Martha Nussbaum- The Clash Within.

I have just finished reading The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future by Martha Nussbaum, and think it is the seminal book for understanding contemporary India. She starts by talking about the shameful genocide in Gujarat, where Muslim women were raped, and then murdered by inserting metal objects in their vaginas.

She then contextualizes the discussion by interviewing some contemporary figures in the Hindu Right, K.K. Shastri, Devendra Swarup and the politician Arun Shourie. In sharp contrast to these zealots she presents the dignified leaders of the Indian Freedom movement, Rabindranath Tagore, the poet, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

She goes more in to the background of the ideas, that lead to democracy in India, and the visions of pluralism, respect for all and equality, that the founding fathers envisioned in the Indian constitution. She than discusses the causes and consequences of the rise of the Hindu right. Her psychological and philosphical insights on the fantasies of purity and domination that the right wing Hindu males feel in creating the other, (Muslims or Christians) is very disturbing.

The later chapters deal with how the BJP government once it got into power, changed the History textbooks, and had respected critical historians like Romila Thapar sidelined. Murli Manohar Joshi, the BJP minister of education, pushed unqualified scholars, into positions of power, so that they could write the textbooks filled with poor English, lies and brain washing fabrications that the BJP and RSS wanted to instill in young minds.

Her critique of the effects of the Indian educational system are very accurate, the emphasis on rote learning and lack of engagement with the subject matter, leading to no critical thinking skills being developed. Another problem is that the teachers have so many students to teach with no resources and low salaries, that they often just do not teach. Instead they supplement their income by tutoring, as many children that can pay them, after school hours.

The Hindu diasporic community, especially the Swaminarayan Sect(one of the richest Gujarati communities in India and abroad) was under critical scrutiny for the material support they provided to the Gujarart riots. Also the I.D.R.F., one of the biggest charities in the U.S. was channeling money to the RSS. Rajiv Malhotra of Suleka.com was described as someone who was blackmailing American scholars that studied Hinduism. A side affect of scholars being harassed by the Hindu students council was leading to a lot of them giving up research on Hindusim. The long term affect will be that their will be no critical analysis on Hindu religious traditions.

Another area of concern was the lack of progressive groupings that Indians in the diaspora could affilate with. For instance most Indians affiliated with their religious groupings instead of a Pan Indian tradition. She felt the Gujarati community in particular by inviting Narender Modi the chief instigator and organizer of the Gujarat riots was falling into the trap of the Hindu Right.

A link to her article on patriotism and cosmopolitanism is here.

Here is a transcript to her talk at the Carnegie Council of New York.

Here is a poem by Tagore on what he wished for the future of education in India. It has always inspired me.

Where the mind is withouth fear
And the head is held high,
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken
Up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving
Stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
Has not lost its way into the
Dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward
By thee into ever-widening
Thought and action-
Into that heaven of freedom,
My Father,
Let my Country awake.