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March 1 - March 16, 2023
Shastri Yagnapurushdasji judgment:
Moksha or Nirvana, which is the ultimate aim of Hindu religion and philosophy, represents the state of absolute absorption and assimilation of the individual soul with the infinite. What are the means to attain this end? On this vital issue, there is great divergence of views; some emphasise the importance of Gyan or knowledge, while others extol the virtues of Bhakti or devotion; and yet others insist upon the paramount importance of the performance of duties with a heart full of devotion and mind inspired by true knowledge.
In contrast to these Hinduism has the same outlook as the pre-Christian and pre-Muslim religions and philosophies of the Western half of the old world. Like them, Hinduism takes it for granted that there is more than one valid approach to truth and to salvation and that these different approaches are not only compatible with each other, but are complementary.
Supreme Court in the context of the Swaminarayan sect taking the position that its followers did not profess the Hindu religion, a contention which the Court rejected. When a similar position was sought to be taken by the Ramakrishna Mission in Bramchari Sidheswar Bhai & ors. v. State of West Bengal, the Supreme Court reiterated the position set out in Shastri Yagnapurushdasji. Therefore, at least in two landmark judgments, the Supreme Court has recognised that Dharmic OET is different from the Christian and Islamic OETs, and that its approximation as ‘religion’ is only for the purposes of
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Critically, this must be understood in the context of the global application of the concept of ‘religion’ by Christian Europe or the West to approximate the nature of non-Christian or non-Abrahamic indigenous faith systems in order to make sense of them through a Christian theological framework. Therefore, the reconstruction of indigenous OET systems on the lines of ‘religion’ is a global consequence of European colonisation, not limited to Indic OET systems, and this does not take away from the precolonial antiquity of Sanatana Dharma.
Maldonado-Torres,13 echo one another. According to Maldonado-Torres, ‘the concept of religion most used in the West by scholars and laypeople alike is a specifically modern concept forged in the context of imperialism and colonial expansion’. He even goes a step further to criticise the postcolonial school for having reinforced this by according a special place to ‘secular’ authors from Europe and the Third World over the views of native practitioners of indigenous faith systems.
Less attention has been paid to fifteenth- to seventeenth-century formations of coloniality, and to colonies in the West, where the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and more recently the United States, among other imperial powers, have had enduring influences. One of the consequences of this is that religious studies scholars who are in conversation with post-colonial theory tend to be well versed in the postcolonial critique of Orientalism, but much less informed about the theorization of Occidentalism or Americanity.
Naturally, Indians had their own cultural experiences, linguistic practices and semantic schemes. Trying to make sense of the queries of the coloniser, Indians learned to use English-language words (‘religion’, ‘revelation’, ‘God’, ‘worship’, ‘priest’, ‘idolatry’), without having access to the background theology that related these terms to each other in a systematic way. For instance, while puja rituals are not in any sense the equivalent of worship in Christianity, Europeans misunderstood these rituals as worship and mistranslated ‘puja’ as ‘worship’.
In the Shirur Math Judgment, apart from setting out the ERP test based on the religious versus secular divide, the Supreme Court also laid down the criteria for what constitutes a ‘religious denomination’ under Article 26, which is the law on this issue to date.
the concept of a religious denomination is a direct consequence of the Protestant Reformation, which led to the recognition of Lutheranism and Calvinism as the other two permanent Christian religious denominations alongside Roman Catholicism.
What emerges from a reading of the Shirur Math Judgment along with the judgments in Shastri Yagnapurushdasji and Bramchari Sidheswar Bhai is a curious mixture wherein the colonial framework enmeshes with a partly colonial and partly decolonial understanding of native/Indic OET systems.
process of this codification, the Indian State, which presides over a civilisational society that values context, subjectivity and custom, has stifled the evolution of custom at the altar of uniformity, homogeneity and codification. This was highlighted and analysed powerfully by Dr. Madhu Kishwar in her article titled ‘Codified Hindu Law: Myth and Reality’.
S C Shah: ‘We have had Hindu law varying from place to place, province to province, having all kinds of local customs and family customs ... it is a very great thing that we will, for the first time, have a uniform code at least for the Hindu community.’ All who questioned that uniformity was a great thing were labelled and dismissed by the ‘progressives’ led by Nehru as reactionaries. Some argued that diversity was not itself an evil, and, more important, that Hindu law had not been imposed by the state or other authority from above but had grown from popular consensus and that this character
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The former’s direct and visible aggression invited fierce resistance from Indic consciousness, while the latter’s attempt to Christianise it through its policy of toleration and secularism resulted in the integration of the native Indic consciousness in a Eurocentric ‘modern’ global order. This has made it much more difficult for Indic consciousness and its way of life to be understood on its own terms without suffering labels, such as ‘ancient’, ‘traditional’, ‘conservative’, and the like.
Every society’s subjective experience leads to the formation of its own views on ontology, which ultimately forms the basis of its epistemology and theology, including its social organisation.
This observation may invite predictable ad hominem reactions and caste-based epithets, which would only prove my point of ingrained coloniality in the native discourse. It would demonstrate how the varnashrama system and Indic knowledge traditions have been successfully boxed in the colonial category of ‘caste’, which takes us to the next related sub-issues of caste and tribe.
Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India21 charts the evolution of caste as we know it today, as a marker of identity, starting from the Portuguese, who introduced the term ‘casta’ to describe the Hindu social structure, which was institutionalised under the British through the creation of an ethnographic state in Bharat.
In this regard, he cites the influential work of French Catholic missionary Abbe Dubois, titled Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India, and of Their Institutions, Religious and Civil, which was published in 1816. This book was treated as the most comprehensive authority on the caste system, so much so that the Madras government bought the copyright for the book from Dubois for a fortune, which provided him with a source of regular pension for years. In fact, William Bentinck, the then Governor of Madras, showered effusive praise on Dubois’ work. Following are
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Dirks also highlights the pivotal role played by missionaries, such as Robert Caldwell, in fanning ‘virulent anti-Brahmanism’ owing to which ‘he became an extraordinary figure in the history of the Dravidian movement’ in southern Bharat. Given the connections drawn by Dirks whose relevance to raging contemporary debates are self-evident, I would urge readers to read his work before forming their views on the subject of ‘caste’ and to recognise the deep-seated coloniality in contemporary perceptions of caste.
Hill Politics in Northeast India
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Christian civilising and reformist intent, since the nexus between education, language and religious conversion was thoroughly understood by the Christian establishment right from the inclusion of the first Missionary Clause in the Charter of 1698. Consequently, it is important to briefly examine the education and language policies of the British coloniser which also support the position that education was the secularised means to an unsecular evangelical end, or the Christian colonial end.
This school was acutely aware of the role language played as the carrier of a worldview, and therefore, pushed for the introduction of English education. It is important to underscore the fact that both schools subscribed to the notion of Christian European superiority in all respects; the only difference was that the former was more driven by certain pragmatic and mercantile considerations and therefore, believed in employing subtler means to Europeanise natives while being seen as supportive of native institutions, whereas the latter school wore its Christian colonial consciousness and
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As it is, their ignorance insures their tenaciousness of their earlier impressions, and pledges their implicit submission to the dictates with which the Brahmins would counteract the object were they alarmed into contest.
In proportion as we have found intellect neglected and sterile here, the obligation is the stronger on us to cultivate it. The field is noble: may we till it worthily
By July 1823, the Governor-General in Council had passed a resolution for the creation of a Committee for Public Instruction ‘with a view to the better instruction of the people, to the introduction among them of useful knowledge and to the improvement of their moral character’.
Further the natural course of things in all countries seems to be that knowledge introduced from abroad should descend from the higher or educated classes and gradually spread through their example. We surely cannot here, at least expect the servant to prize a learning, which his master despises or hates. The influence of Europeans, if they use not the influential classes of the native community, must necessarily be very confined.
Interestingly, the indigenous pedagogy and curriculum are discussed in great detail in a letter dated 17 August 1823 from A.D. Campbell, Collector of Bellary, to the President and Members of the Board of Revenue, Fort St George.35 Here are a few extracts which are telling in their demonstration of how far the contemporary Indian education system has travelled from its civilisational character, which existed even as recently as 1823,
The Hindoo scholars are in number 6,398, the Mussulman scholars only 213, and the whole of these are males, with the exception of only 60 girls, who are all Hindoos exclusively.
If it had been intended to keep the British nation in ignorance of real knowledge the Baconian philosophy would not have been allowed to displace the system of the schoolmen, which was the beat calculated to perpetuate ignorance. In the same manner the Sangscrit system of education would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness, if such had been the policy of the British Legislature.
In representing this subject to your Lordship I conceive myself discharging a solemn duty which I owe to my countrymen and also to that enlightened Sovereign and Legislature which have extended their benevolent cares to this distant land actuated by a desire to improve its inhabitants and I therefore humbly trust you will excuse the liberty I have taken in thus expressing my sentiments to your Lordship.
Therefore, in adopting a decolonial approach, as much as it is important to identify the role of the coloniser in altering the state of affairs as it existed prior to his arrival, it is equally important to acknowledge the role of the colonised in aiding the spread and entrenchment of the coloniser’s colonial consciousness, especially after having achieved decolonisation or ‘independence’.
It does not appear to me that the Act of Parliament can by any art of contraction be made to bear the meaning which has been assigned to it. It contains nothing about the particular languages or sciences which are to be studied. A sum is set apart ‘for the revival and promotion of literature, and the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories.’
have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western
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Also, when questioning the practical value of native learning and using the market as a test of its utility, the Christian coloniser turned a blind eye to the fact that knowledge of native OET was rendered unmarketable as a consequence of the alteration in the native worldview and way of life caused by the very factum of colonisation.
Instead, he conveniently concludes that such learning had always been futile since it lacked intrinsic value. In any case, the Christian coloniser never deemed it fit to ask as to what was the market utility of being trained in Christian scripture.
First—His Lordship in Council is of opinion that the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India; and that all the funds appropriated for the purpose of education would be best employed on English education alone.
Among the measures proposed to address the grievances of both parties, additional funds were allocated to both, apart from directing that ‘the first duty of the Oriental Colleges was to impart instruction in Oriental learning and that they may conduct English classes, if necessary, after that duty had been properly discharged’. However, as the Minute reflects and as confirmed by Naik and Nurullah in their seminal work on Indian education, the following positions of the Evangelical school were accepted:
Attempts of the government should be restricted to the extension of higher education to the upper classes of society who have leisure for study and whose culture would filter down to the masses.
Therefore, in contemporary conversations and debates which touch upon religion, caste/tribe, education or any other aspect for that matter, the first step should be to check for the influence of colonial assumptions and colonial consciousness before proceeding to pass judgements on the past or evaluating contemporary practices and structures for relevance. Until and unless this exercise is undertaken, it must be presumed that our conversations happen within the Christian colonial framework and based on Christian colonialised versions of native OET.
As stated earlier, the decolonial ‘option’ is not just an option but an existential imperative for Indic civilisational consciousness; and since the Constitution is being pushed as a ‘secular’ document without examining it for colonial consciousness, a decolonial evaluation of the document and its antecedents is an exercise that must be undertaken without any further protraction. After all, the Constitution is capable of creating a multiplier effect either in favour of Indic consciousness or to its detriment.
One of the reasons for choosing the time frame from 1858 is because it is typically assumed that the so-called policy of Christian toleration morphed into a policy of irreligious secularism, thanks to the landmark events of 1857. Among other things, this assumption too will be put to test in the next section.
This is because it is important to examine the OET-framework within which the Assembly operated, consciously or unconsciously. Accordingly, while the previous section covered the period until 1853 in order to underscore the distinctly Christian character of the politico-legal and social infrastructure established by the Christian European coloniser in Bharat, the current section will examine the period between 1858 and 1919–1920.
The role played by increased Christian missionary activity under State patronage at least from 1813, which fuelled apprehensions of forced conversions of Indians by the British, must not be underestimated in triggering the Rebellion. What is worse is that the conduct of the British in putting down the Rebellion had religious bigotry written all over it. While the Muslims among the rebels were sewed in pigskins smeared with pork fat before execution, after which their bodies were burnt, the Hindus were forced to defile themselves by consuming beef.
First, that no distinction of caste be any longer recognized. Secondly, that in all schools to which aid is given by the Government the Bible shall be read—not commented upon for its doctrines, but read for its facts. Thirdly, that all connection on the part of the Government with the rites and customs of an idolatrous religion be entirely abolished, even if the object of such connection be simply the preservation of order; that those lands which have hitherto been employed for idolatrous purposes, and of which I believe the Company have become trustees, should be made over entirely to the
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The Earl of Derby, the then British prime minister Edward Smith-Stanley, who was in favour of protection of all religions in Bharat, too was of the view that missionary efforts in Bharat to Christianise the native population should not be discouraged. The gulf between the two points of view was merely a difference between the overt and the covert, the express and the tacit.
No doubt, my Lords, we ought to exercise the utmost impartiality towards our heathen fellow-subjects. No doubt we ought to show the greatest forbearance to them. No doubt the Church of England and the Christian religion itself can never be advanced by a policy of mere force and power on the part of the Government. But we ought to show to the people of India that we wish to give them, not only Christian justice and Christian civilization, but, above all, ultimately the inheritance of Christian truth
But if by ‘neutrality’ is secretly meant that there shall be stamped on the English Government and their representatives in India an aspect of entire indifference as to whether this religion or that is to prosper and abide—if by ‘neutrality’ is meant that their characters are to exhibit that happy indifference as to Christianity which shall impress on the heathen mind the conviction that they care not whether they are Christians or heathens, then I believe that such neutrality would be fatal and false to the religion we profess, and that ultimately it would destroy the empire that has been
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distinction is plain and intelligible between making the Indian people feel that we do not by force and fraud, by policy or by violence, interfere with their religious belief, because our own religion teaches us that such interference would be wrong, and impressing them with the conviction that we withhold our interference because we have ourselves no distinct preference for our own faith. One seems to me to be the line of Christian truth, and the other to be the line of a wicked neutrality; and I am only most anxious that nothing should go forth to mar the impression that we do not mean the
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It is in this context that the passing of the 1858 Act must be understood, instead of making the erroneous assumption that the administrative structure laid down by the Act was intended to address only issues of ‘secular’ governance. If anything, the word ‘secular’ must always be understood as ‘Christian secular’, since the Christian worldview was inherent to the colonial infrastructure.
After all, the missionary clauses in the Charter Acts of 1813 and 1833 were not included at the behest of the Company, but were included at the behest of the British Parliament, which would thenceforth directly govern Bharat by virtue of the 1858
