I An Introduction
For those who aren't clued into it, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, was recently denied a visa (both diplomatic and tourist) to the US for delivering a speech to a congregation of Non Resident Indians. The ostensible reason for this was the indictment by the National Human Rights Commission of India of his participation in the Gujarat riots of 2001, though the Indian press has been quick to offer many conspiracy theories about the "real reason" behind the denial of the visa. The Hindu nationalist elements in India have gone to town about the perceived "insult" to Indian pride, while the rabid segment of secular-liberal civil society can scarcely hide their glee at what they regard as just desert for Modi. Like most other political situations which create ideological faultlines (see Terry Schiavo's case in the US, the screening of Jerry Springer - The Musical on national TV in the UK etc.), the extremist nature of discourse surrounding the Modi visa denial tends to overshadow the less divisive aspects of the matter, aspects which are probably as relevant as the broader ideological debate.
This post, therefore, is an attempt to explain why I'm slightly more agnostic about taking pleasure from Modi's visa denial than some extremist liberals. I propose to look at this from two points of view - (i) the arbitrariness of the decision to deny Modi a visa (ii) the seeming insignificance of the matter from the US' perspective.
II Spot the odd one out
In the recent past, Pervez Musharraf, Chandrika Kumaratunga and Gerry Adams have all been granted visas to visit the USA. President Musharraf has been severely criticised by several international organisations for suppressing democracy in Pakistan (doh) and also for promoting religious discrimination in that country (or continuing to tolerate it); Chandrika Kumaratunga has been accused of the most horrendous human rights atrocities being committed against suspected Tamil militants in custody in Sri Lankan jails and Gerry Adams we all know about. Like Modi, none of these persons have been convicted for the commission of any of these offences, and yet all of them have been accused by some human rights organisation. Clearly then, the issue is not one of meeting certain criteria, because the criteria laid down in the International Religious Freedom Act applies to all of them. This arbitrariness also seems to be reflected in the recent denial of permission to Ram Guha for entry into the US.
However, regardless of what the actual reason for refusing Modi a visa is, every State has the right to determine who it allows onto its territory, and who it should grant a visa to. Few legal procedures exist to allow for review of these sorts of decisions, and very rarely is much political capital expended in seeking to right a perceived wrong which arises from decisions of this nature. There isn't much India can do to protest the US' decision, and arguably there are more important aspects to Indo-US relations to sort out than this. To talk of just desert for Modi, though, is to take a long leap - we have no idea of knowing why Modi was denied a visa, and given the sort of people who have been granted the visa, it's unclear why a random and arbitrary denial of a visa should be taken as a means of vindication in lieu of a properly adjudicated process of justice delivery (unless of course mere denial of a visa is regarded as sufficient punishment for the acts Modi is alleged to have committed). This is why I believe that there's little to rejoice in Modi's denial of a visa - it has little to do with providing justice to the victims of Gujarat, it is unlikely to make Modi feel repentant for what he's been accused of doing(or provide sufficient punishment for it) and it has just provided the Hindu Right with a cause to revive itself around.
III They Don't Really Care About Us
The core of the right-wing argument protesting the denial of Modi's visa is to claim it to be a sign of "disrespect" towards India. This may well be the case, but even if it is, it is not just a problem with the US government's stance towards India, but a reflection of the general lack of interest about Indian affairs in American society. Preliminary support for this can be gathered from the attention given to this denial by the American media - the NY Times carries a 129 word report on column A3 of page 4 of the edition of 19 March, the Washington Post does slightly better by giving it newspace on page A21 of the edition of the 19th, and A18 of the 20th. Other than the Indian community in the US (which seems divided on the propriety of the denial of the visa), few Americans are aware of the whole incident. By raising the "national insult" flag, the Hindu Right is drawing attention away from the important lesson which lies behind the denial of a visa to Modi - that for the US government, as well as for members of civil society, it doesn't matter if this constitutes a national insult or not. In such a situation, it is quite pointless to agitate on the basis of the disrespect being caused by the denial of the visa because it is not likely to result in Modi obtaining a visa (since the US government has no interest in doing so), pressurising the Indian government is unlikely to have any results (because issuing of visas is a purely internal matter for any State in the world) and the feelings of offended Indians don't count for much internationally.
IV The Way Forward
What this incident should be utilised for, therefore, is to introspect about why it is that India has such low presence in the context of the US' internal politics. Why is it that certain leaders would not be denied a visa into the US, but certain Indian leaders would? Why don't Americans care about this apparent discrimination? Why is the supposedly powerful and influential Indian lobby in the US unable to bring about a change in the perception of India there? Ideology-based arguments merely obfuscate this most central concern which arises from the whole visa denial incident.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Saturday, February 05, 2005
Secularism in India
Ok, this is a topic which started off much debate on one of the lists I'm on. I posted two articles from a recent edition of the Indian newsmagazine Outlook, which seemed to reflect two different positions on the notion of secularism as it was understood in the Indian and South Asian context. These articles are part of a debate between Ashis Nandy and Kuldip Nayar. Nandy's article, titled "A Billion Gandhis", essentially argued that secularism as understood by Nehru in its Western sense (i.e. separation of Church and State) was a "dry import" which was artificially imposed upon India. According to him, India has traditionally always had a multicultural ethos premised upon tolerance (a sort of "Hindu secularism"), and hence Western secularism was a pretty needless imposition. Nayar criticises this identification of Indian multiculturalism with Hinduism, and believes that such a notion could be powerful ammunition for proponents of communalism in India. I got an interesting response from a friend to this debate, which was:
First a question of definition and context - in India, no other word is bandied around so much as secularism - the press discusses it, politicians make a living out of it, and almost every Indian has an opinion on it. Our constitution mandates India to be a secular state, but Indian secularism is not a strict separation of church and state - it would be closer to what in the Western context has now been understood as 'multiculturalism' (this itself should be enough to refute Nandy's claim - the fact that the Indian variety was so different from how secularism has been understood in the West). Nandy's post-colonialism makes him blame almost everything on the colonial state. While it is true that the British policies led to the concretisation of 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' identities in the popular psyche, crediting them with running a secular administration is what they certainly did not do. A number of colonial British policies were clearly designed to drive a wedge between the two communities, their oft-quoted 'divide and rule' policy. But secularism was certainly a reaction of the then Indian elite (led by Nehru) to the problem of increasing tensions between the two communities in the aftermath of partition of the country based on religious lines. That Pakistan chose to become an Islamic state made it still difficult for Nehru to justify why India was not becoming a Hindu state, since that was the 'logic' of partition.
Anyway, that much history aside, the main problem of Nandy is that he comes from a romanticisation of everything traditional, and while he claims to be a non-believer, the Hindu colour of his ideas is unescapable. At another place, Nandy claims that 'Hindutva' (that is political militant hinduism) is the death of 'hinduism' (the traditional, rural, tolerance-based religion). A lot of his love for rural tolerance is mostly, for him, Hindu tolerance. His tolerant India is surely hindu India, because he sees the essence of hinduism as tolerance (I am not disputing or affirming the truth of this claim, but the fact is that this does exclude other religions as fundamentally tolerant). He, actually, says that the Hindu Right in India is actually christianising/islamising hinduism.
He gives himself away when he says:
> These ideas of tolerance in ordinary people and everyday life are
> tinged
> with popular religious beliefs, however superstitious, irrational and
> primitive they may seem to progressive, secular Indians. Modern India,
till
> today, has not produced a single hero of secularism except for that
> fading
> star, Jawaharlal Nehru.
He is more direct in his other writings as to which 'popular' religious beliefs he is referring to. Of course, the above question may not necessarily be a critique, and is open to demonstration that in fact the basic belief in hinduim is tolerance. (that still does not prove that the same is not true with other religions - and even if it was, it does not discredit secularism, which teaches tolerance irrespective of religion). However, one very crucial aspect that Nandy almost entirely ignores is the context of caste - his tolerant rural India continues to discriminate on the basis of caste, and only the modern, urban (western) secular state has considered it worth to intervene and disrupt the massive caste infrastructure (with whatever digree of success or failure).
The only point that Nandy gets right is his claim to Gandhi's legacy - this much is true - Gandhi did employ religion to fight religious hatred, and employed religious symbols for his political struggle. Indian secularism truly owes its debt only to Nehru.
And I responded by saying:
I don't necessarily agree that the notion of secularism as understood in India can so easily be equated with multiculturalism. The point Nandy has made in the past is that it is not clear what secularism is meant to be in India, for some it is separation of State from religion, and for some it is a more pluralist recognition of the rights of all religions. This is reflected in constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court on the content of the notion of 'secularism' in the constitution, for instance. Nandy's critique is of one such stream of thought - that of purely Western secularism, symbolised by the separation of State and church, which he believes is impossible to recreate successfully in Indian socio-political discourse. ('If secularism only means the traditional tolerance of South Asia, why do we need an imported idea to talk about that local tolerance?') Nandy is essentially contrasting two modes of achieving amity (Gandhi's religion-based method with Nehru's Occidental secular method) and nominating his preference between them. By declaring Nehru to be the only advocate of secularism in India, Nandy is implying that the current practice of secularism in India (i.e. as among the people of India) is closer to Gandhi than Nehru (who represents the political class in India), and for him this is a desirable outcome (ergo the title 'A Billion Gandhis'). Hence, according to Nandy, the traditional (Hindu/Gandhian) notion of communal amity which is prevalent in South Asian multicultural communities is a workable alternative to Western notions of secularism (which is what is sought to be imposed on them by the political elite). One possible criticism of Nandy could be that he errs in believing that the entire ruling class in India takes one view of secularism (in the Nehruvian sense), whereas in reality even the ruling class is more fragmented than that. This would not detract from the essence of Nandy's argument, that in a struggle between traditional notions of secularism and the Western one, it is the traditional which should prevail, atleast in the South Asian context.
The point about traditional notions of religion reinforcing caste structures is a valid one, but some also appear to believe that the 'modern, urban, secular State' is replacing caste structures with class ones. Is this necessarily a positive step?
Also I believe Nandy's romanticising of other traditional Indian concepts (including that of 'sati' - widow immolation) should not influence analysis of his notions on secularism, as each has its own context.
What do you think?
Prithvi.
First a question of definition and context - in India, no other word is bandied around so much as secularism - the press discusses it, politicians make a living out of it, and almost every Indian has an opinion on it. Our constitution mandates India to be a secular state, but Indian secularism is not a strict separation of church and state - it would be closer to what in the Western context has now been understood as 'multiculturalism' (this itself should be enough to refute Nandy's claim - the fact that the Indian variety was so different from how secularism has been understood in the West). Nandy's post-colonialism makes him blame almost everything on the colonial state. While it is true that the British policies led to the concretisation of 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' identities in the popular psyche, crediting them with running a secular administration is what they certainly did not do. A number of colonial British policies were clearly designed to drive a wedge between the two communities, their oft-quoted 'divide and rule' policy. But secularism was certainly a reaction of the then Indian elite (led by Nehru) to the problem of increasing tensions between the two communities in the aftermath of partition of the country based on religious lines. That Pakistan chose to become an Islamic state made it still difficult for Nehru to justify why India was not becoming a Hindu state, since that was the 'logic' of partition.
Anyway, that much history aside, the main problem of Nandy is that he comes from a romanticisation of everything traditional, and while he claims to be a non-believer, the Hindu colour of his ideas is unescapable. At another place, Nandy claims that 'Hindutva' (that is political militant hinduism) is the death of 'hinduism' (the traditional, rural, tolerance-based religion). A lot of his love for rural tolerance is mostly, for him, Hindu tolerance. His tolerant India is surely hindu India, because he sees the essence of hinduism as tolerance (I am not disputing or affirming the truth of this claim, but the fact is that this does exclude other religions as fundamentally tolerant). He, actually, says that the Hindu Right in India is actually christianising/islamising hinduism.
He gives himself away when he says:
> These ideas of tolerance in ordinary people and everyday life are
> tinged
> with popular religious beliefs, however superstitious, irrational and
> primitive they may seem to progressive, secular Indians. Modern India,
till
> today, has not produced a single hero of secularism except for that
> fading
> star, Jawaharlal Nehru.
He is more direct in his other writings as to which 'popular' religious beliefs he is referring to. Of course, the above question may not necessarily be a critique, and is open to demonstration that in fact the basic belief in hinduim is tolerance. (that still does not prove that the same is not true with other religions - and even if it was, it does not discredit secularism, which teaches tolerance irrespective of religion). However, one very crucial aspect that Nandy almost entirely ignores is the context of caste - his tolerant rural India continues to discriminate on the basis of caste, and only the modern, urban (western) secular state has considered it worth to intervene and disrupt the massive caste infrastructure (with whatever digree of success or failure).
The only point that Nandy gets right is his claim to Gandhi's legacy - this much is true - Gandhi did employ religion to fight religious hatred, and employed religious symbols for his political struggle. Indian secularism truly owes its debt only to Nehru.
And I responded by saying:
I don't necessarily agree that the notion of secularism as understood in India can so easily be equated with multiculturalism. The point Nandy has made in the past is that it is not clear what secularism is meant to be in India, for some it is separation of State from religion, and for some it is a more pluralist recognition of the rights of all religions. This is reflected in constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court on the content of the notion of 'secularism' in the constitution, for instance. Nandy's critique is of one such stream of thought - that of purely Western secularism, symbolised by the separation of State and church, which he believes is impossible to recreate successfully in Indian socio-political discourse. ('If secularism only means the traditional tolerance of South Asia, why do we need an imported idea to talk about that local tolerance?') Nandy is essentially contrasting two modes of achieving amity (Gandhi's religion-based method with Nehru's Occidental secular method) and nominating his preference between them. By declaring Nehru to be the only advocate of secularism in India, Nandy is implying that the current practice of secularism in India (i.e. as among the people of India) is closer to Gandhi than Nehru (who represents the political class in India), and for him this is a desirable outcome (ergo the title 'A Billion Gandhis'). Hence, according to Nandy, the traditional (Hindu/Gandhian) notion of communal amity which is prevalent in South Asian multicultural communities is a workable alternative to Western notions of secularism (which is what is sought to be imposed on them by the political elite). One possible criticism of Nandy could be that he errs in believing that the entire ruling class in India takes one view of secularism (in the Nehruvian sense), whereas in reality even the ruling class is more fragmented than that. This would not detract from the essence of Nandy's argument, that in a struggle between traditional notions of secularism and the Western one, it is the traditional which should prevail, atleast in the South Asian context.
The point about traditional notions of religion reinforcing caste structures is a valid one, but some also appear to believe that the 'modern, urban, secular State' is replacing caste structures with class ones. Is this necessarily a positive step?
Also I believe Nandy's romanticising of other traditional Indian concepts (including that of 'sati' - widow immolation) should not influence analysis of his notions on secularism, as each has its own context.
What do you think?
Prithvi.
Introductions
There are so many media blogs out there, what's so special about this one? Why does it have such a boring title? Why does it exist?
Well, to answer the easy questions first - there's nothing special about this blog, and I couldn't think of a clever enough title for it which would convey what the blog's about, so that takes care of concerns (1) and (2). There are several reasons for why I've decided to waste webspace by putting this blog up:
1. Ever so often, I come across interesting articles on the Net which I post to friends and listserves of which I am a member. However, given the limited membership of the listserves (and the very limited patience of my friends), I rarely get feedback or comment on these articles. This blog is therefore, primarily, a means of promoting interaction and discussion on certain issues which interest me.
2. Blogs have taken off in a big way, and blogger.com seems to be going very strong. I have no backups for the stuff I send, and write, and they exist solely on my computer. Posting to this blog is some sort of insurance against computer-related disasters.
So I look forward to comments, questions, suggestions and further posts from people out there, I promise to post all comments which are not "offensive", whether or not I agree with the content in them.
Happy blogging to me!
Prithvi.
Well, to answer the easy questions first - there's nothing special about this blog, and I couldn't think of a clever enough title for it which would convey what the blog's about, so that takes care of concerns (1) and (2). There are several reasons for why I've decided to waste webspace by putting this blog up:
1. Ever so often, I come across interesting articles on the Net which I post to friends and listserves of which I am a member. However, given the limited membership of the listserves (and the very limited patience of my friends), I rarely get feedback or comment on these articles. This blog is therefore, primarily, a means of promoting interaction and discussion on certain issues which interest me.
2. Blogs have taken off in a big way, and blogger.com seems to be going very strong. I have no backups for the stuff I send, and write, and they exist solely on my computer. Posting to this blog is some sort of insurance against computer-related disasters.
So I look forward to comments, questions, suggestions and further posts from people out there, I promise to post all comments which are not "offensive", whether or not I agree with the content in them.
Happy blogging to me!
Prithvi.
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