I hear this remark often made by the likes of Arnab, Rajdeep and all the other media folks who talk about terrorist attacks.
They comfortably blame it on fundamentalism. But I find that stupid. Simply because it is incomplete!
The "www.freedictionary.com" definition of this term is roughly "rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism."
Hence, if you say it the problem of adherence to "something".....then.....
unless that "something" gets filled with Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Communism, Marxism, Capitalism etc. it is not complete.
Hence "Fundamentalism" CANNOT be the problem standalone.
It has to be what follows/precedes "Fundamentalism" which acts as the base.
The following things lay the foundation of fundamentalism
1) A doctrine/philosophy in which you absolutely believe
2) A leader/teacher/motivator/father figure who has applied that doctrine/foundation in real life (or has at least pretended as if he/she followed it and is misguiding you)
3) The context of your life (where/when are you born, who are your parents, where did you study, what did you study, how poor or rich were you? etc.)
The three factors above play a huge part in what you turn out to be.
Now, assuming you are a fundamentalist, that STILL is NOT a problem.
Why?
Mahatma Gandhiji was one of the greatest fundamentalists in recent history. Although a Hindu, he was unknowingly or knowingly in my opinion, a hardcore Jain philosopher who probably resembled Jesus Christ (he actually refers to Leo Tolstoy's works in his book My Experiments with Truth, who in turn takes on Jesus Christs Non Violent ideology).
Bill Maher once calls the Mahatma "He was so f***ing Christian that he was a Hindu".
The context in which he was born into turned this combination to lead him to become the greatest crusader of freedom movement in India. Take away the doctrine or the leader or if he was born today, it is hard to tell if he would be revered the same way he is.
Turn it the other way, if you look at an Ajmal Kasab, who was made to believe in a version of Islam, by a group of terrorist elements, and he was a poor man (who in his own interview goes to say that he would have done anything for Rs. 1.5 lakhs and that was the amount that the terrorists had promised his mother would get). And what you get out of the above is a terrorist.
Now, having seen the examples, let us analyze these three factors in a bit more detail.
1) Doctrine/Philosophy - you can NEVER have a Fundamentalist Jain terrorist bomber. It is an oxymoron to call a true Jain, a terrorist. Hence it is wrong to say that the doctrine has "Nothing" to do with making you a terrorist. It does. It very much does.
If the doctrine is full of violence, it has expletives, it encourages violence, if it promises wild rewards for acts of violence etc. then it is quite possible that it will play a role (how much of a role it plays is also dependent on who your teacher or motivator is) in turning you into something which is not desirable for the society.
I certainly believe that all the doctrines of the world can easily be compared scientifically and we can definitely grade them on some parameters such as
1) Equality of gender
2) Freedom of speech
3) General violence factor
etc. etc. what is today considered as a moral construct for general human well being (as what a Sam Harris would say)
I will not be giving out what i think is the gradation of the different religions of the world, but it is definitely possible to do this scientifically. Take for example violence, we can look at
1) How many instances of chopping of limbs/head etc. per 1000 words in the text exist?
2) How many instances of child abuse are shown as examples?
3) How many instances of robbery etc. are there in the doctrine?
4) What kind of punishments does the book prescribe?
etc. etc.
Basically what I am talking about is giving a CBFC(Adults only or Universal) type rating to the religious texts around the world and you can decide the gradation of violence, equality , freedom etc.
Take the above and you can easily plot a graph around it.
The basic point of this exercise is that if you arrive at the conclusion that religion X is the most violent based on the above gradation, there is a good likelihood that if you belong to that religion and the below two factors are also right, you may end up being an anti-social element. I am willing to bet Jainism will be the least violent religion as per above yardstick!
And I do believe that the doctrine is the most important factor in contributing to fundamentalism - because it is the basis. Without it, a leader/context is going to do nothing to you
2) Now comes the motivator. This is another important factor. A clever speaker can twist the most non-violent doctrine to make it the most violent, while at the same time can moderate a very heavily violent text into something which is very peaceful.
We can see for example a doctrine being, rights for Tamilians. Combine it with a Prabhakaran and you may get the first suicide bomber in modern history Thenmozhi Rajarathnam (who killed Rajiv Gandhi) - combined of course with the context in which she was born and brought up etc. Now, a similar Tamil sentiment exploited in India for instance during Indira Gandhi regime, and you may get a DMK party in a different context, under different leaders which is now a leading political party in Tamilnadu. Completely different results in both cases.
3) Lastly, the context, I believe critical too. And it is quite self explanatory why a context can shape you completely differently. A most violent doctrine, combined with a most violent leader may still not force you into committing a crime, if you are quite well off, and are well taken care of in your life.
Now, to conclude, to say that fundamentalism is the problem in terrorism, and NOT that of the religion is NOT correct.
Religion or Doctrine has the most important role.
So does the motivator as well as the context. You cannot separate these from a terrorist or a hero.
4 comments:
Well, smartly argued that you can't separate the context from the act. But - I think in your interesting didactic narrative, you are missing the forest for the trees and stopping short of a more nuanced analysis. It will take me a bit to say what I mean - so bear with me.
Every religion is based on a set of dogma. Something like Euclid's geometrical axioms. And the real bug (feature??) in all religions is that at their core, they all started with a fairly small set of axioms, which were expressed in a manner that was relevant to the time. These expressions, instead of the axioms were taken by various followers as rigid dogmas for all eternity. Which is where I would place the concept of "fundamentalism".
Like in Christianity, I might speculate that - it is the Sermon on the Mount and the few pieces of teachings on Love and Compassion that Jesus may have given that might arguably stand as the intended axioms. The New Testament though, is an interpretive piece with versions by 4 different apostles - that gets down to certain dogmatic assertions about the life of Jesus as a personality for worship and over time the church evolved concepts including Virgin Birth, Trinity etc. that expanded the context and placed it in a framework for Christianity as a modern religion.
Islam - we have to understand in in the context of the life of Prophet Mohammed and his teachings and the historical context he lived in (tribal warfare, superstitious idolatry, immoral lifestyles etc). He introduced teners (axioms) for what it means to be a Muslim like the Brotherhood and Communal living ("Ummah"), Charity, Austerity etc besides following One God for what He is (Merciful Father) and not for what he gives. It was a revelation for the masses of those times.
However - the followers by focussing on the expressions of how the concepts were taught (warfare, rigid social codes) rather than the tenets themselves, created the Hadith and possibly influenced many verses in Quran itself, which became their framework for assertion for the religion.
It is a moot question if Jainism's or Budhism's fundamental axiom is really "Non violence" (while common understanding even in wikipedia is just that). To me, Jainism and Budhism really seem to say that life itself is the problem. Both are atheistic religions - that say there is no God to bring you out of the misery. The more you give rise to passions that answer to temptations to attach yourself to life (either by desire or hatred), the more you trap yourself. Because there is no God, it is upto you to eradicate these in yourself and get out of the cycle. Ahimsa is one of the levers to get out of the cycle.
In fact, a deeper study suggests that the axioms for Buddhism and Jainism is in fact monasticism, asceticism and renunciation from active life which is a level beyond ahimsa or aparigraha. Their purpose was to say - rebel against ritualistic forms of worship and illusory lifestyles and go to the forest. Which is why they were called "Shramanas". In fact in ancient India, it has been claimed by some scholars that there were no sanyasis before Buddha and Jains. It is quite illuminating that Sankaracharya had to wear the saffron robes and mimic their approach before he could argue that Buddhism and Jainism are variants of the Hindu thought, and actually disrupt their growtj.
Again quite ironically, the Buddhist and Jain religions today have temples and stupas and viharas and ritual worship forms even in mystical traditions like Tibetan Buddhism. The Budhist religions split into the Mahayana and Hinayana path, the Jains into Swetambara and Digambara, and each created their own cosmology, mythology, Sutras and scriptures.
The interesting feature is - all these religions were outgrowth of axioms that were initiated at a historic point in time by certain personalities - which makes it inevitable that the personalities themselves became objects of reverence - which may or may not have been their intentions. Their other interesting feature is all these religions were also created as "anti- something" (Christianty against prevalent forms of Judaism, Islam agaist Animism, Shramanas against rigid Hinduism). Which necessitates them to have a positivist rigour.
The unfortunate part is - like every powerful concept, religions like these give rise to powerful elites or coteries (some of whom were formed very early) who dogmatized the simple teachings and created bodies of work and personalities who are deemed infallible.
There may not fundamentalist Jains today (though it is probably because they are fairly localized and too integrated within the Hindu social ecosystem that there is not enough cause to assert their identity or have a unique grievance)- but there are fundamentalist Buddhists please (please see Sri Lanka or Thailand)
Against this, you have Hinduism which is like a flowing river that did not arise out of any single set of axioms and perennially evolves, subsuming many passing streams. One sees the Rig Vedas focussing more on worship of the elements - which synchronized with the nomadic lifestyle prevalent in the times of Vedic Hinduism. But, with the early Vedic Hindus settling down for a more sedentary lifestyle - one sees a more openness to inquiry and philosophy and deep questioning that led to the more evolved Vedic scriptures, including the Nasadiya Sukta and all the principal Upanishads and a master-manual for the Kali Yuga called the Gita.
There is enough evidence to suggest that what is known as Hinduism today is a syncretic mixture of several cults, small traditions and ritualistic beliefs, personifications etc. that it is impossible for anyone to say with authority that this defines Hinduism. Noone less than Swami Vivekananda himself has said that before Buddhists and Jains there were no temples either. Even that was borrowed.
So being a fundamentalist - is not just a question of religion as a context. It says a lot about where the evolution of a system of thought got arrested by the actions of the followers who followed the founder. Incidentally, since Hinduism did not grow out of a one set of concepts, it is difficult to prevent its evolution by any power class. So I think the only religion that I know of - that it is absurd to become a fundamentalist of - is Hinduism.
If at any point in time, anyone succeeds in defining Hinduism, creates a moral police for destroying what is "not Hindu", and breeds intolerance for "alien cultures", take it from me - you will definitely see a fundamentalist Hindu.
Not that nobody is trying. Which is why Hindutva, and its symbols of saffron, trishuls, Baba Ramdev, Yoga and Ram Mandir sounds so paradoxical to me- a bit like committing suicide when being chased by marauders.
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