My Left Hand
April 18, 2007 at 11:28 pm ("culture", Hinduism, caste, colonisation, communalism, diaspora, imperialism, self-involved blather, spirituality)
Since my visit to India this February I’ve been thinking hard about my Hindu faith and how it sits with my commitment to social justice.
I think perhaps the only thing I’m sure of regarding the status of Hinduism is that it’s very, very contested. Reading about it only serves to confuse me, because every discourse is underpinned by a political position, all of which reflect positions in a material reality. Given the complexity of the subcontinent, the length of its history, the size of its population and the very density of practices, values, discourses within it, I’m reluctant to approach them. After visiting India, and comparing my point of view from there to mine here, I know that distance distorts these issues. Reading isn’t a substitute for participating in a society.
But of course, as a Hindu Brahmin woman from Bangalore, with a strong intention to return there to work in “aid and development” (a set of terms which, to me, is a respectable way of talking about fighting imperialism and capitalism) I need to understand what all that history, practice and social complexity means.
Until now, most of my knowledge about Hinduism has been religious — explicitly religious and not historicised or taken in its political and social context. This is the identitarian logic of how Hindu groups seem to operate in Australia. Knowing how heavily Hindu revivalism has influenced the practice and discourse around religion, this blindness now strikes me as gratuitous. How can we talk about morality without politics?
At the same time, I feel like a hypocrite for being so invested in Hindu spirituality while at the same time feeling defensive about being a Hindu where Hinduism is a minority religion.
I can’t win, but I don’t have to.
It’s in this spirit that I read these articles about contemporary Hinduism:
Whatever Happened to the Hindu Left? by Ruth Vanita
Hinduism Versus Hindutva: The Inevitability of a Confrontation and A Billion Gandhis, by Ashis Nandy.
While these make me feel better about being Hindu as well as left-wing, I’m not so sure they’re helping me understand the responsibilities of my social position. I know that overcoming privileged guilt (and turning it into practical self-knowledge and conscious action) is an important part of being a good ally, though. I wish I knew what would become of these confused sentiments.
More later, with added Fanon!
saktiswaroopinimissiontrust said,
April 19, 2007 at 3:22 am
Fighting imperialism and capitalism, Being a left, reading Ashis Nandy all go together. But For being a Hindu you dont have to be a left. Not only in Australia but the whole world around Hinduism is a minority, except in India. But Christian Missionaries, Islamists, leftists and secularists are working hard to unsettle Hinduism in India also. Then history will repeat like in Rome, Greece or Egypt where Pagan religions once flourished. Now the remains are in museums only. If so far not, kindly read books of Sita Ram Goel, Ram Swarup, David Frawley, Conraad Elst, Arun Shourie etc.
visit http://www.hinduminority.blogspot.com
AradhanaD said,
April 27, 2007 at 8:52 am
Oh goodness LOL, I was just thinking about this today. How weird.
I think I was thinking about this today because my mom was giving me this Lal, bal and pal lecture yesterday and she mentioned something about hinduism - and it made me wonder whatever did happen to the ‘hindu left’. So I’m so glad you have some articles for me to understand this better.
On a more personal note though, I identify myself as a Hindu-atheist. I guess I have to play a kind of ‘dressup game’ for people. I.e. people who are Hindu, I tell them I’m an atheist - for people who aren’t Hindu, I tell them I’m a Hindu atheist. It’s problematic I know. But it also helps me to identify that I come from a non-judaeo-christian tradition and that I’m a religious minority - who HAS faced religious intolerance in a predominantly christian country.
However, I was always under this impression that there is also this view in hinduism that you can indeed be an atheist and be Hindu. Afterall, we’re born Hindus, and with the whole brahman being defined as “universal spirituality”, karma being deed based, Maya - I assumed was ’social constructionism’ and of course the ‘vedic lifestyle’….
I don’t know, I’m not trying to cover my bases for the after life, but I use that logic with a few of the Hindu fundamentalists (yes, western based fundamentalists!) who I know in my life.
Fire Fly said,
April 27, 2007 at 12:50 pm
I do know what you mean by Hindu fundamentalists in the West! Because NRIs tend to be making it big these days, organisations like the RSS are recruiting in diasporic communities. We’ve had children’s camps and events organised by RSS client organisations here in Sydney!
Wasn’t there some mention of atheism within Indian-Hindu culture in one of the articles (I think it was the second Nandy one)? I think it makes sense to be a Hindu atheist — there are a variety of positions about divinity within Hinduism and atheism is just as valid as any other.
I’d say my own identification with Hinduism is problematised by living in a white supremacist Western country, though. Still working all that out…