8. The monologue of liberalism and its imagination of the sacred in minority cultures

As a generalisation, the bulk of Eastern philosophy, with some exception such as the Nyaya and Vaisesika schools,^[3] absorbs and devours dualism within most of its strands. The perpetual conflict for hegemony between opposing universalisms becomes redundant in Indic civilisation. The artist is free in Indian civilisation, because the civilisation itself is essentially free from dogma. This is the obvious thing that escapes the Western liberal artist when Indian cultures are ‘orientalised’ and treated under the rubric of the dualist struggle in terms of which the main body of Western civilisation comprehends reality. Edward Said, who introduced the word ‘Orientalism’^[4] in relation to perceptions about the Islamic world, charged the West with failing to understand other cultures and of imposing its own worldview to make sense of others; this misunderstanding was partly romantic and partly demeaning. Such an approach perverts the understanding of alternative cultures, and eventually it leads to the leading Western-educated minds in other cultures internalising the myth created by the West of themselves. Similarly, Western liberalism has generally failed to comprehend the non-dualist world view of the East in practical everyday life. Although many Western intellectuals romanticise it ‘intellectually’, they rarely understand its practical expression, and often simplify the seeming contradictions in Eastern cultures in Western dualist contests of good–bad, freedom–oppression.

Multiple and sometimes competing complexities fusing into one strand are a feature of the dominant Vedanta school of which the Advaita (meaning non dualist) Vedanta^[5] of Adi Sankara^[6] has inspired most of Hindu thinking. In Vedic thinking, there is not only Brahma the creator, and Shiva the destroyer, but also Vishnu the preserver. One creates, the other destroys, the third preserves. What is destroyed is created again, preserved and destroyed and it goes on. Time and space become irrelevant, as does history. There is harmony among the three rather than conflict. Underlying all this is the still, unmoving Brahaman,^[7] the Eternal in whom everything finally collapses into, who has set this drama, the Lila, an illusion of cycles perceived subjectively by each human mind. Thus, Hindu philosophy obfuscates certainty and undermines fundamentalism anchored in divine revelation.

In the ordinary tapestry of Indian life, Rama, the god of virtue and charity, can sit with Kali, the god of destruction and sacrifice. The Dharmasashtra, the text of chants of moral duties can be read with the Kama Sutras, the texts of pleasure, in the same temple. Varanasi, the holiest place of worship on the Ganges is not very far from Khajurao, where the temples have bestiality, orgies, homosexuality and heterosexual positions carved on temple walls. The sacred and profane are not seen as in conflict with each other. The tapestry is flattened, all existing in the same domain, the same corner, walking and breathing together without threat from the other or threatening the other.

In the Sikh philosophy, Satguru, the eternal teacher is called by so many attributes and character names that the name loses meaning, becoming ‘anaame’^[8] (without name) in the Dasaam Granth, the text written during the period of the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh. The anaame is the benevolent architect of the tranquillity of a quiet beach, and also the alleged demonic destroyer who created the Tsunami^[9] as explained in the Guru Granth Sahib, the textual guide of the Sikhs compiled by the ten Sikh Gurus.^[10] Everything functions within hukam,^[11] the laws, but no one quite understands why things happen, ultimately.^[12] Bad and good are in people’s minds. We can venture conjectures on the mechanics, but to understand ‘the why’ is beyond ordinary language and discourse. No one can know the ultimate truth; therefore no one can claim to have knowledge superior to that of others.^[13]

Dialogue and critical discourse is an intrinsic feature of Indic philosophies. Consequently Indian philosophies and cultures are used to disagreements and critical views. But in critique and dialogue, offence is avoided in Indic cultures. For instance, within Sikhi, the trinity of Hinduism (called Trimurti) is not dismissed with a language of condemnation, but it is made irrelevant through subtle critique.^[14] The human can outwit the trinity gods and make a direct connection with the Eternal. The pantheon of Hindu gods is thus made irrelevant. But, in the Sikh scripture, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, the language is never offensive, never commanding, just as it never is in Indic traditions. It initiates a debate within the individual to come up with the desired inference. The one eternal divine reality of Sikhi and the multiple gods of some sections of Hinduism have coexisted in the same territorial, social and political space without either system waging a crusade against the other.

The sacred and profane exist within the same context, in the same dimension, in the same space. They are not demarcated by territory or barriers. Differences exist in people’s minds. Therefore, there is no battle for the artist to overcome or external forces to challenge, except people’s minds. The success of the artist is to introduce a dialogue within the mind.

But this is where the Natyashastar ^[15] places sanctions, as does Kautaliya’s Arthashastra. Both prohibit deliberate offence. The reason becomes apparent when other aspects of Indian civilisation and the theory of arts are considered. The Natyashastar, written about 2500 years ago, is the text of theatre and arts. The Arthashaster, also written around the same time by Kautaliya, is a text of statecraft and politics, written at least 1500 years before Machiavelli’s The Prince.

Most Indic philosophies believe in an eternal drama. Creation is engaged in a drama, the lila (Sanskrit), constructing, deconstructing in perpetual cycles operating concurrently.^[16] Lila is the key concept that enables Indian thinker to escape from universalism and anthropocentrism. There is nothing special about Man. All creation is engaged in this perpetual drama. Some day, humans will become extinct and may rise again. All human ideas are conjectures as no one can penetrate the ultimate reality of the drama. On the other hand, our perceptions are illusions, maya, which are real for us, but in the wider context, part of illusion within the lila.

This enables an enduring plurality and the freedom from hegemonic tendencies. The philosopher is under no compulsion to be an evangelist and spread his inspirations or impose his world view. In Indian tradition, the guru (the guide) waits, and the disciple comes to him. Different gurus have different perspectives. The Nyaya school^[17] is highly analytic, as opposed to the intuitive and even blind belief system of some schools. It uses principles of human reason to deconstruct. The Samkhya school is atheist.^[18] It believes that only what we can see, feel and reason, exists. The Vedanta, the most popular school in Hindu society, believes in the Brahaman,^[19] the creator and the creation as maya, an illusion. Yet, the different schools co-exist in the same town, and in the same Kingdom.

Stated within the acceptable norms of dialogue, nothing is shocking and nothing is really suppressed in Indic civilisation. There is nothing that invites the wrath of the ‘Church’, as there is no Church. Since there is no concept of the sacred and the profane as distinct entities, everything is sacred. All life, all creativity and all action are sacred. Even rejection of a divine order or a God isn’t considered blasphemous, unholy or a sacrilege. In fact, the Samkhya school of Hinduism is atheistic and has coexisted as an alternative philosophy of reality without tension between it and other systems.

Hindu civilisation makes a subtle difference between philosophy and pragmatic everyday life. The differences are manmade. People pray to stone gods, but the philosopher engages in dialectic beyond gods. Beliefs exist in perpetual dialogue with others, with the environment, and with the abstract perception of truth. The individual is free to choose his god and his version of reality, his method of perception and form of sacredness. The individual’s engagement is voluntarily. No church or doctrine forces a particular world-view upon the individual. But the culture imposes that he or she accepts and respects the personal space of the other. What one individual considers sacred may seem ridiculous to the other. This degree of pluralism survives by each person and community respecting the other for what they are, not what they can be in one’s terms.

In this free-for-all world, order is maintained in society through some regulation. Civil regulation is part of society, made sacred, but never so universalist as to warrant crusades to convert other systems. There are at least four versions of the Dharmasutras, ^[20] (also named Dharmashastra) the texts of duties, but there have never been conflicts or wars over ‘which’ Dharmasutra. Whenever domination occurs, it is asserted out of pure desire for power and not in some vague belief in one single absolutist idea of the cosmos and life. There are laws, but they are often made by the hegemonic caste or group. These are not absolute laws. They are enacted and imposed consciously by a section of society for its own benefit, sometimes hideous and unjust laws which function to create privilege. The upper caste claims authority from the ancient sages for these laws and repression of others. But if the Brahmins created the caste for their own power, the sanyasi (ascetics) made the casteless system outside the civil. In traditional India, the towns and villages were often regulated by the Brahmin with rules codified in Manu’s laws.^[21] However, the dissenter could legitimately walk out on this and into the almost bohemian and non-materialist life of the sanyasi, with their camps and dwellings in forests. The sanyasi could wander into the towns and villages without fear, but did not stay there to avoid living under civil laws. One version of the Hindu text, Ramayana was written by Valmiki, a sudre (of the low caste), yet Brahmins, not so long ago, cleansed themselves even when the shadow of a sudre prevailed on them.

But one almost universalist concept in Indic civilisation is to limit the scope of gratuitous offence as a weapon of critique, in order to maintain this fiercely pluralistic society. This is the principle that requires the arts and the theatre to avoid offence for the sake of offence, ridicule for the sake of ridicule, or ‘profanity’ simply to make a point. The sacred is not universal but individual to the person or the community. Each person and each community of believers creates his/her own space outside others. That space is its ‘essential’ and, therefore sacred. And each creates its own rituals, practices and causes. The rules of dialectic allow critique but not offence. Offensive acts towards or offensive representations of another’s sacred is a political statement. It is the equivalent of robbery, impropriety or intended humiliation.

If people were to ridicule the other’s choice, make mockery, deliberately offend, and purposely destroy the ‘sacred’ imagination of another, society would break down into a series of violent retaliations and power struggles. This is the basis of self regulation in Indian civilisation. The distinction between critique and offence is embedded in culture. Since another’s god is not imposing any laws upon one’s own value system, there is no reason to embark on a campaign of humiliating the other’s god or the other’s beliefs. There is no mileage in parody of the sacred, since the submission to a god or a system is voluntary.

This principle of civility allows the atheist of the school of Samkhya to live as neighbour in the same street as the believer in the elephant god, Ganesh. The person who sacrifices to Kali (goddess of destruction) and the Sikh who rejects this multitude of gods and idol worship and the Muslim who believes in a revealed religion, the Christian who believes in a son of God and the Buddhist who does not ponder about a creator, can coexist. This coexistence would break down if the humanist put up plays offending the others in his or her assumption of superior values, or the Christian stamped on the elephant god as devil worship, the Sikh spat on the idol of Kali, and the Muslim tore down the crucifix of Christ under pretext of freedom of expression. Indian society would simply tear itself apart. Plurality survives on rejection of universality but respect of the other’s sacred space.

One of most spectacular living examples of this plurality of beliefs, philosophies and ways of lives is seen at the three-yearly festival of Maha Kumbh Mela, rotating between four cities in India. The Hindu Pantheon, from the nanga sadhus (naked holymen) to the rigidly caste-ist and puritanical Brahmins, come together in a gathering of millions. Nothing creative can shock in the Maha Kumbh Mela. In this grand spectacle of Indian civilisation in performance, there is no absolute ceiling, no divinely ordained universal restrictive laws, and no desecration as understood in Western civilisation. It is a world of believe and let believe.

Perhaps the very concept and terminology of religion is misplaced in Indic cultures. Hinduism has the Dharmasutras, the texts of natural duties, the Shilpasashtra, the texts of science and architecture, the Arthasashtra, the text of politics and statecraft, the Kama Shastrar, the text of pleasure, and the Natyashastra, the text of theatre and arts as well as many other smaller Vedic texts. But they also coalesce. There is the wide-ranging Manu’s laws,^[22] which deal with individual moral life, inter-personal interactions, community relations, commerce, politics and in fact most aspects of life. They are part of the so-called sacred cannons of Hinduism. How can these broad fields be classified as religion? They are part of a civilisation that does not differentiate between the religious and the political, between the secular and the spiritual. Indic philosophies tend to work on the premise of a holistic approach and interdependency.

In Sikhi too, the distinction between religion and politics, worship and action, science and spirit, simply do not exist. They are artificial atomistic distinctions created by modernity and when applied to Sikhi, they confuse interpretation and meaning of the Sikh teachings. The word that Indic systems use to describe themselves is ‘dharma’.

The word ‘dharma’ does not have a direct transliteration in English. Sri Krishna Kant, Vice President of India in 1997, made a clear distinction between dharma and religion.^[23] He described dharma this way:

The Krishna society describes dharma as ‘the inseparable quality that makes a thing what it is. A stone’s dharma is to be hard, water’s is to be wet, fire’s to be hot, sugar’s to be sweet’.^[25] The Mahabharat, one of the sacred texts of Hinduism, describes: (‘dhaaranaat dharmam ityahuh dharmo dhaarayate prajah,’) ‘They call it dharma, since it upholds; it is dharma that upholds the people (of the world)’. That which upholds, supports or sustains this universe, without which the universe would disintegrate, is dharma.

The Guru Granth Sahib, the living textual Guru (Guide) of the Sikhs does not use the word mazhab, which translates as ‘religion’, but the word ‘dharam’ (a Punjabi word for dharma) as the context of its teachings. There is now a body of work in India which refutes the use of the word ‘religion’ in reference to Indic systems, and which considers the word to be appropriate to Abrahamic traditions, with a restrictive meaning. The word ‘dharma’, in my own writings is described as the essence of modern science with the spiritual dimension intrinsic. Thus, it is the elusive truth which science is trying to search and which Indic traditions have been speculating and searching for a long time. Religions, on the other hand, tend to end up in proscriptive truths. (Truth, that is, so-called.)

Therefore, parallels with Western civilisation become irrelevant and irrational. Indic systems never strive to create a single way of thinking or a single ‘truth’ or system of understanding reality. The civilisation is most at ease when there is pluralism. From this perspective, statements such as ‘binaries like artistic and religious sensibilities, tolerance and philistinism, the sacred and the profane, deification and vilification’ lose their meaning and context.