The Clash Within: Democracy and the Hindu Right1

1. Forthcoming in a volume in honor of Amartya Sen's 75th birthday, edited by Ravi Kanbur and Kaushik Basu for Oxford University Press. This paper contains material drawn from various parts of Nussbaum (2007a), but attempts an overall synthesis that is nowhere presented as such in the book. The book, of course, contains much more detailed discussion of all the figures and issues mentioned here, as well as copious references to the literature, and interview material.

Abstract

The Gujarat pogrom of 2002 is evidence of a profound crisis in India's democracy. Samuel P. Huntington's influential thesis of the ‘clash of civilizations,’ according to which the world is torn between democratic western values and threatening Islamic values, gives no help in explaining the situation, since the threatening values of the Hindu Right derive largely from European origins and are being used to threaten innocent Muslim civilians. I argue that the real ‘clash of civilization’ is the clash within every modern society between those who are prepared to live with people who differ, on terms of equal respect, and those who seek the comfort of a single ‘pure’ ethno‐religious ideology. At a deeper level, the ‘clash’ is internal to each human being, as fear and aggression contend against compassion and respect. Policy‐makers eager to promote the victory of respect over violence can learn from the case of India, where a wise institutional structure and a genuinely free press are major assets in resisting the call to hate. On the other hand, India's current lack of emphasis on critical thinking in the schools, and its lack after Gandhi's death of a public culture of compassion to counter the Hindu Right's culture of humiliated, warlike masculinity, sound warning notes for the future.

Keywords:

• India
• Gujarat
• Hindu Right
• Muslims
• Huntington
• Golwalkar
• Savarkar
• Respect
• Compassion
• Democracy
• Clash of civilizations

Notes

1. Forthcoming in a volume in honor of Amartya Sen's 75th birthday, edited by Ravi Kanbur and Kaushik Basu for Oxford University Press. This paper contains material drawn from various parts of Nussbaum (2007a), but attempts an overall synthesis that is nowhere presented as such in the book. The book, of course, contains much more detailed discussion of all the figures and issues mentioned here, as well as copious references to the literature, and interview material.

2. In analyzing the reaction of the US Government, one would also want to consider the importance, at the time, of the idea of a war on Islamic terror; nonetheless, it remains true that the State Department documented the riots accurately in its report on religious freedom, and subsequently refused to grant a visa to Gujarat's governor, Narendra Modi. See Nussbaum (2007a, ch. 1).

3. Hindi and Urdu are not very different as languages; they are slightly different dialects at most. The major difference between them is the script in which they are written: Persian script, in the case of Urdu; Devanagari (the Sanskrit script) in the case of Hindi. Thus it is odd to apply the ideas of linguistic nationalism to this question.