IN BAD FAITH (previously published in
The Hindustan Times) NEXT>
India's great new middle class has done it. It has triumphed
over the squeamish pusillanimities of its predecessors and
embraced the pursuit of wealth any which way as desirable
social goal No. 1. Gone are the days when the unduly wealthy
heart would twinge just that little bit with an inherited
habit of shamefacedness. The pieties of old are everywhere
bullied by the designer purse full of currency and the credit
card. Old, self-defeating 'wisdoms' are busy making the
most creative adjustments to the political economy of 'globalisation';
and all proudly in public.
It is a truism of historical analysis that all moments of
profound social transformation (e.g. the English Renaissance,
the French Revolution, the popular upsurges of the Sixties)
entail a far-reaching rethink about what it means to be
'human', about man's relation to man, and man's relation
to God. In the history of the modern West, the Protestant
Reformation, its Puritan fallout that played a decisive
hand in the making of America, and the work of the French
Philosophes are cases in point.
In our own case, a Hindu-Calvinist revolution has been under
way for over a decade. Where possessions and property drew
cultured apology and righteous opprobrium from the have-nots
(witness the overall cultural narratives of Hindi movies
from inception to the Eighties), possessions and property
are now peddled not only as justification for social aggressiveness
and political eligibility, but indeed as indices of the
guarantee of salvation in the hereafter. Put simply, the
logic reads: if God means well by us in this world, he must
mean well by us in the next life as well. Just as the development
of capitalism in the West required the ejection of an inconvenient
Christ - since his ethics hardly matched the imperatives
of Exchange - from the Bible, so here dharma gives way to
more canny and pragmatic interpretations of the concept
as pelf and power become the self-evident pointers to our
status as God's 'elect.'
Is it any wonder then that religious observances are no
longer matters of inward need, but aids to the consolidation
of ascendance? The quietitude of prayer born of an old and
unevolved sense of the imperfections of being human in a
troubled world, therefore, yield to exhibitory and exorbitant
splashes that go hand in hand, in eloquent Hobbesian phrase,
with the "war of everyman against everyman." On an everyday
basis, of course, ill-gotten money feeds smoothly into the
daily offerings made equally at roadside temples as we return
from the day's maximisation of profit and at the more gorgeous
ones - temples that gobble up public land without the least
fear of secular law. But during the festive season - and
when is there not a festive season in Bharat - it is that
our ruling philistines come into their very own.
Thus Navratras, Garbas, Durga Pujas, are taken over now
by professional 'event managers' looking to build a brand
name, and graced by the ubiquitous politicians seeking to
firm up their public standing and, hopefully, their vote.
The Hindu-Calvinist revolution thus effects a clear and
guiltless ejection of the impoverished from the old culture
of community oneness, however symbolic. Religion, our new
elite assume, will properly remain an opiate and a vote-catcher
in the shanty while among the God's favoured, it becomes
a designer draught backed by the full approbation of the
State.
And that last assumption is hardly misplaced. Consider that
whatever else the State may or may not do, it never fails
to place the full compliment of its protective enforcement
at the disposal of the organiser whenever or wherever a
mela or a yatra is in the offing. Indeed, the one reliable
service the State now performs is to ensure that shraddhalus
are fully safe from the profane of every sort. Be it Amarnath,
or the Kumbh melas, or Vaishno Devi, or Tirupati, or the
Kanwaria rally, or an Ashtami, not to speak of Ramlilas,
the State will be in full attendance.
And another thing: notice that 'ordinary' rallies in pursuance
of some socially contentious issue, however significant
to India's impoverished masses - not to speak of the right
to strike - are now prohibited, all with the due pleasure
both of the 'elect' classes whose business is badly affected
by collective expressions of secular protest and of the
corporate media, who project the melas and the yatras with
gusto. But if the rallies are saffron-clad, no highway or
centre of town is out of bounds.
And as the religion of the haves comes to be recognised
more and more for what it is - a brazen and irreligious
display of power - that recognition may yield a more durable
secularisation of the people of India. Let alone the opiate,
even the balm that religion used to be may not anymore be
satisfactory medicine for the crude exclusions and oppressions
that they suffer with increasingly disdainful ejection from
the life of the nation.
-Dr. Badri Raina, Professor of English, University of Delhi
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