The Argumentative Indian

by Amartya Sen

  Akbar’s ideas remain relevant – and not just in the subcontinent. They have a bearing on many current debates in the West as well. They suggest the need for scrutiny of the fear of multiculturalism (for example, of Huntington’s argument that ‘multiculturalism at home threatens the United States and the West’). Similarly, in dealing with controversies in universities in the United States about confining core readings to the ‘great books’ of the Western world, Akbar’s line of reasoning would suggest that the crucial weakness of this proposal is not so much that students from other backgrounds (say, African-American or Chinese) should not have to read Western classics, as that confining one’s reading only to the books of one civilization reduces one’s freedom to learn about and choose ideas from different cultures in the world.24 And the counter-demand that the great Western books be banished from the reading list for students from other backgrounds would also be faulty, since that too would reduce the freedom to learn, reason and choose.

  There are implications also for the ‘communitarian’ position, which argues that one’s identity is a matter of ‘discovery’, not choice. As Michael Sandel presents this conception of community (one of several alternative conceptions he outlines): ‘Community describes not just what they have as fellow citizens but also what they are, not a relationship they choose (as in a voluntary association) but an attachment they discover, not merely an attribute but a constituent of their identity.’25 This view – that a person’s identity is something he or she detects rather than determines – would have been resisted by Akbar on the ground that we do have a choice about our beliefs, associations and attitudes, and must take responsibility for what we actually choose (if only implicitly).

  The notion that we ‘discover’ our identity is not only epistemologically limiting (we certainly can try to find out what choices – possibly extensive – we actually have), but it may also have disastrous implications for how we act and behave (well illustrated by Jonathan Glover’s account of the role of unquestioning loyalty and belief in precipitating atrocities and horrors). Many of us still have vivid memories of what happened in the pre-partition riots in India just preceding independence in 1947, when the broadly tolerant subcontinentals of January rapidly and unquestioningly became the ruthless Hindus or the fierce Muslims of June.26 The carnage that followed had much to do with the alleged ‘discovery’ of one’s ‘true’ identity, unhampered by reasoned humanity.

  Akbar’s analyses of social problems illustrate the power of open reasoning and choice even in a clearly pre-modern society. Shirin Moosvi’s wonderfully informative book Episodes in the Life of Akbar: Contemporary Records and Reminiscences gives interesting accounts of how Akbar arrived at social decisions – many of them defiant of tradition – through the use of reasoning.27

  Akbar was, for example, opposed to child marriage, then a quite conventional custom. He argued that ‘the object that is intended’ in marriage ‘is still remote, and there is immediate possibility of injury’. He went on to remark that ‘in a religion that forbids the remarriage of the widow [Hinduism], the hardship is much greater’. On property division, he noted that ‘in the Muslim religion, a smaller share of inheritance is allowed to the daughter, though owing to her weakness, she deserves to be given a larger share’. When his second son, Murad, who knew that his father was opposed to all religious rituals, asked him whether these rituals should be banned, Akbar immediately protested, on the grounds that ‘preventing that insensitive simpleton, who considers body exercise to be divine worship, would amount to preventing him from remembering God [at all]’. Addressing a question on the motivation for doing a good deed (a question that still gets asked often enough), Akbar criticizes ‘the Indian sages’ for the suggestion that ‘good works’ be done to achieve a favourable outcome after death: ‘To me it seems that in the pursuit of virtue, the idea of death should not be thought of, so that without any hope or fear, one should practice virtue simply because it is good.’ In 1582 he resolved to release ‘all the Imperial slaves’, since ‘it is beyond the realm of justice and good conduct’ to benefit from ‘force’.

  Incidentally, the fact that reason may not be infallible, especially in the presence of uncertainty, is well illustrated by Akbar’s reflections on the newly arrived practice of smoking tobacco. His doctor, Hakim Ali, argued against its use: ‘It is not necessary for us to follow the Europeans, and adopt a custom, which is not sanctioned by our own wise men, without experiment or trial.’ Akbar ignored this argument on the ground that ‘we must not reject a thing that has been adopted by people of the world, merely because we cannot find it in our books; or how shall we progress?’ Armed with that argument, Akbar tried smoking but happily for him he took an instant dislike of it, and never smoked again. Here instinct worked better than reason (in circumstances rather different from the case of Bukharin described by Glover). But reason worked often enough.

  Millennial Insights

  There was good sense in Akbar’s insistence that a millennial occasion is not only for fun and festivities (of which there were plenty in Delhi and Agra as the first Hijri millennium was completed in 1591–2), but also for serious reflection on the joys and horrors and challenges of the world in which we live. Akbar’s emphasis on reason and scrutiny serves as a reminder that ‘cultural boundaries’ are not as limiting as is sometimes alleged (as, for example, in the view, discussed earlier, that ‘justice’, ‘right’, ‘reason’, and ‘love of humanity’ are ‘predominantly, perhaps even uniquely, Western values’). Indeed, many features of the European Enlightenment can be linked with questions that were raised earlier – not just in Europe but widely across the world.

  As the second Gregorian millennium began, India was visited by an intellectual tourist in the form of Alberuni, an Iranian who was born in Central Asia in 973 CE and who wrote in Arabic. As a mathematician, Alberuni’s primary interest was in Indian mathematics (he produced, among other writings, an improved Arabic translation of Brahmagupta’s sixth-century Sanskrit treatise on astronomy and mathematics – first translated into Arabic in the eighth century). But he also studied Indian writings on science, philosophy, literature, linguistics, religion and other subjects, and wrote a highly informative book about India, called Ta’rikh al-hind (‘The History of India’). In explaining why he wrote it, Alberuni argued that it is very important for people in one country to know how others elsewhere live, and how and what they think. Evil behaviour (of which Alberuni had seen plenty in the barbarity of his former patron, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, who had savagely raided India several times) can arise from a lack of understanding of – and familiarity with – other people:

  In all manners and usages, [the Indians] differ from us to such a degree as to frighten their children with us, with our dress, and our ways and customs, and as to declare us to be devil’s breed, and our doings as the very opposite of all that is good and proper. By the bye, we must confess, in order to be just, that a similar depreciation of foreigners not only prevails among us and [the Indians], but is common to all nations towards each other.28

  That insight from the beginning of the last millennium has remained pertinent a thousand years later.

  In trying to go beyond what Adam Smith called our ‘first perceptions’, we need to transcend what Akbar saw as the ‘marshy land’ of unquestioned tradition and unreflected response. Reason has its reach – compromised neither by the importance of instinctive psychology nor by the presence of cultural diversity in the world. It has an especially important role to play in the cultivation of moral imagination. We need it in particular to face the bats and the owls and the insane moon.

  14

  Secularism and Its Discontents*

  When India became independent more than half a century ago, much emphasis was placed on its secularism, and there were few voices dissenting from that priority. In contrast, there are now persistent pronouncements deeply critical of Indian secularism, and attacks have come from quite different quarters. Many of the
barbed attacks on secularism in India have come from activists engaged in the Hindutva movement, including the BJP, which has been described as ‘the principal political party representing the ideology of Hindu nationalism in the electoral arena’.†

  However, intellectual scepticism about secularism is not confined to those actively engaged in politics. Indeed, eloquent expressions of this scepticism can also be found in the high theory of Indian culture and society.1 Many of the attacks are quite removed from the BJP and other official organs of Hindu nationalism. In addressing the issue of Indian secularism it is important to take note of the range as well as the vigour of these critiques, and also the fact that they come from varying quarters and use quite distinct arguments. If today ‘secularism, the ideological mainstay of multi-religious India, looks pale and exhausted’ (as Ashutosh Varshney describes it), the nature of that predicament would be misidentified – and somewhat minimized – if it were to be seen simply in terms of the politics of Hindu sectarianism. While the attacks on secularism have often come from exactly that quarter, there are other elements as well, and the subject calls for a wider analysis and response.

  Despite this broad and forceful challenge, secularist intellectuals in India tend to be somewhat reluctant to debate this rather unattractive subject. Reliance is placed instead, usually implicitly, on the well-established and unquestioning tradition of seeing secularism as a good and solid political virtue for a pluralist democracy. As an unreformed secularist myself, I understand, and to some extent share, this reluctance, but also believe that addressing these criticisms is important. This is so not only because the condemnations have implications for political and intellectual life in contemporary India, but also because it is useful for secularists to face these issues explicitly – to scrutinize and re-examine habitually accepted priorities, and the reasoning behind them. There is much need for self-examination of beliefs – nowhere more so than in practical reason and political philosophy.* Hence this attempt at discussing some of the critical questions about secularism that have been forcefully raised.

  Incompleteness and the Need for Supplementation

  The nature of secularism as a principle calls for some clarification as well as scrutiny. Some of the choices considered under the heading of secularism lie, I would argue, beyond its immediate scope. Secularism in the political – as opposed to ecclesiastical – sense requires the separation of the state from any particular religious order. This can be interpreted in at least two different ways. The first view argues that secularism demands that the state be equidistant from all religions – refusing to take sides and having a neutral attitude towards them. The second – more severe – view insists that the state must not have any relation at all with any religion. The equidistance must take the form, then, of being altogether removed from each.

  In both interpretations, secularism goes against giving any religion a privileged position in the activities of the state. In the broader interpretation (the first view), however, there is no demand that the state must stay clear of any association with any religious matter whatsoever. Rather, what is needed is to make sure that, in so far as the state has to deal with different religions and members of different religious communities, there must be a basic symmetry of treatment. In this view, there would be no violation of secularism for a state to protect everyone’s right to worship as he or she chooses, even though in doing this the state has to work with – and for – religious communities. In the absence of asymmetric attention (such as protecting the rights of worship for one religious community, but not others), working hard for religious freedom does not breach the principle of secularism.

  The important point to note here is that the requirement of symmetric treatment still leaves open the question as to what form that symmetry should take. To illustrate with an example, the state may decide that it must not offer financial or other support to any hospital with any religious connection. Alternatively, it can provide support to all hospitals, without in any way discriminating between their respective religious connections (or lack of them). While the former may appear to be, superficially, ‘more secular’ (as it certainly is in the ‘associative’ – the second – sense, since it shuns religious connections altogether), the latter is also politically quite secular in the sense that the state, in this case, supports hospitals irrespective of whether or not there are any religious connections (and if so, what), and through this neutrality, it keeps the state and the religions quite separate.

  It is the broader view that has been the dominant approach to secularism in India.* But this, it must be recognized, is an incomplete specification. Secularism excludes some alternatives (those that favour some religions over others), but still allows several distinct options related to the unspecified distance at which the state should keep all religions, without discrimination. There is thus a need, in dealing with religions and religious communities, to take up questions that lie ‘beyond’ secularism. While this essay is concerned with scrutinizing attacks on secularism as a political requirement, the organizational issues that lie beyond secularism must also be characterized.* In analysing the role of secularism in India, note must be taken of its intrinsic ‘incompleteness’, including the problems that this incompleteness leads to, as well as the opportunities it offers.

  Critical Arguments

  Scepticism about Indian secularism takes many different forms. I shall consider in particular six distinct lines of argument. This may be enough for one essay, but I do not claim that all anti-secularist attacks are covered by the arguments considered here.

  (1) The ‘Non-existence’ Critique

  Perhaps the simplest version of scepticism about Indian secularism comes from those who see nothing much there, at least nothing of real significance. For example, Western journalists often regard Indian secularism as essentially non-existent, and their language tends to contrast ‘Hindu India’ (or ‘mainly Hindu India’) with ‘Muslim Pakistan’ (or ‘mainly Muslim Pakistan’). Certainly, Indian secularism has never been a gripping thought in broad Western perceptions, and recent pictures of politically militant Hindus demolishing an old mosque in Ayodhya have not helped to change these perceptions. Indian protestations about secularism are often seen in the West as sanctimonious nonsense – hard to take seriously in weighty discourses on international affairs and in the making of foreign policy (by powerful and responsible Western states that dominate the world of contemporary international politics).

  (2) The ‘Favouritism’ Critique

  A second line of attack argues that, in the guise of secularism, the Indian constitution and political and legal traditions really favour the minority community of Muslims, giving them a privileged status not enjoyed by the majority community of Hindus. This ‘favouritism’ critique is popular with many of the leaders and supporters of the Hindu activist parties. The rhetoric of this attack can vary from wanting to ‘reject’ secularism to arguing against what is called ‘pseudo-secularism’ (‘favouring the Muslims’).

  (3) The ‘Prior Identity’ Critique

  A third line of critique is more intellectual than the first two. It sees the identity of being a Hindu, or a Muslim, or a Sikh, to be politically ‘prior’ to being an Indian. The Indian identity is ‘built up’ from the constitutive elements of separate identities. In one version of the identity argument, it is asserted that, given the preponderance of Hindus in the country, any Indian national identity cannot but be a function of some form or other of a largely Hindu identity. Another version would go further and aim at a homogeneous identity as a necessary basis of nationhood (in line with the picturesque analogy that ‘a salad bowl does not produce cohesion; a melting pot does’2), and move on from that proposition to the claim that only a shared cultural outlook, which in India can only be a largely Hindu view, can produce such a cohesion. Even the unity of India derives, it is argued, from the ‘cementing force’ of Hinduism.

  (4) The ‘Muslim Sectarianism’ Critique

&nbs
p; In another line of critique, the proposed dominance of Hindu identity in ‘Indianness’ does not turn on the logic of numbers, but is ‘forced on the Hindus’, it is argued, by the ‘failure’ of the Muslims to see themselves as Indians first. This form of argument draws heavily on what is seen as the historical failure of Muslim rulers in India to identify themselves with others in the country, always seeing Muslims as a separate and preferred group. It is also claimed that Muslim kings systematically destroyed Hindu temples and religious sites whenever they had the chance to do so.

  Jinnah’s ‘two-nation’ theory, formulated before independence (and historically important in the partition of India), is seen as a continuation of the evident Muslim refusal to identify with other Indians. It is argued that, while the partition of India has provided a ‘homeland’ for the Muslims of the subcontinent, the Muslims left in India are unintegrated and are basically not ‘loyal’ to India. The ‘evidential’ part of this line of critique is thus supposed to include suspicions of Muslim disloyalty in contemporary India as well as particular readings of Indian history.

  (5) The ‘Anti-modernist’ Critique

  Contemporary intellectual trends, primarily in the West but also (somewhat derivatively) in India, give much room for assailing what is called ‘modernism’. The fifth line of critique joins force with this assault by attacking secularism as a part of the folly of ‘modernism’. While post-modernist criticisms of secularism can take many different forms, the more effective assaults on ‘secularism as modernism’ in India, at this time, combine general anti-modernism with some specific yearning for India’s past when things are supposed to have been less problematic in this respect (particularly in terms of the peaceful coexistence of different religions). Elements of such understanding tend to form integral parts of the intellectual critiques of some contemporary social analysts.