Colours of Violence

by Kakar, Sudhir

  This construction is confronted with the reality that violence is present in all religions as a positive and even necessary force for the realization of religious goals. Religious violence has many forms which have found expression in the practice of animal or human sacrifice, in righteous and often excruciatingly cruel punishment envisaged for sinners, in the exorcism of spirits and demons, killing of witches or apostates, and in ascetic violence against the self.12 The point is, as John Bowker has vividly demonstrated, that every religion has a vision of divinely legitimized violence—under certain circumstances.13 In the Semitic religions, we have the Holy War of the Christians, the Just War of the Jews, and the Jehad of the Muslims where the believers are enjoined to battle and destroy evildoers. In other religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, with their greater reputation for tolerance and nonviolence, violence is elevated to the realm of the sacred as part of the created order. In Hinduism, for instance, there is a cycle of violence and peacefulness as the Kali Age is followed by the Golden Age. Buddhist myths talk of Seven Days of the Sword where men will look on and kill each other as beasts, after which peace will return and no life is taken. Although Islam (especially in its current phase) and medieval Christianity have had most violent reputations, the question as to which religions have unleashed the greatest amount of violence is ultimately an empirical one.14 In any event, fundamentalists can unleash any violence contained in a religion even if the religion is rarely perceived to have a violent potential, as amply demonstrated by our experience of Buddhist violence in Sri Lanka and Hindu violence in India. Moreover, as Natalie Davis has observed of Catholic-Protestant violence in sixteenth-century France and as we saw in the case of the Hyderabad riots, so long as rioters maintain a given religious commitment they rarely display guilt or shame for their acts of violence.15

  Rhythms of religious ritual, whether in common prayer, processions or other congregational activities, are particularly conducive to breaking down boundaries between members of a group and thus, in times of tension and threat, forging violent mobs. I have called these instruments of the community’s violence ‘physical’ groups since the individual’s experience of group identity here is through unconscious bodily communication and fantasies rather than through the more consciously shared cultural traditions. Physical groups seem to come into existence more effortlessly in religious than in other kinds of conflict.

  Histories and Futures

  In this book, I have attempted to contribute a depth-psychological dimension to the understanding of religious conflict, especially the tension between Hindus and Muslims. I am aware that this may be regarded by some as ‘psychologizing’ an issue which demands social and political activism and which could well do without the introduction of psychological complexities, that ‘pale cast of thought’, which can only sow doubt and sap the will for unself-conscious action. In retrospect, I realize I have gone about this task in consonance with my professional identity as a clinician, though not as a psychoanalyst with an individual patient but more akin to the psychotherapist with a family practice who is called upon for assistance in a disintegrating marriage. I looked at the history of the Hindu–Muslim relationship, made a diagnostic assessment of what has gone wrong, and considered the positive forces in the relationship which were still intact. At the end, it is time to weigh the possible courses of action.

  The awareness of belonging to either one community or the other—being a Hindu or Muslim—has increased manifold in recent years. Every time religious violence occurs in India or in some other part of the subcontinent, the reach and spread of modern communications ensure that a vast number of people are soon aware of the incident. Each riot and its aftermath raise afresh the issue of the individual’s religious–cultural identity and bring it up to the surface of consciousness. This awareness may be fleeting for some, last over a period of time for others, but the process is almost always accompanied by a preconscious self-interrogation on the significance of the religious–cultural community for the sense of one’s identity and the intensity of emotion with which this community is invested. For varying periods of time, individuals consciously experience and express their identity through their religious group rather than through traditional kinship groups such as those of family and caste. The duration of this period, or even whether there will be a permanent change in the mode of identity experience for some, depends on many factors, not the least on the success of revivalist and fundamentalist political and social groupings in encouraging such a switch. They do this, we saw in our analysis of the speeches by Rithambra and Azmi, by stoking the already existing persecution anxiety—its combination of aggression and fear weakening the individual sense of identity. The needed support to a weakened personal identity is then provided by strengthening its social, group aspect through an invitation to the person to identify with a grandiose representation of his or her community. The shared ‘contemplation’ and growing conviction of the great superiority of Hindu or Muslim culture and ways is then the required tonic for narcissistic enhancement and identity consolidation around the religious–cultural community as a pivot.

  As for the future, there is more than one scenario for the likely evolution of Hindu–Muslim relations. The Hindu nationalist, who views the conflict as a product of Hindu and Muslim cultural and institutional traditions, believes the only way of avoiding future large-scale violence is a change in the Muslim view of the community’s role, traditions, and institutions so that the Muslim can ‘adapt’—the word meaning anything from adjustment to assimilation—to the Hindu majority’s ‘national’ culture. To ask the Muslims to recognize themselves in the Hindu nationalist history of India, to expect them to feel their culture confirmed in Hindu symbols, rituals, and celebrations is asking them to renounce their cultural identity and to erase their collective memory so that they become indistinguishable from their Hindu neighbours. To be swamped by the surrounding Hindu culture has been historically the greatest fear of the Indian Muslim, articulated even by some medieval Sufis who are commonly regarded as having been closest to the Hindu ethos. Such an assimilation is feared precisely because it is so tempting, holding the promise of a freedom from fear of violence and an active and full participation in the majority culture and life, especially now when the majority is also politically dominant. The Hindu nationalist’s dilemma is that the Muslims continue to decline an offer the nationalist believes they cannot refuse. The nationalist finds that the Muslim is too big to be either swallowed or spit out. Even if the Muslim was willing to undertake the exercise in assimilation voluntarily, a highly improbable scenario, the task would involve the immensely difficult understanding of how religious–cultural traditions are transmitted and internalized and how these processes can be effectively interfered with and halted.

  The secularist, who views the conflict as rooted in social-structural considerations, especially economic, is more sanguine on the future of Hindu–Muslim relations. In the long run, the secularist believes, the inevitable economic development of the country will alter social-structural conditions and thus assign the conflict, as the cliché would have it, ‘to the dust heap of history’ as religious identities fade and play less and less of a role in private and public life. A sceptical note on the belief in the primacy of political and economic structures in the shaping of consciousness, however, needs to be sounded. Cultural traditions—including the ideology of the Other—transmitted through the family can and do have a line of development separate from the political and economic systems of a society. This is strikingly apparent if one takes the case of Germany where recent studies indicate that, after living for forty years under a radically different political and economic system, the political orientation and values of the young in relation to the family in eastern Germany are no different from those of their counterparts in the western part of the country; cultural socialization patterns within the family have survived the change in political systems relatively untouched and are stronger than the logic of t
he political superstructure.16

  The optimistic realist, a breed with which I identify, believes that we are moving towards an era of recognition of Hindu–Muslim differences rather than pursuing their chimerical commonalities. We are moving toward a multiculturalism, with majority and minority cultures, rather than the emergence of a ‘composite culture’. Such a multiculturalism is neither harmful nor dangerous but necessary, since it enables different religious groups to deal with the modernizing process in an active way rather than making them withdraw in lamentation at the inequities of modernization or endure it as passive victims. The problem is to ensure that one identity, Hindutva, does not dominate or assimilate other religious-cultural identities which are also embarked on the same quest as the Hindus. I can understand the validity of the nationalist call to the Hindus to find new meaning in customs, practices, and symbols of Hindu culture. But by the same logic why should this be denied to the Muslims who, too, are engaged in the same struggle to find meaning in the modern world? The realist would say that the solution is to build a state which protects the equal rights of Hindus and Muslims to be different. He believes that we must work toward building a polity which respects the beliefs of both Hindus and Muslims, however odd or perverse they may seem to each other and however scornful they may be of the other community in private. Being a sceptic, he is also aware that the creation of such a public realm may be a long drawn-out affair accompanied by much tension and open conflict between the communities which will strain the social and political fabric of the country.

  This realist agrees with the Hindu nationalist that clouds of violence loom over the immediate future of Hindu–Muslim relations. He is convinced, though, that achieving the desired goal of a truly multicultural polity will ultimately generate much less tension than the permanent discord which is the probable consequence of the nationalist vision. I can only hope that the violence is short-lived and that it will hasten the creation of a common, tolerant public realm. Our experience of needless suffering and cruelty can sometimes have the effect of jolting us out of accustomed ways of interpreting the world and making us more receptive to fresh ideas and new social-political arrangements. When stress and anxiety are at their greatest there is perhaps enough survival need in humans to suddenly make them reasonable. I hope the poet Theodore Roethke is right that ‘In a dark time, the eye begins to see.’17 This realist is not a cynic since unlike the latter, he still has hope. And even if the hope turns out to be illusory, he knows that, in the words of the Mahabharata, ‘Hope is the sheet anchor of every man. When hope is destroyed, great grief follows, which is almost equal to death itself.’ This applies not only to individuals but also to communities and nations.

  Footnotes

  A New Hindu Identity

  a. Mandai refers to the reservation policy announced by the government of V.P. Singh at the height of the temple agitation. The policy sought to increase reservations in federal and state employment and admission to educational institutions for the backward castes at the expense of the upper castes.

  b. The sage Valmiki, reputedly a hunter belonging to a low caste gave asylum to Sita in his forest abode after she was banished by Rama. Shabri was a poor untouchable who fed berries to Ram during his exile.

  c. All of them belong to the lowest castes.

  d. Widely regarded as two of the leaders of Muslim fundamentalism in India.

  e. Popular embodiments of Hindu resistance to Mughal rule.

  f. The reference is to a comparison between the maps of India before and after Partition.

  g. The best known Indian mosque, located in Delhi.

  h. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.

  i. The symbol of political power in India.

  The Muslim Fundamentalist Identity

  a. Deoras was the chief of the RSS while Vajpayee is a prominent leader of the BJP.

  b. Khalid was the legendary general of the all-conquering Arab armies in the seventh century. Yazid, the first Muslim king, is the personification of evil in Islamic sacred history while Shabbir is another name for Hussain, the Prophet's grandson and Yazid's antagonist in the battle of Karbala.

  c. A hero of the India-Pakistan war of 1965.

  d. Billal was the black slave and a favourite of the Prophet because of his sweet singing voice.

  Appendix I

  The Giessen Test Statements

  1. I have the feeling that I am relatively impatient 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 relatively patient

  2. I think I tend to seek the company of others 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 avoid the company of others

  3. I believe I tend to try to dominate others 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 to be dominated by others

  4. I believe that a change in my outward circumstances would affect my emotional state 3 2 1 0 1 2 3

  very little very greatly

  5. I have the feeling that I worry about my personal problems 3 2 1 0 1 2 3

  very little a great deal

  I think I tend to suppress my anger 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 let my anger out in some way

  7. I have he feeling that I care about outdoing others 3 2 1 0 1 2 3

  very much very little

  8. I feel that I am not at all shy 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 very shy

  9. I have the impression that people are generally 3 2 1 0 1 2 3

  very satisfied with my work very dissatisfied with my work

  10. I think I tend to have very great trust in others 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 very little trust in others

  11. I have the feeling I show my need for love 3 2 1 0 1 2 3

  very strongly very little

  12. I believe that others generally see me 3 2 1 0 1 2 3

  as strong as weak

  13. I have the feeling that it is very hard for me to make myself attractive to others 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 very easy for me to make myself attractive to others

  14. I believe that compared with others I find it 3 2 1 0 1 2 3

  quite easy to keep my mind on one thing very hard to keep my mind on one thing

  15. I seem to find it

  very hard to get into high spirits 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 very easy to get into high spirits

  16. I feel

  quite relaxed with the opposite sex 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 very awkward with the opposite sex

  Appendix II

  The Morality Interview

  Nineteen Cases of Hindu–Muslim Interaction.

  Normal Time Interactions

  1. A Muslim (M) has many Hindu (H) friends.

  2. A (M) regularly eats dinner at his (H) friend’s house.

  3. A (M) rents his house to a (H).

  4. A (M) works in a factory where most of the workers are (H).

  5. A (M) boy marries a (H) girl.

  6. A (M) girl goes to a movie with a (H) boy.

  7. A (M) goes to a pandit to learn the Gita.

  8. A (M) is converted to Hinduism.

  9. A (M) girl elopes with a (H) boy.

  10. Some (M) boys beat up a (H) boy who was whistling at (M) girls.

  11. A (M) throws a dead cow in front of a temple.

  12. Some (Ms) attack some (Hs) who were making fun of Allah.

  Riot Time Interactions

  13. Some (Ms) beat up a (H) walking through the alley.

  14. Some (Ms) rape a (H) girl.

  15. Some (Ms) set fire to a (H) house in their area.

  16. Some (Ms) loot (H) shops.

  17. A (M) man kills a (H) woman.

  18. Some (Ms) stab and kill two (H) men.

  19. A (M) family gives shelter to some (Hs).

  The informant’s understanding of each case is sought to be elicited through a standard set of interview questions. The questions are designed to assess different features of the respondent’s understanding of the morality of a particular situation.

  The Standard Interview

  1. Is the behaviour wrong?

  2. How serious is the violation?

  Not a violation.

  A minor offence.

  A somewhat serious offence.

  A very
serious offence.

  3. Is it a sin?

  4. What if no one knew this had been done? It was done in private or secretly. Would it be wrong then?

  5. In (another city) people do (the opposite of the practice endorsed by the informant) all the time. Would (name of the city) be a better place, if they stopped doing that?

  6.What if (name of informant’s society) wanted to change the practice? Would it be okay to change it?

  7.Do you think a person who does (the practice) should be stopped from doing that? Should he or she be punished? How?

  The first question asks about the existence or nonexistence of a transgression. The second and third questions assess the perceived seriousness of the violation, should one exist. The fourth question, concerning self-regulation in absence of external monitors, tells us whether the violation is regarded as being of a moral order or a matter of convention. Questions five through seven tap the perceived universality (versus relativity) and unalterability (versus alterability) of the moral code being violated. The eighth question concerns sanctions and identifies cases where the informant believes the individual has a right to freedom of choice. In addition, the answers to this question give further clues as to the seriousness of one violation as compared to others.