Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr | India's culture wars: A clash of ignorant armies

The term “culture wars” is a common phrase in the American political discourse. The latest example of culture wars is the one between pro-choice and pro-abolition groups. And at another level, it is seen as a fight between pro-Trump and anti-Trump groups. And many of the American institutions are seen as bending towards one pole or another, especially the United States Supreme Court, where the judges of the highest court wear their ideological leanings on their sleeves as it were. In India too, an intense fight is on between the Hindu right, partially represented by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the Hindu liberals. The right-wingers, also referred to as Hindutva advocates, claim to be fighting the secular and left hegemony in the universities, while the liberals, among whom are to be counted the leftists, who are more than a little untethered because the Soviet Union has disappeared and China has morphed into a market economy. Ironically, the ones caught in the crossfire are the Muslims and Christians in the country, where the Muslims represent the largest religious minority and Christians a miniscule group. The battle between the two groups in the majority community has intensified after the ascent of the ostensibly Hindu party, the BJP, and the Hindutva icon, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It has been discovered that most of the time majority of Hindus have voted for the BJP and Mr Modi for reasons other than hostility to Muslims and Christians. But the voting Gestalt suggests religious polarisation in India. The Hindu liberals believe so, and it seems as if on cue, the BJP propaganda machine – there are no ideologues in the proper sense in the party – adopts an anti-Muslim stance at election time.

It is necessary to note that Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs differ with each other on small and big issues, and there is both mild animosity as well as pragmatic bonhomie among them all. It is but natural that religious beliefs differ and clash and the attempt to project a syncretic culture of all sharing the same belief system seems a little more than poetic exaggeration. But there is a healthy respect among the followers of all religions, and they deal with each other with respect, and even affection, though it looks strange, paradoxical and even hypocritical. But that is the Indian way of life. This is an extension of how caste-riven Hindu society deals with caste differences with respect, hostility, affection and hypocrisy.

At the level of ideas and ideology the differences in Indian society, among different religions and different castes, should have given rise to learned debates and interesting points of view in the historical and cultural context. The group that has invested in learning and debates, that is the Hindu liberal group, has somehow chosen the easy path of putting up straw men and demolishing them.

For example, the Hindu liberals, before and after Independence, have attacked Hindu religious fanaticism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and to some extent the Hindu Mahasabha. And it was easy to laugh them out of court because the Hindu right-wing groups have no strong intellectual credentials. Interestingly, the Hindu liberals avoided attacking the Arya Samaj in north India, which has had some ideas to offer but the majority of Hindus showed interest in the Arya Samaj. The only place where the Hindu reformists had success was in Bengal, especially through the Brahmo Samaj. The success of the Brahmo Samaj was not overwhelming, but it has had a better success than reformist movements in other parts of the country. The Hindu liberals can plead that it was not their fault that their opponents were so poorly armed in terms of ideas.

There has been an attempt to construct some sort of a Hindu ideology in the last quarter century and more by some of the intellectually-equipped Hindu right-wing individuals. But the Hindu right-wingers are at sea because of the bewildering Hindu traditions and they do not know which of them to choose. And they are also not equipped to sift through the Hindu intellectual traditions because they lack the necessary learning. In more ways than one, the Hindu right-wing intellectuals are a mirror image of Hindu liberals, a deracinated class, trying to find an anchor in an ill-digested past.

While the syncretism proposed by the Hindu liberals is necessarily shallow, the Hindu identity and the Hindu tradition – we will not quibble about the rightness and wrongness of the word ‘Hindu’ –that the Hindu right-wingers want to construct is a weak and false edifice. There is then no worthy clash of ideas between the Hindu liberals and the Hindu right-wingers, and it dissolves into the proverbial heat and dust sans light. The majority of the Hindu population in the country has remained indifferent to the Hindu liberals as well as to the Hindu right-wingers.

There is also the basic question whether the Hindu liberals are really liberal, and whether the Hindu reactionaries are conservative. The word conservative does not occur in the Indian intellectual discourse as it does in Europe and in America. Not that there are no conservatives among the Hindus. There are quite many, and it is to be noted that the conservatives in Hindu society are a small group because of their learning. The Hindu right-wingers would not go with the Hindu conservatives because the right-wingers believe that the Hindu conservatives weaken the cause of Hindu identity. So, the two Hindu groups fighting with each other over Hindu identity – the liberals believe that Hindu culture is inclusive, which is a half-truth and there is a hint of self-righteousness and arrogance in the assumption; and the right-wingers too believe that the Hindu identity is universal and therefore absorbs into itself all the other identities, in a way superseding other belief systems and cultures – are, to use the popular and vulgar phrase, pseudo-Hindus.

The fight between them is then not giving rise to new ideas, new syntheses of the dialectical and non-dialectical kind. As a matter of fact, there are no ideas at stake. The right thing for both the groups is to go back to the drawing-board as it were, and before thinking of new ideas they may need to brush up their knowledge of the Hindu past. It is not necessary for them to be right and comprehensive. But they need to understand what the numerous intellectual tributaries are, and how there is no mighty river into which these tributaries are flowing. The Hindu is a new invention and it does not matter whether it the Persian, Arab, Turk, or the European who invented it. It is a handy term to describe the traditions and beliefs of Hindu society in a loose way. And of course, every definition will fail as it clashes with the reality of sect, language, and region. They would have to move from the particular to the universal and general, and it is very important that they have to begin with a particular Hindu viewpoint before they generalise. This becomes an imperative because one would be moving from generalisation to generalisation, and in one of the Indian proverbs it is called indulging in sword-play without a ground to stand on.

The two Hindu groups – perhaps it would be necessary to recognise that there are more than two –need to have a clear time-line of the past in their minds. It would not be a bad idea for them to hold on to a history of Sanskrit language. The Hindu liberals would need to give up the idea that there are non-Sanskrit traditions which are pre-Sanskrit. This is a distinct possibility and it needs to be established through carefully marshalled empirical evidence. For various reasons, many of the tribal languages cannot be plotted on a time line. For example, the language of a tribe on the Andaman Islands cannot be traced from 10,000 Before the Common Era (BCE) and how it has evolved into its present-day form. It would not be right to assume the language had not changed over the millennia.

It is possible to trace the history of Sanskrit language from about 1500 BCE to about 17 th century of the Common Era, and there are clear traces of change in vocabulary and even in structure. If someone takes the trouble studying, and it is not necessary to depend on European Sanskrit scholars for this, it will be evident that the first grammarian of Sanskrit, Panini, comes after the Vedic period.

And the textual evidence of historical difference in the state of Sanskrit language can be seen between Panini’s Ashtadhyayi – the title of the grammar text he wrote – and Patanjali’s Mahabhashya, a grammar text that comes long after Panini’s, and which is a commentary on Panini’s grammar. The two grammar texts provide a clear line of historical linguistics. Similarly, the language of Valmiki’s Ramayana is distinctly different from that of Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsam, and the difference is due to the fact that two texts were written in different periods. Once the principle of historical change is established, then it would be possible to make observations of Hindu society in different periods.

The Hindu right-wingers believe that Sanskrit has not changed over the centuries while the Sanskrit grammarians, Panini and Patanjali, are aware that the language has changed. Panini knew that the language of which he is writing the grammar is different from that of the Vedas. Panini is a post-Vedic writer, and his grammatical rules do not always apply to the Sanskrit found in the Vedic corpus though Sayana, who wrote a comprehensive commentary on the Vedas in the 14 th century CE used Panini to explain the Vedic text. And Kalidasa was acutely aware that the language he is using is quite different from that of Valmiki.

After this kind of a study, the two Hindu groups may have something solid to argue with each other. And some interesting ideas might emerge from this clash of worldviews if indeed each side has some kind of worldview to speak of. The Hindu liberals will find the study of Sanskrit useful because they will notice that the language has changed over the centuries and the writers within the Sanskrit tradition were aware of this.

The problem we find with the Hindu groups is to be found among the Muslims. The Muslim liberals and right-wingers are equally ignorant of Islamic traditions. The Muslim liberals are quite westernised in their education and lifestyle like their Hindu counterparts. So, they cannot speak with authority and learning about Islam. The Muslim right-wingers are in as bad a position as the Hindu right-wingers because the Muslims right-winger too say that there has been no historical change.

Most Muslims are not aware of the fact that when the early accounts of Prophet Muhammad’s life were written, they were based on oral history, and the writers offered versions of the many speakers, and they maintained that only God knows which of the versions is true in cases where they are not able to ascertain the facts. This should come as a cultural shock to those who claim that they are orthodox Muslims, and those Hindu right-wingers that Muslims are just fanatics and nothing more.

It is not surprising then that we do not get any new argument based on evidence from any of these four groups, the two of Hindus and the two of Muslims. It would be unrealistic to expect that the situation would change, and that there would be a better exchange of ideas, and the dialogue among the different groups of Hindus and Muslims does not have to mean that they agree with each other – and if they are honest they should not agree – but that they get to know the different sides of the questions. But when ignorant people and fanatics argue with each other, there will be noise and nothing more. The words of 19th century English poet and culture critic in “Dover Beach” appear so apt in this context: “And we are here as on a darkling plain/Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,/Where ignorant armies clash by night.”