Religious nationalism and democratic polity

·期刊原文
Religious nationalism and democratic polity: the Indian case
T.K. Oommen
Sociology of Religion
Vol.55 No.4 (Winter 1994)
pp.455-472
COPYRIGHT Association for the Sociology of Religion 1994

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In this article I propose to argue that religious nationalism and
democratic polity cannot co-exist harmoniously, particularly in a
society characterized by religious diversity. Yet, some religious
collectivities advance the claim that they are "nations." The claim
to nationality/nationhood can succeed only if the religions under
reference press into service a domain assumption, an ideological
tenet and two strategies, all of which are logically linked. The
domain assumption is that there is a conterminality between religion
and territory; the ideological tenet is homogenization of the
society by imposing the life-style associated with the religious
collectivity asserting or aspiring to nationhood -- that is,
establishing hegemony over the dominated religious collectivities.
The strategies pursued to achieve the goal are communalization and
relativization, which are logical corollaries of territorialization
and homogenization, respectively -- all of which are antithetical to
the ethos of democracy. My concern in this article is with the
articulations of religious nationalisms in India. I shall desist
from the temptation of tracing the trajectories of these religious
nationalisms -- Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh -- because they are well
known and well documented. Instead, I will endeavor to show that the
assumptions, ideologies and strategies invoked by these religious
communities to buttress their claims are not sustainable. It may be
noted here in passing that the other varieties of nationalisms in
India based on language and tribe are qualitatively different
because they meet the critical minimum conditions for nation
formation. That is, they are territorially anchored speech
communities. SOME CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATIONS It is necessary to
indicate at this juncture that there are only two basic conditions
for the formation of nations (Oommen 1994): The first condition is a
territory on which the inhabitants have a moral claim either because
it is their original homeland or because they come to identify with
it as their homeland as migrants, colonizers or even conquerors (cf.
Hertz 1945:145-51). Generally one is apt to reject the claims made
by conquerors and colonizers as immoral or illegal if this happened
in the recent past. But one should not fall victim to the prevailing
instant contemporization of social reality. There are numerous
instances in history when in a short span of time -- say, a few
hundred years or so -- colonizing populations have completely
identified themselves with the territory into which they moved as
their homeland. By contrast, even after several centuries of
expatriate existence, persecuted peoples have returned to their
homeland with alacrity. Therefore the point at issue is not the
length of time involved as such, though a critical minimum period is
often necessary for nativization, but the attitude of the colonizing
people to the new territory and the legitimacy they acquire. If a
people do not identify with the land into which they migrate, they
remain an ethnie. The second condition for the formation of a nation
is a common instrument of communication, a language. This language
need not be a highly developed one but good enough to transact the
business of everyday life such as conducting administration,
processing disputes, imparting elementary education, undertaking
worship, expressing affection and love. Admittedly, a nation that
wants to "modernize" itself should either develop its own language
or adopt another developed language to absorb and communicate modern
knowledge. This, however, does not mean that the adopted language
should necessarily displace the "national" one. It is important to
note here that these two objective conditions need not always lead
to the crystallization of nationalism, the subjective consciousness
a people develops about their common history, experience, and
destiny. That is, even as a concrete nation is a prerequisite for
the emergence of nationalism, it is not a sufficient condition.
Often it is a sense of deprivation, objective or subjective, that
provided the prerequisite for the emergence of nationalism. Further,
there is no inherent tendency for a nation to establish its own
state, although this is taken to be axiomatic based on the limited
European experience (Weber 1948). A multinational state is not only
a viable project under certain conditions but often an
imperative.(1) However, there are several instances in history when
a "nation" is sought to be established invoking religion, ignoring
the crucial importance of common language and contiguous territory.
These religious nationalisms are unsustainable in the long run, as
exemplified by the division of Pakistan in 1971. It follows that a
multinational state is plurilingual, and each of the nations
encapsulated within it would have its own specific territory and
language. That is, the constituting elements of a multinational
state are nations without states. The notion of nation-state implies
a situation of controlled and restricted spatial mobility beyond
state boundaries. Nations today are characterized by frayed edges
and loose textures, and they are constantly exposed to alien
influences through communication and migration. This calls for a
link language and not necessarily a "national" language in the case
of multinational states, as there would be several national
languages in such a state. Only those who are in constant
interaction with people, agencies and organizations located outside
their nations need to know the link language, the common instrument
of communication. To insist on a lingua franca for the whole
population of a multinational state is unnecessary and irrational,
usually the starting point for the emergence of nationalism within
state societies (cf. Gellner 1983). TERRITORIALIZATION By
territorialization I am referring to a tendency on the part of a
religious collectivity to claim that a specific territory is its
exclusive homeland. First, it may be noted that such a claim is
logically untenable in the case of proselytizing religions such as
Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. (This is not to deny that these
religions have sacred sites and cities, even city states.) Through
conquest and colonialism these religious collectivities have been
dispersed to vast territories far beyond the lands of their origin.
The project of Christianizing the world and the notion of universal
Islam rebel against territorialization. In fact, the main anchorages
of proselytizing religions are in alien lands. Thus while there are
several Buddhist majority nations in the world, those who profess
Buddhism constitute a mere 0.70 percent of the population in India.
The biggest two enclaves of Islam are South Asia (India, Pakistan
and Bangladesh) and Indonesia. Christianity was appropriated by
Europe and then spread to Latin America, Africa, and Asia. However,
the conterminality between territory and religion, though logically
sustainable in the case of nonproselytizing religions such as
Judaism and Hinduism, is not historically sustainable in these cases
either. As I have suggested earlier, the disjuncture between
territory and culture leads to the ethnification of a people, but
they could and usually do acquire nationhood by eventual
identification with the new homeland, a course open to the Jews too.
The argument that because of discrimination, persecution and
genocide, the Jews could not identify with their new homelands is
not applicable in all situations. For example Jews were not
persecuted or discriminated against in India, yet they left for
Israel in the wake of the Zionist movement. On the other hand, it is
not true that all Jews who returned to Israel were equally
successful in identifying with Israel as their homeland. Racial and
linguistic factors often came in the way to block this claim.
Clearly religion could not provide authentic content to nationhood
even in the case of Jews. Hinduism, as noted above is also a
nonproselytizing religion, and the notion of a Hindus Rashtra
(nation) is very much in vogue today.(2) But a moment's reflection
makes it amply clear that the concept of a Hindu nation is not
sustainable. The contemporary notion of Hinduism is a product of a
long process of encounters between dissenting sects professing
diverse beliefs, and with other religions, particularly Islam and
Christianity. While the British colonial policy did partially
contribute to the emergence of the new Hindu and Muslim identities
in communal-national terms (see Pandey 1990), Miller's conclusion
(1991:169) appears to be cautious and careful: By their education,
legislation, administration, judicial codes and procedures and even
by that apparently simple operation of "objective" classification,
the census, the British unwittingly imposed dualistic "either-or"
oppositions as the natural normative order of thought. In a
multitude of ways, Indians learned that one is either this or that;
that one cannot be both or neither or indifferent. The significance
of identity thus became a new paramount concern. . . an orthodoxy of
being was gradually replacing a heterodoxy of beings. It is
important to insist that the Hindu identity is neither entirely new
nor completely old; it is a conjoint product of both contemporary
construction and the givens of the past. The cultural symbols and
the values that embody them have a recognizable trajectory, some of
which are newly constructed to cope with the challenge posed by the
semitic religions. On the other hand, some of these values and
symbols are activization of old ones, indeed revivals. It is this
past-present linkage that imparts to the new identity its vibrancy
and vitality, on the one hand, and its ambiguity and ambivalence, on
the other. This is evident from the differing boundary demarcations
of Hinduism, which fall on a continuum. That is, there are a series
of Hindu identities and not just one ideal type. Let me list the
three most prominent ones. First, Hindus are simply the original and
obvious inhabitants of Hindustan, that is, India. "Hindu society
living in this country since times immemorial is the national . . .
society here. . . . The same Hindu people have built the
life-values, ideals and culture of this country and, therefore,
their nationhood is self-evident" (cited in Goyal 1979:40). Further,
"!w^e, Hindus, have been in undisputed and undisturbed possession of
this land for over eight or even ten thousand years before the land
was invaded by any foreign race" (Golwalkar 1939:49). Viewed thus,
Hindus are simply a people who occupy their homeland and share a
lifestyle. This all-embracing definition does not have religious
content, Hindus being a people of a designated land, as the Germans
or the Greeks are. Second, Hindus are all those who pursue religions
of Indian origin, including the primal vision. Thus Savarkar
contends: "Hinduism must necessarily mean the religion or the
religions that are peculiar or native to this land. . . . !I^t
should be applied to all the religious beliefs that the different
communities of the Hindu people hold" (1949:104-5). In this
conceptualization, the inextricable linkage between the community of
faith and the country of residence is taken to be the essence of the
Hindu nation. But such a proposition would be rejected by the
"non-Hindu" religions of Indian origin as antidemocratic, and some
have openly challenged it (e.g., Sikhs); hence the following
clarification: Sikhs are Hindus in the sense of our definition of
Hindutva and not in any religious sense whatever. Religiously they
are Sikhs as Jains are Jains, Lingayats are Lingayats, Vaishnavas
are Vaishnavas; but all of us racially and nationally and culturally
are a polity and a people. . . . We are Sikhs and Hindus and
Bharatiyas (Indians). We are all three put together and none
exclusively (Savarkar 1949:125). Clearly this studied ambivalence
and cultivated ambiguity is a political project designed to avoid
possible wedges and potential conflicts between religions of Indian
origin. Be that as it may, this definition of Hindu is both
inclusive (all those who profess religions of Indian origin) and
exclusive (all those who profess religions of "alien" origin). The
third conceptualization of Hindu is more restrictive and
substantially exclusivist. It includes (a) only twice-born Brahmins,
Kshatriyas and Vaishyas or, at best, also ritually clean Shudras,
(b) of Aryabhumi, that is, North India. It excludes the Panchamas
(those of the fifth order) that is, the ex-untouchables currently
counting a hundred million;(3) the Adivasis (the original
inhabitants), presently accounting for fifty million;(4) and
Dravidian Hindus of South India, numbering around two hundred
million.(5) This conceptualization questions the internality of a
substantial proportion of "Hindus"; they are rendered "outsiders"
(Oommen 1990a:43-66). Clearly, such a definition of Hindu falls
short of the requirements of a political project; it divides the
Hindus of India into different "nations." To avoid the extreme
exclusivist orientation of this conceptualization, neo-Hindu
reformers have attempted to accommodate non-Hindus through Shuddhi
(ritual purification). But the innovation is applicable only to (a)
ritually unclean untouchables; (b) the tribal communities, that is,
Vanvasis (forest dwellers) who claim primal vision as their
religion; and (c) those who have been converted into "alien"
religions. For the Dravidian clean caste Hindus, Shuddhi is
irrelevant. Thus once again one encounters the ambiguity of boundary
and ambivalence of attitude in defining Hindu and Hinduism. The
caste and linguistic factors invoked in defining Hinduism erode the
saliency of religion. Hindu is thus defined at least in three
different ways invoking different variables: territory, religion,
and caste or language. All of them pose problems in defining Hindu
as a nation or nationality, and I shall list them presently. But
what is common to all the three conceptualizations is that they deny
equality to one or another segment of the population, the very
antithesis of democracy. It is true that 83 percent of the Indian
population is classified as Hindu in the census.(6) To begin, it may
be noted that the claim that India is the Hindu homeland was made
with reference to undivided India in which the proportion of Hindus
was much less than that in divided India. On the other hand,
undivided India had the largest Muslim congregation in the world.
Even after partition, India remains the second largest Muslim
country in the world. Similarly, 80 percent of the world's
Zoroastrians live in India. Hindu nationalists counter this point by
suggesting that these people are outsiders raises the question as to
the time span required for the nativization of a people in a
country. The Zoroastrians have been in India since the eighth
century. The Muslims came to the Kerala coast as early as the
seventh century. The Syrian Christians of Kerala claim to be
converts since 52 A.D. At any rate, an overwhelming majority of
Muslims and Christians are converts from Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes, the original inhabitants of India. Therefore, if
one takes the criterion of nativity seriously, a majority of the
Muslims and Christians have a better claim to be Indian nationals
because the Aryan Hindus, who claim to be the original inhabitants,
came to India only some 3,500 years ago. The attitude of Hindu
nationalists varies enormously in regard to the different religious
categories, viewed in terms of their sources of presence and modes
of incorporation. All religions of Indian origin are considered as
Hinduism according to one of the conceptualizations as noted above.
However, this expansionist orientation in defining Hindus is
resented by some, the most obvious case being that of the Sikhs in
independent India, as they too claim to be a nation based on the
criterion of religion. The Hindu-Sikh conflict, then, is to be
viewed as the competing claims of two religious nationalisms. Be
that as it may, the Sikh accusation that Hindu nationalists are
antidemocratic is equally applicable to Sikh nationalists, as both
tend to be hegemonic. Generally speaking, Hindu nationalists have an
attitude of indifference and even tolerance toward the "migrant"
religions -- Jews, Zoroastrians and Baha'is -- not simply because
their numbers are very small and hence they do not pose any threat,
but also because they have not claimed any part of the Indian
territory as their homeland and have not indulged in
proselytization.(7) However, the Hindu nationalists have had an
uneasy relation and a hostile attitude toward Christians and
Muslims, although it has varied in intensity. The negative attitude
to Indian Christians was part of the hostility toward British
rulers, as both were co-religionists and hence an instant object of
suspicion. The persisting hostility toward Christians after the exit
of the British can be traced to the continuing missionary activity,
often geared to proselytization. This hostility is moderated by two
factors. First, Indian Christians never defined themselves as a
nationality and have not even demanded any special benefits from the
state on the basis of religion. (However, Christian converts from
the Scheduled Castes and their spokespersons do demand such benefits
now, as conversion has not improved their material conditions.) The
Hindu nationalists' attitude to the Muslims is very negative for
several reasons. First, they number over a hundred million and
constitute perhaps the single most important vote bank against Hindu
nationalism. Second, the presence of two Muslim majority states --
Pakistan and Bangladesh -- as immediate neighbors makes the
relationship between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority
uneasy, ambivalent, and even tricky. Third, Hindu nationalists hold
the Muslims responsible for the vivisection of India, the sacred and
ancient land of the Hindus. Fourth, Indian Muslims have not entirely
given up the claim to nationality even after partition, although
they are territorially dispersed. The effort to consolidate Muslims
as a nationality is pursued by projecting (although wrongly) Urdu as
the exclusive language of Muslims. Finally, the claim by Kashmiri
Muslims that Kashmir is their exclusive homeland, the secessionist
movement in Kashmir believed to be abetted and sustained by
Pakistan, the special privilege conceded to Kashmir under article
370 of the Indian constitution, have all soured the relationship
between Hindu nationalists and Muslim nationalists, eroding the
democratic ethos of the Indian polity. The Hindu nationalist
hostility to other religions is thus not simply based on their
"alien" origin but anchored as well to the proclivity they unfold in
claiming that they too are nations. Thus interreligious hostility in
independent India is most pronounced between Hindus, on the one
hand, and Sikhs and Muslims, on the other, both of whom define
themselves as nations or nationalities. It is important to recall
here that Sikhism is the youngest religion of Indian origin;
further, the definition of Hinduism proffered by the Indian
Constitution, the Hindu Code Bill, and Hindu nationalists includes
Sikhism along with Jainism and Buddhism. Hinduism, although not
proselytizing, is migratory. At least twelve million Hindus live
outside the Indian subcontinent (Jain 1989:299-304), the traditional
sacred land of Hinduism. In some of the countries (e.g., Fiji,
Surinam, Mauritius) they constitute majorities. Would it be correct
to say that those Hindus who have settled outside the Indian
subcontinent cease to be Hindus because they do not live in their
ancestral homeland? The absurdity of the question is patent, but it
emanates from the assumptions made by Hindu nationalists. At any
rate, where does one put agnostics, rationalists and secularists in
the scheme of Hindu Rashtra or, for that matter, in any nation
constructed on the basis of religion? Finally, the Hindu nationalist
claim implies the annexation of Nepal, the Hindu majority neighbor,
as a part of consolidating the Hindu nation! It is also not true
that only Islam and Christianity have colonized new territories and
in that process either annihilated or marginalized native
populations. The dominant religions of Sri Lanka are Buddhism and
Hinduism (both of Indian origin), and the original inhabitants of
the country, the Veddas, constitute just one percent of Sri Lankan
population today. In the process of Aryanizing India, the native
population was stigmatized. Buddhism has been vigorously
proselytizing, and Hinduism acutely assimilative. Therefore,
religion-territory conterminality is not axiomatic even in the case
of religions of Indian origin. The Hindus belong to a multiplicity
of speech communities; that is, there are several Hindu nations. To
grapple with this problem, Hindu nationalists project Sanskrit as
the common ancient language of all Hindus and Hindi written in
Devnagri script as the national language of India. But they
encounter several difficulties and severe resistance in this context
(Oommen 1990a:43-66). First, Sanskrit is not a living language and
is today spoken only by a handful of people. Second, it is not true
that Sanskrit is the exclusive heritage of Hindus; it is a common
Indian heritage cutting across religious categories. While Sanskrit
was an ancient and highly developed language of ancient India, so
were Pali and Tamil. (Of these three languages only Tamil is a
living vibrant language.) Given the above, Sanskrit is at best
identified with Aryan Hinduism, Pali with Buddhism, and Tamil with
Dravidian Hinduism. Consequently, Sanskrit is not even the common
heritage of all Hindus. Third, Hindi, even as it is expansively
defined to include several languages and dialects, is spoken by only
38 percent of the Indian population. Fourth, several of the
Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Bengali, Marathi) and all the major
Dravidian languages are equally if not more developed as compared
with Hindi; and these non-Hindi speech communities do not accept
Hindi as the exclusive "national" language, relegating their own
mother tongues to the background. Finally, there are a dozen highly
developed languages in India with ten million or more speakers; in
fact, some of them have as many as fifty million speakers. There is
no possibility of these nations abandoning their languages in favor
of Hindi just to facilitate establishing a Hindu nation. The
fallacious claim about religion-territory conterminality is also
implied in the claims advanced by Muslims and Sikhs that they are
nations. As hinted above, the alien migrant element in the Muslim
population of South Asia is negligible, and the overwhelming
majority of Muslims are converts from local castes and tribes.
Therefore, the claims of Muslims that particular areas of the Indian
subcontinent are their homeland is legitimate and authentic because
they have a moral claim on these territories, although not as
Muslims. If the Muslims were not natives and mere migrants eager to
return to their homeland (as the Jews did in the wake of the Zionist
movement), they would not have succeeded in staking their claim. But
there are several difficulties in advancing the claim that Muslims
qua Muslims constitute a nation. First, none of the areas claimed by
the Muslims as their homeland (as in the case of other religious
groups) was populated exclusively by them even after substantial
transfer d Hindu and Sikh populations from these areas. Therefore,
the claim that these areas were or are Muslim homelands is not
tenable -- not because Islam is an "alien" religion, but because
nativity and nationhood cannot be defined in terms of religious
faiths and affiliations. The so-called Muslim homeland is as much
the homeland of non-Muslims of that region. Second, even if a
section of the Muslims are migrants to India, to the extent that (a)
the migration occurred several centuries ago and since (b) they
identify with the territory presently inhabited by them as their
homeland, the claim ought to be accepted as legitimate. Because
there are several alien elements among Hindus -- Kashmiri Pandits,
Maghi Brahmins, Rajputs to mention but a few -- whose nativity is
not questioned by Hindu nationalists, this is no concession to the
alien elements in the Muslim population. Third, Pakistan, which
emerged in 1947, although populated predominantly by Muslims, could
not be sustained as one "nation" for long because of the absence of
geographical contiguity and linguistic uniformity. In fact, Islam
became an irrelevant variable in maintaining the unity of Muslim
Pakistan, leading to its split mainly based on territory and
language. Fourth, the Hindi-speaking Muslims, popularly referred to
as Bihari Muslims, instantly became alien elements in Bangladesh,
the state of the Bengali-speaking Muslims. Even the Hindi/Urdu
speaking Muslims who migrated to Pakistan from India are not
accepted as natives and remain Mohajirins, the stigmatized
outsiders. Thus Muslim nationalists deny nativity even to
co-religionists who are migrants from outside. This clearly points
to the antidemocratic tenor of religious nationalism. Fifth, the
predominantly Muslim but multilingual Pakistan continues to have
serious tensions and conflicts among its different linguistic groups
-- Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis, and so on -- that is, the nations
that constitute the state of Pakistan. Each of these collectivities
defines its respective linguistic region as its homeland. Thus it is
clear that homeland can be anchored only to speech communities and
not to faith communities. Once India was partitioned, no territory
within India could be claimed as a Muslim homeland, save the Kashmir
valley. However, this claim is ambivalent for two reasons. First,
Kashmir itself is partitioned and apportioned between India and
Pakistan for geopolitical reasons. Second, there are others in
Kashmir (e.g., Kashmiri Pandits) who stake their claim with equal
intensity and authenticity that Kashmir is their homeland too. In
such a situation the only route available to those who falsely claim
that the Kashmir valley is an exclusive Muslim homeland is to
intimidate, terrorize, and flush out those who make counterclaims.
In the current exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir what one
witnesses is the inevitable consequence of the perverse notion that
there exists conterminality between territory and religion, that is,
territorialization of religion. Admittedly, territorialization of
religion leads to ethnification of minority or weak nations. After
partition, the Muslims of India did not have a decisive majority in
any part of India except in the Kashmir valley and the Laccadives
and Minicoy Islands. But Muslims constituted about 12 percent of
India's population, amounting to around seventy million people in
the 1950s. That is, while their absolute number was substantial,
they were thinly dispersed all over the country. This situation was
susceptible to their getting assimilated within the linguistic
regions (nations) they inhabit. This necessitated the invention and
maintenance of new symbols to preserve their socioreligious
identity. Urdu, written in Persian-Arabic script, is the most
important symbol the Muslims invoke to highlight their cultural
specificity and nationality within India. But the project remains
ineffective in investing nationhood on Muslims on an all-India basis
because the principle of geographical contiguity is imperiled. The
language of the majority of Muslims in India is not Urdu; it is only
in two provinces -- Uttar Pradesh and Bihar -- that one finds
Muslims who are also Urdu speakers. These two states account for
only one-third of the Muslim population and one-half of the Urdu
speakers in India. In Jammu and Kashmir, though the official
language is Urdu, the Urdu speakers of the state count a meager 0.27
percent. On the other hand, the majority of the Urdu speakers are
from states where the proportion of Muslims is very low. This
disjuncture between Urdu and Islam has further muted the possibility
of Urdu nationalism emerging as an authentic force in independent
India (cf. Brass 1974). The Sikh claim to nationhood, too, assumes
religion-territory conterminality. But the Punjab, claimed to be the
Sikh homeland, was a Muslim-majority province before India's
partition, with 51 percent Muslims in 1921. By 1961, although the
Muslim population was reduced to a mere two percent in the Indian
Punjab (both because of the re-allocation of territory and
migration), the Sikhs constituted only 33 percent, and the Hindus
were still in majority with 64 percent. As religion was not accepted
as the basis of constituting politico-administrative units in
independent India, the only hope was to carve out a Sikh majority
province by invoking language as the criterion. The Sikh leadership
therefore staked their claim for a separate province based on
Punjabi language. A separate Punjabi-speaking state was formed in
1966 in which the Sikhs constituted only a thin majority of 53
percent. Thus, in spite of two successive partitions, the Punjab
still cannot be viewed as the exclusive homeland of Sikhs; they do
not constitute a decisive demographic majority, and the remaining 47
percent of non-Sikh population, too, considers Punjab as its
homeland. But, a fatal error by Punjabi Hindus in disclaiming their
real mothertongue -- namely, Punjabi -- and on falsely insisting
that Hindi is their mothertongue provided a thin veneer of
legitimacy to the crystallization of the idea that the Punjab is the
Sikh homeland (see Nayyar 1966). There is another reason why the
Sikh claim to the Punjab as their homeland is untenable. Although 78
percent of the Sikhs of India live in Punjab, the remaining 22
percent are dispersed all over India. This demographic dispersal of
Sikhs may be traced to two factors. First, in the wake of partition
a substantial proportion of the Sikhs who migrated to India settled
outside the Punjab. Second, the Sikhs are an enterprising migratory
community in search of economic opportunities. The logical corollary
of insisting that Punjab is the exclusive homeland of the Sikhs is
to render instantly the Sikhs outside Punjab and the non-Sikhs
inside Punjab aliens, outsiders, and refugees. The point I want to
make is this: claims to nationhood by a people are based on their
moral claim on a specific territory as their homeland. Such a claim
cannot be sustained by a religious collectivity because of the
disjuncture between religion and territory. Pursuantly, the claim to
nationhood by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs based on the assumption and
argument that the whole of India or specific parts of India
constitute their exclusive homeland is untenable. Viewed thus,
religious nationalities are not simply imagined communities (cf.
Anderson 1983) but also authoritarian collectivities.
COMMUNALIZATION Once the untenable assumption that a religious
collectivity is a nation is accepted, an appropriate strategy,
namely, communalization of politics, has to be invoked. Communalism
has a positive as well as a negative referent. In South Asia,
communalism is invariably viewed as a negative force as it is
juxtaposed against nationalism; it may be defined as the tendency on
the part of a religious collectivity to claim that it is a political
community (Dumout 1970). It is necessary and useful to distinguish
between at least three different variants of communalism as a
political force as they fall into a hierarchy of threat to the state
(Oommen 1990a: 112-23). First, a religious community defines itself
as an autonomous political community, that is, an entity entitled to
have its own state. This implies secession from the state to which
it is currently attached and hence may be designated as secessionist
communalism. The Muslim demand for Pakistan and the Sikh demand for
Khalistan are examples of this variety of communalism. The second
variant of communalism is the proclivity on the part of the
religious collectivity to define itself as a nation, that is, as a
cultural entity with a territorial base. This is often articulated
in the argument that in order to maintain its cultural specificity
the nation should have a separate politico-administrative
arrangement, which could be a district or a province within the
federal polity.(8) The demand for a separate Punjabi Suba, although
couched in linguistic terms, was essentially a demand for a separate
Sikh province within India. To the extent that the demand is geared
to preserve the cultural specificity of a religious collectivity and
a separate province is viewed as a tool to achieve that end, this
type of communalism may be designated as separatist communalism. The
third variant is the demand by a religious collectivity to be
recognized as a specific entity suffering from material
deprivations, the eradication of which could be met through measures
such as political representation, employment quotas, distribution of
land, industrial licenses, and so on. In this context, mobilization
of the religious collectivity is attempted as an interest group
geared to the welfare of its members. Therefore, this variety of
communalism may be labeled welfarist communalism. I am persuaded to
distinguish between these three types of communalisms because their
implications vary vastly for the state, the nation, and the
religious community. The three types of communalism can be organized
on a continuum of hierarchy of threat to the state, and consequently
state responses differ radically in each case (Oommen
1990b:183-209). Generally speaking, the state would oppose tooth and
nail secessionist communalism and would spare no effort to liquidate
the movement. This can be easily discerned in the response of the
Indian state and Hindu nationalists to secessionist movements in the
Punjab and in Kashmir. The opposition to separatist communalism is
less virulent. If the mobilization by the concerned religious
community is massive and visible and if the countermobilization by
the opposing community is weak, the state in all probability would
concede the demand. The formation of the Punjabi Suba exemplifies
this pattern of response. Finally, governments of multireligious
democratic societies are compelled to allow religious collectivities
to function as interest groups and to concede the demands they make.
This response pattern is called for either because the demands made
are perceived as legitimate or because the political clout of the
community as a vote bank is substantial. The state response to the
demands made by religious minorities in the context of the policy of
protective discrimination (e.g., bringing the neo-Buddhists under
the purview of the reservation policy), providing the requisite
recognition to languages claimed by religious minorities as a part
of their cultural heritage (e.g., the recognition given to Urdu), or
"protecting" the minorities from "intimidations" of the state legal
system (nonimplementation of a uniform civil code) are examples of
the Indian state recognizing religious collectivities as
"legitimate" interest groups. Of the three communalisms listed above
two imply religion-territory association. Thus, secessionist
communalism is geared to the establishment of an exclusive state for
the religious collectivity, which implies its legal claim over its
presumed homeland. In the case of separatist communalism, the claim
over the homeland by the religious collectivity is essentially moral
in that the "nation" is to function within the territorial
boundaries of the multinational state of which it is a part.
However, a religious community operates merely as an interest group
when it recognizes the impossibility of carving out a separate state
or nation for itself because it cannot stake and sustain any legal
or moral claim on a contiguous territory. Generally speaking the
interest group orientation and demographic dispersal of a religious
group within the territory controlled by the state coincide. The
point to be noted is that the nature and content of communalism is
inextricably bound up with the religious collectivity's territorial
base and spread, which in turn has profound implications for the
polity. If secessionist communalism invariably invites state
repression, welfarist communalism usually augments democratic
culture. Separatist communalism may graduate into secessionist or
may be scaled down into welfarist depending upon the manner in which
the demands are framed and articulated, and on the state response to
them. That is, the nature of the state -- democratic or
authoritarian -- and the style of framing and pursuing the demands
by the mobilized collectivities will critically mold the process.
HOMOGENIZATION The claim to nationhood or nationality by a religious
collectivity willy nilly implies the process of cultural
homogenization, that is, evolving and imposing a common life-style.
In independent India this has been articulated in different contexts
and forms. I shall pursue the present discussion with special
reference to Hindus and Sikhs, and this for two reasons. First, the
claim to nationhood by these religious collectivities has not yet
been realized, unlike the case of the Muslims in the Indian
subcontinent. Second, the Hindus and Sikhs were, and to a certain
extent even today are, sharing a common life-style; yet every effort
is made to overemphasize their specificities, while ignoring the
commonalities. The Hindu advocacy of homogenization has been
articulated in different ways. If in the 1960s and the 1970s the
preferred phrase was "Indianization," now it is "Hindutva." Hindu
nationalists insist that the advocacy is disassociated from and
devoid of any narrow religious context and content but refers to a
lifestyle common to the people of India as a whole; hence, a Hindu
is one who follows this life-style. If life-style includes matters
of dress, food, worship styles, art forms, marriage and family
patterns, there is very little common even to the Hindus of
different regional-linguistic areas, not to speak of the different
religious communities of India. This, however, is not to deny that
there exists a civilizational unity encompassing the multiplicity of
the collectivities inhabiting India, but this envelops the people of
South Asia as a whole and is not confined to the Indian
state-society. Perhaps an example will lend clarity to the point I
am making. Brahmins constitute the only pan-Indian Varna (Caste),
and even they differ vastly in, say, food habits. Thus if the
majority of Brahmins traditionally were vegetarians, the Bengali
Brahmin was a fish-eater and the Kashmiri Pandit a meat-eater. That
is, vegetarianism is not common to all Hindus, not even to Brahmins.
But beef is a taboo for believing Hindus, and they do not consume
it. (The fact that beef was not a taboo in ancient India and it
constituted a part of the regular diet is not relevant here.)
Against this background it is important to recall that there have
been several mobilizations against cow slaughter in "secular"
independent India, emphasizing the fact that the cow is a sacred
animal for Hindus. But beef is not taboo for Muslims and Christians
who together constitute a staggering one hundred and twenty million
people in India. Thus, it is not only the case that a common
life-style for the entire population of India is advocated, but
through that advocacy only Hindu beliefs and sentiments are sought
to be preserved and imposed on others, which undermines India's
cultural diversity and democratic possibilities. There is another
context in which the advocacy of homogenization surfaces in India,
namely, that of a common civil code. It should be noted here that a
common civil code for Indian citizens is a constitutional promise,
and liberals, secularists, rationalists, atheists, and so on, also
support its implementation. But when a uniform civil code is
advocated by Hindu nationalists the conservative elements among the
religious minorities perceive in that a threat to preserving their
cultural identity. It is useful to remind ourselves that the Hindu
conservatives resisted tooth and nail the introduction and
implementation of the Hindu Code Bill because they feared that the
Bill would erode the specific cultural identity of the Hindu
community (Smith 1963). On the other hand, the fact that a commonly
applicable Hindu Code Bill was required to be formulated points to
the very diversity of Hinduism as it existed in different regions
and among various communities of India. Religious diversity begets
legal pluralism. In those state-societies which are unireligious and
unidenominational, it is relatively easier to implement a uniform
civil code. The resistance to religious reforms in such societies
comes from the conservatives of the same religious collectivity.
Furthermore, there is a qualitative difference in the conflicts
between "conservatives" and "reformers" drawn from the same
religious community and the confrontations between people of two
different religious collectivities, whatever may be the content of
the contentious issue. Herein lies the problematic of cultural
homogenization being advocated by the Hindu nationalists through the
implementation of a uniform civil code in a multireligious society
like India. There is another aspect to the implementation of a
uniform civil code by the state in a multireligious society, which
is that it endorses, perhaps unwittingly, the definition of the
state as an entity commanding terminal loyalty from its citizens, a
definition in tune with the reality of unireligious states. Insofar
as all citizens of a state belonged to the same religious
collectivity such a formulation did not pose much of a problem. In
western nation-states, to the extent that there is an agreed
division of labor between the state and the church, the notion of
terminal loyalty is understood as political loyalty. For example, in
matters religious, Catholics who are distributed into numerous
state-societies may have their terminal loyalty to the Roman
Catholic church and its ecclesiastical order headed by the Pope and
not to the secular authority of the state of which they are
citizens. To those religious communities whose co-religionists are
distributed across different state-societies and who have a common
religious authority, the idea of terminal loyalty to the state,
particularly when the state is not governed by their co-religionists
according to the injunctions of the religious texts, would be
anathema. Herein lies the source of rupture in the Hindu
nationalist's advocacy of a uniform civil code and its resistance by
conservative elements, particularly among Muslims and Christians.
The state in independent India has not yet mustered sufficient
courage to introduce the constitutionally promised Uniform Civil
Code, but it did implement the Hindu Code Bill in spite of
resistance from conservative Hindu elements. This reinforces the
point I made above, namely, that there is a qualitative difference
between the resistance encountered from conservative co-religionists
and that emanating from those of other religious faiths. It is
important to note here that this differential orientation of the
state to the religious collectivities does adversely affect the
democratic milieu. The Hindu nationalist project of homogenization
is caught in a trap of Hinduism's internal contradiction because
homogenization implies not only uniformity but also equality. The
Hindutva version of homogeneity, however, while appealing to the
non-Hindu minorities to shed their cultural identity, assimilate
with the mainstream and become full-fledged Indians, is either
reluctant or else ambivalent, to grapple with the institutionalized
inequality within the Hindu social system as embodied in the
institution of caste. Indeed, several strategies are invoked to
manage this tension and camouflage this contradiction: first,
denying that caste system and particularly untouchability are parts
of traditional Hinduism and insisting that these are latterday
accretions resulting from praxiological aberrations rather than
imperfect doctrines; second, conceding the need to scissor away
these negative accretions through gradual piecemeal reformism;
third, organizing reformist collective actions and mobilizations
(e.g., intercaste dining, collective worship) to fraternalize the
deprived and sap them of their protest orientation. However, given
the fact that the constituency of the Hindutva ideology is largely
confined to the twice-born Hindus of the Hindi belt, it has failed
to gain the confidence of the Dravidian Hindus, the Other Backward
Classes, the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, together
constituting the majority of the Indian population. Thus the Hindu
project of homogenization is bound to remain limited in its scope
unless it frontally grapples with the issue of institutionalized
inequality within Hinduism. The Sikh project of cultural
homogenization is more successful because, (a) the Sikhs are a
minority, (b) they are unilingual, and (c) Sikhism is more
egalitarian in its value orientation. Yet, the attempt at
homogenization faces, and is likely to face, several obstacles.
First, the dominant agent of Sikh nationalism is the Jat peasantry
anchored in rural areas. In the event of Sikh religious nationalism
succeeding in wresting a state for itself, the "protection" now
available particularly to the Mazbhi (Scheduled Caste) and the
Nirankari (a sect not recognized by the Sikh ecclesiastical
authority) Sikhs, from the Indian state as well as from the
all-India political parties will disappear. Understandably, the Sikh
segments that are likely to perceive the emergence of a Sikh state
as a sure invitation to Jat domination are likely to put obstacles
in the process of homogenization. Second, the Sikh project of
homogenization would inevitably mean the current freedom available
to Sahajdharis (shaven ones) will diminish. Not only will the
insistence on being Keshdharis (unshorn ones) intensify, but in all
probability brute force would be pressed into service to transform
the "deviants" into conformists. In fact, available evidence
suggests that even Keshdharis will be forced to follow a more
rigorous and puritan life-style (e.g., abjuring smoking).
Inevitably, organized resistance to such codes of conduct would
eventually crystallize when the insistence on homogenization becomes
more intense and authoritarian. Third, the urban, secular,
middle-class professionals, bureaucrats, and intellectuals (both
Keshdharis and Sahajdharis) are likely to be indifferent, if not
hostile, to the efforts to introduce a more uniform life-style.
Pushed to the wall they may even articulate their opposition. These
spokes in the wheel of homogenization may abort the fruition of Sikh
religious nationalism. Apart from the specific factors listed above
to demonstrate the untenability of homogenization pursued by the
Hindu and Sikh nationalists, there are several general reasons why
homogenization cannot be pursued particularly in a democratic and
culturally plural society. I shall list only three of them (Oommen
1992:154). First, to homogenize invariably means to establish the
hegemony of the dominant collectivity, with the attendant
annihilation of the weak and minority collectivities or at best
their assimilation into an artificially contrived cultural
mainstream, leading to the eclipse of their identity. Second, most
state-societies, as they are constituted, draw their population from
diverse sources. Therefore, assimilation and annihilation endanger
the principle of diversity and block the task of developing
pluralism and democracy. Third, contemporary societies are
constantly exposed to alien influences and hence characterized by
frayed edges and loose textures. The ongoing process of
globalization is bound to intensify this trend. In such a situation
the only viable option is to celebrate diversity, foster pluralism,
nurture intergroup equality, and reinforce democratic trends.
RELATIVIZATION It is fairly clear by now that cultural relativism is
a necessary corollary of homogenization. Relativization is the
tendency to rehabilitate tradition in its totality in terms of
original vision and purity. It often provides justification to all
kinds of inhuman and disparaging practices (see Redfield 1957), be
it sati (the practice of the Hindu wife committing suicide by
jumping into the funeral pyre of her husband), untouchability,
maintenance of perticular diets, dress patterns, and so on, all of
which are justified in the name of religion. Thus, cultural
relativism in the context of religion has two dimensions. First, it
advocates values and practices that are patently inhuman and
irrational in the contemporary context. Second, it insists on
practices that are incongruous and anomalous in modern society,
which practices are justified by invoking religious texts formulated
and injunctions adumbrated in an entirely different context. This is
often referred to as religious "fundamentalism," which may be
defined as the tendency to adhere to the text ignoring the context.
The Hindu conservative elements often justify and legitimize
practices such as sati and untouchability in the name of tradition
and values of pristine Hinduism. The Sikh adherence to the keeping
of the five Ks -- Kesh (unshorn hair and beard), Kanga (comb), Kachh
(knee-length pair of breeches), Karah (steel bracelet), and Kirpan
(sword) -- also smacks of religious relativism. Admittedly,
religious relativism fosters inequality and advocates anachronistic
life-styles. The ideology of homogenization, then, is not only
geared to the standardization of values, norms and practices, but it
also implies (a) the revival of obsolescent traditional values,
norms and practices that are not relevant to the present, and (b)
the imposition of those values on others, both "deviant"
co-religionists and religious minorities. This is so because the
reference point of homogenization advocated by religious
nationalists invariably relates to the original vision and practices
of their rounding fathers, ignoring the context of the latter's
advocacy. That is, religious nationalisms carry with them the
inevitable tendency of revivalism. Further, religious nationalists
endeavor to create a societal ethos buttressed by the values of the
dominant religion within the state-society. Neither Hindu nor Sikh
nationalism is an exception to this inherent tendency; therefore
neither is likely to survive in a modernizing world, nor are other
religious nationalisms. CONCLUSION The gist of my argument is that
religious nationalism as a project is bound to fail because its
domain assumptions -- namely, that there is conterminality between
religion and territory and that a religious collectivity is a
political community -- are wrong and empirically unsustainable. The
process of cultural homogenization is a prerequisite to encapsulate
and contain all the religious groups within the ken of religious
nationalism. This in practice means imposing the life-style of the
majority over the minority religious groups. Further, given the fact
that the frame of reference of religious nationalisms is invariably
anchored to what is believed to be the original vision of the
founding fathers, it necessarily prompts relativism, that is,
reviving and preserving the traditional beliefs and rituals even as
they are embedded in unjust and inhuman values. Admittedly,
religious nationalism carries with it the seeds of religious
fundamentalism. For these reasons religious nationalism is not
sustainable in a fast globalizing world in which democracy has
emerged as a universally accepted and acclaimed value. 1 About 27
percent of the member-states of the United Nations have a population
of one million or less, and 54 percent have five million or less.
Many of these entities are not economically viable and can sustain
themselves only as client-states. The way out seems to be to form
multinational states. 2 Notwithstanding the well-known fact that the
terms Hindus and Hinduism are appellations invented by conquering or
colonizing outsiders to refer to the inhabitants of the then India,
today these are terms that connote a particular religious
collectivity and a corpus of belief system and ritual practices
specific to them. It could be argued, with some justification, that
notions such as religious collectivity, belief system, and so on,
are scarcely applicable to Hindus and Hinduism. Extrapolating the
Thomas theorem, I suggest that if the people who define themselves
as Hindus assert that Hinduism is their religion their perception
should be endorsed as authentic. At any rate, it is those who assert
that Hinduism is a religion who have emerged as its accredited
spokespersons. 3 According to the Hindu doctrine of creation,
Brahmins emerged from the mouth of the creator, Kshatriyas from the
hands, Vaishyas from the thighs, and Shudras from the feet. This
chaturvarna (four color) scheme does not even account for the
untouchables, belonging to the fifth varna. 4 The four-hundred or so
tribal communities of India claim that they are the original
inhabitants (Adivasis) of the land. This claim is not accepted by
Hindu nationalists, who insist that Aryan Hindus were the original
settlers and consequently label the tribal communities as
forest-dwellers (Vanvasis). 5 The population of India speaks
languages belonging to four families: Indo-Aryan (73%), Dravidian
(25%), Austro-Asiatic (1.5%), and Tibeto-Chinese (0.5%). Dravidian
languages are spoken mainly in the four South Indian states: Kerala
(Malayalam), Karnataka (Kannada), Tamil Nadu (Tamil), and Andhra
Pradesh (Telugu). The Dravidian movement, which opposed Aryan
domination, considers Dravidian Hinduism distinct from Aryan
Hinduism. 6 This figure is problematic because the Indian census
automatically counts all those who do not belong to one of the world
religions as Hindu. In the British Indian census there was a
religious category variously designated as "animist," "tribal"
"primitive," etc., which counted two to three percent of the
population, which was about twenty-five million people in those
days. This category is absorbed under the rubric of Hinduism from
the 1951 census onward. 7 It may, however, be noted that the Baha'is
did pursue the project of proselytization in the 1960s in the region
of Malwa in central India. Consequently, their number increased from
a small figure in the 1950s to 400,000 (see Garlington 1977). 8 Thus
Kushwant Singh writes: "The only chance of survival of the Sikhs as
a separate community is to create a state in which they form a
compact group, where the teaching of gurumukhi and the Sikh religion
is compulsory where there is an atmosphere of respect for the
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