Secularism’s claim to be a valid answer to communalism has been a matter of intense debate in India since the mid-1980’s. On the one hand, it is argued that “the secularization of civil society” is the only way to resolve the present crisis; on the other, it is pointed out that secularism has exhausted its potential and hence an alternative should be explored. Secularism has come under attack especially from Ashis Nandy and T. N. Madan. These two thinkers stress the vibrant religiosity of the people and believe that common people have traditionally been tolerant toward other religious systems. Nandy, who calls himself an “anti-secularist,” points out that religious communities in traditional societies knew how to live with one another. The state systems in South Asia would do better to learn something about religious tolerance from religion than to wish that ordinary people would learn tolerance from the fashionable secular theories of statecraft. He looks to Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) as an ideal anti-secularist who derived his idea of tolerance from Hinduism. Nandy argues that militant Hinduism faces resistance from everyday Hinduism, and he calls for “the recovery of the non-modern, pre-secular” conception of religion as accommodative and tolerant.
Madan points out that secularism has failed to make headway in India and “must be put it its place” by finding “the proper means of its expression.” According to him, secularists “who deny the very legitimacy of religion in human life and society” have contributed to the rise of fundamentalism. He stresses how the common people of India, irrespective of their individual religious identities, have long been comfortable with religious pluralism. Madan also thinks that Gandhi, and not Nehru (1889-1964), would be our best teacher with regard to the relationship 2
between religion and politics. Among the Muslims, it is Abdul Kalam Azad (1892-1958) who, according to Madan, believed in religious pluralism and presented a tolerant Islam through his commentary on the Quran.
On the face of it, the Nandy-Madan thesis seems very comforting and attractive; however, we should be more concerned about its plausibility and validity in resisting religious militancy and in exploring the means of emancipating the masses from fundamentalist designs. The first question we should ask, therefore, is how far we can rely on the religiosity and tolerant traditions of people. Our experience of what happened during Partition, or at the time of the demolition of the Babri Mosque and the Mumbai riots of 1992, or more recently in the Gujarat genocide of 2002, shows that we simply cannot count on the “common sense” of people. That common sense is likely to be conditioned by the dominant structures and ideologies. Hindu militants and Muslim fundamentalists have been successful in arousing religious hatred among the common people through gradual communalization and aggressive propaganda against the other. It is easier to mobilize people by transforming their religiosity into religious hatred when people face a scarcity of resources.
Therefore the common sense of people needs to be mediated and rendered critical. It needs to be turned into good sense. It has elements that can turn it into good sense. This task of constructing a passage to make the shift from common sense to good sense is likely to be performed best by thinkers who actually belong to the common people. These thinkers share the social world and everyday life experiences of the people, and are continuously in contact with the common sense of the people. They make explicit what has hitherto been implicit, and bring coherence to the people’s diffuse, often latent, anger and despair. I argue that in the religious ideas of Mahatma Phule (1827-1890), V. R. Shinde (1872-1944), and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) we find an attempt to construct a passage to good sense, or to what I call “People’s Secularism.”
Generally speaking, the Indian nationalist leaders and thinkers such as Vivekanand, Tilak, Aurobindo, Gandhi, and Nehru highlighted the Vedic, Sanskritic, Hindu, Aryan, and “great” traditions, and stressed tolerant Hinduism and unity in diversity, while leaders coming from lower castes emphasized instead the Non-Vedic, “little,” “folk,” regional, non-Aryan, egalitarian, Dravidian, and Prakrit traditions. These leaders developed a critique of Brahmanic and Vedic traditions and condemned Hinduism organized around varna and caste principles. They tried to relate themselves to the Buddha and to saints such as Kabir and Tukaram who practiced devotional religion. The Buddha and the saints represented social and religious dissent and rejected major aspects of the hierarchical caste system. Phule, Shinde, and Ambedkar found the origins of their ideas in these traditions, and claimed the legacy of the Buddha, Kabir, and Tukaram.
Phule
Mahatma Phule was born in 1827 in a low-caste family of gardeners in Pune, the capital of former Brahman rulers. He went to a school run by the Scottish Mission in Pune. He never had a university education. In the first phase of his public career, Phule founded schools for low-caste girls and Untouchable boys. His greatest achievement was the formation in 1873 of the Truth-Seeking Society, a socio-religious forum to organize low-caste people by making them aware of the slavery inflicted by Brahmanical Hinduism. His contribution was recognized when, in 1888, two years before his death, he was honored with the title “Mahatma” – “great soul.” In his ideas and work, Phule was influenced by the Muslim friends of his youth and also by Christian missionaries and their writings. He also came under the influence of the Kabir sect, of Tukaram, and of Thomas Paine. These influences can be traced in his writings, such as the books Priestcraft Exposed (1869), Slavery (1873), The Cultivator’s Whip-cord (1883), and A Book of True Religion for All (1889). He also wrote a play and a ballade, and used forms such as verse and dialogue so as to make his writings accessible to popular audiences. The mission of his life was to free the lower castes from the clutches of Brahmanical Hinduism and to give lower-caste people an alternative religious system based on truth and equality.
Phule realized that the Hindu scriptures and mythology had not only developed a worldview and provided legitimation for the caste hierarchy, but had also trapped the lower castes in a “never-ending series of illusion.” The smashing of these illusions, he thought, was the pre-condition for the liberation of the low castes. In order to bring that about, Phule almost rewrote Indian history from the pre-Aryan days to the colonial period. He connected the present to the past and located two threads running through history: 1) the enslavement of the low castes and 2) the attempts to free them from slavery. His exercise of writing an alternative history of India borders on mythology. While presenting an alternative mythology to the dominant Hindu mythology, Phule also gives new meaning to popular religious systems
Phule creatively uses the theory of the Aryan invasion to show that the Brahmans, who consider themselves Aryans, are aliens in India, while the lower castes are the indigenous people. The Aryans conquered the land from King Bali and established their rule in India. The nine incarnations of Vishnu were the different stages of the Aryan conquest. King Bali’s realm of pre-Aryan days was the golden age of India. Phule incorporates popular deities like Khandoba and Bahiroba in his story by calling them officials of King Bali. The initiation ritual of a new member of the Truth-Seeking Society was picked up from contemporary rituals of Khandoba. Phule connected his story to the popular proverb, “May all sorrows and troubles disappear, and the kingdom of Bali come,” showing that heroes had always arisen to free the low-caste masses from oppressive rule. Thus, a new Bali appears, according to Phule, in the form of the Buddha, Christ, and Muhammad. At many places in his writings, Phule uses the term “Balistan” ((Land of Bali) instead of Hindustan (Land of Hindus) for India. He was constructing a community of the lower castes in place of the Brahmanical social order.
For Phule, Brahmanical Hinduism was not a true religion. It was a contrived, counterfeit, selfish, and cunning religious system based on enslavement of low-caste people. To take the place of this untruth in the name of religion, Phule developed “the Universal Religion of Truth,” founded on truth, equality, and rationality, and he wrote a text for this religion. The Universal Religion of Truth rejects ritualism, idolatry, priesthood, superstition, and caste and gender distinctions. God is considered the loving parent of all human beings. He is seen as the governor, protector, and merciful holiness. Phule brings in the concept of natural rights to establish the principle of equality. He says that natural rights come from the Creator. The Creator has given equal freedom to all human beings to enjoy all things on earth created by him, and in this sense the rights are pre-social and inalienable. Thus, Phule’s religion strives to establish an egalitarian social order.
If Phule had nothing but contempt for Brahmanical Hinduism, he had a high regard for Christianity, Buddhism, and especially Islam. In his ingenious exercise of rewriting history from a low-caste perspective, Phule identified Buddhism as an attempt to liberate the lower castes from the slavery of Brahmans. At a later stage this responsibility was shouldered by the followers of Islam. The disciples of the Prophet, Phule argues, came to India and made life difficult for Brahmanical Hinduism by the strength of their sacred monotheistic religion. The low castes embraced Islam with all enthusiasm. The Muslim rulers, out of pity, converted millions of low-caste masses to Islam and freed them from the Brahmanical religion. It was not a coincidence that the rites of many Muslims were similar to those of the lower castes. Phule believed that the Creator, out of sympathy for the lower castes, sent Muslims to India to eradicate caste distinctions. Phule respected Islam because it believed in one creator-God and saw all humans as his children and therefore each other’s brothers. The Quran, unlike the Vedas, may be read by anyone. It gives equal rights to all, and there are no restrictions on inter-dining or inter-marriage. Phule also wrote a poem in praise of the Prophet.
Phule had closely interacted with Christian missionaries and had read their literature on India. He was deeply influenced by their ideas and practices. He welcomed the idea of the lower castes converting to Christianity because it believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. Phule had great respect for Christ and held him to be the savior of the downtrodden. However, he did not embrace Christianity. Thomas Paine’s critique of Christian doctrines had made Phule aware of the shortcomings of Christianity. He believed that no religious text contains the whole truth. There are always some aberration and distortions, and these aberrations lead to divisions, envy, and hatred.
The concern that Phule showed in late-19th-century India about religious hatred and conflict is amazing. He believed that separation of truth from religion results in religious fanaticism and violence. Those who lay down their lives in religious conflicts are said to have entered heaven. Some call them martyrs, while others believe that they have gone to Jannat. In fact, Phule held, they become directionless and violent due to blunting of their conscience. He believed that since there was only one religion of the Creator, there was no reason for religious conflicts. According to Phule, if we avoid craftiness done in the name of religion and start consuming the things produced by the Creator in proportion to the labor power each of us has spent, there would be no meaningless conflicts; if we start behaving like sisters and brothers, we will become happy and the ideal realm of the Creator will come into being.
At one place Phule paints a picture of an ideal family: a multi-religious family in which the wife embraces Buddhism after reading Buddhist texts, the husband becomes Christian because he is influenced by the Bible, the daughter converts to Islam after reading the Quran, and the son becomes a follower of the Universal Religion of Truth. This is in fact a picture of a multi-religious society, where the followers of various religions behave with each other as if they were members of one family. Phule sees all human beings as children of God and therefore members of his family, who have love and compassion for all human beings.
Shinde
V. R. Shinde also believed in the brotherhood of men, and wanted religious reform association such as the Brahmo Samaj or the Prarthana Samaj to open their doors to all castes and religious communities. Shinde was born in 1873 in a family belonging to the middle peasantry caste of Marathas. After graduating from Pune in 1898 he became a member of the Prarthana Samaj. Between 1901 and 1903 he studied comparative religion at Oxford, and on his return to India he accepted a position as a missionary of the Samaj. In 1906 Shinde established the Depressed Classes Mission to strive for the upliftment of the Untouchables. Besides being an active member of the Samaj, Shinde also participated in the nationalist movement led by Gandhi and was imprisoned for six months in 1930. He followed Gandhi’s line of integration of Hindus and Muslims, Brahmans, and non-Brahmans, and high castes and Untouchables. Apart from a full-length book on the question of Untouchability (1933), Shinde wrote a number of essays on religion, history, and philosophy, and also an autobiography (1940). In his work and ideas, Shinde was deeply influenced by the liberal culture of his family and by the teachings of devotional saints, especially Tukaram and Eknath. Shinde joined the Prarthana Samaj because its position was in many ways similar to the philosophy of devotional religion. The Unitarian Church also made a lasting impact on Shinde when he was at Oxford studying comparative religion.
Shinde saw a connection between devotional religion, the Brahmo Samaj, and Utilitarianism. When he looked at Hinduism in the light of their teachings, he found that institutional Hindu religion suffered from many drawbacks and evils, even though its scriptures are quite elastic in meaning, its style of worship is localized, and it has no organized church. The system of discipline operates through the caste system. The customs keep the masses under hypnotic influence. Shinde thought that Hinduism was “waiting for greater purification.” He believed that religious reform associations, such as the Brahmo Samaj, were working toward that end. Shinde associated himself with the branch of the Samaj that was committed to the cause of social reform. However, he developed differences with the Samaj because of its restrictive policy of membership. Shinde thought that the membership of these reform associations should be open to Untouchables, Muslims, Christians, and even atheists. He looked to the Samaj as a basis for developing fellowship between liberal Hindus, liberal Buddhists of the east, liberal Muslims of India and Persia, and liberal Parsis. Shinde’s aim was to radicalize the existing religious reform movement and also to make it more inclusive. Shinde made Phule’s book on the Universal Religion of Truth a part of the Samaj’s discourse.
Shinde located the roots of the contemporary religious reform movement in the philosophy of the scriptural texts called Upanishads and in the teachings of the devotional saints. Indian culture, he believed, need not be equated with Aryan culture. The pre-Aryan culture was not at all backward, and its influence on Indian culture goes very deep. He argued that devotional religion and yoga are historically pre-Aryan. He held that the non-Vedic tradition had played a very important role in the formation of the culture of this land. He considered the Upanishads the first attempt of protest in Indian history. Their protestant tradition was further continued by Buddhism, Jainism, and the devotional saints. The Aryans are one of many races in India, and other races have also contributed to the development of culture in India. Shinde believed that the Vedic religion was a materialistic religion, while the religion of devotion is ethical. Devotional religion is thus unrelated to Vedic religion.
The Bhagavad Gita is the basis of devotional religion, and it is a post-Buddha text influenced by Buddhist philosophy. Shinde saw a close relationship between devotional religion and Buddhism and Jainism, and argued that devotional religion could spread due to Buddhism and Jainism. Shinde was particularly impressed by the teachings and contributions of Buddhism. He considered the Buddha the original guru and Buddhism the most valued legacy of India. His research showed him that today’s Untouchables were descendants of the former Buddhists of India. He made a plea for the revival of Buddhism. In 1927, at the Brahmo Samaj Conference at Kolkata, Shinde claimed that he was a Buddhist. He held Buddhism to be a progressive and tolerant religion based on empathy and compassion.
In this way, Shinde claimed as his legacy the traditions of devotional religion and Buddhism. His religious ideas were befitting this legacy. In his opinion, religion and day-to-day life are not two separate domains. Religion is man’s all-pervading attitude which is ever-present in all forms of individual and social life. Respectful behaviour with each other is an indication of man’s faith in God, and respect means considering all human beings as equal. It means complete non-violence. If looking at the weakness of others reminds us of our own weakness, and if we feel that the sin that others commit has been committed as if by us, that shows that we have respect for others. Behaving with disrespect toward someone you meet frequently means that you do not have faith in God, who cannot be seen.
Friendship between two persons is a natural quality of mind. It is the act of mind that knits the soul and God into an immediate relationship. The happiness you get because of tranquility of mind is no different from otherworldly happiness. The mind represents God. It is the connecting link between the human being and God. In order to gain liberation it is necessary to remove the hurdles on the path to tranquility of mind. Household life is very important, even sacred, and is not a hurdle on the path to liberation. It is a ladder made by God and hence no step of it is to be omitted. There is no contradiction between this world and the other world. They are one and indivisible. Service to man is the best form of worship of God. Service, pure love, and spirituality are the most important principles of religion. Religiousness is nothing but empathetically doing away with inauspiciousness, impurity, and ugliness. This view of religion was an outcome of Shinde’s journey from devotional religion to Buddhism via the Brahmo Samaj.
Ambedkar
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s choice also fell on Buddhism when it came to quitting Hinduism. Ambedkar was born in an Untouchable-caste family from western India in 1891. Due to support from progressive rulers of princely states, Ambedkar could go to the United States and England for his higher education. He obtained a Ph.D. from Columbia University and an M.A. from the London School of Economics, and also completed his law education in London. On returning to India in 1922, Ambedkar took the initiative in organizing Untouchables for their rights within the Hindu social system and also within the colonial polity. Between 1927 and 1935, he took the lead in agitations for gaining for Untouchables access to public wells and entry into Hindu temples. In 1932, he fought for separate electorates for Untouchables, but due to Gandhi’s opposition he had to settle for only reserved seats for them. Three political parties that Ambedkar formed – one in 1936, the second in 1942, and the last one in 1956 – indicate three phases in his political career. He was appointed the Minister of Law of independent India in 1947, and Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution of India in the same year.
In 1956, Ambedkar embraced Buddhism along with tens of thousands of his followers. This was the last year of his life. Ambedkar acknowledged the debt of three Gurus – the Buddha, Mahatma Phule, and Kabir, to whose sect Ambedkar’s father belonged. Ambedkar was also influenced by John Dewey, who was one of his professors at Columbia University. A prolific writer, Ambedkar wrote many books, pamphlets, and articles in both English and Marathi. Some of his major works are: Annihilation of Caste (1936), Who were the Shudras? (1946), The Untouchables (1948), and The Buddha and his Dhamma (1957). His writings reflect four of his major concerns: 1) analyzing the origins and growth of Untouchability, 2) the emancipation of Untouchables, 3) social and political democracy, and 4) conversion to Buddhism.
By 1930, Ambedkar realized that reforming Hinduism from within was an impossible task. He therefore decided to take the path of conversion, which he thought would take untouchables to a world of freedom and equality. He believed that the function of religion is not to explain the origin of the world, but to reconstruct the world and to make mankind happy. The ideal religion is one that transforms society into a moral, ideal, and democratic order. From this point of view, Buddhism was the only choice for Ambedkar.
According to Ambedkar, the Buddha was not a god or a prophet, and he gave his followers the liberty to question and to modify his teachings. Ambedkar took a clue from this and presented a new version of Buddhism in his book The Buddha and His Dhamma. Instead of calling it a religion, Ambedkar called Buddhism a dhamma and described it as morality. In dhamma there is no God. Morality takes the place of God, and therefore there is no place for rituals, sacrifices, or pilgrimages. For Ambedkar, dhamma was not a personal affair. It is social, and it means right relations among human beings in all spheres of life. To remove misery, each person must learn to be righteous in conduct, and thereby make the earth “the kingdom of righteousness.”
Ambedkar showed that the Buddha was the strongest opponent of caste and the earliest upholder of equality. Ambedkar thought that Buddhism should be regarded as a means to escape from misery. Dhamma, according to Ambedkar, is an optimistic message based on understanding and compassion and shows the path leading to liberation from suffering. Ambedkar gives a radically different interpretation of the concept of karma when he says that the law of kamma has to do only with the question of moral order. It has nothing to do with the fortunes of individuals. The right to self-determination and freedom of thought and action are basic values in dhamma. Ambedkar similarly argues that the Buddha has nowhere preached the rebirth of a soul, and that the “nibanna” in dhamma should not be compared with salvation of the soul. “Nibanna” should be translated as happiness, which can be attained in the present life by following the “Noble Eightfold Path.” In Ambedkar’s dhamma, the monk leaves his home but does not renounce the world. He leaves home in order to better serve the miserable. The monk becomes a social worker.
For Ambedkar, Untouchables’ embracing of Buddhism was a kind of reconversion to their original religion. In his book The Untouchables: Who They Were and Why They Became Untouchables, Ambedkar puts forward a theory that the Untouchables were originally the Buddhists of ancient India. Their conversion to Buddhism in the 20th century was in a way an attempt to regain their lost identity. Ambedkar had, so to say, two models before him. The first was that of Phule, who found Brahmanical Hinduism oppressive and unjust and who, instead of converting to Christianity, like some of his friends, established an egalitarian and rational religion of his own. The second model was that of Shinde, who took a reformist stand and developed his religion along the lines of the Brahmo Samaj, with its emphasis on liberal and egalitarian religion. Initially, it seems, Ambedkar tried Shinde’s model, making it more radical in terms of methods and demands; when it did not yield the expected results, he adopted Phule’s line of abandoning Hinduism altogether. However, instead of formulating a new religious framework, Ambedkar converted to Buddhism and modified it to suit his idea of religion as a means of liberating Untouchables.
One thread that binds Ambedkar with Shinde is the fact that both of them wrote about the origin of Untouchability from a sociological and historical perspective, and both of them came to the conclusion that Untouchables were the persecuted Buddhists. Shinde called himself a Buddhist as early as 1927, and he did so in a Brahmo Samaj conference. Phule, who was not a scholar of sociology or history, also considered the Buddha the savior of the low castes in his times.
As compared to Phule, Shinde, and Ambedkar, neither Gandhi nor Azad pays much attention to the caste hierarchy within their respective communities as they articulated their religious pluralism and tradition of tolerance. In their attempts to construct Hindu-Muslim unity, they tend to perceive their communities as internally homogeneous. Similarly, neither Nandy nor Madan takes into account the caste factor when they propose the recovery of tradition. In fact, the tradition is maintained basically by the masses, not by the elites, and the masses are found in the caste system.
One cannot simply disregard caste hierarchy while “recovering the tradition” of India. People’s secularism does not flow from the religious pluralism of Gandhi or Azad as it does from the religious ideas of Phule, Shinde, and Ambedkar. People’s secularism, as I have noted, tries to relate to an alternative tradition, and locates its origins in popular traditions. It argues that tradition is not homogeneous – there are traditions and traditions. Hence, people’s secularism finds its roots in popular rather than high traditions. However, it does not recover the popular traditions just as they are. Rather, it connects itself only to liberating traditions. It does not hold the view that a tradition is good because it is a tradition.
In fact, people’s secularism goes beyond the idea of a tradition of tolerance. Gyanendra Pandey observes that in recent years secularism in India is “detached from secularisation and expansion of the secular dimension of public life.” Instead, it has become a question of pluralism, or of tolerance between diverse religious communities. In order to become more effective, people’s secularism not only fits into this definition but transcends it. Neeru Chandok says that tolerance is too inadequate, and makes a case for equality. People’s secularism aims not only at equality between communities, but strives to bring about a community of the lower-caste masses across religious groups.
It is through the project of caste majoritarianism that the lower-caste Hindus and Muslims are brought together on a common platform. Conceived by Phule in the 19th century and later developed by Ambedkar and Rammohan Lohia in the 1950’s, such an idea goes well beyond mere tolerance. A new identity emerges, a new community of the oppressed takes shape, thereby defeating the designs of the fundamentalists to mobilize the masses to fight their battles.
People’s secularism is likely to resist the fundamentalist project of homogenization of religious communities, because the majority, which is composed of members of lower castes, realizes that its interests do not match those of the higher castes. Muslim lower castes, for instance, insist that job reservations be extended on the basis of “backwardness,” while the Muslim leadership wants them to be for the community as a whole. People’s secularism gives expression to the latent anger among the people and directs it not to their brothers from other religious groups but toward hegemonic forces, by constructing a community of oppressed castes. People’s secularism does not believe in the mere co-existence of two religious groups. On the contrary, it develops a critique of both the religions and tries to create a new community as an alternative to both of them. In this sense it transcends the pluralism of Gandhi and Azad. It does not take the anti-religion view of some secularists, but identifies the structures of domination within each religious system. Instead of glorifying religion, it makes religion more humane and egalitarian by discarding oppressive elements from it. It develops a religious system based on morality, friendship, brotherhood, and rationality.
People’s secularism tries to take people’s religious consciousness to a higher level. It attacks falsehood in the concepts of rebirth, karma, fatalism, pessimism, and status-quo-ism. It makes a plea that heaven can be created on earth, in this very life. Thus, people’s secularism transcends secularism, pluralism, and tolerance. It is a people’s response to elite secularism, and also to fundamentalism. Possibly, people’s secularism is one route to resolving the “crisis of secularism” in India.
--------------------------------------------------
म ( ) मध्ये प्रकाशित