HVK Archives: Gandhian approach to religion & modernity
Gandhian approach to religion & modernity - The Times of India
Madhuri Santanam Sondhi
()
November 24, 1998
Title: Gandhian approach to religion & modernity
Author: Madhuri Santanam Sondhi
Publication: The Times of India
Date: November 24, 1998
The Indian debate on secularism moves between several
interpretations: (1) the original western sense ,is separation
of state and religion; (2) the impartiality of state arbitration
between competing religions; (3) a belief system opposed to
religion, and (4) equal recognition to all religions. The
second and fourth definitions are unique to India's socio-
historical context.
When India's westernised elites adopted secularism, they both
absorbed the western definition and adapted it to suit the post-
partition communal situation. Thus while the state was to be
secular in maintaining the non-religious character of the public
sphere, secularism also meant the fair, impartial treatment of
all religions in their interactions between themselves and with
the state. However, secularism never penetrated deep into
Indian society. This resistance or inertia has constantly
bedevilled (but not totally stymied) the functioning of all arms
of government, legislature, administration, and most
dramatically, the judiciary.
Humane reforms
The second aspect of official Indian secularism concerned the
minorities. While in theory they were to be reassured against
persecution in a Hindu majority state, in practice the system
seemed to tilt towards them. The right to proselytisation, for
example, favours the expansion of non-Hindu communities at the
expense of the Hindu: with no legal protection the latter takes
recourse to political protest (sometimes to violence) the most
spectacular recent example being the response to the
Meenakshipuram conversions. Again, secular civil law or the
Hindu civil code 'deprives' Hindus of their social
particularities, while permitting others to live according to
their pre-modern traditions. Minority communities have the
right to impart religious instruction in their educational
institutions while the majority attend state-assisted and state-
controlled institutions which bar religious instruction.
Reaction to these systemic distortion produced its backlash in
the form of rejection of official secularism and its replacement
by a new definition of secularism or genuine religious
pluralism. This definition, though increasingly accepted in
public discourse despite robust opposition from the secular
orthodoxy, has not officially supplanted earlier views.
I have argued in my book Modernity, Morality and the Mahatma,
that it might be an exciting thought experiment to adopt the
viewpoint of Mahatma Gandhi, interlocutor of modernity, as a
point of departure for rethinking our received paradigms.
Gandhi's civilisational overview derived from the various
streams of the Indian socio-philosophical tradition. This
inheritance philosophically stresses the oneness and commonality
of individuals, and is socially organised in groups - of
families, castes, communities or whatever. Gandhi wanted to pull
Indian society up by its own bootstraps, not yank it out of its
mould with alien social and economic models. Neither a strict
traditionalist, nor a radical moderniser, he worked for
equitable and humane reforms which would not disrupt and rupture
the organic functioning of Indian society. Hence his attention
to the socio-economic and political problems of inequality,
particularly of women, harijans, and those who in the
infelicitous language of modern bureaucratese are labelled the
'weaker sections of society'.
Gandhi responded positively to the modern valuation of
individuality, but critiqued western civilisation for abandoning
the moral dimension. The capacity to respond to moral truth was
important for Gandhi, for truth in so far as it relates to the
good embraces morals, is integral to human nature. As Gandhi saw
it, Indian society has cultivated individual and social dharma
but needs to extend this moral sense to the public sphere where
tradition points only to realpolitik. He emphasised the
importance of virtue in both private and public life and this
may well be the new socio-political goal to found a healthy
society in the coming era.
Moral Features
Our founding fathers, fascinated by western political, social
and economic models, and the dazzle of democracy, egalitarianism
and freedom, presumed these could be added on to the attractive
human and moral features of Indian society. That the Indian
socio-philosophical framework might get seriously distorted
through such a wide range of alien concepts and practices was
not taken into account: they overlooked the need for
strengthening the peacemaking and moral dispositions which act
as social cement. In India such qualities derive from the
plethora of her own religions and customs, just as the
communitarian sense of the western world is not the product of
its political institutions, but rooted in its religious
inheritance. As Gandhi said, we need to keep our windows open to
winds from other climes and cultures but not be swept off our
feet - which is to say we need be hidebound neither by blind
tradition nor blind modernity.
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