20 The construction of religious Identity in the discourse of Indian modernity

Kumud Ranjan

Introduction

Understanding Modernity and its context in India

The development of modernity in India has been both diverse and varied. While it is true that modernity gets associated with the onset of British colonial rule in India, it is equally true that this encounter of the colonized with the colonizer came to be construed in a variety of different ways sometimes from the vantage point of the colonizer, at other times from the vantage point of the colonized Guha (1997). If one were to acknowledge the close links between the rise of modern capitalism and the growth of European modernity Giddens (2013), it would be difficult to assert the same kind of co-relation in the Indian context. While colonialism did bring with it a change in the feudal mode of production leading to the development of capitalism, the spread of capitalism in India even in the present period remains extremely uneven both in terms of its pervasiveness as well as in its penetration. Modern capitalism in India as Chandavarkar (1998) notes developed in pockets where the British were able to put together the conditions required for its development. Even so such an exercise did not bring about the transformation of the peasantry into a working class. On the contrary, one notices that the development of modernity in India has permitted for the co-habitation of several selves within a single individual. Whether this ‘compartmentalization of self’ as pointed out by Singer (1972) is a hallmark of Indian modernity or not what is important to note is that quite apart from the structures and processes that go into the making of modernity, the reception of modernity by the Indian masses has proved to be a complex and problematic social reality that continues to vex scholarship both in India as well as abroad. If Kaviraj (2000) could indicate the thinness of modernity in the Indian context, others have pointed out to the instrumentalism that underlies our engagement with modernity in India Chatterjee (1994). As such then, any discourse of modernity in India must simultaneously deal with the varieties of ways in which social groups within Indian society seek to hold on to their traditions. This, notwithstanding even if at times there exists an incompatibility of the two co-existing in a single space within a single self. Further, within the Indian context there is also the phenomenon of caste and how caste has structured the Indian social order. While scholarship on this matter has pointed to different kinds of engagement between caste and modernity (Rudolph & Rudolph (1984), Kothari (1995), Fuller (1996) etc.) the fact remains that within the hierarchy of caste both lower caste and upper caste responded to modernity in distinctly different ways Omvedt (1994). While the lower caste saw modernity as a site of contestation involving issues of human rights and emancipation, the upper caste, as Guha (1997) observes, saw modernity as a site for the control of power and the domination of society. Clearly there are two very different agendas that have been historically evoked by modernity in the Indian context. It is within this dilemma that constitutes modernity in India that one must understand the construction of religious identities and the way that these have evolved within the Indian context.

In this module we shall discuss this issue in three sections. In section one, we explore Indian modernity and religious identities. In section two, we look at the religious identity and the political sphere. Finally in section three, we look at other discourses of religious identities within Indian Modernity.

Section-I

Exploring Indian Modernity and religious identities

Kaviraj (2000) writes that one striking fact in the study of comparative colonialism is how the different religious groups responded to the colonial presence. He argues that the presence of Christianity caused enormous internal transformations within mainstream Hindu society. Within Hinduism, it gave rise to at least two different trends with far reaching consequences for the development of the Hindu religion. Firstly, by drawing Hindu intellectuals into religious and doctrinal debates with Protestant missionaries on rationalist terms. This forced proponents of Hindu doctrinal justification to change their character. Such changes fueled attempts to harmonize religion with a rationalist picture of the world. It is this rational transformation which brought about far reaching changes within Hinduism of the kind that Indian society had never seen. Secondly, the colonial state itself reflected its initiatives through Orientalist conceptions of Indian society. These conceptions emphasized the fact that unlike an earlier golden past Indian society was a deeply divided and weakened one in the present period. Not surprisingly the colonial rulers withheld certain Western practices and modified others making them relevant to the prevailing situation.

It may be worth noting here that the category of Hinduism itself has been the object of a growing debate not only in terms of whether such a category constitutes a genuine historical category or whether it involves a construction put together under modernity during the colonial rule in India. David Lorenzen (2006) writes that there are scholars who claim that Hinduism was constructed, invented, or imagined by British Scholars and colonial administrators in the nineteenth century and did not exist in any meaningful sense before this time period. Those who claim this constructionist argument are Vasudha Dalmia, Robert Frykenberg, Christopher Fuller, John Hawley, Gerald Larson, Harjot Oberoi, Brian Smith and Heinrrich Von Stietencron. WC Smith is considered to be an important precursor of these scholars. Romila Thapar (1985, 1989, 1996) and Dermot Killingely (1993: 61-64) have offered somewhat similar arguments, but both display greater sensitivity to historical ambiguities and distribute the construction of distinctly modern Hinduism among British Orientalists and missionaries and indigenous nationalists and communalists. Carl Ernst writes about early Muslim references to ‘Hindus’ and their religion but he joins the above scholars in claiming that the terms ‘do not correspond to any indigenous Indian concept either of geography of religion. J Laine (1983) agrees with Smith and his modern epigones that Hinduism was invented in the nineteenth century, but credits the invention to the Indian rather than to the British.

Richard King (1999) writes that the modern concept of Hinduism is not merely the product of western orientalism. Western Orientalism was necessary but not a sufficient causal factor in the rise of this particular social construction. It is significant to understand the crucial role played by indigenous Brahmanical ideology in the construction of early orientalist representations of Hindu religiosity.

Given such an understanding of its development, it stands to reason that the Hindu identity is in effect an umbrella concept that holds within its folds a vast diversity of sects and cults who have their own religious practices and beliefs and who constitute religious communities in their own right. Yet it must be mentioned that it is the growth of majoritarianism as a political sentiment that sought to unify these multiple Hindu communities into a single Hindu nation that becomes the tenuous site on which the modern category of the Hindu identity comes to get constructed. Such a construction is however deeply implicated in a political logic whose quest for power and domination appears to be paramount. Yet it must also be noted here that such a narrow construction of the Hindu identity has been constantly challenged from within the vast diversity that constitutes this category. To that extent one may note that the construction of the Hindu identity within Indian modernity exists in a contested zone where it’s rich heritage and diversity is constantly struggling against those who want to frame it within a narrow ahistorical construction.

Engineer (1991) writes that primordial identities have assumed a new significance in South Asian countries in particular and other third world countries in general. He points out that the assertion of religious identity in the process of democratisation and modernisation should not be seen only as religious fanaticism or fundamentalism; it should also be seen as a method by which deprived communities in a backward society seek to obtain a greater share of power, government jobs and economic resources.

The reassertion of Muslim identity should be seen as neither a purely religious or ethnic phenomenon nor a purely political and economic one. Engineer (1991) argues that it is commonly understood that politicians manipulate ethnic, communal and caste identities and thus aggravate social tensions for gaining votes of these groups and that this is a comparatively modern phenomenon.

Looking historically at how these identities have emerged in the colonial period, he argues that one of the first systematic divisions between Hindu and Muslim elite emerged in late 19th century over the question of linguistic identity. Persian was replaced by English at higher courts and by Urdu at lower ones. Maharaja Kishan Prasad of Benaras and many others began to demand that the court language be written in Devnagri whereas Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and others insisted on Urdu written in Persian script. This linguistic division turned out to be a communal division too. All those who supported the cause of Urdu were Muslims and those who supported the cause of Devnagri were Hindus. Engineer (1991) observes that this conflict was not purely a question of cultural and linguistic identity but also a question of livelihood. Most of the government, administrative and court jobs were dependent on the language used by these offices. After the dissolution of the Mughal empire, the social and political elite especially among the Muslims who were mainly dependent on the jobs provided by the erstwhile Mughal empire were keen to see the continuation of Persian so as to protect their occupations and livelihoods.

It was Sir Syed who campaigned for modern education among the Muslim elite and induced them to go for it almost half a century after the Hindus had taken to it especially in Bengal. Thus, the Muslim elite was much more dependent on administrative posts wherein work was done in Urdu. Hence, the first sharp division emerged among the two elites based on separate linguistic and religious identities. Notwithstanding the alternative narratives within this dominant narrative of religious identity in the context of modern India, it is important to point out that religious identities have emerged largely in relationship to how modernity has developed within the Indian sub-continent. If there are occasion in which identities get more sharply defined then these must be accounted for in the growing communalization of society i.e., occurring in that particular place and time. On the contrary, religious identities in modern India have co-existed and lived in a syncretic environment drawing solace and strength from their shared world-views and cultures.

Equally it may be pointed out that religious identities have also flourished in situations where modernity has been defined in strongly economic terms. The case of the Sikh identity and its role in the Khalistan movement may be seen here as a case in point. Harjot Oberoi (1997) writes that the crisis of 1980 was a consequence of the economic inequalities generated by the green revolution in the Punjab countryside which were in conflict with the cultural ethos of the Sikhs. “The rising tide of inequalities in the Punjab did not easily blend with the dominant ethos of the Sikh religious tradition, which demanded a just moral economy based on equitable distribution of wealth and resources.

Shinder Purewal (2000) asserts that the crisis of 1980 was the doing of a “small but powerful class of capitalist farmers (the Kulaks). They are the ones who benefitted the most from green revolution technology. In their struggle against the commercial and industrial bourgeois the Sikh Kulaks invoked the ideology of Sikhism and their religious identity to build a common bond with the marginal and landless Sikh peasantry who had been further marginalised by the green revolution. In the name of Sikhism the Kulaks sought to strengthen their domination over the home market of Punjab getting the Anandpur Sahib resolution implemented or through seeking a separate nation of Khalistan. According to Purewal (2000) the rise of Bhinderanwale and the demand for Khalistan were clearly in accordance with the logic of Kulaks politics. Though Bhinderanwale recruited youth from marginalised peasantry, his political programme of uniting the Sikhs against the Hindus served the interest of the Kulaks.

Here in both the examples we observe that how other factors which were initially socio-economic in nature gets converted into religious assertion.

Section-II

Religious identity and the Political Sphere:

Singh (1973:115) writes that the concept of communalism and secularism provide useful conceptual tools for the analysis of the role of Indian nationalism in the cultural modernization of the nation. Secularism is a sub-process in modernization. Its spread implies that various issues and events in personal and social life are evaluated not from a religious point of view but utilitarian. With an increase in the process of ‘secularization’ the various spheres of social life which formerly were guided by religiously ordained norms are exempted from its hold and are increasingly governed by norms which tend to be rational or hedonistic or both.

Singh (1973:115) argues that the kind Indian nationalism which Gandhi advocated was rooted in the Hindu tradition but at the same time was non-communal. Secularism for Gandhi did not mean a-religiosity but the spirit of religious tolerance which he postulated on the basis of universalistic ethic of Hinduism itself. His conception of Indian polity was entirely non-communal and yet non-secular in the strictly western sense of the term.

Jaffrelot (1993) in his essay titled ‘Hindu Nationalism: Strategic Syncretism in Ideology Building’ writes that how socio-religious reform movements reinterpreted tradition within the process and framework of modernisation as an originary moment of nationalism in India. After few decades of Independence we observe the spread of Hindu Nationalism in context of Ramjanambhoomi-Babri masjid issue which did not attempt to communalise only Indian politics but the society at large. This is one of the major issues which continue to determine the discourse of politics and religious identity in India.

Engineer (1991) writes that the Ramjanambhoomi-Babri Masjid controversy communalised Indian politics to an extent like no issue had done since the partition period. Initially, the Muslim leaders who formed the Babri Masjid Action committee took quite an aggressive attitude on the matter. However it was no match for the majoritarian politics espoused by the Hindu right during this period. What emerged in the decades that followed was a practice of electoral mobilizations deeply motivated by religious identities of the groups involved. Not only did religion feature importantly in the electoral politics of the 1989 general elections, it would not be wrong to suggest that besides religion caste as well became an important marker for electoral mobilizations in the realm of democratic politics.

Such a hardening of religious identities and their ideologies within the context of Indian modernity clearly raises the question of the extent to which modernity has been able to manipulate the development of religious identities so as to encourage the development of a more inclusive social environment wherein the forces of communalism and religious intolerance could be effectively undermined. Unfortunately modernity in India has failed to achieve such a construction of civil society. While the secularization of society continues to be a deep felt aspiration among large sections of the liberal elites in the country, it does appear as if with the passage of time in the context of Indian modernity religious identities have not only hardened they have also become more conservative in the way that the practice of religion comes to get realized in the everyday world.

Thus, with increasing prosperity resulting from migration and globalization amongst the different religious communities, modernization has come to mean a more heightened and more pervasive spread of one’s religious practices. In real terms this has meant an ever-increasing investment in the religious economies of the various religious communities. Not only is this witnessed in the ever-expanding activity of constructing new and opulent places of worship, it also manifests itself in the extravagant display of wealth and religious symbolism on the occasion of all religious festivals. Thus, unlike in the West, where Weber (1993) believed the disenchantment resulting out of modernity had relegated religion to the private sphere of an individual’s life, in the context of India, it would appear as if modernity has immensely enhanced the growth of religious consciousness and the ever-increasing visibility of religious identities in the social, political, and cultural life of modern Indian society.

Section-III

Other discourses of religious identities within Indian Modernity

Given the growing majoritarian sentiment that has propelled the rise of religious identities under modernity, it is important to note that besides the Muslim identity which we have already dealt with above, there is also the identity of the Christian and more so the tribal Christian who has greatly affected the majoritarian discourse of identity in Modern India.

David Kingsley (1951:188) writes that “It is hard in practice to draw a line between advanced primitive religions on the one hand and backward Hinduism on the other…Hinduism is so syncretistic that it embraces almost every conceivable religious practice, and the Hindu social order is so pervasive that it infiltrates nearly every social group…Nearly always, therefore, there is some remote basis for labelling a primitive tribesman as Hindu, and he, being illiterate, is often incapable of asserting himself in the matter. Moreover, because of the vagueness and inclusiveness of Hinduism, the enumerator tends to regard it as a residual category. Any person in India is thus a Hindu unless he definitely proves that he is something else”.

Such a thinking clearly reveals the terrible dilemma that tribal society was placed in both during colonialism as well as in the period after Independence. If Christian missionaries worked towards proselytizing the tribals to Christianity, thereby, giving them a separate identity both in terms of a religion as well as community, the Hindu nationalists were quick to counter this particular approach on the part of the Christian missionaries. As a result, the discourse of Christian identity among the tribals continues to be one that is fraught with tensions and with constant demands on the part of the Hindu nationalists that these Christian tribals should reconvert back to Hinduism.

G.S. Ghurye (1959, 1980) in his book describes tribes as ‘backward Hindus’. He divided tribes into three sections. At first there are those who are properly integrated, then loosely integrated and then are those who are not more than touched by Hinduism. Considering the last section he made this point that the only proper description of these people is that they are imperfectly integrated classes of Hindu society and that they are in reality backward Hindus (Xaxa: 2005).

Xaxa (2005) writes that Ghurye made this argument on the ground that there was much similarity between Hindu religion and animistic tribal religions and these two possibly cannot be distinguished from one another. His conception shaped the future line of thinking about tribes in India.

The position that tribes are Hindus is aggressively reiterated and articulated by Sangh Parivar in its discourse on tribes in India. To categorize tribes as Hindus in India therefore smacks of cultural and religious expansionism.

Religious identity in the context of Modern India has also been shaped by Jotirao Phule and later Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Both these figures provide us with critique of Brahmanism and Brahmanical Hinduism. Gail Omvedt (1971) writes that Jyotirao Phule represented a very different set of interests and a very different outlook on India from all the upper caste elite thinkers of the so-called Indian Renaissance who have dominated the awareness of both Indian and foreign intellectuals. Phule viewed upper caste, orthodox religion and the whole structure of sacred books from the Vedas to the Puranas as alien and weapon of rule. In dismissing totally the dominant religious traditions of India, Phule accepted the assumption that something had to be put in its place: even a revolutionary culture required a moral-religious centre. He does not reject the idea of dharma but rather attempts to establish a universalistic one. One aspect of his rationalism can be seen in the Satyashodhak Samaj with its primary emphasis on “truth-seeking”. It is most significant here that the truth seeking was seen as a quest guided by the individual’s own reason, and not by the dictates of any religious guru or authoritative text.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar criticized Hinduism because it did not follow the principle of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. He argued that Hinduism is based on graded inequality especially because of the legitimization of caste system and the position of women in Hindu society and there doesn’t exist any scope for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity within Hinduism.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar fulfilled his Yeola pledge of 1935 by embracing Buddhism in 1956 at Nagpur along with his five lakh faithful followers. After the conversion, Dr. Ambedkar remarked, “I am overjoyed, I am exalted. I feel I have been liberated from the hell.” Dr. Ambedkar opted Buddhism because it was built on the foundations of liberty, equality, fraternity, morality and professes scientific, rational and humanistic outlook. What Buddha called the Dhamma differed fundamentally from what was called religion at that time. The principal aim of Buddhism is to emancipate suffering humanity. He embraced Buddhism in 1956 at Nagpur.

The rise of the neo-Buddhist identity in modern India has an interesting trajectory that brings to the fore the dynamics of religion and modernity in contemporary Indian society Zelliott (1992). If Ambedkar conceived of Buddhism as a new civilizational religion that should be embraced by all Hindus both upper and lower caste it was because he believed that Hinduism both as a religion and as an identity was ill-equipped to exist in a modern society. It is for this reason that he suggested replacing Hinduism with Buddhism which he believed was far more equipped both socially, morally and ethically as well as spiritually to enable all Indians to enter a modern society. Neo-Buddhism however failed to achieve such a goal. Ever since its existence in 1956 it came to be associated with the Scheduled caste and more specifically with certain numerically dominant groups among the Scheduled Caste Fitzgerald (2000). To that extent, the neo-Buddhist identity while many would argue provided a platform for social and ethical transformation of India ended up becoming the basis for the construction of another minority group within the pantheon of religious identities that make up modern Indian society.

Conclusion:

We observe that religious identity in modern India located itself on factors predominantly based on social, economic and political context across time and spaces and not purely on religious lines. Kaviraj (2000) gives emphasis to the idea of social individuals who gets influenced by modernity which fall into social, political and economic and other categories including religion and in turn influence these categories including religion. Gupta (2005) argues about modernity and individual to be intersubjective. The historical past of the religious identity is major influence even in present times especially because of interpreters of different religious value systems in different time and spaces within certain context. On one hand we observe Hindu Nationalists and Hindu traditionalists who seek refuge in Hindu Religion and on the hand we have Jyotirao Phule and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar who criticised Hinduism and orthodox religion especially for the legitimization of caste system by Hinduism. We also observe the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri masjid issue which happened in a society which promised itself to follow democracy. It did not only communalise Indian politics but society at large. We also observe the status of women within different religious traditions. Hindu code Bill and the case of Shah Bano inform us about the gendered aspect of any religion. We even come to know the debates around the ‘tribal’ community and their religious dimensions.

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