Religious pasts vs political presents

RELIGION AND MODERNITY IN INDIA

Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and Aloka Parasher Sen (Editors)

Oxford University Press

323 pages; Rs 950

Human beings live in the present but always carry memories of the past. This fundamental fact of social existence conditions their thinking on tradition and modernity and explains why many reputed modern social philosophers have focused their attention on the problematic relationship between religion, scriptures, rituals and priests and modern systems of knowledge, where every tenet of religious faith has to pass the test of modern scientific inquiry. This is the rationale for this edited volume in which individual scholars have attempted to link, on the basis of empirical micro-level studies, the religious practices of different communities with the processes of modernisation in Indian society and culture. 

The first two chapters, by T K Oommen (“Society, Religion, and Modernity in Postcolonial India”) and Aditya Malik (“Possession, Alterity, Modernity”), provide a background for the 10 chapters that follow, which are case studies of different regions. Although it is correct to maintain that religious traditions are constantly revised under the impact of modernity, the central issue is to identify empirically the “revisions” within religious belief systems and to explain whether these are taking place because of the interface between religion and modernity. 

One insightful contribution comes from Will Sweetman in “The Dravidian idea in Missionary Accounts of the South Indian Religion”. Christian missionaries in the south found it difficult to launch their religious conversion projects because of the Brahmanical hold over society. So they studied Dravidian culture intensively and, driven by their antipathy towards Brahmanism, emphasised the Saiva Siddanta as a “peculiarly Tamil religion”. Thus, Mr Sweetman concludes, “the Dravidian idea and all the consequences that flowed therefrom” are a gift of the Christian missionaries, and the anti-Brahmin, anti-Sanskrit movements in Tamil Nadu took birth as a result of missionaries’ assertions of a separate Dravidian identity. Its impact is still felt in Tamil Nadu’s politics.

In one way or the other, all the contributors in this volume have focused on the processes of modernisation and secularisation of indigenous religious identities in the context of colonialism and post-Independence processes of modern nation-building. Alok Kumar Pandey and R Siva Prasad, authors of the essay “Sedentarization and Changing Contours of Religious Identities: The Case of the Pastoral Van Gujjars of the Himalayas”, show that the interaction between “religion and modernity” is not straightforward and can take many forms. The case of the Gujjars, they say, “does not suggest a return to tradition but an emergence of novelty in the realm of religion laced with fundamentalism and conflict within the community. These processes play out in the context of tradition that interacts with forces of modernity”.

Part Three of this volume focuses on Mohammad Ali Jinnah, around whose ideas the role of Islam in South Asia is analysed, and the Hindu Mahasabha, that section of Hindus who assert their religious identity through politics. Chapter 7 by Aparna Devare (“Rethinking the ‘Religious-Secular’ Binary in Global Politics: M A Jinnah and Muslim Nationalism in South Asia”) and Chapter 8 by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (“Modernity, Citizenship, and Hindu Nationalism: Hindu Mahasabha and Its ‘Reorientation’ Debate, 1947-52”) provide an opportunity to directly link the role of religion (the old) with politics (the modern) in India.

Ms Devare, who has relied on purely secondary sources, summarises the main issue of the debate on the real role of Jinnah in politics. She raises the question without pursuing it in depth — that Jinnah, a modern secular individual, reluctantly used Islam to gain political prominence and political power for the Muslim community. The chapter on the Hindu Mahasabha repeats the same story that Veer Savarkar, like Jinnah, was extremely modern but he undertook the task of mobilising the Hindu religious community for special political power and status in Hindu India. Both authors leave unexplored the critical issue about the manipulation of religious identities, symbols and rituals for political mobilisation in any multi-religious society. 

If it is accepted that religion is a fundamental reference point or category for identifying social groups and that modern politics, especially in a democracy, has to grapple with the problem of religion in politics, the issue of boundaries between religion and politics has to be addressed. B L Biju’s “Bipolar Coalition System in Kerala: Carriers and Gatekeepers of Communal Forces in Politics” provides some insights into the way “community politics” works in a state where three communities, the Hindus, Muslims and Christians, are making every effort to arrive at an “equilibrium” in society and politics. Kerala is witnessing inter-community tensions; however, a balance exists where these communities participate in democratic politics by safeguarding their religious identities. Can Kerala be the model for Indian politics?

The real disappointment is that a volume on religion and modernity published in 2016 does not have a chapter on the Sangh Parivar (including the Bharatiya Janata Party), which is the largest and most powerful organisation of Hindus openly advocating that the purpose of politics is to establish Hindu Rashtra. Is the process of modernity taking India towards the establishment of a Hindu theocracy and is universal adult franchise-based modern democracy in India faced with a challenge from Hindu religious sectarian exclusivists of the Sangh Parivar? Does modernity lead to religious fundamentalism because manipulators can build walls of separation between multiple religions among diverse communities? The volume does not address this fundamental question facing India.