Liberal Hinduism versus Sectarian Hindutva

[email protected] (Ram Puniyani)
February 27, 2014
Banning or attacking the books in current times has been aplenty. There have been many reasons given for this intolerant attitude by different social-political groups. The cases of Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasreen’s Lajja, book on Sonia Gandhi Red Saree, A.K. Ramanujan’s Three Hundred Ramayans are some of the major examples. There is a tight rope walk between freedom of expression and hurting ‘others’ sensibilities, which keeps fluctuating for same political groups. Those from Hindu right will talk of freedom of expression for Salman Rushdie or Taslima Nasreen, while the Muslim fundamentalists will talk of ‘Hurting religious sensibilities at the same time. In case of ‘The Hindus an Alternative History’ by Wendy Donigar or ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’ the same Hindu right will assert the religious sensibility argument to get the uncomfortable things banished away. The overall victim of this intolerant attitude is freedom of expression and it also shows the ascendance of ‘Taliban’ elements in the social political sphere.

hidutvaThe ‘out of court settlement’ reached by Penguin to pulp its stock of ‘The Hindus-an alternative History’ is a very condemnable move from one of the most powerful publishers, who could have taken the matters further to the highest legal battles and preserved the right of a scholar to disseminate her views, and the right of readers to have access to it. It is in the fitness of things that well known Penguin authors Jyotirmaya Sharma and Siddharth Varadrajan have written to Penguin to pulp their books and cancel their agreements. The case against The Hindus… was filed by one Dinanath Batra of Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti (SBAS). In his petition to the court, the book is described as “shallow, distorted...a haphazard presentation riddled with heresies and factual inaccuracies”, and …that Doniger herself is driven by a “Christian Missionary Zeal and hidden agenda to denigrate Hindus and show their religion in poor light”. Interestingly Doniger is no Christian, she is Jewish. In her preface she writes “Part of my agenda in writing an alternative history is to show how much the groups that conventional wisdom says were oppressed and silenced and played no part in the development of the tradition—women, Pariahs (oppressed castes, sometimes called Untouchables)—did actually contribute to Hinduism…to tell a story of Hinduism that’s been suppressed and was increasingly hard to find in the media and textbooks…It’s not about philosophy, it’s not about meditation, it’s about stories, about animals and untouchables and women. It’s the way that Hinduism has dealt with pluralism.”

The two central aspects of the book are, one a presentation of the matters related to sex, which has become a taboo for the self proclaimed custodians of Hinduism. One knows the great creations like Khajuraho and Konark and the depiction of matters related to sex, that’s how it was looked at as and that’s how it prevails in society, before the Victorian prudishness took over. One recalls the classic of Kalidas; ‘Kumar Sambhav’, canto 8, which gives the erotic episode of Shankar and Parvati. And same way Adi Shankaracharya’s, Saundarya Lahiri, which gives graphic descriptions of the goddess, sholaka 78-79 being two examples.

As far as attack on Doniger’s book is concerned it is part of the long sequence of the agenda of SBAS and the other RSS affiliates like VHP, Bajrang Dal etc, who became more assertive after the decade of 1980s. This is also the period when the touchiness about religious sensibilities and suppression of the freedom of expression became a phenomenon of regular occurrence. It is interesting to note that the paintings of M.F. Husain drawn in the decades of 1960s and 1970s came under attack much later, during the 1980s with the rise of the aggressive presence of politics, which began around the Ram Temple issue.

Batra, who filed the suit, is the head of the Vidya Bharati’s Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan, the educational arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the patriarch of the Hindu right. The earlier major book under its attack was A.K. Ramanujan’s classic essay ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’, which was part of the syllabus in Delhi University. This essay shows the wide prevalence of diverse telling of story of Lord Ram. These diverse versions are not in conformity with the version of Ram story which gels with the Ram Temple campaign. Even before the attack on this book, the RSS supporters had attacked an exhibition of many tellings of Ram story by Sahmat. In a similar vein RSS’s political wing BJP’s political and ideological partner Shiv Sena in Maharashtra had opposed the publication of the book ‘Riddles of Ram and Krishna’ as in this book Ambedkar, apart from other things, says that he will not regard Ram Krishna as Gods and nor will worship them.

Doniger has been a Professor at School of Oriental and African Studies in University of London. She has two doctorates in Sanskrit and Indian studies and has written several works of scholarship on Hinduism. She says that Sanskrit and vernacular sources are rich in knowledge of compassion for deprived sections of society, women and pariahs as well. An example of this is in order, she is critical of Manu smiriti as it denigrates the women, at the same time she appreciates the sensitivity with which Vatsayanan’s Kam Sutra deals with women.

The tirade of SBAS and other RSS progeny against differing versions of Hinduism, and iconography is a part of its political agenda. It harps on the Brahamanical version of Hinduism bypassing and undermining the other Hindu traditions, Nath, Tantra, Bhakti, Shaiva, Siddha etc. The construction of RSS brand of Hinduism is a part of its Hindutva project, which took place during colonial period. Hindutva is the political ideology of this supra political organization, RSS. Hindutva picks up its version of Hinduism from the elaboration of European Orientalist interpretation of Hindu traditions. Orientalist scholars were in tune with the monotheistic worldview and that was reflected in their reading of Hinduism. In their rendering Hinduism got straight jacketed into monotheistic, monistic one and this puritan monolithic notion of Hinduism came to be presented as the Hinduism. The Colonial powers’ monotheistic worldview could not fathom the diverse richness of Hinduism’s philosophical, spiritual, religious and aesthetic expressions. Their understanding of religion revolves around a single Prophet. Hinduism as a religion as such is a conglomeration of multiple traditions which were prevalent here. Brahmanism was just one of them. During the colonial period by selectively projecting Brahmanical texts and values as Hinduism, the Orientalist scholars and British rulers gave legitimacy to caste and gender based Brahiminical tendency as ‘The Hinduism’. Brahmanism started becoming projected as the Hinduism. It is due to this that Ambedkar went on to say that ‘Hinduism is Brahmanic theology’. He was criticizing the social inequality prevalent in the name of Hinduism. Opposed to Brahmanical stream was the Shramnanic traditions of Hinduism, which by that time were out of the horizon of scholarship of Westerners and the British policy makers. In due course the declining sections of Hindu Landlords and upper caste resorted to the politics of Hindutva, which in the name of glorious Hindu traditions wanted to uphold the status quo of caste and gender, wanted to retain its hegemony in social and economic sphere. The freedom movement and its leader Gandhi’s Hinduism was away from this Brahmanical-Hindutva stream. It was more in continuation with liberal Hindu belonging to Shramanic tradition. It is the Hinduism with which the large sections of Hindus could identify.

Hindu Mahasabha and RSS brand of Hindutva was a marginal phenomenon as it was elite Brahamnical and harped on the values which were at deeper level undermining the status and dignity of women and dalits. That’s how RSS and the elite supporting them kept aloof from the social changes of caste and gender during this period, and stuck to their agenda of Hindu nation based on their own sectarian interpretation of Hinduism. The RSS, in pursuance of its agenda floated SBAS, which was the one which was instrumental in communalization of the history text books during the NDA regime, led by BJP-Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The same organization is the one which is at the back of the multitude of educational endeavors and promotes the divisive-sectarian history through many Sarswati Shishu Mandirs, Ekal Vidyalayas amongst others. So, for them Doniger’s book is a red rag as it talks of rich diverse traditions of the people and is not prude enough to suppress the narrations related to sex. Doniger talks of liberal Hinduism while RSS wants sectarian Hindutva imposed on the society. The struggle between liberal Hinduism and sectarian Hindutva is in full flow around the debate on this book.

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Wafa Sultana
April 4,2020

Over the last couple of days when the world was occupied with unifying efforts to fight the deadly Covid19 pandemic, sections of Indian media provided viewers a familiar scapegoat – the Indian Muslims – who are often stereotyped as a community being constantly at loggerheads with the citizenry and the State. Biased media channels were quick to resort to blaming the entire Muslim community for the spread of the disease in the country, thanks to an ill-timed Tablighi Jamaat gathering at its international headquarters in Delhi’s Nizamuddin. Unsurprisingly, the opprobrium was also marked by a sudden spike in WhatsApp forwards of videos with people wearing skullcaps licking spoons and performing Sufi breathing rituals, suggesting some sort of wild conspiracy on the part of the community to spread the virus.  Some media channels were quick to formulate, hypothesize and provide loose definitions of a newly discovered form of Jihad i.e. ‘Corona Jihad ’ thereby vilifying the Islamic faith and its followers.

While the investigation on the culpability of the organizers of the Nizamuddin event is still ongoing, there is enough information to suggest that the meeting was held before any lockdown was in force, and the problem began when there was no way of getting people out once the curfew was announced. Be that as it may, there is little doubt that organizing a meet of such a scale when there is a global pandemic smacks of gross misjudgment, and definitely the organizers should be held accountable if laws or public orders were defied. Attendees who attempt to defy quarantine measures must be dealt with strictly. However, what is alarming is that the focus and narrative have now shifted from the unfortunate event at Nizamuddin to the Tablighi Jamaat itself.

For those not familiar with the Tablighi Jamaat, the organization was founded in 1926 in Mewat by scholar Maulana Mohammad Ilyas. The Jamaat’s main objective was to get Muslim youth to learn and practice pristine Islam shorn of external influences. This is achieved through individuals dedicating time for moral and spiritual upliftment secluded from the rest of the world for a brief period of time. There is no formal membership process. More senior and experienced participants typically travel from one mosque to other delivering talks on religious topics, inviting local youth to attend and then volunteer for a spiritual retreat for a fixed number of days to a mosque in a nearby town or village to present the message to their co-religionists. Contrary to ongoing Islamophobic rhetoric, the movement does not actively proselytize. The focus is rather on getting Muslims to learn the teachings and practices of Islam.  This grassroots India-based movement has now grown to almost all countries with substantial Muslim populations. Its annual meets, or ‘ijtemas’ are among the largest Islamic congregations in the world after the annual Haj. One of the reasons for its popularity and wide network in the subcontinent and wordwide is the fact that it has eschewed the need for scholarly intervention, focusing on peer learning of fundamental beliefs and practice rather than high-falutin ideological debates. The Tablighi Jamaat also distinguishes itself from other Islamic movements through its strictly apolitical nature, with a focus on individual self-improvement rather than political mobilization. Hardships and difficulty in the world are expected to be face through ‘sabr’ (patience) and ‘dua’ (supplication),  than through quest for political power or influence. In terms of ideology, it is very much based on mainstream Sunni Islamic principles derived from the Deobandi school.

So, why is all this background important in the current context? While biased media entities have expectedly brought out their Islamophobic paraphernalia out for full display, more neutral commentators have tried to paint the Tablighi Jamaat as a fringe group and have tried to distance it from 'mainstream Muslims'. While the intent is no doubt innocent, this is a trap we must not fall into. This narrative, unfortunately, is also gaining ground due to apathy some Muslims have for the group, accusing it of being “disconnected from the realities of the world”. Unlike other Muslim organizations and movements, the Tablighi Jamat, by virtue of its political indifference, does not boast of high-profile advocates and savvy spokespersons who can defend it in mainstream or social media.  The use of adjectives such as 'outdated' and 'orthodox' by liberal columnists to describe the Jamaat feeds into the malignant attempt to change the narrative from the control of the spread of the pandemic due to the Nizamuddin gathering to 'raison d'etre' of the organization itself.

A large mainstream religious group like the Tablighi Jamaat with nearly a hundred-year history, normally considered to be peaceful, apolitical and minding its own business is now suddenly being villainized owing to unfortunate circumstances. Biased media reactions filled with disgust and hate seem to feed the Indian public conscience with a danngerous misconception - to be a nominal Muslim is okay but being a practicing one is not.  For those committed to the truth and fighting the spread of Islamophobia, the temptation to throw the entire Tablighi Jamaat under the bus must be resisted.

The writer is a lawyer and research scholar at Qatar University. Her research interests include Islamic law and politics.

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zahoorahmed
 - 
Saturday, 4 Apr 2020

great article! provides a great perspective on tableeg jamat

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Ram Puniyani
January 14,2020

In the beginning of January 2020 two very disturbing events were reported from Pakistan. One was the attack on Nankana Sahib, the holy shrine where Sant Guru Nanak was born. While one report said that the place has been desecrated, the other stated that it was a fight between two Muslim groups. Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan condemned the incident and the main accused Imran Chisti was arrested. The matter related to abduction and conversion of a Sikh girl Jagjit Kaur, daughter of Pathi (One who reads Holy Guru Granth Sahib in Gurudwara) of the Gurudwara. In another incident one Sikh youth Ravinder Singh, who was out on shopping for his marriage, was shot dead in Peshawar.

While these condemnable attacks took place on the Sikh minority in Pakistan, BJP was quick enough to jump to state that it is events like this which justify the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Incidentally CAA is the Act which is discriminatory and relates to citizenship with Religion, which is not as per the norms of Indian constitution. There are constant debates and propaganda that population of Hindus has come down drastically in Pakistan and Bangla Desh. Amit Shah, the Home minister stated that in Pakistan the population of Hindus has come down from 23% at the time of partition to 3.7% at present. And in Bangla Desh it has come down from 22% to present 8%.

While not denying the fact that the religious minorities are getting a rough deal in both these countries, the figures which are presented are totally off the mark. These figures don’t take into consideration the painful migrations, which took place at the time of partition and formation of Bangla Desh later. Pakistan census figures tell a different tale. Their first census was held in 1951. As per this census the overall percentage of Non Muslim in Pakistan (East and West together) was 14.2%, of this in West Pakistan (Now Pakistan) it was 3.44 and in Eat Pakistan it was 23.2. In the census held in Pakistan 1998 it became 3.72%. As far as Bangla Desh is concerned the share of Non Muslims has gone down from 23.2 (1951) to 9.6% in 2011.

The largest minority of Pakistan is Ahmadis, (https://minorityrights.org/country/pakistan/) who are close to 4 Million and are not recognised as Muslims in Pakistan. In Bangla Desh the major migrations of Hindus from Bangla Desh took place in the backdrop of Pakistan army’s atrocities in the then East Pakistan.

As far as UN data on refugees in India it went up by 17% between 2016-2019 and largest numbers were from Tibet and Sri Lanka.  (https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publication…)

The state of minorities is in a way the index of strength of democracy. Most South Asian Countries have not been able to sustain democratic values properly. In Pakistan, the Republic began with Jinnah’s classic speech where secularism was to be central credo of Pakistan. This 11th August speech was in a way what the state policy should be, as per which people of all faiths are free to practice their religion. Soon enough the logic of ‘Two Nation theory” and formation of Pakistan, a separate state for Muslim took over. Army stepped in and dictatorship was to reign there intermittently. Democratic elements were suppressed and the worst came when Zia Ul Haq Islamized the state in collusion with Maulanas. The army was already a strong presence in Pakistan. The popular formulation for Pakistan was that it is ruled by three A’s, Army, America and Allah (Mullah).

Bangla Desh had a different trajectory. Its very formation was a nail in the coffin of ‘two nation theory’; that religion can be the basis of a state. Bangla Desh did begin as a secular republic but communal forces and secular forces kept struggling for their dominance and in 1988 it also became Islamic republic. At another level Myanmar, in the grip of military dictatorship, with democratic elements trying to retain their presence is also seeing a hard battle. Democracy or not, the army and Sanghas (Buddhist Sang has) are strong, in Myanmar as well. The most visible result is persecution of Rohingya Muslims.

Similar phenomenon is dominating in Sri Lanka also where Budhhist Sanghas and army have strong say in the political affairs, irrespective of which Government is ruling. Muslim and Christian minorities are a big victim there, while Tamils (Hindus, Christians etc.) suffered the biggest damage as ethnic and religious minorities. India had the best prospect of democracy, pluralism and secularism flourishing here. The secular constitution, the outcome of India’s freedom struggle, the leadership of Gandhi and Nehru did ensure the rooting of democracy and secularism in a strong way.

India so far had best democratic credentials amongst all the south Asian countries. Despite that though the population of minorities rose mainly due to poverty and illiteracy, their overall marginalisation was order of the day, it went on worsening with the rise of communal forces, with communal forces resorting to identity issues, and indulging in propaganda against minorities.

While other South Asian countries should had followed India to focus more on infrastructure and political culture of liberalism, today India is following the footsteps of Pakistan. The retrograde march of India is most visible in the issues which have dominated the political space during last few years. Issues like Ram Temple, Ghar Wapasi, Love Jihad, Beef-Cow are now finding their peak in CAA.

India’s reversal towards a polity with religion’s identity dominating the political scene was nicely presented by the late Pakistani poetess Fahmida Riaz in her poem, Tum bhi Hum Jaise Nikle (You also turned out to be like us). While trying to resist communal forces has been an arduous task, it is becoming more difficult by the day. This phenomenon has been variously called, Fundamentalism, Communalism or religious nationalism among others. Surely it has nothing to do with the religion as practiced by the great Saint and Sufi traditions of India; it resorts mainly to political mobilization by using religion as a tool.

Comments

Ashi
 - 
Tuesday, 14 Jan 2020

If Malaysia implement similar NRC/CAA, India and China are the loser.

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