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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: dharma

Heartburn over Hugs and Hummus

10 Mon Jul 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Israel, Middle East, Opinion and Response, South Asia

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Balfour Declaration, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, dharma, hindutva, India, Israel, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohandas Gandhi, Muslim, Narendra Modi, Zionism

Indo-Israeli relations have been all hugs and hummus of late, a point that neither Jerusalem nor Delhi seem to be tired of reiterating. Narendra Modi’s trip to Israel without even a perfunctory drop-in at Ramallah has been portrayed as historic by most observers, although there have been some doubts about how much of a departure this really is from India’s previous policy given the three-day visit by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas just a couple of weeks earlier.

Whether there really is a shift in Indian policy or not, the perception certainly exists that there has been one and this has caused much heartburn among the ossified grand daddies of entrenched interests. The crux of a string of critiques that have appeared in the Indian press is that the Modi government has made the morally odious choice of abandoning Palestine and in doing so descended into the realm of ordinary states, and that this desertion is but another manifestation of the prime minister’s anti-Muslim Hindu nationalism that has found resonance in Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s equally anti-Islamic Zionism.

In Foreign Affairs, Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch and Manjari Chatterjee Miller argue that “India’s and Israel’s historic perceptions of colonial ideology and religious nationalism are at the root of their longstanding divergence.” According to them, India’s experience as a colony and of bloody Partition created in Indian leaders an aversion to colonialism and religious nationalism; Jewish ambitions in the Levant was, therefore, anathema to them on both counts.

Although Hirsch and Miller are correct in how the Congress leadership viewed Israel and this view did shape Indian policy towards the Jewish state for decades, their article does not grapple with the fact that this was a highly ignorant and erroneous held by Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. To denounce Zionism as a “child of British imperialism” as Nehru did is laughable, and Gandhi admitted to some of his interlocutors sent by the Jewish Agency to inform and persuade the Indian leader of their worthiness of their cause that he did not know enough about Jewish history. Gandhi thought that Israel was being created “under the shadow of the British gun,” a sentiment difficult to arrive at despite the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917. His simplification of “Palestine for the Arabs” also indicates a severe lack of understanding of the convoluted history of the Levant.

Today, whatever else may motivate the Bharatiya Janata Party’s course correction, it also reflects an acknowledgement of these mistaken views. Old dilemmata over identity will not, contrary to what the article argues, hinder relations but more mundane aspects of economics, regulations, and logistics take time to be streamlined. Additionally, the focus on non-defence matters was a deliberate move by both governments to highlight the civilisation-to-civilisation connections being fostered rather than a purely transactional one – which has been blooming on the sidelines, too.

A churlish piece by Manini Chatterjee in The Telegraph betrays ignorance of Israeli culture as well as any deep engagement with European history or political philosophy. Playing on the tired trope of ethnonationalism, Chatterjee wants to draw attention to the “fusion of religious and cultural identity with a ‘holy’ geographical entity common to both Hindutva and Zionism.” This has, in fact, spared the world of the limitless expansion of more universalist (imperialist) creeds. Chatterjee also takes a swipe at MS Golwalkar for his racial weltanshauung. However, it bears note that Golwalker’s understanding of race was substantially different from the European definition and that Zionism did grow as a response to the liberal European project that sought to dilute and destroy Jewish identity. Instead, Chatterjee prefers to further the myth – as the Dreyfus Affair proved – of civic nationalism.

Rajeesh Kumar’s plea that foreign policy be based on principles rather than on interests (though he sees the two as coterminous) in Outlook is naive at best. His attempt to rescue Nehruvian thinking on Israel, however, is an exceptional attempt at fiction writing. His claim that “India’s support to the Palestinian cause was not determined by the policy of appeasing the Muslim minority population at home” falls flat simply by virtue of Nehru’s own words to the effect that he did not wish to vex Indian Muslims so soon after Partition by cosying up to the Jewish state. Kumar does not explain how Indian policy was pragmatic and not idealistic as he claims but goes on to make another incredulous argument that Israel must be seen as India’s junior partner because of its desire to help the South Asian nation despite being rebuked so often. While Kumar’s point raises an interesting point for further research into Israeli attitudes and thinking towards India, the casting of the receiver of aid as the senior partner is bewildering.

There is no denying of the benefits of better relations with Israel for Kumar, though he warns that this should not mean that India should give Tel Aviv (?) a blank cheque. Kumar’s solution is to extract benefits from Israel via trade and scientific cooperation yet continue to condemn it as has been India’s hypocritical custom in the past. Given Indo-Israeli history, Kumar’s suggestion might work but it will not foster warmer relations.

Finally, he appeals to dharma as a guiding principle of Indian culture and policy. That dharma is not constant but depends on place, time, and situation is entirely lost on Kumar. In a specific circumstance, Krishna advises the Pandavas to go to war even against their own kith and kin. Additionally, Kumar’s appeal to ethics, while noble, has served no purpose in the past. India’s bid to join the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation as a country with one of the highest Muslim populations was rejected and Arab states have historically sided with Pakistan politically as well as economically and militarily in its conflict with India.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi tries to resurrect the flawed Indian historical understanding of yesteryear in his article in The Wire. Amusingly, he states that “India’s position has been appreciated, respected by all for its honesty and integrity,” probably referring to only Arab states and the coterie of non-aligned irrelevants. He clings to the old custom of Indian prime ministers abstaining from visiting Israel on principle without addressing the errors of the past or the changes since in the geopolitical climate. Ignoring his preposterous claims of a Palestinian genocide in 1948 for the moment, Gandhi fails to explain why Palestine ought to matter more to Delhi than its own interests. In his selective history, he omits the Egyptian wall along its border with Gaza or the Jordanian action against Palestinians during Black September, not to mention the occupation of “Palestine” by Jordan and Egypt prior to the stunning Israeli victory in the Six-Day War in 1967.

Modi’s visit, according Gandhi, gives legitimacy to the “occupation and brutal suppression” of Palestinians by Israel. This conveniently overlooks the Indian statement of support for the Palestinian cause just two weeks ahead of Modi’s trip to Israel. Gandhi goes on to argue that India’s policy now is “wholly political, ideological,” implying, one only assumes from the tone, what his cohort has expressed more explicitly about the BJP being anti-Muslim. This ever-ready, lazy label may have some superficial truth to it but ignores a strong undercurrent of historical grievances and political minoritarian discrimination that has now run its fuse.

It is not so much that the caviling is premised on faulty understandings of Hindutva, Zionism, and the Palestinian Question – sometimes by Gandhi or Nehru – but its ornery nature that makes any genuine debate moot. Nehru’s fundamental failure was that he, as a modern Liberal, approached society – India – as tabula rasa upon which he could put down his doodles. Communities, however, do not work like that – they are a brown field project with all its attendant baggage. More importantly, the debate never moves forward because opponents of Israel in India never tire of repeating their worn out and fallacious mantras rather than responding to a counter that has been put forward decades ago. In this climate, there is no argument – only an attempt to overpower the public sphere by sheer volume.

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The Hindu Art of War

02 Sat Jan 2016

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

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ahimsa, AIT, artha, Arthashastra, Aryan Invasion Theory, asurayuddha, brahmin, Buddhism, Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, Chanakya, Chandogya Upanishad, dharma, dharmayuddha, Hinduism, Hitopadesha, IAMT, India, Indo-Aryan Migration Theory, Indology, Islamic, Jainism, jati, jauhar, jus ad bellum, jus in bello, Kalidasa, kama, Kamandaka, Kathasaritsagara, Kautilya, kshatriya, kutayuddha, Mahabharata, Manavadharmashastra, Manu, Mortimer Wheeler, Muslim, Nayaka, Nitisara, orientalism, Panchatantra, Rajput, Ramayana, Shukranitisara, Somadeva, South Asia, varna

Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South AsiaRoy, Kaushik. Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia: From Antiquity to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 305 pp.

Hinduism, and South Asia more broadly, has been a glaring lacuna in the study of military history and ethics. Kaushik Roy’s Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia: From Antiquity to the Present (henceforth HEWSA) is unfortunately a poor attempt to rectify that oversight. Although HEWSA passes as an introduction to the uninitiated, it leaves most of the important questions that vex military historians of South Asia unanswered. Although the author’s attempt to place warfare and ethics within their cultural moorings rather than posit them as universal axioms is appreciated, the wider ambitions of his work in presenting South Asia to a Western audience takes away from a focussed analysis of military matters. To be fair to Roy, however, the topic and timeframe presents a Herculean project that would require expertise not just in military affairs but also archaeology and several languages to accomplish thoroughly. This explains why a choice was made – wisely – to restrict the study only to ‘elite’ Sanskrit circles that had the greatest influence on policy. It should also be mentioned at the outset that for the purposes of this review – and most of HEWSA, South Asia is synonymous with India and the dharmic systems that abide within.

The question before any study of military ethics is what constitutes just war and how it should be waged. When it comes to South Asia, scholars would first have to dispel the notion that the region has never known the practice of strategic thinking; second, they would also have to break away from the overpowering Europeanising grand narrative of universal history that places the experiences of the western end of the Eurasian landmass as the normative centrestage. HEWSA begins by asking basic questions on the nature of war and politics instead of accepting readily available theories from the Western canon. Roy, however, sets up the strategists of India in a conversation with their Western (and Eastern) counterparts rather than in opposition; clearly, he does not wish to settle for the simplistic binary of East vs. West that still colours comparative studies across specialties. This is certainly a strength of the book though also a weakness as I will explain later.

Roy establishes his project as trying to answer four questions: 1. What is war?; 2. What constitutes proper justification for going to war?; 3. How should war be waged?; and 4. What are the consequences of waging war? Strategists long before Prussian military theorist h have wrestled with these questions, and the answers each civilisation has proposed to these questions are today obfuscated by a 20th century technological determinism and a Euro-American pragmatism. As historian Jeremy Black has pointed out, not all societies were driven by the motivation to come up with the most combat-effective machines because their worldviews were different; culture is the key to understanding military strategy. The import of this observation should not be diluted to posit a facile dichotomy of Western rationality versus Eastern spiritualism or wars of honour. In fact, as military scholar Michael Handel noted, the basic rationality of strategy as political behaviour is universal. Kamandaka, believed to be a 4th century strategist in the Gupta court, for example, speaks of the importance of the people’s support for a righteous war to ensure stability – a value dear to the heart of several Western strategists as well.

Yet it would be equally unhelpful to overemphasise the similarities between different approaches to war: Indian thinkers like Chanakya and Manu were, for example, as concerned with the potential for insurgency as they were with facing foreign enemies. Indian authors rarely put their names to their treatises either; furthermore, they usually contained the amalgam of strategic thought before their period though again not always with proper citation. As a result, it is a challenge to date Indian theories of state and warfare as it is difficult to put author to treatise. Concerned as they were with dharmayuddha and kutayuddha, Indian strategists were also a product of their times: Chanakya’s Arthashastra proposes a boldly expansionist state as he wrote during the waxing of Maurya power while Kamandaka’s Nitisara is more cautious as the Gupta Empire was on the defensive from nomadic invaders from Central Asia. Perhaps the greatest difference between Indian and Western thinking on the state and warfare, as Roy astutely observes, is that Eastern societies did not view the state as an abstract principle: there was a relation between tao and the people in China just as there was between rashtra and society in India. European thinkers, on the other hand, seem to view the state more contractually and legalistically, although this is more true with modern theorists than ancient Europeans.

The greatest difference between Indian ethical texts and their Western equivalents, however, is that the former are more theoretical and describe the world as it should be, not as it is, while the converse is true for the latter. Although Roy observes this, he fails to realise how important a point he has stumbled on – Indian morality, even on the field of battle, are not as clearly defined as in the West. This is a strong reflection of dharmic thinking on matters of state and it is possible that Western thinking was similarly and equally influenced by Abrahamic certitude of the world. Yet to be fair, expounding on this would lead him away from the main topic of his study. Finally, an interesting observation by Torkel Brekke, historian of religion, about differences between Indian and European military thought is that the latter comprises of equal attention to jus ad bellum (just cause for war) and jus in bello (just conduct in war) while the former only concerns itself with the latter. The author mentions this in the introduction but disappointingly never returns to the matter explicitly later in the book. From the structure of other arguments, the reader is only left to assume that it has something to do with how Indian strategists viewed the nature of politics and conflict but some clarity would have helped.

The greatest weakness of HEWSA is the author’s willingness to indulge in simplifications about Hinduism that muddy the reader’s understanding of Indian society. Given the author’s belief that society and culture are inextricably linked to military strategy, this is an unacceptable lapse. For example, Roy repeatedly harps on the role of kshatriyas as the warrior class in South Asian society. While this may broadly be true, it does not explain how most of India’s major empires were not of kshatriya lineage. Nor does it explain how Indian emperors could sustain large standing armies based on conscription if only kshatriyas could wage war. After the fall of Rome, it was not until the 19th century in Europe that a professional class of soldiers emerged. In the interim, armies were usually composed of farmers who had to return to their fields during harvest season. As a result, war was limited to specific periods of the calendar or the economy would suffer if farmers could not return to their fields on time. If Indian polities did not follow this rule, it is an important social and economic difference that was worth highlighting. Admittedly, Roy merely repeats the formulation of Indian philosophers on the matter but as he has been quick to point out in other aspects, Indian thinkers addressed an idealised world and not the real one. Instead, a brief explanation of varna and jati would have left readers with a clearer understanding of what actually was and what was supposed to be.

The author’s implicit acceptance of the Indo-Aryan Migration Theory (IAMT) is another factor that mars this study. Basically, IAMT was proposed by British and German Orientalists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries after the discovery of the Indo-European language family and postulates that the Indian subcontinent was subject to large population migrations from the Caucasus and Central Asia in three waves, the first around 2,200 BCE, the second around 1,700 BCE, and the final one around 1,000 BCE. In the mid-1940s, British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler suggested that these waves had perhaps been invasions rather than migrations but this variation of the IAMT, referred to as the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), did not hold for long though it has been the strawman subject of innumerable critiques of the IAMT. Regardless, given the controversies around the subject, any scholar touching upon the topic peripherally ought to warn the reader of the assumptions made.

Roy suggests that the rules governing the war towards the end of the Ramayana were more lax than in the great fratricidal war of the Mahabharata…or at least, there seemed to be more anguish and hand-wringing at the violation of rules in the latter epic than the former. This he supposes is due to the different rules governing warfare within and without groups. The assumption here, stemming from his thoughts on the IAMT, is that Rama was an Aryan king fighting a non-Aryan king, Ravana, while the Pandavas and Kauravas were both Aryan families. In the former situation, there were few rules of just war whereas the latter had strict codes. Of course, this fails to explain how Ravana, a non-Aryan chieftain, was a great devotee of Shiva and a brahmin – outsiders would never be accorded a varna (improperly translated into English as caste). More importantly, there is no textual evidence for this supposition in the primary sources – the author cites secondary sources to back his claim, a source whose racial categories are strongly influenced by the orientalism of British Indology.

With the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, Roy correctly points out that these systems are not as pacifist or as ascetic as are commonly believed: the founders of both were themselves kshatriyas and both had several royal friends throughout their lives; Buddha was not even a vegetarian! Buddhist and Jain ahimsa was closer to the Hindu concept as expounded in the Chandogya Upanishad, related to austerity, generosity, sacrifice, truthfulness, and integrity, and not the passive non-violence of Mohandas Gandhi. Roy’s exposition is a much-needed correction to the common narrative on Buddhism and Jainism. However, he insists on seeing both these belief systems as schisms from Hinduism – a view that is not shared by many scholars of the latter.

A whole chapter is dedicated to the most famous treatise on war and politics to come out of India, the Arthashastra. The treatise is briefly summarised before its author is compared to European political philosophers and military theorists from Plato to the authors of Fourth Generation Warfare. Roy relies heavily on secondary sources, preferring the words of his contemporary scholars than of the masters themselves. In the evaluation, the Arthashastra emerges as an amoral text that was quite comfortable with kutayuddha as well as dharmayuddha and considered internal as well as external threats to the kingdom. Chanakya advocates diplomacy, assassinations, poisoning, temporary alliances, espionage, biological warfare, and any other means that can deliver victory. The focus is on strategic knowledge of the enemy than on tactical advice and Chankaya does not stop with victory: the Indian strategist considers the best ways of controlling a defeated foe as part of his analytical package. Contrary to Western armies, Indian victors allowed the conquered to maintain their language, dress, customs, and gods; only the unrighteous rulers were removed. Unlike Western theorists, Roy observes, Chanakya’s theories make human agency instead of inter-state structure the primary variable in politics. Furthermore, there is no mention of seapower, nor is there any consideration of technology as a force multiplier in battle.

Instead of the long comparative section, the topic would have been better served if a closer analysis of the Arthashastra, its author, and their milieu were attempted. How did the political, social, and economic realities of the early Maurya Empire influence Chanakya’s thoughts? How much is he a product of his time? What were the challenges to Mauryan rule at the time? Why did the Mauryans dedicate their efforts to conquering India and not send their armies westwards? The answers to these questions would have situated the Arthashastra in its own context and revealed more about warfare and ethics in South Asia than do the quick comparisons to Western and Eastern strategists. After all, it is not the Western theorists who are understudied but the South Asian context.

Roy’s discussion of early medieval India leaves much to be desired. Again, led astray by his sources, Roy argues that brahmin intellectuals of the period saw the Bactrians and Parthians as mlechchas because of their patronage of Buddhism. This would not have solved the problem of local Indian chieftains who patronised Buddhism or those who followed it and it seems bizarre that the brahmins would follow this half-measure that achieved nothing. Roy also claims that the Sunga and Kanva dynasties were established by brahmins to fight off the sudra ascendancy seen in the rise of the Nandas and Mauryas! It is in this context, the author claims, that the Manavadharmashastra was written and as a result, the primary aim of its author was to preserve the status of brahmins. While Chanakya had concentrated on artha and kama, Manu focused on dharma.

Manu is the first Indian strategist that we know of to mention seapower. Kalidasa is another but in both cases, the authors limit themselves to riverine navies and not bluewater vessels. Manu is also the first Indian strategist to show a liking for cavalry, even suggesting that the king not wage war in the absence of good cavalry. Chanakya had advocated a balanced composition of forces between infantry, cavalry, chariots, and elephants while Kamandaka had emphasised the shock value of elephants. However, Manu is more cautious than the author of the Arthashastra and voices a preference for coalitions of likeminded rulers against a common threat than a quest for power by one emperor. Oddly, though, unlike most commanders, he preferred fortress warfare to open battle despite the hardships of disease, logistics, and discipline. The army would live off the enemy’s land, laying siege to the enemy’s fort while pillaging the countryside.

In general, Indian strategists preferred to solve things through diplomacy and wealth over arms; this is the same advice one gets from Chanakya, Manu, Kalidasa, Kamandaka, Somadeva, and others though they also strongly advised against shunning violence. Later thinkers, however, accepted the use of kutayuddha more readily, especially if it could prevent war altogether. According to Roy, Kalidasa advised that dharmayuddha be followed only against Indian monarchs and not against the Yavanas; similarly, it was permissible for a victorious king to annex the kingdoms of his defeated foes outside India but not within. The development of a geographic sense of India in this period is an interesting facet that Roy does not dwell on.

The author suggests that Somadeva warned against sending armies to the northwest – this would correspond to the region whence most invasions of India occurred and usually by a foe with superior technology. Unfortunately, Roy has little more to say about this either. Something else Roy mentions is Thiruvalluvar’s advice that an army look grand and imposing. Clearly, the Tamil thinker understood the psychological dimension of warfare well and tried to bring it into play in service of his patron. The lessons of these books on strategy did not remain restricted to the elite but trickled into the Hitopadesha, Panchatantra, Kathasaritsagara, and other stories in simplified form. What the reception was is a difficult question to answer. One wonders if the wisdom of Indian military thinking was noticed by foreigners when these works were translated, first into Persian and then later into Arabic and Latin.

The descriptions of Indian treatises on strategy raise many questions that Roy does not answer. For example, Indian monarchs seemed to always lack cavalry of sufficient quality and quantity. Yet no king ever tried to address this shortcoming by importing and breeding horses in India.  Kalhana, the author of Rajatarangini, mentions that the Palas and Senas of Bengal attempted to import cavalry from Afghanistan and South China, and the Hoysalas tried to crossbreed Arab mares with local breeds to no avail. When the Romans, Greeks, Persians, and Carthaginians could take elephants from India, why could Indian traders not acquire war horses? Although the problem of a weak cavalry was temporarily solved under some kings such as Vikramaditya of the Gupta dynasty or Harshavardhana of Thaneshwar and Kanauj, it remained an issue until the very end. In relation to the equine lacuna, India did not develop metal stirrups or horseshoes until much later either and this gave the Hunnic mounted archers a tremendous advantage in battle; the invaders’ composite bows also gave them greater range than their Indian opponents. Why did Indian rulers fail so spectacularly in developing or acquiring military technology despite their use of spies or their fame in trade? This would have been an important question in a military history of South Asia.

Indian reflections on warfare declined with the Islamic invasions of the subcontinent. Warriors for a jealous desert god, Muslims rulers removed Hindu advisors of the conquered Indian kings from imperial service and closed the avenue for contribution to political life. Most Hindus who continued in royal service were forced to convert if they wished to retain their positions. The Hindu kingdoms that resisted the invaders, however, did not fare better than their ancestors did in terms of learning newer and more effective military strategies and technologies. The Rajputs, for example, held to their code of personal glory on the battlefield and failed to see the evolution of mass tactics; similarly, the Nayakas in the south were disdainful of gunpowder and thought it to be weapons for the cowardly – a regressive attitude that only shattered their armies when they went up against more modern opponents. The Rajput and Nayaka views were prevalent among European knights too when they first came across the Ottoman janissaries. The social and economic structure of feudal Europe had created the European knight, a fearsome force in one-on-one combat but no match for hurtling pellets of lead. Where the Europeans adapted quickly, Indian polities failed to do so. Nowhere is this more clear than in the Shukranitisara, a work by an unknown author written around the late 17th century.

The Shukranitisara, like any work on military matters, emphasises the training of soldiers to fight with or without arms. However, it shuns the use of warfare with mechanical devices – gunpowder, siege engines, etc. – as asurayuddha, a particularly barbaric form of kutayuddha. The concept existed even in earlier treatises such as the Arthashastra but where Chanakya used the term ‘asurayuddha‘ to define heinous practices to be avoided by a victor, such as the massacre of the males of the royal household, the violation of their women, and the appropriation of their wealth, the author of Shukranitisara reserved the term for battlefield practices that had become routine. One might pontificate over the degeneration of chivalry but such matters concerned only romantic bards while the strategists were not beyond recommending kutayuddha in the pursuit of a quicker and cheaper victory. Not only were foreign invaders less delicate about such concerns, but Muslim armies frequently desecrated Hindu places of worship, forced conversions, massacred the citizenry, raped and sold the royal women into slavery, and killed their menfolk. It was in response to this barbarism that Rajput women took to jauhar.

Although Roy accepts the atrocities of the Muslim conquests, he nonetheless enters into the record Romila Thapar’s claim that there was no sense of Hinduism in this period. He also cites Richard Eaton on how limited the damage from the Islamic invasions were. This is deeply unconvincing given the tales of conversion and massacre contained in his own study.

Roy takes the reader through the Indian freedom struggle and ends his study with a few short comments on India’s nuclear posture. However, these periods hardly reflect any thought on the ethics of warfare understood in the conventional sense. Even accepting Chanakya’s paradigm of inter- and intra-state warfare, passive non-violence seems a tool that may have, at best, suited a particular situation rather than be an entire ethical theory of warfare in itself.

Perhaps the biggest question Roy does not attempt to answer is why Indian polities remained thoroughly inept at war. Barring a brief period in the Chola Empire, no Indian kingdom ever extended beyond the boundaries of Akhand Bharat; furthermore, there was a total failure to develop or even adopt superior technologies in a timely manner. Why were Indian monarchs not able to do what rulers in most other parts of the world did routinely? A second ‘big question’ Roy could have shed light on is to what extent these theories were discussed and debated. Was there even a limited and elite public sphere in which ideas of warfare were discussed and improved upon? How well did these ideas survive transmission as one dynasty replaced another? Roy indicates that Indian treatises dealt with the ideal world more than they dealt with reality. However, what effect did the results of real battles have on them?

It is possible that these questions can never be answered for lack of sources. Nonetheless, they deserve a vigorous discussion that HEWSA did not provide. The author’s excessive reliance on secondary sources and translations also deserves comment. Although South Asia is a difficult region that demands its scholars to have a command over several languages and kills, any analysis as important as Roy’s project ought not be done without expertise in at least some of the skills and languages; perhaps a collaborative work would have achieved the desired result better. It is said that reviewers often discuss the book they would have written rather than the book at hand – this may be the case here too but any study that claims to discuss the ethics of warfare in South Asia cannot afford these lapses, particularly in a field where much of the groundwork is yet to be laid.

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Riflessioni: India’s Religious Other

01 Fri May 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Society, South Asia, Theory & Philosophy

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Akhenaten, Amarna, Amenhotep IV, Apollo, Atargatis, धर्म तथा समाजवाद, धर्म संस्कृत और राज्य, Christian, Christianity, Cybele, David Hume, dharma, dharma sanskriti aur rajya, dharma tatha samajwad, Die Mosaische Unterscheidung: oder der Preis des Monotheismus, Egypt, Eric Santner, faith, gentile, Greece, Gurudutt, Hinduism, infidel, ISIS, Islam, Jan Assmann, Jesus, Jew, Judaism, monotheism, Mosaic distinction, Muslim, pagan, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, Parmenidean distinction, Parmenides, polytheism, primary religion, purushartha, Ra, religion, Rome, sarva dharma samabhava, secondary religion, secularism, Serapis, The Natural History of Religions, The Psychotheology of Everyday Life, Theo Sundermeier, universalism, Utu, Was ist Religion? Religionswissenschaft im theologischen Kontext, Werner Jäger, Yahweh

One often hears Indian traditionalists argue that not all religions are equal, that the Sanskrit dharma does not translate as the English religion. In essence, the Gandhian phrase, sarva dharma sama bhava, which is considered the root of Indian secularism (though it speaks more to pluralism, actually), does not apply to the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Why are the latter two of these three religions – Judaism presents a complication that will be discussed later – considered as “outsiders” to the subcontinent despite having existed in the subcontinent for over a thousand years? In India, what passes for debate and discussion on this issue in the public sphere has so far been high on politicisation and wanting in scholarship. In academia, however, ironically even the Western variety that many Indian traditionalists like to ignorantly scoff at, there have been some articulate expositions of why the Abrahamic religions are fundamentally different from and unequal to the faith systems of the cultural Indosphere and elsewhere. The argument runs that the differences between the two groups are not simply about what to call the sine qua non (G-d) or even if it is indeed sine quibus non (many gods) but involve a radical difference in views on the political order as well.

How Many Gods?

Theo Sundermeier, professor of theology at Heidelberg University, makes an insightful distinction between religions in his Was ist Religion? Religionswissenschaft im theologischen Kontext between primary and secondary religions. The former, Sundermeier explains, developed over hundreds if not thousands of years, usually within a single culture, society, and language with which the religion is inextricably intertwined. These would include the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian religions as easily as Hinduism. The latter category of religions are those that originate from an act of revelation or foundation and are monotheistic, universal, and of the Book. Secondary religions denounce primary religions as paganism, a collection of superstitions, and idolatry. The three Abrahamic faiths fit this description well.

This seemingly obvious categorisation holds an evolution of great import – from primary to secondary, religion changes from being a system that is irrevocably embedded in the institutional, linguistic, and cultural conditions of a society to become an autonomous system that can transcend political, ethnic, and other boundaries and transplant itself into any alien culture. As Jan Assmann, an Egyptologist at the University of Konstanz, describes in his Die Mosaische Unterscheidung: oder der Preis des Monotheismus, this change, which he calls the Mosaic distinction, is hardly about whether there is one god or there are many gods but about truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance. Monotheistic faiths rest firmly on the distinction between their true god and the falseness of other gods; their truth does not stand in a complementary relationship to other truths but relegates any such claims to the realm of falsehood. They are exclusive, antagonistic, and explicitly codified and clearly communicated. As Assmann explains, the truth to be proclaimed comes complete with an enemy to be fought – only they know of “heretics and pagans, false doctrine, sects, superstition, idolatry, magic, ignorance, unbelief, heresy, and whatever other terms have been coined to designate what they denounce, persecute and proscribe as manifestations of untruth.” Secondary religions do not evolve from primary religions – rather, the emergence of the former represents a revolution, a rupture with the past that uncompromisingly divides the world between “Jews and Gentiles, Christians and pagans, Christians and Jews, Muslims and infidels, true believers and heretics.”

Truth and Falsehood

Such orthodoxy was unknown to the followers of primary religions and they found secondary religions intolerant. Indeed, this is an age-old argument that has been most vividly captured perhaps by David Hume in The Natural History of Religions. What is the root of such unyielding intolerance, or to put it in more sympathetic terms, conviction in their version of the truth? Assmann argues that the Mosaic distinction created an entirely new category of truth – faith – and draws an interesting parallel with a scientific development that Werner Jäger, a 20th century classicist at Harvard University, described as the Parmenidian distinction in Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. Parmenides was a Greek philosopher who lived in the 6th century BCE and articulated something that is so taken for granted today in science that it would be difficult to imagine a world without such an obvious principle: Being is, and Notbeing is not; that which is cannot not be, and that which is not cannot be. Thus, knowledge is based on the distinction between true and false cognition and the irreconcilability between the two. In a sense, we can speak of scientific knowledge as intolerant too, as Hume did of monotheism.

Before the Mosaic distinction, knowledge and faith were not separate concepts. Pagans knew their gods but did not believe in them for they were not objects of faith; like myths, they were unverifiable to science but not necessarily devoid of knowledge. Before the Mosaic distinction, there were four kinds of fundamental truth: experiential (water is wet), mathematical (two plus two is four), historical (the life of Mokshagundam Visveswaraya), and truths conducive to life (ethics). The Mosaic distinction cleaved faith from knowledge and installed the former as a fifth truth that claimed knowledge of the highest authority even if it could not be verified on scientific grounds. The psychological and social impact of this differentiation is most visible in how Greek or Hindu science never conflicted with its philosophy, myths, or religious practices – each operated in their own domain. In fact, there are several anecdotes of highly acclaimed Hindu scientists subscribing to superstitions – S Ramanujan’s belief in astrology and CV Raman’s concern about the ill-effects of a solar eclipse come most readily to mind. But the monotheistic preoccupation with untruth in conjunction with faith-as-truth caused much acrimony in Christendom and the dar al-Islam.

Alterity and Exclusion

Were the conflict between primary and secondary religion merely about how many gods there were, the world might have been spared much strife. Hans Zirker, emeritus professor of theology at the University of Duisburg-Essen, sees monotheism as also a statement against being influenced by strife between divine powers, being divided permanently between a dualism of Good and Evil, or being trapped in the incessant wars of self-affirmation of pluralist people. This is the political dimension of monotheism. Eric Santner, professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago, suggests that the universalism of monotheism is imposed upon all, thereby forcing them to acquiesce to the Mosaic distinction or to be regarded as failures. In The Psychotheology of Everyday Life, an obvious play on the title of Sigmund Freud’s work on psychopathology, Santner makes a case for the stranger – pagan? – to be the Other not for his spatial exteriority but because of his internal alterity. Externalities could be tolerated or influenced but internal alterity was far more insidious as it challenged faith-as-truth.

What makes Judaism different from Christianity and Islam, Assmann argues, is that Jews posit this universalism to be implemented at a messianic end-time whereas Christianity and Islam see it as an event at the time of their foundation. Judaism is no less exclusive than its Abrahamic descendents but as a result of a future date of redemption, Jewish communities have excluded themselves from the social and cultural customs of local gentile populations. Self-isolation has no need to resort to violence or persecute those with differing beliefs; for the Jews, goyim were free to worship whomever they wished. As a result Jewish communities have existed in harmony amidst pagan societies or found themselves to be co-victims of their own monotheistic cousins, alongside pagans, in the lands which came to be dominated by secondary religion.

In contrast, Christianity and Islam excluded the pagan rather than themselves. The Great Commission of Christianity and the Islamic obligation of da’wah not only excludes the pagan but directly puts them on a path of conflict. This intolerance stems from the absolute certitude that faith brings to Christianity and Islam. As Assmann points out, it makes no sense to talk of tolerance in pagan systems because there is no notion of incompatibility: one can tolerate something that is incompatible and irresolvable with one’s own views but how does one tolerate something that is not so steadfastly oppositional?

Translatability

Among the practitioners of primary religions, there has always been a translatability of divinity – the cosmology of different communities was believed to be compatible with each other. In a practice that has been the norm since at least Sumerian times, pagan communities sealed contracts upon oaths to their gods – for example, if the Akkadians wanted to consecrate a treaty with the Egyptians, the former would swear by Utu and the latter by Ra, the solar deities of their respective civilisations. There was no question of the falsehood of the other’s cosmology. The worship of each others’ gods was not unknown either – the Egyptian goddess Isis had a popular cult in Rome and the Syrian Atargatis and Phrygian Cybele and followers all around the Mediterranean. Usually, these gods would travel to foreign lands with traders and with increasing commerce and familiarity, would be established in the local pantheon as well. In the Indian context, the spread of Vedic Hinduism in India occurred along similar lines. The philosophical precepts of the Vedic Hindus were laid over the beliefs of the local communities and their gods were integrated into the Vedic pantheon. Many temples in Indian and Sri Lankan villages are dedicated to gramadevate – village deities – the legends behind whom trace their lineage back to a Puranic deity.

This is not to say that there were no conflicts among pagans – there were, and quite a few, but to go to war over theological differences was incomprehensible to them. In fact, conquerors often stole the idols of the vanquished to re-consecrate the deities back home with the dignity due them. Hercules has thus been around the Mediterranean quite a few times in the wars of Phoenicia, Greece, Carthage, and Rome. Religion, however, functioned as a medium of communication rather than as a criterion to exclude and eliminate. Varro, the Roman scholar who lived at the end of the 2nd century BCE, did not understand the need to distinguish between Jupiter and Yahweh as “the names are of no importance so long as the same thing is intended.” The Mosaic distinction prevented this translatability for Allah could never be Zeus nor Jesus be Apollo. This is another political ramification of monotheism.

Dominus Unum

The Mosaic distinction, if understood correctly, is, thus, a new political order rather than a cosmological order. The importance of this can be seen in that the primus inter pares status of the Abrahamic god and the prohibition of graven images is cemented in the first two of the ten commandments in every version. According to Assmann, this implies that monotheism does not deny the existence of other gods but merely holds them to be false and their worship, therefore, is not meaningless but disloyalty. The former is a cognitive category, a matter of knowledge, while the latter is a political category. In essence, one could not serve two masters. Christians themselves felt the repercussions of this tenet during the Reformation in the Early Modern era when Catholics were viewed with suspicion by monarchs belonging to the breakaway sects.

Historically, monotheistic faiths made outlandish accusations against pagan religions to keep their base radicalised while turning one community against another. The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, for example, spoke of pagans sacrificing their children in sacrifices and secret ceremonies, living in communities defined by adultery, murder, theft, corruption, and all other manner of immoral behavior. Idols, the faithful are told, is the beginning of spiritual fornication and the corruption of life. Thus, idolatrous religions are depicted as completely lacking in ethical orientation. Though this critique might be dated to a specific period of monotheistic radicalisation during the third century, it nonetheless lays claim to proper worship and ethical conduct. This dispute is not merely about the number of gods one worships but about the negation of all gods but one. Strictly speaking, most polytheistic faiths do not claim there to be many gods but that a singular divine presence animates itself in many ways. In that sense, the unity of divinity is not a monotheistic invention. However, the monotheistic spiritual binary is incapable of allowing for a primary god and several subordinate gods – it must insist on the exclusion of all gods but theirs.

There was no such paranoia in the lands where primary religions flourished. Monarchs patronised all religions in their kingdom despite their personal beliefs. Admittedly, at times, some received greater favour than others but never was a faith and its adherents exiled or made into second class subjects. Such pluralism was evident even in recent times. In Nepal, during the monarchy, Hindu and Buddhist holy days were both observed despite the official status of the state as Hindu and an overwhelming portion of the population – about 85 per cent – being Hindu. The closeness between the Hindu and Buddhist communities has historically been so great that it is difficult to demarcate the two in terms of social customs even today. During the famous Bunga Dyah Jatra festival in Laliptur, for example, the Hindu kings of Nepal participated during the climactic Bhoto Jatra phase during which they had to climb up the ceremonial chariot and display a sacred vest to the crowds.

Disenchanting the World

Another reason monotheism stands as the Other is that unlike polytheistic faiths, it disenchants the world. Pagan myths usually involved humans cavorting with the gods, in war as well as in love. This entanglement gives structure to the cosmos, describing its oppositional and synergetic forces in a manner that can be easily grasped by all. Furthermore, the gods bring order to society: with each trade, settlement, and resource associated with a patron deity, a network of duties and obligations is created. Each cult, so to speak, must be balanced with others in the greater community. As Assmann argues, this can even be extended to human destiny in that the stories of the gods give meaning to human relations as well. “By telling stories about the gods, myths bring order to human life.” Polytheism is synonymous with cosmotheism, and the divine cannot be divorced from the world. It is this theology that monotheism attacks. The divine is liberated from its ties to the cosmos, society, and the people, and in its place is the relationship of the individual with a divinity that stands outside the world, time, and space. Monotheism changes not only the image of god but man’s image of himself as well; instead of being in a seamless and symbiotic relationship with nature, he now stands alone but above it, to rule over it freely and independently, subservient only to a true god. To secondary religions, divinity is transcendent whereas for primary religions, it is immanent. Through this distinction between transcendence and immanence, the mosaic distinction also achieves a distinction between man and the world.

Ethics, the Law, and Justice

The disruption from culture and history, the certitude of a new type of truth, the exclusive rejection of other gods, the falsehood and criminality of the Other, the demand of fealty, and the disenchantment of the world pave the way to one of monotheism’s most important claims – that it is the religion of justice. Again, this is a political rather than theological claim. The key point of this claim is that ethics gained entry into religion precisely through biblical monotheism since the gods of Babylon, Assyria, or Rome had nothing to do with ethics in this sense. For the first time in history, justice, law, and freedom are declared to be the central themes of religion and the sole prerogative of god. Though technically true, this is a misleading statement. The monotheistic point of view is that since god is the true authority, only he can be the final arbiter of justice; the temporal laws of man are inferior to the divine. The story of the exodus from Egypt ties in well with ideas of liberation of the Jewish people from slavery. Furthermore, their escape, divinely sanctioned, also took the power to sit in judgment over them away from the pharaoh and invested it in god. The Shemot, or the Book of Exodus, is thus more concerned with political theology than with idolatry (the story of the golden calf). Thus, in monotheism, the political role of justice was given to religion. The authority of the king was superseded by that of the high clergy, god’s representatives on earth, as papal power well into the Early Modern era demonstrated. This fusion of the political with the religious in secondary religions but not primary belief systems is exactly what makes secularism a requirement solely of the former in the modern era.

In pagan religions, justice was of this world for even the gods were of this world. A Roman or an Egyptian who had been wronged could appeal to the local magistrate for justice for its own sake without reference to the gods. Indeed, in Hinduism, dharma is not only properly a function of kaala, desha, and paristhiti but the chaturanga purusharthas mention it along with artha and kama as one of the three goals of mortal life. The ultimate goal, moksha, is beyond short-term earthly consideration. As Hindi novelist Gurudutt explains in धर्म तथा समाजवाद (dharma tatha samajwad) and धर्म संस्कृत और राज्य (dharma, sanskriti, aur rajya), the individual is free to interact with the divine in a manner of his choosing but wherever he must interact with another, their conduct must be guided by the precepts of dharma, artha, and kama. Ethics and the law were intrinsically this-worldy and had no business to be under divine purview. Thus, justice, or ethics at least, existed much before secondary religions came on the scene but were not truly a part of the religious system.

In a world enchanted, this caused no philosophical problems. The famous story of Indra, the king of the Hindu pantheon, being cursed by Gautama Maharishi for seducing his wife, Ahalya, illustrates how virtue reigns even above the gods in Hinduism. Monotheism did not usher law, justice, or ethics into the world; these had long been in existence. Yet monotheism first made justice a matter of direct interest to god; before then, the world had not known a law-giving god. Any claim that law, morality, and justice are terrestrial and not celestial goods still arouses feelings of deep unease in theological circles; even today, the Church defends the dogma of the inseparable unity of monotheism and justice.

*     *     *     *     *

Behind the Mosaic distinction between true and false in religion, there ultimately stands the distinction between god and the world. This worldview is not only fundamentally alien to Hindus but it is also antithetical and inimical to their way of thinking. The emphasis of secondary religions on universalism and all its attendant political baggage keeps them at an arm’s length from the pagan practices of the subcontinent. Were the rejection of Christianity and Islam by Indian traditionalists merely a matter of geography, it would be silly. Yet the grounds for suspicion and Otherness are twofold – a predatory proselytism of exclusive monotheisms and the entire cosmology of secondary religions. Neither of these traits have mellowed over the 1,000+ years secondary religions have been in India, and until they do, the two religions will remain outsiders to the Indosphere.

*I would like to express my gratitude to Rangesh Shridhar for reading through the first draft of this essay and countless hours of debate, discussion, and hair-pulling!


This post appeared on FirstPost on May 11, 2015.

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