Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and Time- Two Hundred NINETY Nine
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'MF Hussain's Departure is a Loss to India' says, Bangalore art communityMyBangalore - 5 hours ago On the other hand, one doesn't need to offend any community, it's not right to make any kind of verbal statement against any religion" Well known ... I love India, but she rejected me: Husain Express Buzz MF Husain is.. Central Chronicle Indian painter M.F.Husain escapes to Qatar Rupee News (blog) Is the magic back?Hindustan Times - Mar 3, 2010 Beyond the elation that springs from banned substances, organised religion and alcoholic stimulants, everyone has moments of euphoria. ... The age of reasonIBNLive.com (blog) - 7 hours ago What if freedom of speech is untouched and untainted by religion? Why does freedom of speech and expression get challenged just at the threshold where ... 'No shift in Pakistan attitude towards India'Express Buzz - - Mar 2, 2010 You can hate India, You can try to out smart us, that is natural we also do the same. But don't love your religion more than your country, this is what is ... Video: India slams Pakistan for not acting against Hafiz Saeed  Asian News International (ANI) TIME TO WALK THE TALK Calcutta Telegraph Derailed Pak-India peace talks The Nation, Pakistan India plays Saudi tuneExpress Buzz - - Mar 2, 2010 Their religion also says, when a muslim kills a nonmuslim, it is normal to confiscate property and wives and children of a kafir. A muslim has an important ... India, Saudi Arabia to sign about ten agreements Hindustan Times PM offers to walk 'extra mile' with Pak Calcutta Telegraph 'Kingdom a pillar of stability in Gulf' Arab News Cricket is religion in India & Sachin Tendulkar is GodKeeda of Sports (press release) (blog) - - Feb 24, 2010 There cannot be any doubt that if cricket is religion in India, then Sachin Tendulkar is God. •I have seen God. He bats at No. 4 for Indian cricket team ... Is this Sachin Tendulkar's greatest innings ever? Cricketnext.com Sachin's double ton seals series for India Express Buzz Saudi: PM sidesteps role of 'interlocutor'Express Buzz - Mar 3, 2010 By Atheist ALL THESE BASTARDS SPEWING VENOM IN THE NAME OF RELIGION SHOULD BE BUTCHERED FIRST TO ALLOW THE UNHINDERED GROWTH OF INDIA. ... Irrational protestsThe Hindu - Mar 2, 2010 In secular India, the right to freedom of religion is on a par with other fundamental rights. One fundamental right cannot infringe on another fundamental ... Minority forum demands apology from Taslima, Hussain Press Trust of India Taslima Nasreen: Can She Return To Bangladesh Again Gaea Times (blog) Surrender policy in J&KLivemint - 1 hour ago Given the sentiments attached to religion, Husain should have left such themes out of his art. One knows that if there is any portrayal or visual impression ... MF Husain's Exile: Battle For Art Or Religion?CounterCurrents.org - - Feb 27, 2010 In bringing this up, we assume that the dominant religion of India is also what drives its nationalism. Therefore, the 'Save Husain' brigade is equally ... PAINTED OUT Calcutta Telegraph Husain has accepted Qatar citizenship, says son Express Buzz 'I won't blame my father if he accepts Qatar offer' Indian Express |
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65 killed in Uttar Pradesh ashram stampede!
Food inflation spikes to 17.87 per cent!
37 women and 26 children were among those killed after they were trampled over by the crowd that had gathered at Kripalu Maharaj's ashram, 60 kms from here, during distribution of food and utensils for the 'Shradh' (post-death rites) of his wife, Sub-divisional Magistrate Kunda Shyama Charan said.
Ramjanki Mandir Stampede Stuns me and I am in Mourning mode but it does not surprise me at all as the Accident in itself has become the Great Escape for those who have Been Excluded, Marginalised, Exploited, Persecuted and are Inflicted with the Greatest Ever man made pandemics of Food Insecurity, Unemployment and Religion is Survival Strategy to boost the Spiritual Moral for Sustenance and the Plight involved. The Accident is a Result in Nature involving a Phenomenon, which is at the same time Economic, Social and Political in Nature. I am browsing the facts exposed by the Media and net but I am dealing with the facts which remain UNCHANGED and Phenomenal in the Valley of India, known as Nuclear shining Hindu India. All the Dead belong to the communities who have no Access to the Global market as they have been Deprived of Purchasing Power and Made to live on DOLE as their Life in itself has been Reduced into dole, Budget allocations for Social Sector without the Land reforms, without Equality and Equal Opportunity, without Inclusion, Without the Annihilation of caste and Class, Hegemony and Dynasty, without Distribution of Assets, do Prove my Point more than Needed!
The rise in the food price index was higher than an annual rise of 17.58 per cent in the previous week.
With food inflation showing signs of impacting the wider economy, the central bank is widely expected to raise borrowing rates at its next policy review given that inflation has already topped its revised end-March forecast of 8.5 per cent.
Farm Minister Sharad Pawar on Wednesday told India's parliament food prices have started easing and would further ease following a good winter crop.
However, the government's decision to raise petrol prices by about 6 per cent and diesel by 7.75 per cent in last week's budget to help increase revenues and cut the budget deficit may prevent food prices from easing.
"Today, truckers have decided to raise the prices. This is basically the second round of impact of the fuel price hike and will have some impact on food prices for the month of February and March," said Sujan Hajra, chief economist with Anand Rathi Securities in Mumbai, before Thursday's data was released.
The government's decision to raise fuel prices for the first time since July has met with anger from both the opposition and ruling coalition allies, underlining the challenge in cutting a near 7 per cent fiscal deficit.
High food prices coupled with a pick in manufacturing and fuel prices are expected to push the headline inflation to double-digits by end-March from 8.56 per cent in January.
In January, the Reserve Bank of India surprised markets with a bigger-than-expected rise in banks' cash reserve requirements, but left the borrowing rates unchanged.
Inflation in manufacturing picked up to 6.55 per cent in January from about 5 per cent in December, a sign that inflationary pressures were spreading to other sectors of the economy.
Inspector General of Police (Allahabad Range) Chandra Prakash said at least 28 people have been injured in the stampede at the ashram in Mangarh area of the district. The injured have been rushed to hospitals in Pratapgarh and Allahabad, about 75 kms from here, officials said.
Eyewitnesses said that many of those killed had fallen into a borewell near the gate. Officials said the district authorities were not given prior intimation about the function. Angry relatives of victims alleged they were not being allowed by the police to look for the bodies of their loved ones.
- Minority forum demands apology from Taslima, Hussain
Kolkata, Mar 03 (PTI) The All-India Minority Forum today demanded that controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen and eminent painter M F Hussain "unconditionally apologise in writing" that they would not hurt the religious sentiments of any community.
"We hold that Taslima had delved in anti-Islam writings while Hussain painted Hindu deity Saraswati in the nude in the recent past, which are both condemnable," Forum convenor Maulana Abdur Rahim said here.
"No religion teaches disrespect to other religion and it is undesirable that liberty to write and paint anything is misused," he said, adding Taslima should be sent back to Bangladesh and Hussain, who has accepted Qatar nationality, be brought back to India.
Forum President Idris Ali demanded a CBI inquiry into the recent violence at Shimoga in Karnakata over a purported article written by Taslima.
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At least 65people were killed and 15 injured today when a gate at Kripalu Maharaj's ashram at Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh collapsed during distribution of food on the occasion of a ritual, for which nearly 10,000 people had converged.
On September 30, 2008, nearly 150 devotees were killed and over 60 injured in a stampede at Chamunda Devi temple in Rajasthan's Jodhpur city.
The incident took place when there was a rumour of a bomb going off. More than 10,000 people had turned up at the famous temple for a darshan of the Hindu goddess.
Such a tragedy at the Hindu temple of Naina Devi in Himachal Pradesh on August 3, 2008 had claimed nearly 150 people, mainly women and children, and injured about 230.
On March 27 that year, at least eight people were trampled to death and 10 seriously injured in a stampede at a temple in remote Karila village in Madhya Pradesh.
The stampede at Mandhar Devi temple in Maharashtra in January 2005 when some people fell down on the steps made slippery by devotees breaking coconuts claimed 300 lives.
Among other stampedes, at least six people were killed and 12 injured in July 2008 during the annual Jagannath Yatra in Puri, Orissa. In January 2008, five people were killed at Durga Malleswara temple in Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.
In October 2007, 11 killed in such a tragedy at Pawagah in Gujarat while in November 2006, four elderly people crushed to death during a stampede at Jagannath Puri, Orissa.
Nealy 40 pilgrims killed, 125 injured in a stampede at Kumbh Mela in Nasik in August 2003.
"New projects need Rs 80,000 crore. The pending projects are there. If there is service tax it will be very difficult to implement them," she said while replying to supplementaries during Question Hour in the Lok Sabha.
Banerjee said she hoped the Finance Minister will waive off service tax levied on the Railways as he had done the
previous year.
"It is very difficult to go for new lines. The Budget has levied Rs 6,000 crore as service tax, I hope the Finance Minister will exempt Railways from the tax as he had done last year," she said.
Banerjee was upset over Mukherjee's budget proposal to bring the Railways in the service tax net.
Rail ministry officials had written to the Finance Ministry seeking withdrawal of service tax on rail freight.
Withdrawing an earlier exemption, the Union Budget 2010-11 has proposed to levy service tax at 10.3 per cent on "service provided in relation to transport of goods by rail" with effect from April 1
Sonia signals support for fuel price rise, to brief allies
Sending a strong message that she was fully behind the government on fuel price hike, Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Thursday praised Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee for deft handling of the Union Budget.
"We have many essential social obligations and to meet them it is necessary to raise resources. I congratulate the Finance Minister for a fine and delicate balancing act, which has bee
Congress President will also talk to allies of the UPA Government on Thursday, and explain to them the party's position on fuel price hike.
Meanehile, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who has cautioned against instant populism, has told party MPs and UPA leaders that correcting distortions in petro good pricing was unavoidable. He also said the time to take bold decisions is "right now".
Mukherjee also referred to the window of opportunity available to the Centre and added that fuel price hike was critical to the economy.
Mukherjee had hiked customs duty on petrol and diesel to 7.5 per cent from 2.5 per cent while excise duty was raised by Rs 1 on non-branded, or normal, petrol and diesel to maintain growth and give the common man spending power.
Mukherjee said he had three options before him: Sit back and do nothing; Go on a borrowing spree; or Restore the duty structure. He said he opted for the third, as the government could not afford to take economically reckless decisions.
Addressing concerns raised by UPA leaders over the decision's impact on the prices of essentials, he said the government has already carried out a back-of-the-envelope calculation.
"The inflationary impact will be a mere 0.41 per cent," he said, adding that an improved crop situation can absorb it.
Meanwhile, the BJP led opposition has decided to halt proceedings in Parliament for the second consecutive day over the fuel price hike and other issues.
PM committed Parliamentary impropriety: Advani
A day after locking horns with Manmohan Singh during the Presidential Address debate, senior BJP leader L K Advani on Thursday said the Prime Minister had breached Parliamentary propriety by making "false" claims that enhanced pension announced for army personnel had been met.
"Advani informed BJP MPs about PM's claim in Lok Sabha on Wednesday that the government had implemented its decision on enhancement of pension to JCOs and Jawans. No JCO or Jawan has received any such orders. This is a very serious matter of Parliamentary impropriety," senior party leader M Venkaiah Naidu told reporters, quoting Advani.
Advani, who is Chairman of BJP Parliamentary Party, was speaking at a meeting of the BJP MPs here. He cited a letter written by Maj Gen (Retd.) Satbir Singh, vice chairman, Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement, where the latter had mentioned the July 6, 2009 order.
Manmohan Singh had intervened several times yesterday while Advani was replying to the Presidential Address in the Lok Sabha, including on the issue of enhancement of pension to ex-servicemen.
Advani had yesterday pointed to Singh's Independence Day speech in which he had referred to steps regarding the demand of ex servicemen relating to 'one rank one pay'.
Singh said whatever promises have been made were delivered by the Government and that Advani "should not create a rift between the Services and the Government".
"Advani said that the Prime Minister should have studied the matter properly and then spoken on it. This impropriety should be taken seriously," Naidu said.
Government had earmarked Rs 2100 crore per year for the benefit of 12 lakh JCOs and jawans.
Advani praised his party MPs for their performance in Parliament on cornering the government on price rise. On the future strategy, he said the Kashmir issue and US "pressure" on India's foreign policy matters should be emphasised by BJP in Parliament.
"Advani said our complaints are not against the US but against our government's tendency to bow under international pressure. The Saghir Ahmed report on autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir gives the impression that the government will buckle under pressure," Naidu told reporters.
The senior BJP leader also said Home Minister P Chidambaram's recent statement on allowing return of Kashmiri militants from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir would lead to "disastrous consequences".
Advani also patted BJP and NDA state governments which had done well in terms of GDP growth.
"The Central Statistical Survey figures show the five top-most states are BJP and NDA-ruled. Gujarat tops the list, followed by Bihar, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand. The fifth is Orissa," Naidu said.
BJP maintained that it had not worked out any floor co-ordination with other opposition parties on taking on the government but had no problems in working with them.
RJD, SP to oppose Women's Reservation Bill
New Delhi The RJD and Samajwadi Party on Thursday remained firm on their opposition to the Women's Reservation Bill which the government has decided to bring in the Rajya Sabha on March 8."We will not tolerate it," Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad told reporters outside parliament.
"The country's president is a woman, Lok Sabha Speaker is a woman, Congress president and UPA chairperson is also a woman and they have not come here through the women quota," he said.
Supporting the RJD's stand, Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Singh Yadav said "we will not support the bill in the present form as we want that the bill should have provision for OBC".
When it was pointed out that though the opposition was united on the price rise issue, it was divided on the matter of Women's Bill, he said "both the issues are different".
BJD MP Kalikesh Singhdeo, however, said that his party is in favour of the Bill.
Kanpur Bajrang Dal on Saturday said Qatar giving nationality to painter M F Husain was a "win" for Hindutva forces and those who "insult" Hindu religion have no place in the country.
"Husain's painting depicting Hindu deities in a derogatory manner and insulting the religion was not at all acceptable to us," Bajrang Dal Convener Prakash Sharma said.
"It is a win for Hindutva forces because there is no place for such people in the country," he said.
Sharma said any other writer or painter having similar thoughts should opt for citizenship of any other country because "our party will protest against them."
Eminent painter Husain was given Qatar nationality on Wednesday.
Husain was living in exile for the last four years spending most of his time in Dubai after escalation of hate campaign against him by right wing groups over his controversial paintings on Hindu deities.
"Appealing to Muslims (to help in building Ram temple) is an insult to hundreds of kar sevaks who became martyrs during the Ram temple agitation," Sena chief Bal Thackeray said in an editorial in party mouthpiece 'Saamana'.
He made a "sincere appeal" to BJP that it should stick to the Hindutva ideology.
"The Prime Minister of this country says Muslims have the first right over India's resources and 80 crore Hindus tolerate it meekly. Muslims have everything and Hindus don't even have their Ram temple. Things have come to such a level that Hindus have to plead to Muslims (to allow Ram temple)," Thackeray said.
"Gadkari has appealed to Muslims. Exactly to whom has he appealed because the leadership of radical and jehadi Muslims is no longer in India but in Pakistan, where terror outfits wield the remote, dictating Muslims in India what to do and how to behave," the Sena chief, who belongs to Gadkari's home state, said.
Thackeray asked "If permission of Muslims is to be sought for building the Ram temple, why was the temple agitation launched in the first place?"
"Hindus could have fallen at the feet of the Imam of Jama Masjid and got a piece of land for Ram temple. It was easily possible. But Hindus have shed blood for the Ram temple," he said.
63 killed in ashram stampede close to Allahabad
Lucknow: The promise of a free lunch and utensils turned fatal Thursday when 63 people were killed and more than 30 injured in a stampede that broke out when thousands gathered at an Uttar Pradesh ashram for a death anniversary ceremony.
The entry gate of Kripaluji Maharaj's ashram near Kunda town in Pratapgarh district, about 180 km from here, caved in, triggering a stampede that claimed 60 lives and turned the place into a veritable graveyard.
The dead included a large number of women and children.
"Sixty-three bodies had been recovered but more casualties cannot be ruled out as some of the injured were serious and rushed to the Allahabad medical college for specialised treatment," Additional Director General of Police (law and order) Brij Lal said.
The tragedy occurred when thousands of followers had converged at the Bhakti Dham ashram to attend the annual 'bhandara' (free lunch) hosted by Kripaluji Maharaj on the occasion of his wife's death anniversary.
"Thousands of disciples of the godman had made a beeline for the ashram to attend the 'bhandara' and to get freebies like clothes and utensils when the gate suddenly gave way, bringing under its weight a number of people," Lal said.
"People ran helter-skelter in panic, leading to a stampede, that took a heavier toll, turning the whole place into a mass graveyard," he added.
Some devotees alleged that the situation turned worse when the police used batons to disperse the crowds.
Rescue parties were rushed by the state from Allahabad while a top official was flown from Lucknow to personally take stock of the situation and report to Chief Minister Mayawati.
Legislator of the area Raghuraj Pratap Singh, better known as Raja Bhaiya, told IANS over the phone from Kunda: "The number of deaths are bound to rise as a number of the injured are critical."
He criticised the "slow rescue operations" and said: "Although the event has been an annual feature since the death of Kripaluji Maharaj's wife, this time the crowds swelled because of his prior announcement that some utensils would also be distributed along with lunch."
Kripaluji Maharaj could not be contacted as he was stated to be busy supervising the relief work.
IANS
UP tops child rape graph
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Agencies
According to the latest data by the Ministry of Home Affairs for three years, cases of child rape continue to rise as a total of 4,721 cases were registered during 2006, 5,045 in 2007 and 5,446 in 2008 across the country.
Police have arrested 5,489 people in 2006 for their involvement in such crimes, 5,756 in 2007 and 6,363 in 2008.
Madhya Pradesh registered 892 such cases, Maharashtra (690), Rajasthan (420) and Andhra Pradesh (412) in 2008, the data said.
A total of 411 such cases were registered in Chhattisgarh, 301 in Delhi, 215 in Kerala, 187 in Tamil Nadu, 129 in West Bengal, 106 in Punjab and 104 in Tripura, it said.
Whereas, Gujarat has registered 99 cases, Karnataka 97, Bihar 91, Haryana 70, Himachal Pradesh 68, Orissa 65 and Goa 18.
"According to the Constitution, police and public order is the State subject that is why the primary responsibility of prevention, detection, registration, investigation and prosecution of crimes, including crimes against children, lies with the State governments or Union territory administrations," a Home Ministry official said.
However, the condition in northeastern states was slight better as compared to their counterparts. Eleven cases came to light in Arunachal Pradesh, 12 in Sikkim, 18 in Mizoram, 22 in Manipur, 27 in Assam and 34 in Meghalaya.
According to the data, no such cases were registered in Nagaland, Daman and Diu and Lakshadweep. Besides, ten cases were filed in Chandigarh, nine in Uttarakhand, eight each in Jharkhand and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, five in Jammu and Kashmir, four in Puducherry and three in Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
Out of the total registered cases, 1,177 people were convicted for their offence during 2008. In 2007, 1,210 were convicted for their crime as against 963 in 2006, the data said.
Kashmiri terror groups thriving under Pak patronage: Report
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ANI
Lahore Defence Minister A K Antony's claim that 42 terror training camps were still operative in Pakistan was backed by a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report which said that militant training camps are once again being established in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) and recruitment is also on the rise in the Punjab province.
"It looks evident now that the Kashmiri militant groups are once again working under the 'patronage of the Pakistani establishment agencies'," the BBC said.
The report said that following the 9/11 attacks in the US, India and Pakistan tried to develop peace between them and it was widely believed that Islamabad would stop supporting militancy as it sought better relations with its 'nuclear-armed neighbour.
"But this has changed once again. Since 2009, militant activity has been on the rise in the Kashmir region. The Pakistani government denies any knowledge of Kashmir militant groups increasing their activities and says the militant groups in Kashmir are operating on their own," the report said.
It is pertinent to mention here that Speaking during the Operation Vayu Shakti 2010 programme organized at Pokhran, Rajasthan last week, Antony had said "Our real concern is existence of terror camps intact across the border after 26/11 attack. There are 42 terror camps. And there has been no serious effort to dismantle these camps."
Bhindranwale T-shirts, Made in China, sold in Punjab
Harpreet Bajwa
Youths in villages and towns of the state can be seen sporting bright yellow T-shirts, emblazoned with huge photos of Bhindranwale carrying an AK-47 rifle. And the paraphernalia is being openly sold in prominent markets in Jalandhar, Patiala, Amritsar, Ludhiana and even Delhi.
The numbers are surprising. Sukhdev Singh, a shopkeeper in Amritsar, claims to have sold 1.8 lakh calendars with Bhindranwale's photos, each priced at Rs 20. He claims that the rush is unabated, something which has prompted the Chinese to enter the market.
"More memorablia has been introduced in the market as watches, key chains and car stickers. The Chinese-made T-shirts are selling at Rs 170 each as compared to the Indian-made ones, which are priced at Rs 350 each. Similarly Chinese key chains and watches with Bhindranwale's photo on the dial are available at one-fifth the price of same products of Indian make. Stickers are available in seven different colours. Our estimates suggest that over 3.5 lakh car stickers have been sold so far," says Tejinder Pal Singh, a shopkeeper based in Jalandhar.
At the recent Holla Mohalla festival too, stalls stocked the paraphernalia in huge numbers, and these disappeared off the shelves.
Guarded in his response, Punjab DGP P S Gill says: "We are aware of this and are keeping a close watch."
Historian G S Dhillon attributes the fascination with the man blamed for the advent of terrorism in Punjab to the "lack of genuine heroes in Punjab today". He says the state has no charismatic and mass Sikh leader and youngsters who haven't seen the dark days of the 1980s are allured by a character whose reputation has been enhanced by myths and fake legends.
The unequivocal endorsement of Bhindranwale by the Sikh clergy may have also contributed to his popularity. Avtar Singh Makkar, president of the Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), says: "For us he was a martyr. We have also installed his portrait in the Golden Temple museum."
Kanwar Pal Singh, Secretary, Political Affairs, of the Dal Khalsa, adds: "We buy these calendars and other memorablilia and distribute them free of cost to our members. Last year, which marked 25 years of the Operation Blue Star, we commemorated Bhindranwale's martyrdom."
Lords of Terror: The real-life Mogambos
When Mr. India (Anil Kapoor) did the vanishing act and destroyed adversary Mogambo in the 1980s blockbuster of the same name, the whole country sat up and shouted "India Khush Hua"! Twenty years down that road, India continues to fight a bunch of real life Mogambos who have inflicted a thousand cuts on our social fabric. Unfortunately, real life has not imitated reel life as we continue our wait for a Mr. India who can defeat these Lords of Terror.
What is even more embarrassing is that unlike Mogambo and his faceless bunch of villains, these modern day terror masterminds have a face that keeps popping up into our living rooms, courtesy the television screens. They are seen in cricket matches, political rallies, and via video tapes gleefully passed on to TV stations. Simply put, they are cooking a snook at India and sieve-like security system.
Here is a look at some of the names that have sent a chill up our collective spines and whose whereabouts are not as big a mystery some of us like to believe. We start off with a list that the government of India shared with Pakistan in 2002 and again in 2008 after the 26/11 carnage. We also proffer a gentle reminder to our readers that the two countries are engaging in a fresh round of talks in the near future. Will this list get shared again?
Marx on Religion
These two selections from Marx's writings are his clearest statements about religion. The first contains his famous (or infamous to some) "opiate" statement, but here presented in the total context in which he wrote it. The second selection contains his view of Atheism and an interesting statement about communism NOT being the final goal of human endeavors.
From...Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
by Karl Marx
Appeared in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbucher, February, 1844
(Color has been added for emphasis)
For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.
The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis ["speech for the altars and hearths"] has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself, the non-man ["Unmensch"], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.
Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But, man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man — state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, it enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.
The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.
It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked.
Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.
But since for socialist man the whole of what is called world history is nothing more than the creation of man through human labor, and the development of nature for man, he therefore has palpable and incontrovertible proof of his self-mediated birth, of his process of emergence. Since the essentiality [Wesenhaftigkeit] of man and nature, a man as the existence of nature for man and nature as the existence of man for man, has become practically and sensuously perceptible, the question of an alien being, being above nature and man -- a question which implies an admission of the unreality of nature and of man -- has become impossible in practice.
Atheism, which is a denial of this unreality, no longer has any meaning, for atheism is a negation of God, through which negation it asserts the existence of man. But socialism as such no longer needs such mediation. Its starting point is the theoretically and practically sensuous consciousness of man and of nature as essential beings. It is the positive self-consciousness of man, no longer mediated through the abolition of religion, just as real life is positive reality no longer mediated through the abolition of private property, through communism. Communism is the act of positing as the negation of the negation, and is therefore a real phase, necessary for the next period of historical development, in the emancipation and recovery of mankind. Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism is not as such the goal of human development -- the form of human society.
Taslima Nasrin: Woman in exile
Agent provocateur or a bold voice of dissent against patriarchy? Rubaiyat Hossain re-examines Bangladesh's most controversial author.
You gave me poison.
What shall I give you?
I'll give you my pitcher of water
Down to its last drop.
--Taslima Nasrin (In Return)
Taslima Nasrin is a forbidden name in Bangladesh. No one likes her. Even the women's rights activists and female writers shy away from her. The validity of her political position as a woman, and the craftsmanship of her literary work have been questioned widely.
I can understand the extreme resentment against her due to the strong oppositional position she has taken with regard to Islamic scriptures (or any religious scripture for that matter), but I keep thinking that there has to be something else in her writing, something else which has established her as an icon in the literary world.
The iconification of Taslima Nasrin is covered with a negative hue. Her sexuality is always brought into question, and she is constructed as a thoroughly immoral woman who is doing crazy things just to get public attention. However, this is a very generalized, partial, and simplified understanding of Taslima Nasrin as a writer.
When her recent book Dwikhondita (also known as Ka) came out I remember calling a book-store in New York in order to get a copy of the book.
The store owner told me enthusiastically: "In this book, Taslima has named all the writers she has slept with."
When I got the book and read it thoroughly, I was surprised when I reflected on the store owner's comment, since the book came across to me as nothing more than a very well-written emotional biography of a female writer trying to make it in a literary world mostly
dominated by males.
The book reveals Taslima's experiences of sexual abuse, and uncovers her relationships with prominent writers. It is the most accomplished of her literary pieces, but it still failed to draw any criticism based on literary lines. Almost all discussions of the book revolved around scandals, and Taslima's immorality as a woman.
The wider level of reaction towards the book reveals the patriarchal double standards that reign over the culture of Bangla literature. It is very common for male writers to write about sexuality, in fact Sunil Gangopadhay's famous biographical travelogue, Chobir Deshey Kobitar Deshey, openly discusses his sexual experiences in the United States and Europe. Gangopadhay's biography does not bring into question his moral integrity because male writers are not only sanctioned to talk about sexuality, but writers like Sunil Gangopadhay, Shomoresh Boshu, and Buddhadev Bosu are acclaimed for talking openly about sexual experiences, thus ushering in a new state of modernity in Bangla literature.
I want to argue that Taslima Nasrin is condemned, especially in the literary circle, because she is the first woman to talk openly about female sexuality in Bangla literature. She is also the first one to write openly about her sexual encounters with other writers (may they be true or fabricated). Whether Taslima's accounts in Dwikhondita were based on reality is an entirely separate debate, but from the ill reaction towards the book, we come to understand once again that when a female talks openly about her sexuality it is not well received.
It strikes me as a strange phenomenon, since most of Bangla literature, even pieces by Kalidasa, use women's bodies and sexuality as a prominent theme of rasa. The social approval for male writers to write about female bodies, and the imposed silence on women writing about their own bodies highlight the overall contour of Bangla literature where women are officially denied access to conceptualize, and write about, their own sexuality.
When a woman writes, it is essentially different from a man writing, because women's personal experiences have a political implication. Women's personal experiences reveal the division, and implementation of patriarchal power through women's intimate experiences of sexual objectification.
For example, the recent publication of Sylvia Plath's unabridged journals and unrevised version of her book of poems Ariel, with a forward by her daughter Frieda, informs us of Plath's extreme marginalization as a female poet, and her intimate experiences of sexual objectification in her marriage with poet Ted Hughes.
Plath's work makes so much more sense when she is contextualized as a female poet fighting against the odds of 1950s patriarchal culture of the US and the UK. Virginia Woolf has pointed out that intellectual freedom depends on material things, and it informs women's psychological lives and their creative outcome.
Esther, the protagonist of Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar, sits down in front of her type-writer to write a novel and realizes that she cannot write, simply because she has "no experience." Domestic isolation, narrow social exposure, lack of access to material things to own a "room of their own" restrict women from writing about their unique experiences of objectification and marginalization.
Woolf has also pointed out that telling the truth about one's experience as a body means "rejecting the ideal, pure image of woman." That is exactly what Taslima Nasrin has attempted to do in her literary work.
Nasrin has flipped the use of womb from a place of reproduction to a place of resistance. The main protagonist of her novel Shodh uses her womb to give birth to an illegitimate child in order to take revenge on her husband. Whether or not this form of rebellion is desirable, or even empowering, is a separate debate. What I want to draw readers' attention to is Nasrin's alternative use of the female body, not only as a passive object, but as an active agent resisting an oppressive cultural code that masters women's bodies and reproductive organs.
When Nasrin described a rape scene in Nimontron, many people found it to be completely obscene. In fact when I read it as a school-girl I thought it was a little too much, but now that I reflect back upon the book as a graduate student, I can finally find some relevance in actually spelling out the totally obscene, violent, and perverted lust that is being played out on women's bodies everyday. After all, why do we feel so uncomfortable reading a female writer writing about rape, when we are totally comfortable reading the newspaper reports on rape, mostly written by male reporters, which are sometimes not very far from being pornographic.
It is a pity that men and women have shied away from benefiting from Nasrin's keen and sharp analysis of gender and power dynamics of women's sexual objectification.
Her literary work creates a rupture in the episteme of patriarchal power-knowledge nexus, and opens up a space for the expression of female individuali but we have failed to take advantage of that space because the patriarchal media and literary circle have scandalized Taslima Nasrin to an extent that we do not even stop give her a second thought.
We fail to acknowledge that Taslima Nasrin is actually a pretty good writer, and, in fact, she is the first one to openly speak up about issues of sexuality ranging from menstruation, sexual harassment, rape, masturbation, etc. It is not uncommon to read passages in Bangla literature about male masturbation, in fact a great literary link is established between the male sexual organ and his poetic exploration of imagery and emotions.
Males are given the social approval to openly explore their sexuality and establish a link between their sexual experiences and the conceptualization of the world around them.
Females, however, are totally condemned for writing about their own sexuality, which is symptomatic of the fact that society wipes out all agency from the hands of women in controlling their own sexuality, and puts it in the hands of the males. In order to claim one's space in society as a free agent, one must, primarily claim rights over one's own body.
The NGO movements attempting to stop dowry, polygamy, or child-marriage do not cause a big stir in our social fabric, because those movements do not reach into the depths of patriarchal value and power system.
Taslima, however, by claiming rights over her own body and sexuality, has shaken the core of our patriarchal value system. She has stepped out, and declared that she is not afraid to be called "fallen," because to be emancipated as a woman means in many ways to be recognized as "fallen" in our societal system.
Rubaiyat Hossain is an independent film-maker and Lecturer at Brac University.
Constructing Outraged Communities and State Responses:
The Taslima Nasreen Saga in 1994 and 2007
Abstract
Taslima Nasreen, the exiled Bangladeshi author, was forced to leave India, her adopted homeland, in March 2008 after being under 'security protection' for months following street agitation against her writings in Kolkata. The events between August 2007, when she was physically attacked in Hyderabad, and March 2008, when she left the country, were reminiscent of those in Bangladesh in 1994 which led to her departure from there. In both instances, the states' responses were her forced removal from the country to placate the agitators. In this paper I analyze the events on the ground and the responses of the states. I argue that these events demonstrate how 'outraged communities' are constructed, and symbols are invented to mobilize the community. The role of state has received little attention in the extant discussions while I contend that states bear a significant responsibility in engendering the controversy.
Index terms
Keywords :
Bangladesh, Taslima Nasreen, India, Outraged Community, Religion, Islamist, Symbol, Emotion, OtherPlan
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'I do not want any more twists to my tale of woes. Please do not give political colour (sic) to my plight. I do not want to be a victim of politics. And I do not want anybody to do politics with me.'
Taslima Nasreen, Hindustan Times, November 27, 2007
- 1 Nasreen has since been allowed to return to India. On her return to New Delhi on 8th August 2008,(...)
1Taslima Nasreen, the exiled Bangladeshi author, once again attracted the attention of the international media as a result of events in India beginning in August 2007. The physical attack on her at a book launch in Hyderabad was followed by riots in Kolkata, the capital of the state of West Bengal, in November 2007. Nasreen was then forced by the government to leave the city she called her second home and was shunted from one city to another. She was kept under security protection for months in undisclosed locations. Finally, in mid-March 2008, after 110 days in the 'safe custody' of the Indian government Nasreen left India for Europe1.
2These events were reminiscent of the events of 1994 which led to her exile from Bangladesh. At that time, she not only became the target of the 'religious zealots' who demanded that she be killed for heresy but was also charged with blasphemy in a court. After 44 days of hiding she was given a 'safe passage', thanks to the intervention of the international community. Her detractors claimed that she had offended the religious sensitivities of the Muslim 'community'. In 2007, the organization of the attack and the agitation was claimed by Indian 'Muslim groups' which insist that one volume of her autobiography (published 4 years ago) and her other writings have offended their religious sentiments.
3The uncanny similarities of these two series of events and the responses of the authorities in Bangladesh and India deserve close scrutiny at various levels. Interestingly, these events (i.e., the 1994 agitation in Bangladesh and the 2007 violence in Kolkata), took place in the background when other outraged communities, based on larger political demands, were in the making.
4In this paper I analyze the events on the ground and the responses of the states. I argue that these events demonstrate how 'outraged communities' are constructed, and symbols are invented to mobilize the community. These events also demonstrate, among other issues, how states in South Asia, particularly Bangladesh and India, deal with 'outraged communities'; and what, if any, role states play in the construction of the outraged community. The paper's focus on the 'state response' is not to suggest the primacy of the state in these issues; instead the dynamics within the groups of non-state actors and how the outrage is framed are important in understanding the trajectories of the events. But the state's role has received little attention in the extant discussions while I contend that states bear a significant responsibility in engendering the controversy. The banning of the book is a case in point. In Bangladesh Nasreen's book Lajja (Shame) was proscribed in mid-1993 before the agitations against the author ensued; similarly, in West Bengal, her book Dwikhondito (Split in Halves) was banned in 2004, three years before the street agitations gripped the state capital Kolkata. The paper, therefore, intends to address the absence of the discussions on states' roles.
5Four sections follow this introduction; the events of 1997 and 2007-08 are described in the first and the second sections. The third section presents the analysis drawing on both events and their significance in understanding the complexity of the politics of emotion. Concluding thoughts comprise the final section.
Episode 1: Bangladesh, 1994
6The sixty-day episode of turmoil and mayhem and the eventual exile of Taslima Nasreen from Bangladesh took place between 4th June and 4th August 1994, but this was in the making from the beginning of 1993. An author, a columnist and a medical doctor by profession, Nasreen was known only to the middle class literate population until the government confiscated her passport on 23rd January 1993 allegedly for traveling under a 'false identity'. Although providing a false identity is a misdemeanor according to the laws of Bangladesh, and as a public official she could have been subjected to administrative disciplinary measures, the government took no further action against her. This, however, was not an indication of leniency towards Nasreen, but the usual bureaucratic way of dealing with such issues in Bangladesh; that is to do something without getting too involved in 'trifling matters'. The government's action was caused in part by Nasreen's high-profile trips to India since she had won a coveted literary prize in Kolkata the previous year. The government headed by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which champions anti-India feelings, was also trying to send a signal that it was not thrilled to see such intimacy with the West Bengal literary community2.
- 2 In mid-1993, a government official commented to the author in a personal conversation that if Nasr(...)
7By the middle of the year, there was a conspicuous change in the attitude of the government: on 10th July 1993 Nasreen's novel Lajja (Shame) was proscribed. The book, published in February 1993, became an instant best-seller and by July more than sixty thousand copies had been sold, a major success by Bangladeshi standards. The book, depicting the agony of a Hindu family during the communal riots in Bangladesh after the demolition of the Babri Mosque (6th December 1992) in India, stirred debate among Bangladeshi intellectuals; but nobody expected the book to be banned, because there were no precedents to draw upon in regard to fictional works. The government action came on the heels of a move by a small religious group from the northeastern town of Sylhet.
8The previously unknown 'religious' group named Shahaba Sainik Parishad (later discovered to have a large following and suspected of connections with a group in Pakistan) from Sylhet – a city northeast of Dhaka – issued a fatwa sentencing her to death and placing a reward of taka 50,000 (approximately US$1,250) on her head on 23rd September 1993. The group retracted its statement after severe criticism from various sectors of society. However, it continued to demand the banning of all her books and that she be put on trial on charges of 'blasphemy'. Two cases were lodged in the local courts of a northeastern city by two individuals, presumably members of the aforementioned group, alleging that Nasreen's writings had offended their religious sentiments. After a preliminary hearing in which Nasreen was represented by her attorney, these cases were shelved. Nasreen also filed a suit against one Maulana Habibur Rahman and six others who were leading the campaign against her. Nasreen complained that they incited people in a public meeting in Sylhet against her, that a death threat had been made in the said meeting, and that she was at risk because of the threat.
9While a pseudo court battle was going on in Sylhet, the group that called for the banning of Nasreen's books continued its agitation and organized several demonstrations – initially outside Dhaka, but later in the capital. In November, the group called a general strike in Sylhet. Shahaba Sainik Parishad's (SSP) demonstrations began to draw a large crowd. Most of the participants, according to eyewitness accounts, were students of madrassahs and activists of religiopolitical parties, including the Jamaat-i-Islami [JI]. The JI initially claimed that it had no hand in this fatwa, but gradually it became clear that the demonstrations were manned by JI activists as the SSP had little or no support and little organizational capacity to mobilize the masses.
10After declaring a bounty on her head militants intensified their campaign against Nasreen. She herself 'appealed via fax and phone to the Western media and human rights groups' (Wright 1995: 4) to put pressure on the government to ensure her safety. Consequently, a number of international human rights groups asked the Bangladesh government to guarantee her safety, and international writers' associations began to unfurl their flags in support of Nasreen.
11The situation took a dramatic turn at the beginning of June 1994. In May, soon after receiving a new passport, Nasreen left for Paris. On her way back from Paris, she visited Kolkata and was interviewed by the Indian English-language daily the Statesman. In her 9th May 1994 interview, she reportedly said that the Quran was written by a human being. Nasreen, according to the report, also said that she was against any partial changes in the Quran, implying that she wanted a total revision of the Quran. In a rejoinder published on 11th May 1994, Nasreen denied that she made any such remarks.
12Both the interview and the rejoinder remained unknown to Bangladeshi readers until a government-owned English daily in Dhaka reprinted the interview in early June, without the necessary permission from the Statesman and without Nasreen's rejoinder. The reason the story was reprinted became obvious within a week. The government lodged a case against her under Section 295A of the Penal Code, which stipulates that a person must serve two years in jail for offending religious sentiments. The court issued a warrant for Nasreen's arrest on 4th June 1994. She then went into hiding.
- 3 For details of the events see the fourth part of Taslima Nasreen's autobiography Sei Sob Andhokar((...)
13Meanwhile, some thirteen Islamist parties, factions, and organizations formed an alliance to put pressure on the government to arrest Nasreen, waged a campaign against almost all secular intellectuals, attacked the offices of newspapers that showed even the slightest sympathy for Nasreen or had criticized religious groups on previous occasions, and ransacked bookstores selling Nasreen's books3.
14Behind the scenes, negotiations took place in New York between Bangladeshi authorities and PEN's Women Writers' Committee, which pressured the Bangladesh government to allow Nasreen to leave the country. Finally, a face-saving formula was worked out. After receiving assurances that she would not be incarcerated, Nasreen surrendered to the court on 3rd August 1994, represented by a pool of qualified lawyers, including a former foreign minister. The court granted bail. Within a week, she left for Sweden 'on an invitation from a Swedish writers association'.
15The above narrative of the events on the ground, especially the street agitation provides an impression that the government was responding to the demands of the outraged community/groups hurt by Nasreen's comments. But it also raises questions as to why the 'outrage' was expressed at that time, especially involving a book published more than a year before. Equally important is the question: were the street mobilizations spontaneous? Anyone familiar with Bangladeshi politics and those who observed the demonstrations would respond negatively. Evidently, organized political forces, Islamists of various shades to be precise, with a specific agenda were at the forefront of these agitations. The prevailing impasse in domestic politics and different hidden agendas of the political actors of Bangladesh created the imbroglio. Before going into details, let me point out once again that Nasreen's interview, which served as a stirring prelude to a drama that lasted for exactly sixty days, was published on 9th May but remained unknown to Bangladeshis until a government-owned newspaper reprinted and highlighted it. There are reasons to suspect that it was reprinted only to create an environment conducive to filing a case against her.
16In May 1994, four features of Bangladesh politics stood out: first, the opposition political parties, which had been boycotting the Parliament for more than two months, demonstrated their firm determination not to return to the house; second, and a corollary to the first feature, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the relationship between the Jamaat-i-Islami and the ruling BNP had become strained, and consequently a new long-term alliance between the Awami League (AL) and the Jamaat-i-Islami was in the offing; third, a verdict was forthcoming on the eighteen-month-long troubled citizenship trial of Golam Azam, the ameer (chief) of the Jamaat; and fourth, the Jamaat was looking for an opportunity to bring its proposed blasphemy law into public discussion. Interestingly, none of this was happy news for the ruling party, and all of it involved the Jamaat-i-Islami.
17On 1st March 1994, opposition political parties led by the Awami League began to agitate for a constitutional amendment that would allow the holding of future elections under a caretaker government instead of under the ruling government. In a not-so-surprising move, the Awami League formed an alliance with the Jamaat-i-Islami, an old-time friend of the ruling party. The opposition's boycott of Parliament began like a usual walkout, but soon it became clear that the opposition was trying to hold on to its demand to amend the constitution to hold all future elections under a nonpartisan caretaker government. The opposition threatened that it would continue to boycott parliamentary sessions unless the ruling party bowed to its demand. Opposition parties engaged in a series of agitation programs. Although the public at large was in a state of confusion with regard to the demand raised by the opposition parties, the immediate reaction of the press was in favor of the demand, which the ruling party mistook for popular support. But the confrontational mood of the opposition was not welcomed by a large section of the population, especially the business community. The ruling party's initial posture was to disregard the issue altogether. But by May 1994 the BNP became visibly frightened as its support fell rapidly. What concerned the ruling party most was the emerging alliance between the Awami League and the Jamaat-i-Islami. The former had always been a rival of the ruling party, but the latter provided support for the ruling party whenever it was necessary. In fact, the BNP had come to power with the help of the Jamaat, whose twenty MPs extended their whole-hearted support to the BNP in forming the government in 1991. Ostensibly, Jamaat was now deserting the BNP.
18For the BNP, this situation called for immediate action to diffuse the brewing tension and reestablish the old order. For the ruling party, two goals had to be achieved: first, to divert public attention from the opposition's demand; second, to create a division within the emerging alliance. Nasreen's interview provided the ruling party with an issue that had the potential to help achieve both these goals. An issue pertaining to religion was sensitive enough to arouse concern, while at the same time, members of the emerging alliance – because of their different ideological orientations – were destined to take different stands, rendering the alliance practically ineffective. Both politics and tricks played their roles. The ruling party's strategy to divide the opposition alliance did not work as well as expected. Contrary to the expectation of the BNP and the general masses, the Awami League distanced itself from the issue, allowing the Jamaat to run the show. The Awami League was more interested in pursuing a closer relationship with the Jamaat than with fighting a battle for a secularist cause. In the name of a combined parliamentary opposition, the AL was working with the Jamaat and intended to intensify the street agitation programs. The Jamaat, at an early stage of the crisis, kept a low profile. But perhaps because of the Awami League's inaction, the Jamaat soon joined the anti-Nasreen agitation. Therefore, the split that the ruling party expected did not materialize. The Islamists outside the ambit of the Jamaat-i-Islami, especially the militant organizations, soon forged an alliance called Sammilita Sangram Parishad (Alliance for United Movement).
- 4 In 1971, Golam Azam, then chief of the East Pakistan wing of the Jamaat-i-Islami, actively collabo(...)
19The Jamaat had two agendas: firstly, to divert public attention from the citizenship trial of Golam Azam4; and secondly, to highlight the proposed 'Blasphemy law'.
20The hearing concerning Golam Azam's case in the Supreme Court began on 4th May 1994, and from the beginning it was evident that the process would not take a long time, meaning a verdict might be forthcoming. In the meantime, the anti-Azam movement turned into a movement against those who had actively collaborated with the occupation regime in 1971. The organizers set up a Public Inquiry Commission to collect evidence against a number of collaborators, most of whom were the current leaders of the Jamaat. The initial enthusiasm and fervor of the movement subsided, but it did not lose all its steam. It was expected that a verdict in favor of Azam might steer the movement to a new phase. Hence the Jamaat wanted to create a situation in which the issue of Golam Azam would become of secondary in importance and the movement against him would face an uphill battle to prove its worth. Their hopes came to fruition when the Supreme Court delivered its judgment on 22nd June 1994, in favor of restoring Golam Azam's citizenship as a Bangladeshi.
21The restoration of Golam Azam's citizenship through a court verdict frustrated the opponents, but gave Jamaat the opportunity it was looking for to bring a specific issue to the fore: the proposed blasphemy law. The bill was proposed in 1992 and tabled in 1993, but discussion continued within the confines of the Parliament building. In 1994, owing to the fact that the opposition members of the Parliament were engaged in a boycott, the Jamaat aimed to bring up the issue through some other means.
22Nasreen's comments in the Indian newspaper the Statesman on 9th May provided the Jamaat with the opportunity it was looking for. As soon as her comments were made known, Islamists in general and the Jamaat in particular argued that the article proved the need for a blasphemy law. The statement issued by some 101 pro-Jamaat intellectuals on 1st June; the statement of Matiur Rahman Nizami, the secretary general of the Jamaat-i-Islami, on the Nasreen issue on 8th June; and numerous articles in the daily Inquilab and the daily Sangram, both mouthpieces of the Islamists, insisted that the situation would not have arisen if there had been a blasphemy law. Other newspapers joined the fray (e.g, New Nation 1994: 5)
- 5 Bangladesh and India both inherited a colonial law in regard to the acts of blasphemy. The Penal c(...)
23The JI had attempted to table a Blasphemy Law, akin to the law passed and implemented in Pakistan, in 1992, but had not succeeded5. Learning from their limited success in 1992, the Islamists, and the Jamaat in particular, did not rely on one single case to prove their point. Instead, to intensify their campaign, they also targeted a Bengali daily, the Janakantha, which since the beginning of the year had relentlessly tried to expose the persons involved in and the factors behind the ubiquitous rise of fatwabaz (those who decree an edict) in the country. In an editorial in the 12th May 1994, issue, the Janakantha showed how orthodox and illiterate mullahs were misinterpreting the Quran and the Hadith. The Islamists alleged that this specific article had offended the religious sentiments of the Muslim community and called upon the government to bring charges against its editor. The government picked up the issue and filed a case against the editor (Atiqullah Khan Masud), the advisory editor (Toab Khan), the executive editor (Borhan Ahmed), and an assistant editor (Shamsuddin Ahmed) of the newspaper under Section 295A of the Penal Code.
- 6 Taslima Nasreen made a brief visit to Bangladesh in September 1998 to see her terminally ill mothe(...)
24It was the first time since independence that a newspaper had been charged under this clause. Ironically, during the twenty-four years of Pakistani rule, when the cry of 'Islam in danger' was all too familiar, no newspaper had ever faced a charge under this clause; but it happened in Bangladesh, which had once proclaimed secularism as its guiding state principle. Both the advisory editor and the executive editor were arrested on 8th June 1994. They appeared before the court on the same afternoon, and their bail petition was denied. Accordingly, they were sent to jail. The assistant editor surrendered to the court later and faced the same fate. Eight days later, Masud was granted bail by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. Borhan Ahmed and Toab Khan were granted bail on 15th and 20th June, respectively (Ahmed 1995). But all of this was overshadowed by the Nasreen saga and received little attention outside Bangladesh. Bangladeshi secularists, unfortunately, failed to highlight the issue altogether. The street agitation continued until she left the country in August6. The state machinery not only allowed these violent demonstrations to continue and death threats to be waged against the author, but also prioritized the issue of dealing with the offenses related to hurting religious sentiments over the demand for trials of Golam Azam and others for their involvements in war crimes.
25Thus, the first grassroots movement against the Islamists, particularly the Jamaat-i-Islami, since their resurgence in 1979 was dissipated - not by clamping down on the movement but through constructing a diversion and by cultivating an outraged community.
Episode 2: India, 2007
26The heightened media coverage of the second episode of the Nasreen saga began with the attack on her at Hyderabad on 9th August 2007. During a book launch at the city's press club Nasreen was attacked by 'an unruly crowd' (NDTV 2007) under the leadership of three state assembly members of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM). The party chief extended his wholehearted support to the attack and threatened to kill Nasreen himself (IANS 2007). A small local group, named Dasgah-e-Jehad-Shaheed, claiming itself the representative of the Muslim community, held a demonstration in Hyderabad on 11th August where it demanded that the author be expelled from India. By then Nasreen returned to Kolkata where she had been living for almost 3 years. The Imam of a local mosque, Syed Noor-ur-Rahman Barkati, issued a death threat against Nasreen on 17th August: 'Anybody eliminating her would be given Rs 100,000 and unlimited rewards if she does not leave the country immediately. She has insulted Islam and continued to create problem in this country' Maulana Barkati told reporters (WebIndia123 2007; Hindustan Times 2007).
- 7 The most obvious indication of the state government's inclination towards removing her from the st(...)
27After more than three months of calm, the issue re-emerged in violent form on the streets of Kolkata on 21st November 2007: the All-India Minority Forum's demonstration demanding that Taslima Nasreen's Indian visa be revoked and that she be forced to leave the country turned into a city-wide riot (BBCNews 2007). The scale of violence, not seen in Kolkata for decades, gripped the city for a day. The West Bengal government immediately put pressure on her to leave the state7, within hours she was forced by law enforcing agencies to move to Jaipur. She was then thrown out of the state of Maharashtra towards Delhi, where she was put in an undisclosed safe house under the supervision of the central government. The cabinet ministers of the central government allegedly pressured her to make a public apology. The Foreign Minister commented that India would continue to provide her 'shelter' as a guest but she would have to show restraint. Pranab Mukherjee told the Indian Parliament on 28th November 2007, that 'It is also expected that the guests will refrain from activities and expressions that may hurt the sentiments of our people' (AOL News 2007).
28On the same day, Taslima Nasreen informed her publisher in Kolkata to delete sections of the second part of her autobiography published in 2002. Announcing her decision Nasreen told the press, 'I have withdrawn some parts of my book Dwikhondito. Some said parts of the book were hurting the sentiments of the people. I hope after its withdrawal, there would be no more controversies. … The decision to withdraw these parts from Dwikhondito is to prove that I never wanted to hurt the people's sentiments. I hope now I will be able to live peacefully in India and Kolkata' (Hindustan Times 2007). Ironically, after a court victory over the same book Nasreen commented, 'If they had asked me to change or delete even one word as a precondition to lifting the ban, I would've gone to the Supreme Court. To me, changing two pages and changing one word is one and the same thing' (Telegraph 2007).
29Despite this concession and publicly giving in to the demands of the demonstrators, Nasreen was not allowed to stay in India, let alone return to Kolkata. She remained incommunicado until her departure in late-March 2008 when her second exile began.
30In India, particularly in West Bengal, Nasreen was hounded in 2000, 2004 and 2006 and fatwas were issued against her. Yet the government did not intervene to prevent the recurrence of such events or to 'appease' those who claimed that they were speaking on behalf of the Muslim community. For example, in March 2000 an organization named the Reza Academy of Mumbai threatened that if she ever set foot there she would be burned alive (Times of India 2007). In January 2004, Syed Noor-ur-Rahman Barkati of Tipu Sultan mosque in Kolkata denounced the author in his Friday sermon, commented that 'Her face can be blackened with ink, paint or tar. Or she can be garlanded with shoes.' Maulana Rahman also offered a reward of 20,000 rupees (about US$500) to anyone who would carry out the act. In June 2006, Maulana Barkati issued what he described as a 'fatwa', after Nasreen's speech at a conference in Kolkata. Maulana Barkati said to a local TV channel: 'I've issued a fatwa against her. After the Jumma namaz [Friday prayers], I said if anyone blackens her face and drives her out of India, I will give him 50,000 rupees.' He later retracted and insisted that a fatwa cannot be issued verbally.
31What prompted the decisive step of the West Bengal government in 2007 to address the issue raised by the 'outraged' Muslim community? The answer to this question is not only important in understanding the government's actions but also to highlight the similarity between the events in 1994 and 2007.
32Like with the situation in Bangladesh in 1994 we need to delve deep into other events connected to the larger political scene of West Bengal politics to find an explanation for the actions. In a textbook copy of the incident in Bangladesh, the West Bengal government first banned her book, Dwikhondito (Split in Halves) in 2004 and thus created an environment to move against her should that become necessary. The ban was later rescinded by the Indian court.
33The 2007 episode, on the part of the agitators, began in March when Taqi Raza Khan of the All India Ibtehad Council, issued a fatwa against Taslima, threatening to kill her. Khan offered an inducement of 500,000 rupees ($11,760) for anyone who would behead ('sar qalam karna') the author. He claimed that he had the full support of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (Khaleej Times 2007). The fatwa was condemned by many Muslim representatives, for example, Safia Naseem, member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, Maulana Naimur Rehman, general secretary of the Ulema Council, and Yasef Abbas, general secretary of the All India Shia Personal Law Board to name but a few (Times of India 2007a). Detractors of Nasreen were looking for an opportunity to highlight their demand and thrust themselves onto the national scene. But the opportunity emerged because of an entirely different and unrelated set of events: the growing resistance to the government's plan to set up a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) allowing a foreign company to build a factory in Nandigram causing the eviction of thousands of hundred of local residents, who happened to be Muslims, and the mysterious death of a Muslim youth named Rezwanur Rahman allegedly with the connivance of the Kolkata police.
34The Nandigram issue had been brewing since January 2007 when the local authority (i.e., the Block Development Office, BDO) announced the seizure of land. Protests and clashes between police and local residents ensued. As the local administration failed to implement the plan, the state government viewed this as a law and order situation and consequently decided on 9th March that it would resort to police action. The local members of the ruling CPIM were also included in the force sent to 'retake' the villages. The police action on 14th March caused the deaths of local people, incidents of rape, and complete mayhem. However, the local resistance continued and the police actions, particularly their heavy-handedness, attracted national and international media attention. In the following months, anti-government political forces, especially the Trinamul Congress led by Mamata Banerjee, became involved and were effectively trying to cash in on the situation. But the mobilization remained, in large measure, local initiatives. The Kolkata-based civil society was divided on the issue and very slow in responding to the on-going locally-inspired resistance to the government industrial development plan. Between March and November, low-level conflict continued; the residents returned to their homes, the movement gathered momentum, and the government was increasingly becoming impatient. Finally, on 8th November, the government forcibly retook the villages. The result was less bloody than the March events, but no less disheartening. As for the local people, they were evicted from their homes, anyway. These events galvanized a section of the civil society leading to a massive protest in Kolkata on 14th November 2007. In the words of Sumit Chowdhury, this was a reflection of the 're-awakened conscience'. Chowdhury states that 'overnight, various platforms sprouted, all of which took place without a political party or bloc lending a hand, and unsupported by any political ideology. This citizens' uprising appeared spontaneous, bypassing the winding alleys of party politics' (Chowdhury 2008, § 2)
35The demonstration was followed up by a government sponsored public gathering of hundreds and thousands of activists in support of 'peace' in Nandigram and the prospects of economic development through the SEZ. The forceful demonstration of the power of pro-government civil society at the heart of the city showed that the issue was far from over. The two public gatherings also revealed that the religious identity of the victims was irrelevant to the issue at hand. But behind the scenes an issue tied to 'religious sentiments' was emerging, as the government suddenly banned a magazine Pathasanket 1414 on 9th November for publishing an article critical of the Bangladeshi government's actions against Taslima Nasreen and voicing support for her criticisms of Islamic religious texts. The support of the ruling CPIM hierarchy for the magazine was obvious from the list of authors, yet the state government acted quickly to proscribe it once an obscure organization called the All India Minority Forum (AIMF) under the leadership of Idris Ali demanded that it be banned. Morally boosted by the government's easy capitulation, the AIMF leaders announced an agitation program against the atrocities in Nandigram and demanding the cancellation of Nasreen's visa.
36The sudden emergence of the AIMF and the government's inclination towards this organization is interesting on two counts; first, the veracity of their claim of representing the Muslims of the state; and second, the consequence in regard to an emerging alliance. As for the representation issue, many Muslims of West Bengal insist the organization does not represent them: 'Contrary to its name, the AIMF is not found all over India, nor does it represent all minorities. Its president, Idris Ali is known for raising emotive issues. He was found guilty of being in contempt of the high court when he reportedly urged the imams of Kolkata to defy the court ban on the use of loudspeakers for aazan' (Indianmuslimsblog 2007). Had the government intended to listen to the Muslim voice it could have turned to the Milli Ittehad Parishad which brought hundreds and thousands of coreligionists onto the streets of Kolkata on 15th November to peacefully protest against the Nandigram incidents. As for the emerging coalition, the Nandigram issue paved the way for the creation of an unprecedented alliance - poor Muslim peasants and the disenchanted urban intelligentsia, the mainstay of the CPIM's support for almost three decades. Thus the hegemony of the CPIM was being challenged from an emerging coalition that never existed before nor had been expected to emerge. The Nasreen issue, as presented by the AIMF, essentially cut out the roots of this emerging coalition. Two elements of the alliance were pitted against each other – Muslims were asked to coalesce around faith, while the urban intelligentsia was bound to stand for freedom of speech. As the coalition began to unravel, Nasreen was shunted from city to city and then had to leave the country.
Constructing an outraged community and the politics of emotion
37Despite the appearance that these two series of events, in 1994 in Bangladesh and 2007-08 in India surrounding Taslima Nasreen, are spontaneous emotional outbursts of a segment of society, there is more to it. They are not fleeting reactions to events or ideas or even a moral panic8 but the product of a community primarily guided by the politics of emotion. It is important to note the longevity of the controversy: these two series of events took place 14 years apart. This debate could re-emerge at different times and at different places because, in part, of the physical presence of the author; but also because of the instrumentalization of emotion by non-state actors and the state's connivance in it. Essentially, in Bangladesh and India (particularly West Bengal) the outraged communities were constructed through a variety of ways. An outraged community is no different from any other collective identity created through deliberate efforts. James Jasper, citing Gamson's study of 1995 (Gamson 1995) reminded us that 'collective labels are necessary for action, even though they are largely fictional' (Jasper 2006: 26)9.
- 10 Post-9/11 xenophobia and Islamophobia in the United States is a case in point. A particular notion(...)
38This argument requires an explanation of how an outraged community is constructed and what the 'politics of emotion' means. The construction of an outraged community requires a combination of a few elements. Objective conditions aside, inventing an 'Other' is a prerequisite for rallying a group of people. The invention of the Other means that the group needs to be assigned an identity and differences with the Other are to be highlighted. The most immediate step in this direction is to create a binary division – us versus them, or in the words of Peter du Perez, constructing 'identity frames' – which maintain each other (Du Perez 1980: 3). Not only are they emphasized but the differences are given a new meaning in the current context. The Other is characterized as demonic and powerful. Whether the outraged community is a localized entity or a nation makes very little difference in regard to such characterization10. Within this frame of explanation the Other does not deserve sympathy, for it is powerful and a perpetrator. Demonization of the Other also makes it morally imperative to oppose it; and thereby makes it larger than the issue at hand.
39In both instances, Taslima Nasreen was the constructed 'Other'. In the case of Bangladesh the Islamists constructed Nasreen as the symbol of the 'demonic Other' who had challenged the faith of the Muslim community and the Bangladeshi identity. The pamphlets and speeches of the detractors of Nasreen insisted on several aspects of the 'Other'- the apostate, the atheist, the westernized, the agent of the Hindus, the transgressor, to name but a few. Both her writings and personal life were highlighted at once. Her writing style (that is, writing in first person) was helpful to the agitators as they insisted that her writings and she are same. Her opponents insisted that she represented moral decadence and was an affront to Islam, as an author and as an individual. Therefore, it was not Nasreen alone they were fighting against, although that was important to them; but the enemies of Islam and the nation. This appealed to a segment of society, because she was transformed into an issue larger than the individual. The issue, to some was blasphemy, to others gender transgression; to some it was her writing that made her the demonic Other, to others it was her lifestyle. In West Bengal, in similar vein, Nasreen was constructed as the instrument of Hindutva's design to malign the Muslims and Islam. The events in Bangladesh in 1994, particularly the charges brought under Article 295A in a court of law, made it easier for her detractors to say that her writings were a challenge to religion. The protestors' deliberate effort to merge the issue of atrocities in Nandigram, a Muslim majority locality, with Nasreen's presence in the state reveals that they wanted to make their cause larger than an individual – the Indian state's anti-Islamic stance.
40Often these new meanings of identity as well as the construction of the Other are connected to history, to demonstrate that the current events are not an aberration but part of a recurrent pattern. In this context one can easily discover the presence of a paradoxical 'dual teleology' within the discourse of the progenitors. The Hindu nationalist movement under the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its like, commonly referred to as Sangh Parivar, is a case in point. Thomas Hansen's fine exploration of this movement is helpful in understanding this dualism:
41On the one hand, history is invoked to justify the movement and its objectives. The movement is but a realization of inevitable historical development, and individuals in the movement are merely inconsequential actors in a great, unfolding drama. . . . On the other hand, the founding myth almost always revolves around a notion of self-birth, self-celebration, depicting the founding of the movement in an extraordinary situation by farsighted individuals who, through extraordinary difficulties, succeeded in creating the present movement. Due to their intervention the course of history will be altered as the movement will gradually realize its vision (Hansen 1999: 91).
42The extent of this teleology varies according to the scope and nature of the events and issues at hand, but they are not entirely absent in any instance. Thus a specific reading of history is essential in presenting the case to the public at large and understanding the part of the public. In the context of Bangladesh, the history was framed with the Muslim identity as the pivotal issue as opposed to the ethnic Bengali identity. Nasreen's writings that called into question the partition in 1947 provided Islamists with the means of portraying her as anti-Bangladesh. Interestingly, those who opposed the establishment of independent Bangladesh became the standard bearer of the national sovereignty. The secularists, within this frame of reference, are recast as the 'stooges of Indian hegemony'. To them, India and Hinduism are synonymous; therefore secularists in general and Nasreen particularly are the 'enemy within'. The movement is an inevitable development of history as it is portrayed as bringing the Bangladeshi Muslims back to their roots after a brief secularist interlude. For the protagonists, the rise of the movement was a part of the reawakening of the Muslims. The agitators in West Bengal and other parts of India framed the movement as the assertion of a disenfranchized minority. They claimed to be the voice of the Indian Muslim community. The history of disenfranchisement and deprivation served as the backdrop and justification of their movement. Thus, in West Bengal, cognitive and symbolic relationships between these two issues were established. These movements, particularly Islamists in Bangladesh, also used global politics as an element of the history – Muslims under attack from the Judeo-Christian western onslaught.
43An important element of the construction of outraged community is personification and/or symbolization of the issue(s). The person/symbol represents the 'Other' and the essential negative aspects of the issues in question. In some form or the other, the central issue is attached to a specific individual or a group of individuals; and/or symbols that can be universalized. It is worth recalling that any symbols have three levels of association: personal, cultural and universal. The importance of symbolization, either through a person or an object, is on the one hand to transform an abstract idea into a tangible material, and to map an individual's relationship with society, on the other (For an exploration of the latter point, see Voegelin 1990). Corneliu Bjola has pointed out, drawing on Sears (1993) and Kertzer (1988: 4), that political symbols are 'any effectively charged element in a political attitude object' by which 'we give meaning to the world around us … [and] interpret what we see, and, indeed what we are' (Bjola 2000: 9).
44How was Nasreen, as a symbol, universalized? Her detractors pointed to the plight of the Muslims in India, the Indian governments' inaction and the support given to her by the state and the secular intellectuals; these were intrinsically connected, they argued. The loss of a moral mooring of Bangladeshi society, brazen westernization, and Nasreen's writings in support of sexual liberation of women were described as parts of one phenomenon. The powers in play were local and global. One aspect in the discourses of the protestors is worth recalling; that is to refer her as the 'female Rushdie'. The analogy was coined and frequently used by the Western press sympathetic to Nasreen to describe her plight; but her detractors also used it to show that she was no different from Salman Rushdie. The Indian government's decision to ban the Satanic Verses in 1988 was an impetus to Indian agitators that they can force a similar fate on Nasreen's books.
45It will be erroneous to suggest that the Nasreen detractors are the only ones who evoked symbols to appeal to the masses. The evocation of symbols to relate individuals to issues of importance is an integral part of politics in general. Political parties and states employ symbols on a regular basis to garner support. This is called 'symbolic politics' - that is construction, distribution and internalization of political symbols such as phrases, images, norms, rules, etc. Discussions abound on the significance of 'symbolic politics' in mobilizing the masses and the assumption of leadership by political elites. The seminal studies of Murray Edelman (1985) and David O. Sears (1993) have demonstrated that the ideational aspect plays very significant roles in political activism. Their studies have also shown that 'People may use political symbols simply as convenient information shortcuts for grasping an understanding of the political environment. On the other hand, their perceived symbolic predispositions may invite political elites to manipulate them for various political purposes' (Bjola 2000: 7).
46Thus there are two aspects of symbolic politics: instrumental aspects and interpretative aspects. The former deals with manipulation by the creators of the symbols while the latter deals with how these symbols are used by the recipients.
47The instrumental aspect of the symbols depends on the emotional intensity of recipients towards the political symbol. The emotional involvement and intensity '[are] contingent to the place occupied by the respective symbol in the dominant political discourse and/or in that of its main competitor(s)' (Bjola 2000: 5). But nonetheless, there remains a close connection between the symbolization and emotions.
48As for the interpretative aspect of symbolic politics, as I have hinted previously, a specific reading of history insisting on a distinctive identity was crucial. Reference to history occupied an important position in the discourse of the leaders who gathered crowds and mobilized them for activism. While the history varied between the Bangladesh and the West Bengal episodes, they were never devoid of history. One key difference between the West Bengal episode and the Bangladesh episode is the relative position of the Muslims within the society which influenced not only how the outrage was framed and articulated but also how the symbols were used by recipients. For the recipients, in the former instance a small organized secularist/atheist minority is insulting the religious feelings of the silent disorganized majority, while in the latter instance the weak marginalized minority's religious rights are being trampled on by the majority.
49The role of emotion in politics has received less than its due attention because, generally speaking, until recently the study of political action has been dominated by the rational choice paradigm. Within this broad framework exists a dichotomy between rational and irrational impulses for actions, emotion falls under the latter deserving less attention (For a succinct introductory discussion on the treatment of emotion in politics, see Jasper 2006). But it is impossible to avoid two facts: (a) 'politics always had an emotional element'; and (b) 'a leading function of the political state is to legitimate some emotions and differently encourage, contain and dissuade others. All political organizations in fact, not just the state are engaged with emotions in the promotion of various dispositions, actions and inhibitions' (Barbalet 2006: 31-32). Thus it is necessary to recognize that emotions have been a crucial determinant of individuals' and organizations' political actions; but the vexed question is how an individual's emotion (e.g., hate, anger, resentment, fear, compassion) is collectivized and translated into the central element of political actions. For making emotion the driving force of the group, individuals' direct experience cannot be the only means, for many may not individually experience it. It then depends upon how the emotions are articulated and framed, and returning to our earlier point, what symbols are used. But it is also important to note that emotions alone cannot explain the actions of the individuals/groups; motivation for collective actions may come from different sources.
50The events of 1994 and 2007-08 demonstrate that in both instances, symbols were constructed to give salience to the politics of emotion. A new collective/community identity was created, the Other was invented, and personification of the Other followed.
51In the case of Bangladesh the movement to bring war criminals to justice needed a symbol to bring the issue to the fore. The protagonists, albeit unsuccessfully, utilized the Golam Azam issue in this regard. While their demands had legal and political legitimacy, they were avoided by political parties of all hues for more than two decades and thus became a distant issue to the younger generation. The hegemony of the political parties, who befriended the 'war criminals' for political expediency, needed to be challenged from the grassroots and through constructing a new alliance of generations cutting across the political divide. As this alliance began to take shape, thanks to the civil society initiatives, the supporters of the JI and the ruling BNP became uncomfortable. The anti-Golam Azam movement also challenged the legitimacy of Islamist politics in Bangladesh. The Islamists, therefore, intended to stop it in its tracks. This was achieved through constructing Nasreen as the symbol of the Other. The Islamists, in this instance, succeeded, not only in creating a symbol to represent their issues but also in distracting the public from the war criminal trial issue. Thus the Islamists not only created a rift among the community that was being constructed by the secularists demanding the trial of the war criminals, but also created a community which was 'outraged' by the comments of Nasreen. Nasreen, in this context, was a symbol through which the world around us was given a meaning.
- 11 The word 'symbol' has been used in almost all analyses of the events of Nandigram. A quick Google(...)
- 12 This binary division was at the heart of the argument of the CPIM leadership, see Karat (2007).
52The events in 2007-08 were no different; the emerging peasant-intellectual alliance was drawing on the politics of emotion as much as it was building on the opposition to globalization and neo-liberal policies of the West Bengal government. While for the protagonists Nandigram was the symbol of resistance to the SEZ11, the ruling party portrayed this as the battle-line between 'us' and 'them' by12. Despite such binary division the emerging coalition showed no sign of breaking until a counter-symbol was inserted into the political equation. The AIMF's demonstration, protesting against the Nandigram violence, added the Taslima Nasreen issue and a new symbol appealing to a different kind of emotion was brought into the discourse.
53The actions of the states, in large measure, have been explained as the policy of appeasement of Islamists and Muslims, respectively. This explanation assumes that rational behavior such as self-interest prompted the state's reaction to the situation. Indeed the increasing strength of the Islamists in Bangladeshi politics in 1994 was a factor in how the Taslima Nasreen issue would be dealt with, but whether the same can be said about the Indian situation is an open question. The ruling party of Bangladesh in 1994 was trying to create a schism between the JI and the Awami League (then the main opposition party), as the JI was gaining saliency within electoral politics, particularly after the new democratic era began in 1991. The case brought against the author indicates that the state became a party to the ongoing tension; in so doing the Bangladeshi state essentially contributed to the construction of an outraged community. Equally important to bear in mind is that the leaders of those who were demanding the trial of the war criminals were charged with sedition. The latter is a clear indication that the state wanted to neutralize the outrage of the secularists in regard to the trials of the war criminals.
54The actions of the Indian state, on the other hand, cannot be explained only by the electoral equation (i.e. the needed support of the Muslim community as a vote bank); although that may have been a factor in the actions of the government of West Bengal where 25 percent of residents are Muslim. The central government's frenzied response is far less strategic. The demand for a trial, the alleged attack on Muslim sensibility by Taslima Nasreen, the unprecedented response to the Nandigram events and the demand for Nasreen's removal from India were all framed within the politics of emotion. Emotions were politicized and collectivized by parties involved and the state also became a part of it when it intervened on behalf of a party of the debate.
In lieu of a conclusion
55The foregoing discussion has demonstrated the similarities between the 1994 and the 2007 events in regard to the Taslima Nasreen issue; described the responses of the Bangladeshi and the Indian states; and discussed the modalities of construction of outraged communities. The paper also demonstrated that the events surrounding Taslima Nasreen - played out in two countries and at two different times - have implications not only for the day-to-day politics of these two countries but also for our understanding of how emotions are instrumentalized and how symbols are created for mobilization of outraged communities. The actions of these outraged communities cannot be explained by looking only at the dynamics of the group and methods of collectivization of emotion but the role of the state in the process warrants attention as well.
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Notes
1 Nasreen has since been allowed to return to India. On her return to New Delhi on 8th August 2008, she was 'immediately whisked off to an undisclosed location.' On 15th October 2008 she complied with a government instruction to leave the country.
2 In mid-1993, a government official commented to the author in a personal conversation that if Nasreen's trips were not covered in the press, both in Kolkata and Dhaka, the government could have avoided these steps. The official repeatedly used the phrase 'trifling' in describing the passport confiscation. However, the official also suggested that some influential members of the ruling party were pressing for action (Interview by the author, Dhaka, August 1993).
3 For details of the events see the fourth part of Taslima Nasreen's autobiography Sei Sob Andhokar(All that Darkness, in Bengali, 2004). Nasreen summarized the content in an interview in 2004: 'Every day thousands started staging demonstrations against me, issuing fatwas one after the other, declaring bandhs, and the government, instead of taking action against them, turned on me, accusing me of hurting the religious sentiments of people. By then the mullahs had begun demanding my death through hanging and instigated lakhs [hundred of thousands] of people to take to the streets. On the one hand there was the police hunting me down, and on the other fundamentalists were baying for my blood. My lawyer then advised me to go into hiding. Matters had come to such a head that even if I had given myself up, I would certainly have been killed in prison. So, I spent the next two months in hiding and darkness. The whole country was in the grasp of fundamentalists at that time. Sei Sob Andhakar is about those two months in hiding and it ends with my leaving the country. This is more like a documentation of the time - my situation and the society outside. It is a documentation of how fundamentalism, with the support of a government, can become dangerously powerful' (Nasreen 2004).
4 In 1971, Golam Azam, then chief of the East Pakistan wing of the Jamaat-i-Islami, actively collaborated with the Pakistani military junta and helped organize paramilitary forces (called Razakars and Al-Badr). In the last days of the liberation war, Golam Azam fled to Pakistan. In April 1973, the Bangladesh government canceled his citizenship along with that of thirty-eight others (Bangladesh Gazette Extraordinary, 22nd June 1973, part III). In 1978, Golam Azam returned to Bangladesh with a Pakistani passport. In 1979, the Jamaat-i-Islami was revived, and Azam became the de facto chief of the party. On 29th December 1991, the Jamaat declared Golam Azam the ameer (chief) of the party. Within a month, eminent citizens and intellectuals challenged the election of Azam on the grounds that Azam was a foreigner and could not head any political party under the laws of the land. They contended that because of his involvement with the genocide in 1971, Azam should be tried as a war criminal. By February 1992, the intellectuals had organized a committee and public campaign for his arrest and trial. The day before the symbolic 'public tribunal' the government arrested Golam Azam and filed a case of high treason against twenty-four persons involved in organizing the trial. The public tribunal, however, went ahead drawing an unprecedented crowd. A writ petition on behalf of Azam was filed within a week of his arrest. It asked for the release of Golam Azam and challenged the premise of his arrest, denying that he was a foreigner. Thus it became an appeal to restore his citizenship. The hearing of the writ petition of Golam Azam began on 19th July 1992, and continued until 5th August 1992. But the case remained unresolved, as the two judges failed to reach a consensus and rendered separate judgments over a period of five days. The chief justice forwarded the caseto a single-member bench of the High Court for the final verdict. The hearing on the government's appeal to the Supreme Court against the verdict of the High Court began on 4th May 1994.
5 Bangladesh and India both inherited a colonial law in regard to the acts of blasphemy. The Penal code 295 and 295A deal with the issue of 'offences related to religion'. None of them gives salience to any specific religion, any religious texts or any religious symbols. The penalty for 'hurting religious feelings' is between 2 to 10 years. In Pakistan two additional sub clauses are added – 295C and 295D – which specifically address punishments of defiling the Quran and derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad with a maximum punishment of death sentence. Additionally, sections 298, 298A, 298B and 298C are added which stipulates that members of the Ahmadiyya community are not Muslims and their reference to Prophet Muhammad is construed as blasphemy. The JI in Bangladesh insists that Bangladesh adopts these new sections and clauses to address 'blasphemous acts'.
6 Taslima Nasreen made a brief visit to Bangladesh in September 1998 to see her terminally ill mother. As soon as the news of her return became public, Islamists organized demonstrations in Dhaka and elsewhere calling for her trial under shariah law. The protests drew a handful of people and have had very little impact. The government headed by Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League made no special arrangements for her safety, nor showed any sympathy to her. On 22nd November, Nasreen surrendered to a lower court to face a case filed by an individual under Penal Code 295A (offending religious sentiment) and she was granted bail. Following her mother's death and further threats from small militant organizations (AFP 1999) Nasreen left Bangladesh in January 1999. Since then her autobiographies have been banned by the government, and in October 2002, a magistrate's court in a remote city sentenced her to a year in prison. The government has refused to renew her Bangladeshi passport and has never allowed her to return to the country.
7 The most obvious indication of the state government's inclination towards removing her from the state was the comment of the CPIM leader Biman Bose that Nasreen should be sent either to Jaipur or Gujarat in the wake of protests against her stay in Kolkata (The India News 2007). Bose told reporters, 'I don't want to speak elaborately on the role played by the Centre on Taslima Nasreen's stay in West Bengal. But if her stay creates a problem for peace, she should leave the state' (Banerjee 2007).
8 The term 'moral panic' coined by Stanley Cohen in 1972 is described as a response of a group of people who consider that some behaviors are not only deviant but also a threat to societal norms and values. It creates outrage (See Cohen 1972).
9 The fictional nature of the collective identity has been underscored in Benedict Anderson's classic study ImaginedCommunities - Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (Anderson 1991).
10 Post-9/11 xenophobia and Islamophobia in the United States is a case in point. A particular notion of the 'Other' loomed large as the politics of fear that dominated the country for at least 3 years.
11 The word 'symbol' has been used in almost all analyses of the events of Nandigram. A quick Google search of 'Nandigram symbol of resistance' generates 4,490 documents/websites in 0.26 seconds (10th July, 2008). The CPIM leadership, however, has questioned the use of the expression 'resistance'. For example, CPIM leader Brinda Karat asked: 'Resistance against what?' (Karat 2007).
12 This binary division was at the heart of the argument of the CPIM leadership, see Karat (2007).
Top of pageReferences
Electronic reference
Ali Riaz, « Constructing Outraged Communities and State Responses:
The Taslima Nasreen Saga in 1994 and 2007 », South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal [Online], 2 | 2008, Online since 31 décembre 2008, Connection on 04 mars 2010. URL : http://samaj.revues.org/index1262.html
Author
Ali Riaz
Professor and Chair, Department of Politics and Government, Illinois State University
Top of pageReligion in India
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| | This article may contain wording that merely promotes the subject without imparting verifiable information. Please remove or replace such wording, unless you can cite independent sources that support the characterization. |
India is a country of religious diversity and religious tolerance is established in both law and custom. Throughout the history of India, religion has been an important part of the country's culture. A vast majority of Indians associate themselves with a religion.
Indian census has established that Hinduism accounts for 80.5% of the population of India.[1] The second largest religion is Islam, at about 13.4% of the population. The third largest religion is Christianity at 2.3%. The fourth largest religion is Sikhism at about 1.9% of India's population. This diversity of religious belief systems exiting in India today is a result of, besides the existence and birth of native religions, assimilation and social integration of religions brought to the region by traders, travelers, immigrants, and even invaders and conquerors. Stating the hospitality of Hinduism towards all other religions, John Hardon writes, "However, the most significant feature of current Hinduism is its creation of a non-Hindu State, in which all religions are equal;..."[2]
Other native Indian religions are Buddhism and Jainism. Ancient India had two philosophical streams of thought, the Shramana religions and the Vedic religion, parallel traditions that have existed side by side for thousands of years.[3] Both Buddhism and Jainism are continuations of Shramana traditions, while modern Hinduism is a continuation of the Vedic tradition. These co-existing traditions have been mutually influential.
Zoroastrianism and Judaism also have an ancient history in India and each has several thousand Indian adherents.
India's religious tolerance extends to the highest levels of government. The Constitution of India declares the nation to be a secular republic that it must uphold the right of citizens to freely worship and propagate any religion or faith (with activities subject to reasonable restrictions for the sake of morality, law and order, etc).[4][5]. The Constitution of India also declares the right to freedom of religion as a fundamental right.
Citizens of India are generally tolerant of each other's religions and retain a secular outlook, although inter-religious marriage is not widely practiced. Inter-community clashes have found little support in the social mainstream, and it is generally perceived that the causes of religious conflicts are political rather than ideological in nature.[citation needed]
Contents[hide] |
History
Existence and development of Vedic Religions
Hinduism is often regarded as the oldest religion in the world,[6] with roots tracing back to prehistoric times,[7] or 5000 years.[8] Evidence attesting to prehistoric religion in the Indian subcontinent derives from scattered Mesolithic rock paintings depicting dances and rituals. Neolithic pastoralists inhabiting the Indus River Valley buried their dead in a manner suggestive of spiritual practices that incorporated notions of an afterlife and belief in magic.[9] Other South Asian Stone Age sites, such as the Bhimbetka rock shelters in central Madhya Pradesh and the Kupgal petroglyphs of eastern Karnataka, contain rock art portraying religious rites and evidence of possible ritualised music.[10]
The Harappan people of the Indus Valley Civilization, which lasted from 3300–1700 BCE and was centered around the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra river valleys, may have worshiped an important mother goddess symbolising fertility.[11] Excavations of Indus Valley Civilization sites show seals with animals and "fire‑altars", indicating rituals associated with fire. A linga-yoni of a type similar to that which is now worshiped by Hindus has also been found.
Hinduism's origins include cultural elements of the Indus Valley Civilization, the Vedic religion of the Indo-Aryans, and other Indian civilizations. The oldest surviving text of Hinduism is the Rigveda, produced during the Vedic period and dated to 1700–1100 BCE.γ[›][12] During the Epic and Puranic periods, the earliest versions of the epic poems Ramayana and Mahabharata were written roughly from 500–100 BCE,[13] although these were orally transmitted for centuries prior to this period.[14]
After 200 CE, several schools of thought were formally codified in Indian philosophy, including Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Purva-Mimamsa and Vedanta.[15] Hinduism, otherwise a highly theistic religion, hosted atheistic schools; the thoroughly materialistic and anti-religious philosophical Cārvāka school that originated in India around the 6th century BCE is probably the most explicitly atheistic school of Indian philosophy. Cārvāka is classified as a nastika ("heterodox") system; it is not included among the six schools of Hinduism generally regarded as orthodox. It is noteworthy as evidence of a materialistic movement within Hinduism.[16] Our understanding of Cārvāka philosophy is fragmentary, based largely on criticism of the ideas by other schools, and it is no longer a living tradition.[17] Other Indian philosophies generally regarded as atheistic include Classical Samkhya and Purva Mimamsa.
Birth of Shramana Religions
Mahavira the 24th Jain Tirthankara (599–527 BC, though possibly 549–477 BC), stressed five vows, including ahimsa (non-violence) and asteya (non-stealing). Gautama Buddha, who founded Buddhism, was born to the Shakya clan just before Magadha (which lasted from 546–324 BCE) rose to power. His family was native to the plains of Lumbini, in what is now southern Nepal. Indian Buddhism peaked during the reign of Asoka the Great of the Mauryan Empire, who patronized Buddhism following his conversion and unified the Indian subcontinent in the 3rd century BCE. He sent missionaries abroad, allowing Buddhism to spread across Asia.[18] Indian Buddhism declined following the loss of royal patronage offered by the Kushan Empire and such kingdoms as Magadha and Kosala.
Some scholars think between 400 BCE and 1000 CE, Hinduism expanded as the decline of Buddhism in India continued.[19] Buddhism subsequently became effectively extinct in India.
Advent of Islam
Though Islam came to India in the early 7th century with the advent of Arab traders, it started to become a major religion during the Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent. Islam's spread in India mostly took place under the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526) and the Mughal Empire, greatly aided by the mystic Sufi tradition[20].
Bhakti Movement and the Birth of Sikhism
During the 14-17th centuries, when North India was under Muslim rule, The bhakti movement swept through Central and Northern India, initiated by a loosely associated group of teachers or sants. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Vallabha, Surdas, Meera Bai, Kabir, Tulsidas, Ravidas, Namdeo, Tukaram and other mystics spearheaded the Bhakti movement in the North. They taught that people could cast aside the heavy burdens of ritual and caste, and the subtle complexities of philosophy, and simply express their overwhelming love for God. This period was also characterized by a spate of devotional literature in vernacular prose and poetry in the ethnic languages of the various
Indian states or provinces. Bhakti movement spawned into several different movements all across North and South India. In North India, Bhakti movement is however not differentiable from the Sufi movement of Shia Muslims of the Chisti fame. People of Muslim faith adopted it as a Sufism while Hindus as Vaisanava Bhakti.
Guru Nanak (1469-1539) was the founder of Sikhism in India, the religion that draws its elements from both Hinduism & Islam [21]. The religion came about to reconcile the differences between the existing religious beliefs and to alleviate the society of the ills of the existing religious superstitions and practices [22] It should be noted that, although Sufi and Bhakti saints are revered and recognized by Guru Granth Sahib but they do not form the main basis of Sikhism.[23]
Introduction of Christinity
Although historical evidence suggests the presence of Christianity in India since the first century[24][25][26], it became popular following European colonisation and Protestant missionary efforts.[27]
Communalism
Communalism has played a key role in shaping the religious history of modern India. As an adverse result of the British Raj's divide and rule policy, British India was partitioned along religious lines into two states—the Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan (comprising what is now the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh) and the Hindu-majority Union of India (later the Republic of India). The 1947 Partition of India instigated rioting among Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs in Punjab, Bengal, Delhi, and other parts of India; 500,000 died as a result of the violence. The twelve million refugees that moved between the newly founded nations of India and Pakistan composed one of the largest mass migrations in modern history.Δ[›][28] Since its independence, India has periodically witnessed large-scale violence sparked by underlying tensions between sections of its majority Hindu and minority Muslim communities. The Republic of India is secular, its government recognises no official religion. In recent decades, communal tensions and religion-based politics have become more prominent.[29]
Demographics
Hinduism is a henotheistic religion and the largest in India; its 828 million adherents (2001) compose 80.5% of the population. The term Hindu, originally a geographical description, derives from the Sanskrit, Sindhu, (the historical appellation for the Indus River), and refers to a person from the land of the river Sindhu.
Islam is a monotheistic religion centred around the belief in one God and following the example of Muhammad. It is the largest minority religion in India. According to the 2001 census, India is home to 138 million Muslims[30], the world's third-largest Muslim population after those in Indonesia (210 million)[31] and Pakistan (166 million); they compose 13.4% of the population.[32] Muslims represent the majority in Jammu and Kashmir and Lakshadweep,[33] and high concentrations in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, and Kerala.[33][34] The largest denomination is Sunni Islam, which is practised by nearly 80% of Indian Muslims.[35]
Christianity is a monotheistic religion centred on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in the New Testament; it is the third largest religion of India, making up 2.3% of the population. St. Thomas is credited with introduction of Christianity in India. He arrived in Malabar in AD 52[36][37][38]. Christians comprise a majority in Nagaland and have significant populations in North-East India, Goa and Kerala.
Buddhism is a dharmic, nontheistic religion and philosophy. Buddhists form majority populations in the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh, and the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir and a large minority (40%) in Sikkim. Around 8 million Buddhists live in India, about 0.8% of the population.[30]
Jainism is a nontheistic dharmic religion and philosophical system originating in Iron Age India. Jains compose 0.4% (around 4.2 million) of India's population, and are concentrated in the states of Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan.[33] Jainism, although usually believed to be atheistic/non-theistic, Paul Dundas writes, "While Jainism is, as we have seen. atheist in the limited sense of rejection of a creator god and the possibility of the intervention of such a being in human affairs, it nonetheless must be regarded as a theist religion in the more profound sense that it accepts the existence of a divine principle, the parmatman, often in fact referred to as 'God' (e.g. ParPr 114-16), existing in potential state within all beings".[39]
Sikhism began in sixteenth century North India with the teachings of Nanak and nine successive human gurus. As of 2001, there were 19.2 million Sikhs in India. Punjab is the spiritual home of Sikhs, and is the only state in India where Sikhs form a majority. There are also significant populations of Sikhs in neighbouring New Delhi and Haryana.
Paul Dundas writes, "However, the earliest censuses of India suggest that many Jains and members of other religious groups saw themselves as in fact constituting varieties of Hinduism and, according to the Census Report for the Punjab of 1921, 'in view of the unwillingness of large number of Jains and Sikhs to be classed separately from Hindus, permission was given to record such persons as Jain-Hindus and Sikh-Hindus".[40]
As of the census of 2001, Parsis (followers of Zoroastrianism in India) represent approximately 0.006% of the total population of India,[41] with relatively high concentrations in and around the city of Mumbai. There are several tribal religions in India, such as Donyi-Polo and Mahima. About 2.2 million people in India follow the Bahá'í Faith, thus forming the largest community of Bahá'ís in the world.[42] Ayyavazhi, prevalent in South India, is officially considered a Hindu sect, and its followers are counted as Hindus in the census.
There is today a very small community of Indian Jews. There were more Jews in India historically, including the Cochin Jews of Kerala, the Bene Israel of Maharashtra, and the Baghdadi Jews near Mumbai. In addition, since independence two primarily proselyte Indian Jewish communities in India: the Bnei Menashe of Mizoram and Manipur, and the Bene Ephraim, also called Tegulu Jews. Of the approximately 95,000 Jews of Indian origin, fewer than 20,000 remain in India. Some parts of India are especially popular with Israelis, however, swelling local Jewish populations seasonally.
Around 0.07% of the people did not state their religion in the 2001 census.
Statistics
The following is a breakdown of India's religious communities (2001 census):
Religions of India[34]α[›]β[›]Religion  | Population | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| All religions | 1,028,610,328 | 100.00% |
| Hindus | 827,578,868 | 80.5% |
| Muslims | 138,188,240 | 13.4% |
| Christians | 24,080,016 | 2.3% |
| Sikhs | 19,215,730 | 1.9% |
| Buddhists | 7,955,207 | 0.8% |
| Jains | 4,225,053 | 0.4% |
| Bahá'ís | 1 953 112 | 0,18% |
| Others | 4,686,588 | 0.32% |
| Religion not stated | 727,588 | 0.1% |
| Religious group | Population % | Growth (1991–2001) | Sex ratio (total) | Literacy (%) | Work participation (%) | Sex ratio (rural) | Sex ratio (urban) | Sex ratio (child)ε[›] |
| Hindu | 80.46% | 20.3% | 931 | 65.1% | 40.4% | 944 | 894 | 925 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muslim | 13.43% | 36.0% | 936 | 59.1% | 31.3% | 953 | 907 | 950 |
| Christian | 2.34% | 22.6% | 1009 | 80.3% | 39.7% | 1001 | 1026 | 964 |
| Sikh | 1.87% | 18.2% | 893 | 69.4% | 37.7% | 895 | 886 | 786 |
| Buddhist | 0.77% | 18.2% | 953 | 72.7% | 40.6% | 958 | 944 | 942 |
| Jain | 0.41% | 26.0% | 940 | 94.1% | 32.9% | 937 | 941 | 870 |
| Animist, others | 0.65% | 103.1% | 992 | 47.0% | 48.4% | 995 | 966 | 976 |
Law
The preamble to the Constitution of India proclaimed India a "sovereign socialist secular democratic republic". The word secular was inserted into the Preamble by the Forty-second Amendment Act of 1976. It mandates equal treatment and tolerance of all religions. India does not have an official state religion; it enshrines the right to practice, preach, and propagate any religion. No religious instruction is imparted in government-supported schools. In S. R. Bommai vs. Union of India, the Supreme Court of India held that secularism was an integral tenet of the Constitution.[43]
The right to freedom of religion is a fundamental right according to the Indian Constitution. The Constitution also suggests a uniform civil code for its citizens as a Directive Principle.[44] However this has not been implemented until now as Directive Principles are Constitutionally unenforceable. The Supreme Court has further held that the enactment of a uniform civil code all at once may be counterproductive to the unity of the nation, and only a gradual progressive change should be brought about (Pannalal Bansilal v State of Andhra Pradesh, 1996).[45] In Maharishi Avadesh v Union of India (1994) the Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking a writ of mandamus against the government to introduce a common civil code, and thus laid the responsibility of its introduction on the legislature.[46]
Major religious communities continue to be governed by their own personal laws. Personal laws exist for Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews. The only Indian religion exclusively covered under the secular ("civil") law of India is Brahmoism starting from Act III of 1872. For legal purposes, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs are classified as Hindus and are subject to Hindu personal law.(see. Indian religion, Status in India)
Aspects
Religion plays a major role in the Indian way of life.[47] Rituals, worship, and other religious activities are very prominent in an individual's daily life; it is also a principal organiser of social life. The degree of religiosity varies among individuals; in recent decades, religious orthodoxy and observances have become less common in Indian society, particularly among young urban-dwellers.
Rituals
The vast majority of Indians engage in religious rituals on a daily basis.[48] Most Hindus observe religious rituals at home.[49] However, observation of rituals greatly vary among regions, villages, and individuals. Devout Hindus perform daily chores such as worshiping at the dawn after bathing (usually at a family shrine, and typically includes lighting a lamp and offering foodstuffs before the images of deities), recitation from religious scripts, singing hymns in praise of gods etc.[49] A notable feature in religious ritual is the division between purity and pollution. Religious acts presuppose some degree of impurity or defilement for the practitioner, which must be overcome or neutralised before or during ritual procedures. Purification, usually with water, is thus a typical feature of most religious action.[49] Other characteristics include a belief in the efficacy of sacrifice and concept of merit, gained through the performance of charity or good works, that will accumulate over time and reduce sufferings in the next world.[49] Devout Muslims offer five daily prayers at specific times of the day, indicated by adhan (call to prayer) from the local mosques. Before offering prayers, they must ritually clean themselves by performing wudu, which involves washing parts of the body that are generally exposed to dirt or dust. A recent study by the Sachar Committee found that 3-4% of Muslim children study in madrasas (Islamic schools).[50]
Dietary habits are significantly influenced by religion. Almost one-third of Indians practise vegetarianism; it came to prominence during the rule of Ashoka, a promoter of Buddhism.[51][52] Vegetarianism is much less common among Muslim and Christians.[53] Jainism requires monks and laity, from all its sects and traditions, to be vegetarian. Hinduism bars beef consumption, while Islam bars pork.
Ceremonies
Occasions like birth, marriage, and death involve what are often elaborate sets of religious customs. In Hinduism, major life-cycle rituals include annaprashan (a baby's first intake of solid food), upanayanam ("sacred thread ceremony" undergone by upper-caste youths), and shraadh (paying homage to a deceased individual).[54][55] For most people in India, the betrothal of the young couple and the exact date and time of the wedding are matters decided by the parents in consultation with astrologers.[54]
Muslims practice a series of life-cycle rituals that differ from those of Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists.[56] Several rituals mark the first days of life—including whispering call to prayer, first bath, and shaving of the head. Religious instruction begins early. Male circumcision usually takes place after birth; in some families, it may be delayed until after the onset of puberty.[56] Marriage requires a payment by the husband to the wife and the solemnisation of a marital contract in a social gathering.[56] On the third day after burial of the dead, friends and relatives gather to console the bereaved, read and recite the Quran, and pray for the soul of the deceased.[56] Indian Islam is distinguished by the emphasis it places on shrines commemorating great Sufi saints.[56]
Pilgrimages
India hosts numerous pilgrimage sites belonging to many religions. Hindus worldwide recognise several Indian holy cities, including Allahabad, Haridwar, Varanasi, and Vrindavan. Notable temple cities include Puri, which hosts a major Vaishnava Jagannath temple and Rath Yatra celebration; Tirumala - Tirupati, home to the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple; and Katra, home to the Vaishno Devi temple. The Himalayan towns of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, and Yamunotri compose the Char Dham (four abodes) pilgrimage circuit. The Kumbh Mela (the "pitcher festival") is one of the holiest of Hindu pilgrimages that is held every four years; the location is rotated among Allahabad, Haridwar, Nashik, and Ujjain.
Among the Eight Great Places of Buddhism, seven are in India. Bodh Gaya, Sarnath and Kushinagar are the places where important events in the life of Gautama Buddha took place. Sanchi hosts a Buddhist stupa erected by the emperor Ashoka. Several Tibetan Buddhist sites in the Himalayan foothills of India have been built, such as Rumtek Monastery and Dharamsala. For Muslims, the Dargah Shareef of Khwaza Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer is a major pilgrimage site. Other Islamic pilgrimages include those to the Tomb of Sheikh Salim Chishti in Fatehpur Sikri, Jama Masjid in Delhi, and to Haji Ali Dargah in Mumbai. Dilwara Temples in Mount Abu, Palitana, Pavapuri, Girnar and Shravanabelagola are notable pilgrimage sites (tirtha) in Jainism.
The Golden Temple in Amritsar is the most sacred shrine of Sikhism, while the Thalaimaippathi at Swamithope is the leading pilgrim center for Ayyavazhi sect members. Lotus Temple in Delhi is a prominent house of worship of the Bahá'í faith.
Festivals
Religious festivals are widely observed and hold great importance for Indians. In keeping with India's secular governance, no religious festival has been accorded the status of a national holiday. Diwali, Ganesh Chaturthi, Holi, Durga puja, Ugadi, Dussehra, and Sankranthi/Pongal are the most popular Hindu festivals in India. Among Muslims, the Islamic Eid festivals of Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha are the most celebrated. Some notable Sikh holidays are birthdays of Gurus,Vaisakhi,Bandi Chorr Divas (also known as Diwali) and Hola Maholla. Christmas, Buddha Jayanti are key holidays among the remaining religious groups. A number of festivals are common to most parts of India, and many states and regions have local festivals depending on prevalent religious and linguistic demographics. For example, fairs and festivities associated with specific temples or Dargahs associated with Sufi masters are common.
Muharram is a unique festival in the sense that it is not celebrated; it is a mournful commemoration of the death of Muhammad's grandson Imam Husain in 680 CE. A taziya, which is a bamboo replica of Husain's tomb, is paraded through the city. Muharram is observed with great passion in Lucknow, the centre of Indian Shia Islam.[57]
Religion and politics
Politics
Religious ideology, particularly that expressed by the Hindutva movement, has strongly influenced Indian politics in the last quarter of the 20th century. Many of the elements underlying India's casteism and communalism originated during the rule of the British Raj, particularly after the late 19th century; the authorities and others often politicised religion.[58] The Indian Councils Act of 1909 (widely known as the Morley-Minto Reforms Act), which established separate Hindu and Muslim electorates for the Imperial Legislature and provincial councils, was particularly divisive. It was blamed for increasing tensions between the two communities.[59] Due to the high degree of oppression faced by the lower castes, the Constitution of India included provisions for affirmative action for certain sections of Indian society. Growing disenchantment with the Hindu caste system has led thousands of Dalits (also referred to as "Untouchables") to embrace Buddhism and Christianity in recent decades.[60] In response, many states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) introduced laws that made them more difficult; they assert that such conversions are often forced or allured.[61] The BJP, a Hindu nationalist party, also gained widespread media attention after its leaders associated themselves with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and other prominent religious issues.[62]
A well known accusation that Indian political parties make for their rivals is that they play vote bank politics, meaning give political support to issues for the sole purpose of gaining the votes of members of a particular community. Both the Congress Party and the BJP have been accused of exploiting the people by indulging in vote bank politics. The Shah Bano case, a divorce lawsuit, generated much controversy when the Congress was accused of appeasing the Muslim orthodoxy by bringing in a parliamentary amendment to negate the Supreme Court's decision. After the 2002 Gujarat violence, there were allegations of political parties indulging in vote bank politics.[63] During an election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP released an inflammatory CD targeting Muslims.[64] This was condemned by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) as playing the worst kind of vote bank politics.[65] Caste-based politics is also important in India; caste-based discrimination and the reservation system continue to be major issues that are hotly debated.[66][67]
Education
Several political parties have been accused of using their political power to manipulate educational content in a revisionist manner. During the Janata Party government (1977–1979), the government was accused of being too sympathetic to the Muslim viewpoint. In 2002, the BJP-led NDA government tried to change the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) school textbooks through a new National Curriculum Framework.[68] Some media referred to it as the "saffronisation" of textbooks, saffron being the colour of BJP flag.[68] The next government, formed by the UPA and led by the Congress Party, pledged to de-saffronise textbooks.[69] Hindu groups alleged that the UPA promoted Marxist and pro-Muslim biases in school curricula.[70][71]
Conflicts
Communal conflicts have periodically plagued India since it became independent in 1947. The roots of such strife lie largely in the underlying tensions between sections of its majority Hindu and minority Muslim communities, which emerged under the Raj and during the bloody Partition of India. Such conflict also stems from the competing ideologies of Hindu nationalism versus Islamic fundamentalism and Islamism; both are prevalent in parts of the Hindu and Muslim populations. Alongside other major Indian independence leaders, Mahatma Gandhi and his shanti sainiks ("peace soldiers") worked to quell early outbreaks of religious conflict in Bengal, including riots in Calcutta (now in West Bengal) and Noakhali District (in modern-day Bangladesh) that accompanied Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Direct Action Day, which was launched on 16 August 1946. These conflicts, waged largely with rocks and knives and accompanied by widespread looting and arson, were crude affairs. Explosives and firearms, which are rarely found in India, were far less likely to be used.[72]
Major post-independence communal conflicts include the 1984 Anti-Sikh Riots, which followed the storming of the Harimandir Sahib by the Indian Army; heavy artillery, tanks, and helicopters were employed against the radical Sikh separatists hiding inside, causing heavy damage to Sikhism's holiest shrine. Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who sought independence for the proposed Sikh theocracy of Khalistan, was killed by Indian troops during the assault; in total, the assault caused the deaths of up to 3,000 soldiers, militants, and civilians.[73] This triggered Indira Gandhi's assassination by her outraged Sikh bodyguards on 31 October 1984, which set off a four-day period during which Sikhs were massacred; some estimates state that more than 4,000 were killed.[73] Other incidents include the 1992 Bombay Riots that followed the demolition of the Babri Mosque as a result of the Ayodhya debate, and the 2002 Gujarat violence that followed the Godhra Train Burning—in the latter, more than 2,000 Muslims were killed.[74] Terrorist activities such as the 2005 Ram Janmabhoomi attack in Ayodhya, the 2006 Varanasi bombings, the 2006 Jama Masjid explosions, and the 11 July 2006 Mumbai Train Bombings are often blamed on communalism. Lesser incidents plague many towns and villages; representative was the killing of five people in Mau, Uttar Pradesh during Hindu-Muslim rioting, which was triggered by the proposed celebration of a Hindu festival.[74]
| Year | Riot | State / Region | Cause | Aftermath |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Anti Sikh massacre | Delhi | Assassination of Indira Gandhi | 2,700 Sikhs killed[75] |
| | Bombay Riots | Mumbai | Demolition of Babri Masjid | 900 people dead |
| | Gujarat Riots | Gujarat | Godhra train burning | 1,044 people killed; 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus (including those killed in the Godhra train fire) |
| | Kandhamal riots | Kandhamal district, Orissa | Murder of Swami Lakshmanananda | Over 20 killed and over 12,000 displaced |
Notes
- ^ α: The data exclude the Mao-Maram, Paomata, and Purul subdivisions of Manipur's Senapati district.
- ^ β: The data are "unadjusted" (without excluding Assam and Jammu and Kashmir); the 1981 census was not conducted in Assam and the 1991 census was not conducted in Jammu and Kashmir.
- ^ γ: Oberlies (1998, p. 155) gives an estimate of 1100 BCE for the youngest hymns in book ten. Estimates for a terminus post quem of the earliest hymns are far more uncertain. Oberlies (p. 158), based on "cumulative evidence", sets a wide range of 1700–1100 BCE. The EIEC (s.v. Indo-Iranian languages, p. 306) gives a range of 1500–1000 BCE. It is certain that the hymns post-date Indo-Iranian separation of ca. 2000 BCE. It cannot be ruled out that archaic elements of the Rigveda go back to only a few generations after this time, but philological estimates tend to date the bulk of the text to the latter half of the second millennium.
- ^ Δ: According to the most conservative estimates given by Symonds (1950, p. 74), half a million people perished and twelve million became homeless.
- ^ ε: Statistic describes resident Indian nationals up to six years in age.
References
- Charlton, SEM (2004), Comparing Asian Politics: India, China, and Japan, Westview Press, ISBN 0-813-34204-X, http://books.google.com/books?id=ipZ56S3boE8C
- Chatterjee, S; Datta, D (1984), An Introduction to Indian Philosophy (8th ed.), University of Calcutta, ASIN: B0007BFXK4
- Fowler, JD (1997), Hinduism: Beliefs and Practices, Sussex Academic Press, ISBN 1-898-72360-5, http://books.google.com/books?id=RmGKHu20hA0C
- Goldman, RP (2007), The Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of Ancient India, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-06663-9
- Heehs, P (2002), Indian Religions: A Historical Reader of Spiritual Expression and Experience, New York: New York University Press, ISBN 0-814-73650-5
- Human Rights Watch (2006), Human Rights Watch World Report 2006, Seven Stories Press, ISBN 1-583-22715-6, http://books.google.com/books?id=eXmogaDhd20C
- Ludden, DE (1996), Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India, University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN 0-812-21585-0, http://books.google.com/books?id=jEUdPqYQjhoC
- Makkar, SPS (1993), Law, Social Change and Communal Harmony, ABS Publications, ISBN 8-170-72047-8
- Oberlies, T (1998), Die Religion des Rgveda, Wien
- Olson, JS; Shadle, R (1996), Historical Dictionary of the British Empire, Greenwood Press, ISBN 0-313-29367-8, http://books.google.com/books?id=-YwDfm1pFF8C
- Pal, Anadish Kumar (2010), World Guide to the Partition of INDIA, Amazon Digital Services, ISBN 8-186-60702-2, http://books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=Yr4JAwXG51QC#v=onepage&q=&f=false
- Radhakrishnan, S; Moore, CA (1967), A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-01958-4
- Rinehart, R (2004), Contemporary Hinduism: Ritual, Culture, and Practice, ABC-Clio, ISBN 1-57607-905-8
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- Symonds, R (1950), The Making of Pakistan, Faber and Faber
Citations
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- ^ The Constitution of India Art 25-28. Retrieved on 22 April 2007.
- ^ "The Constitution (Forty-Second Amendment) Act, 1976". http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/amend/amend42.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-22.
- ^ P. 484 Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of World Religions By Wendy Doniger, M. Webster, Merriam-Webster, Inc
- ^ P. 169 The Encyclopedia of Religion By Mircea Eliade, Charles J. Adams
- ^ P. 22 The Complete Idiot's Guide to Geography By Joseph Gonzalez, Michael D Smith, Thomas E. Sherer
- ^ Heehs 2002, p. 39.
- ^ "Ancient Indians made 'rock music'". BBC News. 19 March 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3520384.stm. Retrieved 2007-08-07.
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- ^ Goldman 2007, p. 23.
- ^ Rinehart 2004, p. 28.
- ^ Radhakrishnan & Moore 1967, p. xviii–xxi.
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- ^ Heehs 2002, p. 106.
- ^ "The rise of Jainism and Buddhism". Religion and Ethics—Hinduism: Other religious influences. BBC. 26 July 2004. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/history_2.shtml. Retrieved 2007-04-21.
- ^ http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers10%5Cpaper924.html
- ^ http://religions.iloveindia.com/sikhism.html
- ^ http://www.info-sikh.com/PageNan1.html
- ^ http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/events/bhakti.html
- ^ Israel J. Ross. Ritual and Music in South India: Syrian Christian Liturgical Music in Kerala. Asian Music, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1979), pp. 80-98
- ^ "THE STORY OF INDIA". www.bibleforu.com. http://www.bibleforu.com/storyofindia.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
- ^ "CHRISTIANITY". India Mirror. http://www.indianmirror.com/religions/reli6.html. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
- ^ "Christianity in India". M.B. Herald, Vol. 35, No. 9. http://old.mbconf.ca/mb/mbh3509/christin.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
- ^ Symonds 1950, p. 74.
- ^ Ludden 1996, p. 253.
- ^ a b http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_Data_Online/Social_and_cultural/Religion.aspx
- ^ Hefner, RW (2000). Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia. Princeton University Press. pp. xviii. ISBN 0-691-05047-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=tc6AcVGgLsEC.
- ^ "CIA Factbook: India". CIA Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html. Retrieved 2007-05-27.
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- ^ a b "Census of India 2001: Data on Religion". Office of the Registrar General, India. http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/Census_data_finder/C_Series/Population_by_religious_communities.htm. Retrieved 2007-12-31.
- ^ International Religious Freedom Report 2003. By the United States Department of State. Retrieved on April 19, 2007.
- ^ http://nasrani.net/2007/02/16/st-thomas-tradition-the-indian-sojourn-in-foreign-sources/
- ^ Stephen Andrew Missick. "Mar Thoma: The Apostolic Foundation of the Assyrian Church and the Christians of St. Thomas in India" (PDF). Journal of Assyrian Academic studies. http://www.jaas.org/edocs/v14n2/missick.pdf.
- ^ http://www.stapostle.org/index2.php?area=about&data=sthomasbio
- ^ Dundas, P. 110-1 The Jains
- ^ Dundas, P. 5 The Jains
- ^ Bose, Ashish et al. (2004-12-04), Growth of the Parsi population in India, Mumbai: Government of India: National Commission for Minorities, p. 3
- ^ "The Bahá'ís of India". bahaindia.org. National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of India. http://www.bahaindia.org/. Retrieved 2007-04-18.
- ^ Swami, Praveen (1 November 1997). "Protecting secularism and federal fair play". Frontline 14 (22). http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1422/14220170.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-17.
- ^ Constitution of India-Part IV Article 44 Directive Principles of State Policy
- ^ Iyer VRK (6 September 2003). "Unifying personal laws". Opinion (The Hindu). http://www.hindu.com/2003/09/06/stories/2003090600831000.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-19.
- ^ Lavakare, Arvind (21 May 2002). "Where's the Uniform Civil Code?". rediff.com (Rediff.com India Limited). http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/may/21arvind.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-19.
- ^ "Among Wealthy Nations ... U.S. Stands Alone in its Embrace of Religion". The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 19 December 2002. http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=167. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
- ^ "Religious Life". Religions of India. Global Peace Works. http://www.religionsofindia.org/loc/india_religious_life.html. Retrieved 2007-04-19.
- ^ a b c d "Domestic Worship". Country Studies. The Library of Congress. September 1995. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+in0055). Retrieved 2007-04-19.
- ^ Chishti S, Jacob J (1 December 2006). "Sachar nails madrasa myth: Only 4% of Muslim kids go there". The Indian Express. http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/17677.html. Retrieved 2007-04-21.
- ^ Thakrar, Raju (22 April 2007). "Japanese warm to real curries and more". Japan Times. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20070422x4.html. Retrieved 2007-04-23.
- ^ Charlton 2004, p. 91.
- ^ Yadav, Yogendra; Sanjay Kumar (August 14, 2006). "The food habits of a nation". hinduonnet.com (The Hindu). http://www.hinduonnet.com/2006/08/14/stories/2006081403771200.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-21.
- ^ a b "Life-Cycle Rituals". Country Studies: India. The Library of Congress. September 1995. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+in0056). Retrieved 2007-04-19.
- ^ Banerjee, Suresh Chandra. "Shraddha". Banglapedia. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. http://banglapedia.search.com.bd/HT/S_0516.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-20.
- ^ a b c d e "Islamic Traditions in South Asia". Country Studies: India. The Library of Congress. September 1995. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+in0059). Retrieved 2007-04-19.
- ^ "Muharram". Festivals. High Commission of India, London. http://www.hcilondon.net/india-overview/festivals/muharram.html. Retrieved 2007-04-20.
- ^ Makkar 1993, p. 141
- ^ Olson & Shadle 1996, p. 759
- ^ "Dalits in conversion ceremony". BBC News. 14 October 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6050408.stm. Retrieved 2007-04-20.
- ^ "Constitution doesn't permit forced conversions: Naqvi" ([dead link] – Scholar search). BJP Today 15 (9). May 1–15, 2006. http://www.bjp.org/today/may_0106/may_0106_p_30.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-20.
- ^ Ludden 1996, pp. 64–65
- ^ Times News Network (25 March 2002). "Togadia wants parties to stop 'vote bank politics'". indiatimes.com (Times Internet Limited). http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4806609.cms. Retrieved 2007-04-20.
- ^ "BJP protests in campaign CD row". BBC News. 9 April 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6538445.stm. Retrieved 2007-05-27.
- ^ "BJP's true colours exposed once again". People's Democracy (Communist Party of India (Marxist)). 15 April 2007. http://pd.cpim.org/2007/0415/04152007_edit.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-27.
- ^ Chadha M (5 December 2006). Despair of the discriminated Dalits. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6211532.stm. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
- ^ Giridharadas A (22 April 2006). Turning point in India's caste war. International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/21/business/QUOTAS.php. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
- ^ a b Mukherjee M, Mukherjee A (December 2001). "Communalisation of education: the history textbook controversy" (PDF). Delhi Historians' Group. http://www.sacw.net/India_History/DelHistorians.pdf. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
- ^ Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (November 8, 2005). "International Religious Freedom Report 2005". 2005 Report on International Religious Freedom. U.S. State Department. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2005/51618.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
- ^ Upadhyay R (21 August 2001). "The politics of education in India: the need for a national debate". South Asia Analysis Group. http://www.saag.org/%5Cpapers3%5Cpaper299.html. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
- ^ Upadhyay R (26 February 2000). "Opposition in India: in search of genuine issues". South Asia Analysis Group. http://www.saag.org/%5Cpapers2%5Cpaper107.html. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
- ^ Shepard 1987, pp. 45–46.
- ^ a b Nichols, B (2003). "The Politics of Assassination: Case Studies and Analysis" (PDF). Australasian Political Studies Association Conference. http://www.utas.edu.au/government/APSA/BNichols.pdf.
- ^ a b Human Rights Watch 2006, p. 265.
- ^ [1]
External links
Religions in India- "History of Religions in India". www.indohistory.com. http://www.indohistory.com/religions.html. Retrieved 2008-01-01.
- "Census of India 2001: Data on religion". Government of India (Office of the Registrar General). http://www.censusindia.gov.in. Retrieved 2007-05-28.
- "International Religious Freedom Report 2006: India". United States Department of State. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2006/71440.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-28.
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Religion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A religion is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a supernatural agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.[1]
Aspects of religion include narrative, symbolism, beliefs, and practices that are supposed to give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life. Whether the meaning centers on a deity or deities, or an ultimate truth,[2] religion is commonly identified by the practitioner's prayer, ritual, meditation, music and art, among other things, and is often interwoven with society and politics. It may focus on specific supernatural, metaphysical, and moral claims about reality (the cosmos and human nature) which may yield a set of religious laws and ethics and a particular lifestyle. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience.
The term "religion" refers both to the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction. "Religion" is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system,"[3] but it is more socially defined than personal convictions, and it entails specific behaviors, respectively.
| Religions by country |
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The development of religion has taken many forms in various cultures. It considers psychological and social roots, along with origins and historical development.
Religion is often described as a communal system for the coherence of belief focusing on a system of thought, unseen being, person, or object, that is considered to be supernatural, sacred, divine, or of the highest truth. Moral codes, practices, values, institutions, tradition, rituals, and scriptures are often traditionally associated with the core belief, and these may have some overlap with concepts in secular philosophy. Religion is also often described as a "way of life" or a life stance.
Contents[hide] |
Etymology
Religion is derived from the Latin religiō, the ultimate origins of which are obscure. One possibility is derivation from a reduplicated *le-ligare, an interpretation traced to Cicero connecting lego "read", i.e. re (again) + lego in the sense of "choose", "go over again" or "consider carefully". Modern scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell favor the derivation from ligare "bind, connect", probably from a prefixed re-ligare, i.e. re (again) + ligare or "to reconnect," which was made prominent by St. Augustine, following the interpretation of Lactantius.[4][5] However, the French scholar Daniel Dubuisson notes that relying on this etymology "tends to minimize or cancel out the role of history"; he notes that Augustine gave a lengthy definition of religio that sets it quite apart from the modern word "religion".[6]
History
| | This section only describes one highly specialized aspect of its associated subject. Please help improve this article by adding more general information. (November 2009) |
The word "religion" as it is used today does not have an obvious pre-colonial translation into non-European languages. Daniel Dubuisson writes that "what the West and the history of religions in its wake have objectified under the name 'religion' is ... something quite unique, which could be appropriate only to itself and its own history."[7] The history of other cultures' interaction with the religious category is therefore their interaction with an idea that first developed in Europe under the influence of Christianity.[8]
Religion and the body politic
A good understanding of the meaning of Christianity before the word "religion" came into common usage can be found in St. Augustine's writing. For Augustine, Christianity was a disciplina, a "rule" just like that of the Roman Empire. Christianity was therefore a power structure opposing and superseding human institutions, a literal Kingdom of Heaven. Rather than calling one to self-discipline through symbols, it was itself the discipline taught by one's family, school, church, and city authorities.[9] At this point, too, the root of the English word "religion", the Latin religio, was in use only to mean "reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety" (which Cicero further derived to mean "diligence").[10][11] Max Müller characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia, and India, as having a similar power structure at this point in history. What is called ancient religion today, they would have only called "law".[12]
At this point, Western Europe and the rest of the world diverged. As Christianity became commonplace, the charismatic authority identified by Augustine, a quality we might today call "religiousness", had a commanding influence at the local level. This system persisted in the Byzantine Empire following the East-West Schism, but Western Europe regulated unpredictable expressions of charisma through the Roman Catholic Church. As the Church lost its dominance during the Protestant Reformation and Christianity became closely tied to political structures, religion was recast as the basis of national sovereignty, and religious identity gradually became a less universal sense of spirituality and more divisive, locally defined, and tied to nationality.[13] It was at this point that "religion" was dissociated with universal beliefs and moved closer to dogma in both meaning and practice. However there was not yet the idea of dogma as personal choice, only of established churches.
Religious freedom
In the Age of Enlightenment, the idea of Christianity as the purest expression of spirituality was supplanted by the concept of "religion" as a worldwide practice.[14] This caused such ideas as religious freedom, a reexamination of classical philosophy as an alternative to Christian thought, and more radically Deism among intellectuals such as Voltaire. Much like Christianity, the idea of "religious freedom" was exported around the world as a civilizing technique, even to regions such as India that had never treated spirituality as a matter of political identity.[15] In Japan, where Buddhism was still seen as a philosophy of natural law,[16] the concept of "religion" and "religious freedom" as separate from other power structures was unnecessary until Christian missionaries demanded free access to conversion, and when Japanese Christians refused to engage in patriotic events.[17]
With the Enlightenment, religion lost its attachment to nationality, but rather than being a universal social attitude, it was now a personal feeling or emotion.[18] Friedrich Schleiermacher in the late 18th century defined religion as das schlechthinnige Abhängigkeitsgefühl, commonly translated as "a feeling of absolute dependence".[19] His contemporary Hegel disagreed thoroughly, defining religion as "the Divine Spirit becoming conscious of Himself through the finite spirit."[20] William James is an especially notable 19th century subscriber to the theory of religion as feeling.
Modern currents in religion
Religious studies
With the recognition of religion as a category separate from culture and society came the rise of religious studies. The initial purpose of religious studies was to demonstrate the superiority of the "living" or "universal" European world view to the "dead" or "ethnic" religions scattered throughout the rest of the world, but this was eventually supplanted by a liberal-ecumenical interest in searching for Western-style universal truths in every cultural tradition.[21] Clifford Geertz's definition of religion as a "cultural system" was dominant for most of the 20th century and continues to be widely accepted today.
Sociologists and anthropologists tend to see religion as an abstract set of ideas, values, or experiences developed as part of a cultural matrix. For example, in Lindbeck's Nature of Doctrine, religion does not refer to belief in "God" or a transcendent Absolute. Instead, Lindbeck defines religion as, "a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought… it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulation of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments."[22] According to this definition, religion refers to one's primary worldview and how this dictates one's thoughts and actions. Thus religion is considered by some sources to extend to causes, principles, or activities believed in with zeal or conscientious devotion concerning points or matters of ethics or conscience, and not necessarily including belief in the supernatural.[23]
Although evolutionists had previously sought to understand and explain religion in terms of a cultural attribute which might conceivably confer biological advantages to its adherents, Richard Dawkins called for a re-analysis of religion in terms of the evolution of self-replicating ideas apart from any resulting biological advantages they might bestow. He argued that the role of key replicator in cultural evolution belongs not to genes, but to memes replicating thought from person to person by means of imitation. These replicators respond to selective pressures that may or may not affect biological reproduction or survival.[24] Susan Blackmore regards religions as particularly tenacious memes.[25] Chris Hedges, however, regards meme theory as a misleading imposition of genetics onto psychology.
Interfaith cooperation
Because religion continues to be recognized in Western thought as a universal impulse, many religious practitioners have aimed to band together in interfaith dialogue and cooperation. The first major dialogue was the Parliament of the World's Religions at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, which remains notable even today both in affirming "universal values" and recognition of the diversity of practices among different cultures. The 20th century has been especially fruitful in use of interfaith dialogue as a means of solving ethnic, political, or even religious conflict, with Christian-Jewish reconciliation representing a complete reverse in the attitudes of many Christian communities towards Jews.
Secularism and criticism of religion
As religion became a more personal matter, discussions of society found a new focus on political and scientific meaning, and religious attitudes were increasingly seen as irrelevant for the needs of the European world. On the political side, Ludwig Feuerbach recast Christian beliefs in light of humanism, paving the way for Karl Marx's famous characterization of religion as "the opiate of the masses". Meanwhile, in the scientific community, T.H. Huxley in 1869 coined the term "agnostic," a term subsequently adopted by such figures as Robert Ingersoll. Later, Bertrand Russell told the world Why I Am Not a Christian.
Atheists have developed a critique of religious systems as well as personal faith. Modern-day critics focus on religion's lack of utility in human society, faulting religion as being irrational.[26] Some assert that dogmatic religions are in effect morally deficient, elevating to moral status ancient, arbitrary, and ill-informed rules—taboos on eating pork, for example, as well as dress codes and sexual practices[27]—possibly designed for reasons of hygiene or even mere politics in a bygone era.
Religious belief
Religious belief usually relates to the existence, nature and worship of a deity or deities and divine involvement in the universe and human life. Alternately, it may also relate to values and practices transmitted by a spiritual leader. Unlike other belief systems, which may be passed on orally, religious belief tends to be codified in literate societies (religion in non-literate societies is still largely passed on orally[28]). In some religions, like the Abrahamic religions, it is held that most of the core beliefs have been divinely revealed.
Religious belief can also involve causes, principles or activities believed in with zeal or conscientious devotion concerning points or matters of ethics or conscience, not necessarily limited to organized religions.[29]
Specific religious movements
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the academic practice of comparative religion divided religious belief into philosophically-defined categories called "world religions." However, some recent scholarship has argued that not all types of religion are necessarily separated by mutually exclusive philosophies, and furthermore that the utility of ascribing a practice to a certain philosophy, or even calling a given practice religious, rather than cultural, political, or social in nature, is limited.[15][30][31] The list of religious movements given here is an attempt to summarize the most important regional and philosophical influences, but it is by no means a complete description of every religious community.
- Abrahamic religions are practiced throughout the world. They share in common the Jewish patriarch Abraham and the Torah as an initial sacred text, although the degree to which the Torah is incorporated into religious beliefs varies between traditions.
- Judaism accepts only the prophets of the Torah, but also relies on the authority of rabbis. It is practiced by the Jewish people, an ethnic group currently centered in Israel but also scattered throughout the Jewish diaspora. Today, Jews are outnumbered by Christians and Muslims.
- Christianity is centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the Gospels and the writings of the apostle Paul (1st century CE). The Christian faith is essentially faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and as Savior and Lord. As the religion of Western Europe during the time of colonization, Christianity has been propagated throughout the world. Christianity is practiced not as a single orthodoxy but as a mixture of Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and many forms of Protestantism. In the United States, for example, African-Americans[32] and Korean-Americans[33] usually attend separate churches from Americans of European descent. Many European countries as well as Argentina have established a specific church as the state religion, but this is not the case in the United States nor in many other majority Christian areas.
- Islam refers to the religion taught by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a major political and religious figure of the 7th century CE. Islam is the dominant religion of northern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. As with Christianity, there is no single orthodoxy in Islam but a multitude of traditions which are generally categorized as Sunni and Shia, although there are other minor groups as well. Wahhabi Islam is the established religion of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There are also several Islamic republics, including Iran, which is run by a Shia Supreme Leader.
- The Bahá'í Faith was founded in the 19th century in Iran and since then has spread worldwide. It teaches unity of all religious philosophies and accepts all of the prophets of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as additional prophets including its founder Bahá'u'lláh.
- Smaller Abrahamic groups that are not heterodox versions of the four major groupings include Mandaeism, Samaritanism, the Druze, and the Rastafari movement.
- Hinduism is a synechdoche describing the similar Indian religious philosophies of Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and related groups, and is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent[34] Hinduism is not a monolithic religion in the Romannic sense but a religious category containing dozens of separate philosophies amalgamated as Sanātana Dharma.
- Buddhism was founded by Siddhattha Gotama in the 6th century BCE. Buddhists generally agree that Gotama aimed to help sentient beings end their suffering by understanding the true nature of phenomena, thereby escaping the cycle of suffering and rebirth (saṃsāra), that is, achieving Nirvana. The main schools of Buddhism are Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana.
- Sikhism is a monotheistic religion founded on the teachings of Guru Nanak and ten successive Sikh Gurus in 15th century Punjab. Sikhs are found mostly in India.
- Jainism, taught primarily by Parsva (9th century BCE) and Mahavira (6th century BCE), is an ancient Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence for all forms of living beings in this world. Jains are found mostly in India.
- There are dozens of new Indian religions and Hindu reform movements, such as Ayyavazhi and Swaminarayan Faith.
- African traditional religion is a category including any type of religion practiced in Africa before the arrival of Islam and Christianity, such as Yoruba religion or San religion. There are many varieties of religions developed by Africans in the Americas derived from African beliefs, including Santería, Candomblé, Umbanda, Vodou, and Oyotunji.
- Folk religions of the Americas include Aztec religion, Inca religion, Maya religion, and modern Catholic beliefs such as the Virgin of Guadalupe. Native American religion is practiced across the continent of North America.
- Australian Aboriginal culture contains a mythology and sacred practices characteristic of folk religion.
- Chinese folk religion, practiced by Chinese people around the world, is a primarily social practice including popular elements of Confucianism and Taoism, with some remnants of Mahayana Buddhism. Most Chinese do not identify as religious due to the strong Maoist influence on the country in recent history, but adherence to religious ceremonies remains common. New religious movements include Falun Gong and I-Kuan Tao.
- Traditional Korean religion was a syncretic mixture of Mahayana Buddhism and Korean shamanism. Unlike Japanese Shinto, Korean shamanism was never codified and Buddhism was never made a social necessity. In some areas these traditions remain prevalent, but Korean-influenced Christianity is far more influential in society and politics.
- Traditional Japanese religion is a mixture of Mahayana Buddhism and ancient indigenous practices which were codified as Shinto in the 19th century. Japanese people retain nominal attachment to both Buddhism and Shinto through social ceremonies, but irreligion is common.
- Shinshūkyō is a general category for a wide variety of religious movements founded in Japan since the 19th century. These movements share almost nothing in common except the place of their founding. The largest religious movements centered in Japan include Soka Gakkai, Tenrikyo, and Seicho-No-Ie among hundreds of smaller groups.
Sociological classifications of religious movements suggest that within any given religious group, a community can resemble various types of structures, including "churches", "denominations", "sects", "cults", and "institutions".
Religion and superstition
While superstitions and magical thinking refer to nonscientific causal reasoning, applied to specific things or actions, a religion is a more complex system about general or ultimate things, involving morality, history and community. Because religions may include and exploit certain superstitions or make use of magical thinking, while mixing them with broader considerations, the division between superstition and religious faith is subjective and hard to specify. Religious believers have often seen other religions as superstition.[35][36] Likewise, some atheists, agnostics, deists, and skeptics regard religious belief as superstition. Religious practices are most likely to be labeled "superstitious" by outsiders when they include belief in extraordinary events (miracles), an afterlife, supernatural interventions, apparitions or the efficacy of prayer, charms, incantations, the meaningfulness of omens, and prognostications.
Greek and Roman pagans, who modeled their relations with the gods on political and social terms, scorned the man who constantly trembled with fear at the thought of the gods as a slave feared a cruel and capricious master. Such fear of the gods (deisidaimonia) was what the Romans meant by superstitio (Veyne 1987, p 211). Early Christianity was outlawed as a superstitio Iudaica, a "Jewish superstition", by Domitian in the 80s AD, and by AD 425, Theodosius II outlawed pagan traditions as superstitious.
The Roman Catholic Church considers superstition to be sinful in the sense that it denotes a lack of trust in the divine providence of God and, as such, is a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that superstition "in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion" (para. #2110).
Superstition is a deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand is to fall into superstition. Cf. Matthew 23:16-22 (para. #2111)
Related forms of thought
Religion and philosophy
| This section requires expansion. |
Being both forms of belief system, religion and philosophy meet in several areas - notably in the study of metaphysics and cosmology. In particular, a distinct set of religious beliefs will often entail a specific metaphysics and cosmology. That is, a religion will generally have answers to metaphysical and cosmological questions about the nature of being, of the universe, humanity, and the divine.
Cosmology
Humans have many different methods which attempt to answer fundamental questions about the nature of the universe and our place in it (cosmology). Religion is only one of the methods for trying to answer one or more of these questions. Other methods include philosophy, metaphysics, astrology, esotericism, mysticism, and forms of shamanism, such as the sacred consumption of ayahuasca among Peruvian Amazonia's Urarina.[37] The Urarina have an elaborate animistic cosmological system,[38] which informs their mythology, religious orientation and daily existence. In many cases, the distinction between these means are not clear. For example, Buddhism and Taoism have been regarded as schools of philosophies as well as religions.
Given the generalized discontents with modernity, consumerism, over-consumption, violence and anomie, many people in the so-called industrial or post-industrial West rely on a number of distinctive religious worldviews. This in turn has given rise to increased religious pluralism, as well as to what are commonly known in the academic literature as new religious movements, which are gaining ground across the globe.
Religion and science
Religious knowledge, according to religious practitioners, may be gained from religious leaders, sacred texts (scriptures), and/or personal revelation. Some religions view such knowledge as unlimited in scope and suitable to answer any question; others see religious knowledge as playing a more restricted role, often as a complement to knowledge gained through physical observation. Some religious people maintain that religious knowledge obtained in this way is absolute and infallible (religious cosmology).
The scientific method gains knowledge by testing hypotheses to develop theories through elucidation of facts or evaluation by experiments and thus only answers cosmological questions about the physical universe. It develops theories of the world which best fit physically observed evidence. All scientific knowledge is subject to later refinement in the face of additional evidence. Scientific theories that have an overwhelming preponderance of favorable evidence are often treated as facts (such as the theories of gravity or evolution).
Many scientists have held strong religious beliefs (see List of Christian thinkers in science) and have worked to harmonize science and religion. Isaac Newton, for example, believed that gravity caused the planets to revolve about the Sun, and credited God with the design. In the concluding General Scholium to the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, he wrote: "This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being." Nevertheless, conflict has repeatedly arisen between religious organizations and individuals who propagated scientific theories that were deemed unacceptable by the organizations. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, has in the past[39] reserved to itself the right to decide which scientific theories were acceptable and which were unacceptable. In the 17th century, Galileo was tried and forced to recant the heliocentric theory based on the church's stance that the Greek Hellenistic system of astronomy was the correct one.[40][41] Today, however, only 7% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences believe in a god.[42]
Epistemology
Many theories exist as to why religions sometimes seem to conflict with scientific knowledge. In the case of Christianity, a relevant factor may be that it was among Christians that science in the modern sense was developed. Unlike other religious groups, as early as the 17th century the Christian churches had to deal directly with this new way to investigate nature and seek truth.
The perceived conflict between science and Christianity may also be partially explained by a literal interpretation of the Bible adhered to by many Christians, both currently and historically. The Catholic Church has always held with Augustine of Hippo who explicitly opposed a literal interpretation of the Bible whenever the Bible conflicted with Science. The literal way to read the sacred texts became especially prevalent after the rise of the Protestant reformation, with its emphasis on the Bible as the only authoritative source concerning the ultimate reality.[43] This view is often shunned by both religious leaders (who regard literally believing it as petty and look for greater meaning instead) and scientists who regard it as an impossibility.
Some Christians have disagreed or are still disagreeing with scientists in areas such as the validity of Keplerian astronomy, the theory of evolution, the method of creation of the universe and the Earth, and the origins of life. On the other hand, scholars such as Stanley Jaki have suggested that Christianity and its particular worldview was a crucial factor for the emergence of modern science. In fact, most of today's historians are moving away from the view of the relationship between Christianity and science as one of "conflict" — a perspective commonly called the conflict thesis.[44][45] Gary Ferngren in his historical volume about Science & Religion states:
While some historians had always regarded the [conflict] thesis as oversimplifying and distorting a complex relationship, in the late twentieth century it underwent a more systematic reevaluation. The result is the growing recognition among historians of science that the relationship of religion and science has been much more positive than is sometimes thought. Although popular images of controversy continue to exemplify the supposed hostility of Christianity to new scientific theories, studies have shown that Christianity has often nurtured and encouraged scientific endeavour, while at other times the two have co-existed without either tension or attempts at harmonization. If Galileo and the Scopes trial come to mind as examples of conflict, they were the exceptions rather than the rule.[46]
Eastern religions
In the Bahá'í Faith, the harmony of science and religion is a central tenet.[49] The principle states that that truth is one, and therefore true science and true religion must be in harmony, thus rejecting the view that science and religion are in conflict.[49] `Abdu'l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the religion, asserted that science and religion cannot be opposed because they are aspects of the same truth; he also affirmed that reasoning powers are required to understand the truths of religion and that religious teachings which are at variance with science should not be accepted; he explained that religion has to be reasonable since God endowed humankind with reason so that they can discover truth.[50] Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, described science and religion as "the two most potent forces in human life."[51]
Proponents of Hinduism claim that Hinduism is not afraid of scientific explorations, nor of the technological progress of mankind. According to them, there is a comprehensive scope and opportunity for Hinduism to mold itself according to the demands and aspirations of the modern world; it has the ability to align itself with both science and spiritualism. This religion uses some modern examples to explain its ancient theories and reinforce its own beliefs. For example, some Hindu thinkers have used the terminology of quantum physics to explain some basic concepts of Hinduism such as Maya or the illusory and impermanent nature of our existence.
The philosophical approach known as pragmatism, as propounded by the American philosopher and psychologist William James, has been used to reconcile scientific with religious knowledge. Pragmatism, simplistically, holds that the truth of a set of beliefs can be indicated by its usefulness in helping people cope with a particular context of life. Thus, the fact that scientific beliefs are useful in predicting observations in the physical world can indicate a certain truth for scientific theories; the fact that religious beliefs can be useful in helping people cope with difficult emotions or moral decisions can indicate a certain truth for those beliefs. (For a similar postmodern view, see grand narrative).
Mysticism and esotericism
Mysticism focuses on methods other than logic, but (in the case of esoteric mysticism) not necessarily excluding it, for gaining enlightenment. Rather, meditative and contemplative practices such as Vipassanā and yoga, physical disciplines such as stringent fasting and whirling (in the case of the Sufi dervishes), or the use of psychoactive drugs such as LSD, lead to altered states of consciousness that logic can never hope to grasp. However, regarding the latter topic, mysticism prevalent in the 'great' religions (monotheisms, henotheisms, which are perhaps relatively recent, and which the word 'mysticism' is more recent than,) includes systems of discipline that forbid drugs that can damage the body, including the nervous system.
Mysticism (to initiate) is the pursuit of communion with, or conscious awareness of ultimate reality, the divine, spiritual truth, or Deity through direct, personal experience (intuition or insight) rather than rational thought. Mystics speak of the existence of realities behind external perception or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible through personal experience. They say that such experience is a genuine and important source of knowledge.
Esotericism is often spiritual (thus religious) but can be non-religious/-spiritual, and it uses intellectual understanding and reasoning, intuition and inspiration (higher noetic and spiritual reasoning,) but not necessarily faith (except often as a virtue,) and it is philosophical in its emphasis on techniques of psycho-spiritual transformation (esoteric cosmology). Esotericism refers to "hidden" knowledge available only to the advanced, privileged, or initiated, as opposed to exoteric knowledge, which is public. All religions are probably somewhat exoteric, but most ones of ancient civilizations such as Yoga of India, and the mystery religions of ancient Egypt, Israel (Kabbalah,) and Greece are examples of ones that are also esoteric.
Spirituality
Members of an organized religion may not see any significant difference between religion and spirituality. Or they may see a distinction between the mundane, earthly aspects of their religion and its spiritual dimension.
Some individuals draw a strong distinction between religion and spirituality. They may see spirituality as a belief in ideas of religious significance (such as God, the Soul, or Heaven), but not feel bound to the bureaucratic structure and creeds of a particular organized religion. They choose the term spirituality rather than religion to describe their form of belief, perhaps reflecting a disillusionment with organized religion (see Major religious groups), and a movement towards a more "modern" — more tolerant, and more intuitive — form of religion. These individuals may reject organized religion because of historical acts by religious organizations, such as Christian Crusades and Islamic Jihad, the marginalisation and persecution of various minorities or the Spanish Inquisition. The basic precept of the ancient spiritual tradition of India, the Vedas, is the inner reality of existence, which is essentially a spiritual approach to being.
Myth
The word myth has several meanings.
- A traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon;
- A person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence; or
- A metaphor for the spiritual potentiality in the human being.[52]
Ancient polytheistic religions, such as those of Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia, are usually categorized under the heading of mythology. Religions of pre-industrial peoples, or cultures in development, are similarly called "myths" in the anthropology of religion. The term "myth" can be used pejoratively by both religious and non-religious people. By defining another person's religious stories and beliefs as mythology, one implies that they are less real or true than one's own religious stories and beliefs. Joseph Campbell remarked, "Mythology is often thought of as other people's religions, and religion can be defined as mis-interpreted mythology."[53]
In sociology, however, the term myth has a non-pejorative meaning. There, myth is defined as a story that is important for the group whether or not it is objectively or provably true. Examples include the death and resurrection of Jesus, which, to Christians, explains the means by which they are freed from sin and is also ostensibly a historical event. But from a mythological outlook, whether or not the event actually occurred is unimportant. Instead, the symbolism of the death of an old "life" and the start of a new "life" is what is most significant. Religious believers may or may not accept such symbolic interpretations.
See also
- Economics of religion
- Philosophy of religion
- Sociology of religion
- Faith
- Belief
- List of religious populations
- List of religious texts
- Religions by country
- Wealth and religion
- Religion and happiness
- Religious conversion
- Theocracy
References
Notes
- ^ http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion
- ^ The whole experience of a religion can give a systemic and stable character to human life and society; thus a religion may also be thought of as a cultural system. While religion is difficult to define, the standard model of religion as used in religious studies was defined by Clifford Geertz (Religion as a Cultural System, 1973). For an influential critique of Geertz's model see Talal Asad's The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category (1982).
- ^ The words "belief system" may not necessarily refer to a religion, though a religion may be referred to as "belief system."
- ^ In The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light. Toronto. Thomas Allen, 2004. ISBN 0-88762-145-7
- ^ In The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers, ed. Betty Sue Flowers, New York, Anchor Books, 1991. ISBN 0-385-41886-8
- ^ Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion. pp.22-23
- ^ Daniel Dubuisson. The Western Construction of Religion. 1998. William Sayers (trans.) Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. p. 90.
- ^ Timothy Fitzgerald. Discourse on Civility and Barbarity. Oxford University Press, 2007. pp.45-46.
- ^ Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993 p.34-35.
- ^ Max Müller, Natural Religion, p.33, 1889
- ^ Lewis & Short, A Latin Dictionary[1]
- ^ Max Müller. Introduction to the science of religion. p. 28.
- ^ Fitzgerald 2007. p.194.
- ^ S. N. Balagangadhara. The Heathen in His Blindness... New York: Brill Academic Publishers, 1994. p.159.
- ^ a b Brian Kemble Pennington Was Hinduism Invented? New York: Oxford University Press US, 2005. ISBN 0195166558
- ^ Jason Ānanda Josephson. "When Buddhism Became a 'Religion'". Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 33.1: 143–168.
- ^ Isomae Jun'ichi. "Deconstructing 'Japanese Religion'". Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 32.2: 235–248.
- ^ Fitzgerald 2007, p.268
- ^ Hueston A. Finlay. "'Feeling of absolute dependence' or 'absolute feeling of dependence'? A question revisited". Religious Studies 41.1 (2005), pp.81-94.
- ^ Max Müller. "Lectures on the origin and growth of religion."
- ^ Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
- ^ George A. Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1984), 33.
- ^ from unabridged dictionaries on http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion?r=75 and also the Oxford English Dictionary
- ^ Dawkins 1989, p. 352
- ^ Blackmore 1999
- ^ Bryan Caplan. "Why Religious Beliefs Are Irrational, and Why Economists Should Care". http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/ldebate.htm. The article about religion and irrationality.
- ^ Nobel Peace Laureate, Muslim and human rights activist Dr Shirin Ebadi has spoken out against undemocratic Islamic countries justifying "oppressive acts" in the name of Islam. Speaking at the Earth Dialogues 2006 conference in Brisbane, Dr Ebadi said her native Iran as well as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Yemen "among others" were guilty of human rights violations. "In these countries, Islamic rulers want to solve 21st century issues with laws belonging to 14 centuries ago," she said. "Their views of human rights are exactly the same as it was 1400 years ago."
- ^ Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, Pascal Boyer, Basic Books (2001)
- ^ see several dictionaries on http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion?r=75 and also Oxford's English Language Dictionary
- ^ Russell T. McCutcheon. Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001.
- ^ Nicholas Lash. The beginning and the end of 'religion'. Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0521566355
- ^ Charles Eric Lincoln. Race, religion, and the continuing American dilemma. Macmillan, 1999. ISBN 0809016230
- ^ Won Moo Hurh. The Korean Americans. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998.
- ^ Hinduism is variously defined as a "religion", "set of religious beliefs and practices", "religious tradition" etc. For a discussion on the topic, see: "Establishing the boundaries" in Gavin Flood (2003), pp. 1-17. René Guénon in his Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines (1921 ed.), Sophia Perennis, ISBN 0-900588-74-8, proposes a definition of the term "religion" and a discussion of its relevance (or lack of) to Hindu doctrines (part II, chapter 4, p. 58).
- ^ Boyer (2001). "Why Belief". Religion Explained. http://books.google.com/books?id=wreF80OHTicC&pg=PA297&lpg=PA297&dq=%22fang+too+were+quite+amazed%22&source=web&ots=NxCB1FWq5v&sig=SuHHSm8zvnJd8_I2cKp5Zc090R0&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result.
- ^ Fitzgerald 2007, p. 232
- ^ Dean, Bartholomew 2009 Urarina Society, Cosmology, and History in Peruvian Amazonia, Gainesville: University Press of Florida ISBN 978-081303378 [2]
- ^ Bartholomew Dean 1994 "The Poetics of Creation: Urarina Cosmology and Historical Consciousness." Latin American Indian Literatures Journal (10):22-45
- ^ Quotation: "The Second Vatican Council affirmed academic freedom for natural science and other secular disciplines". From the essay of Ted Peters about Science and Religion at "Lindsay Jones (editor in chief). Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition. Thomson Gale. 2005. p.8185"
- ^ By Dr Paul Murdin, Lesley Murdin Photographs by Paul New. Supernovae Astronomy Murdin Published 1985, Cambridge UniversityPress Science,256 pages,ISBN 052130038X page 18.
- ^ Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2003. Theory and reality: an introduction to the philosophy of science. Science and its conceptual foundations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Page 14.
- ^ Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham, Leading scientists still reject God, in Nature July 23, 1998
- ^ Stanley Jaki. Bible and Science, Christendom Press, 1996 (pages 110-111)
- ^ Spitz, Lewis (1987). (The Rise of modern Europe) The protestant Reformation 1517-1559.. Harper Torchbooks. pp. 383. ISBN 0-06-132069-2 The historian of early modern Europe Lewis Spitz says "To set up a 'warfare of science and theology' is an exercise in futility and a reflection of a nineteenth century materialism now happily transcended".
- ^ Quotation: "The conflict thesis, at least in its simple form, is now widely perceived as a wholly inadequate intellectual framework within which to construct a sensible and realistic historiography of Western science." (p. 7), from the essay by Colin A. Russell "The Conflict Thesis" on "Gary Ferngren (editor). Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8018-7038-0".
- ^ Gary Ferngren (editor). Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8018-7038-0. (Introduction, p. ix)
- ^ India – Caste. Encyclopædia Britannica.
- ^ Jeffrey Brodd (2003), World Religions: A Voyage of Discovery, Saint Mary's Press, p. 45, ISBN 9780884897255, http://books.google.com/books?id=vOzNo4MVlgMC&pg=PA45&dq=%22330+million%22 : '[..] many gods and goddesses (traditionally 330 million!) [...] Hinduism generally regards its 330 million as deities as extensions of one ultimate reality, many names for one ocean, many "masks" for one God.'
- ^ a b Esslemont, J.E. (1980). Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era (5th ed.). Wilmette, Illinois, USA: Bahá'í Publishing Trust. ISBN 0-87743-160-4.
- ^ `Abdu'l-Bahá (1982) [1912]. The Promulgation of Universal Peace (Hardcover ed.). Wilmette, Illinois, USA: Bahá'í Publishing Trust. ISBN 0-87743-172-8. http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/PUP/.
- ^ Effendi, Shoghi (1938). The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh. Wilmette, Illinois, USA: Bahá'í Publishing Trust. ISBN 0-87743-231-7. http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/se/WOB/index.html.
- ^ Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, p. 22 ISBN 0-385-24774-5
- ^ Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor. Ed. Eugene Kennedy. New World Library ISBN 1-57731-202-3.
Bibliography
- Saint Augustine; The Confessions of Saint Augustine (John K. Ryan translator); Image (1960), ISBN 0-385-02955-1.
- Descartes, René; Meditations on First Philosophy; Bobbs-Merril (1960), ISBN 0-672-60191-5.
- Barzilai, Gad; Law and Religion; The International Library of Essays in Law and Society; Ashgate (2007),ISBN 978-0-7546-2494-3
- Durant, Will (& Ariel (uncredited)); Our Oriental Heritage; MJF Books (1997), ISBN 1-56731-012-5.
- Durant, Will (& Ariel (uncredited)); Caesar and Christ; MJF Books (1994), ISBN 1-56731-014-1
- Durant, Will (& Ariel (uncredited)); The Age of Faith; Simon & Schuster (1980), ISBN 0-671-01200-2.
- Marija Gimbutas 1989. The Language of the Goddess. Thames and Hudson New York
- Gonick, Larry; The Cartoon History of the Universe; Doubleday, vol. 1 (1978) ISBN 0-385-26520-4, vol. II (1994) ISBN#0-385-42093-5, W. W. Norton, vol. III (2002) ISBN 0-393-05184-6.
- Haisch, Bernard The God Theory: Universes, Zero-point Fields, and What's Behind It All -- discussion of science vs. religion (Preface), Red Wheel/Weiser, 2006, ISBN 1-57863-374-5
- Lao Tzu; Tao Te Ching (Victor H. Mair translator); Bantam (1998).
- Marx, Karl; "Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right", Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, (1844).
- Saler, Benson; "Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories" (1990), ISBN 1-57181-219-9
- The Holy Bible, King James Version; New American Library (1974).
- The Koran; Penguin (2000), ISBN 0-14-044558-7.
- The Origin of Live & Death, African Creation Myths; Heinemann (1966).
- Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia; Penguin (1971).
- The World Almanac (annual), World Almanac Books, ISBN 0-88687-964-7.
- The Serotonin System and Spiritual Experiences - American Journal of Psychiatry 160:1965-1969, November 2003.
- United States Constitution
- Selected Work Marcus Tullius Cicero
- The World Almanac (for numbers of adherents of various religions), 2005
- Religion [First Edition]. Winston King. Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. Vol. 11. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. p7692-7701.
- World Religions and Social Evolution of the Old World Oikumene Civilizations: A Cross-cultural Perspective by Andrey Korotayev, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004, ISBN 0-7734-6310-0.
- Brodd, Jefferey (2003). World Religions. Winona, MN: Saint Mary's Press. ISBN 978-0-88489-725-5.
On religion definition:
- The first major study: Durkheim, Emile (1976) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: George Allen & Unwin (in French 1912, English translation 1915).
- Wilfred Cantwell Smith The Meaning and End of Religion (1962) notes that the concept of religion as an ideological community and system of doctrines, developed in the 15th and 16th centuries CE.
- A distillation of the Western folk category of religion: Geertz, Clifford. 1993 [1966]. Religion as a cultural system. Pp. 87-125 in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. London: Fontana Press.
- An operational definition: Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1966. Religion: An Anthropological View. New York: Random House. (p. 62-66)
- A recent overview: A Scientific Definition of Religion. By Ph.D. James W. Dow.
External links
| Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Religion |
| Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Religion |
- IACSR - International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion
- Studying Religion - Introduction to the methods and scholars of the academic study of religion
- A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right - Marx's original reference to religion as the opium of the people.
- The Complexity of Religion and the Definition of "Religion" in International Law Harvard Human Rights Journal article from the President and Fellows of Harvard College(2003)
- Major Religions of the World Ranked by Number of Adherents by Adherents.com (August 28, 2005) Retrieved December 22, 2005
- Religion Statistics from UCB Libraries GovPubs
- Religion at the Open Directory Project
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