Indian secularism is a multi-value ideal and has trans-cultural potential

Indian civilisation: a thematic approach NALINI RAJAN The Hindu Tuesday, Jul 11, 2006

POLITICAL IDEAS IN MODERN INDIA — Volume X Part 7 — Thematic Explorations: V.R. Mehta and Thomas Pantham — Editors; General Editor — D.P. Chattopadhyaya; Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi-110017. Rs. 1700.

When the editor of a publication lucidly anticipates and provides a rationale for its shortcomings, the enterprise may be deemed a `success'. The same is true of the book under consideration, which is the last part of the 10th volume of an ambitious project comprising 16 volumes, titled `History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization'.

The General Editor of the series, D.P. Chattopadhyaya, points out that these volumes are concerned with the broad strokes of Indian civilisation; consequently, the shortcomings in the details are more or less inevitable. Although there is some fuzziness and discontinuity between the 24 essays, the overall aim of presenting different modes of experience in an organic manner is fulfilled. A positive fallout of this aim is that the different essays may be read in no particular order and it will still make sense to the reader. The negative fallout is that there is some overlapping, even duplication, of themes in the volume.

G.P. Deshpande's essay in section two, for instance, is a weaker, somewhat scattered, replication of the topics ably introduced in the earlier section by Bidyut Chakrabarty (on the polarisation of social and political radicalism among Indian nationalists, with the honourable exception of Gandhiji). On the whole, section one provides a fascinating historical background of the colonial period and the nationalist struggle in India. Section two is less impressive in terms of presentation of concepts.

Even though it is concerned with probing the importance of the language-bound and context-relative character of meaning — and this is one of the aims of the series, according to Chattopadhyaya — the essays tend to be laboured and, at times, unconvincing. Barring Deshpande's article, the other three contributions in this section present political events as part of a naturally disorderly, chaotic, and non-teleological flow. This works best in Dipesh Chakrabarty's essay, perhaps because it is located in the realm of ideas, and not directly in the context of literary texts in regional languages, as is the case with the essays by Sitanshu Yashaschandra and Harish Trivedi, where some signification is lost in translation.

Sections three and four, in particular, comprise some excellent essays on identity politics and nation-building by erudite social scientists such as Pratap Bhanu Mehta on the differences between the legal authority of the colonial state and the moral authority of the national community; Gurpreet Mahajan on the differences between benevolent and exclusive majoritarianism and those between benign and separatist minoritarianism; and Mushirul Hasan on the pluralistic nature of Indian Islam.

Inevitably, Gandhiji's long shadow provides the backdrop to major events in the last century and many of the writers in this volume are committed to a re-examination of Gandhian ideas in our present troubled times. Fred Dallmayr discusses the distinctive merit of Gandhiji's conception of heart-and-mind unity with respect to Hindu-Muslim harmony as against the dry legalism or religious orthodoxy of some of the other players in the nationalist movement.

Thomas Pantham informs us that while Hindutva or right-wing Hinduism is akin to social Darwinism or militant majoritarianism that can only have either an assimilationist or an exclusionary relation to religious and cultural minorities, the Gandhian way provides an ethical and radical democratic alternative remedy to the social ills of our time.

These ideas set the tone for what, in my opinion, are two of the finest essays in the collection — by Rajeev Bhargava and Akeel Bilgrami; they are the finest simply because they go beyond mere description or prescription, and attempt some form of creative reconstruction in the realms of theory and practice. In his article, Bhargava makes two important points. One is that Indian secularism is not a mere variant of a so-called Western ideal. It is not a single-value, but a multi-value, ideal, and therefore has trans-cultural potential.

In other words, Indian secularism may have lessons for the West — which is currently grappling with problems of multiculturalism — and not the other way round. This, in a nutshell, constitutes Bhargava's sharp response to the many critics of secularism, such as Ashis Nandy, T.N. Madan, and Partha Chatterjee.

Akeel Bilgrami's essay, which complements Bhargava's, is unique in that it is perhaps the only philosophically conceptual article in a volume replete with historical and political analysis. His philosophical defence of secular liberalism has an interesting South Asian twist. According to Bilgrami, there is no invariable or external standard of rationality that can be invoked in the discourse on secularism — say, like the right to freedom of expression.

The way to counter the opponents of secular liberalism is to demonstrate that their opposition to secular liberal values is wrong in terms of some of their own values. This is an unusual form of humanism that shows respect to those who fundamentally disagree with secularists, not by conceding that they have a relative truth on their side, but by admitting respectfully that differently conflicted subjects have plural internal reasons for signing on to secular liberal principles. To sum up: this is an excellent volume that will make good sense to the specialist as well as the lay reader interested in political theory and practice. Comments to : thehindu@vsnl.com