TRUTH TO TELL by NIRMALYA DEB
Terrorism and identity politics will contribute to further polarization of political attitudes which is an impediment to democratic functioning. In the absence of self-critical political activity such attitudes and feelings can never be resisted from taking on ugly forms of authoritarian over-assertiveness that could lead to historical excesses some of which still haunt humanity.
The upsurge of religious fundamentalism poses a serious threat to civilization and there is no definite appraisal of the problem that could shed light on its different aspects – political, religious and cultural. There has been substantial historical discussion of the different forms of ideological suppression – in communist regimes, for instance, often at the exclusion of other veiled forms of violence embedded in so-called liberal democracy – but the upsurge of fundamentalism as obviously a far more powerful and destructive force than even state suppression has started bothering the international community only of late.
To begin with, blatant and coercive political terms like “Islamic fundamentalism” are to be abjured at all cost. Fundamentalism, as we should seek to understand the malady, runs far deeper than mere superficial contradictions like the “West vs the rest” that media and money can set up as a rationale for brutal militaristic intervention in parts of the world considered unsafe for the hegemonic penetration of “free capital”. Fundamentalism, though obviously related to international terrorism, infects all religions and thoughts and the fight against it is a fight against human nature itself.
The very first, and obviously vainglorious, trait of fundamentalism that emerges from historical experience is glorification of the past and the exhortation of one’s own tradition as the one supremely noble and divinely ordained to rule the universe. This thought or belief becomes constitutive of identity and ought to appear quite unnatural to anybody with an iota of rationality, but has paradoxically held a rather unnatural sway over men. Examples closer home would suffice. Glorification of archaic laws and traditions of a supposedly unadulterated Hindu past is a pretty common way of thinking which wields considerable political clout in today’s India. This is a fact irrespective of the parliamentary fortunes of the BJP as a party. Glorificationism and exceptionalism are inherent traits of any fundamentalist thought and a sense of exclusivism is an infallible corollary. It’s evident from the history of civilizations that exceptionalism has often been countered by a mystical form of religious assimilationism, so well propounded, albeit in Vedantic etymology, in Swami Vivekananda’s speech at the congress of religions in Chicago, but vehement assertion of exclusivist principles and impulsive adherence to a segregated “holy” identity are political expressions we are by no means unfamiliar with.
To illustrate by way of an example, look at what Zionist fundamentalism is up to by beating up a persistent feeling of political insecurity. Isn’t it a shameful fact, politically if not in terms of blinkered diplomacy, that Israel still happens to be one of the top suppliers of military hardware to India being an aggressively nationalistic state with a history of brutal suppression of the Palestinian Arabs which continues unabated well into the 21st century? Yes, the Jews have indeed been a tortured, hassled, heckled, uprooted, brutalized race, but past crimes don’t justify present ones. If the Zionist regime is indeed more sinned against than sinning then that same feeling of being wronged upon that haunts the Muslim psyche today and the attendant feeling of cultural and political marginalization are perfectly intelligible forms of political expression and it is but pretty natural that a political programme of vehement self-assertion would follow from such a feeling. It would also obviously follow from such a feeling, if it is not restricted or reined in by conscious political action, that, say, a nation only exclusively belongs to people who share one religion, one race, one culture, one language instead of many and innocent minorities like Graham Stuart Steins can be wantonly butchered.
Only if a political community with historical consciousness, which is exactly what a political community is unlike a colony of ants, aligns itself with forces within the culture, the psyche, the religion, the social and cultural philosophy of the race that have often militated against unitarism and exceptionalism in the past, can it hope to resist the forces of fundamentalism – external coercion can only contribute to exacerbating the feeling of deprivation and marginalization and the subsequent outburst of violence.
Take for example, though this pertains to a higher aspect of culture, Bertrand Russell’s attitude to the classics and a classical education in his essay ‘The Place of Science in a Liberal Education’. He says the attachment to past and the classics of Greek and Roman literature for European students is the cornerstone of liberal education insofar as it widens humanitarian understanding, but inculcation of values necessary to science – focus on the present, the existing, the immediate being the foremost – is not conducive to an over-attachment to the past, the well-ordered metrical world of the epics. This, coming from an intellectual with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Western mathematics, philosophy and logic, is exceptional if only because the usual image of an academic polyglot is of someone who swears by Dante and Virgil, but then Russell never was an academic polyglot. The reason this illustrates our point is that only someone who could come out, get rid of a way of learning, thinking, and, also obviously a way of life, a whole moral world, could appreciate that the grooming of practical, painstaking, patient values of scientific endeavour is more necessary than a hankering after the cosmic, metaphysical trappings of classical education. In order to arrive at this conclusion the man had to trundle through heaps of classical literature, philosophy, science, and ethical and political thought to arrive at a generalized picture of the practical utility of tradition in education. This self-critical attitude to tradition – comprehension of material assimilated from tradition, self-critical scrutiny, and rational, value-based judgment – is essential to counter its intellectual, moral absolutism, which we know is an inherent trait of fundamentalist ideologies.
Unfortunately, such rationalism is rare in politics. Racial, religious and linguistic polarization is rampant in the most sophisticated of democracies and identity issues, as we all know, can swing electoral fortunes in vibrantly democratic India. God forbid, we shudder to imagine the social possibility of a violent, ultra-nationalistic upsurge in the distant future, however slight the chances for it happening might seem at present, but terrorism and identity politics will contribute to further polarization of political attitudes which is an impediment to democratic functioning and in the absence of self-critical political activity such attitudes and feelings can never be resisted from taking on ugly forms of authoritarian over-assertiveness that could lead to historical excesses some of which still haunt humanity.