Religion and Politics of South Asia: a bibliography
Films:
Father, Son and Holy War (1994, 120 minutes in two parts, color)
Anand Patwardhan
This is perhaps the most ambitious film by India’s finest documentary film maker, Anand Patwardhan. The two part film, which was completed in the aftermath of the destruction of Babri Masjid (1992) and Bombay riots (1992-3), addresses the social origins of political violence. In particular, Patwardhan is interested in exploring the psychology of violence and the desire to eliminate the other as a product of the construction of vernacular masculinity. The first part of the film entitled, Trial by fire, considers the communal fires that have consumed India recently. The second part, Hero Pharmacy, addresses the question of masculinity in relation to stereotypes of Hindu femininity and the consequent quest by aggressive and violent rioting in present day India.
Accompanying article: Vinay Lal, Anand Patwardhan
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/Cinema/AnandP.html
Vinay Lal offers a critical appreciation of Anand Patwardhan’s life and works.
Bombay (1995, 130 minutes, Color)
Mani Ratnam
A feature film directed by Mani Ratnam, on the life of an inter-religious couple in the backdrop of Bombay riots of 1992-3. A Hindu journalist, Shekhar, falls in love with a Muslim college Student, Saira Banu, from his own village; faced with opposition from their families, they elope and live in Bombay where Shekhar works as a journalist. In the new metropolitan setting and the anonymity it affords, Shekar and Saira seek to make a new life for themselves away from old prejudices. However, as the old wounds heal and the families reconcile, a new context of hatred that has taken over the metropolis poses fresh challenges to this couple and their twin sons. Mani Ratnam, India’s foremost film maker, offers a nationalist solution, by suggesting an Indian identity as superior to religious and ethnic identities. While the politics of the film is quite simplistic, this visually stunning film is a poignant love story.
Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2001, Color)
Aparna Sen
Director, writer Aparna Sen continues to explore the theme of inter-religious relationships. A Muslim man and a Brahmin woman, introduced by common friends, travel together to Calcutta in a fateful cross-country bus trip. Filled with singing teenagers, doddering old people, card-playing drunkards, freshly-married love birds and a crying baby all belonging to different religions and sects, the bus suggests a mini-India. Just as the reality within the bus is about to overwhelm everyone, unforeseen violence caused by avenging Hindus prevents the bus from going further. Sen deploys the reactions of each character to the violence unfolding around them as a mirror that reflects the clashing attitudes Indians hold toward one another. Described as cruelly disturbing and fascinatingly lyrical by a reviewer, the film portrays the growing intimacy between this unlikely traveling companions, drawn to each other under the stressful conditions and interrupted by the reality that her husband is waiting in Calcutta. Faced with a Hindu mob, the Brahmin woman proclaims that the Muslim man to be her Brahmin husband, Mr. Iyer to save him from being lynched. Aparna Sen said that the movie was about what happens when two people are thrown together in unforeseen circumstances, amidst something as destructive as a riot.
Books:
Van der Veer, Peter. 1994. Religious Nationalism.Berkeley: University of California Press.
This comprehensive and broadly interpretive work explores the relation of religion and politics in India as well as the nature of the conflict between religious communities in the present, primarily focusing on the Ayodhya controversy. Van der veer critiques the claims of nationalist historians that religious nationalism is a product of India’s colonial past; he emphasizes the role of religious organization and the role of ritual discourse and practice in the making of religious identity as well as nationalism.
Hansen, Thomas Blom. 1999. The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hansen traces the processes that moved Hindu nationalism from the periphery of Indian society to its center. He argues that Hindu nationalism has emerged in the realm of public culture, wherein the constituent elements of the society represent and recognize themselves through political discourse and cultural expressions. He analyses this process in the context of broader democratization of politics in India, especially the intensification of political mobilization among lower castes. While Hindu nationalists view the secular Indian state as a political fiction, Hansen argues that the notion of a single Hindu culture that Hindu nationalists promote is the real fiction at work.
Kishwar, Madhu. 1998. Religion at the Service of the Nationalism and other Essays. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
The essays in this collection were written for a general readership and published in Manushi. Activist, scholar Madhu Kishwar combines a passion for issues with scholarship and deep understanding of the problems of everyday life in modern South Asia. She is belongs to a small but influential group of thinkers, who point
out the limited appeal of secularism in the South Asian context and the need
to engage with Indian pluralist traditions. However, unlike other scholars she proposes pragmatic solutions to issues such as uniform civil code and the rationalization of Muslim personal law, especially those that affect women. Madhu Kishwar also addresses the question of ethnic, religious violence and its victims in Kashmir, Punjab and elsewhere. The thrust of her argument has been to focus more on India’s own pluralist traditions to improve community relations and not depend exclusively on state intervention.
Kesavan, Mukul. 2001. Secular Common Sense, New Delhi: Penguin Books
This small tract written for the general reader offers a brief history of the idea of the secular in the South Asian context. In contrast to Madhu Kishwar, Kesavan, a democrat and a modernist, suggests that secular common sense is a political virtue for the Republic. Kesavan identifies two contexts out of which secular common arose: first, the compulsions of forging a multi-religious state and secondly, after 1947, the trauma of partition related violence and hatred. In that period of necessary political pluralism, Kesavan suggests, Indian nationalists had to create a secular common sense of the republic, to make sure, no single community had monopoly over the state. Thus for him, the present day aggressive Hindu nationalist politics, with its exclusionary politics and rhetoric of grievance, threatens that edifice.
Articles:
Nandy, Ashis. (2001) “The politics of secularism and the Recovery of Religious Tolerance (pp. 61-88)” and “A Report on the Present State of the Health of Gods and Goddesses South Asia” (pp. 129-156) in Time Warps, New Delhi: Permanent Black
and
2003. “An Anti-Secularist Manifesto” in The Romance of the State and the Fate of Dissent in the Tropics, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. pp. 34-60.
Political Psychologist Ashis Nandy is perhaps the most effective voice articulating the limits of secularism in the South Asian context. He argues that the idea of secularism may cope with religious riots that result from faulty passions; however, secularism fails to respond to the new rationally managed riots of present day, wherein the political cost of such violence is already factored in. Nandy is equally critical of Hindu nationalism, which ignores the lived experience of Hinduism and in his typical witty, acerbic style writes about the fate of gods and goddesses in contemporary India.
Madan, T.N. 1998, Secularism in its Place. in Rajeev Bhargav Ed. Secularism and its Critics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. pp. 297-320.
Madan argues that secularism is a late Christian gift to India and a world view that proposes expelling religion from the public sphere, which is inappropriate for the Indian context. He stresses the need to keep religion in the public sphere and then also to use its resources of toleration to prevent violence and hatred.
Chatterjee, Partha. 1998, Secularism and Tolerance, in Rajeev Bhargav Ed. Secularism and its Critics, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. pp. 345-379
Like Madan and Nandy, Chatterjee also argues that secularism in its present form is politically unviable to meet the challenge of Hindu majoritarianism. However, his alternative is to promote a democratized state that ensures religious toleration.
Sen, Amartya. Secularism and its Discontents. Rajeev Bhargav Ed. Secularism and its Critics, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
In contrast to the three critiques offered above, Sen defends a Nehruvian vision of secularism. He argues that secularism is primarily a strategy for symmetric political treatment of different religious communities and while its practice may leave us dissatisfied, the critiques of secularism do not undermine the case for secularism. Sen primarily recognizes Indian society as an integrally plural society, which needs secular politics at its core.
Galanter, Marc. 1998. Hinduism, Secularism and the Indian Judiciary. in Rajeev Bhargav Ed. Secularism and its Critics, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. pp. 268-293.
Galanter considers the role of Indian law in transforming religion in India. He distinguishes between the mode of limitation – which promulgates public standards and the religion is shaped accordingly – and the mode of intervention – in which religious authority is directly challenged. Galanter suggests that Indian constitution exemplifies the limitation mode.
Thapar, Romila. 2002. Imagined Religious Communities (p. 965-89) and Syndicated Hinduism (1024-1054) in Cultural Pasts, New Delhi: Oxford University press.
Thapar argues that communalism is a consciousness which draws upon a supposed religious identity and uses this as the basis for a political and social ideology. She critiques the new religious form of the Hindu community, which seeks to encompass earlier religious sects and traditions. Hence, her focus is also on the problems of projecting present day communities historically.