Chicago: The University of Chicago Press [distributed for Seagull Books], 2021. viii, 163 pp. US$19.00, cloth. ISBN 9780857428622.
This engaging essay on dissent by the eminent historian of ancient India, Romila Thapar, raises more questions for the centre of the political agenda than the ones she addresses. Thapar’s rigorous examination of the making and remaking of Hinduism compels us to think. In a world where the asking of uncomfortable questions is frowned upon, and often punished by prolonged jail sentences, her arguments encourage the reader to reflect, examine, and prize open the chief legitimizing ideology of political power. This is an enviable accomplishment. Thapar is to be congratulated for her indomitable courage, her meticulous research, her skill in translating complex and difficult issues into communicable language, and above all the clarity of argument that brings various strands neatly together in the concluding section.
It is by now understood that religion as ideology in search of power is qualitatively different from religion as faith. This essay goes further and shows that the idea of a homogenized and uniform religion, which has been uncritically adopted by the ruling party in India, is a colonial construct. Hinduism has undergone various permutations and combinations since the time of the Rig Veda in the second millennium BCE, i.e., the Vedic times. The dominant religion practiced and taught by the upper castes, the Brahmanas, was based on the Vedas. Even then the presence of the “Other” in the form of the Dasa, who practiced a different religion and different rituals, was registered, even accommodated. For instance, learned sons of Dasi mothers and Brahmin fathers came to be known by their maternal name in a patriarchal society.
In the second stage of the development of the religion, from the mid to late first millennium CE, the challenge to Puranic Hinduism came from Shramanic philosophies: Buddhists, Jainas, Ajivikas, and Charvaks. Dissenters questioned the foundations of Vedic orthodoxy, and introduced new ways of worship. These sects as well as the Bhakti movement attracted the lower castes, which had been excluded from the Brahmanic fold, through institutions such as the Vihara and the Sangha. In easily the most interesting part of the work, Thapar tells us that Brahmanas realized that concessions had to be made to other sections of society if Vedic religion were to expand its domain. Though Puranic Hinduism focused on Vishnu and Shiva, gradually the pantheon evolved to include local cults. Much of the spread of the religion was due to successful interweaving of the Puranic religion with regional cults of deities and heroes. One such example is the worship of Vishnu in his Vithala/Vinobha form in the main temple of Pandarpur in Mahararashtra. The entry of Islam brought new forms of dissent. Sufis challenged orthodox Islam, and formed new centres of devotion that revolved around Pirs.
Until the time of colonialism, Hinduism encompassed a number of sects. Sometimes dissenting sects were accommodated into the dominant religion, and sometimes their fate depended on patronage from wealthy sections, or the lack thereof. In the process, Hinduism was transformed. “To ignore the contribution of dissenting ideas to these reformulations, or their failure to encourage the necessary mutations, is to ignore the impressive presence of dissent in assessing the cultivation of religion in India and in the underpinning of many social forms” (89).
Colonialism replaced the plurality of religious traditions with a uniform and homogenizing Hinduism. Administrative officials and Indologists, for a complex array of reasons, standardized religions. The project was furthered by nineteenth-century social reform movements that invoked Vedic Hinduism. In the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party that rules India, the flattening out of multiple traditions is a necessary precondition of a legitimizing ideology. The ideology accepts neither debates, nor challenges to its version of Hinduism, as if religion had no interaction with political economy, society, or the opposition thrown up by dissenting sects over the centuries. Consequently, Hinduism has become excessively Brahmanical, metaphysical, and abstract. The many inequities and the many exclusions of Hinduism, particularly on the basis of caste, are neither recognized nor commented on. Thapar’s essay mounts a powerful critique of precisely this approach. Religion in the hands of professional politicians becomes a form of power. It is distanced from faith.
Intolerance towards dissent cannot obfuscate the fact that we are social beings; we realize ourselves through debates, agreements, and disagreements. These were central to Hinduism. Bhikhu Parekh suggests that from 1000 BCE onwards Hindus within and outside traditions debated on Vedic hymns, sacrificial rituals, the nature of the Brahman, atman, karma, and the meaning of life. With the rise of Shramanic philosophies, debates took place in halls specially designed for the purpose. Over time discussions on the best way to conduct debates generated the discipline of vadvidya. Debates were categorized according to the intention of the debaters. One form was Tattvanirninsisu: concerned with discovery of the truth. The second was vijigisu, or a debate meant solely to win (Bhikhu Parekh, Debating India; Essays on Indian Political Discourse, Oxford University Press, 2015, 3–33).
Ironically, Brahmanical Hinduism shorn of debates and dissent became the public philosophy of the freedom struggle, and of our society. The marginalization of critical and rational philosophies gives us cause for thought. If a rational, materialistic, empiricist, and sceptical philosophical school such as Carvaka had been given prominence in the forging of a Hindu tradition, perhaps India would have escaped being slotted into the spiritual versus materialist dichotomy. The stereotyping of Indian society as exotic and otherwordly has not helped us forge an equitable future. Even today Indian society fails to accept the enormity of material inequities, fascinated as it is with the metaphysical spirit. In short, the privileging of a highly metaphysical tradition as the public philosophy of India has led us away from the reality of social oppressions and ignoble power. It cannot help us to challenge power equations, let alone remedy inequities. Thapar’s essay propels this very recognition to the centre of our political concerns.
Neera Chandhoke
University of Delhi, New Delhi