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The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future
While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Martha Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state.
Since long before the 2002 Gujarat riots--in which nearly two thousand Muslims were killed by Hindu extremists--the power of the Hindu right has been growing, threatening India's hard-won constitutional practices of democracy, tolerance, and religious pluralism. Led politically by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu right has sought the subordination of other religious groups and has directed particular vitriol against Muslims, who are cast as devils in need of purging. The Hindu right seeks to return to a "pure" India, unsullied by alien polluters of other faiths, yet the BJP's defeat in recent elections demonstrates the power that India's pluralism continues to wield. The future, however, is far from secure, and Hindu extremism and exclusivity remain a troubling obstacle to harmony in South Asia.
Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history. Ultimately she argues that the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilizations, as some believe, but from a clash within each of us, as we oscillate between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others. India's story is a cautionary political tale for all democratic states striving to act responsibly in an increasingly dangerous world.
Since long before the 2002 Gujarat riots--in which nearly two thousand Muslims were killed by Hindu extremists--the power of the Hindu right has been growing, threatening India's hard-won constitutional practices of democracy, tolerance, and religious pluralism. Led politically by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu right has sought the subordination of other religious groups and has directed particular vitriol against Muslims, who are cast as devils in need of purging. The Hindu right seeks to return to a "pure" India, unsullied by alien polluters of other faiths, yet the BJP's defeat in recent elections demonstrates the power that India's pluralism continues to wield. The future, however, is far from secure, and Hindu extremism and exclusivity remain a troubling obstacle to harmony in South Asia.
Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history. Ultimately she argues that the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilizations, as some believe, but from a clash within each of us, as we oscillate between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others. India's story is a cautionary political tale for all democratic states striving to act responsibly in an increasingly dangerous world.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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About the author
Martha C. Nussbaum
177 books1,364 followersMartha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Law School and the Philosophy Department. Among her many awards are the 2018 Berggruen Prize, the 2017 Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the 2016 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 29, 2008
I finished this book on my flight to India. Nussbaum delivers a well crafted monologue attempting to answer the question: how does fascism find a foothold in democracy. She takes as her case study the RSS and BJP of India who are gaining political footholds in India and are directly responsible for the violence in Gujarat in 2002. I'm writing this review a day after the RSS in Margao, where I live, incited violence against muslims and closed down the Ghandi market.
There's more to answering her question than can be written in one book, and while the book is detailed, it gives only a brief overview to the problem in India, and then, only answers the question as only a Westerner and outsider can answer it. That said, she is fully aware of the limitations of her own work and is quick to set boundaries and stay within them.
If you want to understand what's going on politically in India today read this book.
There's more to answering her question than can be written in one book, and while the book is detailed, it gives only a brief overview to the problem in India, and then, only answers the question as only a Westerner and outsider can answer it. That said, she is fully aware of the limitations of her own work and is quick to set boundaries and stay within them.
If you want to understand what's going on politically in India today read this book.
July 13, 2016
Its not a bad book, but its not a great book. Its worth reading to understand the leftist-academic spin on Hindutva, and religious violence in India. Protip: the subaltern is always right, and the Hindu is always the violent oppressor. Essentially, the Hindu plays the same role in South Asian anthropological leftism as White people do in Western anthropological leftism. Which is to say the all powerful bad guy.
The book frequently dismisses right wing complaints as not worthy of serious consideration. The author is virulently opposed to private education, yet is a big fan of Rabindranath Tagore. Her educational policies are very confused. Actually, nearly all the policies advocated in this book are either confused, or platitudinous and vague. She frequently reads nefarious implications into the body language, tone, and bodily/verbal tics of her interview subjects. She makes flippant comparisons between the RSS and the BJP on the one hand, and Fascist and Nazis parties on the other, which would make any actual scholar of Fascism cringe.
The book isn't trash though. It does have a lot of good points. For instance the major thesis of the book is that the clash between or amongst civilizations is an overstated force, at least relative to the internal clashes in civilizations. In the decade since this book was written we've gotten more wise to the internal civilizational dynamic, but the point sill stands. Each civilization has what we might call "progressive" and "reactionary" elements to it, which vie for the soul of the nation. Its a good point, and Nussbaum isn't shy about which side she is on and how little she cares to take her opposition's ideas seriously.
The book frequently dismisses right wing complaints as not worthy of serious consideration. The author is virulently opposed to private education, yet is a big fan of Rabindranath Tagore. Her educational policies are very confused. Actually, nearly all the policies advocated in this book are either confused, or platitudinous and vague. She frequently reads nefarious implications into the body language, tone, and bodily/verbal tics of her interview subjects. She makes flippant comparisons between the RSS and the BJP on the one hand, and Fascist and Nazis parties on the other, which would make any actual scholar of Fascism cringe.
The book isn't trash though. It does have a lot of good points. For instance the major thesis of the book is that the clash between or amongst civilizations is an overstated force, at least relative to the internal clashes in civilizations. In the decade since this book was written we've gotten more wise to the internal civilizational dynamic, but the point sill stands. Each civilization has what we might call "progressive" and "reactionary" elements to it, which vie for the soul of the nation. Its a good point, and Nussbaum isn't shy about which side she is on and how little she cares to take her opposition's ideas seriously.
January 30, 2008
Very interesting book. I knew a little bit before about religious violence in India, but not much about what was behind it. I can see why some extreme right-wing Hindus don't like the book though...the author lays the blame squarely on the doorstep of groups like the BJP, etc. I also think the author is correct in her estimation of the Indian educational system, which does not encourage critical thinking or study of the liberal arts, but instead focuses on math/science/etc.
July 27, 2018
I have complicated feelings about this book, but I think what everyone can agree upon is that given what Nussbaum sets out to do, that is write "a book about India for an American and European audience", she delivers. The heart of her book is the claim that there are two struggles any person is any nation always has to face - one external, where the impulse to homogenize and remove people who might be inconvenient to a straightforward narrative about your own invulnerability; and second, an internal struggle to accept yourself as having a body with vulnerabilities, instead of imagining yourself as made of iron. She applies this idea to India, focusing on the 2002 Gujarat massacre of Muslims, as well as the broader Hindu right.
Despite having lived in India for most of my life, I admit that I (shamefully) have been quite uninformed about the systematic nature of the Hindu-right, instead simply assuming it was a more spontaneous, organic movement. But the RSS taking in small children through games, for instance, and then slowly inculcating a deep antagonism of Muslims in thousands of centres is far more insidious that I expected. And the battle over textbooks, the banning of certain books because they depict some God or famous figure in what's thought to be negative is so ubiquitous, it takes an outsider to India writing about it to make you realize how screwed up the situation is. The book itself is more than a decade old, but the very people she denounces for their suspicious inaction during the 2002 Gujarat massacres are in power at the federal level.
For her part, Nussbaum seems like someone who genuinely loves the pluralistic India she has seen and read about, and has clearly read plenty of texts and talked to a number of important people. Her close reading and comparison of Nehru, Gandhi, and Tagore is very insightful, and her analysis of the particularly brutal treatment of Muslim women in 2002 Gujarat as being linked to their strange symbolic positioning in certain Hindu male minds as both inferior (because dirty and impure) and a serious threat (because of the historic Mughal domination) is certainly onto something. She also points out quite right that the education system is still pretty terrible, and the reliance on rote-learning and science education over the Humanities and creativity is a recipe for a technically gifted by emotionally stunted populace.
Still, there's something off about the book.
First, her triumphant story of India doing away with the BJP in the 2004 elections because people opposed their attempts at religious division has soured since, since the BJP was elected nationally less than a decade later under the Gujarat Chief Minister she criticizes. Since their platform was administrative efficiency, and the Congress party (who Nussbaum seems to admire somewhat naively, disregarding their dynastic rule) is now pretty much discredited as a legitimate opposition, her particular analysis seems inapplicable now, whatever their merits in the original moment. There still are frequent claims about the Modi government turning a blind eye to the slaughter of people accused of eating beef, but still, they're hardly the fascists that were feared.
I suspect that this is because Nussbaum was trying a little too hard to find a difference between her vision of a pluralistic India and another which is Fascist and wants a monolithic mold. She certainly finds certain sources that support this division, and there really is a persisting problem of Muslim hate and distrust in the country, but she seems to read too much into a lot of what she learns about.
For example, she somehow hears a spectre of violence in "Vande Mataram" which she doesn't in the national anthem, but honestly, I'm not seeing it. She also claims that the appointment as President of Abdul Kalam, the Muslim ex-head of the Indian nuclear programme, who was a figure of broad appeal to the country as a non-partisan advocate of science, was "a canny step to woo the right while reassuring Muslim voters." Um, maybe. When faced with a random temple guide in America who belongs to a (possibly) shady organization, she says: "Our guide’s rigid, unmotivated smile troubled us, suggesting a kind of cultic obedience that Americans typically associate with authority and the abnegation of critical independence." Like ok, the temple guide giving tours to strangers all day didn't smile authentically enough, so somehow it's evidence of "cultic obedience"?
The book is an unapologetic polemic by her, and since I agree with her, I don't particularly find it disagreeable. But while there is a lot that's undeniably right - denouncing inept ideologues rewriting history - she isn't really engaging with any of her opponent's ideas, running the worst of them with what is somewhat reasonable. When she interviews people from the right, she offers some brief remarks meant as refutation and then somewhat inappropriately starts using her psychological framework to analyze them (the inappropriateness would be apparent if they did the same to her). So again, while she has a lot of good criticism, some stuff just seems strange. Like, is it really so bad for a textbook to claim the core of all religions are the same? That seems like the kind of banal thing you should tell children to cultivate a kind of unity early, but she sees Fascism everywhere.
Perhaps why this comes up is that in her quest to avoid the "postmodernist" charge that there are only narratives, she digs in her heels a little too fervently, assuming that her assumptions really are the only ones. For her, unity is required, but there are two different and distinct paths:
Although she tries to argue that these are distinct, her own claims in other places undermine the sharpness of the distinction. A common political culture that shares art and a "language" to talk among themselves (even if the actual languages are many) also calls for the undivided allegiance to a single culture, and if it's going to speak to people, needs to be grounded in someway in their cultural identities. Obviously, it is no solution at all to want to impose Hinduism on everyone, but what kind of shared culture would there be if Hinduism is ignored? Is she calling for a brand new neutral culture, or just a lot more public cultural exchange? And any majority religion/culture which has a 80% majority is going to impose itself on others through its mere presence, so I don't completely see what we should do here, but I don't quite think anybody else does either, despite their pretensions to the contrary.
Ultimately, I think she is a pretty good scholar when it comes to close readings of texts and ideas, but the application of her ideas to the messy, messy debates about identity, especially when it's a people who have been humiliated through colonization until recently will probably not yield many easy answers. Hers is a valiant effort to eke out some answers anyway, and to that extent it should be lauded.
Despite having lived in India for most of my life, I admit that I (shamefully) have been quite uninformed about the systematic nature of the Hindu-right, instead simply assuming it was a more spontaneous, organic movement. But the RSS taking in small children through games, for instance, and then slowly inculcating a deep antagonism of Muslims in thousands of centres is far more insidious that I expected. And the battle over textbooks, the banning of certain books because they depict some God or famous figure in what's thought to be negative is so ubiquitous, it takes an outsider to India writing about it to make you realize how screwed up the situation is. The book itself is more than a decade old, but the very people she denounces for their suspicious inaction during the 2002 Gujarat massacres are in power at the federal level.
For her part, Nussbaum seems like someone who genuinely loves the pluralistic India she has seen and read about, and has clearly read plenty of texts and talked to a number of important people. Her close reading and comparison of Nehru, Gandhi, and Tagore is very insightful, and her analysis of the particularly brutal treatment of Muslim women in 2002 Gujarat as being linked to their strange symbolic positioning in certain Hindu male minds as both inferior (because dirty and impure) and a serious threat (because of the historic Mughal domination) is certainly onto something. She also points out quite right that the education system is still pretty terrible, and the reliance on rote-learning and science education over the Humanities and creativity is a recipe for a technically gifted by emotionally stunted populace.
Still, there's something off about the book.
First, her triumphant story of India doing away with the BJP in the 2004 elections because people opposed their attempts at religious division has soured since, since the BJP was elected nationally less than a decade later under the Gujarat Chief Minister she criticizes. Since their platform was administrative efficiency, and the Congress party (who Nussbaum seems to admire somewhat naively, disregarding their dynastic rule) is now pretty much discredited as a legitimate opposition, her particular analysis seems inapplicable now, whatever their merits in the original moment. There still are frequent claims about the Modi government turning a blind eye to the slaughter of people accused of eating beef, but still, they're hardly the fascists that were feared.
I suspect that this is because Nussbaum was trying a little too hard to find a difference between her vision of a pluralistic India and another which is Fascist and wants a monolithic mold. She certainly finds certain sources that support this division, and there really is a persisting problem of Muslim hate and distrust in the country, but she seems to read too much into a lot of what she learns about.
For example, she somehow hears a spectre of violence in "Vande Mataram" which she doesn't in the national anthem, but honestly, I'm not seeing it. She also claims that the appointment as President of Abdul Kalam, the Muslim ex-head of the Indian nuclear programme, who was a figure of broad appeal to the country as a non-partisan advocate of science, was "a canny step to woo the right while reassuring Muslim voters." Um, maybe. When faced with a random temple guide in America who belongs to a (possibly) shady organization, she says: "Our guide’s rigid, unmotivated smile troubled us, suggesting a kind of cultic obedience that Americans typically associate with authority and the abnegation of critical independence." Like ok, the temple guide giving tours to strangers all day didn't smile authentically enough, so somehow it's evidence of "cultic obedience"?
The book is an unapologetic polemic by her, and since I agree with her, I don't particularly find it disagreeable. But while there is a lot that's undeniably right - denouncing inept ideologues rewriting history - she isn't really engaging with any of her opponent's ideas, running the worst of them with what is somewhat reasonable. When she interviews people from the right, she offers some brief remarks meant as refutation and then somewhat inappropriately starts using her psychological framework to analyze them (the inappropriateness would be apparent if they did the same to her). So again, while she has a lot of good criticism, some stuff just seems strange. Like, is it really so bad for a textbook to claim the core of all religions are the same? That seems like the kind of banal thing you should tell children to cultivate a kind of unity early, but she sees Fascism everywhere.
Perhaps why this comes up is that in her quest to avoid the "postmodernist" charge that there are only narratives, she digs in her heels a little too fervently, assuming that her assumptions really are the only ones. For her, unity is required, but there are two different and distinct paths:
One sees the unity of the nation as consisting in moral and political principles affirmed by people who differ by religion, region, and ethnicity; the other sees unity as consisting in the soil of the motherland and in the majority’s undivided allegiance to a single religious/ethnic culture. One sees richness in inclusiveness; the other finds inclusiveness messy, unmanly, and humiliating.
Although she tries to argue that these are distinct, her own claims in other places undermine the sharpness of the distinction. A common political culture that shares art and a "language" to talk among themselves (even if the actual languages are many) also calls for the undivided allegiance to a single culture, and if it's going to speak to people, needs to be grounded in someway in their cultural identities. Obviously, it is no solution at all to want to impose Hinduism on everyone, but what kind of shared culture would there be if Hinduism is ignored? Is she calling for a brand new neutral culture, or just a lot more public cultural exchange? And any majority religion/culture which has a 80% majority is going to impose itself on others through its mere presence, so I don't completely see what we should do here, but I don't quite think anybody else does either, despite their pretensions to the contrary.
Ultimately, I think she is a pretty good scholar when it comes to close readings of texts and ideas, but the application of her ideas to the messy, messy debates about identity, especially when it's a people who have been humiliated through colonization until recently will probably not yield many easy answers. Hers is a valiant effort to eke out some answers anyway, and to that extent it should be lauded.
September 3, 2019
The timing of reading this book couldn't have been better for me. Picked it up from my local library just because it had an Indian connection, and I am glad I did.
Since this book was published in 2007, the Hindu right has steadily gained more might given that BJP led governments have come power. My self bias (of a certain minority group being the bane of many problems that infest India) was getting reinforced after reading curated facebook feed or popular media.
Reading the book has done some balancing of this bias. To me as well, undoubtedly the beauty of India lies in its diversity. Anything that tries to homogenize our culture takes away some of that beauty.
Great language, strong themes and plenty of food for thought - amazing book.
Since this book was published in 2007, the Hindu right has steadily gained more might given that BJP led governments have come power. My self bias (of a certain minority group being the bane of many problems that infest India) was getting reinforced after reading curated facebook feed or popular media.
Reading the book has done some balancing of this bias. To me as well, undoubtedly the beauty of India lies in its diversity. Anything that tries to homogenize our culture takes away some of that beauty.
Great language, strong themes and plenty of food for thought - amazing book.
July 1, 2010
It's hard to think of academic books as page-turners, but Professor Nussbaum does a wonderful job in this work creating an intellectually rigorous account of recent violence in India's coastal state of Gujarat that captures the intricacies and contradictions of the modern Indian state while making recent challenges to and failings of India's democracy resonate with non-Indian readers. Knowing the basic plot of the story she tells and sharing the general tenets of her argument makes the book easier to read, but certainly Nussbaum's book is worthwhile for anyone contemplating questions of religion, democracy, and tolerance in today's world. The one criticism I have of the work stems from my own frustration with the academic process. In order to attack the Hindu Right, Nussbaum must resort to making arguments and criticisms on the basis of their lack of academic rigor. In defending the academics attacked by the Hindu Right, Nussbaum therefore demonstrates the academic rigor of those she defends and impugns the lack of scholarly process of her adversaries. Although her arguments stand, it is frustrating to see these somewhat petty and esoteric claims stand as the academic's only defense against unthinking, prejudicial, and violent political movements.
October 2, 2011
Nussbaum is a legal scholar, which makes for an interesting twist. Her discussion of the radical Hindu right are . . . informative. Solid book.
October 13, 2017
A solid analysis of communal violence in India, Hindu Right(sangh parivar) and Indian diaspora in US. Nussbaum's main contention is the "real" clash is not between civilizations but rather within modern nation, between one that sees no fear in diversity and another content only when the "other" is at the margins. She also kind of extends this to say the "clash" is within oneself. I have always looked at communal violence as a "struggle for resources", where mostly the have-nots are conditioned to find meaning and self-confidence only in the collective identity. However, Nussbaum looks for psychological origins of the problem: the colonial hangover, the real (and imaginary) humiliations of subjugation. The author ties this to the rise of manliness cult, obsession with purity and repudiation of sensual which together animates the Hindu right. This culture of dominant masculinity & disgust anxiety are cited as the reason for the horrific sexual violence during the Gujarat 2oo2 riots. I think the author is mostly correct in this respect. She is clear about the solution, education with emphasis on critical thinking and arts. One can surely dispute whether this is sufficient, as any casual observer of Indian politics knows Kashmir and the regular confrontation with Pakistan also feeds into the communal violence. However Nussbaum keeps Kashmir, Pakistan and Economics out of the analysis. Nevertheless, the pathetic state of Indian education surely needs attention if the communal violence is to be tackled.
Other things I liked:
1) Her espousing nation based on principles and aspiration, as against one by creed, language, race, geography, tradition.
2) Her survey of the Indian Law was also quite illuminating.
Other things I liked:
1) Her espousing nation based on principles and aspiration, as against one by creed, language, race, geography, tradition.
2) Her survey of the Indian Law was also quite illuminating.
May 4, 2024
Really like it. Fascinating look at Modi and the fascist politics of RSS and BJP. If you want an understanding of Indian political system, specifically Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nehru, it's pretty good. Lots of cool analogies to other democracies. The final paragraph:
"What subverts democracy, and what preserves it? In any democracy, the moral imagination is always in peril. Necessary and delicate, t can so easily be hijacked by fear, shame, and outraged masculinity. The real "class of civilizations" is not "out there," between admirable Westerners and Muslim zealots. It is here, within each person, as we oscillate uneasily between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others."
"What subverts democracy, and what preserves it? In any democracy, the moral imagination is always in peril. Necessary and delicate, t can so easily be hijacked by fear, shame, and outraged masculinity. The real "class of civilizations" is not "out there," between admirable Westerners and Muslim zealots. It is here, within each person, as we oscillate uneasily between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others."
May 8, 2023
Unabashedly opinionated, but well-researched. Did a great job of providing this Westerner an understanding of India as conceived by Nehru, Gandhi, and Tagore, and how it is being dismantled by the Hindu right, a religious nationalist movement that makes the MAGA crowd look like a small band of clueless goofballs.
In retrospect, it is too optimistic about was then (2007) the recent elections that ousted Modi’s BJP.
In retrospect, it is too optimistic about was then (2007) the recent elections that ousted Modi’s BJP.
December 15, 2017
I love Nussbaum, but don't think she offers the most nuanced perspectives on India
April 30, 2017
I wish I could have given this book more than two stars. I expected greater objectivity and even handedness from someone as distinguished as Nussbaum.
Mrs. Nussbaum admits to a bias in the text. What I didn't expect was the extent of bias. There is a clear intent to insult, such as calling Shivaji Maharaj - the founder of the Maratha Empire - a "Hindu prince with a minor rebellion". She also attempts to critique the complex psychology of her chosen opponents through her crude lens of feminism and obsession with sexuality.
The text is filled with moral judgments, but the T14 law professor and "philosopher" doesn't offer any coherent basis for her judgments besides a vague and over played fascist reference. The entire text is full of scorn for the people she thinks are "fascists" and who her friend Mrs. Sen (who obviously influences Nussbaum) clearly does not like.
There are a few decent chapters on Indian history and law, but for the most part this is a one sided tale that makes no attempt to discover an objective explanation for the horrible events in the early 2000s in India.
Mrs. Nussbaum admits to a bias in the text. What I didn't expect was the extent of bias. There is a clear intent to insult, such as calling Shivaji Maharaj - the founder of the Maratha Empire - a "Hindu prince with a minor rebellion". She also attempts to critique the complex psychology of her chosen opponents through her crude lens of feminism and obsession with sexuality.
The text is filled with moral judgments, but the T14 law professor and "philosopher" doesn't offer any coherent basis for her judgments besides a vague and over played fascist reference. The entire text is full of scorn for the people she thinks are "fascists" and who her friend Mrs. Sen (who obviously influences Nussbaum) clearly does not like.
There are a few decent chapters on Indian history and law, but for the most part this is a one sided tale that makes no attempt to discover an objective explanation for the horrible events in the early 2000s in India.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews