Saheli
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- Oct 11, 2014
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India adopting the secularism of Europe is like India abandoning the Indian decimal system and going back to Roman numerals for math.
Whenever I travel through Europe, I am struck by how much religion and religious conflict shaped its history. The main religion, Christianity, was in conflict with everything else — Europe’s pagan traditions that it erased and digested, Islam that it warred with and Jews that it repeatedly persecuted. When these conflicts were not enough, it fought within itself and, starting from the first reformation movement by the Czech philosopher Jan Hus in the 15th century, Europe’s bloody history included internecine wars between Catholics and Protestants.
In the centre of Prague Square stands a memorial to Jan Hus. This week I learnt about the conflict between the Hussites, the local Czech Protestant movement that bears the name of its founder and the Catholic armies. In the Compact of Basel Catholic kings promise religious tolerance, but as is common in European history, promptly went back on their word, relentlessly persecuting Hussite Protestants and forcing the people to Catholicism. The sword was relentlessly used in spreading the religion of love.
The other motif that stands out, at least to a Dharmic observer, is how fear was central to the hold of Christianity. In Krakow, Poland, I found a major church where in the front were two cages build into the church walls on either side of the entrance. These cages were used to hold prisoners for display, a reminder to the religious that the Church was willing to back the promise of eternal hell for unrepentant sinners with some earthly torture of its own. Torture devices are also found in European dungeons from chairs that spoked nails to strap in the unrepentant to metal tipped flails that would cut through the flesh with ease.
The earthly tortures, severe as they came, were merely reminders of the real tortures that awaited in the afterlife. In the main clock tower in Prague Square there is an animatronic display that takes place on the hour. Here we Death, in the form of a skeleton, ringing the bell, while assorted sins are shown in human forms. Greed is depicted by a Jewish money-lender, a reminder both of stereotypes and the tragedies that befell the Jews in the area.
Krakow is only an hour’s drive away from Auschwitz, the notorious German concentration camp where Hitler exterminated nearly a million Jews. I visited the ghetto of Krakow, an area that sixteen thousand Jews were forcibly packed into, where only three thousand people live earlier. Entry and exit in the ghetto was restricted and the ghetto’s inhabitants were killed by Nazis both in the small square, now called Heroes Square and the concentration camp. Krakow is the site too of Schindler’s factory, made famous by the movie Schindler’s list.
But it would be a mistake to see Hilter’s persecution of Jews as the isolated work of a madman. Jews were isolated into ghettos directly on the order of the papal bull of Pope Paul IV. They had been repeatedly persecuted by Christians and subjected to forced conversions and outright massacres, including in the crusades. Christians reportedly held Jews responsible for the murder of Jesus, but the Jews also presented a theological problem. Though Jesus was a Jew, only some Jews had accepted him as the messiah they had been waiting for, these had become Christians. The rest did not accept Jesus as the messiah and still await the coming. This rejection of Jesus, even though passive, made the very existence of Jews a theological question mark. Hitler’s gas chambers were thus simply the “final solution” for the long-standing Jewish problem that had been a thorn for Christianity.
As the history of Christianity shows, Christians took their theology very seriously. Deviation from church authorized theology and interpretation of scripture was the grave sin of heresy. Heresy literally means to choose for oneself. The idea that you could choose how to interpret Biblical scripture differently from church dogma was a crime punishable by death. The questioning of church practices such as indulgences—paying money to the Church to buy off God and get your sins forgiven was part of the Protestant reformation. For raising a question on indulgences, the philosopher Jon Hus of Prague was captured, after the Church first promised him safe passage, and then killed by tying him to a wooden stake planted in the ground and burning him from the feet up in torturous death.
The unremitting violence that accompanied the religion of love, after centuries of internecine war gave birth to the necessity for secular tolerance in Europe. As recent scholarship from Jonathan Kirsch (“God against Gods”) and Jan Assmann (“The Price of Monotheism”) shows, monotheism is inherently intolerant. Since it theology is exclusive, there is only one “true path” to salvation, which is “my way”, it is inherently in conflict with everything else. The idea that Jesus is the only way or Mohammad is the last and final prophet creates an inner dynamic for the necessity of converting all others—the mere existence of the other is a challenge to the belief system. In the European experience, religious belief is inherently irreconcilable, hence a “neutral” secular state that has a monopoly on the use of force is the only way to keep the fighting groups at bay.
Secular society can be viewed as a form of primitive polytheism. Each religion has their god and so society as a whole has multiple gods. These gods and religions would be in perpetual conflict without the secular state since their beliefs are inherently irreconcilable. Thus Europe, after centuries of religious conflict, came up with the secular state as a solution. The error made is in assuming that the problem of exclusive religions is universal and hence the European solution is a universal need. It is not.
Indian society evolved so that different ishta-devatas or deities would be seen as aspects of the Universal Consciousness. This allowed both diversity and unity. Rather than terms monotheistic and polytheistic a more accurate descriptor is अनेक रूपक, polymorphic rather than polytheistic. The multiples are seen as forms of the one. Thus all can co-exist without a coercive external state entity maintaining order. Monotheism allows for only one form and way and could be called monomorphic (एक रूपक). That there is only reality seen and expressed in different ways and forms allowed India to shelter different ways, including Jewish, Christian and Parsi communities without any persecution for centuries. In this method, the state is not separated form dharma. It is dharma, in fact, that protects the minorities.
India adopting the secularism of Europe is like India abandoning the Indian decimal system and going back to Roman numerals for math. Just as the Indian export of the decimal system helped evolve enhanced mathematics, we have an opportunity to export India’s wisdom of a multi-cultural, multi-religious society to the world. Indian Muslims and Christians can be at the forefront of evolving new Indic theologies for Islam and Christianity and exporting these to Muslims and Christians worldwide. Instead of encouraging this, the secular state in India has tacitly allowed the increased Wabbhisation of Indian Islam and access to exclusivist Christian proselytisation that takes Islam and Christianity in the opposite direction of Indian pluralism.
For this to be successful, the Indian intellectual class must being to study in Europe on our own terms an challenge the एकरुपक ईश्वर rather than using the unfit theories of religion and secularism to study ourselves. My observations on my journey through Europe are a small step in that direction.
European secularism a bad fit for India | India News Analysis Opinions on Niti Central
