I finished reading Martha Nussbaum's The Clash Within - Democracy, religious violence and India's future. I heard about it during a discussion on sepiamutiny and the initial discussions made me want to read it. By the time I got through the book, I was disappointed at the bungling explanation of a common sense approach to religious fundamentalism and democracies' response to it. As the book progressed, it got progressively difficult because of the simplistic analysis and wholesale focus on the importance of humanities for the human development.
The book is written for american and european audience as an introduction to importance of religion in indian society. The theses covered as part of the book include
1. Case study of Godhra riots
2. Rebut 'clash of civilizations' forwarded by Samuel Huntington and
3. Importance of religion to democracy
To buttress her credentials, the explanation,"long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history", on the flap of the book cover definitely helps. References to Amartya Sen dont hurt either. I only wish she would have taken that more seriously to give a better view of religious violence in India.
Some positive things about the book include,
1. Very good retelling of cause behind godhra riots and clear denunciation of the crazed fanatic Narendra Modi. She could have gone into a deeper explanation of the participation of different castes in the riots instead of lamenting their participation and just hinting that they might have been bought off.
2. Attempt to engage with the different arms of the hindu fundie movement including VHP, RSS and BJP. This is sullied by a jaundiced view she brings to the psycho analysis of the interviewees that ends up sounding like hatchet jobs on most of them. So, Arun Shourie(BJP) is unnecessarily harsh on all religions while at the same time lending legitimacy to BJP's hindutva policies, K.K.Shastri(VHP) is a dirty old man and Devendra Swarup(VHP) is a male chauvinist. The one contrast to all of them is Gurcharan Das, shown as someone who is a religious hindu but is not a certified nut job as the other three. He gets off with minimal psycho analysis(no one is spared the psycho analysis treatment) and when he ventures to paint Arun Shourie in positive terms, she calls Gurcharan Das naive.
3. Good coverage of the indian diaspora's role in targeting academics who wish to study hinduism, its symbols and its adherents. But, this is tarnished by simple mistakes like referring to Rajiv Malhotra as the owner of sulekha.com (Page 247, "The chief antagonist behind these attacks is Rajiv Malhotra, a very wealthy man who lives in New Jersey and heads the Infinity foundation, which has made grants in the area of Hinduism studies. Had Malhotra decided to focus his energies on giving scholarships to students and graduate students in this area, he would greatly have enhanced the profile of Hinduism studies nationally. But in recent years most of his energy has been focused on Internet attacks against Doniger and scholars associated with her, on his website sulekha.com. Malhotra's voluminous writings show a highly aggressive, threatening personality."). But she does a very good job of sticking up for Romila Thapar, Wendy Doniger and others(they escape the psycho analytic scalpel too) while attacking efforts to promote revisionist history by the hindu organizations abroad and at home.
4. The central thesis that each civilization carries within it people who are open to foreign influences and those who are fearful of it and the resulting interactions among them determines how a democracy sees itself with respect to religious violence.
Given my disappointment with the book, I could only see overwhelmingly negative points including,
1. Prescription to the clash within a civilization. While the identification reflected common sense, the solution was wholly unsatisfactory. Her solution that Gandhi's approach towards religion and Tagore's approach towards education will provide salvation to religious violence in India is half baked. Gandhi, for all his religious moderation wasnt able to prevent the horrifying violence of partition that was mostly driven by religious passions. She approvingly talks of " Gandhi believed that self-rule in the political sense must grow out of self-rule in the psychological sense;only by mastering the urges to dominate in ourselves can we become the sort of citizens who can live respectfully with others on terms of equality, and only by producing self-mastering citizens can a nation remain free from external domination. The events in Gujarat support Gandhi's contention. ". While the idea of self-mastery leading to more respect between people sounds reasonable, to trace it to religious moderation requires a leap of faith. Especially the kind of religious moderation as practiced by Gandhi ignored the real advances made by science and looked on religion as the panacea. And Gandhi doesnt get mentioned when she discusses the restrictions on right to proselytize in India.
2. Her insistence on wider availability of Tagore's emphasis on development of critical faculties in public education. It ignores the compexity in implementing educational curriculum in a country as diverse as India. Rote learning is the bane of many a school child in India and the sooner it gets reduced, the better. But, her point that Santiniketan and Tagore's approach as the solution across India doesnt take into account the original failure of Tagore to spread his approach beyond Santiniketan. She contrasts the use of Jana Gana Mana as appealing to a higher ideal of humanity when compared with Bande Mataram that exhorts its singer to pledge devotion to motherland. But, she ignores the strong use of admiration of mother sentiment by different social and political movements. After all, MGR captured power in tamil nadu by targeting them successfully and tamil politicians routinely swear fealty and loyalty to tamil language while describing it in mother or other female terms. To me, the analysis of Bande mataram was eye opening because I always thought it was a good song and I am not the typical hindu right male. Far from it. Her description of Tagore's approach seems clouded by her association with, and admiration of, Amartya Sen. So, Amartya Sen's mother, Amita Sen has the book dedicated to her with glowing tributes to her achievements in the artistic sphere and is held up as the example of what students in India have missed out on throughout the book. Poor us! And Amartya Sen pops up with sage quotes of his own once in a while.
3. Backhanded compliments to Nehru on his achievements with regard to industrial, science and technology development. She recognizes Nehru for his commitment to secularism, democracy but faults him for "failure to create a liberal, pluralistic public rhetorical and imaginative culture whose ideas could have worked at the grassroots level to oppose those of the Hindu right". And somewhere else, she blames Nehru and congress for "neglecting the cultivation of liberal religion and the emotional bases of a respectful pluralistic society". She identifies lack of stress on humanities and too much emphasis on science in Indian education system as one of the causes of religious violence. The same Nehru who pushed the reforms in hinduism with Ambedkar is held up for not cultivating liberal religion. Her negative coverage of Nehru's contribution sounds very convenient when tied to her narrative of hindu right as one uninterrupted movement developing for a long time.
4. The whole book treats the hindu right as building strength for last 50 years and flowering in the last 10 years. That muddles the reality where there were times when hindu right wasnt powerful and places where they still have difficulty getting or maintaining a toe hold. The ascendancy of hindu right can be blamed partly on the confused and ineffective policies with regard to religion of the congress party and partly on the discipline and cohesiveness(as she rightly points out) of its different units. Her treatment of sikh killings of 1984 is different from godhra riots even though they were driven by political masters intent on killing people of a different religion. Rajiv Gandhi is let off the hook for his comment after hearing of sikh killings, "When a tree falls, the ground shakes". The book would have improved its appeal if it treated the religious massacres that happen periodically in India as just that, religious madness. The treatment of religion by congress also gets a passing reference. After all, congress has played its part in fanning religious madness with its mixing of politics and religion. While angry symbolism of Ram by BJP is rightly panned, she lets congress off the hook for playing into the hands of religious politics through telecast of ramayan. After all, Doordarshan those days was controlled by the central government and they would have had to approve the narrow rendering of ramayana as was shown on the television screen.
5. The obsessive focus on psycho analysis of the typical hindu right male - someone who raped women in Godhra riots, killed people and asserted cultural superiority over anyone who doesnt agree with his view on India as a hindu nation. While I can see some merit in the increased sense of victimhood on the part of hindu male(my speculation based on my interactions with my friends), she takes it to extreme levels with explanations like this - "Something like this paranoia, this refusal of compromised humanity, infects the rhetoric of the Hindu right and indeed, may help to explain its continuing fascination with Nazi ideas. The woman functions as a symbol of the site of weakness and vulnerability inside any male, who can be drawn into his own mortality through desire. The muslim woman functions doubly on such a symbol. In this way, a fantasy is created that her annihilation will lead to safety and invulnerability- perhaps to "India shining", the campaign slogan that betrays a desire for a crystalline sort of domination. Only this complex logic explains, I believe, why torture and mutilation are preferred to abduction and impregnation. Or even simple homicide. Only this logic explains the fantasy of penetrating the sexual body with a large metal object. Only this logic explains, as well, the frequent destruction of women by fire, as though the world cannot be clean until all vestiges of the female body are obliterated from its face.". While the hindu right does have fascination with Nazi ideas, to extend the explanation to the slogan of "India shining" is a leap that cannot be justified. But, in this book, she isnt focussed on balanced view even if it happens to be about an extremist viewpoint. It is not only the hindu right that has a fascination with Hitler. There have been tamil movies that treat him as an admirable figure. The view of this subset in India of females in general and muslim females in particular sounds inconsistent sometimes. At some points, she refers to the tendency of hindu right to treat them as object and assert a sense of control over them. At other points(as in the one above), she refers to the tendency of hindu right to reduce sexuality of the female to oblivion. Either they are an object or they are a sexual being whose sexuality has to be removed.
6. Betrays a negative view of science, technology and capitalism in general while treating religion as good. So, Chandrababu Naidu suffers collateral damage as BJP's partner for promoting Andhra within "India shining" through foreign investment while doing nothing about the condition of the rural poor. She would do well to check the progress report of previous governments, at centre and state level, on alleviating rural poor's misery. Religion, hinduism or islam, is good but there are few bad apples who hijack it for their own ends sounds hollow from her when one sees the havoc it has wrought in India.
7. Reluctance to pull up other religions for their madness. So, "islamic fundamentalism has no grip in India despite discrimination and even persecution" as if the existence of discrimination and persecution justifies turning fundamentalist. At another place, she explains the poor situation of muslims is due to persistent discrimination which, to me, is taking things to the extreme. I am sure there are indignities and discriminations suffered by muslims in India but that doesnt mean other religions dont suffer or that it is an admirable feature of religious people to turn fundamentalist because they are being discriminated against. If that is the case, India might as well wind up its court system and let people turn fundamentalists to resolve religious discrimination. Even if I am not a muslim, it is difficult for me to accept there is persistent discrimination. And where there are violent acts involving muslims, she takes care to mention the organization that caused the violence has both hindus and muslims. So, the bombay blasts in 1993 was conducted by gangs in mumbai that had both hindus and muslims. To my recollection, the way it was covered at that time, was as a religious response to the destruction of Babri masjid mosque.
There are some issues she raises with education which anyone educated in indian schools wouldnt find out of place. The spelling mistakes and errors sounds bad when reading it on this book. Her use of feminist ideas shed some light on why some people do the things they do but she ignores the part rabid women play among hindu fundamentalism.
On the whole, the book puts forward a common sense approach to analyzing religious violence in demcoracies and proceeds to flesh it out poorly and sometimes, comes across as too heavy on psychoanalysis. Given the author's background, it might have to be expected but it doesnt add any value to the discussion on religious violence in India.
