If we consider the completely this-world contexts of the temple inauguration in Ayodhya – cameras, social media, helicopters, etc. – we might say that it fulfils an old Nehruvian dream. Religiosity has been effectively banished from the public life of the nation. However, as delicious as the irony is, it doesn’t really tell us very much about the nature of religious beliefs and its completely plastic nature. Older – well-meaning – certainties about what it is don’t help us in understanding the present.
Over the past few months, there have been at least two kinds of distinct ideas about the temple. The first suggests that it is the result of a “Hindu” rage based on what happened 500 years ago. And that there is a depth of feeling that has continued to exist in the same form for five centuries. This is a simplistic understanding of identities and how they are experienced through time. To subscribe to this view would be like saying that we feel the same way towards, say, cruelty to animals or the role of women in society now as we did 500 years ago.
The temple owes little to 500 years of constant rage and everything to the circumstances of the present. The most significant of these is the rise of the spectacles and a fundamental shift in thinking where Hinduism is about the outer world and spectacular displays of belief. There is no “rage”, as suggested by some, over what happened 500 years ago and as a consequence of which Hindus insist that their temple be re-built at the place where it was supposedly demolished.
We tend to think of the past as if there is a direct and transparent connection between it and the present and assume that we have always felt the same way about, say, religious identity. We know, for example, that in the battle for succession between Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh, each was supported by a nearly equal number of Hindu kings and nobles. The latter were not particularly deeply invested in their Hindu identity. As kings and rulers, they were interested in deploying whatever strategy they thought might gain them the maximum benefit in staying on the right side of power and maintaining their positions as rulers. To imagine that the current Hindu identity is the same as feelings of religiosity in the past is ill-informed and pernicious. The latter because it suggests that while it is unfortunate that religious divides have been created for political gain, there are, nevertheless, “genuine” reasons for “Hindu” anger. This thinking and bigotry are first cousins.
The past does not create the present in an unmediated way: The past itself is produced in the present through processes of the present. This is why, “better” – or more “accurate” – depictions of the past may have little or no effect on how people react and behave in the present. Our own present is being shaped through three interrelated aspects: The rise of new consumer cultures, the spectacularisation of everyday life and the fundamental shift towards viewing religion as an outer, rather than inner, aspect of one’s relationship with divinity. The three are linked in as much as consumer cultures are fundamentally about the relationship between us and commodities and hence about presenting ourselves publicly – through cars, clothes, mobile phones, whatever – to the world. This informs the great transition in the relationship between religious identity and its public nature. The temple at Ayodhya is not the result of a long-felt and consistent rage or grief that has lasted several centuries. It is the result of the processes of our time.
The second line of thinking has argued that the temple is “inauthentic” as it does not represent the “actual” – hybrid – Hinduism that exists as everyday reality. And that, the temple is about “politics” and not “faith”. However, this too assumes that religion has an actual and unvarying reality, unaffected by the processes of the times in which the believers live. In speaking of Hindutva as fake religion, it doesn’t address Hindutva’s popularity across such a vast swathe of the population — the urban and rural poor, the middle classes, Dalits, Buddhists and a whole range besides. It also doesn’t account for the fact that in both modern and earlier times, religion and politics have been intertwined. The idea of an inner “true” faith that exists outside the churn of the times has a very recent history. Do members of the Church of England feel less religious because their church was carved out by Henry the VIII for personal-political reasons? It is unclear if shouts of “inauthentic believers!” and “the politicisation of religion!” by 16th-century Catholics might have diminished the faith of English protestants.
The focus on “real” and “fake” belief systems – apart from providing a moral high ground – is both a poor strategy against majoritarianism and inadequate social analysis.
The irony is that religious beliefs that have been nurtured in the crucible of consumerism and spectacularisation are not any less “religious” or “fake”. Historically, there is no proof of any “authentic” ways of being religious. Marwari businessmen who pioneered Indian capitalism were just as religious as ascetics who severed all relations with the material world. Certainly, within Hinduism, otherworldliness is not the “genuine” mark of a religious person. This is hardly possible in a religion where gods procreate and relish a variety of delicacies. In the continuity between gods and humans, Hinduism is fundamentally different from the Judeo-Christian traditions of beliefs.
Religion itself has no authentic ways of believing – it entirely depends on how the cultures of believing are nurtured. It is quite possible that once the dust has settled – and the temple settles into the commerce of life – the monument might primarily become a tourist spot. However, there is little comfort to be gained from suggesting that “real” spirituality will be found in other, more organic, temples. This form of belief is no less real for all the inauthenticity we might attribute to it. Neither feelings of rage (for those who justify the new temple) nor ways of believing (for those who oppose it) have a deep and long history. Just as the present shapes how we think of the past, it also shapes the present. The fundamental change – the move towards spirituality as a matter of spectacular display – has recent roots, located in cultures of contemporary Indian modernity. The response, equally, must be to utilise the processes of the present to re-fashion another narrative. There are very few resources to be found within religion – by referring to Hinduism’s “inherent” tolerant nature, for example – that will help in this task. Religion in the time of plastic divinities should encourage us to ask questions about the other contemporary ways in which plastic gods can be made.
The writer is British Academy Global Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London
The temple in Ayodhya showcases the move towards spirituality as a matter of spectacular display
10
1
26.01.2024
If we consider the completely this-world contexts of the temple inauguration in Ayodhya – cameras, social media, helicopters, etc. – we might say that it fulfils an old Nehruvian dream. Religiosity has been effectively banished from the public life of the nation. However, as delicious as the irony is, it doesn’t really tell us very much about the nature of religious beliefs and its completely plastic nature. Older – well-meaning – certainties about what it is don’t help us in understanding the present.
Over the past few months, there have been at least two kinds of distinct ideas about the temple. The first suggests that it is the result of a “Hindu” rage based on what happened 500 years ago. And that there is a depth of feeling that has continued to exist in the same form for five centuries. This is a simplistic understanding of identities and how they are experienced through time. To subscribe to this view would be like saying that we feel the same way towards, say, cruelty to animals or the role of women in society now as we did 500 years ago.
The temple owes little to 500 years of constant rage and everything to the circumstances of the present. The most significant of these is the rise of the spectacles and a fundamental shift in thinking where Hinduism is about the outer world and spectacular displays of belief. There is no “rage”, as suggested by some, over what happened 500 years ago and as a consequence of which Hindus insist that their temple be re-built at the place where it was supposedly demolished.
We tend to think of the past as if there is a direct and transparent connection between it and the present and assume that we have always felt the same way about, say, religious identity. We know,........
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