Intellectuals, thinkers, and common people who make the reassuring and feel-good claim that no religion teaches hatred are like the proverbial ostriches. They are ignoring the entire panorama of the violent history of religions in the western and the middle eastern worlds in the last two thousand years. The destruction and conversion of cultures and civilisations was not by individuals who did not understand religion but by people who specifically drew inspiration from their religions.
A troubled India holds on to some very divisive narratives concerning religion thanks to a sustained poor scholarship after independence which did not disband the colonial narratives. Intellectuals like Bankim Chandra had an inkling but it is Dr Balagangadhara Rao (Balu) in recent times who has most clearly articulated a better understanding of India with some real solutions (The Heathen in His Blindness and its simplified version Do All Roads Lead to Jerusalem). His claim about religions at the most basic level goes like this: India is a land of traditions and not religions. If Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism are religions in their true definition (consisting of A Book, A God, A Doctrine, A Temple), then there are no indigenous religions in India. As a corollary, if the Indian traditions are religions then Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism are not religions.
The biggest problem of the world, cutting across all ideologies, is the continuous understanding of traditions as religions. Dr Balagangadhara clearly shows that Hinduism was an ‘experience’ of the colonials trying to understand an alien culture. In this sense they ‘constructed’ a religion based on their own frameworks and a total belief that there can never be a culture without a religion. The puja, the Sandhyavandanam of the Brahmins, the Sahasranamams, the Purushasukta, our notions of dharma and adharma, all exist. The West did not provide a false or wrong description of the social and cultural reality in India. But problematically, the unity they created by tying these things together is a unity only for them. They could not understand us otherwise.
This different but cognitively superior description of Indian culture perhaps confirms to the lived experience of most people. However, we need to first reject the present framework based completely on Western scholarship. Calling oneself a ‘Hindu’ for the sake of convenience is simply a continuation of ancestral traditions. A traditional land has the characteristic feature of dealing with pluralism and that is an ‘indifference’ to differences. This transcends the classical notions of ‘tolerance’ and ‘mutual respect’ maximally achieved by secularism. While calling oneself a ‘Hindu’ might be convenient, the danger is in trying to develop ‘doctrines’, ‘theologies’, ‘catechisms’ and our own ‘Ten Commandments’ so that we could identify people that follow a religion called ‘Hinduism’. Intellectuals, in India and in the West, are transforming some of the multiple Indian traditions into a single ‘religion’ called ‘Hinduism’. Intellectuals, starting with the colonials, successfully continue to describe and define other religions branching out (Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism) sometimes even ‘fighting’ and ‘opposing’ the main body of Hinduism. The problem does not lie in trying to unify diversity into a unity. Rather, it lies in trying to fit traditions into the straitjacket of ‘religion’, says Balu.
Even though we assume that a set of practices from time immemorial transmits; in principle, there is no way of establishing the truth of this belief. Only certain knowledge such as the Vedas and mantras might have faithfully come down in their pristine form. Dr Balu says, today, we are not yet able to make sense of the presence of these two properties in a land of traditions: (a) the enormous flexibility in belonging to a tradition and the sharpness with which the boundaries exist between traditions; (b) the possibility that any element could be absent from a tradition and yet it could maintain identity and distinction. Contrary to popular understanding, traditions are neither variants of either religion or philosophies. They are what they are- traditions.
How do we then understand Christianity and Islam in India? Dr Balu says that the simple answer is that when these religions entered India, they met with an already formed culture. These religions adapted to the existing culture to survive. Thus, Indian Christianity and Indian Islam remain Indian irrespective of their religious beliefs and practices which had a space to flourish as one of the many diversities present in Indian culture. In this process, these religions undergo modifications in how the believers live their daily life which does not affect the content of their beliefs or their places of worship. It is exactly this kind of adoption and adaptation to Indian culture that many Madrassa schools and evangelical Christians militate against. Whether such ‘resistance’ has any effect at all or not depends not on their militancy but on the vibrancy of Indian culture.
India’s practical solution since ages, instead of the inappropriate and noxious secularism, was to traditionalise the religions so that they lost focus on proselytization and made some genuine attempts at cultural syncretism. In reverse, our thinkers are trying hard to convert our traditions into religions. As secularism drives Hinduism into a proper religion, we typically see the rise of intolerance and fundamentalism and begets the accusation by others of what they have been guilty of for hundreds of years.
Religion at its root is intolerance and othering. It simply says, ‘I am right and you are wrong.’ Traditions at its root is an indifference towards others with a healthy give and take (including severe intellectual debates) so long as there is no physical violence and an attempt to convert en masse. It says, ‘I am right but you are not wrong.’ These differences are important to understand to make sense of the increasing clashes in recent times and the rise of the so-called Hindu fundamentalism. The solution to peace is obviously not in the direction of making Hindu traditions into religions but to continue the process of traditionalising the religions. Historically, our solutions were that religions could simply absorb into Indian culture; generously interact with other traditions with some genuine syncretism; lose their focus on proselytization (an essential requirement for religion); and yet retain their independence and identity. If only we could learn from the past.
RANDOM MUSINGS 