The Argumentative Indian

by Amartya Sen

  Ashis Nandy notes that ‘as India gets modernized, religious violence is increasing’, and he expresses admiration for ‘traditional ways of life [which] have, over the centuries, developed internal principles of tolerance’. The denunciation of secularism that follows from this line of reasoning is well captured in Nandy’s sharp conclusion: ‘To accept the ideology of secularism is to accept the ideologies of progress and modernity as the new justification of domination, and the use of violence to achieve and sustain ideologies as the new opiates of the masses.’3

  (6) The ‘Cultural’ Critique

  The sixth and last critique I shall consider takes the ambitiously ‘foundational’ view that India is, in essence, a ‘Hindu country’, and that as a result it would be culturally quite wrong to treat Hinduism as simply one of the various religions of India. It is Hinduism, in this view, that makes India what it is, and to require secularism, with its insistence on treating different religions symmetrically, must turn an epistemic error into a political blunder.

  This line of criticism often draws on analogies with formally Christian states such as that of Britain, where the particular history of the country and the special role of its ‘own religion’ are ‘fully acknowledged’. For example, the Archbishop of Canterbury conducts political ceremonies of the state at the highest level (‘no nonsense about secularism there’). Similarly, British laws of blasphemy are specifically protective of Christianity and of no other religion (just as in Pakistan the domain of blasphemy laws penalizes ‘insults’ only to Islam). India, it is complained, denies its indigenous cultural commitment in not providing anything like a similarly privileged status to its ‘own’ tradition, to wit, the predominantly Hindu heritage.

  I shall consider these half-dozen critiques in turn. As was stated before, other grounds for rejection of secularism have also been offered. Some of these critiques involve elaborate conceptual compositions and estimable intricacy of language, and are not breathtakingly easy to penetrate (even armed with a dictionary of neologisms on the one hand, and courage on the other). I shall confine myself only to these six lines of criticism of secularism, without pretending to be dealing with all the arguments against secularism that have actually been proposed.

  On the ‘Non-existence’ Critique

  Is the ‘non-existence’ critique to be taken seriously? Many Indian intellectuals tend to view this kind of opinion with some contempt, and are rather reluctant to respond to what they see as the obduracy (or worse) of Western observers. This is sometimes combined with a general theory that it does not really matter what ‘others’ think about India (at most, this is something for Indian embassies to worry about). This studied non-response is not only insular (ignoring the importance of international understanding in the contemporary world), it also overlooks how crucial outside perceptions have historically been to the identity of Indians themselves. * Even the composite conception of Hinduism as one religion includes the impact of the outsiders’ view of the classificatory unity of the religious beliefs and practices in the country.

  There is also the recent phenomenon of the support provided by opulent expatriates from the subcontinent to community-based political movements – of Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus – back at ‘home’. And because of the relevance of what they read and react to, we can scarcely take foreign reporting on India as ‘inconsequential’ – even for immediate issues of internal politics in India.

  The ‘non-existence’ critique certainly has to be addressed (even if the more informed reader would decide to switch off while that addressing takes place). Is India really the Hindu counterpart of Pakistan? When British India was partitioned, Pakistan chose to be an Islamic republic, whereas India chose a secular constitution.† Is that distinction significant? It is true that, in standard Western journalism, little significance is attached to the contrast, and those in India who would like the country to abandon its secularism often cite this ‘forced parity’ in Western vision as proof enough that there is something rather hopeless in India’s attempt at secularism when the new masters of global politics cannot even tell what on earth is being attempted in India.

  Yet the distinction between a secular republic and a religion-based state is really rather important from the legal point of view, and its political implications are also quite extensive. This applies to different levels of social arrangements, including the operations of the courts, all the way up to the headship of the state. For example, unlike Pakistan, whose constitution requires that the head of the state be a Muslim, India imposes no comparable requirement, and the country has had non-Hindus (including Muslims and Sikhs) as Presidents and as holders of other prominent and influential offices in government and in the judiciary (including the Supreme Court).*

  Similarly, to take another example, it is not possible, because of the secularist constitution of India, to have asymmetric laws of blasphemy, applied to one religion only, as it is in Pakistan. There is a difference between the legal status that Pakistan gives to Islam (as it must in an ‘Islamic republic’) and the lack of a comparable legal status of Hinduism in India. Not surprisingly, the ‘non-existence’ critique is aired much more frequently abroad than at home, and often takes the form of an implicit presumption – colouring Western analyses of the subcontinent – rather than an explicit assertion. That hardened belief turns on overlooking extensive and important features of the Indian constitution and polity.

  Two qualifications should, however, be introduced here. First, the ‘non-existence’ critique must not be confused with the claim – not infrequently made, often by staunch secularists – that, despite the elements of legal symmetry, Hindus still have a substantive advantage over Muslims in many spheres. This would be, typically, an argument for practising secularism ‘more fully’ in India, rather than for discarding the secularism that is already there. Second, the rejection of the ‘non-existence’ critique does not identify the exact form of secularism that exists in India (nor of course assert anything like the ‘superiority’ of that specific form of secularism). Indeed, as was discussed earlier, the acceptance of secularism still leaves many questions unanswered about the attitude of the state to different religions. Even when the basic need for symmetry in the political and legal treatment of different religious communities is accepted, we still have to decide on the shape that this symmetry should take, and what the exact domain and reach of that symmetry might be.

  To illustrate, symmetry regarding blasphemy laws can be achieved with different formulas – varying from applying it to all religions, to applying it to none. While the latter option fits in immediately with a secularist withdrawal of the state from religious affairs, the former pursues symmetry between religions in a way that favours no religion in particular. Just as a secular state can protect the liberty of all citizens to worship as they please (or not to worship), irrespective of their religious beliefs (and this could not be seen, as was analysed earlier, as a violation of secularism), secularism can, in principle, take the form of ‘shielding’ every religious community against whatever that community seriously deems as blasphemy. I am not, of course, recommending such ‘universal anti-blasphemy laws’ – indeed, I would argue very firmly against anti-blasphemy laws in general. But my rejection of ‘universal anti-blasphemy laws’ is not based on seeing them as anti-secular, but on other grounds that go beyond secularism: in particular, the need to prevent religious intolerance and persecution, and the practical unfeasibility of making anti-blasphemy laws really ‘universal’, covering all religions in India (including those of the various tribal communities that constitute an underprivileged minority in India). The need to choose between different secular forms remains, but this is a very different contention from saying that the requirement of Indian secularism makes no difference – that it is ‘immaterial’.

  On the ‘Favouritism’ Critique

  The ‘favouritism’ critique turns on interpreting and highlighting some legal differences between the various communities. The
se have been much discussed recently in the activist Hindu political literature. The difference in ‘personal laws’ has been particularly in focus.

  It is pointed out, for example, that while a Hindu can be prosecuted for polygamy, a Muslim man can have up to four wives, in line with what is taken to be the Islamic legal position (although, in practice, this provision is extremely rarely invoked by Indian Muslims). Attention is also drawn to other differences, for example between the provision for wives in the event of a divorce, where Muslim women (in line with a certain reading of Islamic law) have less generous guarantees than those which other Indian women have – a subject that came to some prominence in the context of the Supreme Court’s judgement on the famous ‘Shah Bano case’ (involving the right of support of a divorced Muslim woman from her estranged and more opulent husband). The existence of these differences has been cited again and again by Hindu political activists to claim that Hindus, as the majority community, are discriminated against in India, whereas Muslims are allowed to have their own ‘personal laws’ and ‘special privileges’.

  This line of reasoning has many problems. First, if these examples indicate any ‘favouritism’, in giving special ‘privileges’, in the treatment of the different communities, this can hardly be a favouritism for Muslims in general. Any unfairness that is there is surely one against Muslim women, rather than against Hindu men. A narrowly ‘male’ – indeed, sexist – point of view is rather conspicuous in the particular form that this political complaint often takes.

  Second, it is not the case that the personal laws of the Hindus have been somehow overridden in post-independence India by some uniform civil code. The separate status of Hindu personal laws has in general survived. The issue of uniform civil codes has to be distinguished from the fact that the Hindu laws were reformed after independence, particularly during 1955 and 1956, with little opposition (indeed, they resulted from political movements within the Hindu communities). The possibility of polygamy was explicitly ruled out by reform of the Hindu laws. It did not follow from some ‘uniform’ civil codes being imposed on the Hindus but not the Muslims. Nor did it make the Hindu personal laws inoperative – quite the contrary. Several other provisions were introduced within the Hindu laws themselves, but the domain of Hindu personal laws continues to be quite substantial.

  The makers of the Indian constitution did express some preference for ‘uniformity of fundamental laws, civil and criminal’, which was seen by Dr B. R. Ambedkar (the leader of the team that framed the constitution of India) as important for maintaining the unity of the country.4 In the event, however, such uniformity was not incorporated in the constitution that emerged, and the preference for uniformity was only included as a ‘Directive Principle of State Policy’ – without enforceability. The principle that was adopted demanded that ‘the State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India’. Like all the ‘Directive Principles’ enunciated in the Indian constitution, this was seen as ‘fundamental in the governance of the country’, and it was specified that ‘it shall be the duty of the State to apply’ this principle, but at the same time this principle (like the other ‘directive’ ones) ‘shall not be enforceable by any court’.5

  It is, of course, up to the courts to see how far to go in line with this Directive Principle. In the much-debated case of the ‘Shah Bano judgement’, involving a Muslim woman’s right to a better financial deal at the time of divorce, the Indian Supreme Court did indeed make a move in the direction of uniformity.6 The Court also revealed some disappointment at the government’s failure to move in the direction of a uniform civil code in line with the ‘constitutional ideal’ (and noted that this constitutional provision had ‘remained a dead letter’). In fact, as one observer has noted, ‘the intensity of Muslim reaction to the Supreme Court’s judgment in that case was partly explained by the inclusion of this utterance and the suggestion that what the government had failed to do, the Court itself might undertake’.7 The ‘Muslim reaction’ was not, however, by any means uniform, and there was support as well as criticism for the Supreme Court’s judgement, from different sections of that community.8 It was Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress government that ultimately ‘caved in’, and made fresh legislation that further supported the ‘separatist’ view, rather than following the Supreme Court’s push in the direction of more uniformity.

  The general issue of asymmetric treatment is indeed an important one, and there would, of course, be nothing non-secular in pursuing the possibility of making the provisions of a set of uniform civil laws apply even-handedly to individuals of all the communities. On the other hand, as was argued earlier in this essay, the principles of secularism will also permit an arrangement by which separate personal laws continue well into the future (so long as the different religious communities are treated with symmetry). In arguing against the latter option, considerations of justice may well be raised which demand some symmetry not only in the way the different religious communities are treated, but also in the way fairness is applied across other classificatory distinctions (for example, between the different classes, between women and men, between the poor and the rich, between the ‘elite’ and the ‘subalterns’, and so on).

  The choice between these two options – and intermediate ones – remains open, and certainly cannot be closed in one direction or the other by the requirements of secularism alone. To note this is not to concede the failure of secularism, but is rather an acknowledgement of its circumscribed domain, and the affirmation of the need to go beyond secularism – with other principles of fairness and justice – to identify specific legal and social forms. While there is not much substance in the charge of ‘favouritism’ benefiting Muslims, and certainly no general case against secularism can be constructed on that line of reasoning, it is useful to integrate the discussion on secularism with the principles – such as those of justice – that lie beyond it.

  We have to distinguish, in particular, between (1) the need for symmetry among different religious communities (a secularist consideration), and (2) the question of what form that symmetry should take, a concern that has to be consolidated with other principles of justice which take us well beyond secularism into, on the one hand, the importance that may be attached to group autonomy of religious communities, and on the other, the inescapable issue of equity for different groups of Indians, classified in non-religious categories, such as class and gender.

  On the ‘Prior Identity’ Critique

  The question of political and religious identities raises issues of a rather different kind. There can be little doubt that many Indians – indeed, most Indians – have religious beliefs of one kind or another, and regard these beliefs to be important in their personal lives. The issue that is raised by the claimed priority of this identity in the political context is not the general importance of religious beliefs in personal or even social behaviour, but the specific relevance of that identity in political matters (with and without the involvement of the state).

  It is useful in this context to recollect the contrast between the religiosity of political leaders in pre-independence India and their respective beliefs in a secular identity. Jinnah, the great advocate of the ‘two-nation’ theory and the founding father of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, was scarcely a devout Muslim, whereas Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the President of the Indian National Congress and a major leader of the Indian union, was a deeply religious Muslim.9

  Similarly, Shyama Prasad Mukhopadhyay, the leader of Hindu Mahasabha, had very few Hindu practices, compared with, say, Mahatma Gandhi, who was both actively religious in personal life and in social practice (for example, he held regular prayer meetings which were open to the public) and also staunchly secularist in politics (insisting on symmetric political treatment of different religions and an effective separation of the state and religions). When Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by an extremist Hindu politician, the murderer’s complaint against him was n
ot that he did not follow Hinduism in his personal life or in his social activities, but that he was, allegedly, very ‘soft’ on the Muslims in political matters, and did not give adequate priority to Hindu interests.

  The importance of religious identity has to be separated from its relevance in the political context. It is thus odd to require that Indians must ‘go through’ their religious identity first, before asserting their Indianness, and even less plausible to insist that the Indian identity must be ‘built up’ on the constitutive basis of the different religious identities. That assertion of priority comes not only from religious sectarians (particularly, in recent years, the so-called ‘Hindu nationalists’), but also from those who have been especially worried about the usurping role of the state (as opposed to community), and about the violences committed by the state.

  In this context, the issue of a national identity is often identified, misleadingly, I believe, with the philosophy of a ‘nation state’, thus giving an inescapably ‘statist’ orientation to the very conception of any political unity across religious communities and other social divisions. It is certainly true that in the emergence or consolidation of that unity, the nation state may well have an important instrumental role, but the state need not be central to the conceptual foundation of this unity, nor provide its constructive genesis. It is, for example, not a ‘category mistake’ to think of the Indian nation prior to 1947 as encompassing the residents of the so-called ‘native states’ (such as Travancore), and also of the non-British colonial territories (such as Goa), even though they did not ‘belong to’ the same state at all. It is a serious mistake to think that the idea of a nation requires the prior presence of a nation state.