RANDOM MUSINGS

Religions and Traditions– The Why and The How Questions

The Ghent group in Belgium under Dr SN Balagangadhara question whether religions truly exist in India. They propose that if Islam, Christianity, and Judaism classically are religions, then there are no religions in India. As a corollary, if what we have in India are religions then Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are not religions. Indian traditions do not meet the basic criteria of religion in the form of A Book, A Church, A Messenger, and One True God by any stretch of the imagination.

What we have in India are a huge conglomerate of traditions that the colonials brought under an umbrella and called it ‘Hinduism’. They saw many practices, rituals, sampradayas, paramparas, gurus, philosophies, and such, which they had to unite into an overarching meta-narrative. The explanation of all these varied practices became the religion of Hinduism. Later came the religions of Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, and so on, many times allegedly revolting against the main ‘oppressive’ religion of Hinduism. 

Dr Balagangadhara shows ‘Hinduism’ was an experiential unity for the colonials who were trying to make sense of Indian culture. The religious culture from which they came also generated the strong idea that religion is a cultural universal. They could not imagine that cultures might exist where religions are absent. Our social sciences, heavily colonized, did not relook at the narratives the colonials set for us. Their theories and conclusions regarding Indian social systems, religions, and caste remained pretty much the same. (different religions inhabiting the land; the caste system as an outcome; and all social evils arising from the former two). 

Religions come with an ideology of monotheism and exclusivity; traditions come with an idea of pluralism and an indifference to differences. This indifference is way beyond the standard tolerance and acceptance which religion can maximally achieve under the force of secularism and trying to live in a modern, rational, interconnected world. 

Religions place a premium on truth and the only way a person can reach the truth is to become a believer in its God, its Book, and its doctrines. The non-believer can never gain salvation and it is the solemn duty of a believer to convert as many non-believers as possible on the correct path. This may take the form of physical violence too. Traditions too place a premium on truth. It is a gross error to believe that the concept of truth is not robust in Indian traditions because it allegedly says ‘all religions and traditions are equally true’. An Advaita practitioner will say that his path is the only true one but, most importantly, does not say that Dvaita is false. Religions say, ‘I am true and you are false’; traditions say, ‘I am true but you are not false’. And therein lies the difference.

Rituals form the basis of traditions and these help in uniting people. Religions with their specific concept of My One True God versus Your False Many Gods divides people and breeds intolerance and hate. The history of Christianity and Islam as an organised religion is quite evident across many centuries. Traditions however evolve– merging, dissolving, and exchanging with other traditions of the land. The main principle is an indifference to the differences.  

What comes down from ancestors is tradition and this is religio for Indian culture just as it was in the past in the Greco-Roman world. Traditional cultures like the obliterated Greco-Roman world of the past and the living Indian world of the present characteristically have multiple gods, including the divine feminine. There is typically deification of even animals and nature.  Peculiarly, the One Single God has no great relevance in many Indic philosophies. Jain traditions, Buddhist traditions, and even orthodox darsanas (or philosophies) like Yoga, Samkhya, Nyaya, and Vaisesika have no special need of a god in their expositions. The single purpose of multiple paths, perhaps excluding Charvakism (atheism), is Enlightenment (Moksha, Nirvana, merging with the Self or Brahman, and so on). 

This indifference to differences allows traditions to survive without the threat of violent personal attacks in case of different opinions. Intense debates, yes; violence, almost never. This also allows a person to hold multiple views and believe in multiple gods too in a typical traditional culture. Cicero was officiating as a priest but the entire arsenal of Enlightenment thinkers was from his single work questioning the existence of God. The Charvakas of India could argue about the non-existence of god from temple courtyards without fear of their lives.

Looking for scientific explanations, the why question, is typically important in a religious culture. Hence, the West persistently asks these questions to which Indians struggle to find an answer- what is the purpose of the Bindi? Why is the cow revered so much? Is linga puja worshipping the phallus? Is Ganesha’s trunk a limp phallus? And so on. Religious cultures ask the why question and hence it gives rise to atheism and science, says Dr Balagangadhara. Traditional cultures ask ‘the how’ question (like how best one should perform the ritual) and bring people together.

Buddhism versus Hinduism

In the light of how traditions emerge, evolve, merge, and share many common points, Buddhism (like Jainism, Sikhism) was just another tradition. In the Hindu land, new traditions, sects, and gurus evolve all the time showing many paths to the final enlightenment. The clash of Hinduism and Buddhism is simply a popular internalised myth. One important point is Hinduism as a great unified body did not exist as such when the Buddha came along. What or who was he fighting? 

This alleged clash, despite many commonalities between Advaita and Buddhist philosophy, has roots in a poor and continuous misunderstanding of Indian traditions as religions.  The many paths, many gods, and many philosophies are a rich reflection of the traditional land of India. The Buddha sits happily with many deities and saints in many Hindu households and temples across India and the Far East. 

The Heathen in His Blindness explains clearly how the entire ‘religion’ of Buddhism evolved in the libraries of Europe. The clash with Hinduism was also a product of hyperactive minds. Unfortunately, the public rejection of Hindu devas and devis by Dr Ambedkar and ‘conversion’ into a Buddhist faith has increased the perception of the division between Hinduism and Buddhism. Koenraad Elst simply says from his studies that the ‘Buddha was every inch a Hindu.’

The Rise of Hindutva

Hindus have faced physical and intellectual persecution for a thousand years. The intellectual violence against Hindus, either in India or abroad, does not show any sign of abating. In the Western world, Hinduphobia is evident in academia, the media, and missionary literature. It comes out even from the so-called secular organizations. In India too, the evangelists, missionaries, and the clergy in the mosques routinely carry out an anti-Hindu tirade. Their speeches and pamphlets even today focus on all social evils which must emanate from an impure religion of Hinduism.

At a fundamental level, there is inherently something wrong in the way we have seen ourselves and the way we see others. Despite internal intellectual debates of the highest order, for some strange reason, we never seemed to have historically engaged in reversing the gaze on alien religions. It was always a one-sided monologue on what they said about India. 

‘Religionizing’ the traditions takes one from tolerance to intolerance; from acceptance to discrimination; and from indifference to hate. This is precisely the route that Buddhism in scholarly writings and intellectual understandings took. Buddha was not fighting anybody the way scholars want him to. He was showing another path and was simply a beneficiary of an established Hindu pluralistic tradition. Simultaneously, converting Hindu traditions into a Hindu religion in the classic Abrahamic mould trying to define itself by a single God (Brahman), a single Book (Vedas), a single Temple, and some fixed doctrines (seeing equality between all and supposedly a superior way of thinking) makes it more intolerant and self-asserting. The rise of the Hindutva phenomenon is a manifestation of this process.

Secularism

On a broader scale, the notions of secularism arise from this same poor understanding of religions and traditions. Secularism was a solution for the European Christian world at a specific time of its history when its multiple denominations of Protestants and Catholics were fighting each other. The state separated from religion to bring harmony. It was a success for that period and in that specific context. Making it a universal solution for all cultures and across all times is a recipe for disaster as is evident in India.

As a first step to create this Indian brand of secularism, our intellectuals and politicians continued to understand traditions as religions when they should have fundamentally questioned the colonial understanding of Indian traditions. The post-independent India should have seriously taken up this question of whether religions truly exist in India. Traditions when they become religions lose their flexibility and absorptive power. It becomes intolerant and, when taken to the extreme, fanatical. 

Secularism paradoxically will be the cause of increasing fundamentalism as Dr Jakob De Roover warns in his book Europe, India, and The Limits of Secularism. As we are carving out separate identities, some in the form of religions, like ‘Buddhism’, ‘Sikhism’, ‘Jainism’, ‘Ramakrishnaites’, ‘Arya Samajis’, ‘Lingayats’, and so on as being different from ‘Hinduism’, India is just losing its capacity to handle and absorb the pluralism and multi-culturalism which had always been our forte and the key to survival.

The Congress after independence became a spokesperson for a brand of secularism that took over the Muslim vote as a block. The Hindus, believing that the Congress would naturally act in their interests, continued to vote for it. In this secularism based on appeasement, the majority at one point simply detached from it. The country lost a great opportunity to set the Hindu driven solutions for dealing with multi-culturalism and pluralism.

The Indian Communists and Marxists, despite being an insignificant political power, unfortunately, gained powerful positions in the academia which took this secularism further. They whitewashed the brutal Islamic histories, reduced Hindu history to footnotes, removed any shred of pride in Indian culture and heritage, and set noxious narratives of the Indian past in the light of Marxist interpretations. Instead of looking at ourselves afresh, the themes of the exploiter and the exploited gave no different conclusions than the missionary-colonials: a degenerate Hindu religion giving rise to a malignant caste system.

In two generations, there was a complete deracination and de-rooting of the Indians by this unbelievable academic narrative. We lost an opportunity and now it is an uphill task to fight against such narratives. Though democracy remained vibrant, India could not come together and offer solutions to the world. The imported solutions became our problems even as we failed to see that it is India that offers solutions to the world.

Conversions

In each of the following suppositions regarding the cultural diversity of humanity, each is a logical negation of the other:1. The Hindu traditions and Islam and Christianity are phenomena of the same kind (the Christian view), or they are not (the Indian view).2. They are religious rivals (the Christian view), or they are not (Indian view).3. As rivals, the traditions compete regarding truth or falsity (Christian view), or they do not (Indian view). They can do so because some religion is false (Christian/Islamic view), but they never could if no religion is false (Indian view).

This shapes today’s view of religious conversion as a universal problem. The inevitable conclusion is that conversion becomes a vital problem of religious diversity, if and only if one looks at the world the way Christianity and Islam do. A dynamic of proselytization is intrinsic to Christianity and Islam. Those who receive this revelation have a duty to convert the others from their false religions into the true one. The cultural traditions of these others become obstacles to conversion to the true God. When all religions are rivals, conversion indeed becomes the predicament at their encounter. If this theology sustains and constrains the understanding of cultural diversity, one is bound to see religious conversion as a universal predicament and religious liberty as its solution. 

The conflict between these two views of religious diversity gives rise to a clash over the principle of religious freedom. When religion is a matter of doctrinal truth and different religions are rivals, the freedom to convert becomes of the greatest importance to humanity. The secularization of Christian theology translates into the importance of the absolute right to profess, propagate, and change one’s religion. Thus, the dominant principle of religious freedom reproduces theological assumptions about the nature of religion.

Where religion means the ancestral tradition of a community, like in India and other pagan traditions of the past and contemporary times, the significance shifts to the freedom to continue one’s tradition without aggressive interference from the outside. The integrity of the ritual and narrative traditions of a community becomes central here. Attempts to proselytize and denunciation of the common inheritance holding a community together are clearly violations of the integrity of a community.  Most crucially, a stance of non-interference is central to these traditions.

Thus, for Christians, Muslims and secularists in India, freedom of religion principle revolves around the freedom to convert and proselytize. For Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains, it revolves around freedom from the intrusion of proselytization. There is no neutral position between these two interpretations of religious freedom. Either one accepts that some religions are false or one believes that no religion is false.

The dominant principle of religious freedom, then, must necessarily favour one of the two sides of the Indian equation. The liberal principle of religious freedom, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the Indian Constitution, privileges Christianity and Islam, because it involves the freedom to propagate or manifest one’s religion and to proselytize. It implicitly endorses the assumption that religion revolves around doctrines and truth claims. Thus, privileging the right to convert over the right against cultural invasion amounts to condoning the dismantling of traditions. The dominance of the framework that construes religions as rival belief systems has produced a skewed contest which privileges proselytization rather than protection of the indigenous traditions.

Solutions

Without the risk of romanticizing the past, looking into the history of the subcontinent, it is striking that, in several regions, the Hindu traditions and Indian Islam and Christianity succeeded at living together in a relatively stable manner. India has a far better record of pluralism and multiculturalism in mostly peace than Europe and the western world anytime in their histories. There must exist some mechanisms in Indian traditions responsible for this. For one, many scholars have pointed out that local Islamic and Christian traditions lost their aggressive proselytizing drive in India. Hindu attempts to impose anti-conversion legislation aggressively also seemed to be absent.

How do we rediscover these old solutions always existing in our society replaced by the noxious ‘secularism’ of post-independent India? India’s practical solution was to traditionalise the religions so that they lost focus on proselytization and made some genuine attempts at cultural syncretism. This adoption and adaptation to Indian culture allowed the different religions to merge into society and yet keep their belief systems intact.

In reverse, our thinkers are trying hard to convert our traditions into religions with their own gods, temples, doctrines, and commandments causing severe problems. As Hindu traditions become more of a religion, it becomes intolerant. Hindu fundamentalism is the outcome of this process which ultimately damages the philosophy of the nation. A philosophy, which in fact, is the solution to the pluralism and multi-culturalism of the world, now packed into smaller geographical areas.

The solution to the pluralism and multi-culturalism in the world can come but only from a land of thriving pluralistic traditions- India. Call it Hinduism for sake of convenience. Only if religions become more of traditions, the flexibility emerges in interacting with others yet retaining their identity. This is the foundation of true peace and harmony in a diverse society. If we insist on converting the mass of traditions broadly called Hinduism into a proper religion like the Abrahamic ones, we shall paradoxically see more intolerance and fundamentalism. The so-called ‘radical’ Hindutva is one such outcome. 

Muslims and Christians playing the highest devotional music to Hindu gods without any threat to personal identity or faith is a small example. Many Hindus enter the Church or the mosque with equal faith as anyone else but without feeling a loss of his or her belief systems. This is what tradition means. Most Hindus have no problem with Jesus Christ or Christians; Allah or the Muslims. Friendships, partnerships, visiting different places of worship other than the own are rarely a problem. This includes the Christians and Muslims too. The problem only comes when an organized religion starts narratives against the mainstream Hindus in a bid to undermine or convert. 

In traditional cultures, many practices may not have a scientific explanation like the Bindi on the forehead or the worship of the linga or the devotion to the cow. These are simply traditional practices handed down by ancestors. So, when religions or the secularists start questioning the rationality and scientific basis of many inherited traditional practices like devotion for the cow, a Bindi, vastu for house-constructions, and so on, many times, the answer is a silence not knowing what to say.  

A thick layer of ‘colonial consciousness’ hides the truth of our lived experiences. We dimly realize that what we all have is something different and yet continue to call it the religion of Hinduism (along with many others like Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism). We need to shed this consciousness and realize that there are no religions in India but only traditions which do not fight for truth values.

When we now look at the contemporary popular and academic discussions on the so-called Hindu-Sikh conflicts or the ancient Hindu-Buddhist conflicts, there is something deeply wrong in the way we understand India. The nature of Hindu-Muslim conflicts in India also is different. Religious conflicts across history in other parts of world were on truth values (my religion is true, yours is false). The Hindu-Muslim conflicts have been more socio-economic and political in nature and have almost been never about truth values. This also needs study. 

India could absorb so many alien religions without major disruptions in society. This was because the religions took the form of traditions in a genuine manner, sometimes maybe as a continuation or modification of many ancestral Hindu practices of the converted. In a traditional world, conversion entailing complete rejection of previous beliefs is unknown and almost unethical. Also, Indian traditional societies have rarely pressed hard to take up strong movements against proselytization. At a core-level, traditions fail to understand the need for conversion to live happily and peacefully. 

Colonial consciousness, a permanently altered intellectual state not bothering to question the colonial narratives, in the post-independent period, continued this idea of religions in India without explaining the contradictions. At a grosser political level, secularism has come to mean only appeasement of minorities in India- a very Indian application of the idea. Intellectuals and academia continuing to apply western lenses to study ourselves gives the same results of colonial 19^th century about Indian society, its ‘religions’, or ‘caste-system’. The problems and solutions related to religions in the west have had a wholesale transport to Indian soil where they end up making no sense. Yet we persist with the ideas despite all the contradictions they throw up.

The Balagangadhara school maintains that the problem of religion in India arises when we insist on converting our traditions more into religions. As a corollary, the solution lies in making religions more into traditions. This was the solution of a multicultural and plural India historically and we must apply more study to rediscover these inherent mechanisms in the Indian society. The present understanding promises only strife in the future.