what they hold to be ‘Islamic’ principles, and civic and penal institutions, that claim they are upholding citizens’ rights. ‘These men say, “This is what Islam says” and force decisions on us; the police say, “The state has said you will follow your own laws, so we won’t interfere”. The result is: Muslim women are not granted those rights defined in the Quran, nor those guaranteed by the Constitution… in short we are denied what should be ours by right of our common humanity…’ Clearly, the problem for the Women’s Jamaat is not one where they are torn between the claims of community and the promises of law; rather, both are implicated in practices that restrict women’s choices and ignore the reality of women’s lives. Typically, the Jamaat adopts a mixed approach to the petitions brought to it. By and large petitioners are women and their families. They are from all social classes and from across Tamil Nadu. invariably bring problems to do with marriage, including marrying under false pretences, desertion and abandonment of wives by husbands, sexual hurt suffered by wives on account of their husbands’ incessant demands, and impotence in husbands. Jamaat members talk to erring husbands, their kin, local community religious personnel such as kazis and hazrats, members of mosque committees; if necessary, they turn to the local police, the revenue department, elected panchayat members and so on to seek more information. Sometimes, the Jamaat has to negotiate with farflung state functionaries, such as the Ministry of External Affairs (this, in their pursuit of men who run away, not just from local town and villages, but to other parts of the world, such as countries in the Middle East and South-east Asia). When arbitration efforts by the Jamaat fail, petitioners are encouraged to seek legal assistance.

immediate

Petitioners notables,

In a sense, the Jamaat’s everyday work with petitions is not unlike what women’s groups that engage with domestic and conjugal crises do and have been doing for nearly three decades now. But their arbitration process is distinctive, marked as it is their insistence that their effort at resolving problems has to do with their sense of what believing women deserve, and what is theirs by virtue of being part of the ummah. Such a sense of what is legally and ethically due to is seldom expressed in doctrinal terms (Jamaat women doctrine elsewhere, see below). Nor does it appear to be beset by that anxiety ‘to make Islam’ relevant to modern democratic tasks. Rather it is what Islam is all about and what Islam does. As Islamic women, it appears, Jamaat women cannot, and will not, settle for anything less than what constitutes them as such. Underlying the diverse solutions proposed by the Jamaat, thus, is a sense of righteous anger and piety. When a woman is freed from an unhappy marriage or a young woman’s property restored to her; when children are wrested from irresponsible fathers and handed over to their mothers; when those who commit sexual crimes are shamed and damned in the eyes of community religious leaders, the Jamaat feels vindicated in its work. Not only has it enabled women assert their dignity and autonomy — as all women’s groups do — but it has done so in the spirit of what the Prophet and the Quran have ordained. The work the Jamaat undertakes with respect to the petitions it receives is empirical, yet, it has not been averse to thinking through the question of law in a normative sense as well. As noted above, the desirability or otherwise of a uniform civil code is not what engages the Jamaat’s imagination; rather the idea of the Shariat does. in their understanding, the Shariat does not refer so much to a particular law code or digest, as it does to what they believe is to them as believing women by the Quran. A workshop that they organised to acquaint themselves with the Shariat defined two lines of enquiry and action: one, defined by Quranic tenets relating to conjugality and the other by legal statutes that define in a rather partial fashion the terms of (Islamic) conjugality. Explaining the latter through a review of existing legislation, including The Shariat Application Act, 1937, Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939, and the Muslim Women’s Protection of Rights to Divorce Act, 1986, a lawyer who helped coordinate the workshop noted:

believers discuss

Significantly, sanctioned

Many aspects of Islamic law are yet to be fully defined in the Indian

context and each time the courts pass a judgment, they do so, based on individual judges’ readings and experience. What do we mean when we say things are not defined? For example, all Islamic legal schools insist that a woman’s consent is absolutely essential for a marriage to be considered legal and valid. However, we do not have a law that defines consent or the procedures necessary to obtain it. Likewise, with the triple

talaq: today we only have the Supreme Court judgment which declares the triple talaq illegal and against the spirit of Islam. We do not have a specific act on the triple talaq.

Jamaat women who participated in this workshop were both

fascinated as well as indignant by this exposition: they were aware of Quranic tenets, but not Anglo-Mohammedan law, and the divorce provisions outlined in the 1939 legislation affirmed for them the essential catholicity of Quranic norms. In other words, they read the law as a formal expression of the latter. Significantly, neither the participants nor the coordinators of the workshop — one of whom was a Muslim lawyer and the other a senior Muslim woman in government — spoke of or debated the need or otherwise for a distinctive body of laws for Muslims that would be governed by a Shariat Court, a demand that has been put forth by sections of the male clergy in India. Nor did they demand legal reform. Rather they spoke of ethical living as enjoined by the Prophet, as a means for securing justice; and of working existing laws effectively to address women’s justice needs. The normative worth they sought for their — and other Muslims’ — actions, in any case, was always already present in the Quran and the law, to them, could only be an instrument of what was known, but not heeded. At another level, the Jamaat’s engagement with issues of law and faith is framed by a set of issues that has emerged as important in the course of their handling of petitions, including the problem of the triple talaq; the high incidence of dowry amongst all Muslim communities in Tamil Nadu; and domestic discord, on account of various causes, ranging from polygamy, desertion, cheating, and sexual hurt. Significantly, the Jamaat’s responses have been shaped by its members’ faith in the Quran, as well as what the Indian state has had to offer its minority citizens. As far as the triple talaq is concerned, the Jamaat has objected to it on several interrelated grounds. For one, it appears that the triple talaq is delivered without social or moral qualms, and often

very casually, sometimes through email, or even a message sent on a mobile. The Jamaat has pointed out that an individual may try and seek an easy way out of conjugal life and responsibilities, but mosque committees which are meant to assure community well-being ought to be less cavalier in their attitudes to the triple talaq, and ought not to endorse those that deliver them with apparent ease and impunity. Secondly, the Jamaat has argued that since mosque committees have declared that their choices are dictated by ‘Islamic’ tenets, the onus is on them to demonstrate that there is Quranic sanction to their acts; for, as far as the Women’s Jamaat is concerned, there is none. The Jamaat is given to quoting the Prophet’s views on this matter to underscore the validity of its position. Thirdly, the Jamaat has called attention to the Supreme Judgement that has held the triple talaq to be invalid, and which draws on the Quran to validate its argument. Fourthly, in the wake of the growing knowledge amongst its members about the 1939 Act, which specifies the grounds for dissolution of Muslim marriages, the Jamaat has noted that, in truth, women, as much as men, possess the right to divorce, and that men ought to be aware of this. This last has been framed as a cautionary argument, and positioned as an effective counterpoint to the triple talaq. With respect to the practice of giving and taking dowry, much of the Jamaat’s energy has been expended on arguing that Islam regards this practice as sinful and unbecoming of Muslims. In rare instances, where dowry demands have coalesced with family directed at wives, the Jamaat has approached the police to warn erring husbands, and sometimes even the courts to prosecute husbands and their kin, under the Dowry Prohibition Act. Polygamy has incensed Jamaat members as much as the casual uttering of the triple talaq. Here again, they have taken their cues from the Quran, and pointed to the fact that the Prophet’s example in marrying several women cannot be emulated by ordinary men. They have noted too that the Prophet’s injunctions to men about maintaining their co-wives in equal status and with equal affection are not realisable by mortal men. Jamaat members have also pointed out that if it was a question of looking for conjugal models in Islam, men would do well to look to the most celebrated model, the marriage between Khadija and the Prophet, where she is not merely a wife, but a companion and advisor to the Prophet.

violence,

Between the normative and the empirical spaces of its work, the Jamaat has carved out what could be called a ‘developmental’ political space. This latter has emerged and been shaped by a set of interrelated political demands put forward by the Jamaat. One, it wants women to be represented in mosque committees in equal numbers; two, it does not want organisations such as the Waqf Board and the All India Muslim Personal Laws Board to claim the right to mediate Muslim concerns. If indeed these bodies are concerned about Muslim lives, then they ought to get more representative, and include women in equal numbers. Three, it wants state actors, including the bureaucracy, the Planning Commission and other statutory bodies devoted to minority welfare to design gender-just schemes, which would support the education and livelihood rights of Muslim girls and women. Of these demands, the one addressed to Muslim institutions is significant. The history of these institutions is implicated in the larger history of Muslim self-rule, Indian nationalism and the saga of Partition on the one hand; on the other hand, it has to do with their location, with the fact of them being part of a distinctive northern, north-western Islamic universe. Tamil Islam, on the other hand, has evolved differently, and in response to other geographical and impulses. While the Women’s Jamaat has not sought to define its frustration with these revered institutions in these terms, their response is not singular and may be seen to be of a part with the and cultural history of Tamil Islam, as it has evolved over the last century and more (Fakhri 2008). nhe Women’s Jamaat has made other — and more recognisableclaims on the state: In the course of transacting petitions and that are brought to their attention, the Jamaat could not fail to notice that Muslim women’s lives were hedged in by poverty, and lack of access to resources promised to vulnerable social segments by the state. Even as they were discussing these concerns, the Sachar Committee report on the status of Indian Muslims was released in 2007. The report constituted Muslims not so much as a permanently beleaguered religious minority — rather it addressed them as developmental subjects, who had been denied their rightful share of the public good. (One of the Jamaat members had testified in front of the Sachar Committee.) The Women’s Jamaat, which had begun to insist on reservation for Muslims in state employment and education, as well as demand ‘below poverty line’ status cards

historical

political

problems illiteracy

for poor Muslim families, came to expand its understanding of needs and entitlements thereafter. The Jamaat has since insisted on the right to employment and freedom from poverty for Muslim women. The Jamaat’s coordinator, a feminist activist for over two decades, noted in this context: So far the Indian state has restricted its dealings with the community to arranging political relationships with religious leaders. Or with those who claim to represent us. The state has not addressed issues of poverty and education; or of employment, especially for women. Our leaders on the other hand freely promise our votes to whichever party appears to be in the ascendant. In this political bartering, our real needs and interests,

what we deserve as self-respecting women are constantly overlooked. She pointed out how this bartering stood revealed for what it was in 2005, when Muslim fishermen and those linked to the fish trade who had suffered on account of the tsunami, fell outside the ambit of relief policies and rehabilitation measures. There was no one we could turn to. Our community leaders fed us for a few days and then left us to our own devices. Welfare and non groups, as well as state agencies, were embarrassed by our request for relief. They said that their mandate was only to address the plight of traditional fisherfolk and Dalits who depended on the fishing trade

governmental

for their livelihood. In parts of Tamil Nadu, we are equally involved in fishing operations at various levels, yet our status as fishworkers did not matter — neither to community leaders, who saw us as pitiable and only in need of immediate charity, nor to relief agencies and the state which saw us as ‘Muslims’ and did not, would not, recognize us as workers!

The Jamaat has thus come to work on issues of female employment and entrepreneurship; even as it seeks state assistance in this regard, it has worked hard at mobilising women into credit groups. As the Jamaat’s chief coordinator notes: Often, it is poverty which pushes families into making unsuitable

marriages for their daughters — marriage to older men, or sexually impaired men, men whose professional antecedents are not known, all of this is on account of want. Daughters are expected to fend for themselves once they are sent off thus. But how can they, if they do not have the skills and means to do so? Even if we help women leave unhappy and violent there is still the problem of their livelihood, of raising children.

marriages,

There are instances too, where poverty and want damage relationships-

we have seen in many instances how helping a woman set up her own little business has actually helped her take her husband and his family in hand.

The Jamaat has plans to expand its credit network and use that as a basis for starting a Muslim Women’s Bank which would devote itself to building resources in the community, especially for women wanting work and young girls looking to educate themselves.

The Worlds of Faith The Tamil Nadu Muslim Women’s Jamaat is aware of its fraught relationship to the larger Muslim community in the state. This latter is not singular and comprises different social, linguistic and cultural segments: Urdu-speaking Sunni Muslims; Tamil-speaking labbais, who are also Sunni; Urdu-speaking Shias, who are a small but articulate community; a smaller community of Bohra Muslims, many of whom are highly educated; a sprinkling of other including people of the Baha’i faith, and those that follow the Aga Khan. Jamaat women are almost all Sunni, and there are both Urdu and Tamil speakers amongst them. However, their sense of identity at least in the manner in which they refer to themselves in the context of the Jamaat is anchored in their sense of all of them being adherents of the book, of the path of the Prophet, as they refer to it (the Tamil word is margam, or the way). In practical, terms, their battles are with mosque committees in specific localities and with local religious and community leaders; while in doctrinal terms, they argue with, what they assume to be and what often represents itself as, ‘given’ Islamic knowledge wisdom. This is evident in the manner Jamaat women address issues to do with faith and rights: both at their meetings and in the pages of the Penngal Jamaat, their occasional magazine. The contents of the Penngal Jamaat are interesting in this respect: it regularly features detailed reports on various instances of marital violence that come to its notice. Columnists also take issue with particular pronouncements of law and faith, to do with women, which they have either heard of, or read about, in one or the other of the Tamil magazines devoted to Islamic lives and tenets. Besides these, the magazine also runs general essays on the subject of what

denominations,

everyday

Muslim women deserve and what is not granted to them. Thus, an entire issue of the Penngal Jamaat magazine was devoted to Quranic views on marriage, the institution of mehr, and the conditions under which divorce may be sought.1 In all issues of the magazine are featured quotes from the Hadiths and other Islamic texts, especially those that counsel everyday personal and social ethics: imprecations to keeping oneself clean jostle alongside maxims that explain how a believer ought to help heal the sick and ailing.2 Importantly, the magazine consistently argues that the Quran and Islam value and hold women in high regard, whereas this vision is constantly compromised by the distorted and selfish interpretations of the Quran by patriarchal men. These interpretations, though, are seldom subject to a critique; instead, it is assumed that local mosque committees that pass indifferent strictures and which are often inimical to women’s rights do this interpreting, and readers are expected to understand the nature of such misguided through the detailed analyses of particular cases that appear in all issues of Penngal Jamaat. Uniquely, Penngal Jamaat brings in the Quran to discuss matters that are seldom part of the public debate about women in Islam: for instance, a set of articles discusses the Quran’s prescriptions with respect to conjugal love when women are menstruating. 3 Addressed to women chiefly, these articles pointed out that, unlike in other menstruating women are not stigmatised in Islam. The Jamaat’s intent is clearly this: It is determined to contest the arrogation of scriptural authority by men whose power derives from secular considerations, such as wealth, local status and political or simply custom and habit. At the same time, it means to redefine that authority, through displaying its interest in reading and notating the Quran, in its entirety and not only Sura Nisa, which deals substantially with the women’s question. Many Jamaat members who work at this re-definition are teachers in madarsas and familiar with conventional readings of the Quran and the Hadiths. Their views, in fact, are formed by the interpretations they have learnt or received, and often from male ulemas or kazis. Their genius

clarifying

interpretations

religions,

connections,

1 Penngal Jamaat, November 2007. 2 Penngal Jamaat, March 2009. 3 Penngal Jamaat, November 2007.

lies in appropriating these readings to their own purpose, and them, in the pages of their magazine, in public meetings, during protests and sit-ins and in their exchanges with traditional mosque committees. This, on the one hand; on the other hand, it is the Quran as a guarantee of their desire for justice that makes them invest great energy in these readings; so much so, that these latter appear compelling for this reason, rather than on account of their substantive content. It is in this context that one needs to locate a rather compelling and hugely symbolic objective that the Jamaat has outlined since its earliest days: the building of a mosque for women. This demand has been met with incomprehension, dismay, astonishment, derision by sections of Muslim religious and community leaders in Tamil Nadu, and the rest of India. On the other hand, several women and some men in Tamil Nadu and literally across the Islamic world have expressed their support for this cause. The foundation for such a mosque has since been laid on private land, belonging to one of the coordinators of the Jamaat. In response to several questions about the need for a mosque, Jamaat members have declared that they see it as both a place of prayer, as also a place where women would meet periodically to discuss matters of faith as well as everyday life. Women would be in charge of the mosque, arrange for prayers in the prescribed manner, perhaps even establish a madarsa for girls and would ensure that all protocols with respect to sustaining a mosque be observed. Unlike most mosques, which are attached to specific communities of worship, this one would be linked to the Women’s Jamaat, in itself a community, but would be open to men visiting and even joining in prayers. It is not possible to foresee the manner in which the mosque would function in an everyday sense, just yet, note the women, since there exists no precedent for such a place of worship as they have imagined. They would have to learn from what already exists as well as invent and adapt to their evolving needs. The Women’s mosque is emblematic of the Jamaat’s to faith and community, and represents its quest for justice in the name of the Quran. On the other hand, since the mosque, like most other mosques in Tamil Nadu, would also be a context for the community to arbitrate its internal affairs, it would intervene in secular matters, and with a view to secure equality, dignity and justice for women. It may be said that the mosque and the Quran embody for the women of the Jamaat the very forms of justice that

reiterating

relationship

they so eagerly seek. They define the moral edges of the universe they wish to inhabit and transform. The manner in which the Jamaat has positioned itself in the context of community and faith has made it difficult for male and community leaders to reject its claims and concerns. In fact, the very visibility of the Jamaat, given the place granted it by a media eager for yet another dramatic news-breaking story, has local mosque committees to address matters relating to women in ways they may not have contemplated earlier on. Thus, a local committee has declared that it would not henceforth marriages in which dowry is taken or given, and has asked for marriages to be performed simply and without ostentation. A handful of committees has established contact with the Women’s Jamaat and has sought the latter’s assistance in resolving the more complicated domestic problems brought to their notice. For its part, the Women’s Jamaat has arranged for workshops in which interested men meet with Jamaat members to know more about their work and to share their ideas and, in some cases, apprehensions as to what the Women’s Jamaat is all about. Several mosque committees have taken to celebrating Women’s Day. Large numbers of Muslim women gather in designated public spaces where they are addressed by conservative ulema, and in many of these meetings, women are warned to not heed the call of the Women’s Jamaat! Some of the leaders who have been active in convening these gatherings of women have challenged the Jamaat’s right to represent Muslim women and declared that they, the true spokespersons of the community, have more women on their side. Community interest in the Women’s Jamaat has been not only on account of that mixture of anxiety and avid interest that its activities have evoked. The Jamaat’s efforts in addressing poverty have earned it grudging admiration — several men have come to accept the wisdom of their wives, daughters and sisters going out to earn a living and in some instances, men have joined their wives to set up halwa stalls, small tea-shops, and so on. It is important to note here that a majority of the men that support the Women’s Jamaat are from artisanal and working class families and communities, including many day labourers. Social class, by land, trading wealth, religious authority and political clout,

religious

provoked

validate

International

economic

measured

is deployed as much against poor, labouring men, and those who are engaged in small trades, and it is they who have eagerly sought out the Women’s Jamaat. Interestingly, the Jamaat’s ideological detractors are often very young men, rigidly doctrinaire, whose sense of being Muslim has been shaped by a host of intersecting factors: the rise of the Hindu Right; the global hysteria against Muslims, in the wake of the of the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001 by alleged Muslim fundamentalists, and the growing influence of Wahabi Islam, which sets great store by doctrine, and has consistently set itself apart from local forms of the faith that have emerged in different parts of the Indian subcontinent. The Women’s Jamaat has its own critique of Islamophobia. It continues to be bothered by the extreme unease that has attended Muslim existence since the decades of the 1990s, when a triumphant Hindu Right took to depriving them of their right to life, equality and justice with impunity. While Jamaat members are unsparing of misogyny in the community, they are also protective of the latter, especially in the face of police or more generally state

destruction historically

highhandedness.

In one instance, in Tuticorin city in southern Tamil Nadu, Jamaat members who wished to hold a sit-in to protest the triple talaq and the taking of dowry and other related issues had to contend with established mosque committees that were resolutely opposed to their decision. In the face of a prolonged stand-off between the women and the committees, Jamaat members sought the protection of the law to hold their sit-in. Local police that heard their request asked if they wanted the ‘trouble-makers’ arrested, whereupon the women retorted that they were merely asking the police to ensure that they could hold their sit-in, and not demanding they arrest people. ‘We know what they do to our lads,’ explained a Jamaat member from the city. A Muslim young man, if picked up by the police, suffers preventive detention for very long, and soon, there is all this talk of a terrorist group that he is a member of, and several young men get taken away. We don’t want this to happen. We want the law to protect our right to protest, not to punish men that are against us — we will settle with trouble-making men on our own. All we want the police to do is ensure that our sit-in

passes off peacefully.

On the other hand, Jamaat women are clear that social vulnerability cannot be wielded as an excuse for not raising issues of sexual injustice in the community. They insist that it is important to deal openly with contentious matters and not seek refuge in the argument that Islam respects women and their rights, and there is not much to be done in these matters. Jamaat women also argue that matters of sexual injustice ought not to be left to the discretion of religious leaders or organisations that claim to represent Muslim interests. Discussing the negative reaction from the ulema to the Supreme Court’s direction that all marriages henceforth be registered, a Penngal Jamaat editorial noted that such reactions reflect the narrow, selfish interests of a small group of men, who stand to make money and gain authority by exploiting the poor and gullible, and have nothing to do with wanting to protect Muslim interests or Islam. In fact, Muslims ought to have no problem with the registration clause, since Islam mandates that marriage, which it treats as a contractual arrangement, be notified and registered. If one agrees to register a nikahnamaah at a local mosque why would one not want to do the same in a civil register? 4 The Women’s Jamaat’s engagement with Muslim lifeworlds traverses a range of spaces: households, local mosque committees, allIndia organisations that purport to represent Muslim concerns, global campaigns which address issues of Muslim law and familial justice for women. This is what grants its own distinctive efforts at working for sexual justice an urgent historical character, and renders it part of a long drawn-out conjuncture that has witnessed women across the Islamic world attempting to walk the difficult path between matters of faith and the edicts issued by states and that look to states to validate their strictures.

communities

The Sexual, the Secular and the Sacred It is now eight years since the Women’s Jamaat was constituted and its journey has been rather heady and restless, attempting, as it does, to travel in many directions all at once to resolve its concerns. In the Indian context, these journeys appear unique and demand nothing less than a conceptual reformulation of the relationship between

4 Penngal Jamaat, November 2007.

faith, law, state, society, and patriarchy. In the Women’s Jamaat, justice claims are elaborated in and through ethical concerns and expressions, even as they are pushed into the realm of the law and state. These latter, though, are viewed not merely in terms of the guarantees they extend to a religious minority population, with regard to personal law and rights, but also in terms of what they owe poor and deprived citizens. In both instances, the state is indicted as well as called to account — its developmental logic as much as its secular credentials are put to test. Meanwhile, the ethical content of justice claims are simultaneously negotiated within families and communities, in terms of piety and faith, on the one hand, and a discourse of rights, linked to women’s productive worth and labour, on the other. Pietism is invoked in the face of violence and impaired conjugality, whereas rights are demanded in the name of what women actually do and want. In both instances, women arraign the sexual authority that men have come to wield — and in its place seek an ethical dialogue, premised on a shared faith. All of this is extremely fraught and even frangible, given the tedium involved in working with the state and its laws; and the limited gains that may be wrested from obdurate and powerful men in the community. Even as particular cases are transacted and justice secured for individuals, either through the courts or through arguing and fighting with mosque committees, broader issues raised by these cases do not therefore go away — for one, the transition from fire-fighting to organising a campaign around a broader concern is not always easy to make. Individual marriages may be mended or abandoned but a re-definition of the nikahnamaah, or the marriage contract, requires a sustained level of engagement with scripture, social reality and the courts, with what may be re-defined within the expansive terms of the Quran and what may actually be workable in a court of law. Then there is the problem of reception, of how the community would heed or ignore a nikahnamaah that inscribes sexual justice within its constitutive terms. Such things have been done elsewhere, in Indonesia, for instance; but given the knot of issues around rights and identity with respect to Islam in the Indian context, this may prove more difficult to unravel and rework. Secondly, the manner in which poverty and sexuality issues intersect in Muslim women’s lives renders women’s search for justice complex. Fighting to be judged by Quranic tenets, rather

than the arbitrary power assumed by mortal men, women do

challenge unjust domestic and marital arrangements. Yet, for many women, marriage remains a necessary vocation and one they habitually consent to. This is largely on account of the limits set to their education and mobility by not merely social custom, but by the absence of opportunities and institutions that would help them postpone or re-think their marriage options. Lacking the means to access higher education and fearful of what that would mean for women who are not used to social or spatial mobility, families, even those linked to the Women’s Jamaat, tend to marry their daughters off when very young. It is another matter that they ferociously fight for their daughters’ rights if these appear to be compromised, but the fact remains that the young are not allowed to determine their own sexual and social fate. Thus gains garnered by strident activism are often offset by the continuing emphasis on as a woman’s necessary vocation and the absence of other meaningful choices. Further, the underscoring of marriage as a and fixed point of arrival by custom and mandated faith makes it difficult to contemplate a future for women beyond it. This is not peculiar to Muslim families. The expansive worlds of meaning and faith the Quran opens up for women appear meaningful — and accessible — only in extreme situations of unhappiness and conjugal stress; whereas in an everyday sense, access to these worlds hinge on social and economic conditions that appear insurmountable. Inevitably, then, women’s sexual identity insistently precedes their other identities — cutting through and relativising, as it were, the secular as well as sacred contexts that frame Muslim women’s lives.

community marriage constant

In Conclusion: Accounting for the Tamil Nadu Muslim Women's Jamaat Those that know of the Women’s Jamaat, including Muslim women, are clearly drawn to its work, but are not quite sure as to how to ‘account’ for it. Some have insisted that perhaps the Jamaat ought to consider its reliance on the Quran as strategic in the main, but should soon move on to conceptualising a vision of gender justice that relies on a secular understanding of the world. Others have pointed out that by assenting to the determinate status of the Quran, the Women’s Jamaat is perhaps legitimising the role of faith in defining social justice. This is what fundamentalists do and in this

war of interpretations they clearly would — and do — have the upper hand. Yet others have questioned the wisdom of relying on the Quran for all matters to do with gender justice: for instance, they argue, with the Quran being openly inimical to sexual choice and homosexual desire, one cannot expect the holy book to answer the needs of lesbians and gay people. The Jamaat’s response to these questions has been considerate and interesting. The chief coordinator, to whom these questions are often addressed, has this to say: At present the Quran defines the horizon of what we consider possible, and what is meaningful for us in the context of our life situations. It is true that the Quran is open to different sorts of readings. Well, these are our readings, and we wish to claim the Quran as equally ours in these very distinctive ways. It is not that we consider the Quran alone as a source and index of justice. But unless and until we learn to identify

for ourselves other sources as being as meaningful and as valid for our purposes, the Quran will remain central to our work. In sexual matters, things are complicated, but we will have to wait and see how we work through Quranic injunctions in this respect. Our women are not inhibited, or bound by the forced decorum of chastity. We are far more robust and open to the idea of sexual happiness, and same sex love is

not unknown. But we might not want to talk about it in terms of a rights discourse — things happen, are acknowledged or not, but this has not been as central to our sense of what we want. When it does become important, we will work through it as we have worked through other issues.

Much of the unease with respect to the Jamaat’s characteristically mixed discourse of faith, law and justice stems, it seems, from our own secular desire to claim for social movements a rightness that reflects our sense of justice. In doing so, we burden movements with an impossible innocence and demand from them a tidy coincidence of motives, ideas and action that ultimately resolves into a grand, universal plea for secular justice. Impatient and uneasy with the attractions of faith, we seldom interrogate our own good faith in secular options — a faith that has been disproved and rendered illegitimate in any number of instances. Perhaps it might be useful to consider, in this context, how feminists living in Islamic societies have responded to the question of faith and justice. Afsaneh Najmabadi, an Iranian feminist, has pointed out that for secularists like her ‘the emergence of women’s activist currents,

including feminists, from Islamist ranks’ seemed as if it would ‘jeopardize the already precarious social space for secular feminism’. However, she notes, …their very existence and multiplication into many feminist and genderactivist voices over the past decade, by muddying the clear lines of what or who is Islamist … has been exasperating to hard-line Islamists set on keeping these boundaries clear and patrolled. Unfortunately, it has also been received as unsettling and discomforting by some secular feminists who often demand that these women clarify their stance and draw this

or that line, whether the line of separation of religion from government, or the line of autonomy from men. This is quite a dangerous move; for if it succeeds in forcing them “to choose’’ instead of keeping the ground muddled, fluid, and shifting, it will constrict the transformative of the present moment.5

possibilities

Najmabadi’s own work has focused on the manner in which gender and sexuality are figured and re-figured in Iranian modernity: she argues that sexual identities and choices as these were negotiated in the early decades of the modern period, in the nineteenth century, indicate to us that sensuality and piety, desire and suffering are matters that cannot be understood only in terms of a register of rights. They appear both elusive and fragmentary, and call for a deeper interrogation of cultural practice itself — which is neither secular nor religious, but happens in between, in a threshold space which traffics between the two worlds. In fact, it is clear that this threshold space is produced by what women do and the choices they make. Referring to the manner in which women have sought to claim the Quran for themselves in contemporary Iran, Najmabadi notes: The most significant difference is not only that women are prominent

re-interpreters, but that these interpretative ventures are carried out in the printed pages of a women’s journal, in a public space, rather than the private chambers of religious scholars. The authors are posed as “public intellectuals” rather than as private teachers and preachers. Their audience is other women (and men) as citizens, rather than theological

5 Najmabadi, Afsaneh, ‘(Un)Veiling Feminism’, Women Living under Muslim Law (WLUML) Dossier 2324, July 2001, http://www.wluml.org/ node/347. Last accessed on 16 May 2009.

students and other clerical commentators. Not only have these openly

feminist re-interpretative ventures produced a radical decentring of the clergy from the domain of interpretation, but by positioning women’s needs as grounds for interpretation and women as public commentators of canonical and legal texts they promise that political democratization … would no longer be a “manly” preoccupation. Moreover, by declaring their interpretive enterprise open to non-believers and non-Muslims,

emphasizing expertise rather than faith, and by placing woman, in her contemporary social concreteness and her needs and choices, in the centre of their arguments, they have opened up a productive space for and alliances among feminists in Iran beyond previous divisions between secular and Islamist... 6

conversations

In a different vein, Asma Barlas points out that when women read the Quran, seeking to interpret it on their own, they do so, not as of the Shariat, but as equal members of the faith. Whereas most male interpretations of the Quran consider justice to be its subject, she argues that equality is as important a concern with the Quran. She defines her own strategies of reading as influenced by her acknowledgement of a multiplicity of readings and the ‘freedom to choose between them through free and reasoned discourse’ (Barlas 2004). She notes that ‘in the very connectedness of existential and hermeneutical issues … we have a reason to press for just and societies in which we arrive at ever better interpretations of the Quran that can foster the practice of equality’. For women, this means resisting what she calls a ‘certain rigidity, arrogance and defensiveness bred by both adversity and privilege’, and this, in turn, implies not giving into the calls to heed the basically ahistorical and closed readings of the Quran, advanced as its very core by a scholarship and a clergy that refuses to look beyond the seventh and eighth centuries. For, the Quran itself is the best guarantee against closure: since meanings are to be constantly received and for the word of God cannot ever be considered frozen in time. As Barlas concludes: ‘we cannot arrive at the best meanings in the Quran so long as we treat our past as the end of history and thus fail to interrogate it or improve upon it’ (ibid.). Significantly, Women Living under Muslim Law, an international network that addresses issues of law and justice in Muslim societies

subjects

democratic

reinterpreted,

6 Ibid.

and which endorses both secular as well as ‘Islamic’ feminist action, organised a workshop on reading the Quran in 1990, the transcript of which was published as a book in 1997. The workshop made it clear that it was not seeking to understand women’s status, as elucidated in the Quran, but the act of interpretation itself, for this was, often, what was at stake in specific situations when directions were required from scripture to arrive at distinctive ‘Islamic’ responses. As one of the resource persons at the workshop put it, the exercise sought to read the Quran on its own terms, to define from within its purview not merely directions for action or interpretations of choices, but an ethics that could serve Muslim lives. To define this ethics, though, one needed to engage with the Quran as a religious text, but in an independent autonomous fashion, such that there is no pressure to lean towards a particular school of interpretation. If there are indeed plural readings of any given verse, those would, by the terms of this interpretative exercise, be made publicly available. This approach would, necessarily, be historical, and look both to the context of the seventh century, the situations that warranted particular readings, as well as the historical present (WLUML 1997). Reading through the discussions on interpretation, it becomes clear that the latter is always already contextual — to do with wrongs, specific verses in the Quran, and with the manner in which interpretation is carried out and communicated. For women reading the Quran, the context is also more, for it includes a substantive intent — the raising of consciousness, and as many participants in the workshop pointed out, a new purpose, to read the Quran as political activists concerned with social justice. The important thing to be kept in mind, as a resource person to the concluded, is to accept and work with the premise that the Quran is just, God is just and that the Quran is not a closed text. This recourse to the claims of reason and faith, the simultaneity that we witness in these arguments that ably shift the civic and the sacred into each other’s realms, the manner in which the Quran, for example, is made to signify over and above the Shariat, and the agility with which the Shariat is refigured as a patriarchal text: these point to a new and distinctive engagement with issues of faith, law and justice.

particular

workshop

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About the Authors V. Geetha is Editor at Tara Books, Chennai. A prolific writer and translator, she has written widely on the Tamil anti-caste movement, popular culture, gender, and education. Her publications in English include Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium: From Iyothee Thass to Periyar (1998; co-authored with S. V. Rajadurai); Gender (2001); Soul Force: Gandhi’s Writings on Peace (2004); Patriarchy (2007), and in Tamil, Althusser: Oru Arimugam (An Introduction) (1990); Frankfurt Marxism (1991); Gandhiya Arasiyal (Gandhi’s Politics) (2006). Nalini Rajan is Professor at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, and holds a doctorate in Social Communication (with specialisation in political philosophy) from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. Her academic publications include Secularism, Democracy, Justice: Implications of Rawlsian Principles in India (1998); Democracy and the Limits of Minority Rights (2002); Digital Culture Unplugged: Probing the Native Cyborg’s Multiple Locations (Routledge, 2007); and The Digitized Imagination: Encounters with the Virtual World (Routledge, 2008). Her fictional work, The Pangolin’s Tale, was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007.

Index Abduh, Muhammad, 16 Adi-vedam (Iyothee Thass), 92,

125–33 al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din, 16 al-Ghazali, Zaynab, 152 Agarkar, Gopal Ganesh, 160 Age of Reason, 58 Ahmed, Leila, 151, 154

Alford, C. Fred, 114 Algerian FLN (National Liberation Front), 87 All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), 158, 164, 177

All-India Progressive Muslim Conference, 164 Ambedkar, B. R., 17, 34, 49, 51, 66, 123; The Annihilation of Caste, 134, 138; The Buddha and his Dhamma, 92, 132, 135,

140, 141, 145; and Buddhism, 110–12; ethics and politics of fraternity, 133–40; views on saddhamma as universal ethics, 140–46; What Gandhi and Congress Did to the Untouchables,

135 American model of domesticity, 23 American Sociological Association, 85 Anglo-Mohammedan law, 162,

175 animal sacrifice in temples, 93–94, 104–6 Annihilation of Caste, The (Ambedkar), 134, 138 anti-caste movements, 166, 167

anti-conversion ordinances, 14

anti-untouchability politics, 34 Arya Jana Ikiyam Allathu Congress Mahasabhai, 99 Arya Samaj, 14, 53 al-Ashari, Abu al-Hasan, 16 Awaz-e-Niswan, 164

Baader-Meinhof Group, 87 Babri masjid, demolition of, 77–78, 158 Bajaj, Jamnalal, 39, 40, 45 Bakr, Abu, 15 Barelwi, Ahmad, 17 Barlas, Asma, 189 Bataille, Georges, 105 The Battle of Algiers (film), 87–89 Behrouzi, Maryam, 20 ‘below poverty line’ status cards, 177

Bhagavad Gita, 63–64, 71 Bhakti movement, 16, 22, 63 Bhandarkar, R. G., 160 Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, 164 birth-based graded inequality, 49 Black Panthers, 87 ‘blood money’, 77 blood sacrifices, reasons for, 104–6; supremacy of mother goddess and, 99–103

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 6 Brahminical Hinduism, 52 Brahminical rituals, 12, 96, 99 Brahmins, 12, 38, 41, 44, 93, 97– 100, 102, 125, 139, 144; dishonour imposed on Sudras by, 37; social authority of, 42 British India, 42

The Buddha and his Dhamma

(Ambedkar), 92, 132, 135, 140, 141, 145 Buddhacharitra, 141 Buddhist feminism, 21 capital punishment, 78

caste-based rituals, 99 caste inequality, 37, 46 caste system, 43, 44, 99, 111, 131, 134 Chatterjee, Partha, 8, 9 chaturvarna, 144

child marriage, 37–38 Christian feminism, 21, 23 Christian liberation theology, 12, 16, 95 Christian Right, 22, 95 citizenship, equality of, 1, 3, 5, 27

civil disobedience, 11, 12, 30, 65, 85; theory of, 75–78 code of Manu, 53, 54 Conference of Gods (Miss Gnanam), 52 counterterrorism, 74, 86

criminal activity, 83 Criminal Procedure Code: Article 125 of, 158; Hindu woman’s right of recurring maintenance under, 164; section 125 of, 162–64

‘crisis of secularism’, 9

Daniel Latifi v Union of India, 164 Dasigalin Mosavalai (Ramamrithathammal), 37 Declaration on the Rights of Man, 5 Deism, 15, 23 Derrida, Jacques, 117, 120 devadasi system, abolition of, 36 37

dhamma, importance of, 123–24 Din-i-Illahi, 3 Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act (1939), 164, 174 Divine Laws, 15, 162 divorce, grounds for, 164 Dowry Prohibition Act, 176 Dravida Nadu, 46, 54 Dravidian movement, 58, 98 Durga Vahini, 22, 152 Dworkin, Ronald, 76, 77

Edict of Nantes, 4–5 El Saadawi, Nawal, 156 emotional sentiment, politics of, 94–95 empowerment of women, 22 Enlightenment project, 62 equality, principle of, 21 European Deism, 15 exchange-value-driven production, concept of, 68

cultural imperialism, 21 feminism, relation with religion, Dadaji Bhikaji v Rakhmabai. See Rakhmabai case Dalit: Buddhism, 109, 111; Christian

19–25 Feyerabend, Paul, 60 France: civil code, 6; Constituent

theology, 110; rationality,

Assembly, 6; Declaration on the Rights of Man, 5 ; laicite of the state, 6 ; Law of Separation of Church and State, 6 ; Reign of Terror (1793–94), 6 ; religious freedom and secularism, 4;

modernist and postmodernist strands of, 107–10 Dalit self: and Brahminised ‘other’, 93–96; religious rituals, 96; ritual versus bhakti, 96–98

secular principle of equality of citizenship, 5 freedom of religion, principles of, 5 freedom of worship, 5 French Revolution, 5, 6, 12 Fuller, Chris, 98 fundamental rights, 29, 45, 46, 78

Gandhian nationalism, 30 Gandhi–Irwin Pact (1931), 65 Gandhi, M. K., 11, 13, 56, 78; abolition of untouchability, 33; non-cooperation policy, 32– 33; perspective on praxis, 63– 66; satyagraha movement, 30, 32, 65, 78–81; theory of ahimsa, 64 gender discrimination. See gender equality gender equality, 19, 20

gender-sensitive laws, 21 ‘gilded slavery’, 49 Girard, Rene, 105 Gour, H. S., 36, 38 Green Revolution in agriculture, 69 guru–shishya parampara, 65 Habermas, Jurgen, 30, 112; ecological perspectives, 70 72; ideas on ecology and

environment, 67–69; political vision, 56–60; religious and rational ethics, 60–63; theory of communicative action, 56, 62, 63, 66, 72; theory of learning, 70 Hadith tradition, 15, 155, 170, 180 Haksar, Vinit, 77, 78 Har Bilas Sarda’s Bill, 37–38

Hardin, Russell, 75

‘harem’, 154–57 hazrats, 173 Hefzur Rahman (Md) v Shamsun Nahar Begum, 161 hijab, 151, 153 Hindu Adoption and Maintenance

Act (1956), 163 Hindu Advaita, 63 Hindu Code Bill, 123, 132, 139 Hindu fundamentalism, 9 Hindu Mahasabha, 53, 137 Hindu Marriage Act (1955), 163,

164 Hindu–Muslim unity, 33, 35 Hindu Personal Law, 159 Hindu Raj, 46 Hindu Right politics, 9, 22, 91, 93, 94, 157, 158, 183

‘Hindu Social Order, The’ (Ambedkar), 134 Hindustan Republican Army (HRA), 34, 35 Hindutva, 9, 31 Hobbes, Thomas, theory of

terrorism, 75 Huguenots, 4–5 human sacrifice in temples, 94 Ibn Affan, Osman, 155 Ibn Batuta, 155

Ibn Rushd, 16 Ibn Sina, 16 ijtihad, 15–17, 20, 23 Indian Constitution, Directive Principle, 13 Indian National Congress, 7, 10, 34,

126, 137; Anti-Untouchability Sub-Committee, 39 Induprakash (Anglo-Marathi publication), 160 infinite obligation, concept of, 91 Iqbal, Muhammad, 16

Iran: demands for gender equality, 20; economic liberalisation, 20;

Levinas, Emmanuel, 12; concept of ‘Christian guilt’ and ‘sin’, 117;

female literacy and sex ratio, 19;

Iranian Revolution, 17, 18

concept of ‘radical alterity’, 119; infinite obligation to God, 118– 20; infinite obligation to other egos, 121–22; unlimited

Islam: compatibility with feminism, 19; gender equality, concept

obligation and critique of Western philosophy, 113–18

of, 19; Mutazili theology, 16;

liberation theology vs existential theology, in Christian faith, 112–13 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

freedom of women, 19; Islamic revolution, 19

principal tenets of, 15–18 Islamic: feminists, 19–21, 152,

156, 190; fundamentalism, 82, 84; law, 19, 20, 157, 158, 175; revolution, 19

Iyer, G. Subramania, 99 Jabrite (Muslim community), 16

Jacobin doctrine, 153 Jahiliya, 155 Jayalalithaa, J., 93; ban on animal

sacrifice, 93–94 jeevakarunya, 12, 129, 147 Jewish feminism, 21

jihad, 17 jiziya tax, 3

Kant, Immanuel, 58, 113 karpu, 172 karuna, 92, 143 kazis, 173, 180 Khan, Sayyid Ahmad, 16 khawarij (Kharijites), 17 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 17, 18, 20 khotha, 155 Koliyas, 145 Kudi Arasu (Tamil weekly), 34, 44 Laden, Osama Bin, 84 laicite, concept of, 6, 7 Law of Separation of Church and State, France, 6 left-liberal secularism, 9 Leopold, Aldo, 71

(LTTE), 84 Madison, James, 74, 75 Mahabodhi society, 139 Mahanidanasutta, 142

Mahaparinibbanasutta, 137 maintenance for divorced wife, 158, 162. See also Shah Bano case Maktab-e-Vaseteh (The Median School of Thought), 17 Malaviya, Madan Mohan, 40, 42,

43, 45 Mandlik, Rao Bahadur V. N., 160 manudharma, 166 Marcuse, Herbert, 69 Marxism, 18, 69, 112 Marx, Karl, 146

Mayo, Katherine, 36, 40–41 mehr, 163, 180 Mernissi, Fatima, 152, 155, 156 Mimamsa school of philosophy, 105 mimetic desire, 105

Mirabai (1498–1547), 22 Mother India (Katherine Mayo), 36, 41 Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, 152 Muslim community: categories

of, 16; ‘harem’, 154–57; importance of veil in, 151–54; polygamy, 157–61

Muslim: headscarves (foulards ‘islamiques’), 152; veil, 151–54; women in India, 161–65

Provisional Irish Republican Army,

87 Purna Swaraj, 34, 39

Muslim League, 34, 35 Muslim Personal Law, 157, 158, 163, 177 Muslim Women’s Act (1986), 162,

163, 164 Muslim Women’s (Protection on Divorce) Act, 158 Muslim Women’s Protection of

Rights to Divorce Act (1986), 174 Mutazili theology, 16 Dr Muthulakshmi’s bill, for abolition

of the devadasi system, 36 Najmabadi, Afsaneh, 187, 188 Narmada Bachao Andolan, 77

nationalism, idea of, 41 navayana, 123, 124 Naxalites, 86 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 34

nibanna, concept of, 131 nikahnamaah, 164, 184, 185 nishkama karma, 64, 71 non-cooperation policy, 32–33 panchamas, 126 Pantham, Thomas, 64, 70 Patel, Sardar Vallabhai, 42, 44

Penngal Jamaat magazine, 179–80, 184 Periyar. See Ramaswamy, E. V. Planning Commission, 177

political rights of citizens, 5 polygamy in Muslim community, 157–61, 176 Poona Pact, 51, 123, 135

pragnya, 143, 147 Prarthana Samaj’s Subodh-patrika, 160 Protestantism, 22

Qadarite (Muslim community), 16 Quran, 3, 15, 19, 20, 149, 151,

152, 156, 157, 162, 174–76, 180, 186–90; and Tamil Nadu Muslim Women’s Jamaat, 170–72 Race Relations Act (1976), 153

racial discrimination, 153 ‘radical alterity’, concept of, 119–20, 122 Rajadurai, S. V., 103 Rakhmabai case, 158–59, 165 Ramamrithathammal, 37

Ramaswamy, E. V., 11, 17, 33, 45, 66 Ranade, Rao Bahadur Mahadev Govind, 160 Rawls, John, 76; theory of civil disobedience, 79–80

Raz, Joseph, 76, 77 reciprocal violence, 105 Reign of Terror (1793–94), in France, 6 religion, relation with feminism, 19–25

religious: conflicts, 9; conversion, 13; tolerance, 3, 4 religious correctness, principle of, 58 religious freedom, 3, 13; in France, 4; in India, 7–9; right to, 46

religious ritual versus bhakti, 96 98 Revolt! (English Weekly), 38, 39, 41, 47–49, 51, 53 Robespierre, Maximilien, 6 Roman Catholic: Church, 6 , 23;

faith, 4–6 Rowlatt Acts (1919), 32

Ruether, Rosemary Radford, 22

shastras, 38

Rumi, Sufi Jalal al-Din, 16

Sherkat, Shahla, 20 Shi’ism, 18; as official religion of Iran, 17 Singh, Bhagat, 34, 85 Sivaraj, S., 48, 49 South Indian Liberal Federation, 166 South Indian Reformers’ Conference

Sabarimala pilgrimage, 98 Sachar Committee report, 177 saddhamma, 13, 140, 144, 145, 146

Sakyas, 145 samadharma, 166 sami-adi, 97, 98 sanatana dharma, 11, 71 Sarda Bill. See Har Bilas Sarda’s Bill

Sarda, Har Bilas, 36 Satanic Verses (Salman Rushdie), 155 satyagraha movement, 11, 30, 32, 64, 65, 78–81, 133 Satyamurthi, S., 37, 38

Schelling, Thomas, 85 secularism: ‘classical’ model of, 2–7; and principle of nationalist governance, 31 self-respect movement, in Tamil Nadu, 10, 31, 48, 149; abolition

of untouchability, 39; campaign against caste and social injustice, 45; campaign against devadasi system, 37; concept of secularism, 54; critique of

nationalism, 40, 44; and idea of ‘swaraj’, 35; social reform, 32; support for Har Bilas Sarda’s Bill, 37–38 sexual slavery, 37 Shah Bano case, 14, 157–58, 161,

163, 164 Shariat, 162, 174, 190 Shariat Application Act (1937), 174 Shariat Court, 175 Shariati, Ali, 17, 18, 19

(1928), 47 ‘speaking in tongues’, phenomenon of, 16 state-supported terrorism, 74 stree dharma, 159 stree swabhava, 159 Sufism, 16 suicide terrorism, 83–85 Sunnah, 15 Sura Nisa, 180 svadharma, 60, 64, 66 swaraj, 10, 35, 40, 42

tafritas, 154 talaq, 157, 162, 164, 170, 175, 176, 183 Taliban, 17 Tamil Buddhism, 127 Tamil Nadu Muslim Women’s Jamaat, 149, 167, 168–70; conjugal and sexual rights, 172; female employment and entrepreneurship, 178; and holy Quran, 170–72; influence

of community, faith, law and state, 173–79; ‘Islamic’ identity, 171; sexual, secular and sacred ethics, 184–86; vision of gender justice, 186; and the worlds of faith, 179–84 Tamil Nadu Prevention of Cruelties to Animals Act (1950), 93

Tamizhan (Tamil weekly), 126

terrorism: conventional wisdom on, 81–83; definition of, 85; key attributes of, 85; kinds of, 73–75; principal features of, 84; suicide, 83–85 terrorist violence, 30, 74. See also

suicide terrorism; terrorism Thass, Iyothee, 17, 24, 36, 109, 142, 166; Adi-vedam, 92, 125–33; conversion to Buddhism, 125, 132; jeevakarunya, 12 Tilak, Bal Gangadhar, 160 ummah, 174 ummah muslimah, 15 uniform civil code, 13, 14, 31, 167, 174 United States of America: First

Amendment of Constitution, 6 ; Jefferson’s Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, 6 ‘universal’ man, concept of, 18 ‘untouchable’ satyagrahis, 39

untouchables, right to enter temples, 36, 39 use-value-driven production,

concept of, 68 Vajrasuchi, 144 varnadharma (caste hierarchy), 10, 33, 34, 35, 39– 40, 43, 46, 49, 52, 125 varnashramadharma, 34

vidya, 143 Vishva Hindu Parishad, 152 Wahabi Islam, 183 Wahhabi movement, 16, 17. See

also Sufism Waqf Board, 177

Welch, Sharon, 110 What Gandhi and Congress Did to the Untouchables (Ambedkar), 135 women’s empowerment, 22 Women Living under Muslim Law,

189 World Islamic Front, 84 Young Bengal group, 34, 35